Page 28 of Here for a Good Time

“You need major stakes to propel an entire novel forward. And no one shows up armed and angry on a remote island unless there are big stakes at play. What did they come for, and what’s going to happen if they don’t get it?

If we figure that out, then worst-case scenario and we get recaptured, maybe we can come up with some sort of compromise so they still get what they want, and all of us, including the rest of the staff, get to go home. ”

“What are you saying? That we go back to the people who kidnapped us and ask them, ‘What do you want’?” Leila’s tone is speckled with condescension, and she sounds like she’s holding back from laughing at me.

“Well, no,” I say, embarrassed because I didn’t really think through my next step quite yet. “But I just… something’s wrong.” I can’t help but motion back at my laptop. “The pieces aren’t fitting. We need to know more about who we’re dealing with here.”

Leila studies me, clearly gauging whether or not to say what she actually wants to say. In the end, she decides to say it. “Poe, this isn’t a novel.”

“I know this isn’t a novel.” This time, I don’t try to temper my irritation.

“Then we can’t treat this like it’s a novel.

” I’m so startled by Zwe’s interruption that I turn around to make sure it was him that said it and that I didn’t just hallucinate his voice.

“You can’t seriously be suggesting we go back to the resort right now.

We’ll all get captured, too. We’re sticking with our original plan, which is to either call for help, or get off of this island somehow and go get help ourselves. ”

“But I’m right. You know I’m right,” I stammer.

“I know this will all be really useful information for the police,” Leila replies, keeping her cool.

“For now, though, Zwe’s right, we have to figure out how the hell we’re going to escape.

I fucked up yesterday with the trail, and I’m so sorry about that.

” Her voice goes wobbly, and Zwe puts a hand on her shoulder.

“You were under a lot of stress,” he says.

Leila’s buried her face in her hands, and Zwe gives her shoulder a squeeze.

“Between that and the adrenaline, anyone would’ve gotten confused, too.

It was super dark. It’s okay, there’s daylight now, and we’re all rested and recharged. We’ll make it there today. We have to.”

I know I shouldn’t be making this all about me, but what Zwe’s doing right now feels like a twisting of the knife he stuck in my back just a few minutes ago. I get a condescending Then we can’t treat this like a novel and she gets You were under a lot of stress ?

“I can try leading the way today,” Antonio suggests. “I know these woods pretty well, too.”

Leila’s head pops up, and her gaze drifts toward the ocean. “Unless there’s a quicker way for us to get help.” There’s a glimmer of hope in her voice. “Hey, what day is it today?”

“Um—” I press on a random key to turn my laptop screen on. “Friday.”

Leila and Antonio share a wordless look, and he punches the air. “Supply day!” he shouts.

“What?” I ask.

“Supply day,” he says with a new burst of energy. “Every Friday morning, our food suppliers make their delivery from the mainland. They’ll be at the pier in a few hours.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Leila confirms. She sounds like she already has a plan. “When I was a kid, you know what my parents taught me would always be a constant if I ever got lost?”

“What?” Zwe asks.

“The sea,” she says, pointing across at the horizon. “In case I ever got lost in the jungle, they told me to head down to the water, and that they’d meet me there. You can get lost in the jungle, but not on the shore of an island.”

Zwe peers over even though from where we are, we can’t actually see the sand. “Won’t we be sitting ducks out in the open?” he asks. “At least here, we can hide.”

“Not if we hide out close to the water until the boat arrives,” Antonio says.

“And they’re not going to know about the supply boat,” Leila points out.

“So it’s not like there’ll be a group of them waiting at the pier.

My guess is one, maybe two, and that’s mainly to guard the boat they arrived in.

Assuming they’ve moved their boat to the pier.

We just have to take them out before they can alert anyone that there are people approaching. ”

Right then, I feel a small drop of water on my forearm. Then another. We all look up. Small, feathery raindrops brush our skin.

“Does the supply boat come even if it’s raining?” Zwe asks. “Leila, weren’t you saying when we first arrived that there’s bad weather on the mainland?”

“Fuck.” Antonio’s whole face scrunches up on the word.

“I forgot,” Leila groans.

“Forgot what?” I ask.

“Storm’s arriving tonight,” Antonio mumbles.

