(no subject)

[everyone_takes]

Even now, with all her stuff prepared and the canoe pulled up onto the sand, Kate knew she wasn't exactly the camping type. It had taken her way too long to realize that she'd forgotten to pack any water, even though she'd remembered food, a sleeping bag and a flashlight. The serious lack of water was the reason she was late now, jogging along the boardwalk to where she'd left the canoe, hoping Effy hadn't been there for ages already, waiting for her. Not that she was particularly punctual most of the time, so it probably wasn't even a surprise.

And even though she knew she wasn't the camping type, she was excited for the trip. In all the time Kate had been on the island, she'd never done anything like this. Killer stuffed animals hardly counted as an adventure, since that wasn't exactly the sort of fun anyone went looking for. She hadn't been to see the dinosaurs, hadn't gone down into that underground city, hadn't changed bodies with anyone -- though she had been a dude for a few days, which had been sort of fun. This, though, was planned.

On top of that, she'd never really gone on any sort of trip with a girl friend before. She and Tara had done that weekend trip that had ended pretty okay, even if it had started off rough, but she'd never done anything like this. By eighteen, she figured it was the sort of thing everyone had done, but not Kate. Of course, by eighteen, most girls hadn't done half the shit she'd done, but that sort of wasn't the point.

"Hey!" she called as she finally made her way to the beach, breathing hard and skidding in the sand a little. She dropped her pack as she tried to catch her breath, then waved her hand absently at the canoe. "Sorry. Forgot water. Had to go all the way back."

Comments

[backward]

"Italy was a year before I got here," Effy said, trying to get the words out of her lips as quickly as possible, for the thought wasn't one that she wanted to allow to linger and fester, all ill will or hurt towards her mother having been shoved into the background after she'd tried to kill herself, bleeding dry onto yellowed tile. "Talking was..."

She paused, tilting her head in thought, running through the years as though flipping through pages in a photo album without truly focusing on the faces, faces that had begun to fade around the edges ever since she'd landed on the island. Some, even prior.

"Tony was the one who talked to me. Mum didn't know how."

[everyone_takes]

"So Italy was sort of... a big deal, then," Kate guessed, not wanting to put words in Effy's mouth. That was how it sounded, though, like the first time her mom had actually tried and that was the kind of thing that was important.

She knew that things at home had been hard sometimes, that there had been times when they were younger that Tara had worried about the two of them being taken away because of her DID, but Kate thought they were probably pretty lucky. It was just too bad that she was figuring that out now, here, where she couldn't actually tell her parents or change how she treated them.

[backward]

"Guess so," Effy said, quickly reverting to a levity born out of necessity, because thinking on efforts her mother made and what drove her to finally do so was... pointless. She wasn't on the island. Chances were she wouldn't be, because parents seemed so rare to arrive. Chances were she wouldn't be, because whenever Tony was in her life and in control, no one else mattered at all, and some part of Effy truly believed that the island listened to wishes.

Didn't always grant them. Sometimes stomped right over them.

But it was aware.

"Doesn't fucking matter. She didn't know how to be a mum, but... not her fault. How do you know before it happens? I figure I'll never have kids. I'd just fuck them up."

[everyone_takes]

"Yeah, same here," Kate says, although she hasn't given it much thought one way or the other. For the most part, she's been smart enough to take precautions to make sure she doesn't have kids, but it's always been due to her age rather than an active decision to not have them eventually. She's thinking about it now, though, wondering if that's what Harry wants one day. If he'll want kids and marriage and all those things that Kate's never really considered herself adult enough for.

She still doesn't, but one day someone might expect it of her and that thought is strange.

"I mean, I never really thought about it much," she adds. "I had to take the morning after pill once and my mom freaked out, but like, what? I was fifteen. I was supposed to let that fertilized egg implant itself and become a baby? No way."

Not at fifteen and not now.

[backward]

Her earlier teen years were all a blur, yet Effy Stonem still tries to pinpoint the exact time that she'd started having sex, wondering if it's even in her memory at all. Those first days all blend into one another, nothing more than pulsing lights and loud music boring itself into her chest, reverberating in a way that only tugged at her wrists, tried to make her dance. She was only fourteen, she remembers, when Tony first took her towards the chaos, thinking her strong enough to handle herself there.

She had been. More so than she'd be now.

"Maybe she was freaking out over you having sex at fifteen," Effy points out, belaboring the obvious. "You didn't use a condom?"

[everyone_takes]

"No," Kate says slowly, drawing the word out. Looking back, she realizes how stupid it had been. Everything with Ben had been stupid, from dating him to sleeping with him and right back to inviting him to that party Marshall had insisted they'd throw. But until Harry she hasn't exactly made great decisions regarding dudes and she still isn't sure how to explain it.

"He was an idiot," she settles on saying finally. "And being around him made me an idiot, I think." It turned her into someone she wasn't, that much was certain. "I let him push me around once, too. I mean, it didn't get very far. My mom saw it and she transitioned into Buck. He's the alter who's a Vietnam war hero or whatever. So Buck came to my dance recital, saw Ben and then pretty much kicked his ass."

