Gray Wolf Island

by Tracey Neithercott

  But then he opens his mouth.

  “The average teen needs nine and a quarter hours of sleep each night for optimal functioning.” He staggers to the ocean, bends low over the shallows, and sticks his head under the water. “Four hours! You gave us four hours!”

  Anne shrugs. “People sleep for a long time, and it feels longer when you don’t sleep.”

  Elliot collapses onto the ground. His hard gaze finds Anne. “Look, you can borrow a book, but—”

  “Your backpack was for maps, flashlights, and our tent.” Gabe spits toothpaste into the sea. “If you could fit books, you could’ve fit the extra cooking supplies you made me leave behind.”

  “What the hell are we going to do with a Dutch oven, Gabe?” Elliot glares at Anne. “You can borrow a book, but I need to sleep at least three hours past sunrise.”

  I raise my hand. “I’d also like that deal. Also, I’d like to not wake up to your face six inches away.”

  “I wasn’t that close all night,” she says. “It’s just that sometime after dawn, I started thinking you’d been asleep for an awfully long time and maybe you’d died. And then I started worrying I was sitting in a hot tent with a dead body, so I had to check.”

  Instead of answering, I take a giant bite of my Pop-Tart. The ocean air has turned it soggy, but it’s still cherry-sweet and a good distraction. When I’m done, I kneel in the sand and draw the slashed square. And I explain our latest discovery.

  “So,” Elliot says, “the map tells us to navigate with the stars trapped in a sign. I bet we have to look for the slashed square along the way.”

  Charlie groans. “This is literally going to take forever.”

  “Is it, Charlie? Is it literally going to take forever?” Elliot rolls his eyes. “Look, all we have to do is search for this symbol in the place where ‘the ocean beats its anger into the land.’ Either the northwestern or southeastern cliffs.”

  “Southeastern,” I say. “I figured it out this morning.”

  Elliot tugs at his hair. Uses both hands, too, in case I thought he was only mildly irritated. “And you let me discuss Dutch ovens—”

  “I could have made vegetarian chili,” Gabe grumbles.

  “Dutch ovens,” Elliot says. “Instead of your breakthrough.”

  “I was luxuriating in the knowledge that I solved something a Thorne couldn’t.”

  “Well,” he says, “if you’re done savoring your own brilliance, care to fill the rest of us in?”

  “Don’t mind him.” Charlie waves a lazy hand in Elliot’s direction. “He’s a viper before noon. After that, he’s…a slightly less venomous snake.”

  Gabe nods. “So, Ruby, tell us about the sunrise. Feel free to mention the way it accentuated my eyes when you tell the story.”

  Waves roar at the shoreline. The wind batters our tents. I raise my voice and say, “I was staring at the sunrise, which accentuated the flecks of yellow in Gabe’s eyes, making them look jaundiced—”

  “More like golden.”

  “All of a sudden the poem clicked. ‘Discover the spot where morning sun scorches sand’ is talking about sunrise.” I pause for emphasis, the way Anne does when she tells a story. “The sun rises in the east. The poem’s talking about this beach.”

  “I think Ruby’s more of a Thorne than you are,” Gabe says. I wait for Elliot to snip at him, but he smiles instead. And then he breaks out the big laugh. The rest of us join in, and the morning crankiness dissipates like predawn fog. By the time we’ve reached the southeast end of the beach, we’re practically glowing.

  It’s low tide, so the rounded rocks that lead to the cliffs are slippery but not submerged. The cliff seems to grow as we near it, stacked rock soaring so high I have to crane my neck to see the top. With the full force of the early-morning sun, the tan stones are lit like pirates’ gold.

  We’re almost positive this is the spot mentioned by the map, but to be sure, we fan out and search for the symbol. The sun bakes the back of my neck as I scour the base of the cliff. Charlie finds it fifteen minutes later, a palm-sized sign carved into the stone.

  Anne runs a fingernail through the groove. “I can’t fly.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Gabe asks Elliot.

