Moby Clique

by Cara Lockwood

  “The stories from books do come to life,” I tell him. “As do fictional characters. I used to think it was just here, on this island. You see, Bard isn’t just a school. It’s also a kind of purgatory. Our teachers aren’t our teachers. They’re really ghosts, dead authors who are stuck in limbo.” I’m talking fast, realizing that I’m in a rush to tell him this secret. I’ve been bottling it up for a year and it’s a relief to finally let him in on it. “I mean, they’re famous ghosts. Like Coach H is really Ernest Hemingway. And Ms. W is really Virginia Woolf. And Headmaster B is Charlotte Brontë.”

  Ryan is just looking at me, expressionless. I suddenly realize I’m not telling this right. It sounds so farfetched. I backpedal.

  “I mean, like, remember last year? The tiger that was loose on campus? That wasn’t just a regular tiger. That tiger came from William Blake’s poem. You see, it was fiction, but it came to life. And other fictional characters come to life, too.” Ryan’s face turns skeptical. My mind races, trying to think of another. “Heathcliff!” I exclaim suddenly, grabbing Ryan’s arm with both hands. “You see, Heathcliff is really the Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. That’s why no one knows where he’s from. Because he really is from a book.”

  Ryan frowns at the mention of Heathcliff’s name.

  “And even me,” I say, rushing to tell him everything. “I’m part fiction. My great-great-great-grandmother or something was originally a character in Wuthering Heights, too. But she left the book, so she’s not there anymore and…well, okay, that’s too complicated, but anyway, I’m part fiction. So you see,” I barrel on, ignoring the darkening look on his face, “Rebecca might have been the real Rebecca from the book. You aren’t crazy at all,” I finish, realizing that my entire explanation sounds super lame.

  Ryan is silent for a moment, taking it all in. Please believe me, I think. I’m telling the truth. One hundred percent. I give him a pleading look and squeeze his arm, but he shrugs away my touch.

  He glances up at me, looking sad and more than a little hurt. “You don’t have to make fun of me,” he says at last.

  “What? I’m not—”

  “Seriously, Miranda. I open up and tell you something serious, and you just make a big joke out of it. Fine if you don’t believe me, but don’t make fun of me.”

  Ryan gets up and shakes off a few dried leaves from his pants.

  “Ryan, I’m not making fun of you, I swear. I am totally serious.” I try to grab at his hand, but he shakes it away. “I’m telling the truth!”

  “Whatever,” Ryan says, not meeting my eyes. “It was real funny. Ha-ha. I’m sorry I bothered you. Glad you got a good laugh out of it.”

  “I’m not laughing!”

  Ryan turns his back on me just as Hana comes bounding out of the woods, looking a little out of breath.

  “Parker’s gone,” Hana says, her face a knot of concern.

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Ryan asks, turning toward Hana and ending our conversation. Dammit.

  “I mean gone,” Hana says, pointing to the place where Parker had been sleeping, but there’s still no sign of her. She hadn’t come back in the time Ryan and I had been talking and, for the first time, I notice her blanket is gone and her backpack, too.

  “Could she have gone to the bathroom?”

  “That’s what I thought, but she’s been gone a while,” Hana says. “I woke up because I thought I heard something. When I looked up, Parker was gone, so I tried calling her name, but she didn’t respond.”

  Uh-oh. For some reason, I’m pretty sure this isn’t just one of Parker’s jokes.

  “Maybe she went back to campus?” I ask, even though I know that’s probably not likely.

  “On that bad ankle?” Ryan interjects. “She could barely walk on it.”

  Hana and I stare at each other, neither one wanting to admit that maybe Parker’s been taken—by the same people who took my sister.

  “Do you think…”

  “I don’t know,” I say, not willing to say it out loud. “Did you find footprints?”

  “There were too many leaves on the ground. I couldn’t really tell,” she says.

  “What’s going on, guys?” asks a groggy Samir, waking up and rubbing his eyes.

  “Yeah, what’s with all the chattering?” Blade sighs, stretching and throwing off her blanket. The sky above our heads is getting lighter, thankfully. Dawn is coming and not a minute too soon, either.