But sometimes she wonders. If Tara hadn't seen it, if Buck and Marshall hadn't beaten the hell out of Ben, how far she would have let it go. If she would have stopped him from shoving her again or if she would have let him get away with it.

[backward]

In some ways, it reminds Effy too sharply of Katie Fitch, all of those pointless meathead boyfriends that she'd cycled through, usually fit physically, but certainly a bit empty upstairs. It'd been intensely irritating, the first few months that the two girls had known each other, but in many ways, Effy still regretted the way that she made it worse for a time for Katie, before things eventually climbed back up. Made it worse by still chasing after Freddie, in spite of how Katie had fallen for him, in spite of how they were an item.

Maybe Effy fell in love with Freddie long before Katie ever had, but it didn't make what they did any fairer. If anything, it made things worse.

And now that Effy thinks about it, the two girls show more similarities than she'd like to admit. Dubious mistakes from the past, possibly taken out of a mixture of needing that attention and demanding any type of affection, and driven by a desire to escape a bit of that familial circle in the process.

More importantly, they've both grown so much.

"Didn't fucking deserve you," Effy decides. "That prick ever shows up, I'll show him how it feels to be shoved 'round a bit."

[everyone_takes]

Kate laughs, not because she doesn't think Effy could do it, but because she probably can. "Make sure you include Marshall. He got some pretty good kicks in last time," she says, although there's nothing to worry about. She isn't thinking about Ben much at all anymore and if he were to ever show up, she thinks she'd make sure all the girls on the island know exactly what kind of douche he is. Maybe it's petty, but she doesn't care.

"It didn't really last long," she says, stepping through the trees and coming to a sudden stop, pointing to their left. There are huts there, the fishing village she's been told about and all thoughts of Ben disappear almost as quickly as they'd arrived. "Hey, check it out. Abandoned village."

She grins, then turns in that direction, excited about what they might find.

[backward]

Thoughts not as easily derailed by the sight of the village, it takes Effy a second or two longer before she works up a smile and heads more resolutely in the direction of the gathered huts. The materials in her bag get hiked further up her shoulder as she listens for any hint of voices in the air.

It's a bit comforting to be met with silence.

"Wonder if this is the haunted part," Effy says aloud, carefully laying her belongings by a tree that stands beside the nearest hut before rushing forward to try and peek in through slivers in the boards.

[everyone_takes]

Leaving her bag near Effy's, Kate steps up onto the tiny front porch, noting how similar the whole structure looks to a lot of the huts back on the other island. It's as if the building crew came over here and built these, too, but she knows they didn't. That makes it all even more strange. It looks too familiar for something that she's supposed to be seeing for the first time.

"There's a bunch of stuff inside," she says, pushing up onto her toes to look through one of the windows. There's a heavy wooden shutter pulled down over it, but she presses it up with one hand to take in the state of the hut beyond. There's a bed, a small dresser, even what looks like a little wooden train set, discoloured with age and exposure to the salt in the air, she figures.

[backward]

Effy doesn't hesitate before rounding the side of the hut, coming down from where she stands on tiptoe and looking for a door, because while it's interesting to see these faint remnants of a life long past, more than that Effy wants to feel it all, to stand in the middle and absorb whatever there is left of the people who lived here once. People who seem to leave more than anyone does on the first island, belongings all too quickly gathered away and redistributed among the people.

"Let's see if they're pissed when I step in here," Effy says with a slight lilt in her voice, hand splaying over dry wood and pushing all the way through, the scent of stale air catching under her nose.

[everyone_takes]

Kate grins when Effy pushes into the hut, watching her for just a moment. There are a lot of things Kate knows she's good at and most of the time she tries to pretend she's fearless, but there's still that hint of hesitation. She'll go through with things most of the time, but sometimes she wavers. Effy never does, it seems, and Kate can't help but admire that.

"Any ghosts?" she asks, finally following her inside. The hut smells stale and salty, like it's been closed up for a long time, which she guesses it has. It's weird, though, that no one who has come over here has gone into these places.

Or maybe they have. Maybe the whole island just resets itself every time. The thought makes her shiver a little, even though the air is warm.

[backward]

"Probably," Effy declares, less because she believes in ghosts, and more because the mere thought is one that spices up the moment, imagining that someone might still be lingering around protectively, watching over lives long past. The only voices that Effy fears are the ones that linger about her for no reason she can definitively ascertain, the ones that crawl around her head seemingly for the sheer sake of overwhelming her. Walking into a ghost is another matter entirely.

There's a pair of chairs by a small dining table, and Effy plants herself in one of them, legs easily crossing as she observes everything from that unmovable distance.

"S'like they were people like us," Effy murmurs thoughtfully.

[everyone_takes]

"You think they were brought here, too?" Kate asks, running her hands over the furniture that's left behind. She opens a drawer, surprised to find clothes left there and she picks out an old shirt, dusty and full of holes. "Like we were, I mean? Brought here and then just sent back home again?"

It wouldn't totally surprise her, but it's strange at the same time. She knows the island wasn't always here and she wonders if it's possible for this place to create other islands. Or draw them from other places. There's mostly a lot of guesswork when it comes to how stuff happens around here, but she likes to think about it, even if she knows she'll never have an answer.

