The Island

16. Pyrophobia

Jordyn

At first, I am filled with a serene tranquility. The flames move around me like millions of tribal dancers. Their naked bodies twist and shake, grabbing the overhead branches and bringing them back to the ground with them in bursts of red. Their arms climb the trunks of the skinny trees. Bark turns red at their touch and melts to the ground.

The scene is beautiful and haunting.

In the center, we are safe, but with every passing second, the heat on my arms increases. The dream scape returns to me, and so does the panic I felt when I was burning alive.

"Kaia!" I blurt, turning around and grabbing the girl with both hands. She jerks her chin up, looks at me, and then looks around.

"What did you do?" she hisses as she stands up.

I say nothing as I stare up at her. My silence must make her furious, because she throws her hands up again and twists in a tight circle.

"Wake up Cowboy, and meet me at the beach," she says, and in the blink of an eye, she's gone.

When we both moved, Sam fell over into the grass. I'm surprised that he's still asleep, considering that Kaia was shouting at me moments earlier and that the fire has begun to make it hard to breathe.

I grip his shoulders with shaking hands and shake him.

"Sammy, wake up," I say, and he stretches his arms out on either side of him.

How can he be so calm when everything around him is falling apart?

"Is it morning already?" he asks in a sleepy voice. "Why is it so warm?"

He rolls over on his back and opens his eyes.

They go wide, and his mouth drops open. The flames of the fire reflect in his blue irises. Strings of saliva stretch between his teeth as his eyes dart around the blazing scene.

"Sam, we have to go," I say, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Fire," he says in a breathless voice.

His eyes glaze over, and for a moment he's gone. I recognize that displaced look; I feel it in my own eyes when the memories hit me. When he returns, he grips my shoulders and pulls me inches from his face.

"I'm scared of fire," he hisses, tears pooling atop his heavy lashes. "I remember it. It killed my parents, burned my entire house down. I was there, Jordyn." He takes a shaky breath and pushes me away from him. The heat of the fire licks my back. "I could have stopped it. I could have saved them."

He repeats those two sentences over and over again as he closes his eyes. I dig my hands under his armpits as his face goes white. Within seconds, he falls limp, and the both of us crash into the grass.

A string of profanities leave my mouth as I struggle to pick him up and hoist the both of us to our feet.

I could leave him behind. It would be much easier than trying to drag him out of the jungle. One less mouth to feed. One less body to worry about. One less person to worry about shoving me into the water when I least expect it.

Am I that kind of person, though? Can I leave someone to die?

The silence of my mind scares me. I don't have a clue who I am.

I grip Sam's shoulder and take a deep breath.

If I don't know who I am, then I'll just have to create a new identity.

I hoist Sam up onto my shoulder and hurry through the wall of flames around us. The hot ash of leaves clings to my feet, making me wince. The trees rain down around us, embedding glowing embers in our hair.