Reckless Girls(27)

But maybe she picked up on the tone, because she steps away from Nico, sulkily folding her arms across her body.

She runs hot and cold, that girl. Brittany and I had spent the day after the almost shark attack on the Azure Sky, and Amma hadn’t joined us, hanging out on the Susannah instead. It didn’t seem to bug Brittany, but I could hear them whispering in their cabin at night, and I wondered if they’d been arguing.

Not for the first time, I’m glad Jake and Eliza are here, too. Having extra people definitely helps defuse any possible tension.

The six of us stand there on the beach, looking into the jungle. Nico and Jake each hold machetes, both of which came from the Azure Sky. It had seemed like an insane amount of macho overkill at first, but now, as I stare into the thick vegetation just a few feet from shore, it makes sense.

“So, you guys are seriously going to hack through this shit like Rambo?” Brittany asks, one hand on her hip, her eyebrows raised.

“Only way to do it, love,” Jake replies. He’s not quite as well put-together today, trading his shorts and button-downs for an old T-shirt and a baggy pair of khakis, an ancient pair of sneakers on his feet.

The machete makes a whizzing noise as Nico swings it, thwacking into a thick vine with a sound that’s both damp and meaty, making me shudder a little. “Fucking sick,” he mutters, little-boy excitement gleaming in his eyes, and Eliza laughs.

“God, you are such a dude.”

She over-enunciates, drawing out the vowel, duuuuude, and Nico laughs, too, shrugging.

“It’s fun. You wanna try?”

He hands her the machete, and she wraps her fingers around the handle, testing the weight of it before swinging. Her stroke isn’t nearly as hard as Nico’s, and the blade gets stuck in the vine she was attempting to slice.

“Bugger me,” she says, tugging, and Jake steps forward, adding his grip to hers as they pull the machete back.

“Harder than it looks, eh?”

As the blade pops out, Eliza staggers back a little, bumping her back into Jake’s chest, and he uses the opportunity to duck his head and press a kiss to her neck.

“I’m sweaty!” Eliza objects, but he only grins and kisses her again, on the cheek this time.

“We’re all sweaty,” he reminds her, then gestures up to the sun overhead, already beating down on us even though it’s barely nine in the morning. “And we’re gonna get a lot sweatier before the day is out.”

He’s not lying. Jake and Nico take turns cutting through the underbrush, and I pull at stray vines and branches with my hands, Brittany, Amma, and Eliza all doing the same. It still seems like it takes us ages to make any real progress, and I’m just about to suggest we take a break, when suddenly, the vegetation opens up a little more, and we’re in a clearing.

It’s so humid in the jungle that I feel like I can’t breathe, and the air that enters my lungs is thick and heavy. Underneath my rash guard, my skin has grown prickly and itchy, and even the backs of my knees are sweating.

But there’s something beautiful here, too. Beautiful and wild and strange.

“It’s so quiet,” Amma says. There’s a low drone of insects, and the rustling of the leaves overhead as the trees sway in the breeze, but other than that, there’s no sound, not even the waves from the beach, as if the jungle has closed around us, sealing us in.

“It’s like church,” Brittany adds, then reaches for Amma’s hand. “Like that church in Italy, remember?”

I see Amma’s throat move as she swallows, the way she squeezes Brittany’s hand, and I think back to that photo of them on Brittany’s phone. In moments like this, it’s easy to see why their friendship works even though they’re so different. Shared experiences do that to people, and I wonder if when we leave Meroe, we’ll have this kind of bond, too.

I like that idea.

Nico points up ahead with the tip of his machete. “Come on. That looks like a path.”

It is a path—not a great one, and we definitely have to do more hacking through the jungle, but it’s easier now, and after just a few minutes, the greenery clears again, leaving us in a vast open space, no trees overhead, the ocean pulsing against the shore just a few yards away.

We’ve reached the other side of the island. The surf is stronger here, the waves bigger outside the protected lagoon where we’re harbored. When I step forward, my foot catches the edge of something.

I look down and see cracked asphalt, grass and vines pushing through the black cement. “Guess this is your airstrip!” I call to Nico, and he looks around, clearly a little disappointed.

“Man,” he says, reaching back to ruffle the long hair at the back of his neck, his machete still in hand. “I thought it would be … I don’t know. Not so fucked up, I guess.”

Jake pushes his sunglasses up his nose with one finger, his other arm loosely looped around Eliza’s waist. “That’s the jungle for you, mate. Takes everything back in a flash.”

He snaps his fingers in emphasis. There’s something eerie about this part of the island, something unsettling. Maybe it’s the reminder that this place has a history, a dark history, at that. That there were other people here once, and this isn’t some paradise completely free from all the bullshit of the modern world. Or maybe it’s just how loud, how violent the sea sounds here.