Island of Men

Chapter 11- "My Honey Bunches of Oats"

Morning had become a routine.  Whoever woke up first would extricate themselves from the conglomeration of limbs, pretend that they had slept a standard nine meters from the rest of the inhabitants, and then proceed with their dawnly duties.  

Objective:

1.  Find breakfast for those who were still plagued with sleep.

2.  Think about boiling water and then realize that you had nothing to boil it in.  

3.  Resign yourself to drinking water fresh from the stream, which was a good 16 minute hike south-west from the campsite.  

4.  Try not to think about parasites.

5.  Carry water back in the satchel and try not to whine about doing all the work when the rest of the troop wakes up.

6.  Whine about doing all the work.  

Miles was first up on the sweaty morning of July 22nd.  He rubbed the sand out of his hair, did a few lunges to wake up the ol' legs from their stiff dormant state, and took off into the jungle.  

Miles had always liked the jungle- in theory, that is.  Living in one town his whole life which was comprised of 24,000 people made the horizon seem endless and unachievable.  He thought he'd be stuck there- high  school, college, marriage, a gaggle of kids, and then be buried right in the local cemetery right next to his father.  

Don't get him wrong, he'd always wanted to hit the road.  It just hadn't seemed do-able.  There were those places he wanted to go: Morocco, Laos, Macedonia- but the question was: HOW DOES ONE GET THERE?  He didn't have the money, he didn't speak the language- in fact he butchered Spanish 1- and the thought of leaving home was similar to the feeling of having your credit card denied.

But here he was, in a metaphorical paradise, except Adam's apple was a mango.  And Eve... well, Emma, was here too.  Don't take that metaphor too far, especially because Miles wasn't fond of snakes.  Call him Indiana Jones, minus the fedora.  

Emma.  Emma.  Em.  It wasn't a cheesy thing.  He hadn't been in love with her from day one.  In fact, he had hardly talked to her for most of high school.  She wasn't his type, for he didn't even have a type.   He didn't really talk to... female creatures.  But Senior year, she had sat next to him in Spanish I.  She'd bugged him about the gender of his adjectives and laughed at his pronunciation, and teased him about all sorts of things.

She wasn't gorgeous, she wasn't perfect.  But she had been willing to talk to him, and he liked that.  She always had a book on her stack of notebooks- a new one every three days.  

From his point of view, she had many friends- he was one class to her.  

See, the school that the bunch attended had a strict no dating policy.  Students were to love each other, but to do so unbiasedly.  There was no room for favorites.  It was easier that way, it was harder that way.  

Emma was unbiased.  She talked to all the boys, she smiled at all their jokes, and she went back to reading Wodehouse, or The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed out the Window, or whatever it was she was hunched over.  

So what was Miles to do?  

In a class of fifty he was just Spanish 1.  But on an Island of four, his odds were dramatically increased.  In fact, the odds were in his favor, to use a popular turn of phrasé.  

He knew that David was quasi-interested, but that Emma didn't really lean that way.  By observance, he figured that Emma was sort of head over converses for Luke, in a casual sort of way.  So that was that.  But recently, he wasn't so sure.

Miles had a speech impediment- well, it had been insurmountable back in elementary, and his classmates well-meant laughter had always hurt him.  Wounded, to pick a word that sounded funny in his speech.  He'd kept that quiet for years.  Regardless, they spoke poniards, and every word stabbed.  Now he just over-enunciated, and constantly cracked banana size grins so that no one would see how confused he was about everything.  

But enough about Miles Hamilton Lewis, he didn't like talking about himself anyway.  He put his mind in the steps, just like XC, and made it to the stream and back without another thought. Emma was just waking up, and her hair was ruffled to one side like the comb of a rooster, and she was scrunching her nose up and down in an effort to resuscitate her facial muscles.  

She stood up, rubbed her ankle, and to use a colloquium, ankled over to the remains of the campfire.  Miles handed her a slice of mango, rather like Usain Bolt passing a 400m relay baton to Michael Phelps.  Unprecedented, awkward, yet memorable.  

Emma noticed that he had even more moles than when they were spontaneously plunked on the island.  Interesting.  She looked him in the eyes for a second, and they looked like the rings of an oak tree.  He looked away.  

"Gracias," said Emma.  

"Ah.  Russian.  My favorite language," schmoozed Miles.

"Oh Miles," laughed Emma as she walked over to the water bag.  She tried not to think about the possible parasites that could be co-mingling in her stomach and producing little parasite babies.  

Luke and David were still asleep, cuddling like two junior high volleyball girls.

"Emma."

"Oui, Miles?"

"Do you- could you- well," It was a rough start, but the closest he had ever gotten to a real conversation with Emma.  

"Well howdy love birds!  What's for breakfast?"  David was up, and squatting next to the coals, warming his hands.  

"Grits and biscuits and gravy, my honey bunches of oats," said Miles, as he abandoned the other effort entirely.  Well, for the time.  He didn't know- he didn't have a masters in the subject of Wooing.  

------

So who do you ship?  

Sea what I did there.

Cause it's an island-

Hehe.  

Nah, it's okay, you can just wave at that joke and keep reading. 

-ClutsyNerd