PROLOGUE:

Renee sat alone in her apartment, surrounded by scattered remnants of her fucked life. Love letters from both Jon and David formed a pile of pain in the middle of her room, and she shot a glancing look at the pregnancy test that laid next to her on the bed. The stained quilt beneath her welcomed her as she settled on it. What was she to do? In two short years, her life had fallen apart. Sighing, she looked out the window, into the slummed, ghetto-like heart of Huntington, California. The sparkling, pure beaches she'd known for so long begged her to return. She'd had enough of society. Her life was too complicated, and she was only 26. Already, she wanted to un-complicate the hell out of it.

She could still smell the salt beneath her fingertips.

"Do I have any mail?" Renee asked her landlord as she walked into the main living room where the elders in the apartment complex gathered to play chess. She lit and puffed on one of the first cigarettes from her only pack. Today she needed to spend money, and she'd grabbed the first thing she saw, which had been a pack of cigs. A nagging tug of conscious told her to cut the nasty habit before she became addicted. She listened to the instinct, grinding the butt of it into the trashcan. On second thought, she tossed the whole fucking pack in, too.

The landlady looked up from her sleazy romance novel, and saw that Renee wore her light-blue waitress' outfit; she wore it constantly, no matter how dirty it was. Renee didn't care. Nothing mattered anyway, even though she wasn’t fooling any of the elders in the lobby. Even she knew very well that a beautiful body hid underneath her soiled, ugly outfit. The elderly landlady saw Renee's hidden beauty, too, beneath her oily black hair. She must have been beautiful once, the woman thought as Renee slumped towards her.

Not for the first time, Renee saw the golden cross slung against the old woman's dainty neck. She winced. Suddenly Renee was way back in the past, under the tropical light, with her husband, Jon. Back to a time when he loved her. She'd been so naive, so innocent. A virgin to the tortures of love--and loss. She felt the cross slip off her neck, and Jon's soft black hair as she placed it around him. The plastic yellow boat that carried Jon to his death lay only a few feet from the surf; David hauled the remainder of food and water into the boat as her and Jon's lips met passionately. Jon was their only hope--

David wore a cross, too, and she imagined it as it decorated his bare chest. She winced again. David.

The mere thought of him brought tears to her eyes. She bit them back, and took the mail the old woman handed her. She flipped through the pile; nothing but fucking trash mail. At the bottom of the pile, though, was an official letter, from the Californian Medical Center for The Mentally Deficient. Deficient, Renee thought in disgust. Ha. Deficient. More like The Royal Institute for the Fucking INSANE.

Again her thoughts fled to a different time, a different place. David was with her, in a bare, white room. She saw Jon as he was led to her, handcuffed, his eyes staring vacantly into nothing. She wasn't sure she wanted to open this letter, so she tucked it into her purse. She'd read it later, if she read it at all.

"Do I have any phone messages?" she asked. The woman nodded, stepping aside to let Renee pass. The old woman pulled a box of Kleenex; Renee always burst into tears while listening to her messages. Usually Renee couldn't handle listening to David's voice, but today she wanted to; she missed him so much. The secrecy of the messages had grown tiresome, and so one day she'd just stopped listening to them through her earphones, as she did at first. Now she let them blast across the lobby. Maybe she wanted people to pity her; she was never sure.

Renee pressed the message button. "One message. Five-fifty-five a.m.," a monotone voice cooed over the machine. Then a short, shrill beep. David's voice filled the answering machine. Unlike the usual sobbing mess she heard, he sounded strangely calm.

"Renee, just--just come back, okay?" Pause. "I know you don't want to be with me, because you're not calling. I'm not gonna say I love you anymore . . . I promise. Just come back, and stay in the house with us. We all miss you. Renee--" his voice broke, and she knew he resisted the urge to tell her he loved her, because he did. Helplessly. "--this is the last time I'm calling. God, Renee. When I lost you, I didn't just lose the love of my life--I lost my best friend. No one else knows what we went through on that island. I'm dying without you. I can't eat, sleep--nothing. I need you back."

Pause.

Then, out of nowhere, came "I hope Jon's doing alright." A wave of pain shattered Renee's control. Tears tugged at her temples. "He'll get outta there someday. I know you love him--more than you ever loved me." Sob. A pause in his words no one else noticed but Renee. "I can accept that now. We're survivors, Renee. Survivors. Come back."

"David, oh God, David." She hugged herself, and coldly the woman handed her a Kleenex. She took it. The letter poked out of Renee's ripped purse, and she took it, opening it. She read it, too curious to wait; at that moment, the letter that was meant to leave her in mourning became a miraculous release. That letter freed her, in all its sick officiality. And she knew what she had to do. She handed her apartment keys to the landlady, and fled that awful place. She jumped into the car, already speeding down the road before turning the ignition. She knew where she had to go. And what to do. For the first time, she knew exactly what she wanted. . .

He was right. No one else knew what happened on that island.