  Anne flings a piece of seaweed at him. “Flying, Gabriel. I can’t do it, and neither can any of you.” She points to the highest bluff, which has a flat top bare of trees. “So how do you suggest we get from here to there?”

  I bite back a grin. I know Sadie said Anne was odd, but it’s a good kind of odd.

  Charlie backtracks to where she stands. “Do you trust me, Anna Banana?”

  She tilts her head, stares at the sky from the corner of her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” he says. “But you kind of have no other choice.”

  At my and Anne’s skeptical gazes, Charlie agrees to take everyone’s backpacks up first. Gabe grumbles about being manly enough to climb with his own pack, but even he relents in the face of Charlie’s obvious glee. He’s all smiles as he jumps onto a boulder. The way his body moves, smooth and precise, leaves me with no doubt this will be an easy climb for him.

  Charlie is covered in sweat but only mildly exhausted when he returns to the beach for the final time. Anne follows his path up the rock, slow but surprisingly skilled.

  I’m not convinced I can do it without serious bodily injury.

  “It’s really not that hard, Ruby. Those smaller rocks are like stairs.” Elliot falls into step beside me. He’s wearing a pair of translucent orange sunglasses with dark brown lenses. They match the orange shorts slung low on his hips and the orange lettering on his white tank top.

  “Are you…color-coordinated?”

  Elliot follows Gabe onto a jagged boulder. His back muscles bulge as he moves from this outcropping to its taller neighbor. When he’s standing steady, he peers down at me. “Can’t I be smart and fashionable?”

  I laugh, but it sounds more like a grunt because I’m somewhere between up and down. “You can be anything you want. Except a badass.”

  A gap between the crag I hold tight and the one Elliot stands on yawns at me, sharp rocks at its base ready to bite me if I fall. Elliot points to a jag along the rock face. “Put your left foot there.”

  I do as he says. Left foot, left hand. I’m nearly there, spanning the rift like an X that marks the spot. I’m nearly there, reaching my right hand for a knob of stone.

  I’m nearly there when I slip.

  My feet scrabble against stone.

  One hand holds fast to a protrusion. The rest of me dangles twenty feet over razor-edged rocks.

  A scream rips from my throat. My fingers are slipping. Quickly? Slowly? I can’t tell through the terror.

  Elliot’s hand shoots out. Clenches around my wrist.

  For a moment, we’re frozen. Time stops and it’s just me and Elliot and a whole lot of relief. “I have you,” he says. “It’s okay to let go.”

  People always do this in the movies, give up a tight hold for a strong hand, but I can’t imagine it’s a safe idea in real life. “I have a vision of us both falling to our deaths.”

  “I have you, Ruby,” Elliot says before he tugs my arm off the rock and up, up, up. Nothing but me and Elliot’s hand and too much empty air. My stomach swallows my throat. I land on my knees, which burn against the hot rock.

  Elliot presses two fists to his forehead. “Holy shit. I thought for sure I was going to drop you.”

  “Not the kind of thing a girl likes to hear after dangling twenty feet off the ground.” I’d like to sock him in the gut for that one. I form a fist but change my mind. My finger presses the underside of his forearm, where a compass tattoo puts me at due north. “Thanks for hanging on.”

  Elliot has a look about him, like he has a mouthful of letters and is deciding which to swallow. I take strange satisfaction in the fact that of all the words Elliot knows, he chooses my name.

  And then he�
�s shouldering his pack and hiking across the flat outcrop. From here, the path to the top is clearer: a rugged climb along a narrow stretch of rock that’s covered in dirt and spindly pine trees. We reach the others, then walk single file along the coast as the cliff climbs higher and higher and the trees thin. At the top it’s nothing but tan rock, long grass, and salty sea air.

  Charlie wraps Anne in a bear hug, lifts her off her feet, and twirls her around. His shovel clunks against his pack as he spins. “How about now, Anna Banana? Now do you trust me?”

  She gives him a soft smile. “Anywhere but on a boat, dear Charlie.”

  Elliot turns to the forest behind us. “It’s out there,” he says in a voice so soft and deep it sounds almost reverent. “I can feel it.”

