Gray Wolf Island Read online

  “When I was little, Bishop Rollins told me Gabe was an angel.” Even in the dark, I can see her blush. “I don’t even believe in angels, but for the longest time I believed that.”

  A rustling of nylon. Anne’s face appears less than a foot from mine. She lowers her voice. “I fell in love with him that day. Never talked to him before this summer, but I knew him in my mind and I loved him. That’s my secret, Ruby.”

  My stomach clenches. Hasn’t the island had enough truth for the night?

  “I don’t hate him,” I say. I can’t—I’m as wicked as he is. Still, I hate myself a bit for that piece of truth.

  “I loved him this morning. And this afternoon. But he’s not the boy I built in my head. And he’s not the same person he was before dinner.” Anne shakes her head, and out pour a few more tears. Down the side of her face, into her hair with the others. “But of course all of this happened months ago, so he’s exactly the same person he’s been since we first became friends.”

  “I’m not sure that boy ever really existed.” I close my eyes and see Gabe’s easy smile, see him flirting not because he wanted to but because that’s who Gabe Nash was six months ago so that’s who Gabe Nash had to be.

  “Can you really know someone without knowing the one horrible thing that defines who they are or who they become?” Anne’s watery eyes search my face, and I feel such a connection to this girl who’s so unlike Sadie. Is this what friendship feels like when blood doesn’t tie you together?

  I think about the warmth of Charlie’s arm over my shoulders, the way my chest tightens then gets really loose when Elliot smiles, and the feeling of Anne’s fingers wrapped around mine. But most of all I think about Gabe’s words.

  It’s not the same. It’s not the same.

  No, it isn’t the same. Because what I did? It was much, much worse.

  I’ve kept that horror hidden somewhere dark and deep, but they know me. I might be more me than I’ve ever been, here on the island with these new friends. “Yes.” I squeeze Anne’s hand. “People can be real, even if they’re not being honest.”

  Anne brushes the wet from her cheek. Her gaze returns to the ceiling. “Ruby?”

  “Yeah?”

  She squeezes my hand. “You can be honest with me.”

  “Thanks.” I turn on my side, my back to her. What would happen if she knew that evil hid behind a friendly face?

  I can’t tell her. I can never tell.

  Bishop makes one more trip to the island. He doesn’t take me with him this time. Says he has stuff to do alone. I try telling him he’s too old to go around spray-painting and carving the symbol all over the island. That isn’t my best idea.

  A week later, Bishop’s back, and Doris Lansing is at his door. She brings along a girl who looks more fairy than human. We follow Bishop to the patio. It’s warm out, a little too hot to be comfortable. Bishop and Doris don’t seem to mind. Old people are constantly cold.

  Bishop places a plate of cookies on the table. I give Doris a look.

  “I’m old, not blind,” he says. “You can stop trading glances. I didn’t make the cookies. Got them from that angel boy.”

  “He’s really an angel?” Doris’s Lilliputian great-granddaughter regards Bishop with huge eyes. She’s been attached to Doris since Doris’s daughter died a few months back.

  “What do you think, Annie girl? Could a mere mortal bake like this?”

  “No,” she whispers. Shoves the whole cookie in her mouth.

  “How’s the treasure hunt, Bishop?” Doris asks. She’s braiding grass into a basket, which she’ll send to the museum. Bishop has some of these baskets hanging in his house even though they’re not as fancy as his other stuff, like the sword he won’t let me play with. “Find my Fountain of Youth yet?”

  “Wouldn’t that be scary? Bet you’d be up to all sorts of trouble if you were young again.”

  If Doris had any eyebrows left, she’d be hiking one up her forehead right now.

  Bishop laughs.

  The old-people-flirting thing. I just can’t.

  “As a matter of fact…” His eyes dart to mine. Only for a second. “I have a theory.”

  I stare at him. Eyes narrowed. Mouth tight. “About the treasure?”

  Doris slaps the back of my head. “Don’t look so excited.”

  “I wish you’d told me when you got back.” This is a severe understatement of my emotions.

