José starts convulsing an hour before help is supposed to arrive. 

I am half asleep, mumbling theories on how Shawn and Willow must have come to be a couple. All of them are more ridiculous than the next. The stories are elaborate and unrealistic in the hopes that if José hears he'll get a kick out of them. I'm in the middle of one where Willow hits her head really hard and the part of her brain that processes emotion confuses the feeling of disgust with love. I think José is laughing when he moves. 

Then the movements get violent. 

I scream. 

Logan is the first one to the room. He was staying in the one next door because "This one smells like disease - no offense." Now he just stands there at the foot of the bed, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. 

"What are we supposed to do?" His words are small and frail. Helpless. We’re both suffocating under the feeling. We don’t know how to help José and the people that do are miles away. 

"Where's Aaron?" Remembering some vague instructions from health class, I turn José on his side and remove the blanket from around him. 

Is he having a seizure? A stroke? A heart attack? I don’t know and even if I did, there is nothing I can do for him. No one here graduated high school, let alone med school.  

Logan's chest rises and falls in thin shallow breaths. "Uh - at the docks waiting for the ferry." 

"Get him!" He charges out of the room and I stand there helpless. 

Even as I gave him the command, I knew Aaron wouldn’t be able to do anything to help. Aaron could fly but not across miles and miles of sea, with no breaks, while carrying someone. We're stuck waiting for the ferry and by the time that ferry arrives and takes José to the hospital . . . 

Time goes by ever so slowly as José continues to convulse. I don't know if it's been seconds or minutes as I watch him suffer. I try to prevent him from hitting his head on anything but it's harder to keep it together the closer I stand to him. Everything in me wants to block it out. I want to close my eyes and cover my ears. I want to walk deep into the forest and forget this is happening.   

I let out another scream as his condition worsens. I want to tell José it'll be alright - that help is on the way - but his eyes are sealed shut and he hasn't responded to anything I've said in hours. All that comes out is a sob. 

What if he’s in pain? What if he can hear and doesn’t understand why we aren’t helping him? 

"What's going on?" Luka appears in the doorway. "Crap." 

He tentatively walks up to the foot of the bed. He runs a hand through his hair, his other hand holding onto the bed frame as he sucks in a breath. I can see him making the same conclusions I have. He realizes the same horrendous truths that I do. 

"What do we do?" 

Everyone keeps asking me for instructions and looking to me for guidance but I don’t know why. I’m  not a leader. Everything in my life is a mess. 

I shake my head, hating that he has to see his friend like this. Even if Jose makes a full recovery, Luka will never forget this moment. It’ll torture him forever but who I am to kick him out of the room? This is his friend - no - his family. He has a right to be here. 

"We can't do anything. We have to wait for it to pass." 

He looks up at me, his expression saying it all. 

What if he dies before then? 

Luka rubs his eyes underneath his glasses hard. Then his hands are slamming into the mattress. Desperate frustration flushes his skin red. "Come on, José! You'll get to the hospital soon enough. Just hold on!" 

The convulsions begin to slow down. Luka reaches for my arm like he needs something to keep him standing. I let him, clinging onto him as much as he is clinging onto me. The room is spinning. The only sound is coming from José's stirring and our breathing. 

After a moment, we are the only ones breathing. 

Luka's breath hitches in his throat and I release him to make sure it's act u ta my happened. Pressing my trembling fingers to José's neck, my nightmare is made real. 

"He's gone." 

I hurry to catch Luka who is crumbling to the ground. He lets out half a sob that turns into a wail. As much as my chest hurts and the sinking feeling in my stomach aches, José was more Luka's than he was mine. José forced Luka to sit beside him every meal until he sat with him because he cared. They were friends for years. 

He screams, a howl much like the pained sound I heard come from the depths of the ship. I lower him to the floor where he collapses against me, screaming his throat raw.

“No, no, no,” he cries “No!” 