"I wonder if they disappeared one by one until there was only one person left," she says. "All alone, no idea where everyone else had gone."

[backward]

"Think so," Effy says thoughtfully, drawing from things she learned in class back in college without even thinking too greatly about it. People have always been more interesting to her, though, than anything else she's learned in class. "Don't think they were born here. Don't think it was evolution. 'Cause what's the odds that starting from whatever the fuck kind of primate they were before, they'd still come up with huts and houses that look like ours?"

She finds a small stuffed animal— an elephant, if she's to guess— in the corner, constructed out of scraps of cloth.

"Dunno if this place would leave just one person, though. It'd drive anyone mad."

[everyone_takes]

That's exactly why Kate thinks the island might do it. So far, it hasn't done anything too awful that she's seen, but she's heard the stories and she knows the sort of things that have happened in the past. Something about that makes her feel like the island just might leave only one person behind. The last one.

"It's like one of those creepy civilizations that just totally disappeared without a trace," she says. Marshall's mentioned it, probably, because that doesn't seem like the type of thing she'd go researching on her own. It seems like the basis for some weird movie that he'd make. She'll have to tell him about this place, see if he's ever come over. If nothing else, it looks like a good place to shoot a movie.

"This stuff has been here forever," she says, turning back to Effy, the shirt still in her hands. "We're probably the first people to touch this stuff in years."

[backward]

"Or maybe they got the choice to leave," Effy ponders aloud, staring around at everything else in the hut, twirling lightly on her toes as she overturns everything, touches it, as though that might call back something of the people who were here before, enough for them to demand some answers to the mystery otherwise unsolved. "Maybe everyone vanished at once 'cause it was their choice."

It sounds hopelessly optimistic coming from her lips, and Effy's nose wrinkles from it.

"But we're finding them now. Parts of their lives... all this shit. Kind of romantic, leaving behind their lives for us to find."

[everyone_takes]

"I wonder why no one's done anything with it before," Kate says, considering the things left behind. "I mean, I guess they're not useful by most standards, but this place has been mapped. People have been over here. You think they'd like, want to clean it up or something." She's glad they haven't, but given how ordered everyone tries to be most of the time, she's still surprised. People like things neat, they like things that they can understand.

"What's next?" she asks, still turning the shirt over in her hands. She thinks it might have been blue once, but it's so faded now that it's hard to tell. "Someone told me there's a bunch of shipwrecked boats that we can take a look at." There might be ghosts in the village, but she thinks a shipwreck is almost a guarantee.

[backward]

"Because you won't know if people disappear here," Effy decides, the thought coming to her out of nowhere as she glances around, but it feels right when she thinks more about it, glances at the way everything on this island's untouched. When people disappear on Tabula Rasa, everyone sweeps in to scatter the memories among people, people still alive and well and thriving. Nothing of that would happen to anyone who vanishes from this spot, because it's too far away from the masses.

And something about the thought rends her heart.

Crossing the space and linking her hand with Kate's, Effy nods further in the direction they were originally walking. "Let's find the boats. Walk 'round the island until we're tired."

[everyone_takes]

It's not normally a gesture Kate would feel comfortable with, but there's always been something different about Effy and she doesn't give their linked hands a second thought. It feels natural, really, which isn't something she's ever had with a friend before, only Marshall.

"Should we leave our stuff here?" she asks, looking around the hut. It hasn't been touched in a long time, but it doesn't feel as creepy as she thought it might. It's the sort of place she wouldn't mind camping out in, even with all the things left behind. "Just take some water and food and then we can come back here for a fire and ghost stories?" she asks, looking at Effy with a grin.

[backward]

"Leave the shit," Effy grins, raised only higher when Kate's hand seems to fit so naturally against her own. It reminds her of the way things used to be with Pandora, lovely Pandora who followed after Effy because she was cool, because she needed someone, because they were right for each other in spite of all of the ways that they were wrong, too. Teeth biting down lightly on her tongue, Effy tugs in the direction of the exit.

"Find whatever we need to eat tonight, find a light, we'll make our way back before it's too late." With a smile, Effy glances in Kate's direction. "'less you think we can stay there all night. I might be too scared."

[everyone_takes]

"Being scared might not be a problem, but there's no way in hell I'm sleeping outside all night," Kate answers, following Effy easily, almost as easily as she follows Marshall. It's natural, which in itself is strange sometimes, because it's never been natural for her to follow anyone. Kate's spent most of her life trying to be on her own, refusing to let anyone but her brother take care of her because, as much as she loves her parents, they've never quite done it properly.

They exit back out into the sun and Kate points to the path leading off to their left. "That way," she says, although she doesn't know if that's the right way. The island isn't that big, though, if they need to, they can walk around the whole thing in search of the wrecked boats.

[backward]

Carefully, Effy glances up at the sun, makes note of its position and the shift from where it was only minutes ago. Although north and south have far less meaning on an island that looks from above to be completely flat, still it helps with picking directions; for now, they head west with the sun, and it feels to Effy like anything could happen along the way.

"Promise I won't leave you out to dry," Effy says, voice barely above her breath as they step forward.