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“Stop your little girl crying!” he screamed.
“I’-I’m-I’m s-s-sorry!”
“Shut up, you stupid little shit. Sorry doesn’t change anything! Sorry is fucking pointless! Sorry doesn’t make that glass magically fix itself! It ain’t gonna make the money to replace it fucking appear out of the air! Don’t you ever fucking say sorry again, you stupid, stupid…”
Memories I don’t think my conscious mind had ever revealed to me flowed through my head. I wasn’t sure who he was…my father? A foster parent? I didn’t know who he was, only that he terrified me, he hurt me, and I hated him. What I did know was that anything that was meaningful to Raine mattered more to me than anything I may have believed before. I didn’t give a fuck about what anyone else might have said or cared about. Raine’s thoughts and opinions meant more, and whatever Raine wanted – if it was within my power – I was going to give to her.
“I’m sorry, Raine.”
I guess I didn’t need to be such a dick after all.
Chapter 12 - Food
A few feet from the lean-to, Raine and I sat on large palm leaves around a fire, popping bits of the first cooked food we had consumed in weeks. The cooking fire was nothing but hot red coals now,
and since we were done with the actual cooking, I threw a couple of green palm fronds on top of it, creating a column of smoke.
“Why did you do that?” Raine asked. She had finally calmed down enough that she was no longer sniffing, and her breathing was steady again. I still didn’t understand why she freaked out on me, but at least she seemed okay now.
“It will help keep the bugs away,” I told her. “It’s good for keeping other animals away as well, though I don’t think there is much here besides those tiny little lizards. They aren’t even big enough to eat. We should still always keep the fire going, especially at night.”
“I thought I’d never eat cooked food again,” Raine said with her mouth full. “I can’t believe how much better it tastes!”
She was right; it did taste a thousand times better. It would be easier to digest, and maybe she’d get a little weight back. I didn’t like how thin she was and wished I knew how to cook better so she would eat more. After we made some progress with shelter and water, I’d have to find something more carbohydrate-rich for her to consume.
“I’m a pretty shitty cook,” I said with a shrug. “Too bad Alejandro didn’t get stranded with us. He could make most anything taste good.”
I considered how life on the raft might have been different had Alejandro been there and decided I could put up with my own cooking. For starters, there hadn’t been enough water for two. We’d all be dead by now if he had been there. I had more selfish reasons as well and realized I was not at all sorry to have been put in this particular situation with Raine alone.
“What do you think happened to them?” Raine asked softly.
“No way to know,” I responded. “It’s best to assume they got on the lifeboats and were picked up. All of the boats had been launched,” or were lost, I thought but didn’t say, “by the time I got topside. There wasn’t anyone else on the ship but me by then. At least, I couldn’t find anyone else.”
“What are we going to do now?” she asked. “I mean, do you have any idea where we are?”
“I have a guess,” I said. “There’s a decent sized island chain north of Venezuela. I think we’re somewhere along there, just given currents and how long we’ve been in the open water.”
“Are any of them populated?”
“Lots of them,” I confirmed. “This island looks pretty small, but once we get a little more settled in, I can explore a bit. There might be a settlement or at least some evidence that people come here sometimes.”
“What if you find someone?”
“I’ll hope that they speak Spanish,” I said. “I don’t know any of the island dialects.”
“What if you don’t find anyone?”
“We’ll be okay here,” I assured her. “There’s probably a decent variety of things to eat, and as long as we find a reliable water source we won’t have any problems at all. If there isn’t any fresh water, there are still enough options between rain, the coconuts, and the still. It won’t be great, but it’s enough to live on.”
“Do you know what kinds of plants are edible?” she asked.
“Yes, I know a lot of them. There are some ways to figure out if something is edible, too, but testing stuff isn’t always safe. As long as I can find plants I recognize, I wouldn’t bother with it.”
“So we could look for those tomorrow?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “shelter and water first, then food.”
“Why?”
