A Map for Wrecked Girls by Jessica Taylor

Author:Jessica Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Smoke billowed up from the jungle clearing in warm, gray gusts that filled me with more excitement than Christmas morning.

Henri warmed her hands and face, feeding little bits of dry wood and green leaves into the fire.

We built it only about eight feet from the shelter door, at the center of the clearing, where the branches above were spaced loosest for ventilation. Flames danced around the small pile of wood and dried the humidity from the air. I inhaled, pulling deep inside the scent of the musky smoke and fresh, wet earth. It had been so long since I’d breathed anything like it.

The island wasn’t cold—it was never cold—but something about those flames drew us in.

The heels of my hands were blistered and burning. The rock I’d been using as a hammer to beat a piece of scrap metal into a bowl had ripped my skin to shreds. My bowl was wide and shallow and wouldn’t catch much water, but we could boil small amounts at a time.

Henri pressed her hand over mine. “You should take a break, Em. That looks pretty good.”

We’d been listening for hours to the sound of Alex’s ragged breathing. I’d already speared us a fish, cooked it just beside the fire in a wet leaf. The bowl was something else to keep me busy. “Not yet.”

Henri followed my gaze back to the shelter for the hundredth time. “Hey, Em, if he’s not okay—”

“He’ll be okay.”

I knew she didn’t believe that. Henri hadn’t said much about the lighter, about what it meant—it wasn’t like her to give someone grace. Dying, I supposed, meant he got a reprieve.

“Well, if he’s not okay, then, well, you and I will be fine. We’ll have each other. I— Emma, everything back home . . .”

I looked at her. “What?” I thought she might say something important, something that would let the weight of my guilt float away.

“Never mind. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

I didn’t know what shifted the balance between us, if it was Alex being sick or the two of us working on the shelter or her sensing something was happening between him and me, but I started to see a side to Henri I hadn’t seen since long before Puerto Rico. I wanted her back more than anything. But now that she was within reach, I couldn’t be happy.

All I could think about was Alex dying on this island.

Henri threaded another blue shell onto her string. Forty days. I was finally breaking through her icy exterior. It should have thrilled me. But I felt only tired, jittery.

She opened her hand and let a palmful of seashells spill onto the wet ground she’d cleared in front of her. She separated them by color, piles of light pink, seafoam green, beige, and baby blue.

“Why do you care about those so much?”

“They’re something to do, I guess. If exposure and hunger won’t kill you, the boredom will.” She set down the strand she’d been weaving. “I never thought too much about what I might want to do someday.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.