Orphan Island

by Laurel Snyder

  “Oh,” said Ess, nodding. “Okay.” She added, “I like Abigail.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Jinny. “But I wonder how she knew so much about everything. I wish I could meet her and ask.”

  “Well, I don’t want to meet her,” said Eevie, setting down her book and reaching for another.

  “Really?” asked Nat. “Why not? She’s smart. And funny.”

  Eevie frowned. “But that’s just it. She thinks she’s so smart. She thinks she knows everything. And she’s written something in every single book. Like everything in here belongs to her. I hate when I’m reading and I stumble on Abigail. Why would she do that, write in all of them?”

  Nat shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I always thought they were her books to begin with.”

  “Really?” said Jinny. “You mean you think she brought the books here, to the island? Like, when she came in the boat? I never thought about that.”

  Nat nodded. “Yes, that’s what I always thought. Anyway, I love her scribbles. It’s like I know her.”

  “I feel like that too,” said Jinny. “Like she’s one of us, even though she’s gone. Like she’s managed to stay on the island forever, in a way.”

  “Except that she didn’t stay, did she?” added Eevie. “She left like everyone else does. And like that King Max. Now she’s probably old or dead, and nobody even remembers her. Even her books are falling apart. They’ve been here forever, and they’re dying. I wonder if Abigail is dying like her books.”

  “Ugh, what a morbid thing to say,” said Nat.

  Jinny stared at Eevie and wondered what made her the way she was. She was smart, but not in a nice way. Jinny couldn’t remember if Eevie had always been a crank, if she’d arrived on the island like that.

  Jinny glanced at the window, then stood up and reached out a hand to Ess. “Hey, Ess. It looks like the rain is letting up. Let’s go. I just remembered something fun I saw Deen do with Sam when he was teaching him to read, something that might help us.” Jinny pulled Ess to standing beside her, then dragged her through the door and back out into the day. She waved without looking back. “Bye, Nat. Have a nice morning. Bye, Eevie,” she called over her shoulder.

  Outside, the rain was gone, but the sky was still cloudy. Jinny walked Ess past the sleeping cabins, down the path to the water’s edge, where the sand was hard and wet. There, with a long stick she drew a letter in the wet sand.

  “Okay, so . . . here we go. A is for abalone,” said Jinny. “Ah—ah-abalone. A.”

  Ess giggled at her and jumped into the wet sand, making footprints.

  “Come on, Ess. Stop messing around. Don’t you want to know how to read? Like the rest of us? Like a big girl?”

  Ess shrugged.

  “This is an A,” said Jinny. “Can you at least say A?”

  “A,” said Ess. “A for ahhhhhhhbalone, A for Ess.”

  Jinny sighed. “Not exactly, but almost. Let’s try again. A is for Abigail. Here, you try to draw an A.”

  “A for Abigail!” shouted Ess, reaching for the stick.

  “Good,” said Jinny. “Now make an A. Make ten of them. And each time you make it, say aaah aaah Abigail!”

  Jinny watched Ess make her letters, her tongue clenched between her teeth, as though she was concentrating very hard. After a bit Jinny sat down, then lay back on the sand and felt the damp hard grit beneath her, through her wet clothes. She closed her eyes and thought about the books in the book cabin.

  Like all the other kids, she’d read everything she could get her hands on. The books were fun. The books were a welcome distraction. But the books were actually far more than that. The books were from the other place, the world out there. The books were about that world, and when the boat came for Jinny, she’d find out what was real in the books and what was make-believe.

  Jinny had read about ballerinas, girls who could spin on their toes. She’d read about pyramids, triangles of stone, with dead people buried inside them. That pyramid book had made everything sound true, but it was hard to imagine pyramids being real. Why would anyone go to the trouble of building with stone, only to place a dead body inside it? That seemed crazy.

  Jinny had also read about wars, unicorns, and something called chocolate, but she couldn’t even begin to picture any of those things. Was there really a world out there of stone triangles full of dead bodies and girls spinning on their toes? In books, there were giant metal boxes with wings that soared through the sky, carrying people. Surely that couldn’t be true. Just thinking about it brought the tightness back to Jinny’s belly. And a funny tingle to her scalp. She shivered it away.