  Bishop runs a hand over his hair. There’s not much left. “I knew you’d have questions.”

  “Obviously.”

  “You’re not ready for it.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Me too,” Doris says.

  “Me too,” Anne repeats, crunching on a butterscotch cookie.

  “I’m sorry, Bart.” Bishop looks sorry. For some reason, that makes me angrier. “Time’s coming when you’ll be ready to know about it. When it’s here, you’ll feel it.”

  I shoot to my feet. My chair hits the ground.

  “This was our thing.”

  “It’s still our thing.”

  For the first time in four months, I’m Nameless Boy again.

  “Go to Hellmann’s, Bishop.”

  “Don’t be sad.” Anne holds out a cookie.

  I take a bite. Doris is right. No human could make these.

  “When I’m upset, I think about things that make me happy.”

  I slouch against the living room couch. It’s expensive and fancy and very uncomfortable. “The treasure hunt makes me happy.”

  “Treasure hunting with Mr. Rollins makes you happy.”

  She lies on her stomach. Head in her hands. She looks somewhere between six and sixty.

  “Fine. I like working on it with him.”

  More things I’ve learned about myself: I like research. I like puzzling out a mystery. I like both better when Bishop’s by my side.

  Anne kicks her feet in the air. “Riding my horse makes me happy. Do you know how to ride a horse?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, did anyone ever teach you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Your childhood?”

  I laugh. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Not even yesterday?”

  “No, I remember that.” I snatch a cookie from the plate on the floor. Of the eight Anne brought into the living room, she’s eaten all but two. I have no idea where she puts it. She’s the size of my forearm. “I don’t remember anything before I came to Wildewell.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “I’m happy now.”

  Turns out, that’s the truth. I can’t stay mad at Bishop for too long.

  He found me. Taught me. Trusted me.

  Gave me a job. Made me somebody.

  “Do you have a lot of friends?”

  “Just the one.”

  “I don’t have any.” She eyes the last cookie. “My brother, Ronnie, says I’m only good for my time.”

  “Then Ronnie’s a spithead.” I unclasp the braided leather bracelet on my left wrist. Bishop bought it for me at the Festival of Souls. I wrap it around her wrist. “You’re supposed to give it away when you meet a true friend.”

  She traces the braid. “So we’re friends?”

  I nod.

  “Do you miss your mom and dad?” Anne asks.

  “Sometimes.”

  I don’t miss Mom and Dad. I miss the idea of a mom and a dad.

  I glance at her, real fast. “Sometimes I don’t even want to remember.”

  “Because you’re happy with Bishop,” Anne says, and I nod. A breeze blows her hair in the air. It’s shiny like silk. “Don’t try to remember, but don’t try to forget. Then maybe you’ll stumble upon your memories when you’re supposed to.”

  She snatches the last cookie and bites it in half. “Gotta trust the gut, babe.”

  “Did your mom say that?”

  “No, my great-grandmother.”

  That makes sense.

 
; “Okay, I’ll trust my gut.”

  “Yeah, and when it tells you to pay attention, listen.”

  INTO THE DEPTHS

  is your eventual demise.

  Part the water instead

  for the ultimate prize.

  First there’s a swish, then a rustle and a hiss. I open my eyes.

  “Let’s go.”

  I shimmy halfway out of my sleeping bag, shake my hair from my face. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  A crease forms between Elliot’s brows. “Nothing’s wrong. I figured it out.” His expression is hard to read in the dark, but I hear the impatience in his voice. He ducks out of the tent.

  “Impossible,” I say, frozen in place.

  “Most possible things used to be impossible,” Anne says.

  I turn to find her sitting cross-legged on top of her sleeping bag, small flashlight held close to a book.

  Elliot’s head pokes through the tent door. “Hurry up.”

  I glance at Anne. “You coming?”

  Her eyes jump between the space Elliot just occupied and me. “I think I’ll finish this chapter.”