  “Heathcliff hasn’t come back and Parker is missing,” I tell them.

  “I so told her not to mess with that Indian burial ground,” Samir says, crossing his arms. “You guys never listen to me, and see? I’m always right.”

  “So what are we supposed to do now?” Blade asks me.

  “We should go back to campus,” Ryan says, now not meeting my eyes. He’s still very mad. “Maybe Parker went there.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not leaving my sister out here.”

  “Okay, am I really the only one who’s ever seen a horror movie?” Samir asks. “When people start disappearing from the group, it generally means they’ve been hacked to pieces and it’s time for all the people who still have their limbs to run as fast as they can!”

  “You’re such a wimp.” Blade sniffs. “No one’s been hacked to pieces…that we know of.”

  “It’s still a likely possibility,” Samir says. “And besides, Heathcliff was supposed to be our guide. We don’t even know where we’re supposed to go.”

  “We could find it ourselves,” Ryan says, sounding confident. “We don’t need Heathcliff. Lindsay said the cove was on the far side of the island, so all we have to do is head east.”

  “And just where is that?” Blade asks.

  “Hang on,” Ryan says, whipping out a compass from his pocket. It’s a tiny one dangling from his keychain.

  “How’d you get that past the Guardians at check-in?”

  “Hid it inside my American civilization book,” Ryan says, as if it’s obvious. He stares at the compass, frowning at it. “Hmmmm. That’s weird.”

  I lean over to look and see that the compass arrow is slowly spinning around counterclockwise. But it never seems to stop.

  “Maybe it’s broken,” Ryan says, shaking it.

  Hana and I look at each other.

  “It’s not broken,” Blade says. “It’s the island.”

  “You’re telling me this island has an electromagnetic force field?” Ryan asks, his voice skeptical.

  “I’m saying that a compass won’t do you any good,” Blade says. “Anyway, east is that way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the sun is rising that way,” Blade says. “Besides, I know we’re close.”

  “How?”

  “Look up,” she says.

  I do and see seagulls circling above our heads.

  “Okay,” I say. “But we should leave a note for Heathcliff in case he comes looking for us.”

  “And one for Parker,” Ryan says.

  Reluctantly, I agree.

  Hana writes the notes, while I head back to the campfire to wrap up my blanket and get my backpack together. That’s when I look down and see the footprints. They’re inches from my blanket, from where I slept, and they’re not normal footprints. There’s one boot print and then a single round hole, as if someone with one leg was walking with a cane or a crutch.

  A shiver goes down my spine.

  “Um, is that what I think it is?” Samir asks, standing next to me, his voice cracking a little bit as he looks down at the footprints.

  I nod slowly.

  “Peg Leg,” I say.

  Twenty

  “It was probably just Parker trying to freak you out,” Hana says, ever the voice of reason as she pushes her glasses higher up on her nose. Together we tromp through the forest in the direction we think is east.

  “Of course, there is the little problem of Parker disappearing,” Blade says. “Who does a practical joke and the
n disappears? Wouldn’t she want to laugh at you?”

  “Good point,” I say.

  “There’s no such thing as Peg Leg,” Ryan says, sounding dismissive. He glances at me, and then adds for good measure, “Just like there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  So he’s still in denial. Fine, if he wants to be like that. I know the truth. If he wants to think I just made it up, then that’s his prerogative. I’m done trying to convince him.

  “Whatever,” I shrug, not looking at him. If he wants to be mad, then I can be mad, too. He should’ve believed me. It shows he still doesn’t really trust me, after all. I can’t help but think that Heathcliff would believe me no matter what I said. If I told him the sky was orange, he’d believe it.

  Of course, Ryan always has been skeptical of all things supernatural. It’s what makes it so surprising that he even allowed himself to believe that the accident had anything to do with Rebecca. Most of the time he’s just too practical and sometimes it’s just plain annoying. You’d think he would’ve caught on by now that something isn’t right with this place, but he’s totally clueless.