  Jinny propped herself up on her elbows for a second and saw that Ess had lost count of her letters. She was still making A for Abigail. There must be thirty of them in the sand, crooked letter after crooked letter. But that was good. Ess would know A, at any rate. That was more than she’d known when she woke up this morning. Maybe in twenty-six notches, if they kept this up, Ess would know her letters.

  Jinny felt a little ashamed of how long it had taken to bother with writing out the alphabet. She’d just sort of expected the kid to figure it all out on her own, as they read together each day, but now she saw it was going to take more work than that.

  Jinny thought about Abigail. It had never occurred to her that Eevie, or anyone else, might truly dislike the notes in the margins of the books. She’d heard Eevie grumble about it before, but Eevie grumbled about so many things. Jinny had never taken that seriously, especially not when she, Jinny, loved the notes so much. Jinny remembered reading a book about a family traveling across a prairie of grass in a wagon, and how she’d come across a scribble that day from Abigail that read, “Thank goodness they took the wolves off this island before we got here!”

  She was so grateful to Abigail for this snippet. That there had been wolves on the island, wolves! And that they had cleared them out. Whoever they happened to be. She wondered how Abigail knew about it. Abigail seemed to know so much.

  It felt like a secret, this fact that once there had been wolves on the island. And also that there was a time before. Jinny couldn’t imagine that. How long ago was before? she wondered. How many years had the books been there? Eevie was right. The books were dying. They were falling to bits, year by year. How long had it been since they were new, since Abigail? How long would they last? Had anyone else—maybe Deen—ever thought these crazy thoughts? If he had, he hadn’t shared them with her. Jinny swung her head and looked out at the ocean, where it vanished into the mist. It had never occurred to her that Deen hadn’t shared everything with her.

  Jinny stared out at Ess in the sand, now abandoning her A in favor of a shape that looked more like a flower with a long tail, sort of like the fire flowers in the morning sky. Ess was drawing a picture. So much for the alphabet. But that was all right. Tomorrow they would work on B.

  13

  Treading Water

  Five notches later, Ess had mastered the letter A and the letter B but gotten no further. “A for apple!” sang Ess, drawing with her stick in the wet sand. She had never actually seen an apple, but for some reason they appeared in lots of books. People were forever eating apples or putting them in pies. “A for apple and A for ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” she screamed. “And B for bee and B for bzzzzzz!”

  “Yes, that’s great,” said Jinny. She was going out of her mind from boredom. “Let’s try C again before dinner—what do you say?”

  “C!” shouted Ess, “C for sea!” She drew a wave in the sand. Ess always drew a wave in the sand. Jinny groaned.

  “Hey, Jinny,” called Joon, striding down the beach toward her from the dunes, Eevie at her heels. “Can we talk to you for a minute?”

  “Of course,” said Jinny, grateful for the distraction. She walked over to the join them. “What is it?”

  “We were thinking,” said Joon, in a quiet voice. “Well, Eevie was saying . . . that you might like some help, with Ess. With . . . her reading.”

  �
��Oh, thanks for offering,” said Jinny. “But it’s okay. Ess is my job. I’m responsible for her, not you. And we’re working on the reading right now. See?” She pointed down the beach at Ess but then noticed the little girl had abandoned her letters, and was now seated and burying her feet in the sand.

  “Yes . . . I do see,” said Joon. She didn’t look impressed.

  Jinny stared at Ess. Then she turned back to look at Joon, and at Eevie, who had perhaps been instructed not to open her mouth. Jinny couldn’t remember her ever keeping quiet for this long before. She was bouncing lightly on her toes.

  Jinny squinted at the two girls standing in front of her. “You really want to help me with Ess, with the reading?”

  Joon nodded. “If you’d like,” she said. “Look, we don’t want to upset you. We don’t mean to criticize. We’re really just offering to help. You’ve been working at it so hard the last few days, and you seem . . . frustrated.”

  “You think it’s like the swimming, I guess?” Jinny said, glancing down at her feet. She felt a little embarrassed, but it was generous, what Joon was offering to do, and she was frustrated. Very.

