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Ralph awoke at a point in the night when one isn't quite sure if it's night or morning. For a moment, he was brutally confused and terrified; why was he huddled under huge loops of fern? Why was he sore? Why was adrenaline slowly stirring up in his veins? Why had he woken? And then, answers, almost before the questions. He was hiding, he had been running, he had been running for his life, and someone was walking just outside the fern tunnel. Someone was there, in the night.
The figure was walking slowly, almost undetectable, away from Ralph. He looked like a jigsaw puzzle under the fragmented light from the canopy. In his hand, he held a long spear with a large point at the end. His fingers flexed, drumming now and again.
It sent a chill through Ralph, the figure in the moonlight in the dark. The air wasn't cold. On the contrary, it was very hot, but everything had turned horribly and intensely cold in a sudden flash that Ralph couldn't avoid. He shook a little, and his right elbow brushed a branch. It ruffled once, and then was still, but the boy spun around immediately. It was Jack. Ralph felt every shred of hope rush out of him and fly away on some nonexistent breeze. He was going to die. Maybe I should just go out and let him kill me now. Maybe I should just give up, he thought. No! I should stay and fight. I should tear at him. Jack's eyes, sharpened by hunting and night and bloodlust, came to rest on the patch where Ralph's face was hidden. They circled for a moment, almost like birds, and then slowly settled on Ralph's.
Look away, Ralph ordered himself. Look away. But he could not look away. He found he couldn't move, couldn't think. Jack advanced evenly. Ralph was frozen. Every step closer became slower, until Jack was right there, close enough that Ralph could reach out, snatch the spear, and stab Jack with it, hard, before the boy could even think.
Jack knelt, lowering and lowering, until he almost came to a stop. Ralph could see the blue of his eyes. He could see the freckles poking out at the edges of his face under the paint. He could see sweat beading at the top of Jack's eyebrows.
He was still for one second, and then was on top of Ralph, pinning him to the ground, spear shaft pressing into his upper arm. Ralph yelped a little. Jack grinned a little.
"You know I could kill you," Jack breathed, his face inches from Ralph's, his hands shaking a little on Ralph's shoulders. Ralph didn't respond, though the word, 'could' made his skin prickle a little. Could? Not will? Jack picked him up a little and slammed him in to the earth. "Huh? You know that, right?"
"Yes," Ralph snarled. Jack's grin widened.
"You know I've got a spear, and you haven't got anything? I could kill you, carve you up and put you on a pike in the middle of the jungle, and everyone would celebrate, you know why?"
"Why?" Ralph whispered.
"Because we're all waiting for it." Here, Jack leaned in a little, pressing his knee harder against Ralph's sternum. "We're all waiting for it. It's only a matter of time. You are going to die." Ralph shifted.
"Everybody dies--"
"Not like you will." Jack squeezed Ralph's upper arms harder for a moment, then thrust him down and bounded out of the thicket, not looking back once.
Ralph could feel the white hand prints on his skin slowly filling in red.
It seemed impossible that twelve hours later, Ralph was on a boat, and that no one was meeting his eye or trying to kill him. He felt like someone had taken him and shaken him very hard while screaming at him, and then punched him in the stomach. This seemed too impossible. No one would look at him. He sat on the deck and watched the island disappear. He wondered if he would ever go back to school, if he would ever speak to anyone ever again.
He heard something behind him, and spun around to see a flash of red hair disappearing behind a large metal chest, presumably holding life vests.
Call out to him, Ralph ordered himself, but a veil of fear fell over his mind. This is ridiculous, Ralph thought. He can't kill me on a boat full of soldiers. But he still didn't speak. Nor did Jack show himself.
They remained, one twisted around on his bench, straining to see through steel, the other crouched behind life vests, arms wrapped around his knees. Ralph stood up and walked over to the chest. The feel of smooth wood was still strange to his feet.
He peered around the white wall to find Jack staring at him, looking as irascible as ever. Ralph looked away and sat down next to Jack, sliding down so he was facing out over the water, away from the island. He could feel Jack staring at him still.
The engine of the boat mumbled endlessly, almost making their silence excusable.
"Why'd you let me go?" Ralph asked finally. He felt a small sense of relief as Jack looked away and said nothing.
Ralph waited.
"Well?" he asked again, turning his head to look at Jack pointedly.
"I didn't mean t'find you so soon," Jack muttered.
Ralph realized that living only in the second one was currently in made one a very bad liar.
"What's the real reason you let me go?" he asked a little breathlessly, half expecting Jack to rip out his throat with his teeth.
He didn't. He just stared out over the ocean.
Without looking at Ralph, Jack let go of his knee and slipped his hand across the smooth wood of the deck, searching, fluttering for a second, almost like a bird, and Ralph remembered his owl eyes in the dark.
Jack's hand found what it was looking for, and clenched Ralph's fingers to his own.
When Jack started to cry, Ralph looked away and squeezed his hand a little.