Aaron arrives minutes later. He runs in, coming to a sharp halt at the sight of us on the ground. His face falls. When he approaches the bed, the green pools of his eyes dim like a smothered fire. 

He bites back the emotions swirling up and walks over to our spot on the ground. He helps us up and ushers us out of the room. When he closes the door behind him, Luka rushes away with his thick eyebrows drawn down. 

"I need to be alone." I watch him disappear as tears cascade down my cheeks. 

José is dead.

It doesn't sound right. It isn't right. 

Aaron is crying softly as he pulls me into a hug. I can tell he’s just as distraught as Luka but he reigns it in for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because he knows he has too much to do to completely fall apart now. He’ll have to tell the others, he’ll have to contact outside help, he’ll have to dispose of José’s body. It was too horrible to think about. 

 "I thought he would be okay. I thought we'd get help in time,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. 

"He was too young for this to happen. He was healthy." 

"I know." 

"He should have been able to fight off the fever. I don't understand why . . ." I cut myself short as more sobs work their way up my throat. I’ve never lost someone before. I’ve never seen someone on their deathbed or watched them die. It’s all too much. Sweet José, here one day and gone hours later. 

"This is Nakpuna's fault. If José was in a proper home, he would have gotten help in time," he says into my hair. "We're gonna take them all down - everyone involved with the research facility. I won't let something like this happen again." 

His voice is filled with conviction. Aaron will not rest until Nakpuna is stopped.  

And I won't either. 

+++

The river water is refreshing as it rushes against my toes. It's crystal clear and glinsens in a rainbow hue under the rays of the sun. I spot a little red fish swimming near my toes. Willow flinches her feet away but I don't have the energy too. 

"You've been really quiet," Willow says, her head resting on my shoulder. She's wearing a makeshift crown out of the leftover flowers she found for José's grave. The petals of the white petunias tickle my cheek. 

"I don't have much to say. I mean, what is there to say when you have to say goodbye to someone so young?" I scoff, bitterly. "I barely got the chance to know him. He barely got a chance to know him." 

Willow lifts her head, her hair falling away from her like a curtain. She presses her lips together while inspecting my expression. The hazel in her eyes looks golden in the light. 

"You would have ended up being super close. You, Luka and José - the ultimate group of friends." 

I bite my lip to stop the tears from coming again. "The three amigos." 

Luka didn't come down for breakfast this morning so I sat on the blanket that was meant for the three of us by myself until Aaron came down. I felt both their absences and by the end of the meal I was crying again. Things were different on the island and it made it impossible to escape the grief following José’s passing. 

Luka barely showed his face around the castle anymore. I was worried so I was forced to swallow my pride and ask Shawn, his roommate, if he was doing okay. 

“His best friend is dead,” Shawn replied, dryly. “No, he’s not okay.” 

As much as I knocked on his door, asking if there was anything he needed or simply reminding him that I was there for him and missed him, Luka was unpersuaded to come out of his room. I decided that when he was ready, he would come to me. Grieving took time. While I wanted nothing more than the support of those around me, maybe Luka was different. 

The other boys on the island seemed to be in shock, especially the younger ones. They were immediately saddened but before responding, they gazed at everyone else to see how they would respond. I anticipated a lot of questions from them about what this meant because I didn't think they would understand the permanence of death. I underestimated them. Perhaps it was having lived on Nakpuna's ship, but they understood exactly what José's death meant.

It meant he was gone forever.  

Jimmy wanted to take one of José's blankets to remember him. Adrien complained that he never got to say goodbye. Aaron and I did our best to console them while Willow and Luka were still processing the loss. 

I felt a responsibility to be there when Aaron told them. It wasn’t so much for them as it was for him. He had been handling a lot on his own and as much as he tried to reassure me he didn’t mind it, I knew he was being crushed by the weight of it all. 

Aaron had buried José himself. 