  Joon shook her head. “No, really. No judgment. We just want to help.”

  Eevie said nothing, and Jinny was fairly certain she didn’t just want to help. More likely she wanted to show Jinny up. But it amounted to the same thing if Jinny didn’t have to spend the rest of her life going over C is for cup.

  Jinny threw up her hands. “Fine!” she said. “Sure. I guess. Why not?”

  “Really?” Joon smiled.

  Jinny nodded. “Honestly, I detest this. And I’m discovering I’m not . . .” She looked at Eevie, hating the moment. “I’m not good at it, teaching. I can admit that. And you got her swimming, after all. So, sure, do whatever you want, and thank you. Just . . . can you go somewhere else? Away from me, while you do it? I could use a break.”

  “Sure!” said Joon. “Of course. That’s fine. I was worried you’d be annoyed. But I promise I’m just trying to help. I know she’s your Care. We all know that.”

  Jinny shrugged. “I don’t want to fight with Ess anymore.”

  “I don’t mind fighting with Ess,” Eevie said with a grin.

  Jinny rolled her eyes. “It’s not like we fight,” she said. “Fight isn’t the word. Ess doesn’t fight. She just doesn’t listen to me. She wanders off. It’s like trying to teach a kitten to read, or a scuttle. And I hate making her do things she doesn’t want to do.”

  Eevie snickered. “You never minded before Ess. Bossing us around.” Then before Jinny could think of what to say to that, the other girl had bounded off down the beach, toward Ess. “Come on, Joon!” she called back over her shoulder.

  Ess wasn’t exactly excited to join the two other girls for yet another lesson, but in the end she straggled off behind them, leaving Jinny oddly alone on the beach, with nothing to do, for the first time in as long as she could remember.

  At first Jinny just sat there, listening to the water and the birds wheeling above. It was so still, so empty, without Ess. Lonely, but peaceful. Off in the distance, she could hear Oz and Jak shouting about something, but there was nobody who needed her, nobody she had to take care of or think about. It was a funny feeling.

  Then . . . Jinny felt restless. She looked around. She tried to think of something to occupy herself. She could go for a walk, of course, but she’d walked every foot of the island a million times. She could go to the sea-star field, but it didn’t seem fair to do that without Ess. She could do chores but didn’t want to.

  Really, there was nothing to do that she hadn’t done countless times before. There was no cliff she hadn’t scaled, no food she hadn’t tasted. Nothing she couldn’t do with her eyes closed. The more she thought about that fact, the more restless she felt. Itchy.

  It had been different with Deen, at least until he’d started acting so quiet at the end. Deen had always had an idea for something new to do. Odd, wonderful things. Once he’d buried her up to her neck in sand, just to see if he could do it. It didn’t sound like a fun thing to do, thinking back now. But it had been, with Deen. Deen made everything fun for years and years. Deen and she sat and talked or picked berries or carved sticks, and that was plenty. Jinny didn’t want to carve a stick by herself.

  The more Jinny thought about it, the itchier she felt. As though she was falling deeper and deeper into a hole. At last, she stood up and stretched. She walked down the beach a ways, but her itchiness walked with her. The feeling swelled inside. Hot and obvious, automatic. Jinny wanted to shout. She kicked at the sand as she walked. Hard.

  After a little while, Jinny reached the spot where all the shoes were buried, where the white bone tree stuck up into the sky. Jinny looked at the pile of shoes, the tree, the island rising behind the beach. Then she turned around, away from the island, to stare at the sea, and she watched the waves roll in, watched the sun glint on the endless vista.

  Jinny felt her anger subside. Quickly, she reached down and untied the drawstring on her pants. There was something she’d never done. She’d never swum alone. Not ever. And she’d never swum out. Past the shallow waves that lapped the shore. Never in all these years. Not even with Deen.

  “See?” Jinny muttered. “I didn’t always get what I wanted.”

  Beneath the waves, she knew, the sea was a universe all its own. Full of hidden creatures, rocks, and even mountains. It was another world. Just thinking about the miles and miles of watery unknown sent a shiver down Jinny’s spine. There was fear in her shiver. But not only fear.