  I can’t feel the treasure, but I can feel the weight of this moment. It’s heavy like salty water in your stomach and lungs. But it’s light, too. Buoyant as a body floating on its back.

  “It’s like nothing exists anymore,” Anne says. She’s right: There’s an infinity of blue on one side and an infinity of green on the other. And somewhere buried in that abounding nature is my treasure.

  “Read from the book, Ruby,” Elliot says.

  But I can’t. I can’t open the cover and flip to the back. I can’t run my finger along the lines of poem or trace the slashed square. Can’t do anything with the book when it has completely disappeared.

  Laura gives me a discount. Says I remind her of her son.

  “Maybe I am your son.” Wouldn’t be a bad thing. “You lose one a few months back?”

  She rolls my poster board, snaps on two rubber bands. Later today, I’ll start a map of Gray Wolf Island so Bishop and I can plan where to bury his treasure.

  Laura hands me the bundle. “Now that you mention it, I did. Pretty thing, but wouldn’t remember his name unless it was tattooed to his palm.”

  “Isn’t it rude to make amnesia jokes around an amnesiac?”

  She waves me off. “You’re not offended.”

  I’m never offended, even by those people in Wildewell who think a boy with no past is bad luck. Sometimes I catch a whisper not meant for me.

  “Bet they grew him that way,” Captain Thirwall said one day last week. I was standing in line at the market, waiting for the day’s catch. Bishop was teaching me how to cook lobster. “Doesn’t need to know he’s Jason Bourne to butcher us all. Best to get him out of town now.”

  I told Bishop about it. “Is my name Jason Bourne?”

  He laughed. We watched a spy movie that afternoon, and then I understood.

  “No,” I tell Laura now. “I’m not offended.”

  I tuck my poster board under my arm. Grab my bag from the counter.

  Outside, the breeze off the ocean ruffles my Indian laurel hair. Car windows flash the sun.

  Tourists clog the sidewalks. I don’t consider myself one of them. I may not be from Wildewell, but I’m a Wildewell boy now.

  The main road ends in a rotary. The arm to the northwest will take me up the steep hill to Bishop’s house on the cliff. I stop before the turn.

  Across the street, Captain Thirwall sits on a shaded bench in front of the grocer’s. He’s not actually the captain of anything, aside from his own boat, but he likes people to pretend he is.

  Today he’s wearing a white tank top, showing off faded tattoos and sagging skin. It’s my least-favorite thing I’ve seen since I woke up on the island.

  I put on a pair of sunglasses Bishop lent me the other day. They’re from the fifties and make me look like an old-time spy. The poster board under my arm kind of ruins the effect, but whatever.

  I cross the street. Pick up my pace. Jason Bourne always moves fast because someone’s always on his tail.

  The captain peeks at me over his newspaper.

  My mouth’s a tight line, like I’m concentrating really hard on being a sniper or learning my spy past or generally being dangerous.

  When I’m a few feet past the captain, I glance back. He’s watching me with narrowed eyes. “You’re nobody, boy.”

  My stare is long enough to be unsettling. Then I raise a finger.

  Here’s something I just learned about myself: Sometimes I do take offense.

  I take a shortcut through the park.

  Dozens of kids race around a grassy field ringed by trees. The air’s full of their shouts.

  I sit on a bench in the shade. Try to imagine myself with a bunch of friends.

  “Push down,” says a soft voice. It belongs to the skinny kid I saw at the bed-and-breakfast when I first came to Wildewell. He’s still wearing a bike helmet.

  I slide over.

  He sits next to me. Back straight. Eyes zipping up, down, all over the place.

  “You all right?”

  He bounces his feet against the ground. “So far.”

  “What’s with the helmet?” There’s no bike in the park. “You have epilepsy?”

  “That’s not how I die.” His hands clench on his lap.

  “A little early to be thinking about death.”

  He puffs out his chest. “I’m twelve.”

  He looks a lot younger. Especially with that helmet.

  He wiggles a finger between his head and helmet. Scratches. “I should have picked a helmet with more ventilation.”

