Lost Girls (5 page)

Those of us who can have spent the rest of the day searching for firewood, which isn’t that easy, what with the heavy rain. Jas and I put our efforts into finding firewood and trying to dry out broken-off branches to put on the fire. It’s a full-time job. The others are useless. May is putting her recovered curlers in her hair, Arlene is asleep or pretending to be, and Hope is holding her stomach and moaning. Jody is cuddling her tattered toy bear and sucking her thumb.

Carly hasn’t moved. Jas says she’s in shock. She wraps her in her
WESTERN WILDCATS
sweatshirt and gives her sips of water. The little girl shivers and shakes her head and won’t look at us, staring into space as if she’s sleepwalking.

Mrs. Campbell sits in the dark of the cave, smoking, her head in her hands.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Campbell?” I ask several times, and finally she answers.

“For Christ’s sake, Bonnie, no, I’m not all right.” She
takes a bottle of Thai whiskey from her backpack and drinks. There’s an uncomfortable silence. She’s angry and I don’t know what to say. Natalie, huddled next to her, breaks the silence, howling, “I want to go home, I want to go home.”

She sets the other juniors off, and soon the three of them are sobbing their little hearts out. We older girls try to cuddle them, but Natalie won’t be quieted and won’t let anyone near her, and her leg is looking sore. I wish we could find the first-aid kit.

“I can’t believe we’ve lost the first-aid kit!” I stare pointedly at Mrs. Campbell, who ignores me. “It could have gone in the waterproof bag with the food.”

Jas shakes her head at me, frowning. She knows how I’m feeling, but she’s determined to keep the peace.

The boatman will be back the day after tomorrow, and we’ll have to make the best of it in the meantime. The wind is still very strong and the waves are high and we feel safer if we stay in the shelter of the rock. We’ve stacked a great pile of palm fronds across the cave mouth to give us more protection from the wind.

I pull out my journal. I’ve started mapping out the island on a double page. I’ve named the cave Black Cave, because it is almost a cave and the rock is very dark with black lichens. I suddenly feel guilty. Why wasn’t someone holding on to Sandy? How did it happen? She shouldn’t
have died. Could we have saved her? Her poor parents. They don’t know. How will we tell them? Will Mrs. Campbell tell them? Will the Thai police or USAF military police have to come to the island? We’ll have to take her body back with us in the boat. It seems inappropriate—disrespectful—to make a map when Sandy is lying dead. I replace the journal in the waterproof plastic folder with my pencil and Swiss Army knife. I’ve attached it to my belt with a clip.

I’m still upset by Mrs. Campbell’s outburst. Jas comes to give me a hug, but I shake her off. I can’t get over it.

Arlene and May are useless. All they talk about is boys.

“If we had boys with us they’d know what to do. Boys are good at building and stuff.”

“Yeah, Lan Kua’s useful with his hands.”

“So I’ve heard,” May says knowingly, and Arlene smirks.

“Shut up, you two!” I shout at them and they make faces at me.

I’m trying to distract myself by thinking about William Golding’s book
Lord of the Flies
. Our teacher told us it was about the falling apart of society when there is no order, no authority figures. But the characters are all little boys, and everyone knows little boys are barely human.

Anyway, we’re all female on this island, and we won’t
become savages. The bit when they attack Piggy is horrible. Girls wouldn’t act that way. We’re much more civilized.

Hope has started her period, and broken her glasses, and she wants to go home.

DAY 3, MORNING

Didn’t sleep last night—sleeping bag gritty and damp. My hair is sticky and tastes of salt. My scalp is itchy with sand and dirt. Lips are dry and cracked. Wish I’d brought ChapStick or Vaseline. I’ll never go to an island again for as long as I live.

None of us feel like eating, except Hope, whose appetite never seems to suffer no matter what happens. But Mrs. Campbell says we must.

So, just like yesterday, it’s tinned sardines and cold
baked beans for brunch straight from the tin, with damp matzos.

