Jon's mouth and nostrils were so full of dirt he could barely breathe. But he was breathing, and for that alone, he was relieved.
The sounds of the storm were gone. His heart wasn't pounding in his ears, either. The chaos of a few minutes ago--it was only a few minutes, wasn't it?--was replaced with a calm wind rustling through leaves and calls of various birds and insects. But he couldn't see anything. He tried to move and realized it was because he was facedown on warm, damp soil.
"Ulwaagh, blech!" He pushed himself up out of the dirt and gagged, spitting several times. He used a sleeve to wipe his eyes and blinked them open. It was bright. He looked up to see the sun glimmering through a thick jungle canopy.
He furrowed his brow to clear his vision somewhat. The trees and stones around him gradually came into focus. He was on a rudimentary path trodden in a dense jungle. He sat on his knees in a Jon-shaped rut in the dirt. The oblong distortion of his outline signaled that he'd fallen at a sharp angle and skidded. He must have dropped from the vine and blacked out. The storm was long over.
How long had it been? And where was he now? And where was
"Lexi? LEXI!" Jon jumped to his feet and immediately lost his balance, plopping his ass back in the dirt. He moaned a disgusted grunt. "These were really good clothes!" Cursing, he got back up in a more careful manner and went down the path in the directly he was sure he came from. He didn't get far before he heard the sound of crashing waves and saw a break in the trees ahead. He scanned for his girlfriend, but there wasn't so much as a footprint besides the ones he was making.
"LEXI! You out there? Are you alive?"
Nothing but a soft rush of waves breaking against hte unseen cliff in the distance and a mosquito buzzing in his ear. Jon clapped his hands to squash it and shouted at the same time. "Fucking shit! Lexi, please answer me!" His voice started to warble strangely, the same way it did on the boat, shifting higher and lower in pitch than his usual octave. He felt like he was coming unmoored. He was used to being aware of his situation and falling back on his know-how to slip out of a jam. Here there were too many unknowns and nobody to help him work them out. He shouted again, but weaker. "Please tell me you made it..."
BONK! Something hard landed on his head. It certainly wasn't a shoe this time. But, snapping his head upward, he was elated to discover it came from the same source.
Alexis was smiling down at him, some twenty feet up on a thick tree branch. "My name's not Lexi."
A laugh of joy burst from Jon, but it too was strangely distorted and came out as a multisyllabic tone. He was too happy to care. Then that passed and he got actually kind of angry. "Why the hell didn't you answer me before? And what was that?" He looked around his feet and saw something like a shriveled up pumpkin.
"It's a cocoa bean," Alexis said as she shuffled toward the trunk of her tree. "And I must have gotten knocked out when I landed on this branch. It's amazing it didn't break when I hit it...or that I didn't break anything. I just woke up when I heard you shouting."
Jon scratched the lump on the top of his head. "So you're okay?"
"For the most part. Are you?"
"My clothes took most of the damage," he quipped, fully examining himself for the first time. His jacket was blackened with dirt and had a hole in the left elbow and his jeans were torn in spots. He kept rubbing his head. Aside from the sore spot where he was hit, something else felt off. He looked back up and saw Alexis had reached the trunk and was removing her remaining sock. "Hey, how are we gonna get you down from there? I don't see any more vines..."
"I think I've got it," Alexis said casually as she wrapped her arms around the massive tree. "Natural climber here!" She bravely shifted her legs away from the branch and started slowly making her way down the tree, carefully finding footing in the ragged bark. "It's actually better that I lost my shoes."
"How does that not hurt your feet?" He combed his fingers through his hair, thinking that it felt thicker than it should have, but with all the dirt on him, he figured he must be imagining it. He brushed himself off as Alexis continued her descent.
"I dunno, they actually feel just fine. I didn't pick up any splinters from the boat or anything."
"Maybe you got thick skin," he said, leaning back on his cocky demeanor to keep himself from stressing out.
"Anybody who dates you needs thick skin," Alexis retorted just before hopping down to the ground. She landed into a crouch to take pressure off her legs. Her hands balled into fists as they sunk into the dirt. Jon noticed her almost freeze into that pose. It was a couple seconds or more before she lifted her head and slowly stood up.
"You all right?" he asked with genuine concern.
"Yeah, just...you know that feeling when you stand up too fast? I sort of felt that just now. Like my brain just hit pause."
Jon forced a smile. "Good thing it didn't do that while you were coming down."
"Yeah, well, like I said..." She strutted up to him and pulled a twig out of his hair. "Better climber." As she lowered her hand, she stopped to rub his cheek, which felt gritty. "The dirty look suits you. It almost looks like you've got tough-guy stubble." She flicked the twig into some brush and started walking up the path.
Jon eyed her. "Where are you going? The cliff is this way."
"We don't want to go back to the cliff. We want to go forward."
Jon furrowed his brow again and just stared at her.
Alexis stopped and turned back to him, putting a hand on her hip impatiently. "The cliff just has vines and death. Somebody cleared this path for a reason. It could lead back to the park."
"The path could follow the shoreline to wherever that ride was taking us," Jon suggested. "Besides, the last time we went where YOU wanted, we ended up on that deathtrap."
Alexis groaned and swung her arm. "Then which way, fearless leader?"