Gray Wolf Island

by Tracey Neithercott

  “Slow down,” Elliot says from somewhere behind me. But I can’t, not when Sadie could be here somewhere, turning half-truths into nursery rhymes. If I can catch her, I’ll set her straight. Remind her of my fingers on her nose. Remind her that she asked, knowing full well I’ve never refused her anything.

  “You made me a monster,” I whisper. My breath’s ragged from my run. Ragged from shame. Ragged from finally saying aloud what I’ve hidden since Sadie begged me that day.

  The cave winds this way and that, a maze of low ceilings and tight walkways. I only stop when there’s nowhere left to run. My anger’s gone, replaced with the guilt I know so well. I rest my forehead against the cool cave wall, waiting for Sadie’s voice to tell more lies. But this part of the cave is silent.

  The others arrive with a scuffing of shoes and a slurry of curses. Gabe hurries to me. “Stop this.”

  “I’m not doing anything!”

  “Ruby,” he says with a shake of his head. “You can’t outrun it.”

  “I just did.” But even I know that’s just another one of my lies. And this time it doesn’t drive the pain into that deep, dark part of me. That’s the problem with lies: They’re only comforting in the beginning. They’ll cut you if you wear them too long.

  “What was that?” Elliot says, flinging his arm toward the entrance to this tunnel. As if I’ve dropped the wretched rhyming verses behind me. “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head. No no no. I’m not okay.

  He moves toward me, and I think there’s going to be a hug involved, but I can’t let that happen. Not with that rhyme in my head. “Let’s focus on the treasure.”

  “I thought there were supposed to be cave spikes,” Charlie says. He’s removed a pocketknife and is carving his initials into the stone wall.

  Elliot regards me for a few more seconds, then turns to Charlie. “Stalagmites. Let’s try a different route.”

  He leads us through the cave, and I don’t even care that he’s usurped control again. I can barely think, let alone follow a treasure map. My mind’s a swirling mess of childlike voices singing, “Gave her sister one more breath, then held her down to meet her death.”

  A warm hand clasps my elbow. I jump at the contact, nearly smashing Anne with my backpack as I swing around. “Sorry.” My voice is a little too shaky, but for a split second I really thought…It was dumb, because Sadie’s gone.

  “Sorry,” I say again. “I wasn’t really here.”

  She walks beside me—while I was blind with that poem, the cave must have doubled in width—and clasps my hand. “I’ve decided to forgive Gabe.”

  “That was fast.”

  Anne nods. “I’ll be taking back my crush, of course. He’s not the Gabe I had in my head.”

  I think of my new friends and say, “Nobody’s ever who you imagine them to be.”

  The boys are so far ahead of us that they’re nothing but shadows in the bright of our bobbing flashlight beams. I tug Anne’s hand, and we speed up. “Aren’t you curious why I forgave him?”

  “I think you’re about to make a point.”

  “I am! My point is that everyone who’s truly sorry deserves a second chance. Everyone, Ruby.”

  And people can say that her head’s full of clouds or her feet never touch the ground, but they don’t know. They don’t know her at all, and that’s a shame because Anne may be the best person of all.

  It’s an ambush.

  One captures my right hand. The other gets my left.

  “Do you want I Eat Mainely Lobster or Green-wich Village?”

  Even without knowing my past, I know I’m not the kind of guy who wears nail polish.

  But there’s this girl. Rosy cheeks. Auburn hair. All sorts of bossy.

  “I don’t think he wants a manicure, Sadie.” That’s the other girl I’m hanging out with. Exactly like the first but quieter.

  I’ve got an hour with these two while Bishop sits inside with their lawyer dad and updates his will. I’m trying not to think about that.

  “He’s a boy,” Sadie says. “He doesn’t know what he wants.”

  I try to tug my hand out of hers. She tightens her grip.

  I flop back onto the grass. Their backyard is a carpet of green, and it’s sort of relaxing. “Fine,” I say. “But you have to take it off before I go home.”

  “It’s a deal.” Sadie shoves two bottles of nail polish in my face. “So?”

  “I like this one,” her sister says. “It matches his eyes.”

