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Fatin didn’t notice Leah on the plane. Why would she? After years of going to an art school, where the fashion included baggy jeans and dyed bangs, and students were more interested in indie music at a kickback than the loud pumping bass and sticky floors that Fatin was used to, she learned to shut out her peers. Yes, she was also technically an art student, music prodigy, cello virtuoso if you will, but that was in name alone. If she looked around at the sea of students striving to stand out in the exact same way, the monotony of individuality would kill her. Also, she was sure all that she’d see staring back at her were the glares of those that thought she was just some prissy rich girl who didn’t give a shit about the actual artistic endeavors that the rest of them did.
And hey, she was a prissy rich girl, and proud to be one. Her dad made sure the newest Louis Vuitton bag was pre ordered every time, and she had a lipstick and earring combo for every occasion. It’s not like any of the other people who attended the school were any less well off, no matter how much they tried to hide it under their fake woke attitudes and tote bags advertising the local coffee shop.
So yeah, Fatin didn’t notice Leah until after the plane crashed, after she woke up on the wet sandy ground and Dot had to shake her out of her mental fugue state. Fugue, as Fatin remembered during her freakout, had a second definition, that of a piece with two opposing lines of melody played out most often in a group of four instruments, such as Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach, which Fatin had been practicing right before the crash and was, unconsciously, tapping out on her knee while the rest of her body froze).
She noticed Leah for the first time as she heard her voice, raw and cracking like lightning through the fog. She let Dot help her to her feet as she watched Leah struggle to drag another girl (Jeanette, as she later found out, of course) in from the waves that were crashing against the sand relentlessly threatening to pull them back in.
She noticed her again nights later when she refused to get under the makeshift tarp shelter they were all holding onto for dear life, still getting drenched by the rain but with less abandon. Her scream scorched through the night, and burned a permanent place in Fatin’s heart. It signified something to her. It meant that she was really there, on an island in the middle of nowhere. This wasn’t a dream, or some crazy drug trip from a roofie she’d been slipped at the last frat party she went to (and it had been a sketchy one, so it could have been entirely possible). The cold that was seeping into her bones and the girls around her were real, and so was the girl screaming at the top of her lungs outside.
“Get in! Jesus Christ, Leah, get under here!” Fatin heard herself calling out.
She gripped Leah’s bicep and felt her go limp as she dragged her back to the tent, soaking wet but strong, filled with the fire and anger that had spurred her to action when she saw the texts on her dad’s phone, the fire that disappeared when she saw her mother cry and when she had resigned herself to her future at some fucked up boarding school all the way across the country. She was back, and she was fucking pissed.
A scream ripped through the night once again, and Fatin realized that it was coming from her own throat, raw and filled with rage. She looked at Leah, and Leah looked back from where she was lying, half in and half out of the tent, fully spent from her time outside. She smiled weakly, sat up, and suddenly they were both screaming, filling the night with pain and fury as the rest of the girls joined in around them.
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Fatin had never been friends with many girls. And honestly, she was self aware enough to know that it wasn’t because she thought they were “bitchy, jealous, catty,” whatever the bullshit buzzwords men liked to put on women that she used to internalize. It was because she was scared.
Men were easy. Men liked Fatin because she was hot, willing to have sex with them, and was at every party in a short dress and heels. But this wasn’t friendship. She’d even struck up a sort of camaraderie with some of her past hookups, if it turned out they were nice guys and not sleazy. She’d show up at a party, play a round of pong with Darren from Northridge, maybe ask Joey to queue up a song or two, and then go about her night becoming an anonymous body in a sea of others.
But women were real. Most of them weren’t just going to have sex with her (not that she hadn’t had her fair share of hookups of the feminine persuasion). She had to put in effort, vulnerability, had to show who she really was and not just what she looked like, the carefully manicured facade she presented to the world. And who she really was? Well, if what happened with her dad was any indication, she was spiteful, and probably unfaithful and disloyal. She didn’t need other people in her life to reflect this information back to her, so she didn’t try. She walked through the halls of East Bay alone, filming videos for her Instagram followers and ignoring the pit in her stomach she feels when she walks by the groups of kids that brush by her on their way to class.
On the island, she tried to keep her walls up, offering snarky comments here and there and a sex joke when it fit, and for the most part the girls accepted it. They left her alone to use her huge makeup kit that had floated back to shore, and didn’t try to coax more work or emotion out of her.
At night, when it seemed like most of her fellow castaways were getting closer to each other, sharing stories from their lives, Fatin abstained. They were getting rescued soon anyways, why should she have to get to know these people that she didn’t know and would never see again?
