island hopping

Last night I was back on that same island road, camping in Alex’s living room with William while we were on break from school. His family knew we were there but we had to hide behind the furniture and could never stop crawling. I was responsible for carrying all of us up a hillside each night for dinner at the monastery, climbing slowly between the large roots that pushed out from the path. The monastery was a school in the style of Santa Barbara’s architecture, and when we arrived there was some brief tension with Francis’ roommates in the dining hall. I was asked to perform and swung between some vines dangling from the ceiling while E looked on, applauding tepidly. This crisis quickly changed back to the road, where I was now taking a vacation with MT’s family out to the island kingdoms. The Tonga lived off that Swiss town’s port just past the hill, and their first island was made of thin strands of dirt woven together like a cinnamon roll. As you climbed ashore, they would perform a ragged dance, prompt you for 10 pence, and then lead you to the point where the tours departed. MT’s parents spoke a strange version of Japanese and kept asking me about my intentions. As we waited for the tour boat, the whole family jumped into the water in their clothes and looked up at me sadly as they sank, mouths open. I laboriously pulled them out one after another but found that they’d turned into a chubby version of Larry’s family. There was a baby that hadn’t been there when we started. Everyone survived, but MT, now white and swollen, wouldn’t talk to me. I knew I was in a novel she had written—she’d shown it to me, said it covered my current life in the island nations—but the baby warned that my appearances in the plot were brief and tragic.