Gray Wolf Island Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Tracey Neithercott

  Cover photos: forest island copyright © 2017 by Martin Vcelak/500px; figures copyright © 2017 by Ethan Welty/Getty Images

  Map art copyright © 2017 by Mike Hall

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781524715304 (trade) — ISBN 9781524715311 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9781524715328

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue: Ruby

  Chapter One: Ruby

  Chapter Two: Ruby

  Chapter Three: Ruby

  Chapter Four: The Boy

  Chapter Five: Ruby

  Chapter Six: Ruby

  Chapter Seven: The Boy

  Chapter Eight: Ruby

  Chapter Nine: Ruby

  Chapter Ten: Ruby

  Chapter Eleven: Cooper

  Chapter Twelve: Ruby

  Chapter Thirteen: Ruby

  Chapter Fourteen: Ruby

  Chapter Fifteen: Cooper

  Chapter Sixteen: Ruby

  Chapter Seventeen: Ruby

  Chapter Eighteen: Ruby

  Chapter Nineteen: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-one: Cooper

  Chapter Twenty-two: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-three: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-four: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-five: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-six: Cooper

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Ruby

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-one: Cooper

  Chapter Thirty-two: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-three: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-four: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-five: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-six: Cooper

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Ruby

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Ruby

  Chapter Forty: Ruby

  Chapter Forty-one: Cooper

  Chapter Forty-two: Ruby

  Chapter Forty-three: Cooper

  Chapter Forty-four: Ruby

  Chapter Forty-five: Cooper

  Chapter Forty-six: Ruby

  Chapter Forty-seven: Cooper

  Chapter Forty-eight: Ruby

  Chapter Forty-nine: Ruby

  Acknowledgments

  For Matt and Jill,

  who have always believed

  Detail left

  Detail right

  It’s no secret that somebody else has to die.

  In Wildewell, where there’s little to do but stare at the sea and think deep thoughts about a deep hole, there’s no such thing as a secret. The curse of Gray Wolf Island doesn’t even play at privacy. If you know about the eight days of rain each summer that make flowers grow on the ancient tree in the center of town, you know about Gray Wolf Island and the pit in the earth that demands three lives before it gives us anything in return.

  My sister finds this endlessly fascinating in the way she’s found most things having to do with death fascinating since her diagnosis. She licks her cracked lips, and when she speaks, her voice is scratchy from sleep and sickness. “Murder.”

  I open the curtains so early-morning sun can warm her face. A cool breeze sneaks through the open window and ruffles what’s left of Sadie’s auburn hair. I push the strands behind her ear. “You’re truly a creep,” I say.

  She turns on her side, tugging my arm across her stomach. Her skin looks pale against the jewel-toned pillows, against my tan arm. “I can feel it, Ruby. Like it’s calling to me.”

  It’s what people said when they came to Wildewell in its heyday, back when nobody owned Gray Wolf Island and anybody with an ounce of curiosity could hire a boat and try their luck at the infinitely deep pit that legend says promises treasure. But the decades passed and the centuries turned and nobody found the bottom of that hole. Now the corporation that owns the island has long since given up on gold, and only true believers like my sister think anyone will ever solve the mystery.

  I think death’s calling to Sadie, but the island is easier to accept. “Well, tell it to call back later. You need another nap.”

  Her lungs rattle when she heaves an exasperated sigh. With a shuddering breath, she lowers her lashes. Beyond her window, the grass gives way to sand and surf. I watch the horizon until my eyes burn, then lower my head to the pillow. Sadie’s skeletal body shivers, and I scoot closer to lend her my warmth.

  My mother says we left the womb like this, my long body coiled around my tinier twin like if I held on tight enough, she’d never leave my side. Not much has changed in the past sixteen years. There’s Sadie, and then there’s me, stuck to her like gum to the bottom of a shoe. It doesn’t matter that we’re twins or that I’m a whole head taller. She’s always been my big sister. I’ll always look up to her.

  Until I can’t.

  Sadie presses a finger to the window screen, right where sea meets sky. “Murder,” she whispers. “That’s all that’s left.”

  She’s talking about the curse of Gray Wolf Island again. My sister’s lifelong infatuation with the treasure transformed into an obsession about the time the doctors gave up on a cure. Now, the worse she feels, the harder she searches, like maybe her body will stick around for the treasure if she wants it badly enough. I use a blanket to wipe sweat from her cold forehead. “There have probably been a hundred murders there. People are generally willing to kill for buried treasure.”

  Sadie hits me with a look I haven’t seen in a while because condescension is tiring for her to maintain. “The suicide and the accident,” she says, her voice hoarse. I lift a cup to her lips. “Two deaths. If we’d had the third, if someone had been murdered there, we’d have a treasure.”

