The Account of Jade Young Chapter 3

I can’t move, suppressed by the weight of fear and pain. Everything hurts without me even moving, I cannot imagine what sitting up would feel like. If I still can. Half of me is paralyzed merely because I don’t want to find out. So, maybe I can move, but why risk the chance? Where ever I am, it is comfortable enough. I know there is something I should be doing, some reason to face the day, but I don’t want to think about anything right now. With nothing at all to think about, I drift off into sleep again.
I wake up to a buzzing sound. The vibrations are strongest on my right side beneath my butt, and they send fresh waves of pain throughout my body. I can’t seem to think of what to do about them and eventually they go away.
There is a light prodding at my right shoulder and it shoots pain all the way down the length of my arm. Now I am more awake and realize not everything hurts. Mostly just my right side. Especially my arm. That someone is poking. Just when I am about to muster up the energy to yell at this person, they stop. I hear the sounds of a river, accompanied by a grunt. As I open my eyes to see what is happening, a jolt of ice cold water gushes over my face, finding my open eyes and nose. Sputtering and coughing, I sit up and scream more than a few choice words and trying to find this water-throwing person.
Then I hear it; a soft chuckle that I immediately recognize. This is the reason I was supposed to get up. It seems so obvious now; I don’t know how I could have forgotten. I blink and open my eyes, taking in my surroundings. I’m in a clearing in a jungle/forest-type environment with sticky, humid air. There is a river near me, over which stands Tyson, a little worse for wear. He has on the same white t-shirt, now stained a variety of dirt, grass, and something suspiciously red. His jeans are ripped off just below the knee and his whole body is decorated with various dirt smudges, cuts and bruises. There are bluish purple shadows under his eyes and his hair sticks up in every possible direction. I can see a welt the size of a golf ball on the left side of his jaw.
“Wow, you sure look like crap.” I tell him sincerely in an unusually gravelly voice. Huh, I would have thought my voice would be softer, more feminine.
“You haven’t seen yourself yet, you’re not exactly ready to win prom queen.”
I roll my eyes at him as I get to my feet. Everything goes out of focus for a second and I sway a little.
“Hey! Easy there.” Tom grabs my shoulders, holding me up.
I gasp as pain shoots through my arm yet again. He glances down and apologizes with a suddenly ashen face, switching his hold to around my waist and guiding me over to the river. I plop down next to the river and proceed to drain it dry. At this point I don’t even care if it’s mud, I probably would drink that gratefully and ask for seconds. My throat feels like I swallowed the Sahara Desert. I gulp down the icy river water, barely pausing long enough to breathe. Finally, my thirst is quenched and my stomach sloshes cheerfully as I flop on my back and sigh gratefully.
“Did you leave any for the fish?”
I just sigh again, like the poster child for a Sprite commercial, and doze off into a light sleep again. I wake after Tyson and go sit beside him, staring off into a beautiful sunset beyond the horizon of trees.
“So, what now?” I ask as I sit next to him on the packed earth.
“I was asking myself the same question. Jade, how did we get here?”
That throws me. How could he just not remember. I try to think back to yesterday and find I can’t, like there is some wall in my head that I cannot get past. But, that’s not right, not really. Walls can be jumped or scaled. I can see the top of a wall. This was like memories just were not there when I went to use them.
Everyone has memories. They frame the basis of everything people do. They form habits and stop people from doing things that may hurt them. If I went and touched a hot stove, I would remember being burned and never do it again.
In this environment where we have to re-learn almost everything as a newborn, I am certain of a few things. My name is Jade Young and the person next to me is Tyson Strong. I had memories. Somewhere in my brain, I still do. Something or someone took those memories from me. I am going to take them back.
The tears that I had been suppressing thus far issued forth as I asked, “Who are we?” He wipes away a teardrop on my cheek with one calloused but gentle finger. I look up into eyes that just for one second, mirrored mine; confused, angry, frustrated, but above all filled with mind-numbing terror. That was it, just a flicker of what he was really feeling. He quickly composed his features into a determined mask.
“I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out.”
My little warrior.
Where did that come from? I see a blurry sideshow of him doing this same thing many times over. I try to focus but can only make out his face, the background stays stubbornly blurred.
I smile at him through the tears, wiping them away and setting my face to match his. He offers a hand and I pull myself up, again with a strange sense of déjà vu.
