Gray Wolf Island Page 4

  Elliot takes the only available chair, which he collapses into with a thud before thunking his feet on his desk. I resign myself to the bed, across which Gabe Nash has draped himself like a muse waiting to be sketched. I perch at the edge of the mattress, worrying at the hem of my jean shorts as I wait for Elliot to kick the boys out so we can get down to business.

  “So, did you bring it?” Elliot asks.

  My jaw clenches. I have a feeling our treasure-hunting team of two has doubled. “I thought we were going to talk about…” I widen my eyes. “You know.”

  “The treasure? We are. They’re part of the team.”

  “The team, Elliot?” I take a deep breath. “You have commandeered my mission.”

  “No, I invited friends.”

  It’s times like these when I wish Sadie were here to save me.

  My fingernails bite my palms. My voice is as calm as the sea before a storm, but inside I’m the wind that riles the water and lets grown men drown. “By inviting your friends, you have stolen the leadership of this mission. You are a leadership stealer.”

  “Right.” He turns to the boys. “Ruby’s in charge.”

  “Cool,” says Charlie.

  “Cool,” says Gabe.

  I release a low groan. This is everything I don’t want. Sadie never specified that I have to do this alone, but I don’t think she’d support the idea of these boys finding her treasure.

  That’s another lie.

  “Fine,” I say, because I knew my twin better than I know myself, and Sadie would never turn down a trip with three cute boys. Their eyes are glued to my fingers as I unzip my bag and remove the book. The mattress bounces as Gabe scoots closer, peering over my shoulder at the worn novel. I flip to the final page. Skim my fingers over the simple words that will lead me to the treasure.

  Gabe’s chin presses into my shoulder, and warmth tickles my ear as he lets out a breath. “No way.”

  “Um, yes,” I say, politely inching away. “Yes way.”

  His body sways into me. Palm to forehead, I push him out of my personal space. I stand, pressing my back against the wall.

  Guilt flashes across Gabe’s face, but only for an instant. He laughs and retreats to the other side of the bed, reclining in a position that would give Doris another heart attack. “I thought you were supposed to find the map,” he says to Elliot. “What kind of Thorne are you?”

  Elliot flinches at that, and I get the sense that he’s the kind of Thorne who’ll spend his life trying to live up to the expectations of six little letters. “Does it matter? We have the map, and we’re going to have the treasure, too.”

  Elliot leans forward as if there’s a string between his chest and the book, and by opening the cover, I’ve given a not-so-gentle tug. I read the poem aloud, barely looking at the words on the page. I’ve studied them so often they’ve burrowed into the folds of my brain.

  When I’m done, Charlie tilts his head back and releases the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard. “Dude,” he says, glancing at Elliot with watery eyes. “You look like you’re going to tackle her.”

  Elliot sinks back into his chair. He chucks a balled-up sock at Charlie. “Ruby’s protective of her book. But,” he says, focusing on me, “I can decode the poem if you’d let me have a look.”

  I hug the book to my chest. “So you can solve it on your own?”

  He stares at me—eyes narrowed, tongue tangling with the hoop at the edge of his lower lip—but that’s about as far as Elliot’s intimidation goes. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Uh, yes you would.” Gabe plucks the book from my fingers.

  “Shut up, Gabriella,” Elliot says.

  Gabe’s fingers tighten on the pages, but his face reveals no tension. “Dick.”

  “Least he has one,” Charlie contributes to this pointless conversation.

  Elliot ends up with the book anyway, because he snatches it from the bed as Gabe leaps at Charlie. They roll around on the floor like a couple of feral animals, nearly knocking Elliot’s dresser over in the process. Elliot, for his part, grins as he reads the book, as if the fight was his plan all along.

  “Take it back or I’ll shave your eyebrows,” Gabe says, his muscular frame pinning Charlie to the floor.

  “It’s like I’m being mauled by a gorilla. Not that I’ve ever been mauled by a gorilla. Or been mauled. Or seen a gorilla.” Charlie tries to kick the back of Gabe’s head, but mostly he just flails like a toppled giraffe. “Fine, I take it back.”