  Maybe there’s been a murder there. Maybe not. It wouldn’t matter because the legend isn’t true. But I smile and nod because Sadie needs it to be true, needs to believe she has a chance to solve the mystery before she goes. “Okay, I’ll look out for a murder.”

  “And if you get lost, just ask Mom, ’kay?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Sadie doesn’t speak for a long while. She’s doing that thing she always does, which is stare at me without blinking. Like she can see into my head or something. I’m not sure what she finds, but her attention flips to the window, where the cloudless sky is baby-boy blue. “This is the year you finally live, Rubes.”

  “Shut up, Sadie. Just shut up.” Sadie is convinced her death will be great for my social life. But my life is her life. She dies, I die.

  “Promise me something,” she says, ignoring my irritation like she always does.

  I’m afraid of what she’ll ask me to do, and I’m afraid I won’t
say no. But this is my twin, so I say, “I’ll promise you anything.”

  “If you make a promise, you have to mean it. This is my deathbed,” she says with the kind of dramatic emphasis she’s been using since she was old enough to speak in syllables.

  I don’t need to know what she wants. Tomorrow I might not have a sister, so today I’ll do whatever she asks.

  “Find the treasure.”

  I sigh. “Sadie.”

  “Ruby.” Her hand wraps around mine. “You can have this great adventure for us both. I want you to do that for me. I want you to have the adventure I can’t.”

  I get the sense I’m being manipulated, but I don’t care. “Okay.”

  “Promise it, Ruby.”

  “I promise,” I say. “I’ll find your treasure.”

  This is the first lie I tell my dying sister, but it won’t be the last.

  Later that morning, while the good people of Wildewell, including my parents, are at church, Sadie asks me to do it. We’re curled up on her bed, three blankets covering her thin frame, and I’m fussing with her hair like I used to before it started falling out.

  My fingers brush her cheek—too pale, too clammy, all wrong.

  A tear leaks from my squeezed-shut eye, and I bat it away. The motion rouses my sister, who snuggles closer. For the past two months, she’s been cold when the world is hot, icy fingers crawling up my warm skin and begging me to stay a little longer, stay the night.

  “Play me something, Ruby.”

  It’s impossible to play the harmonica without breath, and looking at her steals just about all of mine. “Go back to bed,” I say.

  Sadie’s fingers dance across my temple. “Why are you crying?”

  I look at my sister, with her sunken cheeks and stringy hair and defiant eyes that promise to keep fighting, and I tell another lie. “I was dreaming about the day the butterfly was killed.”

  “Why’d it have to die?” Sadie wheezes as she sucks down a deep breath. The air’s a mix of salty sea and the tuberose lotion I rubbed onto her dry hands. She doesn’t smell this, of course. She stopped smelling a week ago.

  “It was beautiful,” I say, and I’m back on that day four years ago. In my mind, the butterfly is a swirl of yellows and oranges. My memory may be more imagination, but when I think of it, when I tell the story, the butterfly is marigold and rust with shots of white and black. In my mind, its wings are torn and its body squished, but maybe I made that up, too.

  I remember the next part, though: dark hair hanging over green eyes, rough boy fingers plucking the butterfly from my palm. The rock, the smash. “It was hurt,” I tell Sadie even though she’s heard this story before. “It was mercy.”

  Sadie starts to speak, but a cough tears through her. Her body shakes from the force of it, a floppy sort of movement that makes her neck weaken and head roll. I wrap my arms around her, tug her back to my front, and hold tight. I feel the echo of her tremors in my bones.

  I rest my cheek on the crown of her head and shut my eyes. I wish I could shut my ears to the sound of my sister fighting with her lungs. My arms are damp with her tears.

  When the coughing stops and her breathing steadies, Sadie slumps in my arms. I lower her to the bed, so focused on keeping her steady that I almost miss the red. It takes a curved course over my forearm and onto the blankets. “Oh God, Sadie.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  I can’t stop gaping at the blood. She’s coughed some up before, but never this much. It looks like a crime scene. Like someone slashed my skin to ribbons. Murder, my mind says in Sadie’s wispy voice. “Stop being sorry. You’re going to be okay. This is all—” I scrub the blood from my arms, toss crimson tissues to the floor. “This is all going to be okay.”

  “Rubes,” she says. “I need help.” I tell her I’ll do anything for her, but she does the thing where she tries to transmit thoughts into my head and, finally, it works. I look at her, knitted brows and face pinched in pain, and I know what she wants.

  It’s not the first time she’s asked. Not even close. Each time she begs, the idea burrows into my brain a bit more. I shake my head—really fast so the idea won’t stick around any longer than it already has. “Anything but that.”