  “You guys believe what you want, but I still say we should’ve headed back,” Samir says.

  “You better stop your whining,” Blade warns. “Don’t you know the scared guy always gets killed first in horror movies?”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly why I want to go back. Don’t you think I know I’m marked for death? I’m a minority and I’m a total wimp.”

  At that very moment, the drums start up again with their rhythmic thump, thump, thump.

  “Is it just me or are they louder?” I ask Hana, who nods.

  “We’re moving closer to them,” she adds, her voice a low whisper.

  “What do you think they are?” I ask her.

  “On this island? I’d expect anything. Cannibals, probably,” Blade says. I can’t help but notice that she sounds a little too hopeful.

  “Does anything scare you?” Samir asks.

  “Beauty pageants,” Blade answers right away, flicking her black-and-red spiking hair away from her eyes with her fingers, which are covered in silver skull rings and topped with jet-black nails. “And the color pink.”

  The drums seem to be coming at first from our right, and then from our left. I’m beginning to think we’re walking in circles.

  “We should’ve waited for Heathcliff,” I whisper to Hana, watching Ryan trudge ahead of us into the brush.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe he wasn’t coming back?” Hana asks me.

  “He’d never just abandon us,” I say sharply.

  “Okay, but even if he didn’t, what if he was taken by force? By whoever took Lindsay?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Despite Heathcliff’s badboyness, maybe he really is in trouble. We walk by a big oak tree that looks familiar—too familiar.

  “I think we’re walking in circles,” I tell Ryan.

  “We can’t be,” Ryan says. “I’ve been watching the sun.”

  “How can you even see the sun?” Blade asks him. It’s a fair question. The forest is so thick it’s hard to see sunlight or shadows.

  “We’re not walking in circles,” Ryan declares.

  “Well, if we’re not, then how come I’ve just found some of my footprints?” Blade asks, pointing downward in front of her. Her Doc Martens tracks are there, plain as day in the mud.

  “That’s impossible,” Ryan sputters. “I know my way around the woods.”

  “Um, Blade?” Samir asks, his voice catching a little. “Are those your tracks, too?”

  Samir is pointing down at the ground and just a little ways off from Blade’s tracks are another set. A man’s boot print and a single, round hole.

  “Peg Leg is following us!” Blade exclaims.

  “You sound like that’s a good thing,” Samir says.

  “Well, no, obviously, but if he has something to do with Lindsay’s disappearance, then maybe we’re on the right track.”

  “There’s no such thing as Peg Leg,” Ryan says. “There has to be another explanation.”

  We fall silent. None of us really believes there’s a practical, nonscary explanation.

  I can tell we’re all a little unnerved. Being lost in the woods is bad enough, but having a potentially ticked-off pirate/ghost who likes hacking off limbs following you around just makes matters worse.

  As we continue on, Hana pulls me back from Ryan. “What if Peg Leg is Ahab?” she whispers.

  “The captain from Moby-Dick?”

  “Yeah. He lost his leg and uses a wooden stump to get around. And since literary characters are always getting loose, it makes sense.”

  I’m momentarily relieved until I remember that Ahab is completely insane and fixated on revenge.

  “But what would he want with us? He was obsessed with finding a whale. And there aren’t any whales around here.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “What are you guys whispering about?” Blade asks us, leaning in. Samir scurries closer, too, so that the four of us are scrunched together away from Ryan, who is trying to hack his way through the forest ahead of us.

  “I think Peg Leg might be Ahab,” Hana says.

  “Who’s Ahab?” Blade asks, a bit too loudly. Ryan stops and turns.

  “I take it you didn’t do your summer reading?” Samir asks.

  Blade snorts. “As if you did,” she says. I try to tell Samir to lower his voice because Ryan is coming into earshot, but he doesn’t.

  “No, obviously. But I did read Spark Notes,” Samir says. “Ahab is the captain of the Pequod, the ship that goes after Moby Dick. And if he’s Peg Leg, then we’re totally safe because all he wants is a whale. I don’t think any of us are whales.”

