The downpour starts, and wearerunning. I don’t want to make it too obvious, but I watch Callie from the corner of my eye.
She is giggling, following Maddy, me following her.
I grin.
Yeah, this feels like adventure.
I’ve been to this waterfall a hundred times, but with her, it feels different.
The rain drums against the big palm leaves. It showers onto us. We are wet. And everyone is laughing. Like it’s the biggest fucking miracle that’s happened.
The guys make war cries.
Ty is playing Tarzan or whatever he is doing, running around and beating himself in the chest with his fists. Then he grabs Dani by her hand and hurries up the path, making her laugh.
We slip and slide and wipe our faces again and again and squint because the rain already soaked us wet.
There is something magical about a moment of happiness that takes over you suddenly, like a storm. An unexplainable euphoria. It wipes away the past and the future and even the present. It lets you laugh and live in the moment.
Ty is howling like a fool. Katura is behind him, making war cries. Maddy, Mia, Santino, Jeok, Ya-ya, Kristen, and Owen are all cheering.
Callie is behind them, on purpose or not, and I close the procession.
The branches and leaves slice my face as we dart along the path to the village.
The air around us is thick with rain. The sky is dark, and the path through the jungle is even darker, the trees closing above our heads, leaving just a tiny slice of the dark sky.
The world somewhere else is falling apart.
But fuck!
Euphoria sweeps over us. And we are desperate young souls trapped on this island, running toward something we are not sure of.
“Watch the stump!” someone shouts ahead.
Someone roars with laughter in response.
We only have this moment.
This minute.
This fucked-up sense of happiness takes us away from the memories and grief.
This island traps time. It traps us away from anything that can hurt us. And though there are plenty of things that can damage us here—fuck, we try to harness them, because once in a while we feel powerful.
This is our world.
We cry.
We live.
Ty screams in delight somewhere too far ahead now.
Katura oh-la-las.
The cheers are suddenly so powerful, echoing all over, that we take over the rainy jungle with them, cackling and chirping like a pack of rowdy parrots.
Someone slips and falls. We laugh hysterically. Because if we don’t, we break down and sink in misery.