So when it was time for yet another team building activity courtesy of one bubbly blonde Shelby Goodkind, Fatin was ready to sit it out. Even after being put on a team to put together a shelter, she was propped up in the sand with her sunglasses on ready to participate with absolutely zero effort, as had been expected. She was providing most of the clothes and goods that they had on the island, her watertight suitcase floating to the surface no matter how heavy the stolen watches weighed it down.
Leah, fucking Leah, wouldn’t let it go. She seemed determined to get Fatin to pull her own weight. Why wouldn’t she just give up? Everyone else had. Just like before, Leah was blowing huge gusts of wind into the sleeping embers inside her. Caring about things was not Fatin’s modus operandi. She learned that too many times living with her parents and her shame.
She turned around, hiding from Leah’s piercing gaze and started walking away. She wasn’t going to be dragged in to whatever little game the rest of the girls were playing, fucking Survivor? Whatever.
Leah’s hand wrapped around her arm, gripping hard. Fatin was not expecting that.
And when the fight escalated, Leah and Fatin in each other’s faces, the embers were no longer dormant. Staring into Leah’s eyes, Fatin felt a passion she hadn’t felt in a long time. Sure, it was rage, but it was something she couldn’t push down. It felt like the seconds lasted for minutes, both of them staring each other down, waiting for the other to break.
When Leah pushed her to the ground, and she saw blood, the flames erupted. The blood was hot on Fatin’s hand, warm and alive. She was strong, and she was going to prove it to this fucking girl in front of her who wouldn’t leave her be, wouldn’t leave her to give up and just get by. Smearing the blood on Leah’s face, she felt the fire spewing out of her body like a dragon’s breath.
“Don’t. Ever. Fucking touch me again.”
And with that, Fatin turned around and walked into the woods.
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She walked until she couldn’t anymore, militant and staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. After an hour or so, Fatin collapsed to the ground, hugging her knees. Hot tears fell from her eyes and she wiped them away with shaking hands, smearing blood and dirt all over her face and also probably ruining her last bit of mascara.
Fatin knew how to be alone. She knew what to do when she walked into her house at two in the morning, holding her shoes in one hand and her dead phone in the other. She knew the feeling of her hands shaking as she sat in her empty practice room, repeating the same notes over and over again and not getting them right, of her yells of frustration being absorbed into the soundproof walls. So it was only a matter of time before this happened anyway. Before the one person who knew her from home finally gave up on her, left her to rot in her own self pity on this stupid fucking island in the middle of nowhere.
Leah’s opinion of her really shouldn’t matter to Fatin. She hadn’t known her in school, never spoke to her, wasn’t even really sure if she was in any of her classes. But even though the rest of the group had already written her off, even though Leah was just the last person to say that she was selfish and weak, it hurt the most. Leah was special, for reasons Fatin had no ability to emotionally decipher for herself. She had shaken and stirred something earlier, something Fatin hadn’t felt in a long time. Passion, and the need to be good in someone else’s eyes.
At home, nothing was enough. No matter how much she practiced her scales, how many other things she pushed to the side, and how many hours she put into her music, her parents were never satisfied. So Fatin gave up. She gave up on other people and connected with them. She slept around, never going back to the same bed twice. She posted bullshit on social media, content to create a bubble of popularity and fans around her to keep her safe from having to make real connections with others around her.
And here, Leah saw through that and called her out for it. She couldn’t get by doing the same distancing that she did back in the real world. Leah was her only connection to home and she hated her, thought she was useless. And she was right.
Fatin closed her eyes and leaned her back against the tree, tears finally drying and breath slowing back to normal. She couldn’t do this to herself, wallow in self pity. It was gross, and she’d done enough of it after her parents caught her for what she did to her dad. She’d had enough self pity to last a lifetime. No, Fatin made up her mind. Leah might be right, but it doesn’t mean she can’t do better. She was going to come back, apologize to the blue eyed girl that had such a hold on her, and be a productive member of the survival team.
Standing up slowly, Fatin turned around, looking for the way back. Every way she looked, all she could see was trees, endless and identical stretching in every way. Shit. No need to panic, she could do this. As she slowly searched for any marker or sign that she recognized, she noticed a strange noise, one that she hadn’t paid attention to before. It sounded like… it sounded like rushing water?
Well. If she couldn’t find her way back now, she could at least try out this new being useful thing. But she wasn’t going to get more lost, that’s for sure. Fatin remembered the one time she’d ever been hiking before, with her dad a few years before high school in the redwood forests of North California.
“Daddy, why do all of these trees have such funny marks on them?”
“Those are blazes, Fatin. They help you find your way along the trail when it isn’t clear.”
“Like the street signs on the walk to school?”
