Gray Wolf Island Read online

  It’s not like that with them. Everybody knows this. But everybody agrees it’s more hilarious to watch Bishop get red-faced and tongue-tied than to stop Doris’s flirting.

  I stick around for a bit, but the whole thing stops being funny and starts being pretty gross.

  I wander the art stalls. This guy is whittling these amazing animal figurines—bears, snakes, birds, deer—all with so much detail they could be alive. He’s using wood that might be Indian laurel, so I buy a carved wolf to remind me of myself.

  I join a crowd gathering by the waterfront. A man decked out in traditional tribal regalia stands on a bench. He gives us a rakish smile—he’s old, but rakish is the best word for how he looks. It’s a good word.

  He introduces a group of drummers and dancers. They’re from the reservation an hour northwest of Wildewell. Came down with the other artists and crafters for the Festival of Souls.

  Doris used to be one of the dancers. Lived on the reservation and everything. But Gray Wolf Island called to her husband, so loud that he had to come to Wildewell and he had to join Bishop’s dig.

  Well, she says that’s why she stopped dancing. I’m pretty sure she’s just too old for it.

  The drummers and dancers don’t come to celebrate the English’s triumph over the souls of the slaughtered. I asked Doris.

  They come to celebrate the undying spirit of their people. I like that a lot more.

  The man with the rakish smile beats a drum. Someone else joins. Soon it’s all drumbeats and dancing and voices. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

  I see my first ghost at ten o’clock. Bishop went home a half hour ago. He was falling asleep at a picnic table.

  He’s really old.

  I’m sitting outside the bookshop, eating blueberry pie on a stick, when one shuffles toward me.

  “Oh!” I jump. Blueberry pie filling plops onto my white shirt.

  “Right to be scared of that one,” Sal Caine says. He’s sitting beside me, demolishing his third piece of angel food cake. A stray cat sits on his other side, trying to knock his plate over like an absolute jerk.

  The ghost stares right at him. Like he knows Sal’s giving me a warning.

  “Lady gets pregnant without a man. Nobody knows what the kid is.” He licks his fingers. “That one’s something evil. I can feel it.”

  “When’d he die?”

  The ghost drifts closer, and I realize he’s about my age. I can’t imagine he’s any more evil than an adult ghost.

  “Die?” Sal’s brows cross. “That boy’s as alive as you and me. Though I plan on staying that way. Take my advice and go home.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You wouldn’t. You’re a tourist, Cooper.”

  That stings.

  Sal stands. Takes a shuddering look at the boy. “At the very least, don’t look into his eyes. Seven years’ bad luck.”

  I don’t move.

  The boy approaches the bench. He solidifies as he nears the light.

  I look away, just in case Sal’s right. Figure with my past erased, I’ve had all the bad luck I need.

  He sits at the far end of the bench. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him staring at me.

  “You spilled,” he says.

  I follow his gaze to my shirt. With a flick of my finger, I toss the blueberry filling to the ground.

  A napkin lands on my leg. I rub at the stain.

  “You really should wet it. Then dab.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He shrugs. “Mr. Caine told you I was a demon, didn’t he?”

  I dab at my shirt. “I thought you were a ghost.”

  The boy laughs. “No one’s ever thought that before.”

  “Aww, Gabriella’s got a boyfriend.” A tall kid with a buzz cut walks out of the shadows. Two others follow.

  The boy’s spine stiffens.

  Buzz Cut laughs. It’s sharp. Cuts the boy right open.

  I see his insides as plain as day, and they look like hurt.

  “Nah, he was just telling me about the girl he kissed on the Ferris wheel.”

  “Please,” Buzz Cut says. “Gabe’s more likely to turn into a girl than kiss one.”

  Gabe’s fists clench. “Screw you.”

  “Looks like Gabriella’s getting upset,” Buzz Cut says. “Let’s go get Ash’s brother to buy us candy.”

  They leave. Smack Gabe’s head into the hard bench before they do.

  I won’t embarrass him by asking if he’s all right. So we sit there. Don’t speak.

  After a long while, Gabe says, “Hey, you know any girls?”

