Lost Girls (12 page)

We see a black spot in the sky, way over by the nearest island to the mainland. It keeps zigzagging across the island and the channel between that one and the next. A helicopter, but not heading in this direction. Jas and I stoke the fire, but the damp wood is reluctant to do much more than produce a thin veil of smoke.

“See, Mrs. Campbell? They
are
looking for us.” But they don’t appear again.

“You two help me with this net, will you? It’s torn.” I despise the Glossies, but for some reason I can’t give up on them. They are sitting on rocks by the sea. May is weaving Mrs. Campbell’s hair into thin braids.

“No way, hate sewing,” says May.

“Yeah, leave us alone, bossy Bonnie.” Arlene is applying red lipstick, sticky and dark as blood, the same color as Mrs. Campbell’s lips.

“Let Layla see what I’ve done with her hair,” says May, snatching at the small rectangular mirror Arlene is holding.

“Haven’t finished with it—
gedoff
.” Arlene goes to grab it back and the mirror falls and smashes on the rocks.

“You stupid bitch. You crazy stupid bitch.”

They hit out at each other, scratching and screeching. Mrs. Campbell sits, unmoving and unmoved, as if she were the statue of a goddess.

I retrieve the largest piece of broken mirror from between the rocks and leave them to it.

Great! Mrs. Campbell is now high on a hallucinogenic plant. That’s all we need.

Mrs. Campbell has found a new way to escape reality—chewing the seeds of a datura plant. At the forest edge
are dozens of small trees covered in the creamy, trumpet-like, too-fragrant blooms.

“She was supposed to be looking for food, not drugs,” says Jas angrily. Now she’s lying in the shade of a palm, eyes glazed, red mouth open, a hibiscus blossom rotting in her hair, cheesecloth blouse loosely tied, one breast uncovered, red petticoat torn and grubby, red toenails chipped and jagged. May’s hair styling, stiffened with salt and sand, remains intact, despite the wreckage below.

Hope, Jas, and I are wading into the sea at the far end of the beach to our camp. The Portuguese Men o’ War have gone. I try not to think about sharks.

We walk out as far as we can, Hope at one end of the boatman’s net, Jas and I at the other. But it keeps floating to the surface.

“We need more weights or something on the bottom edge, so it drags along the bottom,” I call to the others.

After an age of searching we find enough heavy shells with holes in them to tie to the bottom edge of the net. We survey our handiwork proudly.

“That’s better,” says Jas. “Who’d have thought we’d make such expert fishermen!” We wade out again, then gather the net into a smaller and smaller circle as we
gradually move closer to the beach. It works. We’re all smiling and jumping up and down with joy. We have caught two beautiful parrotfish, with their large fluorescent scales of bright blue and emerald green. They flap around while the juniors hit them with sticks and rocks.

“I’ve never killed anything before,” says Jody. She’s so happy, so pleased with herself. The others jump and scream with excitement. Our brief moment of happiness is ruined when Jas hits her forehead with the palm of her hand. “How could we be so stupid?” she hisses. “We don’t have any matches. We can’t cook the fish.”

Think! Think! Think!

I try to remember movies I’ve seen with natives making fire. I know Dad’s done it. You rub a stick into a split made in another stick, twisting it fast until smoke appears. He says it’s harder than it sounds. Much harder. But I’ve got to give it a go. I end up with aching wrists, blistered hands, and no smoke. We all try and fail, even Hope.

“Let’s ask Mrs. Campbell.”

“You’ve got to be joking. She’s totally out of it.”

Then Hope offers me her one-eye glasses. “M-m-maybe these will help?”

Yes, of course! In
Lord of the Flies
they used Piggy’s broken glasses to make fire.

“Brilliant, Hope! What a good idea!” Jas says. “Actually, William Golding got it wrong. Piggy was nearsighted,
and they wouldn’t have been able to use his glasses to make fire. We can use yours, though.”

Hope smiles.

Jas is so clever.

But the sun’s gone again. Huge dark clouds sweep across the sky like battleships, sinking lower and lower.

“Oh, well, we’ll just have to salt them instead. There’s lots left,” says Jas. At least Mrs. Campbell had the foresight to carry more than enough salt to the island. It’s vital in the tropics. Mom says to take a teaspoonful when you feel like you’ve had too much sun and heat.

Jas sees the bright side of things, whereas I… well, I am just angry and fed up, and I feel as if I could murder someone. Every day I wake angry and go to sleep furious.

Hope and I cut the fish into thin strips. Jas rubs salt on them and then hangs them to dry over the net. Small red flies come from everywhere, attracted by the smell. Layla Campbell has introduced the Glossies to the datura plant now and they’re busy munching on its leaves. I have completely given up on them.

We can’t wait longer than half an hour—we’re all so hungry. So we eat the fish, sharing it with the juniors. It’s disgusting, but it’s protein. And now I can’t get rid of the smell of fish on my fingers, no matter how much I wash them. Oh, for a bar of soap! I’m sure Dad said there was
a leaf you could use as a substitute, but I obviously wasn’t listening hard enough when he told me.

“Why are May and Arlene eating leaves?” asks Jody.

“Because they’re stupid. And don’t you eat any—they’re poisonous.”

“Then why are they allowed to eat them?”

“They aren’t very poisonous to big people,” I lie.

“Oh.”

Mom once told me that datura gives you nightmares and that you lose control over body functions. So why anyone would want to try it is beyond me.

