Part 1, Chapter 2

 

 

 

II:  The Raven

The night passed peacefully, considering the frantic movement and hushed conversations of only hours prior, and soon a faint pink crept over the water’s horizon and scattered itself over the sand. Out in the distance, the first of the day’s sailboats appeared on the water. Through the morning condensation, the skyline was only faintly visible, appearing to Ray as vague misty shapes. Paula still slept, her arms shielding her head and her bony shoulders bobbing softly with each breath as she lay in the sand.

             Ray had spent the entirety of the night awake (and only now, with the rising sun, was beginning to feel fatigue wear at him), but not once did he grow restless of his idleness; he was completely entertained by contemplating the identity of the girl beside him, and what they should do at the coming of dawn. He marveled at the warm light emanating from behind her eyelids—how it seemed to pulse softly along with her breathing, and quietly pondered something he hadn’t noticed before: what appeared to be a small tattoo on her left arm, grainy as if inked by an amateur, reading:

EXP 5483

             Another note: the darkness of the night hadn’t tricked his eyes, after all; the growing sunlight confirmed that Paula’s hair was, in fact, violet, even at its roots. She must have dyed it recently, then—so before whatever had befallen them in the stadium, she must have had the time and resources to choose how she presented herself.

             Several times his curiosity nearly pushed him to wake the resting girl, but her bruised, pale flesh stopped him short; she needed her rest.

             Within an hour or so of the first hint of sun, Paula had begun to shift, and soon was sitting upright on the sand, eyes open. In the daylight, the piercing light of her eyes wasn’t nearly as noticeable from afar, though Ray still had to avoid her gaze. When she first sat up, she gripped the sand and breathed in the salt of the ocean in confirmation that the night’s events hadn’t, in fact, been conjured up in a dream.

             He wished her good morning, and soon after couldn’t help pressing her about his nocturnal thoughts:

             “You have a tattoo on your arm,” he said. “Did you know that?”

             She rubbed the skin of her arms as if to search for a tangible mark. “No. What is it of?”

             “It says, ‘E-X-P five-four-eight-three’.”

             She paused. “What about you?”

             Somehow Ray hadn’t even considered that, and he felt foolish. Pulling up his left sleeve, he revealed another poorly-inked tattoo, reading:

EXP 2002

             “E-X-P two-zero-zero-two.”

             Matching tattoos, then—that was interesting. And clearly both unprofessionally done, too, with shaky lines and uneven darkness; so who had inked them? They weren’t particularly aesthetically pleasing.

             “Another thing,” he said. “Your hair’s purple. Looks like it was dyed recently.”

             Paula shifted uncomfortably. “My eyes are weird, I have a tattoo of a random number, and I have purple hair. I don’t sound so inconspicuous.”

             “I’ll make sure we stay safe,” he said, although really he wasn’t sure if he should have any confidence at all in that statement. “Do you remember anything else now? From before you woke up?”

             “No,” she said quietly.

             And neither did he. Before his waking to incessant water droplets on his neck, his mind was blaringly blank. There was nothing. No memory of family, of childhood, of friends—and he thought to himself that that must sound sad to an outsider, but really, he felt indifferent, having no concrete sense of what he may be missing. But his brain hadn’t been wiped completely clear; because here he was, formulating complete sentences and knowing the names of things like clouds and trees and the sea. Maybe they could still extract some information about their pasts from the sort of memory they’d retained…

             But first: there was a sharper, more emotionally pressing matter at hand, and that matter was that Ray was agonizingly hungry, and so, he inferred, must have been Paula.

             He surveyed the beach, and the mess of tropical vegetation behind them. As the light grew, the insects and frogs calmed their voices, and the nocturnal singing was replaced by squawks of gallinules and the bassy rhythm of distant reggaeton music. One thing he knew for certain was that he had no idea how to find food in the wilderness. But many parts of the island seemed to have been touched by man; surely there would be a proper source of food somewhere.

