Junk Island (Part 1 of 4) A short story by Danny Demaio
“Who’d have thought after all the boozin’, schmoozin’, and cut classes that we’d have gotten out of college without beer bellies, without some kind of vile STD, and actually be graduating?” Jordan whispered in Joby’s ear with a grin so wide it threatened to rip his face in two.
“I know I can attest to those things, but I’ve seen some of the girls you hook-up with and I’m not so sure you’ve out-maneuvered any number of STDs,” Joby said, with a smile matching Jordan’s.
“You son of a bitch! Now you can’t go!”
“Where to?” asked Joby. “To accompany you to get tested?”
“After. I’ll tell you after”
That night, with graduation behind them and sitting on patio of Jordan’s beach house, he informed Joby, Chelsea, Damon, Ashley, that he was planning on taking them on a vacation on his parents’ yacht, the Megalodon, that would begin in a week and finish just before the Fourth of July.
Chelsea, Jordan’s girlfriend, shrieked so abruptly with joy that Joby had practically jumped out of his chair. It made him happy though because Chelsea came from the same humble background as he had. Chelsea and Joby appreciated the little bits of pleasure to begin with, but a gesture of this magnitude was too amazing to try to downplay.
In turns, each of them hugged and thanked Jordan, but it was only Joby and Chelsea who had not experienced something as grand as their upcoming cruise. Damon toasted to their graduation and then to Jordan for his friendship. As the night went on, the same toast to Jordan was repeated every ten minutes until finally Damon, the functioning alcoholic in the group, was toasting to a passed-out Jordan and drinking tequila alone.
It was Sunday afternoon, the air thick and hot. Jordan had wanted to leave in the morning before the June gloom of morning had worn off, but it seemed to everyone that this was a naïve request from him. Each of them,especially Jordan had a reputation of consistent tardiness, but none of them were so far gone as to be labeled flakes. By mid-afternoon Joby, Chelsea, Ashley, Damon, and Jordan were aboard Megalodon and making their way out of the harbor. The seals that had followed the ship ceased at the end of the jetty as Jordan aimed the bow into the open Pacific Ocean.
“Aw, look how cute they are! When they bark it sounds like their way of saying ‘goodbye’ to us,” Ashley said.
“Yeah, it’s just like that,” Damon mocked.
“Quiet, ass,” Chelsea said, defending her friend. “She’s your girlfriend, you should always agree with her,” mocking Damon’s previous emphasis.
Before it could go any further, Damon finally questioned the destination of the vacation.
“We’re going a lot of places,” Jordan purposely being coy.
“Look, you know I’m not gonna beg, but I’ve been asking you for the pat week and you’ve given me nothing to do off of.”
After a few seconds of silence, Jordan intentionally building the tension as for a better payoff, he answered.
“Oh, why, only the major ports in Mexico. All of them party ports, but I didn’t set any kind of itinerary so we can do whatever we feel like doing day-to-day.”
“Did you know about this Chels?” Damon asked.
“Yes. Everyone did, except you. Jordan made us promise not to tell you because…“
“Because he knows I hate Mexico,” Damon said, cutting Chelsea off.
“Why do you hate Mexico?” exclaimed Ashley, speaking from a state of complete innocence.
“Because of the Ice Incident! He’s scarred for life,” shot Jordan, now with his back pressed up against the ship’s wheel.
“Laugh all you want, but Mexico sucks,” said Damon.
“Someone care to elaborate?” asked Ashley.
“Fine. Fine! The short version is that when I was a sophomore in college I went to Cancun for Spring Break and got sick from the water. I didn’t drink any of the water, but anyone that knows me knows that I love to chew crushed ice. I mean, the ice is probably the best part of any drink. Crushed ice soaked up with whatever you’re drinking? Are you kidding me? And anyone who knows anything knows that Mexico is home base for the margarita. I ordered margaritas all day, not thinking about the ice I was eating, and I spent the rest of my break over a toilet seat. So, yeah, I’m not a big proponent of Mexico at this point of my life”
Chelsea smirked. Ashley caught Chelsea’s expression, which prodded her into laughing aloud, and within seconds the whole deck was laughing at Damon’s issue with Mexico.
“Go on, jerks, go on,” Damon said, he himself on the verge of laughing with everyone else. “But I’m gonna go with an open-mind this time. I’m gonna give it one more chance. So make sure it’s absolutely amazing and I have a raging good time every day, got it?” he said, his finger playfully poking into Jordan’s chest.
“Okay, you got it, but don’t be a wanker about it. I don’t want to hear you picking apart every place we go just to be a bastard. Deal?”
“Deal, Tremolo,” Damon agreed, ending the debate with a handshake. “But there is one more thing?”
“Oh, God! The truce is already broken,” Chelsea spat.
“What is it, Damon,” said Jordan, secretly intrigued by some new aspect coming into play.
“It’s going to sound nerdy, but I am a biology major, so I may be cooler than all of you, but---“
“I love you, too,” Ashley mocked.
“Hey, shut up and let me finish, Ash,” Damon said in a tone that held no malevolence. “Jordan, on the way back, can we go out farther off the coast and try and find Junk Island?”