Later, while we are washing in the freshwater stream, downstream of where we gather drinking water, I suggest to Jas that the juniors see us as the adults now.

“Yes, and Hope, too.”

“What on earth is wrong with that woman?” I mutter, glaring in Mrs. Campbell’s direction.

“She’s just fallen apart. I mean, I think that’s what has happened. A breakdown,” Jas says, dipping her feet into the stream and cleaning between her toes.

“What’s the Glossies’ excuse then?”

“Stupidity? Lack of imagination? They act like this is all a big joke. A laugh.”

Right on cue they come staggering toward us, obviously stoned.

“Layla’s sooo sick,” says May.

“So are you, by the look of you. Why do you take that stuff?” I sound like Mom.

“I only chewed a tiny bit of leaf; Layla ate seeds. I think I’m going to throw up.” May vomits onto the sand in front of us.

“Gross, ugh, gross!” Arlene says and follows suit.

DAY 12—I THINK

I have given up all hope of anyone coming for us. They have no idea where we are, and they probably think we died the first night. But they would surely be looking for our bodies? If they are still alive.

I wish I had made notches in a palm trunk every morning, to help keep count of the days. I feel a real need for order in my life. Civilization seems to have broken down for us very quickly. No rituals like cereal for breakfast, no school, no homework, no lemonade time. No tea and
biscuits. No cleaning of teeth or soap and showers. No clean clothes. We are simply existing—surviving. We are like a drifting, rudderless boat.

Writing in my journal and reading Mom’s book are the only ways I know to make myself feel normal. For a short time I can forget what’s happening to us. The book is in a bad state—torn and battered, like the journal, with some pages stuck together and the cover bent and swollen. Mom doesn’t even break the spines of her books—it’s a point of pride with her. I grab the book and my journal, find a sheltered place behind a rock, try not to scratch my legs, and begin to read.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
is a very unusual book. It’s not a novel. It’s the story of a journey a man and his young son make across America. The narrator, Phaedrus, is good at maintaining his motorbike, but his friends on another bike are not interested in anything technical. They want to float through life without knowing how things work. Phaedrus tries to get his friends interested, but they really don’t want to know. They get angry when things go wrong and they have to depend on professional mechanics’ help to get them out of trouble. Phaedrus doesn’t, though. He doesn’t let his bike’s condition deteriorate. He spends evenings oiling the parts and
twiddling with spark plugs and brakes and stuff, adjusting the engine so it works well and doesn’t let him down.

But something else is happening in the story. He is revisiting his past—the college where he worked as a teacher and had some sort of breakdown. But somehow this means that he is in danger of breaking down again. He remembers how his thoughts took him to a point of no return, and he is getting dangerously close to the truth that drove him over the edge of sanity.

It seems to be about philosophy, too, about art against science, and how they could work together. But most artsy people can’t change a fuse, and most science people can’t appreciate poetry—that’s a simplification, but Mom says it’s more or less right.

I think I am a practical, science-y person. I like to know how things work. I like taking things apart and putting them together again—like radios and clocks and locks. But should I try to be an art person, too? I can see how lovely things are: I appreciate sunsets and rainbows and things like that. I particularly like finding different ways to describe colors.

But I also need to know why the colors are there—why a bird has bright tail feathers or why a butterfly has an eye painted on its wing. I don’t simply accept the world and say
WOW!
I need to know why it is wow-ish and wow-some. That’s just the way I am. Anyway, I do like
drawing and writing poems, so I guess I am slightly artsy. Once—it seems like years ago—Mrs. Campbell asked to see some of my poems.

I don’t know how any of that is going to help me in this situation. I’m fit, and I can run and climb and swim quite well, so those skills might help. We’ll see.

It’s only a matter of time before they find us… isn’t it? I can’t bring myself to believe Mrs. Campbell’s theory about the explosions. The Vietcong can’t have attacked Thailand. Our forces are stronger than theirs—we’re always being told that on the news and in the newspapers. The Americans and their allies are going to win the war.

Maybe there were lightning strikes on the base and it’s taking a long time to sort things out. Everything is so laid back in Thailand; everything takes time here. Mom says it’s part of the country’s charm, but Dad gets annoyed when things don’t work and we have to wait forever to get them fixed. That’s where I come in. I often fix things at the house—like the plumbing. There was a blockage somewhere and they couldn’t get a plumber to come. It smelled so bad! A land crab had got stuck in the drain outlet for the bath and died. I found and removed it and saved them hundreds of baht. Even Dad was impressed.

Lots of people are like Dad and get fed up with the way the Thais take their time over everything. That’s why so
many military families live on the base at Utapao—it’s like a little piece of America. I’m glad we don’t. I like being part of Thai life. For example, one of the charcoal burner’s daughters at Amnuythip is a really good dancer. We’ve watched her perform in the Lakhon dance-drama at the local wat. Her hands are like charmed snakes, writhing and twisting. She’s very supple. We’d miss out on that kind of thing if we lived on the base. And if we lived at the base I wouldn’t have met Lan Kua. Thinking about him or any of his family being hurt or killed by the Vietcong makes me feel ill.

Life should be
sanuk—
fun—the Thais say. People smile a lot. I have a sudden horrific image in my head of Lek’s children in flames, screaming and running naked, unable to escape the fire that consumes them.

I wonder if the Americans are making things worse for the Thais? Involving them in the war? Encouraging their daughters to be prostitutes—after all, they can earn far more working as bar girls than they could helping their mamas grow rice.