             He was sorry to ask Paula to close her eyes again, but he didn’t want to risk any passerby locking eyes with the burning light. He took her hand (which was very warm!), and together they navigated the thick foliage and returned to the pavement by the stadium. In daylight, washed over by the powerful sun, Paula’s eyelids looked normal from a distance; so Ray felt more confident stepping out from the cover of the trees and onto the broad asphalt.

             Now there were even more white tents, and more vested workers arranging equipment—and with this increase in busyness came several food carts, each painted with loud colors and words that begged for the money of the hungry. The cart closest to the perimeter of trees had a man working with a compact grill, and the scent of fried food hit Ray in a warm punch. He drummed his fingers against his side.

             “Stay here,” he said to her.

             As he approached, he saw it was an arepa cart, and although Ray had no idea what an arepa was, he desperately wanted one. If he could just snag one off the grill…

             He kept his eyes away from the stand, feigning a walk towards some other food cart. The man was working away from the grill, doing something on a counter. Ray’s plan had been to, while the man’s attention was on the counter, discreetly slide an arepa into his pocket. But when he reached the stand, he saw that at the counter, the man was stuffing an arepa with avocado and cheese and sauces. The temptation was too great. He abandoned his plan. He needed the stuffed arepa, in all its glory.

             He kept walking past the stand, glancing behind him as inconspicuously as he could to keep tabs on the worker. He was nearly at the base of the stadium when the cook finally finished the arepa and turned back to the grill. Ray pivoted and walked back towards the stand, this time on the side of the counter. But when he reached the counter and flicked the arepa with his hand, it missed his pocket and flopped pathetically onto the asphalt. He gritted his teeth, but then paused; this could be good. Now he had an excuse to take the arepa and wouldn’t need to worry about being caught stealing.

             “Oh, man, I’m sorry—I knocked it onto the ground,” he said, holding up the now gravel-y arepa to the cook. The cook said it was fine, and outstretched his hand to throw it away for him, but Ray, polite as he was, told him not to worry about that—he would take care of it.

             He ambled back to the treeline, brushing off pebbles from the bottom of the arepa. “Food,” he said to Paula, and handed her the half that hadn’t touched the ground. They sat together under the shade of towering palm trees, backs against trunk. The grass was overgrown and feathery, and dotted with patches of little yellow flowers. Overhead a band of green parakeets screeched and bickered, then pivoted and landed in boisterous flaps on the graffitied roof of the stadium.

             Paula ate slowly and quietly. Ray devoured his half in seconds and spit out a few stray pebbles that had nestled themselves into the fried dough. It was a delicious, but unsustainable, food source—he knew well that he couldn’t pull this stunt every day.

             After eating they walked the length of the island, always under the cover of trees, with Ray describing in detail to Paula everything he saw. At the edge of the tree cover, around a twenty minute walk from the stadium, there was an enormous overflowing dumpster, with rotting furniture strewn about its base. Further, at the far end of the island, lining the road were a few buildings: a school, a marine lab, and some water management structures; and at the very tip, the main road lifted into a bridge and then lowered itself, continuing onto another island. This time around he wanted only to observe the island’s features from a distance to get a sense of which areas might be safe to wander. But even then, nothing seemed to call his attention; nothing inspired in him any sense of what could’ve possibly happened to them, or even a mild sense of familiarity.

             By the time they returned to the woods near the stadium, the hot sun had drained their bottles of water, and he guided them back in the direction of the water fountain.

             Sleep-deprived, Ray didn’t notice someone come up from behind as he drank from the fountain.

             “Hey buddy, this isn’t a public access area,” a burly man in a reflective vest sneered.

             Oh.

             “It’s not?”

             “No. You need’a leave.”

             “We’re just getting water real quick. Then we’ll head out.”

             He eyed Paula. “What’s wrong with the girl?”

             “Uh, she’s fine.”

             “Why’s she just standing there with her eyes closed?”

             “She’s tired,” Paula hissed.

             The man grunted and headed back to the work area as Ray turned to leave with Paula. Lovely. No more water fountain, then, at least during daylight hours.

             It was late afternoon and the sun was still high. Even through the cover of mangroves and palm trees, the sun was hot on Ray’s back as they made their way back to last night’s place of rest on the shoreline. His head had begun to feel heavy, and his legs weak with exhaustion as they navigated fallen palm fronds and packed patches of Mulhy grass.