  And that’s how I end up with green nails. They look slightly fungal.

  We’re all hungry, but the girls won’t let me grab lunch with wet nails. The quiet one, Ruby, runs inside for snacks, which Sadie says they’ll feed me while I’m drying. This isn’t a half-bad deal.

  “You don’t say much,” she says.

  “You say a lot.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.” She pokes my forehead. “What’s going on in there?”

  “I’m thinking about a treasure I’m burying on Gray Wolf Island.”

  I’m not sure if Bishop would want me to talk about this, but it seems harmless enough. She’s just a girl.

  “Treasure!” Sadie edges closer to me. “What kind of treasure? Where are you going to bury it?”

  Obviously I haven’t spent much time around girls.

  “It’s a secret.”

  “Down the hole, right?” She pokes my shoulder. I swat her away. “Hey, you’ll ruin your manicure. So, am I right? It’s down the hole?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m burying it near some random tree.”

  “Is there a map?”

  “I’m making one.” I open one eye.

  She’s looking toward the ocean with a dreamy expression. “Can I have a clue? Just one. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  “You’ll tell your sister the minute I leave.”

  “Please?” She clasps my hand. No regard for my wet nails. “I promise I won’t tell. Not even Ruby.”

  I sit up with a groan. I don’t want to share, but now I feel guilty. Should have kept my mouth shut.

  “One clue,” I say. She leans closer. “The map is a poem.”

  Sadie’s reading a book of poetry beneath the oak tree in the backyard. She found it in her parents’ study.

  I almost reminded her that I’m still writing the poem, so there’s no use searching for it. But reading is quiet. And I could use a break from her nonstop chatter.

  Girls are exhausting.

  I wander to the garden. There’s a small greenhouse in the back. Glass body, metal bones.

  Ruby’s bent over the hose, drenching her hair. She straightens to her full height. Her personality is too small for such a lanky body, and Sadie’s is too big for hers.

  “It’s hot as Hellmann’s out here.” I gesture to the hose.

  “You’re supposed to keep mayonnaise in the fridge.”

  “Um, okay. Mind if I borrow the hose?”

  “That way it doesn’t get hot.” Ruby hands me the hose. It’s still on. Now it looks like I peed myself.

  I spray my hair with water. “Much better.”

  “You shouldn’t eat hot mayonnaise.”

  I turn the water off. “Why are you so hung up on mayonnaise?”

  “You said it’s hot as Hellmann’s.”

  “Oh, right. I’m trying not to swear.”

  “Because I’m a girl?”

  “Because of Bishop.”

  “Okay.” She wipes water from her eyes, heads farther into the garden. She keeps stopping in front of flowers and telling me how she’d paint them. It started off annoying, but now it’s funny.

  “This one’s all wrong,” she says. “It’s a peony.”

  It’s pink. “What color should it be?”

  “You know when the sun’s setting and it’s really red so you know it’s going to be a good beach day tomorrow? I’d paint peonies that color.”

  “Sunset Boulevard Red.”

  Ruby crinkles he
r nose. “That wasn’t very good.”

  “Despite what my green nails are telling you, I’m not a nail polish aficionado.”

  “Sadie’s a nail polish aficionado.”

  “Technically aficionada. She’s a girl.”

  Ruby sends me a chastising look. “Fine. Sadie’s a nail polish aficionada.”

  I peek at her nails. Bare.

  “How’d I get roped into wearing Fungus Among Us polish and you don’t have any?”

  “That was a good one!” Her face dimples in a smile. “And Sadie thinks you’re cute.”

  “I have Indian laurel hair.”

  Ruby shrugs. Wanders to a cement birdbath at the center of the garden.

  “C’mon!” She bounces on her toes.

  “It’s hot as—”

  “Mayonnaise, I know. But there’s been an injury.”

  Ruby pokes at something in the birdbath. I bend down.

  Floundering in the shallow water is a butterfly. Amber-colored wings with black veins. White polka dots along the edges. Its left wing is torn in half.

  The real issue, though, is its middle. It’s almost completely smushed.