Her dad laughed, and moved towards the tree Fatin had pointed out.
“Sort of. It’s like in Hansel and Gretel, when they leave behind breadcrumbs to lead them out of the woods.”
“I want to make a blaze! Daddy, can we make some here?”
Fatin started to pull a marker out of her little backpack, to draw something on the tree. Her dad grabbed her, picking her up into his arms before she could make a mark.
“Whoah whoah girl, not here. This trail is already marked, and we don’t want to confuse people. How about this,” He said, grabbing the marker from her hand. He drew an X on the back of her hand, and then drew another on his hand. “There. Now we both have blazes, so whenever you need to find your way through the woods and on the trail, you can find the other blaze on me.”
“And you can find me too!”
“Yeah, I’ll find you too. Always, Fatin.”
Fatin shook her head, freeing herself from the bittersweet memory. Searching her pockets, she found the nail polish that she had put aside for later, before she was drawn into the shelter competition and subsequently the woods.
Marking the trees she passed with pink Xes, she followed the sound of the water through the woods, and to the source, a roaring waterfall pouring into a pool below.
“Holy shit,” Fatin whispered, partly out of breath and partly in awe. She stood on the rock ledge overlooking the waterfall, and let out a yell not unsimilar to a tiger looking over its domain.
The discovery took a lot out of Fatin, and she yawned as she noticed the sun dipping over the trees, turning the water shades of orange and pink as the temperature dropped. There was no point in heading back now, she would just get more turned around in the dark. No, she would head back in the morning, and triumphantly take Leah -- and the rest of the group, of course-- to the waterfall, and they would all be proud, and maybe clap for her, hold her up above their shoulders…
Fatin’s eyes closed and her breathing slowed as her dramatic daydreams of her heroic return faded into sleep.
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“Fatin. Babe. Hey, wake up.”
Fatin’s eyes fluttered open and settled on the ocean blue filling her vision. A smile crept up her face, unconsciously. “Leah? What’s going on?”
“Shhhhh, it’s alright, I’m just leaving for school, I wanted to wake you up before I left.”
“Wh- School?” Fatin sat up and took in her surroundings. She was in a bed, wearing her pajamas. She was clean, no longer covered in island grime. Leah sat in front of her, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead and she was looking at Fatin with a strange expression on her face, one she hadn’t seen before. She was looking at her with… fondness? What?
“Babe? Are you alright?” Leah lifted her hand up to Fatin’s forehead, taking her temperature. Fatin felt the sparks in her stomach go wild again, whirling around like a tornado. Leah didn’t seem to notice, and dragged her hand down to Fatin’s cheek. She cocked a half smile, and moved to speak again, with Fatin barely paying attention to anything but Leah’s touch.
“You feel fine, no fever. Drama queen.” She said it like a joke between old friends, people who felt comfortable with each other and weren’t constantly at each other’s throats. “I’ll see you when I’m done with office hours, Professor Garettson’s being a hardass again so I have to stay late.”
Fatin still wasn’t able to speak or respond, too confused and also awestruck by the girl in front of her.
Leah leaned in closer to Fatin, and she could feel her heart beating out of her chest. Was this really happening? Hold on a minute, was Leah about to --
Her train of thought was immediately derailed as her mind was overwhelmed with the feeling of Leah’s lips on hers. Soft, but confident, as if she’d done it a thousand times before, she was kissing Fatin.
Before she knew what had even happened, the contact was gone, and Leah got up. She walked to the bedroom door, and opened it. She turned around one more time, as if she could feel Fatin’s eyes following her every move, raking up and down her body as if it was the last time she would ever see her.
Leah winked. “See you later babe. It’s time to get up. They’re looking for you. I’m looking for you.” She shut the door behind her, and the room around Fatin wisped away and faded back to blackness.
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Fatin lay on her stomach at the edge of the water, dragging her fingers through it lazily and watching her reflection ripple. Last night’s dream replayed over and over in her head. She didn’t like Leah. She didn’t, they fought constantly! It was just a dream, and it’s not like Fatin even did relationships anyways, so why wasn’t the thought of Leah calling her “babe” and holding her with such tenderness leaving her mind?
She took her fingers out of the water and touched them to her mouth, erasing the ghost of the dream from her lips. She had to return to the group anyway, had to share the water with everyone. No time for thinking about Leah and her possible (definite) crush on the girl.
Walking back along her marked path towards the spot she got lost at, she heard a noise in the distance, one that turned into a familiar voice as it got closer. Fatin stopped in her tracks, heart beating out of her chest, as she made out her name being yelled out towards her.
“Faaaaaaaaaatin!”
