Day 4

When the sun came up, I could barely lift my head off the sand. Two seat cushions from the plane had washed up overnight, and something blue next to them caught my eye. I rolled toward Jennie and shook her to wake her up. She looked at me with sunken eyes, her lips cracked and bleeding.

“What is that?” I pointed to the black thing but the effort required to hold my hand up was too much, and I let my arm drop back onto the sand.

“Where?”

“Over there. By the seat cushions.” 

“I don’t know,” she said.

I lifted my head up and shielded my eyes from the sun. It looked familiar and suddenly I realized what it was. 

“That’s my backpack, Jennie, hat’s my backpack!”

I stood up on wobbly legs, walked to the shore, and grabbed it. When I came back, I knelt down next to Jennie, opened the backpack, and pulled out the bottle of water she’d given me at the Malé Airport.

She sat up. “Oh my God.”

I twisted the cap off and we passed the bottle back and forth, being careful not to drink it too fast. It held 600 milliliters, and we drank it all, but it barely took the edge off my thirst.

Jennie held up the empty bottle. “If we use a leaf for a funnel, we can collect rainwater in this.”

Shaky and weak, we walked to the breadfruit tree and plucked a large leaf from one of the lower branches. Jennie tore it until it was the right size and stuffed it into the mouth of t