  “Think we can save it?” Ruby pulls the insect from the water with gentle fingers.

  I pluck it from her cupped hands. Lay it on the edge of the birdbath. Pick up a small rock.

  Stone against stone, and the butterfly’s dead.

  “Why would you do that?”

  I look at her wide eyes, and I say, “Mercy.”

  “How strange,” Anne says in her floaty voice. “Charles Kim standing completely still.”

  I follow her gaze. At the end of the long tunnel, the guys are rooted beneath a doorway of arching rock, as if they’ve been magicked into stone statues.

  “Ruby.” Elliot holds a hand out behind him. I take it, squeezing between him and Charlie, then finally turn to the expanse of cave before us. Late-afternoon sun streams through a crack in the rock, lending dim light to a ceiling dripping stone. The cavern stretches for miles and miles, seeming endless as the faint light tapers into dark. It’s an absurd thought, but I can’t help wondering whether the cave is bigger than the island itself.

  We’re standing on a cliff. To my left, aged wood forms the top of a man-made staircase. Everywhere else, it’s bumpy ground—until it drops a hundred feet to earth studded with spikes.

  “Hello!” The cave sends Anne’s voice back to us again and again. With each echo, my smile widens.

  Elliot squeezes my hand. “We’re going to find it. We’re really going to find it.”

  “No, we’re not.” Gabe glares at me. “The island won’t give up the treasure until Ruby tells the truth.”

  “It’s not staying invisible just because Ruby’s keeping a secret. Either it’s here or it’s not. And it’s here. I can feel it.”

  “You can feel the treasure, but I can’t hear the island? Whatever, Elliot.” Gabe’s shoulder slams into Elliot as he moves farther into the cavern.

  “Fine, you’re right. The island only shares its plans with guys who sexually assault girls.”

  Gabe shoves Elliot against the wall. He stands tall, a full inch taller since shaking off his secret.

  “Get out of my face.”

  I expect Charlie to jump in—he’s always good for some pointless recklessness—but he’s standing motionless at the threshold.

  “You’re jealous,” Gabe says. “That’s what this is, right? You think the island should speak to you, not some piece of shit like me.” He swings for the face, but Elliot shifts and Gabe’s fist smashes into Elliot’s shoulder instead.

  “It’s in my blood!” Elliot’s arm shoots out, fast. Gabe doubles over, clutching his stomach.

  They’re so focused on each other, the boys don’t notice how near they’ve wandered to the edge of the cliff. This seems to snap Charlie out of his stupor. “Okay, wow, you both are so tough. The girls are puddles of hormones on the floor. I can hardly stand it. But maybe don’t be tough and dead? Which is what you’re going to be if you take one step to the left.”

  But the boys aren’t listening, or they don’t care.

  If Sadie were here, she’d shove herself between those two beautiful boys and say something like “Let’s make love, not war.”

  For the first time in forever, though, I think maybe I don’t need Sadie to speak for me. I tip back my head, release a guttural cry. The acoustics in the cave and the echoes it creates give my scream a songlike quality. It’s the raw stuff you hear when it’s just you and the harmonica sitting around a fire—fear and hope all mixed up together.

  Gabe and Elliot freeze. Charlie shoots me a puzzled look. Anne winks.

  “There’s a thief with the map and you two are wasting time fighting. If you don’t mind, there’s a treasure I’d like to find.”

  “Excellent rhyme,” Anne says, linking her arm with mine and leading us to the side of the cliff. We tug on our headlamps, then descend.

  Charlie hurries after us, leaving Elliot and Gabe to either follow or kill each other. A minute later, they add their footsteps to the clatter against the rickety stairs.

  “Think we’re below the waterfall?” Charlie asks.

  “According to my compass, we’ve been heading north,” Elliot says, his voice a rumbling remnant of his earlier anger. “We’re probably headed into the belly of the southernmost mountain.”

  “Into the breast.” Charlie erupts into giggles. It’s true what my mother says: Boys can get taller, but they never really mature, not even when they start calling themselves men.

  I hold tight to the railing even though the rough wood stings me with splinters. I don’t even let go when I spot a ginormous bug with hundreds of legs scuttling inches from my hand.