  “Not you guys, too,” Ryan says, frowning. “Are you all in on Miranda’s little joke, too?”

  “Joke?” Samir asks. “What joke?”

  “You guys think it’s pretty funny just to laugh at me? Well, that’s fine. Go ahead. I’m leaving.”

  Ryan’s mouth settles in a thin line of determination and he turns on all of us and stomps ahead into the woods.

  “What’s his problem?” Blade asks.

  “I tried to tell him the Bard secret,” I admit.

  Everyone whirls on me.

  “You didn’t!” Hana exclaims.

  “That’s classified, sister,” Blade scolds.

  “Totally top secret,” Samir agrees.

  “But why?” Hana asks.

  I decide not to tell them all the particulars. Ryan probably wouldn’t appreciate it. “He thought his life was mirroring a book and, well, I just told him that it could be, because of what Bard really is.”

  “Unbelievable,” Blade says, shaking her head. “What? You’ve got to spill your guts anytime a remotely cute guy starts confiding in you?”

  “Hey—I dated him for a whole semester and managed not to tell him that entire time.”

  “Oooh. Give the girl a medal!” Blade says, rolling her eyes.

  “You can’t just go around telling anybody we’re going to school in purgatory,” Samir says. “They’ll think you’re crazy.”

  I nod. This is very true.

  “Not to mention what it does to the LITs,” Blade adds. “We can’t just go around admitting new members anytime you feel like spewing secrets.”

  “And what about the faculty? They’re going to be pissed!” Samir lets out a low whistle.

  Hana gives me a sympathetic look. “No they won’t,” Hana says. “It’s clear Ryan doesn’t believe Miranda anyway. So nobody has to worry about more LIT members, or what the faculty will think. Let’s just drop it, okay, guys?”

  Samir and Blade grumble a bit, but decide to let it go.

  “So what do we do about Ryan?” I ask the group. “We can’t just let him go off by himself.”

  Right about that time, just ahead of us there’s a shout, then the sound of something big falling.

  “Ryan!” I shout, and
take off running. I break through the clearing, only to nearly fall straight off a cliff. I skid to a stop, balancing precariously on the edge of a precipice that must be at least a hundred-foot drop straight down. I flail my arms and just manage not to plunge headfirst. I regain my balance, just as Samir, Hana, and Blade join me.

  “Watch out,” I say, holding up my hands. The last thing I need is for them to collide into me and send me over the edge.

  “Um, a little help?” comes Ryan’s voice from somewhere below my feet. I drop to my hands and knees and peer over the edge. I see Ryan hanging by a root coming out of the side of the mud hill. He wasn’t as lucky as I was.

  “Hold on, we’re coming,” I say. I look at Samir.

  “What are you looking at me for? I’m scared of heights,” he says.

  “And that’s a surprise, why?” Blade says, but she’s smiling.

  “We need rope. Anyone got any?”

  The three of them shake their heads. “We’ll have to make some.” I glance down at everyone’s Bard Academy standard-issue backpacks. “Empty your bags. We can tie them together.”

  I hear scraping on the cliff wall. It sounds like Ryan is trying to climb up. I hear him slip, then curse as his body bangs hard against the cliff.

  “Hang on, Ryan. We’re going to throw you a rope, okay?”

  Furiously, we work to tie our backpacks together. Once done, Hana, Blade, and Samir act as anchors, holding on to the backpacks as I lean over the edge of the cliff and lower the string of backpacks down.

  “You call this rope?” Ryan asks, reaching up and trying to grab hold of the low-lying strap of the last backpack in the chain.

  “Best we could do.” I stretch a little lower, hoping to bridge the gap between the backpacks and Ryan. As I watch, Ryan lunges again for the strap, but misses, nearly losing his grip on the root.

  “Hang on!” I shout, just as he manages to recover, grabbing the root in his right hand and steadying himself against the mud wall. I can see his feet aren’t getting any traction, and little bits of dirt and rocks are falling to the ground below. It occurs to me that the wall could shift at any moment and we could find ourselves in the middle of a mudslide.