  Jinny stepped out of her loose pants and kicked them aside. She raised her tunic over her head, let it fall on the sand beside her. She tiptoed into the warm shallows and then kept going, striding out into the gray-blue. When the water was high enough that the small waves broke against her bare thighs, Jinny ducked down and submerged herself, until the chill was gone from her bones, and her skin felt smooth and good, the same temperature as the water.

  Then Jinny began to swim, slowly, carefully, evenly. I’ll just go until I get tired, she thought, then I’ll turn around and come back. I just want to see what it’s like to swim far. I couldn’t do this with the others. But I can do this alone. Jinny touched a foot down, to see how deep the water was, and she found she could still touch, but beneath her feet, the sand had turned to a muddy, squishy surface, riddled with strands of weed and bits of shell.

  She began to swim again, and after a few minutes, the water temperature dropped, causing her breath to catch. Then she got used to the cold and swam faster, harder. Jinny stretched out her arms. She cupped her hands and struck at the waves. She swam and swam, and her arms grew tired, but only a little. She closed her eyes against the salt sting and kept on.

  At last, Jinny felt her breath weakening, so she turned to float, belly up, to rest on the ripples. What a wonderful feeling it was, to be alone like this, on top of the ocean and beneath the sky. She felt like she could float forever. Jinny wondered if maybe, somewhere, on the other side of the sea, Deen was swimming right now, both of them in the same water. Only an ocean between them.

  Suddenly, a small wave rolled over her and filled her mouth and nose. It sent her coughing, so she turned back upright and treaded water for a second, wiping the splash from her eyes with one quick hand. And when she did, she saw . . . something. With her salty, blurry eyes, she saw a shape, a smudge of green. Her breath stopped and she peered to see the smudge better.

  “No!” cried Jinny. “No!”

  The boat? It couldn’t be—not now, like this. What was happening? Jinny began to swim back, away from the green smudge. She swam hard.

  Then another wave rolled over her, and when she looked up and peered around again, the green smudge was . . . gone. What? Jinny rubbed at her eyes, but she still couldn’t see the boat. Where had it gone? Had it not been the boat after all? What had it been? Some sort of greenish dolphin? Had it been at all? Was she seeing things?

  That must have b
een it. Just her imagination, a trick of the light on the water. There was nothing to see, nothing. Only the sea, a flat line in the distance, and the mist above it. In every direction, nothing. Nothing all around.

  Then it hit her what nothing meant. Jinny whirled around again and realized what she couldn’t see, what else wasn’t there. Somehow, the entire island had disappeared, vanished into the mist that wreathed it.

  “W-wait!” Jinny sputtered as she turned quickly this way and that, small waves rolling past her, breaking gently against her shoulders. “How can it just be gone?” she cried.

  It was. Gone from sight. All the land. Her whole world. Everything she knew. Some combination of the mist and the distance had left Jinny stranded in the sea. Directionless. Now she felt the cold. Now her teeth began to chatter, and her legs began to cramp. Her entire body felt covered in prickles, and her arms were suddenly tired. Heavier than they’d ever been before. The feeling of moments before, that proud strength, that brave aloneness, was gone, replaced by cold fear. This was alone too. She was paralyzed, treading water with feet of stone. But even if she could tread and float forever, night would come. Jinny couldn’t imagine floating in the darkness, in the cold, with only the stars for company. And eventually, she’d need to sleep.

  She longed to swim again, to strike out and stop treading, but she didn’t know which way to head. There was nothing to tell Jinny where the island lay, nothing to mark it. And if she swam in the wrong direction, where would she end up? If she tried for home and got it wrong, she’d only end up farther away, heading for open sea.

  Jinny thought of Ess, of the girl’s sad face, if Jinny disappeared. If Jinny never came back. What had she been thinking, swimming alone this way? She was afraid for herself, of course. But also, she was the Elder. She owed Ess more than this.

  Meanwhile, Jinny was getting tired. So she turned and floated some more, hoping for a thought, an instinct, or best of all, a glimpse of the island through the mist. Jinny stared up at the forever blue of the sky and waited. She waited for something to happen.