  “If you’re so hot, why not just take it off?” I kick the ground. “Worried about falling a foot onto the padded grass?”

  “I’m not worried about falling.” He heaves an exasperated sigh. Makes me think he’s told this story a few dozen times before. “I’m worried about something cutting my skull open.”

  “That’s pretty morbid.”

  “It’s going to happen. When my hand’s larger than this”—he wiggles his fingers—“but before it gets wrinkly.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “It’s true. When I was little I used to see my hair, and there was blood on it. I wasn’t even asleep. Now I see my hair with the blood, a dirty hand a little bigger than mine, and the back of my head. Only there’s a big chunk missing. It’s really gruesome.”

  “So your mom makes you wear a helmet all the time?”

  “No.” A truck backfires, and the boy jumps off the bench.

  Kids screeching. An airplane overhead. Tweeting birds. When that’s all we hear, the boy sits back on the bench.

  “My older brother said I look slow in it.” He tilts his head. Squints at me. “He wasn’t talking about how fast I run, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a really mean thing to say when you mean someone looks like a freak. My brother got grounded for it. But then my mom felt bad for me, so she said I didn’t have to wear it if I felt like a freak.”

  “And yet you’re wearing it.”

  He scratches beneath his helmet again. “I just don’t want to die is all.”

  I take a long look around the park. Everything here’s alive.

  Thick grass. Sturdy trees.

  Kids running circles. Parents fanning themselves in the heat.

  Bees. Birds. That dog with the golden fur.

  He’s the only thing not living in this park.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the boy.

  “Wade Kim.”

  What kind of parents give their kid a verb for a name?

  “Well, Wade,” I say. “You ever think you spend so much time not dying you don’t really live?”

  “Aren’t they the same?”

  “No,” I say, thinking of the map I’ll be drawing later and the lobster I cooked the other night. “No, living and not dying aren’t the same thing.”

  I woke beside a giant hole, and I didn’t die.

  I crossed a wooded island, and I didn’t die.

  I climbed down steep hills, and I didn’t die.

  I met Bishop and earned a job, and I’m finally, finally alive.

  Wade purses his lips. “You mean how I’m over here and not with friends?”

  “Exactly,” I say. “Yo
u’ve got a lot of living to do before you die.”

  He gives me a smile like Bishop’s grinning Buddha. “My head’s hot.”

  “Give it some air.”

  HEAD WEST, DEAR FRIEND,

  if you want to have fun.

  Too far to the south,

  and your quest is done.

  The book is well and truly gone.

  We empty our backpacks. Shake out our sleeping bags. Send Charlie back to the beach, but he finds only sand.

  Every bit of excitement has been sucked out of me. I collapse to the ground, not even caring when Elliot warns of snakes. I dig my fingers through the rough grass and yank.

  “Well, that was exciting,” Charlie says from his splayed-out position on the ground. “Can we go find this treasure now?”

  Elliot groans, but the roaring wind steals most of the sound. “By following directions on a map we no longer have? No, Charlie, we can’t do that.”

  “I memorized the poem. That’s not what worries me.” I watch our boat bob beside the dock below. The sea’s a desperate gray with the threat of a storm. I’d like to shine a spotlight on it, see if there’s a soggy Treasure Island somewhere at the bottom. But the ocean would tell me what I already suspect.

  There’s nothing down there for me.

  “You’re sure you packed it?” Elliot asks for the eleven-billionth time.

  “Positive.” The recollection is twisted around a memory of Sadie, and those remain the clearest of all. I remember opening my desk. Top drawer on the left. Out came the bookmark, the metal one. The one with the glassed-in vintage map at the top. So you can find your place when I’m not there.

  I remember sliding it between the pages of Treasure Island. Zipping the book into the side pouch of my bag.

  I remember smiling. Crying. Knowing there was a piece of Sadie coming with me.

  “Could it be—” Anne shakes her head, starts again. “Maybe the island disappeared it.”

  I stare at the only boat beside the only dock on Gray Wolf Island. What started as a hunch has sunk its claws so deep into my skin it’s become a fact. I say, “Someone stole it.”