  Gabe eases off Charlie, swipes at his ruffled brown hair, and collapses back on the bed with a satisfied sigh, as if Charlie’s proclamation of his masculinity is the only reason it’s real.

  “You find the treasure yet?” Charlie asks Elliot from a splayed-out spot on the floor. Sweat sticks his hair to his skin, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

  Sadie always said Charlie was about as exciting as Wildewell got. He does the things no one else is brave enough or stupid enough to do, and he does them with an air of fearless nonchalance that makes him appear larger than Wildewell will ever be. When he went cliff diving during a thunderstorm, Sadie decided he’d be her one true love.

  This had more to do with the fact that she was dying and everyone knows Charlie is going to go someday soon. It might have been romantic if she hadn’t gotten worse before Charlie figured out his end of the whole thing.

  Elliot runs his fingers over the slashed square at the top of the page. “You ever see this symbol before?”

  Only every time I close my eyes. “No. Could it be one of those old letters, like from Viking times?”

  “Runes? Unlikely. I’m pretty familiar with the runic alphabet.”

  And Sadie thought this boy could teach me about adventure?

  “My mom taught it to me when she was trying to translate the Star Stone markings, which turned out not to be runes.” His mouth tightens, and for a minute it’s just Elliot and his thoughts. Then he flicks the page. “Anyway, this symbol isn’t part of the alphabet.”

  “It could correspond with the third stanza.” I gaze at the ceiling and pull the poem from my memory. “ ‘Your adventure begins with stars trapped in a sign. Navigate with them and our paths will align.’ Maybe we find the symbol in the night sky and it’ll point to the treasure.”

  Elliot’s “No” bites off the end of my sentence. “It’s too easy to connect the stars into this shape. We could make dozens of squares with lines down the middle.”

  “It’s a constellation that corresponds with the signs of the zodiac,” Gabe says. “We find the right one, we use that to navigate.”

  “Celestial navigation doesn’t work that way. The stars can tell you where you are or which direction you’re headed, but they can’t give turn-by-turn directions for a location even we don’t know. And,” Elliot says, swiveling to Gabe, “how the hell do you know about zodiac constellations?”

  “What? Kiera James likes to do my horoscope. And I like to do—”

  “The next stanza,” I say before the room fills up with any more testosterone. “We should talk about that.”

  Elliot unrolls a map of Gray Wolf Island. It’s from the museum gift shop, so there’s a crispness to the otherwise antique-looking paper. “ ‘Discover the spot where morning sun scorches sand and the ocean beats its anger into the land.’ That’s talking about a beach.”

  “Where’s the water roughest?” I ask.

  “Two places,” Elliot says. “Before Rollins Corp. bought the island, a kid died while swimming by the cliffs in the southeast. A wave crashed him against the rocks. But in the northwest there’s a small beach and another set of cliffs with violent waves.”

  “One of those is where the ocean beats its anger into the land.”

  Elliot appraises me with something like admiration. “Exactly. The only dock on the island is in the south, so we’ll start with those cliffs. If that doesn’t lead to the treasure, we’ll start over and follow the map from the northwestern cliffs.”<
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  Charlie unearths a tennis ball from beneath Elliot’s bed, chucks it against the door. “You realize Rollins Corp. still owns the island, so you’ll be trespassing.”

  “And you care?” Gabe asks with a laugh. He and Elliot share a look that says Charlie is out of his mind. I think it’s a valid question.

  Charlie rolls his eyes. “Obviously, no. But I’m not going.”

  This sends Gabe and Elliot into a minute-long discussion spoken solely in eye movements. It feels sort of intimate, and I press my back against the wall until I feel myself go a little invisible.

  The tennis ball clatters against the door again. “I can hear you,” Charlie says.

  “We’re not talking.” Gabe grins, but Charlie is too busy chucking the tennis ball against the door to notice.

  “Whatever. Not even a killer cliff dive could lure me to that deathtrap.”

  My eyebrows jump to my hairline. Charlie Kim isn’t afraid of anything.

  Everyone remembers the scared Korean kid who never removed his bike helmet, not even indoors. Wade Kim. It’s the name Charlie used to go by, back when he was a scared slip of a thing. The summer he got cool enough for boys to call him by his last name, he went around answering to Kim. That confused all the old people in town, who knew one or two other Kims, all of whom were women. When his father died that fall, Wade stole his name, and he’s been Charlie ever since.