  Sadie doesn’t speak at first, just nuzzles her head into the crook of my shoulder. Her cold nose soothes my sunburned skin. Finally, she says, “You know it’s coming.”

  “It’ll come when it’s damn well ready to come!” I push away from the bed, away from her searching eyes and trembling body and sickening request.

  “It hurts.”

  Murder, my mind says in Sadie’s voice, but it sounds a lot like mercy.

  I look down at my twin, my best friend, the only person in the entire universe who understands me. I’ve known all along, I realize. It was always going to end this way.

  She must see it in my eyes, this horrible decision I’ve made, because she whispers, “Thank you.”

  I say, “I love you.”

  I squeeze her nostrils.

  “Don’t let go,” she says.

  A sob escapes me.

  My hand clamps over my sister’s chapped lips, and I tell my third lie. “This won’t hurt,” I say, and her eyes are so bright, so full of love and gratitude and relief.

  When she starts to struggle, I do what she said. I hold on.

  And on.

  When the church bells sound in the distance, Sadie’s eyes close, and I tell the biggest lie of them all. Everything is going to be okay.

  One Year Later

  Everybody has a theory about Gray Wolf Island. Doris Lansing has five.

  “Pirates’ gold.” She touches one finger to another. “King John’s missing crown jewels. The Holy Grail. The Ark of the Covenant. Or the Fountain of Youth.”

  We’re sucking down milk shakes beneath the lone oak tree outside the Oceanview Nursing Center, her in a wheelchair and me on a stone bench that cools the backs of my thighs. I tie my hair into a high ponytail so the meager breeze can dry the sweat on my neck.

  Across the lawn, the bluff drops to a pebbled beach, then miles and miles of ocean. Somewhere too far to see from here but close enough to call our own are Gray Wolf Island and a deep, deep, deep hole.

  “Sheriff March thinks it holds the key to all knowledge,” I say.

  “Ha! That’s a myth if I’ve ever heard one.”

  They are all myths. It’s the lie I tell myself daily because that’s what I do now. I lie.

  I tell myself there is no such thing as buried treasure. That the source of Wildewell’s endless frustration is one very famous sinkhole. That I haven’t screwed up my sister’s dying wish by being too weak with grief to chase a legend.

  Doris’s fingers tighten around my wrist. “Are you seeing this, Ruby?”

  I lift my sunglasses and blink back the bright. The ocean is almost silver in the summer light, as if the sun has leached color from the sea. A bony finger pushes my cheek, and my head jerks to the left.

  “What a babe.” Her eyes follow Gabriel Nash in all his crisp-polo glory as he pushes the giant Oceanview lawn mower with an almost innocent unawareness that other people might struggle with the same task only to come away sweaty, wrinkled, and covered in grass clippings. “I always trust a man in a pair of pressed slacks.” She slurps her milk shake, then shoots me a serious look. “I bet he’s a very tidy kisser.”

  “Doris!” I should mention that Doris Lansing is one hundred and four years old, and she’s only that young because she started counting backward once she hit a hundred and six.

  “Not for me.” She shakes her head. “Nope, not for me.”

  It’s been this way with her since I first started volunteering at the nursing home, one month after Sadie died. I push the wheelchair around the grounds, she scouts for potential relationships. Once, in a fit of exasperation after I told her I didn’t want a boyfriend, she told me I could have a quick fling so long as I kept my pants on.

  “W
hich of those boys is he?” She doesn’t say it the way most adults do when talking about Gabriel Nash, Elliot Thorne, and Charles Kim, like they’re talking about wild boars or ferocious wolves. She says it the way most girls my age do when talking about the trio, like the boys have been dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with gold.

  “His mother’s the Virgin Mary.” It isn’t her real name, of course. That’s Cecile Nash—three syllables too ordinary for the virgin who gave birth.

  My grandpa Sal used to say that simply being near Gabe invited evil into your life. There are stories—this is Wildewell, after all. Some say Gabe brushed against them in a crowded store and, out of their fear of the damned, their shoulders dislocated. Others say Gabe shook their hands and, after they’d come into contact with such evil, burns sprang to life on their palms. And if it wasn’t exactly true before, it was once they spoke the words.

  But there are also those people who believe Gabe is holy. An angel maybe, because who else but God could make a virgin pregnant? Constance Loyal, whose knees have cracked with arthritis for longer than Gabe has been alive, said she found relief after Gabe shook her hand at church. She was seated at the time, so Mr. Garza, who had burns on his palm from where Gabe had shaken his hand at church just last week, cried foul. But Mrs. Loyal just stood without a creak and danced a small jig.

  Across the lawn, Gabe whips off his polo and tucks it into his back pocket. Doris sucks in a breath. “I hope the sprinklers come on.”