My stomach flips. “A storm? Like with… rain and wind?” Already, I feel like I need to sit down. “Great. If this were a novel, I’d say that it’s a bit in the face to foreshadow gloom and doom with an approaching storm.”

“It wasn’t a problem yesterday because I thought we’d be safe by nighttime,” Leila says. “But now it does put a timer on everything.”

“But it’s okay,” Zwe says. When I meet his eyes, he gives me a nod. An I know you’re spiraling, but I promise you it’ll be okay nod. “Because by the time it gets here, we’ll have already left on the supply boat.”

“But what if it arrives sooner?” I ask, panic jacking my voice up several octaves. “The storm, I mean. Or what if the supply boat decides not to come because there’s a storm on the way? Or what if the bad guys told the supply boat not to come?”

“My grandfather is the only one who talks to the suppliers,” Antonio cuts in. “There’s no record in the computers or anything. He writes it all down in a notebook. Old-fashioned like that.”

“And the supplies always come,” Leila reassures us.

“The storm won’t land until the evening.

Trust me, it’s part of my job.” When I look at her quizzically, she explains, “I need to know what the weather’s going to be so I can advise guests on which activities they can book.

Can’t exactly arrange a parasailing session for the weekend a storm blows in.

And some guests get real pissy if, god forbid, their parasailing afternoon gets canceled. ”

“Those guests sound like real assholes,” Zwe says.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “But this—” She stretches out an open palm, and a couple of small drops land on her skin. “—is just light rain. It’ll stop in a bit.”

Stretching, Zwe twists his waist to one side, then the other. “Okay, then, all the more reason to hurry back down. Should be a quicker trip since it’s downhill.”

“Everyone ready?” Antonio asks.

I clear my throat. “I… I think we should still try to free everyone first,” I say quickly.

I can’t stop worrying about Sandra and Antonio’s grandfather and everyone else.

I can’t leave them behind here when we don’t know what this group’s motive is.

“Strength in numbers, right? We know where they are, so we’re not going in blind, and we have the two knives from the emergency kits that Leila kept.

On the other hand, we don’t know what they’ll do to everyone else if they catch us escaping on the supply boat.

That might cause them to panic. This new supply boat plan has too many variables.

” I look at Zwe as I say “variables” because if there’s one thing Zwe Aung Win hates, it’s variables.

He chews the inside of his cheeks, running through all the scenarios in his head, and even though I want to reiterate my point, I know that the best thing to do right now is to let him come to the safest, most logical conclusion himself.

“Do you really think they’ll hurt my grandpa?” Antonio asks.

For all of his charm and bravado, in this moment, he can’t pretend to be anything other than what he is: young and scared. “No,” Zwe rushes to answer, throwing me a stern look. “No one’s hurting anybody. Your grandfather will be fine.”

“The supply boat is a certainty, too,” Leila says.

“It’s—” I try.

“Leila’s right. They’ve never missed a delivery, Ms. Poe,” Antonio says with a sheepish shrug.

“But the moment they fire a single bullet, that boat is going to turn right around,” I say, standing my ground.

“And then we’ll be right back here, only from the starting point and without even the advantage of surprise.

Right now, they don’t know where we are.

There’s a good chance that we can take them. ”

“It’s too risky,” Leila says. “Strength in numbers only works if we do manage to free everyone, but what if we don’t?

There’s only four of us currently, and we don’t know how many of them are guarding the reception area.

They’ve most definitely already upped their surveillance once they realized two of us escaped.

Plus, we’re not in the best shape either.

We barely found enough to eat yesterday, and the exhaustion is already catching up to us. They will capture us.”

“Aren’t you worried about your friends?” I snap.

At that, Leila’s expression changes. “Of course I’m worried about my friends,” she says, barely holding on to her last traces of politeness. Her cheery persona has slipped. “Which is precisely why I want to get the hell off of this island, and get help so they can be freed.”

I fold my arms, and hope that the posture makes me look authoritative and not like a sulky child. Leila doesn’t say anything else, but her posture is just as rigid as mine. There’s no compromise here, not unless we split up. If she’s not backing down, then neither am I.

Zwe’s voice loosens the tautness between us, a referee stepping in the middle of an unmoving game of tug-of-war. “Why don’t we take a vote?”