Natalie’s leg looks bad and she refuses to let Mrs. Campbell tend to it—screams if she gets close. Not that Mrs. Campbell can do much anyway, without the first-aid kit. But when Natalie falls into an exhausted sleep Mrs. Campbell examines the injury. I help her clean it with bottled water and attempt to remove dirt from the wound, which is closing up. Mrs. Campbell says it should have been stitched and heroically sacrifices a strip of her torn petticoat skirt to make bandages.

“Shouldn’t we clean it with hot water, Mrs. Campbell? Or disinfect it somehow?” I’m thinking of my first-aid course.

“Oh, it’ll be fine, Bonnie.”

Mom trained as a nurse and I’m not squeamish about blood and stuff, but the leg is red and swollen. Infections from coral cuts are common in the tropics. Some of that purple disinfectant we buy at the base shop would have been useful.

“If you fuss you’ll only frighten her. We’ll be home the day after tomorrow and she’ll get proper medical treatment. We’re doing fine for now.” This is the first time Mrs. Campbell has spoken to me since her outburst last night, and I’m relieved.

I lead another search party to look for any other useful
debris from last night’s storm. No luck, but I do find an amazing large empty shell. I think it’s a conch. I take it back with me. They had a conch in
Lord of the Flies
and used it to call everyone together for meetings. And whoever spoke in meetings got to hold the conch, and all the others had to listen. I tell the others that you can blow into it and make a loud trumpeting sound, but we all try and only Hope can do it.

I suggest we tie rags over our noses and mouths to help keep the sand out. It helps.

Then Hope has an idea. Somehow she’s managed to salvage her supply of those old-fashioned Kotex pads with loops at the end, and she gives each of us one to use as a mask. They really work! We put the loops over our ears. We look so ridiculous, like surgeons in a comedy movie. We laugh for the first time since the storm.

The laughter stops when we return to the cave and realize we have lost the fire. As darkness falls we huddle together, the Thai barbecue at our feet, the juniors in our arms to keep them feeling safe. Sandy’s sister, Carly, still hasn’t spoken, and she’s pale and listless.

“Let’s sing!” Mrs. Campbell smiles brightly at us.

So we sing all the songs we can think of, from the Beatles to the Beach Boys. Mrs. Campbell, Arlene, and May know all the lyrics. We try to harmonize like the real bands do but we’re rubbish. It helps take our minds off our troubles, but I keep finding my thoughts drifting
away, back to poor Sandy. Flashbacks—the sleeping bag blown through the air, wrapping itself around the palm tree. Sandy inside, alone, dead.

My thoughts are almost noisy enough to drown out the sound of the songs and the wind and the rain.

Natalie is still asleep but it’s not a natural sleep. I put my hand on her forehead like Mom does when I’m feeling ill, and she’s feverish.

“What did I say about fussing?” Mrs. Campbell reminds me, but not unkindly. “You’ll only upset her, or Jody….” And she points at Jody, who is whispering to herself or to the invisible Mikey. But I think Natalie needs more care than we’re giving her.

Mom should be here. She’d know how to help Natalie. She’s the most capable person I know. Most days when she drives into Pattaya to get the groceries there’s a line of sick Thais waiting for a lift to the local clinic. Mom’s become the local ambulance service, fitting in the clinic visits between shopping.

A few weeks ago a U.S. Marine hammered at our door in the early hours of the morning. His yelling woke me. He was carrying his unconscious Thai girlfriend in his arms. She had bad head injuries. Robbers had fixed a trip wire across the road that had knocked them from his motorbike. His wallet and passport were gone.

Mom wrapped a towel around the girl’s head and drove them to the all-night clinic in Pattaya. The doctor could
do nothing for her and sent them by taxi to Bangkok, which is a two-hour drive away. Mom lent them the fare.

Recently the Marine returned with the cash to thank Mom for her help. His girlfriend is fine, recovering from her injuries.

I look around at us now, huddling, cranky and miserable. Mom would know what to do. She’s always on top of things. She would soon have us organized. I’ll be nicer to her when we get home.