Trekking through the jungle is hard work. Not only do we have to remember how to get back, but we have to watch out for animals and look for food because, by the way, I am absolutely starving. Maybe I forgot to mention that I am about to start gnawing on the nearest tree if we do not find food now. Tyson is still in warrior mode, but I know that’s not thunder I’m hearing.
Imagine our luck, just when we are about to give up, Tyson spots a banana tree. I look up through the leafy branches, noticing how amazing they look with the sunlight shining through them, giving everything below a surreal greenish haze. Then I see it, not a huge bunch, and not particularly yellow, but they look edible to me.
Now we have found food, but it’s a whole other matter getting to it. It is the only branch of bananas, and it’s at almost the very top. Tyson tries to climb up the tree, but the branches don’t start until halfway up and he slides back down time after time. I get on his shoulders and climb, but we still are not tall enough and I just get a sore butt for my efforts. This is just about the sickest joke ever. We are starving, yet we could see perfectly good food so close to us.
All out of ideas, I slump down against the tree, knocking my head against the base over and over, wishing I was anywhere but here, starving to death in some god-forsaken jungle who knows where. I open my eyes toward the sky to see the bananas wobble and fall into my lap. There is already a welt the size of a golf ball on the back of my head but I dig in with reckless abandon.
Tyson wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and stands up. We walk back to our “campsite” pretending everything is just dandy. Pretending it’s not starting to get dark…that wasn’t thunder, it was just our stomachs again…I’m just being paranoid, nobody is watching us…I’m not scared out of my mind.
Yeah, everything is great. And it will only get better.
We quicken our pace as we go, racing the sky. It is a while before either one of us can face the facts.
“Um, K…I think it’s going to storm, maybe we should--” He starts as a crack of lighting almost directly overhead splits open the sky and a cascade of water is released. We run the rest of the way back to our campsite.
“So Tyson, this is where you amaze me with your Boy Scout survival skills and build me a house.” I say as I slow up, already completely drenched. There is no reason to run, it’s raining this hard everywhere.With a careless desperation I realize there is absolutely nowhere to run to.
“What’s that?” He gives me a puzzled look and I find I don’t really know either. It’s like a dream that I try to remember, once I start trying it just slips away as elusive as sand between my fingers.
I stop even walking and just stand there, face upturned to the sky. When I open my eyes again, Tyson is laying on the ground, possibly asleep. This seems like a good enough idea to me so I join him.
The sky begins to lighten as the rain slows to a drizzle. I open my eyes to see the rain stop and the clouds disperse. Tyson hears me sit up and opens his eyes.
“So,” I start, “We don’t know where we are or how long we may be here…or who we are for that matter…anyway, I think the first thing we need to do is build a shelter.”
“We should probably do it down by the river so we have a water supply close by.”
We hike the rest of the way back to where we started and search for anything that might be useful for shelter.
A quiet trek through a mysterious jungle really gets a person thinking. Going back to the place we woke up is probably the dumbest thing we could do. I don’t know who put us here, but one thing is perfectly clear; our jailor is no friend of ours. With that in mind, going back to where they can easily find us seems foolish and impulsive. But something about not knowing anyplace or any home makes me want to hold on tight to the one place I do have memories. I do not bring up that going back to the clearing might be an unwise choice. If Tyson thinks anything along the same lines, he does not voice it either.
Back at the river, I thrash my way through a thick clump of woods searching for wood dry enough for a fire. My foot catches on a vine or some other useless annoyance and I fall on my butt. I feel something in my back pocket, and when I reach in I pull out a faded red contraption. It reads Swiss Army Knife on the side. Why would I have a knife from the Swiss Army?
“Tyson, come here!” I call excitedly as I realize the full potential of this little oval of wonder. He takes it and examines it then lets out a whoop that sends birds scattering out of the treetops. He lifts me up and swirls me around in a circle. When he starts looking at it more closely, he frowns.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing. Just…déjà vu I guess.”
After that little miracle we decide to empty out our pockets and take inventory, something so simple I feel stupid not to have already done it. Tyson has a pack of gum that is half disinigrated and his wallet. Inside is a credit card, 64 cents, and a condom. Along with the knife I pull out a cell phone.
