Lost Girls (18 page)

I try to name all the spices and vegetables and other stuff we see at the market in Pattaya: galangal, ginger, coriander, lime leaves, curry leaves, chilies, peppercorns on stalks, tamarind paste, mustard seed, cumin, garlic, cardamom pods, fennel seeds, cloves, mint leaves, star anise, fenugreek, cinnamon sticks, turmeric, mace. I love watching the noodle man make rice sticks, transparent hanks of flat, wide noodles.

Shellfish! So many wonderful shellfish: mussels, clams, stalked barnacles, spider crabs, green-shell crabs, limpets, shrimp, tiger prawns, lobsters, crawfish… uh… uh… sea cucumbers, seaweed. Okay, those aren’t shellfish.

I’m so hungry. I imagine a big bowl of pad thai—flat rice noodles with bean curd, vegetables, egg, peanuts, and dried shrimp, with a handful of coriander leaves on top. I can almost smell it. Actually I’d settle for a bowl of plain rice, or—better still—a big plate of fries with ketchup, or porridge with honey and cream.

What’s that? In the dim gleam of the slice of moon that appears briefly from behind a cloud I see two golden eyes, shining and deep, like pools of fire, and there’s a smell of something familiar—incense, maybe. Then they’re gone. Did I see them or imagine them? I’m shaking. They were real. The eyes of a tiger? My own eyes are wide open. I’ll never sleep now.

I struggle to see through the gloom and write:

If I survive this, God, I promise I’ll be good forever. I’ll never argue with Dad again.

I’m shaking with fear. Why did I ever want to go camping? Why did I come up here on my own? I must be crazy. My mouth is dry. I can’t swallow, I can’t breathe.

Eventually I sit myself up against the backpack so I’m sort of protected from the worst of the wind, and now that my eyes are accustomed to the dark I can see more or less all around me. I can smell forest smells—earth,
leaves, flowers, the faint scent of the sea. The forest is not quiet. Perhaps when this is all over, I could come back and study the ecology of the island. I wonder what exams I’d have to take to be able to do something like that. Perhaps I could do it with Jas. She knows so much already.

What am I thinking? Come back here, with these ants, these chiggers, the mosquitoes! Wild boars and tigers! Oh God, please save me from the tigers! And the snakes.

I rely on my Scottish memories again to stop me from panicking:

I learn to read and write in a schoolhouse that has four-to six-year-olds in the front row where I sit, older children behind, and the fifteen-year-olds in the back row. We eat bowls of broth at our desks. A peat fire burns in a cast-iron stove in the corner. One morning I jump up and down to get feeling back to my feet and one of my rubber boots goes flying into the fire.

“I’m telling on ye,” says a classmate.

No need; the stench is appalling. I am carried home through snow, as the drifts are too thick for a vehicle.

I keep forgetting to breathe. Terror paralyzes me.

DAY 15?

Okay. I haven’t been eaten yet. And I’ve survived the longest night of my life.

I’m cold and thirsty, and I ache all over. I’m incredibly itchy. My teeth are coated with what feels like fungus. I can smell myself. When the sun comes up properly I’ll thaw out.

The island is blanketed in thick white mist again, apart from the top of my hill. There’s no sun. The air smells of spice and seaweed. No birdsong, but I can hear the
hoo-hoo-hoo
of a gibbon choir, far below me in the invisible forest.

Finally the sun breaks through. I jump around to get my legs working again and climb down the hill to find more dry kindling and branch wood. I see a bush with great bunches of crimson berries, but I don’t know if they are edible. How did people ever discover what was edible and what was poisonous in the old days? Trial and error, I suppose. If you lived it was edible; if you were sick or died, no one tried to eat it again. And how did people ever work out what to do with spices like peppercorns and salt? Potatoes! Who found out that you have to cook them to make them edible? Who invented french fries? The French, I suppose.

I lick one of the berries. Yuck—maybe not. I must remember Dad’s edibility test.
Don’t eat any red plants.

Breadfruit, for example: How did anyone ever find out you have to cook it? Green and bumpy on the outside, rather like enormous unripe lemons. If you roast them in an oven or in the embers of a campfire they sizzle and split to reveal white flesh. The core isn’t edible, though.

I should concentrate on fire.

This time I have made plaited twine from stripped bark to hold the bundle of wood. I poke at a branch with a long cane to get at a hank of stringy lichen—ideal for tinder—and can’t quite reach, so I climb the tree. It’s not difficult and I feel warmer already, but I am suddenly covered in a sticky orange web and when I look around
to see where its occupant is I come eyeball to eyeball with the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It has a spread of about five inches and a long yellow and black body, and it looks deadly poisonous.

I don’t know who is more shocked—the spider or me. Me, I think.

I hurl him from my shoulder quickly before he regains his senses and bites. I hear him plop on the ground. Ugh, big spiders—I hate them. Jas told me once that huntsman spiders’ bites have some sort of toxin that liquefies living flesh.

Brown ghosts of cicada casts cling to the tree trunks. There’s a termite nest I have to climb around. It’s made up of termite crap—digested wood. It would burn well. Perhaps I should hack some off?

