Kimberly wore Keith's Hawaiian shirt over her white bikini. She carried her tomahawk on its rope sling. The Swiss Army knife puckered out the front of her pants. The spear was in her left hand.
Billie wore her same black bikini and no shirt, of course. Her chest was crossed by ropes. The single line of the tomahawk sling swept down from her shoulder to her right hip. The remains of the hanging rope (which we'd used for tying Thelma's hands) crossed her from the other shoulder. It was long enough to make three loops. We'd decided to bring it along in case we took a captive.
Though Kimberly was the one with Indian blood in her veins, Connie looked more the part. Because of her headband. She wore it to hold the bandage in place against her wound. The bandage was a pad of cloth made from her old T-shirt. The T-shirt had been ruined, anyway, so Billie had washed it in the stream and cut it up.
Connie also wore a vest. She'd made it herself, using my razor on day seven to cut it out of a beach towel. It had yellow and white horizontal stripes. Even though it didn't weigh much, it helped to hold a bandage down against her left shoulder. It also protected her shoulders and upper back from the sun, though it had no sleeves and was so short that it left her arms and lower back exposed. Not to mention her rump, which was as good as naked in that thong.
Before we set out, I offered to spread some of Billie's sunblock on her bun. She told me to fuck off. (Like I said, she was feeling better.)
The vest couldn't be shut in front, but the towel panels covered her breasts -- her real reason for making and wearing the thing, more than likely. To keep them out of my sight. To taunt me and punish me.
Logically, she should've made herself a skirt, too. But she didn't. Did she think I had no interest in her lower regions? It didn't make any sense, really. But then, you could go crazy trying to make sense out of Connie.
She was sure good to look at, though. They all were.
To think that I might never see any of them again . . . It isn't fair. I know this is a terrible thing to write, but I feel cheated.
They're dead, and I feel cheated.
Sooner or later, maybe one of them would've . . . either fallen for me or gotten so desperate . . .
Maybe not. We'll never know.
What is for sure, though, is that they aren't here to look at, to daydream about, to talk with, to sometimes hold.
Which makes me realize that I've had hugs from all three of them, at one time or another.
I've seen Billie's breasts and Connie's, but never Kimberly's. Now, I never will see hers. Along with all the other things I'll never . . .
I had to stop writing for a while.
It depressed me too much -- to put it mildly. I miss them so much. I can't stand the thought that they are dead.
I don't know for sure that they are dead.
A big mistake, around here, to assume that anyone is dead.
What I need to do is find them. I need to know whether they are dead or alive. If they're alive, they are almost certainly being held captive. Maybe I'll be able to rescue them. If they're dead, I'll . . . I don't know what. In either case, though, I have to kill Wesley and Thelma.
I should be out searching for them right now, not sitting here on the beach.
But I want to bring the journal up to date first. That way, in case I don't come back, there will be a record.
Back to the story.
I'd been telling about Connie's towel-vest. Because of the injury to her left shoulder, she wore the rope of her tomahawk sling on her right shoulder. The rope crossed her chest, and the tomahawk hung by her left hip. In her left hand, she carried her spear -- the special, wicked one she'd made for fishing.
As for me, the day seemed too hot for Billie's pink blouse, so I went without it. I wore Andrew's khaki shorts. I haven't worn my swimming trunks since the day I started wearing Andrew's shorts. I like having the pockets, and the shorts are so big and roomy that they give me plenty of freedom. I wore shoes and socks, too, by the way.
I haven't written much about footwear. That's because it doesn't interest me much, and so far it hasn't been of any great importance. We all had shoes to wear. Sometimes we wore them; sometimes we went barefoot. Not much else to say on the subject.
For weapons, I had the ax in both hands, a tomahawk at my hip (stuck under my belt, which I'd gotten back after the loan to Connie), and Thelma's straight razor. Kimberly thought I should get to keep the razor. For one thing, it was the weapon I'd almost gotten murdered with. For another, even though Kimberly had actually found the razor where it had fallen in the sand, she pointed out that I'm the one who'd knocked it out of Thelma's hand.
Besides, Kimberly had her Swiss Army knife, Connie didn't even want to touch the razor, and Billie thought I should keep it because I was obviously the one in the most danger.
Wrong.
We were so damn wrong about that.
Anyway, I had the razor safely folded inside the right front pocket of my shorts, along with Andrew's lighter and Billie's plastic bottle of sunblock. (My other front pocket bulged with chunks of fish that we'd smoked overnight and wrapped in some leftover cellophane.) So that's pretty much the way we were -- how we were dressed and armed and so on -- when we set out on the morning of day eight to hunt for Wesley and Thelma.
We'd agreed to try our luck at the lagoon. It seemed the most likely place to find them.
But Kimberly said, "This way," and started walking toward the inlet.
We went after her.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"We shouldn't look like we're on our way to the lagoon," she said.
"Are you kidding?" Connie asked. "Who do you think is watching?"
"Probably no one. But maybe Wesley or Thelma."
"Give me a break."
"We'll just go up the shore for a while, make them think we're off to explore the island."
Then what?" Connie asked. "Sneak around behind the lagoon?"
"Yep," Kimberly said.
"Fabulous."
"I think it's a good idea," I said.
Connie gave me a sneer. "You would."
"Look what happened last time," Billie told her. "We don't want to repeat the same mistake. If we come in from the back, maybe we'll take them by surprise."
"I think it's stupid," Connie said. "We'll probably get lost."
She was outnumbered.
With Kimberly in the lead, we climbed the ridge of rocks just to the north of our beach, made our way down to the other side, and hiked along the shoreline.
Connie glanced back, now and then. "How far are we gonna go?" she asked.
"Let's make it around that point," Kimberly said.
It was pretty far off.
Connie wrinkled her nose.
"If anyone's watching," Kimberly explained, "they'll think we're trying to circle the island."
"Maybe we should circle the island," I said.
"Some other time. First, we've gotta take care of Wesley and Thelma. They're too big a threat. After we've killed them, we'll be able to explore the island to our heart's content. What we'll do, as soon as we get to the other side of the point, is take cover in the jungle and make our way back till we're sure of our bearings . . ."
"Why don't I just wait for you here?" Connie offered.
"You're not helping matters," Kimberly said. "We know you're hurt, but. . ."
"But you're gonna make me walk a few extra miles, anyway."
"What about trying to circle the island?" Billie asked Kimberly. "It might not be a bad idea."
"It's a fine idea," Kimberly said. "For some other day."
"No, hold on. Except for a couple of short little trips into the jungle, we've been cooped up on that beach ever since we got here. We don't know what we might find."
"Probably the dinghy," I said.
Connie stopped glowering. "Yeah! If we find the dinghy, we can get outa here."
"This might not even be an island," Billie said. "How do we know we didn't land on . . . the end of a peninsula, or something?"
"It's an island," Kimberly said. "Dad was showing me the charts the night before we got here." She nodded. "We're nowhere near any mainland. Nothing for miles around but scads of little islands."