  I shrug. Crouch through the tent and into the humid air. The night’s a chorus of buzzing insects and crunching leaves, the snap of a branch and hoot of an owl. Elliot walks with purpose, as if he discovered this island ages ago and is only now sharing its secrets.

  We leave the Star Stones in our wake, diving into a forest of thin trunks that go white under our flashlights’ glare. Two minutes later, we enter a small clearing circled by towering birch. Elliot tosses a brown cylinder to his feet, then settles onto the mossy ground. I kick off my sandals and sit beside him, digging my toes into the spongy earth.

  “This can’t wait until morning—not if we want to beat the other treasure hunter.” Elliot’s wide eyes make him look younger than usual. “This is it, Ruby.”

  “What’d you find?”

  He crosses his legs. Rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward. “I couldn’t sleep because…” He gazes in the direction of camp. “Because I couldn’t sleep. Anyway, I was thinking about wolves and how they named this island after an animal that doesn’t even live here, and how that’s really ridiculous. And then I wondered if maybe they were overhunted or something. So naturally I started thinking about decoys.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’m talking about those fake animals they use to attract wolves and birds and deer. Which really has nothing to do with our search since we already found the gray wolves, except that decoy comes from the Dutch de kooi. You probably know where this is going.”

  “Surprisingly, I don’t.”

  “De kooi,” he says again. “It comes from the Medieval Latin cavea, which means ‘hollow.’ ”

  “Like a cave.”

  Elliot grins. “Exactly. Trace both words back far enough and you’ll land on cavea.”

  I raise an eyebrow. I wonder if I look as much like Sadie as I feel.

  “Yeah, I know, my nerd is showing. But it got me thinking about the caves again. What if we’re wrong about the Star Stones? What if they’re not the stone that stabs at the sky? Before I came for you, I dangled a piece of rope down the hole in the center of the Star Stones. It didn’t even hit the bottom. There could be a huge cave below us. A cave with stalagmites.”

  “What about the square on the Star Stone? Or the poem? It all fits, Elliot.”

  “But the poem says ‘part the water,’ ” he says. “And I know what that means.”

  Elliot uncaps the cylindrical container and coaxes a thick piece of paper from it. Gentle fingers lay it on the ground. I hold the flashlight over the map. Unlike the gift shop version we’ve been using since we first met in Elliot’s bedroom, this map is detailed and old, curling at the edges and smudged with dirt. “Isn’t this part of the Gray Wolf Island exhibit in the museum?”

  “Not anymore.” He presses a finger to a point on the western side of the island.

  I lean closer, see a lagoon and a waterfall. “The island’s surrounded by water. What makes you think that’s the spot?”

  “What other body of water can you part?” Elliot rolls the map, slides it into the carrier. “I bet there’s a cave behind it. Maybe it connects to the one beneath the Star Stones.”

  “It’s not like we have time for more strategizing. The other treasure hunter could be close to finding the treasure by now.” I lie on the cool ground. “Besides, it’ll be nice to bathe after today’s hike.”

  He leans close, so close I can almost taste the metal of his lip ring. So close I wonder if maybe…

  And I’m hoping for it. That’s the most surprising thing of all.

  But no, he just sniffs my hair. “Yeah, a bath would be nice.”

  I try to punch him, but he dodges. I give up and turn my face to the glimpse of sky circled by the tops of tall trees. Against an inky backdrop, thousands of stars appear like dust. But that’s not what makes me gasp. It’s the amber and purple scar that arches across the sky. “It can’t be.”

  “The Milky Way.” Elliot lies beside me, hands clasped over his stomach. “I heard it was dark enough out here to see it, but I never thought…It’s amazing, right?”

  More than that. As I stare at the spot where the sky marbles, the trees overhead seem to shrink. Everything shrinks, even me. I’m unimaginably small beneath the band of light and stars. “It looks like magic.”

  We stay like that for what feels like half the night. Time seems to stretch out, as if it’s waiting for us to finish this moment before a second goes back to being a second and a minute no longer lasts an hour.

  “Ruby?”

