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“Me neither.”
“I still can’t wrap my head around any of this. I’m supposed to fly out to LA in three days…”
Adela sat down on a log and pulled her friend along with her. They deserved a little break after defying the intense heat in the jungle these past hours.
“I’m sorry. I know moving to LA and working for your mom as an interior designer meant the world to you.”
Camilla swept a sticky strand from her forehead and huffed. “My dad hates it. He said I’m just like my mother; burning all my bridges the moment things get tough.”
“Losing your twin sister is not just a tough moment. Of course it wrecked you. I would also turn to my mother if she was still…”
Adela didn’t finish her sentence and took a deep breath to numb the pain she felt whenever she thought about her parents.
Sailing from port to port, taking on all kinds of odd jobs to get by, had been difficult growing up. Her parents had always been her best friends, as Adela learned from a young age that investing in friendships only resulted in a broken heart, since her parents never stayed long in one place.
For the first time in her life, she’d found genuine friendship with Camilla, Raven, Hailey and Liv. Her college roommates had made her feel welcome four years ago, and despite their different backgrounds, they just clicked.
Adela had just started her oceanography study when her mother stopped by one morning and told her about the lump they’d discovered in her breast. Her mother passed away six months later. And three weeks after her mother’s funeral, her dad had already sold their home in Honolulu, bought a new sailboat, and left Adela to deal with her grief on her own.
She’d talked to her father six times in total after that day he left. The last time he called had been on her birthday. He’d reached Morocco and sounded so happy. In retrospect, it could have been the last time Adela talked to her father.
“Will it ever get better?”
Adela wiped a tear from under her eye. “I still miss my mom every day. It’s like there’s a hole in my chest and nothing can fix it. I wish I could tell you something different.”
Although at first it seemed like Camilla mindlessly traced a line in the dirt with a stick, soon appeared her sister’s name:EMMA.
“Maybe we can find a beautiful spot on this island for Emma and my mom. A place where we make something in their memory, like with sea shells or something…”
A few seconds passed, the silence between them hanging heavy in the air.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to if that—”
Camilla tore her eyes away from her sister’s name in the dirt. “I think I’d like that…”
Adela got up from the log and held out her hand. “Okay. Now we have three goals to reach while we’re here.”
Camilla let Adela hoist her up. “We do?”
Adela counted the goals on her fingers. “One: we need to find the others. Two: we need to find civilization so we can contact your family and find our way back home. Three: I don’t care if we’re staying here for a day, a week or indefinitely; we’re going to find a magical spot on this island where we’ll make something in memory of Emma and my mom.”
“I’d like that…”
“Good.”
“Okay. Let’s go. We’ve been slacking off for way too long,” Camilla said before she playfully bumped her hip against Adela.
Adela took the lead this time. After a few minutes of getting sliced at her arms and legs by all kinds of branches, she stopped and looked back at her friend, who also had blood running down her arms.
“I’m sorry. I think this way into the jungle is harder to get through.”
Camilla wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here before it gets dark. My way led us back to our starting point. At least now we know that we’re entering some new ground.”
Adela looked around, imagining danger lurking at them from all angles. “I really don’t want to sleep here tonight.”
A branch snapped behind them. Adela held her breath while Camilla froze.
As they stared at each other in silence, Adela mouthed, “What is it?”