Fatin could recognize Leah’s voice from a mile away, raspy and warm like campfire smoke and honey. It was cracking like she’d been calling all night. Did she really come looking for her? After she’d smeared her blood on her face and ran off into the woods like an idiot? Fatin shrank away from her voice for a minute, steeling herself for the reunion. Leah was going to kill her for running away. This was going to be a painful conversation, and the scared cellist took several deep breaths to calm herself, running through several scales in her head.
Footsteps crushed leaves and snapped twigs on the ground next to her, and she could no longer delay the inevitable.
“Heyoo!” Fatin swang out from behind a tree, and cringed inwardly at her overly sunny greeting.
Leah stopped in her tracks in front of her, breathing heavily. Silence fell between the two as the rest of the group shifted uncomfortably behind them. Their eyes met, and Fatin refused to look away, not wanting to seem nervous or betraying any of her complicated new emotions towards the girl. It felt like they stood there forever, blue meeting brown.
Until Leah’s eyes flitted down for a moment, to -- wait. Fatin was sure it was a trick of the light, she had been out by herself all night and the dream she had was messing with her head. But as Leah met her eyes once again, blue shrinking to be replaced with the black of her dilating pupils, Fatin was sure of it. Leah was looking at her lips.
Suddenly, Leah launched forward, and before Fatin knew it, she was being wrapped in Leah’s arms, her head nestled next to Leah’s chest, absolutely confused about what had just happened. Leah had been about to kiss her. Leah had been about to kiss her, and Fatin wouldn’t have stopped it.
Holy shit, she really liked Leah.
As Fatin accepted her reality, she sank into Leah’s arms, the girl tightening around her. She noticed a wet feeling on her shirt, and looked up at Leah’s face. She was crying silently, tears running down her face. Without thinking, Fatin reached up with her hand and softly wiped her cheek dry. Leah stopped for a moment, taken aback by the sudden and intimate gesture.
The other girls had been out of Fatin’s head throughout this encounter, tunnel vision only including Leah. But the noises around her were starting to filter in again, and she looked up at the rest of the group, haggard expressions on their faces as well as mild confusion at the display in front of them.
Fatin coughed uncomfortably and stepped back from Leah. “Jesus, guys, who died?”
The joke broke the tension and the girls stepped forward, expressing their happiness that Fatin was alright, and their pride as well once she shared the news about the new water source. Fatin slowly relaxed. Nobody was mad at her for running off, not even Leah.
She was useful to the group, but more than that, they were happy to see her just to see her, not because she had finally done something helpful. It was a new experience for her, one that should have come much earlier than the island. It felt like a different relationship than those she’d had with other people in the past. Closeness to a group, feeling like she belonged even if she messed up. These people were her friends, and that meant a whole lot more than some waterfall.
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Fatin sat on the cliff overlooking the waterfall once again, watching the girls splash around in the water below. Toni and Martha are splashing water at each other, and Rachel is floating on her back, eyes closed, looking more at peace than Fatin has ever seen her before.
Fatin’s eyes naturally start to drift towards Leah, who is getting out of the water. Droplets fall down her back as she wrings out her hair, and Fatin has to pull her eyes away to stop from staring. But she doesn’t last long, and soon she is following a the path of a few drips down her back, over her hips, and--
Leah turns around, and notices Fatin’s eyes on her. Her cheeks turn a slight pink, and Fatin knows she isn’t much better, despite her darker skin, as she feels her face heat up at the eye contact and the notion that she was just caught checking her out.
The taller girl slowly makes her way up the rocks and slides next to Fatin, dangling her feet over the edge of the cliff. She looks at Fatin, eyebrows furrowed. They need to talk about what happened, the fight that caused Fatin to run off. Neither knew how to start the conversation.
“So--” Leah starts, but Fatin cuts her off.
“No. Wait, can I start?”
Leah laughs, a short sound but one that still fills Fatin’s heart with a now familiar ember.
“I shouldn’t have ran off like that. I’m sorry that I wasn’t helping, and I know I was being a dick about the workload. You were right, I should have at least tried, I’m not some helpless idiot. I can do things, and I want to make sure we all survive this bullshit. Together.”
Leah nods, but purses her lips together. “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have been such a cunt to you about it.”
“Dude, I know.” Fatin let out a laugh, showing that the admission wasn’t that big a deal. “Honestly, I was kind of proud of you for it, I didn’t know you had that in you. If it was directed at like, some douchey frat bro instead of me I would have been cheering you on.”
Leah lets out a breath, the remainder of the tension flowing out of her body as her shoulders relax. But Fatin still had more to say.
