CHAPTER EIGHT.

Getting Acquainted Kevin was dreaming. He was in a burning bed. The house was on fire around him and he was trapped in his sheets. He had to get out!

He started thrashing around. If only he could get the covers from around his legs. It's as if they were tied around him, intent on making sure he would never escape the flames.

"Kevin, what the h.e.l.l! Stop it!"

In his sleep-induced haze, he heard his sister's voice. Is she trapped in the house too? I have to save her, but where is she?

"Kevin, cut it out or I'm gonna slap you."

Huh. Well, those aren't the words of someone who should be grateful they're about to be rescued from a blazing inferno. She'll be sorry if she gets stuck in this fire.

"What are you mumbling about a fire for? There's no fire. Just you, kicking everyone who's trying to sleep here, you idiot."

Kevin's mind started to clear as his sister's words began sinking in.

"Give him a break, Sarah, he's still sick."

Sick? Who's sick? Me? Who was that?

Kevin struggled to open his eyes. Only one was obeying his command.

"What's going on?" he mumbled, "Where's the fire?"

Candi sighed and sat up, giving up on the idea of any more sleep. "Good morning, Kevin. There's no fire. You used to have a fever. I guess you're dying of the heat now because you've got a rain poncho on you and no more fever."

Kevin sat up slowly, looking around him. "Don't forget the two hot b.u.t.ts that are pressed up against me too, Gumdrop."

Candi looked down at herself and then over at Sarah. "Okay, so you have a point. Wow, is it ever muggy here with that humidity and heat."

"You said it," agreed Kevin, using his shirt to wipe his face off.

"Well this b.u.t.t is getting up now. Sorry about getting you all hot."

Kevin lifted up his bandaged hand, waving it weakly. "No, don't get up on my account. I'm sure at some point I was appreciating your b.u.t.t being here." Then he looked over at his sister and nudged her awake. "You, on the other hand, can take your b.u.t.t on over there, if you don't mind."

Sarah reached back and slapped his hand away, as if she was going to ignore him. But the flies had other ideas.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" she yelled, as she slapped at her neck. "You have got to be frigging kidding me. What is it with these G.o.dd.a.m.n flies anyway?"

She sat up, rubbing her neck and arms, trying to get the flies to go feast on something else.

"They aren't bothering me at all," said Kevin.

Sarah shot him a stink eye and mimicked him, "They aren't bothering me at all. Eewwwmew mew mew mewwww."

Kevin laughed.

Jonathan sat up and rubbed the top of his hair, which made absolutely no difference to its totally unkempt state, except maybe to add another teaspoon of sand to it.

"Studies have shown that blood-sucking insects are attracted to some people more than others. One recent study I read suggested that they were attracted to people who were more stressed. People who were able to manage their stress levels more effectively attracted less bites than others who weren't."

Kevin watched Candi send a worried look over to her brother and then turned to see Sarah's reaction.

Sarah very carefully stood up, and calmly brushed the sand from her legs and arms. She walked over to where Jonathan was innocently sitting on the edge of the sheet, with no idea that Sarah was coming closer.

"Stressed?"

Jonathan looked up, surprised and instantly looking a little wary.

"Stressed?!"

Jonathan got a very worried expression on his face.

"Stressed?!! Do you think I'm stressed, Jonathan?!"

Jonathan's mouth dropped open; he froze in place, unable to move even a finger. Only his eyes followed her movements.

She was looming over him, her crazy, knotted and salty hair sticking out on one side; remnants of her black makeup still stuck under her eyes; chapped and crusty lips, thinned into a white line ... an angry, sunburned, scary woman face like Kevin and Jonathan had never seen before.

Kevin was pretty sure she was going to attack Jonathan. He didn't know if he should rescue him or let it play out.

"Um, yes?" Jonathan answered meekly, ducking his head a little and hunching his shoulders keeping an eye on her lunatic face, waiting for the physical attack he was wisely expecting.