He had to be buried in Neverland because José doesn’t exist in the real world. Not anymore. He was stolen from his family a long time ago, maybe even given up by his family, so there are no medical or legal records of him. If he turned up at a hospital, it would cause an uprise of confusion and questions. Nakpuna would be alerted and it would put us all in more danger than we’re currently in. It didn’t make sense for his body to be taken from the island and back to a world that didn’t care for him. It made sense to bury him in the only place he ever called home. 

Aaron hadn’t said anything before burying José. I didn’t know he had done it until I saw him coming back from the woods, dirt streaked across his face and clothes. Dirt caked into his hands and stuck under his fingernails. He used the shovel as a walking stick, his body hunched over as if in pain. When he saw me sitting on the garden’s fence, he stopped walking. Fresh tears fell against his skin, making clean streaks where dirt and grim once sat. 

I stood up, staring at him in horror. 

“Why would you do that all by yourself?” I said. The two of us stood in place, feet apart and breathing sporadically, him from fatigue and I from shock. 

He dropped the shovel to the ground. It landed with a deafening thud on the gravelly walkway. When he spoke, he sounded hoarse. “Because I have to be strong for everyone.” 

Then, all the confidence and composure left his body. He broke out into a sob that shook his whole person and his eyes became swollen from the sudden onset of tears. His beautiful features were veiled by anguish.

“I had to bury him in the dirt,” he cried. He held his hair away from his forehead with a tight grasp, the veins in his neck bulging. “There were so many flies swarming around him. No coffin, no grave stone, just dirt. The worms are going to eat him. They’re gonna . . .”  

It was bound to break him. The boy he had rescued and brought to this island himself had died. The boy he considered himself responsible for. He had to drag that very same boy's corpse through the forest and put him into the ground. 

Without another word, I helped him inside. I knew Aaron wouldn’t want anyone to see him like this. He would be afraid that the younger boys would lose any sense of security they had on the island. It was already enough that one of them had died. They didn’t need to see their leader in a state of complete ruin. 

I helped him get cleaned up, catching tears with a washcloth as I scrubbed the dirt from his face. I watched him tremble as he shrugged on a clean shirt and held him when he couldn’t sit up on his own anymore. He cried and cried, staring off into space like he was replaying something unspeakable in his mind. I held him tighter in the hopes that my embrace could ground him. 

Hours later, we sat by a makeshift fire in one of the abandoned rooms of the castle. He rested his head on my lap as I stroked his hair. He was half asleep, exhausted in every capacity. I was too. 

"Thanks, Dovie," he said. "For not leaving me alone." 

Alone. 

I wondered if he often felt like this. Even with all of the boys and Willow, did he feel alone? I could imagine that being the one everyone looks to gets lonely. He pours out his time and energy to take care of everyone but no one takes care of him. No one looks after him. 

"I'll never leave you alone," I said, planting a gentle kiss on his lips. "Never." 

Willow's soft tap on my shoulder brings me out of the memory. The last few days, I have been floating through time, reliving things over and over again to derive some meaning from them. I can only stay present for so long. 

"Is there something you're not telling me?" Willow asks. She speaks as gently as the sound of the water rushing over the rocks and pebbles. I know Willow well enough now to know when she's worried. This is her being worried.  

I have a plan to put a stop to all of this. 

It was the plan that I formed before José got sick but was too afraid to share. 

I need to be the one to go back to the Jolly Roger. I have to stop this before more people get hurt. 

Cowardice melts away when I remember José's face, round and child-like but sharpening with each passing day. Voice on the brink of deepening and innocence wearing thin. He was growing up. He was close to starting a new exciting chapter in his life until it was ripped from him. 

This island is not enough for the boys. This isn't all that life has to offer. There's more and I would be selfish to keep them from it. I would be cruel to let Aaron get himself killed to save them. 

"I'll tell you about it soon," I say. "I need some time." 

Willow places a hand on my shoulder. "I'm here for you, Dovie. We're family now." 

Family. 

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your family. 

I know I'm evil for having did that to José . . . Vote and comment! :)