The Island

Olivia Levez

• Publisher: Rock the Boat
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780748771

‘There were friends once, but they melted away. Things are different now I am a MONSTER’

Frances is alone. Cast away on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she has to find water, food and shelter. But survival is hard. Especially when she is haunted by memories of the things that she did before, the things that made her a monster. Pushed to the limit in extreme conditions, she battles to come to terms with her past, and find a future worth fighting for.

This is a gripping and thought-provoking story about one girl’s journey to become the person she believes she can be.

TRAITOR

Shrinking

The red cover is hardest to tear but I manage it, hands shaking. All those pages, all those stories, all the words, words, words. I scatter the pieces over the piles of magazines, all the books I could find, anything that could burn, newspapers, junk mail, unpaid bills.

Picture books.

I hear the ducks from the lake, still splashing even though it’s late. The park’s locked up. I had to climb over the railing by dragging up the old trampoline that’s been at the bottom of the flats since for ever. Around me, the dark shapes of the kiddies’ climbing frame and wooden tunnels in the playground. Below me, the coolness of the sandpit.

The smoke smells good; it reminds me of bonfires and Grandad on his allotment, chucking all the bad weeds on top of the pile. And all the time the smoke from his pipe curling, curling, a million years ago, before Johnny was born.

My notebook flickers. I’ve torn the pages out and scrumpled them up into little balls on the sand. They light easily and I watch the words wrinkle.

I’ve made one last entry in my red notebook, especially for her, for Miss.

And I’ve even done it as an ink waster so, Miss, if you ever read it in hell, I hope you really like it.

Dear Miss

You’re a snake. A smiling snake.

I want to rip out your ponytail and spit in your face and scratch out your eyes and rip the vintage buttons off your stupid frickin cardigan and pull out your hair and slash through that smile.

No more stories, Miss. Are you listening? Can you still hear me?

I hope you frickin can. You lying, treacherous bitch.

Made you look so good, didn’t it?

‘Write me a story, Fran’ and ‘Why don’t you set it all down?’ and ‘Let’s do an ink waster, an ink waster, an ink waster – maybe it’ll turn into something.’

You’ve been waiting for me to come out, prising me out

like a crab out of its shell. And you’ve taken the innermost secret part of me, the bit that I’ve hidden and covered up and protected, and I let you read my dreams and all

the time you’ve been waiting.

Maybe it will make me

open myself up like a blank page

and, while you’re at it, why don’t you scour lines through

my words and scribble deep gouges in my heart and rip

out my heart and tear it up, tear it up

into little fleshy shreds.

Because that’s what you did

when you told.

I screw up more pages because the first ones are going out already.

The words wither to embers that flash and die in the sand. My rage burns.

And I watch the words wrinkle till they burn into an idea.

Clean as Forgetting

I don’t know how long I sit in our tattered camp under the trees.

I clean my bleeding feet with seawater from a bottle and my torn-up leggings. From out of my Hello Kitty washbag I take:

1 black eyeliner

1 turquoise nail varnish

1 broken mirror.

And between swigs of vodka, I outline my eyes precisely with the eyeliner, taking great care with the flicks. My eyes stare back at me, glassy and huge. There are fragments of dirty brown skin and flashes of wet cheek and red peeling forehead, but they belong to a stranger.

I concentrate only on making perfect flicks.

When I’m done, I replace the cap on the eyeliner and put it back in the bag.

Another swig of vodka, clean as forgetting.

Off comes the lid of the turquoise polish. I stretch my legs out in front of me and they are long and brown and grubby. Old scabs and new scabs cluster from rock scratches and sandfly bites. But this doesn’t matter.

What matters is applying my nail varnish, carefully, breathing in the fumes. The polish gleams like a blue teardrop on each grimy toe. I do my hands next, holding them to the sun to dry. My hands are black shadows like palm leaves; through my frond fingers the sun shivers.

I blow on them to make sure they’re dry and put my Ray-Bans on.

Vodka.

Lie back now.

Because vodka tears are the sweetest.

Cave of Tears

We can’t stay here, Dog and me, that is certain.

One Tree Beach, our little camp, our home, they’re all gone; all smashed and broken. One Tree Beach has become Dead Man’s Bay.

I think of the weeping cave and its sucking tunnels and look at Dog.

‘There’s got to be a way through to the other side of the island,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve got to be brave, Dog.’

He wags his tail solemnly. Watches me as I refill the vodka bottle with rainwater and place it into my rucksack along with the Hello Kitty bag.

So we leave the broken-backed forest with its smashed-up trees, its tumbled logs and branches. We leave Dead Man’s Bay with its flies and flesh and pelicans.

Dog leads and I follow.

A bark, high and shrill; it comes from the back of the cavern.

I push against the darkness, one step at a time.

‘Wait for me,’ I say again.

His bark bounces off the unseen walls and mocks me. I follow and grope my way further in.

One foot. One foot at a time. It’s like pushing against a force field. I breathe hard and focus on reaching the back wall where Dog waits for me.

Then, moth-soft, a breath on my cheek.

I scream and scream and scream, loud as bells, loud as gulls.

And Dog joins in, yipping and yawling. He’s here with me; I can feel his wet fur pressing against my legs.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ I say. ‘What was that? What the frick was that?’

As if in answer, two bats flit up and out of the cave, squealing. I can just see them, like scraps of cinder with my unblinding eyes.

‘Keep going, Dog,’ I say. ‘Frannie’s all right now.’

But I am so not all right.

The back of the cave doesn’t stop; it is an endless passage, a nightmare thing. Here, the dark is rock solid. I reach forward with my hands.

‘Wait for me,’ I say.

My fingers shrink from touch. Eyes wide and stretched and unseeing.

Dog is fast. I pant as I try to catch him up, Coral’s toobig shoes squelching and slipping – here is wet slime, there’s a rockfall. But Dog is always there, waiting; my little white guide.

Deeper and deeper we go, till the tunnel twists round and there is the ghost-light –

light at the end of the tunnel –

which I saw the first time I came. It’s a weird light, sort of blue-green, all shimmering and glowing like a misty pool.

The rocky floor begins to desce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dog Breath
• Medusa Girl
• Are You Sitting Comfortably?
• Indictable Offence
• Yogurt
• Starfish
• Tarmac
• TeamSkill
• Clouds
• Fasten Your Seat Belts
• Crash and Burn
• More Than
• Unravelling
• Up
• Burning
• Dead Calm
• How to Get Water
• Red Nylon Bag
• Party
• The Morning After
• Team Games
• Birds
• Sun
• Tree
• First Steps
• Be Careful What You Wish For
• alone.
• Howl
• Traitor
• Acknowledgements