  Our descent feels endless. There’s fire in my thighs, in my butt, in nearly every muscle in my body. My sister would use this as proof that my aversion to team sports and people in general is harming my health.

  Elliot pauses on the last step, surveying the land in front of us. Judging from his smile, you’d think we’d discovered Shangri-La. “Ruby,” he says, walking backward toward the center of the cave, “we’re going to make Sadie proud.”

  Then he tips right over.

  He’s on his back, stuck in his backpack and laid out like a turtle turned upside down, when we reach his side. Charlie kicks his hip. “I think you really impressed her,” he says.

  “He didn’t even stumble,” Anne says. “Just went straight down.”

  Elliot rolls his eyes, but his mouth’s twitching to smile. In a swift move, he tugs Anne off her feet. She teeters, but her balance is no match for her backpack, and she falls with an oomph on top of Elliot. “You’re supposed to be tiny,” he says, a bit out of breath. “How is it that you weigh five hundred pounds?”

  She throws off her pack, rolls onto her back. She laughs, all light and tinkling bells like you’d expect to come out of Anne. Then Elliot joins in, a sound that’s rocks rumbling down cave walls. It’s a laugh he doesn’t let free too often, which makes it feel like a special sort of gift.

  Charlie and I ditch our bags, sit cross-legged on the rocky ground. I flick on my headlamp to cut through the gloom.

  Anne kicks Gabe’s calf, but he’s a statue above us: jaw tight, arms crossed over his chest, gaze stuck on a stalactite overhead. “I’m not rolling around in the dirt.”

  “What’s a drop of rain in the middle of a downpour?” Anne says.

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

  “It’s a thing my great-grandmother says, Gabriel. And it means this: You’re already filthy, so sit down.” She tugs the hem of his shorts, and he crumples to the cave floor. “To think I ever liked such a pigheaded boy.”

  Gabe’s eyes are huge and fixed on Anne. His cheeks are red red red. “Me?”

  Anne waves him off. “I thought you were adorable. That’s not really the point. The point is you’re also a complete idiot.”

  “She’s right,” Elliot
says. “There was that one time you trusted Charlie’s rope swing.”

  “I trusted my friend not to try to kill me.”

  “Or what about when you baked Mrs. Kim a casserole because Charlie told you Stella died?”

  “How was I supposed to know Stella was her car?”

  Elliot grins. “And there was the time you took Mia Stein to see that horror movie even though everyone knows Mia Stein has that thing about blood and blacking out.”

  “That’s because Charlie told me she’d been dying to see it!” Gabe laughs. “Maybe I’m an idiot, but can we agree Charlie is a bastard?”

  “I’m right here.”

  I watch them all, and I’m amazed. How is it that after a purposefully solitary year so much of my own happiness is wrapped up in theirs? But solitude is a crafty devil, deceiving you into thinking you’re alone by choice. Only when you meet people who make you feel a part of something real does he whisper in your ear, “You see, I’ve been loneliness all along.”

  I lean back, shut my eyes.

  It’s a perfect moment. Like untroubled waves that lap at the shore just before the ocean turns violent.

  “Hello, Gabriella.”

  And just like that, the storm descends.

  AND IN THE BLACK

  you’ll find the star

  to guide your way,

  to take you far.

  Ronnie Lansing is a tower of hard muscle. Hard smile, hard stare, hard words. Even the spikes of his hair look sharp enough to draw blood.

  He’s emerging through an opening tucked behind the staircase we descended earlier. “I think they’re after our treasure,” he tells the freakishly pale boy who follows him. I don’t know his name—like Ronnie, he’s two years older than me—but with his ice-blond hair and almost-colorless eyes, he’s like a ghost drifting behind Ronnie wherever he goes.

  “Ronnie?” Anne’s forehead crinkles. She blinks a couple of times. “You stole our map?”

  He ducks his head as he passes beneath a low-hanging stalactite, heading in our direction. “Just looking out for you.”

  “You said you were camping,” Anne says, her voice growing in strength and certainty as she speaks. “We were here first. It’s our treasure.”