But suddenly a cough and a sigh come from below me, followed by a yelp.

I keep very still, heart pounding, and look down but see nothing. The forest is teeming with life. Big dragontail butterflies are flitting in the canopy and through the stripes of sunlight lower in the trees. I reach my lichen and clamber down again, getting yet more sticky web all over me. Spider’s webs can be used to cover wounds and aid healing. Why have I thought of that only now? If I had thought of it earlier it might have helped Natalie.

There’s no sign of whatever yelped.

The sun is higher and stronger now and I make my way back to the mound and my fire site. I’m getting better at climbing, and at fire-making. This time I get it right. It takes ages to heat the lichen tinder, and I hold the glasses lens close, watching the spot of white heat work its magic. Then when it ignites I place not too much kindling on top of the lichen; I add a little bit at a time—patience—then a few dry leaves, a little twig or two, yes, another, more small kindling, get it going, that’s it, that’s it. In a few minutes I have a real fire going, but it burns fast and I have to keep feeding it. I should have gathered more wood.

I clamber back down—I’m getting pretty good at this—and have to travel farther to find dry timber this time. I find a long, dead branch and with difficulty drag it back up with me, and then break it up onto the fire. The wood crackles and the fragrant smoke grows high to announce our presence on the island. There’s not so much wind today.

It’s a good fire! Oh, thank you, Hope, for the broken glasses! If only there were a ship or a plane to see the smoke!

My euphoria fades as I think about Jas and Jody. Have they left for the beach, or is Jody worse so they’ve had to stay? My mind races.

I sit by my wonderful fire, feeding it as if it were a hungry dog. It eats fast. The smoke spirals high as the flames die down. I wish I had some food other than rose apples.
I have cramps and have to leave my fire to go to the bathroom at the base of the rock, where I can cover it up. I feel like a bag lady or a tramp, I’m so dirty. But I can’t neglect my baby, my hungry fire. I grab some more dead wood and climb quickly back up.

The fire is stacked high with plenty of damp stuff and rotten logs. Green wood would be good, as it smokes more, but I have no ax.

Beetles crawl out from the burning wood and try to escape the fire. Even though I don’t mean to I am killing things.

Are Buddhists allowed to light fires if it means insects and grubs will die? I watch as the bugs are turned to crisp black beads, rather beautiful, like jet.

I am proud of my fire; it’s settling well and will burn for hours with the amount of wood I’ve placed at its disposal. I say good-bye to it as if it were my friend and head back down the rock for the final time.

I gather more rose apples and eat several for the moisture but almost immediately I am doubled over with more terrible cramps.

My Hansel and Gretel crumbs—the ribbons tied to trees—show me the way.

Ants bite or sting my ankles and I scrape them off with my spear, which I am using as a prod to poke at the undergrowth.

I’m worried about snakes, and everything suddenly looks snakelike: Each dangling liana, every root that trips me, and above, in the trees, each trembling leaf turns into a serpent in my vivid imagination. It must be exhaustion. I’ve hardly slept for several days and I haven’t had enough to eat.

I’d like to be back with my beautiful fire.

Phaedrus worried about the meaning and existence of Quality. He couldn’t define it. He wanted his students to define it, but no one could. He stopped marking exam papers in the university where he worked and upset a lot of people, including his students, who only wanted good grades so they could get well-paid jobs. They didn’t care if their work was of Quality or not. In fact, I think that is what finished him off—sent him over the edge and into the pit of insanity. But I’m not sure. When I think about it, Mom is probably very clear about the meaning of Quality. She insists on me always doing my best, whatever it is I’m doing—baking a cake, doing my math homework, writing an essay. I suppose Quality is the opposite of sloppiness.

At the beginning of the book there is a quote:

And what is good, Phaedrus,

And what is not good—

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

How come Mrs. Campbell can’t see that what she has become is not good? I don’t think she has any Quality at all. She has fallen apart. We haven’t been able to depend on her. She may be pretty, when she’s showered and shampooed her hair and put on her makeup and everything, but in reality she’s ugly—inside she’s crap. I don’t even blame May and Arlene. They’ve been led astray. But Mrs. Campbell is flaky, unbalanced, loopy. Definitely not Quality.

This is the fifteenth day we’ve spent here, I think, and we only had supplies to last three days. But it’s no thanks to her that we’ve survived. It’s suddenly terribly important to me that people understand what’s happened on this island. I swing my backpack from my shoulders and dig around for my journal and pencil. I write in large letters:

DAY 16

If anyone gets to read this journal, it’s because I have failed to survive and get help. I want you to know that you should look into the behavior of Layla Campbell on
this island. Ask any survivors what she did, and what she didn’t do. She’s partly to blame for the death of Natalie. She had plenty of whiskey, which could have been used to help disinfect Natalie’s injury, but she chose to drink it instead. And she’s been taking drugs. Encouraging minors to take drugs.

Signed—Bonnie MacDonald, May 1974, Fire Mountain, Koh Tabu