Red Sand by Ronan Cray

people were missing from the other boat crews.
    Emily knocked on Lauren’s door to wake her up. No one answered. She came back to try again after a breakfast of fish soup. When no one responded, she opened the door, thinking Lauren might be sick. The room was empty.
    She thought Lauren might have spent the night with Carter. Last night she saw them sneak away from the fire together. She found Carter eating breakfast alone, and he confessed he hadn’t seen her since he returned to the camp.
    Emily sat in Lauren’s empty room looking for a clue. She touched the pictures on Lauren’s wall. Irrelevant strangers smiled down at her. She searched for a photo of Lauren, as if she would have left one behind, or a clue to her disappearance. “Where are you?” she wondered aloud.
    She could hear Paul calling her for work detail. She wondered what he would do if she just refused to go.
    Emily pulled the pictures off the wall, one by one. Not Lauren. Not Lauren. This is her room. These people shouldn’t be here. She thought of burning the wallet-size portraits, but she didn’t have the heart. Whether the survivors lived or died, someone out there loved them. She stacked the pictures in a neat little pile beside the door. She planned on doing the same thing in her room when she got back. 
    She sat back to examine the room one last time before stepping out. Removing the pictures exposed some kind of writing on the wall.
    Paul called again. She could hear Paul’s footsteps approaching the room next door.
    She reached up and brushed her hand against the white fiberglass. Blocky, black letters appeared. She tried to make out the words, scraping off a bit of sand here and there. They were stenciled, like you see on industrial containers. Wherever this big piece of fiberglass had originated, it had been part of a boat.
    The best she could tease out were the letters “RIN” and “DWA”. The rest had long ago worn off.
    Rin Dwa. Foreign? No. There must be more to it. She was never very good at Wheel of Fortune. The contestants always solved the puzzle before she could.
    Rin Dwa . Rin Dwa.
    Nope. Nothing.
    Now Paul rapped on Lauren’s door. “Let’s go, Lauren? Emily? It’s not time to sleep in, girls.”
    She surprised him when she came out of Lauren’s hut.
    “Where’s Lauren?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. She isn’t in there.”
    Not a flicker of care reflected on his face. “Fine. Then fall in.” He pushed her toward the line.
     
    Paul split her off from Mason and Carter to spend the day with another survivor – Eddie. They were assigned to catch fish. Amy was right. Catching fish was far harder than the greenhouse.
    Two White Hairs, Marvin and Dumbo, ran the fishing operation. Dumbo didn’t actually introduce himself by that name, but Marvin did. Marvin was a wiry black man, originally from Brooklyn. She recognized the accent. White hair made him look old, though he was probably still in his thirties. When she pried him for his background he told her with a laugh, “None of your business.”
    Dumbo was a very, very large man, both in height and girth. He had the strength of three men and seemed to defy the ocean just by wading in. What he had in strength he lacked in intelligence. Simple minded, he did whatever Marvin told him. Dumbo didn’t have any hair at all.
    Each night, Marvin and Dumbo spread a wide net at the bottom of a small inlet. This net, like everything else on the island, had been woven together with twisted strands of plastic.
    In the morning, they would stand on either side of the bay and pull the net inland. Two more people, in this case Emily and Eddie, would collect the fish trapped in the net. They waded in, waist deep, hauling plastic buckets. The buckets floated beside them while they caught the fish bare-handed and tossed them in. It was difficult work. The fish thrashed in the net, tangled and defensive, but the two men on shore never slowed down. At one point, to her surprise, she even