  “The wolves,” Anne repeats. “Where are they?”

  The forest is silent except for the rattle of wind in the trees.

  “There aren’t any wolves on Gray Wolf Island,” Charlie says. “Not anymore at least.”

  Elliot releases an almost predatory snarl. “Where the hell did they go?”

  “How should I know? It’s not like I lived with the wolves until they accepted me into their pack and divulged their travel plans. I just know they’re not here.” Charlie crunches through the forest, tearing leaf and limb from trees as he goes. He swats Elliot with a thin branch. “I thought your family knew everything about the island.”

  “Charlie,” Elliot says, snatching the branch from him, “where’d you hear this?”

  “Where’d you hear there’s a treasure down the pit?” Charlie scales a nearby tree, all grace and agility and hidden power. “I’ve known it for so long I forget not knowing.”

  Elliot rakes his hands back and forth over the shorter hair on the sides of his head. “Maybe this is something you could have mentioned during one of the dozens of meetings we had about the poem!”

  Charlie shrugs. “I didn’t think I was coming, so I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Elliot launches off the ground. His hands grasp for Charlie’s foot, but Charlie jumps to a higher branch. He’s got the moves of a mountain lion.

  Elliot has the roar. “I’m going to kill you. That’s how you’re going to die.”

  He latches on to a low branch. That’s when I see it. Peeking from beneath the hem of his T-shirt, down by his hip. Two paws with sharp claws. And suddenly I know why Elliot’s chasing Charlie up a tree. “The wolves.”

  “Exactly!” Elliot drops to the ground. “We’re supposed to see wolves!”

  I say it again even though we all know the words. “ ‘Go down to go up, pay no heed to the dead. If you’re on the right track, you’ll see gray wolves ahead.’ ”

  “How are we supposed to see wolves if there are no wolves on the island? How are we going to beat the other treasure hunter when we haven’t even figured out the map?” Elliot growls. “I spent a week analyzing the poem, but of all the instructions, that one never—”

  “How is it that smart people are so dumb?” Charlie sniggers. “What’d you expect? A wolf to stay in the same spot as a marker?”

  Well, now that he mentions it.

  Anne tosses Charlie a water bottle so he won’t have to leave the tree and face Elliot’s wrath, which I find amusing but also pointless since Elliot’s staring into space. Which is what Gabe’s been doing all morning, only now he’s mumbling to himself, too.

  “All right, fine. It’s not a real wolf,” Elliot says. He has this delightfully wild look about him that makes me think of riding a roller coaster for the first time. “But it could be carved into a tree or…the Star Stones.”

  “Is one of the runes in the shape of a wolf?”

  Elliot gives an aggravated sigh. “They’re not runes. If they were runes, my mom and I could have translated them. And if they were pictures, they’d be hieroglyphs.”

  “I honestly don’t care,” I say. “All we need to know is whether the stone could have a wolf on it.”

  “I saw the photos—there’s no wolf on that one.” Elliot’s pinched lips blossom into a smile. “But I bet it’s carved into one of the others. Which means
you were right: down into the valley, up to the Star Stones.”

  “Let’s do this,” Charlie says, clapping his hands together. He drops from the tree and falls into step with Anne. They scurry after Gabe, who’s wandered deeper into the forest.

  I don’t know where we are, but Elliot—who doesn’t even try to hide his Boy Scout past beneath his attempt at bad boy—has a compass, so we have a direction.

  “Ruby?” His fingers whisper against my bare shoulder. Somewhere, in some universe, a girl is getting a kiss that feels a whole lot like this touch.

  I lower my gaze to the three fingers on my skin.

  He jerks them away. “We’ll find the thief and get the book back.”

  “Yes!” Charlie shouts from a few feet ahead. “I’m adding that to my bucket list: Take down evil treasure hunter dude.”

  “Or woman,” Anne says, but she’s giggling. It’s a wonder how a moment can feel so light when there’s such heaviness to this day.

  After three hours of walking and a quick lunch, the woods thin and the trees shrink until they’re gone and there’s nothing but a grassy hill and a sea of green. In the distance, two rounded mountains meet to form what resembles the humps of a camel.