"Well, isn't that very astute of you, Jonathan, resident brainiac. You are, indeed, correct. I am very stressed. I am more stressed than I have ever been in my entire life, in fact." She paused to catch her breath and then continued, counting off complaints on her fingers.

"Let's see ... two days ago, I caught my boyfriend cheating on me with my brother's girlfriend. Then, I was forced onto a cruise ship with the brother and sister tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dee team from h.e.l.l. Then that stupid cruise ship sank, sending me into the bowels of h.e.l.l where my brother has laid near death for twenty-four hours. I got to watch him almost get eaten by a shark. Oh, and my hair has knots in it that will probably never come out, which will force me to have a very short, very ugly haircut that will make me look like a very manly lesbian, not that there's anything wrong with being a manly lesbian if you are, in fact, a manly lesbian, which I am not. And, I have just started my period, and I don't have any tampons or pads with me. So yes, I am just a little bit stressed out. AND I THINK I'M ENt.i.tLED TO THAT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"

She finished her tirade by storming off into the jungle, leaving the three of them in stunned silence.

"Well, that explains it. She's on her period." Jonathan stood up and brushed himself off, oblivious to the daggers his sister was sending him with her eyes and the silent laughter shaking Kevin's shoulders.

"You are an inconsiderate oaf!" yelled Candi, getting up and storming off in the direction Sarah took.

Jonathan looked after her, confused. "What? What'd I say? It's true, you know!" he yelled after her. "The hormonal instabilities present during a woman's menses make women act unreasonably emotional!"

Kevin held up his hand, gasping for air. "Dude, stop. You're killing me." He kept laughing while he was talking. "Who says that s.h.i.t, seriously? You're hilarious. Thanks, man, I needed that."

"Yeah, well, I don't think Sarah or Candi appreciated my medical information or research findings," said Jonathan, looking around their shelter site. "Should we go after them?"

"No way, dude. That's like hunting jungle cats. Wait 'til they cool down and come back, then we'll figure out what's what."

"Wait up, Sarah. Wait! You have longer legs than me." Candi could hear Sarah crashing through the trees ahead, still muttering to herself.

"a.s.shole. a.s.shole, a.s.shole, a.s.shole. They have no idea. None! a.s.sholes."

Candi caught up to Sarah and reached out to grab her shoulder and slow her down. "You're right. They're a.s.sholes. Now slow down before I barf from all this exercise and humidity."

Sarah stopped in the middle of the path she was following. "Seriously, Candi, what am I supposed to do with a friggin' period in the middle of the jungle?" Sarah swept her arms around her, gesturing to the trees that rose up high above their heads, some of them leaning together so close they blocked out the sun. The sounds of birds calling out to one another filled the air around them.

Candi looked at the surrounding wildness and threw up her hands too. "I don't know, but we'll come up with something. Look, I have all the incentive in the world to help you. My period is coming any day. Come on, don't look so sad, we'll work it out. We'll tear up the sheet or something and stuff our underwear like they did in the olden days."

All of a sudden, Sarah started crying. She stood there looking so pitiful with her awful hair and destroyed makeup, ruined leopard print dress still clinging sadly to her dirty, sandy, and sunburned body, wearing flip-flops that didn't fit.

Candi couldn't help herself. She reached out and hugged Sarah.

Sarah grabbed onto her and started crying even harder. "I'm sorry I called you tweedle-dumb. I'm just so p.i.s.sed right now, I can't see straight."

Candi chuckled into her shoulder. "I thought I was tweedle-dee."

Sarah laughed and quickly pulled away, embarra.s.sed by her weakness, swiping at her eyes. "Whatever. I didn't mean to say it. I'm not mad at you or Jonathan, even though sometimes he can be a total pain in the a.s.s. No offense." She hesitated and wiped at her eyes again before saying, "If it hadn't been for you two, I don't even want to think about what might have happened to Kevin and me. We would probably be in a shark's stomach right now or something." She looked up above them and then gestured all around her with her arms open wide and a tremulous smile on her lips. "Instead, we have all this!"