My heart sinks as I remember the vibrating from before. I stare at the thing, our one link to help and I sleep through it. It is no longer working; either dead or too water-logged to function. I begin to sob like a baby before Tyson even notices what I clutch between my white-knuckled hands. I just hadn’t thought hard enough. If I had made myself get up, maybe we would not be here still. At first Tyson has a euphoric grin, but after he sees my sobs and fumbling hands laying out the pieces to dry, he realizes too. It’s dead. He drops the smile but does not realize the full extent of what happened. I find I don’t have the courage to tell him it was me. I didn’t answer. I slept through our rescue call. Our chance at safety and I couldn’t even pick up.
For a second he stares at it too, and I think my warrior may join me in my crying. Then he pulls himself together and holds me. Hold me until my sobs turn dry. The water all gone from my body. There is nothing left to cry out but I am still racked with dry sobs for another hour.
I feel weakened when I am finished. I am not embarrassed that Tyson saw me cry, but the jungle itself. I feel its eerie presence and know that I will not show such weakness again. The jungle has eyes and I feel them watch us constantly. Although perhaps that is just the crushing silence that tells us there are no other like-minded creatures here.
It takes us three tries before our shelter finally is stable enough, but I think we did a good job in the end. It is similar in feel to a tepee. We secured sticks all leaning on one tree in the middle. Then we tied vines around the sticks and filled the gaps with mud and grass. The final product is a donut shaped space with about a four foot radius and a circumference of about ten feet. He would have to sleep on one side and I would sleep on the other.
The sun is setting when we finish. We scavenge for food but don’t stray far for fear of getting lost after dark. We came up with a poor dinner of fruit and a piece of gum each to keep us chewing something.
Tomorrow, we will have to work on finding better food. My stomach is telling me I am not used to going without a good meal.
As I lay in our tent, I am bitten alive by flies. Tyson and I start a competition as to who has the most bug bites. So far he is winning with 27, but I’m close at 25. I think sweat attracts them. Obviously I didn’t pack an overnight bag, so I am in the same clothes I sweated in all day. Tomorrow I will have to wash them out at the river.
I wake as the sun does and count my bug bites. I am now in the lead with 31. We wash in the river and drink as much water as we can hold. When we set off to explore, it is with sloshing bellies and sodden clothes. After about a half an hour of trying to creep through the jungle without much success, a rabbit hops past us. Before I can blink, Tyson lunges and knocks it out with a heavy stone he had been carrying. Quickly, before I start to think about it, I slit its throat with my knife. I hear Tyson’s stomach and know we are both starving, so we don’t bother to look for more food just yet. We head back to camp to eat.
We can’t eat without cooking it first. We can’t cook it without a fire. I feel so stupid, thinking it was that easy. We lay out everything we own, hoping for some inspiration. I stare at it while Tyson makes a pile of dry leaves and things that will ignite easily and puts it on top of a big piece of bark. He begins rubbing a stick between his hands on top of it in hopes it will catch a spark. It does not look very promising to me.
I watch him for a while before concluding that is not going to work. I look over our belongings and try to think of ways a fire would start.
1.) Lighter—not exactly helpful without a lighter
2.) Matches—ditto
3.) Lens
We don’t have a lens, but maybe we could substitute that. Tyson is still stubbornly working with his method, without even any smoke yet. I don’t bother him because this might not work anyway.
I pick up the condom and go over to the river. He doesn’t bother looking up, thinking I’m getting a drink, no doubt. I open the wrapper and fill the condom with water like a balloon, tying it off at the end . Tyson is now watching me with an expression of amused patience.
Ignoring him, I make a little nest of dried leaves and grass like his. I hold the inflated condom a few inches above the nest, angling it to catch the sunlight. After about 15 seconds the nest starts smoking. Tyson finally walks over, interested, as a tiny spark catches on the leaves. He kneels down and stokes the spark, turning it into a fire and slowly feeding it small twigs and eventually branches.
I make a rotisserie with a branch coming out of the dirt on either side of the fire and one on top of them. We tie the rabbit to the middle branch and slowly rotate it, cooking it through. The smells coming from it are amazing, and when it is finally ready I am in such a hurry I burn my tongue on the stuff. Even with half a rabbit in me, I’m not full. We head back out to look for more, but this time with an air of unprecedented pride and confidence in our triumph and semi-full stomachs.