“You know, people don’t normally get to me like that.” She says it carefully, like it’s a truth that will crumble and break if it isn’t received right.
Leah’s blue eyes darken with concern, but they remain trained on the girl in front of her.
“Yeah, I know. It was weird that you even reacted to me. But uh, I also don’t normally get that emotional about stuff like a shelter building competition either. It was a weird day all around.”
“No, Leah, it wasn’t just today.” Fatin breathed in through her nose, knowing that if she continued, there was no going back.
“I don’t like to get close to people. I learned to shut people out and shut my emotions in so long ago that I really got used to being alone, and not caring at all. But somehow…” Fatin trailed off, her mouth fighting against her mind to get the words she needed to say out.
Leah reached over and grasped Fatin’s hand delicately, giving her a light squeeze of reassurance but also not trying to scare her with the gesture. Fatin’s heart leaped into her throat, pushing the words out of her mouth and out into the open.
“Somehow, Leah, you got in. I look at you, and something in me starts to move again. You’re like… lighting my fire again, which has to be the cheesiest thing I could possibly say but you’re a writer and so like it makes sense? To say that?”
The tall girl was clearly confused. Metaphors were not Fatin’s strong suit.
“Shit, sorry, I’m really not making sense. I like you, Leah, even though I didn’t mean to. Not just in the friend way, even though that would be just as shocking given my history with friendship too. I like want to kiss you, and it’s so stupid because I don’t even want to hook up with you, I want to be with you when I’m sad, and talk to you first when I do something I’m proud of like find the waterfall. And that’s why you were able to get under my skin, and I really don’t think I’d be able to keep that in without blowing up any longer. So, uh, yeah. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way but I really just needed to let you know. I like you. Again.”
Leah regarded Fatin silently, face unchanged. Fatin started tapping her fingers quickly and lightly against Leah’s palm, unable to stop the nervous tic. This seemed to drag Leah out of her inner thoughts, and she tightened her grip on Fatin’s hand.
“Fatin…” Leah ran her other hand through her hair, a motion that Fatin couldn’t help but follow with her eyes. “I singled you out that day. And it wasn’t because I thought you were useless, I hope you know that by now. I know that we barely knew each other before the island, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know who you were.”
Fatin cocked an eyebrow, and moved to start talking again, but Leah squeezed her hand again and gave her a look signifying that she wasn’t done.
“I’ve seen you play cello before, in one of the practice rooms after school. I know it was meant to be private, but I was there late and I heard the music as someone else left the room. You looked so focused, so determined, with this look on your face like what you were doing was the most important thing in the world. I wasn’t able to stop thinking about that after, not for a while. But then I saw you here, and you were so… different. It was like you didn’t think you could do anything, so you wouldn’t even try. I needed to see the girl in that room again, the girl I --”
Leah reached up to touch Fatin’s face, playing with a piece of her hair that had slipped out of her ponytail somewhere along her journey over the past two days. She smiled.
“The girl I couldn’t get out of my head and absolutely didn’t want to. I noticed you, Fatin, and I have for a while.”
Fatin sighed, absolutely caught up in Leah’s words and the sensation of her hand against her cheek. “God, you’re even poetic on a deserted island.”
Laughing, Leah leaned closer to Fatin’s face, blue eyes shimmering with possibilities. “Fatin. I could literally wax poetic about you for hours, and something tells me that now that I’ve said that you’ll definitely hold me to it. But I don’t think I need words to tell you that I like you too.”
Fatin grinned. This was absolutely more her speed. With a nod by Leah giving her the go ahead, she leaned towards Leah, closing the distance between the two. Their lips met, spark’s flying between them. Fatin felt like she was on fire, inside and out, a roaring flame crackling in her chest. She needed to be close to Leah, needed to feel this forever.
Suddenly, a whooping noise came from below, the girls forgotten below the pair finally getting wind of what was going on about them.
“Yeah, get it, Jadmani!” Dot whooped as Rachel rolled her eyes and wrestled her underwater to shut her up.
Leah pulled away, much to Fatin’s disappointment. But Leah put her forehead against Fatin’s and started playing with her fingers, pulling her hand into her lap. “I’m not going anywhere, Fatin. The idiots down there don’t bother me,” She said with an affectionate nod to their friends.
The cellist smiled, and then stood up. “Well then, Leah Rilke, should we go join them?” She took off her shirt slowly, feeling Leah’s eyes trained on her, and gave her a wink. She took a running start, and leapt off the cliff towards the water.
As she hit the water, she stayed under, listening to the muffled sounds of her fellow survivors, castaways, friends. And nearby, she heard a splash, Leah, the girl who cracked her back open. She swam towards the noise, one that she knew would lead her home.