Islands Away

Chapter 1

I woke up on grass, to the sound of an old-fashioned (but still working) radio playing faintly, with a tattered rag doll in my hands. The room I was supposed to be in was in ruins, boulders of wall around me. I was fine, but I had no memories, and no idea of where I was. Only memories of books and songs, a flurry of voices, and knowledge.

I sat up and looked around. There was smoke everywhere, and corpses. The matted, tangled hair of a woman here, a once white shirt dyed blood red there. It was a cloudy afternoon, and dark was quickly coming upon me. I scavenged what I could find, and built a crippled lean-to on the least destroyed tree I could find.

I picked around and found a threadbare blanket filled with holes and lay on the grass, huddling under the blanket, and only then did the memories hit me: a beautiful woman, hushing me and panting,"It'll be alright, Scarlette, be quiet," stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. She turned up the radio, the only luxury we had, and we huddled in a dark shack. Suddenly the woman gasped,"Andrew! He's outside!" She turned toward the bolted metal door.

"No," I cried. "Don't leave me," and grabbed her hand tightly.

The woman turned toward me, her eyes glistening with tears. "Please," I choked.

"I must," she whispered. "Scarlette, you must remember me."

And as the pool of tears spilled over, she slid her hand from my grasp and turned. I sobbed and formed a heart with my hands toward my mother, folding it and scooping it toward my own heart, the sign that meant that she would forever be in my heart, crumpling against the steel wall. But seconds after my mother stepped out the doorstep and bolted the door again, I changed my mind and fumbled for the lock.

But I was one second too late. As I reached for the door, there was a huge roar, and I was thrown against the back wall violently. As I rapidly lost consciousness, the blood mixed with the tears, all from a gully into a faded red river, and everything went black.

I woke with a start, tears streaming down my face, and remembered that it was a dream and not reality. I hugged the rag doll close to my chest, my tears dampening it. That woman had died, trying to save a lost cause. It was no doubt I was the only one alive.

I lay on the sweet-smelling grass again, tears in my eyes, and cried myself to sleep. My eyes stung, the saltwater continuing to pour down my face, watering the dry, withered grass. But I had hated my mother, I remembered. I had run away from her and my family tons of times, so my sorrow dissipated quickly, anger, resentment, and bitterness in its place.

I clenched my fists around the doll and curled up on my back, my eyes drifting off slowly, then all at once.

The next day, I woke up at, a little bit earlier than noon, it seemed. I remembered how to fish and make a fire to cook it, so I scavenged for wood and string, coming back to my lean-to with a sturdy stick from a fallen tree, and a coarse, tattered string that I had found from the ruins of another house. I could hear the ocean in the distance, and found that it was right outside, about fifty feet away from the village. I caught fish, returned to my makeshift shelter, and cooked dinner. When I was full, my eyes drooped, and I crawled to my blanket and slept soundly. Watching, waiting, as the sky turned into a black oil and the world dripped down my eyelids like oil dripping down a wet canvas.

The next couple of weeks was the same, struggling to stay warm and healthy, filling my stomach with food from the sea and drinking water I found in some metal canteens that had been sealed shut.

Every night, I turned up my radio to listen to old jazzy songs that I loved when I was younger. "Stars Fell on Alabama" was one of my favorites, and I often listened to it while lying on the grass outside the lean-to, looking up at the endless stars, the star-drunken sky, recognizing the constellations. I didn't know where I was, but I had to be somewhere along the coast, and the weather was warmer, so I thought that it had to be California.

Tonight, as I lay on my back, picking out constellations and listening to "Stars Fell on Alabama", I thought of Q and Margo from Paper Towns, listening to same song, dancing the foxtrot and the 6th grade slow dance, after pulling pranks on Margo's enemies and breaking into SeaWorld, the night before Margo was never seen again. I closed my eyes and listened, to the wind in the rustling grass, to the infinite sound of the waves crashing on the beach, to the music, and realized that there was never a place as peaceful as this. I lay on the sweet-smelling grass as Hazel Grace did in the movie for The Fault in Our Stars, and, turning down the radio, I began to tear up again, and there was no one to see me. No one to see me except me.

I poked the fire that I always kept burning, and the embers sparked up. I drifted my hand over the flames, just barely missing them, and looked into the fire. By that time, I was tired, so I crawled under the blanket and fell asleep.

The next day, I walked along the beach, my feet in the water, trailing my hands on my sides, in the air, drifting them as if they were caught in the wind.

Suddenly, in the distance, something was rolled onto the sand by the waves. I sprinted as fast as I could to it. I reached the object, breathless. But still I caught my breath. Because lying half in the ocean, being washed over by clear blue waves, was the body of a boy.