All faces, all looking at her in her underwear. The girl at her side reached out toward her, as if seeing for the first time the wound on her shoulder.

“Did you get shot?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

Fear on every face.

She pulled on her pack, tightened the straps. “Come on.”

The helicopter was fading away. The man was shouting after it, increasingly desperate.

“Guys! Hey, over here! Guys, we’re over here.”

A shot. Then another.

The man stopped shouting.

No one spoke. The three girls looked at her, terror in their faces. The boy too.

“We’re trapped,” one of the girls said quietly.

She looked up toward the top of the steps. The other children followed her gaze. She could see them thinking the same thought. The helicopter had given them away.

Every face turned toward her.

I’m the oldest person here, she realized. I’m the adult. Funny. Almost.

“We’re trapped,” said the girl again.

“No.” She set her teeth against the pain, tightened the straps on her backpack. She pushed past the girls to the bottom of the steps, crossed her arms over her chest, jumped forward, let herself fall, body tensed and stretched like a dart. For a moment she felt only the air around her. Then the shock of the water, the roar of the sea all about her. She felt herself drop, let her body relax, waited for the water to carry her up toward the light. Her right shoulder ached, but the water cooled it and soothed it, and she found she could swim with her left arm.

Not a sound behind her. She turned to find all faces looking at her. The girls, the boy, rooted in place.

“There’s a boat. It’s at the dock. I have the key.”

One by one they joined her in the water. Only Arno remained. “Arno,” she said. “We have to go.”

Two gunshots near the top of the steps.

“Arno, please.”

Arno crossed his arms over his chest and jumped.

She kicked hard. The straps of her pack cut into her wound and she winced. But if she held her body stiffly she could make progress. Two girls on one side of her, swimming strongly; on the other side Arno and the other girl. The only sound was water; water and breath.

Arno was the weakest of the swimmers. He held his head too high, kicked too hard, tiring fast. The girls swam quietly, efficiently, their bodies low in the water, pacing their breathing to their strokes.

She turned, treading water, waiting for the boy to catch up. Her shoulder was stiff, to be sure, but she was all right. Better now than before. She would survive this. They would all survive.

She looked back at the cleft in the rock. She did not see the men.

“I’m so slow,” said Arno as he drew close to her. “Sorry.”