On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

Anna shook her head. “I have no idea. But whoever it was, they haven’t been home for a while.”
    “This isn’t scrap wood,” I said. “It’s been cut at a lumberyard. I don’t know how he got it here, boat or plane I guess, but this guy was serious. So where did he go?”
    “T.J.,” Anna said, her eyes growing wide. “Maybe he’ll come back.”
    “I hope so.”
    I put the guitar in the case and handed it to her. I picked up the toolbox, and we retraced our steps back to the beach.
    At lunchtime, Anna roasted breadfruit on a flat rock next to the fire while I cracked coconuts. We ate it all—the breadfruit still didn’t taste like bread to me—and washed it down with coconut water. The heat from the fire, plus a temperature that had to be near ninety, made it hard to sit inside the lean-to for very long. Sweat trickled down Anna’s red face, and her hair stuck to her neck.
    “Do you want to get in the water?” I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. She’d probably think I just wanted her to strip in front of me again.
    She hesitated, but she said, “Yes. I’m burning up.”
    We walked down to the shore. I hadn’t changed back into my shorts, so I took off my socks and T-shirt and stepped out of my jeans. I wore gray boxer briefs.
    “Pretend they’re my swim trunks,” I said to Anna.
    She glanced at my underwear and cracked a smile. “Okay.”
    I waited for her in the lagoon, trying not to stare while she took her clothes off. If she had the balls to undress in front of me, I wasn’t going to be a jackass about it.
    I got hard again, though, and hoped she didn’t notice.
    We swam for a while and when we got out of the water, we dressed and sat on the sand. Anna stared up at the sky.
    “I thought for sure that plane would make another pass,” she said.
    When we got back to the lean-to, I threw some wood on the fire. Anna took one of the blankets from the life raft, spread it on the ground, and sat down. I grabbed the guitar and sat down beside her.
    “Do you play?” she asked.
    “No. Well, one of my friends taught me part of a song.” I plucked at the strings and then played the opening notes of “Wish You Were Here.”
    Anna smiled. “Pink Floyd.”
    “You like Pink Floyd?”
    She nodded. “I love that song.”
    “Really? That’s awesome. I wouldn’t have thought that.”
    “Why, what kind of music do you think I listen to?”
    “I don’t know, like, Mariah Carey?”
    “No, I like the older stuff.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I was born in ’71.”
    I calculated her age. “You’re thirty?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought you were twenty-four or twenty-five.”
    “No.”
    “You don’t act thirty.”
    She shook her head and laughed softly. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
    “I just meant that you’re easy to talk to.”
    She smiled at me. I strummed some more, playing the same Pink Floyd riff, but I had to stop because my hands ached from making the fire.
    “If we had something to use for a hook, I could turn this into a fishing pole,” I said. “The guitar string would probably make a decent line.” I thought about using a nail from the toolbox, but the fish weren’t very big, and I needed something smaller and lighter.
    Later, when we went to bed, she said, “I hope that party you stayed behind for was worth it.”
    “It wasn’t a party. I just told my parents that.”
    “What was it?”
    “Ben’s parents were out of town. His cousin just got back from college for the summer, and he was supposed to come over with his girlfriend. She was going to bring two of her friends. Ben convinced himself he could score with one of them. I bet him twenty bucks that he couldn’t.” I didn’t tell Anna I had planned to try, too.
    “Did he?”
    “They never showed. We sat around all night drinking beer and playing video games instead. Two days later I got on the plane with you.”
    “Wow, T.J., I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Yeah.” I