  I turn my head, breathing in the earthy scent of the moss. Elliot’s closer than I remember, so close I can see the lightness of his eyes.

  “What do I do about Gabe?”

  I absently pick at the fraying hem of my pajama shorts, which used to be Sadie’s and therefore will never be thrown away. “I have no idea.”

  Elliot turns back to the sky. “I made fun of him. Not to be mean or anything, but I called him Gabriella to get a rise. I knew it pissed him off, but I didn’t realize…It’s partially my fault, you know?”

  I know Gabe was built, word by cruel word.

  But everybody can be made into a monster. Not everybody embraces it.

  “It’s nobody’s fault but Gabe’s,” I say.

  “Would it be so terrible if I wasn’t ready to forgive him?” Elliot’s voice is a plea.

  I don’t answer right away. I need to get this right, so if Elliot ever learns my secret, he’ll remember the mercy he showed Gabe and maybe extend it to me. “It’s never okay to force a girl, no matter how far you let it go,” I say. “But I’d like to hope good people who do bad things can be redeemed.”

  Elliot rolls his head in my direction. “Sometimes I wonder if one day I’ll wake up and feel all the bad stuff in me, too.”

  “We’re all a little bad.” I’m a lot bad, but I don’t tell him that.

  I can’t look at him, not after that, so I stare at the sky until I see flashes of the moon when I blink.

  “My dad,” Elliot whispers.

  Everything I know about Patrick Thorne I learned from Doris Lansing, and it’s not much: He enlisted in the army when he couldn’t find the treasure because when you’re a Thorne, war’s preferable to failure.

  “I read my mom’s journal. I didn’t even know she kept a journal until I found it two years ago and read that unforgivable thing.”

  I finally turn my head. Elliot’s teeth are worrying at his lip ring. Hands plucking moss from the soft earth. He takes a deep breath and says, “My dad didn’t kill himself.”

  My head and heart float somewhere far above me, maybe in the trees or clouds or up with the stars. It’s not the secret making me dizzy but the fact that Gray Wolf Island seems to be coaxing the truth out of all of us. But it can’t have mine.

  Elliot stares at me, all wide-eyed and worked up. “You want to know the tru
th, Ruby?”

  “Is the island making you say it?”

  “No, not the island.”

  I’m not as relieved as I should be. Deep down I know—and it feels like tempting fate to even think it—the truth doesn’t die or disappear just because you will it to.

  Elliot’s hand slides down my arm. His fingers lace with mine, hold tight. “My mom did it. She killed him. Blew his face right off.”

  “Elliot.”

  “Everyone always says my name like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, getting ready to jump. Like maybe I have some of my dad’s sickness in me.” He squeezes my hand tighter and tighter. “What if I have hers?”

  We stare at the stars and hold on tight, fingers crushing fingers.

  “My brother died that day,” he says. “Maybe my mom might have seen him wandering into the water if she hadn’t been so busy killing my dad.”

  “Why’d she do it?”

  “She won’t tell me. Won’t talk about that day. But does it really matter why someone murders someone else?” He doesn’t say murder the way I do, holding it in until the very last minute. He says it like the word will sting his tongue if he doesn’t spit it out fast enough.

  I try my hardest to hold his gaze, but it’s impossible with his twisted expression and the memory of Sadie’s scratchy voice whispering “Murder” on that Sunday afternoon. “No. There’s never a good reason.”

  I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my name on the wind. I turn to face Anne, but when the call comes again, her lips aren’t moving. She’s so engrossed in her book, she doesn’t object when I tell her I’m going to the bathroom alone.

  The grass is cool and slightly damp beneath my bare feet. The wind is as wild as my sister was, pushing and pushing until I’m right where it wants me. I’m standing in the center of the Star Stone formation, static zinging across my skin, when I hear her. Scratchy voice barely a whisper.

  Ruby, she says. Oh, Ruby, what have you done?

  “Something terrible,” I say before I realize I’m speaking to the wind.

  Tell them, it rasps in my sister’s sick voice. Tell them everything.