             They emerged onto the stretch of grey sand, and soon had reached the divots and footprints of the night before. Paula sat beside him, still as a stone against the half-hearted gusts of warm sea air. Ray lay on his back, arm over his eyes to shield them from the spots of burning sunlight that broke through the coverage of the palm trees. He intended only to rest and think, but in moments had fallen asleep.

        

 

 

             “Ray. Ray.”

             He awoke to Paula shaking his shoulder. It was dark, now, with no faint light in the sky telling of recent sunset. His heart sank, guilty he’d left her awake alone for so long.

             “What’s up?” he mumbled, clearing sand out of his eyes.

             “What is that?” she whispered. “It won’t stop.”

             “What?”

             He listened. From somewhere in the mangroves behind them, there snapped through the air the shrill caw of a bird. It was powerful and confident.

             He rose from the sand and peered into the mangroves, eyes following the call. Partially shrouded by mangrove twists, and perched on a branch at the height of his shoulders, was a large black bird. He wondered if the sand in his eyes had irritated them and warped his vision, because it seemed to gaze at him with piercing red eyes.

             “It’s a crow or something,” he called back to Paula. “I’ll scare it off.”

             Moistened by the humidity of the sea air and what must’ve been a recent rain, the leaves below his feet didn’t crunch and snap, but bent softly and nestled themselves deeper into the earth. He ducked under branches and was now only a few feet from the bird, who gave no air of being threatened. It sat regally on its branch, poised as if absorbed in its own glory.

             Ray outstretched his arm and waved a hand at it, but the bird only cocked its head at him as if offended, and Ray almost felt a little guilty for trying to scare it off. It gazed at him expectantly and ruffled its dark feathers, which even this deep in the mangroves reflected the soft pale blue of the moon. Then it chuffed impatiently and lighted on great wings, rising over the canopy and into obscurity.

             When Ray returned and told Paula of its having flown away, she rolled back onto the sand to sleep. But Ray, now, was alert. He aimlessly drew on the wet sand with a mangrove branch, and retreated into his thoughts.

             He returned to his earlier deliberation, of if his partial memory could still somehow be of use in figuring out what had happened to him and Paula. His strategy was to see if there were any particular topics about which he had more knowledge than others.

             Ray’s first question was regarding their location. Out of all the countries Ray could name, he recalled the most regional names for the United States, which combined with his and Paula’s languages and accents led him to assume he was somewhere in that nation. Clearly they were coastal, too, and somewhere that at least felt tropical, which narrowed down the country further.

             In the sand he wrote the names of Southern coastal states he could remember, at one point nearly tripping over Paula’s legs, and going state by state he took mental notes of how much he seemed to know about each. He was at first skeptical of his methodology, but soon pleasantly surprised to see that Florida, in particular South Florida, was emerging far ahead of the other locations. He was happy to recall the names of towns, local animals, and regional foods of the area. His eyes rose to the dark seawater, at whose horizon he could see white yachts and little sailboats cruising before the distant city skyline. South Florida seemed plausible. He had no way of confirming this suspicion now, but it was somehow comforting to Ray. To that first question Paula had asked him, about where she was, he had some sort of answer to give now, at least.

             He turned and looked at the sleeping girl, watching the warm light from her eyes flicker onto the sand by her face, and something inside him ached. He couldn’t remember his family, or his classmates, or friends, but having no semblance of who they might be made him feel detached from them.

             Here, on the other hand, before him on the sand, was a girl he felt deeply he should know. A gust of wind tossed a clump of her hair onto her face, so that her glowing eyelids were shielded from his view. It was the strangest feeling—as if he was mourning something he wasn’t even sure existed.

             She was so quiet. He was lucky to get even one-word responses from her. But he didn’t want to press her; she, too, was enduring something confusing, frustrating, and isolating. Whoever she had been in his life before—if she even had been someone in his life—he would let her take her time. Maybe, slowly, he could come to know the light behind her eyes.