  Connecting Wade with Charlie is almost impossible. This boy has free-climbed Wildewell’s highest cliffs. He’s gone skydiving and white-water rafting and heli-skiing. He shouldn’t be afraid of Gray Wolf Island. Of all of us, he shouldn’t be afraid.

  I glance between Elliot and Gabe, then finally look at Charlie, who leans on his elbows, feet still splayed to the sides. He sighs. “It’s the legend.”

  He’s talking about the three deaths the pit needs before it gives up the treasure: an accident, a suicide, and a murder.

  “The pit’s a greedy bastard,” Sadie used to say. “It got its accident. It got its suicide. And it’s still demanding murder.”

  Charlie hurls the tennis ball across the room, hard enough to smack Elliot’s door shut. “I’m not going to be the pit’s murder. I could die.”

  “I’m not talking about your fucking death again,” Elliot snarls before he storms out of the room.

  Charlie’s gaze locks with mine, and for the first time in a very long time his eyes are haunted. “That’s the thing, Ruby. I’m going to die on Gray Wolf Island.”

  The Boy Who Is Going to Die. That’s what they call Charles Kim. Not the Boy With the Virgin Mother, like Gabe, or the One Whose Dad Blew His Face Off, like Elliot. Ever since he had his first vision at age six, Charlie has been the boy who would die.

  It’s absurd, really, that title. We’re all going to die. The only difference is that Charlie’s time is coming soon.

  This knowledge is as much a part of me as the fact that Wildewell daffodils stay shut until a band of yellow-rumped warblers sings the buds into bloom. I don’t remember a time when Charlie wasn’t on the cusp of dying.

  But I didn’t know he’d do it on Gray Wolf Island. Or that he’d do it quite so soon.

  Elliot and Gabe knew this already. Their eyes didn’t bug out of their heads and nearly bounce across the room like mine. Still, Charlie’s declaration officially ended our meeting, and I’ve been avoiding the boys ever since.

  Now, two days later, I’ve decided to go alone. It’s not just about Charlie. It’s that any of them could die, and it’d be my fault for finding the map. I’ve done enough murdering, thank you very much.

  But then the doorbell rings and they lure me right back in.

  “We need a boat, Ruby.” Elliot pushes his way through my door with such authority I feel as if I’m the guest. I should have known he wouldn’t give up.

  Charlie pauses for less than a second before disappearing through the wide French doors to my left. He shouts something about food that gets muffled as he moves farther into the house. If I hadn’t spent the past forty-eight hours contemplating his imminent death, I’d tell him how much my mother hates when anyone wears shoes in the house. But I feel bad about him dying sometime soon, so I stay silent.

  He wanders back into the foyer, granola bar between his teeth and crumbs dusting his T-shirt.

  “Can’t bring him anywhere.” Gabe’s breath is warm on my ear. “Me, though? You can take me anywhere.”

  “You have a problem with personal space,” I say, then turn to Elliot. He’s in full thug mode today, muscle tee baring his inked-up arms, shorts hanging loose and low. “Also, I don’t have a boat.”

  “I know,” Elliot says without glancing up from the book he’s pulled from thin air. He’s standing in front of a window that gives his hair a halo of light, as if the sun itself has anointed him the leader. “I arranged an appointment with someone who does.”

  “How anyone believes you’re anything but a control freak with initiative, I have no idea,” I say, forgetting for a moment that when I speak without thinking I almost always say things that are rude. Sadie would be rolling her eyes at me right about now.

  I dare a glance at Elliot. He seems surprised for some reason. Maybe he believes he’s a better bad boy than he actually is.

  “Don’t you have a boat?” I ask Charlie, whose stepdad is rich enough to own a fleet.

  Charlie mumbles something, spitting a few pieces of granola in the process. Gabe translates. “Charlie broke the last boat when he tried to see if a case of soda stuffed with firecrackers would blow up.”

  “It was an experiment,” Charlie says. “Like, with science and fun.”