  “They look like boobs,” Charlie says. “Hey, Gabe, don’t the mountains look like…Oh, right. You’re busy with the self-loathing.” Charlie shrugs. “I’m just saying, those are very breastlike mountains.”

  Sadie would have loved that. She’d have said it first. “You would have liked my sister.”

  “I kinda did. Not because of her—” Charlie points to the mountains. “Not that they weren’t nice. They totally were. Oh, this is awkward, isn’t it? Because of the twin thing?” He peeks at my chest.

  Elliot smashes his fist into Charlie’s shoulder. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He points to the base of the leftmost mountain. If we had followed the map as intended, cut west from the cliffs, we’d have an almost-straight walk down the hill, across the valley, and up to the Star Stones. Coming from the pit, we’re taking a southwesterly route. “That’s where we need to be.”

  For a minute nobody speaks, and in the silence the island sings and it sounds exactly like Sadie. It’s somehow in my head and all around me. It’s as raspy as my Marine Band playing the blues.

  Ruby Caine whose heart went sour

  took her sister to the highest tower.

  Said her heart was full of love,

  then gave her sister a hard, hard shove.

  “Let’s go,” I say to stop the song. I clench my jaw and tell myself I’m not that girl.

  It’s a lie, of course.

  I thunder down the hill, thighs shaking with the weight of my pack and the strain of maintaining a slow march. Charlie gives up on it, letting his legs carry him as fast as gravity likes before face-planting in the tall grass. Elliot kicks Charlie’s pack as he passes. Anne and I attempt to lift Charlie to his feet, but his skinny body’s heavier than it looks and he’s not trying very hard to get up.

  I leave them there, hurrying after Elliot and nearly running into Gabe, who appears to be having a conversation with himself. His words don’t wander far from his lips, but though I can’t hear what he’s saying, I can tell he’s passionate about it. His hand rakes through his hair, tugs at it tragically.

  “Gabe? Are you okay?”

  He closes his eyes, squeezes tight. “Do you hear it, too?”

  “Hear what?” I speak like I’m testing a field for land mines.

  “The voice. The island. I don’t know.” But I do know. I heard it, too. A million different sounds of the island—the shhh of waves against its shores; the scuttling, slithering, stomping through the forests; the roar of the wind; the rattling leaves; and the absolute silence of secrets—all of it swirling around in my mind. All of it sounding a lot like Sadie.

  Gabe shakes his head. “I think it wants the truth from us, Ruby.”

  My stomach drops. “What truth?”

  Panic ghosts across his face, and I wonder whose voice he heard on the wind. “All of it,” he says.

  I must look like he does: white as winter with wide and wild eyes. We walk in silence as we enter the valley, slowing our steps to lag behind the others. “It can’t have mine,” I say when we’re finally alone. “Any of it.”

  We’re halfway across the valley, following a path worn into the earth by long-ago tires, when the wind begins its assault. It roars across the empty plain, beating red into our cheeks. If it weren’t for my backpack, I’d worry a gust might lift me straight into the air.

  “You know what’d be real useful right now?” Elliot shouts over the wind.

  “A truck,” Anne says. If we were ever going to find a truck, it’d be at the end of this overgrown path, worn into the island by excavation equipment years ago. That’s why we decided to follow its haphazard route across the valley in the first place.

  “That, too. But I’m thinking we’d definitely beat the thief with Star Trek–style teleportation.”

  I try to shake my head, but the gale holds me steady. “If you get any nerdier your tattoos are going to wash off.”

  “Ahem!” Anne shouts the word so it’s not swallowed by the wind. “I meant to say that I see a truck. Over there.”

  I follow her gaze to a pickup with rust bleeding down its sides and grass climbing its back. I imagine it must have been blue at some point, before the island began devouring it.

  “Here’s your wolf.” Charlie grins at Elliot. I circle the truck until I’m also staring at the driver’s side. Disappearing letters spell ROLLINS CORP. And below that, half hidden by grime and weathered by time, is the silhouette of two wolves.