Not that I’m horrible to her exactly, but I suppose I don’t appreciate her enough. She hasn’t been able to work here (U.S. rules for alien service wives or something), and she says it’s boring being in the middle of a war but not taking part, and wishes we’d gone back to Scotland. But then I wouldn’t see Dad at all and that would be awful, even if he is moody when he is around. Anyway, it will all be over soon and we’ll go back to our old house in Edinburgh. I love waking up on really cold mornings and wrapping up in a scarf and woolly hat for a walk to Holyrood Park. Maybe we can get a dog. I’d love a dog. A golden retriever, or one of those mongrels with hairy faces and intelligent eyes, the ones who look like they can speak.

DAY 3, AFTERNOON

I am sitting on my own in the shelter of a fallen palm to write this. The barbecue’s
gone out again and we’ve run out of charcoal. I’m beginning to think that Layla Campbell is useless.

One bit of good news—Hope found Carly’s teddy bear sticking out of the sand. When Hope gave it to her it was like she didn’t recognize it.

The gale isn’t as bad as it was. The waves are racing in and engulfing the narrow beach. The sea is brown from churned-up sand. There’s a new shelf of sand where it has been moved by the storm. This sea hasn’t finished with us yet.

“Mrs. Campbell, don’t you think it would be better if we camped on higher ground?” I ask.

“No, Bonnie, we can’t leave the body…. We can’t leave it unattended.”

“But the tide is coming in, and with the wind behind it, it might be even higher than last night.”

Jas supports me. “Yes, Mrs. Campbell, it doesn’t feel safe here anymore. The sea looks as if it will come crashing on top of us at any minute.”

Mrs. Campbell looks flustered for a moment. “Okay, okay, but we better bury the remains properly first, and mark the grave, or we’ll never find it again.”

How can she talk so coldly about Sandy?

The burial upsets us all. Mrs. Campbell whispers a few
words over the grave, something about Sandy being an unfortunate innocent child, but when she starts crying of course we all start. Jody wants us to chant the Amelia Earhart Cadet pledge.

“Okay then, why not?” says Mrs. Campbell. “How does it go?”

I am shocked. “You must know the pledge.”

“No, Bonnie, I don’t know, actually. I only took the job as cadet leader because there was no one else qualified and I was persuaded to volunteer. So…”

“Oh.” I feel deflated.

We chant, without the benefit of Mrs. Campbell’s voice:

I promise to always do my best.

I promise to be honest and truthful.

I promise to be loyal.

I promise to be kind and thoughtful.

I promise to obey my parents.

I promise to be modest.

I promise to help my fellow cadets whenever they need help.

We stumble through the Lord’s Prayer and sing Sandy’s favorite hymn—“All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Carly and Jody make a cross pattern in shells on the mound. Mrs. Campbell hasn’t allowed us to make the grave very deep.

“Somebody will have to dig up her body when the boat comes,” she explains.

I look for Carly, hoping she hasn’t heard.

“Now, nuts, everybody. We need to gather as many as we can—enough to keep us going until we go home.”

We set off inland, away from the roaring sea, and I try not to think of that little body, broken and alone.

There are loads of fallen coconuts all along the top of the beach, so we won’t be short of something to eat and drink, except that we are in competition with coconut crabs. They’re hideous and large, like shell-less hermit crabs—they split open the coconut shells with their powerful claws. They are so aggressive that we have to push them away with sticks.

Natalie can’t walk, and we carry her between us, taking turns to make a seat with our arms. But she’s no good at holding on as she’s practically unconscious, so Hope ends up carrying her over her shoulder. Luckily Natalie’s small and not too heavy. Jody hangs on to Jas’s arm and cries incessantly. Carly drags behind Mrs. Campbell. The rest of us carry sleeping bags, the remaining backpacks, the water bottles, the waterproof bag, and the rest of our food.

“Watch out for thorny bamboos and scorpions and
biting ants,” Jas tells us. Mrs. Campbell looks alarmed, and Jas nods at her. “Yes. And there could be snakes. What am I saying? There are bound to be snakes.” May and Arlene leap to Mrs. Campbell’s side, shrieking stupidly. Jas smiles cheerfully at them and rolls her eyes at me.