  I’m supposed to carry out a serious treasure hunt with these people? “This is going to take longer than a day. I doubt our parents will let us spend a week on Gray Wolf Island.”

  Elliot shrugs. “I wasn’t planning on telling my mom.”

  “We’ll say we’re visiting colleges,” Gabe says.

  I sigh. “Who are we bribing?”

  “No one,” Elliot says. “Gabe mentioned you visit Mrs. Lansing all the time. She’ll let you borrow her boat.”

  A laugh bursts from my chest, bounces around the foyer. “I’m not the one who should be asking her,” I say with a pointed look at Gabe.

  “Me? I’ve met her, like, twice.”

  “Well, she knows you.” I really do try to contain the giggles that spill from my lips. “You in those sensible khakis and starched shirt. You without a shirt, covered in sweat and glistening…”

  Charlie drops to the floor with laughter, and Gabe lunges for him. Charlie dodges, then flees out the front door.

  “She thinks you’d be a very tidy kisser.”

  Gabe follows Charlie’s howling outside. Elliot looks up from his book, glances around the room, and shrugs. “Let’s go.”

  And then he’s gone, too, and I’m left with a choice.

  So I walk out the door.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have worn my fancy sweater.” Doris fluffs her hair and gazes at Gabe over her shoulder as we spill out of the Oceanview Nursing Center.

  I walk beside her wheelchair, carrying a bundle of sweetgrass. When she was younger—and younger for Doris means forty, even though that’s not young at all—she and other Native American women founded a basket-weaving band. Together they’d canoe out to Arrow Isle and gather heaps of sweetgrass from the marsh, then sleep under the stars.

  She can’t make the trip herself anymore, so sometimes I get up early and hitch a ride to the island on a lobster boat. It’s how I spent yesterday, so she’d have the sweetgrass for the apprentice she’s teaching in a couple weeks. But instead of being grateful, she won’t let me push her wheelchair because Gabe is here and have I seen his muscles?

  “You have just lovely features. Like a young Cary Grant.” Doris has been in love with Cary Grant since before color TV.

  Gabe winks at me. “Not nearly as lovely as yours, Mrs. Lansing.”

  I roll my eyes.
Doris laughs. “So polite. What’d I tell you, Ruby? This is the kind of boy you want to marry.” Gabe’s face pales. Either he’s grossed out by the idea of marrying me or he’s grossed out by marriage in general. Probably both.

  Elliot’s shoulders tighten. He can’t help that people see his lovely features and imagine the man who bit the barrel of a gun. And Charlie? Well, no one considers Charlie for the long run.

  Elliot sits at the base of a wide tree, crosses his ankles, and opens his book. Charlie disappears into the foliage. I get the sense that dealing with these boys is going to be more difficult than finding buried treasure.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Lansing?” Gabe with manners is actually kind of cute. I bite back a smile and focus on Doris, who’s straightening the pile of sweetgrass I dropped on the ground.

  “Call me Doris, dear. I’m not that old.” The tree guffaws. Doris glares at the branch above our heads. “Keep laughing, Charles Kim, and your time will come sooner than you’ve seen.”

  Leaves rustle overhead. Then a body soars toward the wall that forms a barrier between the nursing home’s land and the ocean beyond. Charlie teeters at the top of the wall, arms pinwheeling as his body tilts toward the sea below. But he rights himself, brushes his shaggy hair from his eyes, and winks. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Lansing. I can’t die until it’s my time to die.”

  Doris shakes her head. “It’s not a question of when that boy’s going to die. It’s a matter of who’s going to kill him first.”

  Charlie cracks up at this.

  “Today it’s going to be me.” Elliot glares at Charlie. “We’re off topic.”

  I should care that we haven’t secured a boat yet, but mostly I’m enjoying being in on the jokes, even if all I’ve done so far is sit and watch without a word.

  Gabe smiles at Doris. “We’re going to discover the Gray Wolf Island treasure.”

  “Of course you are. You have this one leading you,” Doris says with a head tip to Elliot. As if simply being a Thorne makes him more capable of finding the treasure. I behead a purple clover.

  “Well, uh, we need a boat,” Gabe says. “To get there.”