  We give in to glee. Jump around as much as our heavy packs will allow. Whoop and holler with all the breath in us.

  After a few minutes, Elliot tugs the door open with a creak, slides behind the wheel. He flips down the visor, rifles through the glove compartment.

  “I can’t find any keys,” he says, bending to the floor. I expect him to search beneath the carpet, but he whips out a Swiss Army knife and uses the screwdriver to remove the plastic panels around the steering column. They land on the passenger’s seat with a clatter.

  He switches to the blade to carefully cut through two red wires. He removes part of the covering, then twists the exposed wires together. The process takes much longer than it does in the movies. No ripping wires in one hasty motion. No careless cutting. Only steady hands and cautious movements and one hundred percent Elliot Thorne.

  He catches me staring and smirks. “What was that about me not being a badass?”

  “Please. You wouldn’t steal even your own car.”

  Another two wires are snipped and stripped. Elliot touches the wires together. We’re waiting for a spark, a coughing to life of the engine. He tries again.

  “It’s dead,” Gabe says, and though the wind’s still whistling through the valley and his voice isn’t raised in the least, he might as well have spoken thunder for the way Elliot jolts.

  “It’s dead!” Elliot slaps a palm against the hood. “ ‘Pay no heed to the dead.’ The poem. This is the dead.”

  He holds my gaze, a wide grin creeping across his face. “You were right. It must be taking us to the Star Stones.”

  “Aw, look how happy you’ve made him,” Charlie says, wrapping his skinny arms around my shoulders from behind. “You have a beautiful brain, Ruby Caine.”

  “Excellent rhyme,” Anne says.

  Elliot cranes his neck to find a stoic Gabe gazing at the cloudless sky. “Gabe, man, what the hell are you doing?”

  Gabe blinks at Elliot. “It’s all going to come out, Elliot. All of it.” He turns and walks in the direction of the Star Stones. Elliot races to catch up. Charlie and Anne stare at each other with equally bewildered expressions before following. I hurry to their side.

  “Have you kissed a boy before, Ruby?” Anne asks as we trek through a field of purple lupines so tall their tips brush
Anne’s thighs. “Before Gabe?”

  I wish for the wind to swallow my words, but in this moment the fierce gale that was terrorizing the valley quiets to a breeze. I release a hard laugh. “Sadie kissed enough boys for the both of us.”

  “Yeah, Elliot figured. He yelled at Gabe for ruining your first kiss,” Charlie says. He uses his shovel as a walking stick as we hike out of the valley. Jams it hard against the ground. “I don’t think you have to count it. Right, Anne?”

  “Oh, that doesn’t much matter. I’m curious, though, whether your lips are venomous.” She tilts her head and regards me through slitted eyes. “I’d ask you to kiss Charlie, but then he might go mad, too.”

  “I’m not kissing Charlie,” I say. “No offense, Charlie. And my lips aren’t venomous.”

  “Then how do you explain Gabriel?”

  I don’t mention the voice or the way Gabe answered it back. I don’t talk about the truth he’s adamant must come out. But I don’t lie. “I think the island’s tormenting him. I don’t think it wants us to find the treasure.”

  Anne bites her lip. “That makes sense,” she says. “The island wouldn’t keep the treasure hidden if it wanted the treasure found.”

  FIND HEAVEN ON EARTH—

  a sign you will see.

  Then let go the lie

  and set the truth free.

  Elliot and Gabe are leaning against a stone slab that juts from the ground like an oversized tombstone when Anne, Charlie, and I stumble into the grassy clearing. Five more stones, as tall and deteriorated as the first, surround us. The air snaps with energy, raising the fine hairs on my arms.

  “There’s something here, isn’t there?” Anne stretches her arms wide and twirls around, her loose tank catching air and swirling around her. “There’s nothing, but there’s something.”

  I can’t help but agree. There’s an otherness to this place, though I can’t tell whether it’s been here all along or if our excitement coaxed it into being.

  I wander to the center of the stone formation, where the meadow is balding of its grass. The ground buckles around knuckles of rock that at one time must have connected in a single fist. It’s the hole that stops me, though.