He had said it with such conviction and directness it caught everyone off-guard. This was his other condition?
“You’re serious? You are.” Jordan said in a manner that sounded like he was both answering Damon and talking to himself. Obviously flustered by such a question, Jordan told Damon that he would abide by his condition, but they’d only go a hundred miles off the western coast. Jordan was an able captain for a voyage as benign as hitting the ports of Mexico, but he himself was not so comfortable as to venture very far off into open water.
“We’re talking about the supposed Junk Island, right?” said Joby as he stood against the crow’s nest ladder nursing a beer.
“Dude, it’s real. There are pictures of it online. I’ll give you that none of them are of much quality, but it’s obviously real,” explained Damon.
Realizing that Joby had meant no harm in his question, but was rather genuinely intrigued, Damon continued.
“It’s like a floating Area 51. The United States government owns it, in essence, I suppose. The island is a floating trash dump. When the waste management crisis was such a big deal about ten years ago, congress passed some bill that allowed for a certain amount of waste to be pushed out into the ocean. The stipulation, I think, is that it all stays bound together, so we don’t have a ton of stray trash spread out all over the ocean. It’s just concentrated. So, like I said, in essence, the government owns it, but they don’t take responsibility over it really besides adding trash to it every year or so. It’s not buoyed to anything and just floating around in the same 500-mile radius between Hawaii and the mainland. That was the stipulation. My history teacher in my freshman year of high school made us debate the pros and cons of the bill. So, that’s why we can’t find any definite coordinates on it because it’s not a static island. It moves, but within limits. I don’t know. It’d be awesome to see it in person.”
Everyone had stopped sipping their beers and margaritas while Damon had been talking about the illusive island.
“I’m definitely in,” Joby was the first to say.
Without anyone else verbalizing, it was clear that all of them, Jordan included, were game to abide by Damon’s condition.
The sun was making the final movements of its descent, a pollution-drenched sphere of orange and red illumination, when the Megalodon docked itself in the port of Rosarito. It was the end of the third day, but everyone on board had intentionally avoided too much sun and alcohol during the day in anticipation of a long night ahead of them. The anticipation of the first land destination of the trip, as Jordan had kept them out to sea for the first two full days with the mind to show his friends some of the desolate coastal scenery that Baja California had to offer. Instead of relaxing the other four, it simply made them anxious for human contact.
As the yacht docked a fisherman unloaded his catches of the day, muttering to himself. As he stretched his arms out and then retracted them, pulling the net from the side of the boat, it became apparent that the man’s pace slowed down considerably. He yelled for his young shipmate, instructing him to help him pull the remainder of the net from the water. The boy grabbed the free side of the net and began struggling as well. In a sure-handed jolt, the net suddenly freed up, leaped aboard the deck, and coughed free a dead sea lion. Chelsea was the first to see it.
“Oh my god!” she screamed, catching the others in a daze.
Jordan, positioned on the other side of the deck and with irritation, asked her what she was screaming about.
“Uh! It’s disgusting. That poor seal. It looks like its been burned,” Chelsea blurted.
Coming up behind Chelsea and investigating the sigh for himself, Joby spoke to himself.
“That looks like oil on its skin.”
“Why would it have oil on its skin, Joby?” questioned Chelsea.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look like burnt flesh. It’s looks really thick and it smells like oil, too. That’s oil for sure.”
Disgusted with what the net had brought aboard, the man gave the sea lion three hard kicks, positioning it up against the wall of the ship’s deck. After much trouble and fumbling of the sea mammal, the mixture of oil and seawater being the reason, the man and boy heaved it into the shallow harbor.
By the time it was over, all five passengers of the Megalodon had gathered to see the scene. Jordan and Damon had been making jokes about the frustrated obscenities the fisherman was spitting out in Spanish rather than the oil-slick sea lion that splashed overboard.
“Shit, man, that’s certainly one way to start the evening,” Jordan said.
The sun was gone now and the five of them filed down the yacht’s steps, out of the harbor, and into the glowing city streets.
Shards of twisted neon ricocheted from building to building, joining in an orgy of illumination that no longer had specific origins. The heavy scent of cigarette smoke, sweat, and cooking lent themselves to nestling in anyone’s nostrils, but to the uninitiated, the smell was simultaneously intoxicating and repellant. Tobacco smoke and human sweat were sure signs of the invitingly lusty nature of the dance clubs that stretched up and down each main street, but the cooking pork’s aroma emanating from the shabbily constructed shacks that bordered the clubs acted as a distraction from the allure of the music.
“Oh, God! That smells amazing.”
“Hold on for a bit, Ash,” pleaded Jordan. “I’m dying to find a beer.”
“Goddamn, me too,” agreed Damon.
This was just like the boys Chelsea thought, and she was right. The truth was that there was rarely any middle ground when it came to Jordan and Damon drinking. Joby knew how to pace himself, which is why he was usually the one having to talk the other two out of a fight.
Realizing she was doomed to lose in an argument, Ashley relented with a meek “Okay, that’s fine,” before showing a playful frown at Chelsea.
Within a few minutes Damon had sniffed out one of the little shacks that sold both street tacos and beer.
