Once several hundred feet from the beach, he turned around to get a look. It was much larger than any other private island he’d ever been on which, he supposed, wasn’t saying much. He watched swimmers hanging out in the cove, where the water had a paler blue hue, and he could almost see the beach through it just before the waves hit the sand.
Steve would love this, James thought. The idea made him feel suddenly isolated and alone on the water.
The people on the beach looked like miniature figures, and they probably couldn’t even see him.
I could disappear out here and no one would even know.
What a morbid thought. He set his shoulders back and looked up toward the sky, feeling the warm sunshine on his face. He was here and going to make the most of it, which meant scoping out all the good spots for filming magic tricks and looking for locations similar enough for video edits to make it look like he teleported. People loved those videos, mostly kids, but the algorithm doesn’t discriminate and a like on a video was still a like, even from a child.
James took off north, away from the rental shack, toward the cove. He saw people walking and biking along the beach, tanning, and having their friends take photos and videos. Behind them, the trees were thick and dark and the leaves quaked in the light breeze. As James skipped like a high-speed rock across the waves, he watched the foliage and buildings get fewer and farther between. Then, just past the dormitories, they opened into a wide channel in the middle of the island where two coves nearly touched. On the hot white sand, a group of guys threw a frisbee and chased after it like their lives depended on it. Beyond them, the dark blue ocean reached out to the horizon, where it blurred in the heat of the sun meeting the cool water.
The beaches on this side of the island were completely empty. In the woods he saw a group of buildings several stories high clustered close together. Even from the distance, he noticed that these buildings weren’t as nice as even the dorms. They looked older or poorly constructed out of wooden planks curving at the edges and rotting in the middle. Small windows sat high above the ground, and the exterior appeared covered in dirt from heavy storms. The trees also crowded the buildings and little effort had been made to clear away vegetation as was done with the buildings on the south side of the island. As he slowed to get closer, he concluded that the buildings were much older than the dorms or the huts on the south of the island, and maybe they were already here when the Island Xperience came through with their building contractors.
Something like this will be perfect if no one else comes up here when I do.He slowed to a stop and floated on the waves as he continued to brainstorm options that his kind of set offered him.
Underneath the steps leading to the porch on one of the buildings, James saw something move in the shadows and quickly disappear.
Too quickly, though. It stood in one spot and half a second later darted impossibly far away, like an object in a video struggling to buffer. James rubbed his eyes and felt the heat from the sun beating down without mercy on his bare back.
Maybe he only witnessed someone doing some much-needed maintenance, but why had they run when he’d come around? It was so quick, if James blinked he would have missed them completely.
His stomach turned anxiously while the jet ski bobbed on the surface of the water.
I’ve come too far,he thought. Somehow the thought felt too existential, so he forced himself to addfor finding a good place to film. I should check out the other side of the island.
This side of the island looked much the same as the side he started from. The same group of guys were playing a life and death game of frisbee in the cove at the center of the island. People swam in the ocean and tanned on the beach, and someone drove one of the blue bikes directly into the water while their friends laughed and filmed it from behind.
“Idiots,” James said out loud.
James sped down the length of the island. The short white luxury tents grouped together in roughly the center of this part of the island between the dorms and the villas. Most of them with their flaps pulled down, but some were open as people lounged about on the beds inside. He couldn’t see very well into them, but he’d already seen the photos from the website and knew what they looked like. He didn’t need to torture himself with what he could have gotten by just paying an extra two grand and had someone to split the villa with.
“I’m sorry, it just seemed way too expensive to not know what we were getting ourselves into,” Steve said when James confronted him back at home.
“This is an exclusive invite, Steve. It could mean something to be there. How many people do we know that didn’t get it, but you and I both did?”
“Yeah, well, maybe they just think we’re good marks,” Steve said. The implication cut James deeply, but Steve kept speaking. “Look, I already made up my mind, and I’m not going.”
So, instead of one of the beautiful tents, James amended his reservation for that tiny room back at the dorms. He kept his eyes on the water and avoided looking at the luckier, happier people in the tent village.
The elevated four person villas were placed even further south, and all their porches appeared empty. No animals or people hid under these ones, as far as James could tell, but the verdant shrubs growing patches of red and the short trees with stumpy bitter melons hanging from their branches provided cover for something or someone to remain unseen.
Turning west to finish circumnavigating the whole island, he saw the black and empty stage inside its skeleton of trusses. This side of the island swarmed with people and looked less like a festival than an actual town. People walked and ran across the beach, ate inside the straw-covered buildings, and drank beer or dove off the pier that stretched out into the ocean. There were more people in the ocean on this side as well, swimming or snorkeling or on jet skis further away from the beach. On the shore nearest to the villas, he noticed a line of large boxes that seemed out of place until he noticed there were people in them.
“Hot tubs on the beach. This place has hot tubs on the fucking beach,” he muttered to himself.
James slowed down to avoid collision with another group, then came to a complete stop and allowed himself to bob on top of the waves. He gazed down into the blue water but saw only his own reflection stretch and warp on the surface. He watched himself, like Narcissus in a funhouse mirror, until something changed and became twisted. His mouth stretched on the waves, but it stretched a little too far, grinning from ear to ear, or further. He gasped, and flinched away from the water, like the reflection might reach out of the ocean and grab him. When he leaned back over and peered at the bobbing surface, the specter disappeared, and James gazed upon his own face again. He kicked at the distorted image, feeling ridiculous for his fear now, and it scattered in a splash, the cool water welcome on his bare skin.
He must have been riding for a good hour. He stopped feeling gently warmed by the sunshine and instead it slowly cooked him. He felt tired and thirsty and decided to return the jet ski and search for something to drink.
“How was it?” the woman at the desk asked him, taking the keys back.
“Just as good as I’d hoped,” he told her, then as an afterthought added, “Are there any animals on the island?”
The woman nodded. “There’s a petting zoo near the dormitories. I think they have pigs, goats, some chickens—”
“No, I mean, are there any big animals on the island? Like big cats?” James asked.
“Um, no, I don’t think so.” The woman turned to the other person behind the desk with her, a dark-skinned man with short hair in a Hawaiian shirt that matched hers but not fitted as tightly. “Are there big animals on the island, Mark?”