Candi and Sarah smiled at each other and then laughed. A little at first, and then more, until they were both hysterical.

"Oh my G.o.d, stop, stop I'm gonna pee on myself," gasped Candi.

"Go ahead, you couldn't possibly look or smell worse than you do right now!" laugh-screamed Sarah.

"Oh, y-y-yes I could ... I could b-b-be on my p-p-period!!"

They both fell to the ground, laughing like hyenas. All of their problems were temporarily forgotten as they held their sides, laughing like they'd never laughed before.

After a couple of minutes, their merriment petered out and they were able to get their breath back. They were both exhausted, but enjoying the endorphins that their laughter had released into their bloodstreams.

"Man, I needed that," said Sarah.

"I guess I did, too." Candi looked around them. "Where in the heck are we, anyway?"

Sarah looked up into the trees. "I have no idea." She looked down at the ground. "But this seems to be some sort of trail we're on."

"Trail? Well, that's weird, should we follow it?"

"Yeah, maybe there's a Wal-Mart at the end of it, and I can buy some tampons."

"Did you bring any money?" asked Candi, a sparkle of remaining laughter in her eyes.

"Honey, when you look like I do, you don't need to bring money," said Sarah, saucily, flinging her knotted hair over her shoulder and walking down the path like she was on a Paris fashion runway, except her flip-flops kind of ruined the effect with their sound and the sand they were spraying up behind her.

"That's the spirit!" said Candi happily. Now they just had to find something that could be like a period pad and everyone would be permitted to live through the night unscathed by her majesty, the queen of menstruation.

The girls made it back to the campfire just in time to see Kevin stumble off into the bushes to vomit.

"Ew."

"Sarah, that's not very nice," scolded Candi, walking over to where Kevin was leaning his hand on a tree.

"Are you okay, Kevin?" she asked tentatively.

"No, I feel like s.h.i.t. My stomach is in knots."

Candi looked back Jonathan who had a contemplative look on his face.

"Kevin, if you did get food poisoning from those oysters, I expect you're gonna feel sick for a couple of days. You're probably going to get diarrhea too."

"Dude, if you say that word again, I'm gonna come over there and bust you up."

"What word? Oysters?"

"That's it!"

Kevin turned around as if he was going to head towards Jonathan, but his legs had other ideas. He fell to the ground on his knees, moaning as he went down onto his side in the sand, landing at Candi's feet. He looked up at her and said, "Hey, sand fairy, can you get me some water?"

Candi moved quickly to get him some water from their precious stores.

"We need more water," said Jonathan, worriedly. "I'm going to go do some exploring, see what I can find."

"I'm going to stay here with Kevin. Maybe I'll be able to get him to eat something," said Candi as she lifted his head to help him drink.

Kevin stopped midway and fixed his gaze on her eyes. "If you say a food word, I'm gonna have to bust you up, too."

"Yes, well, I'm very worried about that, for sure." Candi looked over at Sarah and Jonathan and rolled her eyes. "Sarah, why don't you go with Jonathan and help him look. I'll stay here and look after the tough guy. See if you can find any more b-a-n-a-n-a-s for d-i-n-n-e-r later."

Sarah shrugged her shoulders and started walking into the trees. "Come on, Jonathan, I don't have all day to wait on you."

Jonathan shot his sister a weary look before he got up to follow her into the jungle.

The last thing Candi heard was Sarah singing, "'This s.h.i.t is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S! I said this s.h.i.t is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!'"

Candi couldn't help but laugh. They were a million miles away from Gwen Stefani on the radio and everything else they used to think was normal.

She looked down at Kevin who seemed to be asleep again, his head resting directly on the sand. She looked around and decided to spend some time trying to create a more comfortable place to put him. She started by grabbing a nearby fallen palm frond, stripping it of its leaves, trying to figure out how to weave them into some sort of mat he could sleep on.

"I said this s.h.i.t is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S! The B is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!"

"What in the heck are you saying, Sarah? Is that some kind of cheer or something? What do bananas have to do with football?"