Gray Wolf Island Read online

“I see.” She meets my gaze with a single raised eyebrow. “And you thought I’d be more inclined to loan it to you if Gabriel here asked?”

  “Yes?” I squint at her through the sunlight. “Is it going to work?”

  Doris sighs. “Of course it’s going to work.”

  Elliot’s head jerks up, revealing wide eyes and an open mouth. Gabe huffs. “You always underestimate my charm.”

  Doris pats his head. “So which of you boys knows how to sail a boat?”

  “I do,” Charlie says.

  Doris’s thin lips are a slash of coral against her tan skin. “Try again.”

  I shake my head. Sadie was afraid of the open ocean, so we never learned to sail. Gabe looks the part, but he informs Doris that he wouldn’t know a boat’s left from its right. This seems to dampen her opinion of him, because she spends a full two minutes explaining that boats have port and starboard sides, but not lefts and rights.

  “I know how to drive a speedboat,” Elliot says. “And I’m a fast learner.”

  “Oh no.” Doris shakes her head, then rolls her eyes for extra effect. “Bishop would have a fit just thinking about you taking the Gold Bug to that cursed island without a bit of sailing know-how.”

  With a flick of his finger, Elliot’s Wayfarers slide from his head to the bridge of his nose.

  “What you need,” Doris says, “is someone like my great-granddaughter.”

  I’m sure Doris would volunteer herself if she actually knew how to sail, but she inherited the Gold Bug long after old age made her landlocked. So while Bishop Rollins left the sailboat to Doris when he died, he really left it to Anne Lansing. Unlike Doris’s daughter and granddaughter, Anne had both the time and patience to learn.

  A dark eyebrow rises above cherry-red shades. “You trust her more than me and Charlie?”

  “Guess we know how I’m dying,” Charlie says.

  Doris shrugs. She and about everybody else in Wildewell stopped guessing how Charlie will go a long time ago. “I suppose you could just give up.”

  I groan. At this rate, the entire town may as well migrate to Gray Wolf Island for the hunt.

  “Thanks anyway, Doris. But I think we’ll forget about the treasure.” Elliot peers at me over the top of his sunglasses. “Our leader is a bit antisocial.”

  I shouldn’t care that he’s right. I shouldn’t want to be like these boys, who cease to exist without each other. It’s a dangerous thing, flinging open your chest and begging another person to burrow inside without breaking anything.

  After Sadie, I should want to be alone. But that’s the thing: In a flash, alone becomes lonely. Maybe I’ve been waiting for someone to push me. That’s what these boys are doing, I think. They’re forcing their way under my skin.

  I drop my gaze to the ground. “No,” I say. “We’re going.”

  I learn little things about myself between the moment I board Bishop’s boat and the moment I know I belong to no one.

  It starts with the waves. Rolling, playfully nudging the boat. We rock, tilt, dip, and rise.

  I don’t get seasick.

  Of all the pointless things I know about my unknown self, this one finally works in my favor.

  I ask Bishop about me as we sail to his home. Try to soak up as many details as possible. Hoping something will tug at my memory.

  “And this,” I say, yanking at a chunk of hair. “What’s this look like?”

  Bishop’s doing all this stuff with the boat, so he barely gives me a look. “Brown.”

  “There are a million shades of brown,” I say.

  “Thought you didn’t know anything.”

  “I don’t know anything about myself. I know plenty about other things. Besides, even if my brain was totally blank, I’d know brown isn’t brown isn’t brown. Your face is brown, but it’s darker than the dirt on that damn island.”

  “Don’t curse,” he says. “And, fine. Your hair’s the color of Indian laurel.”

  “That a flower?” I tug my hair forward, but I can’t make out the ends that brush my eyebrows. “Am I the kind of guy who dyes his hair the color of a flower?”

  “It’s a type of hardwood. I have a desk made from it—a nice, rich brown.”

  I open my eyes really wide. “What about my eyes?”

  “Ah, you’ve got Gray Wolf Island eyes.”

  I blink against the drying wind. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Green as the grass in the valley.”

  “Humph,” I say, still sore at all the green for its uselessness.

  Land rises in the distance, a smattering of houses and hilltops. As we near, I make out a small marina, a cluster of buildings painted a dozen different colors, a tall cliff, and a giant house perched at its edge.

  “Who lives there?”

  Bishop glances at the estate. “An old man on an even older quest.”

  There’s a bed-and-breakfast in the center of Wildewell that looks like a frosted gingerbread house. It’s dark brown, maybe Indian laurel brown. The trim’s turquoise. Some kind of white wood made to resemble lace dangles from the roof.

  Inside, it looks like a candy store exploded. The furniture’s a rainbow of gumdrop colors. The wood stairs are bubblegum pink. The painting behind the reception desk is a lollipop swirl. I eye the jar of jelly beans on the counter.

  “Go ahead, have some.” The receptionist is younger than Bishop but old enough to have some gray hair. She has kind eyes. Makes me think I had some kindness in my past if I can recognize the kindness in her.

  I shove a handful in my mouth.

  “Maybe you’re part animal,” Bishop says, popping jelly beans in his mouth one by one. “You eat like one.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I ate,” I say around a mouthful of candy.

  “You can’t remember anything.”

  “Not a thing?” Bed-and-Breakfast Lady asks.

  I shake my head. “Do you know me?”

  I’ve spent the past hour asking that question. Bishop looks less hopeful than he did when we first set foot on land. Looks about as hopeful as I feel.

  “Wouldn’t know,” she says, pointing to her eyes. The pupils have gone hazy gray. “The morning fog got caught in my eyes, and I can’t seem to blink it out.”

  “But you might know me.”

  “Maybe.” She shakes her head. “But right now you’re as big a mystery as that island.”

  The porch is empty, aside from a kid wearing a helmet who’s staring into space. “Weird,” I mumble.

  Bishop slaps me upside the head. “C’mon, Nameless Boy. Time to go to the police.”

  I stop him in front of a blue cottage with a billion buoys hung from its side. It’s been hours since I woke up beside that pit. Hours to wonder who I am. How I got there. Why I’m as dumb as the day I was born.

  I’m sick of being an unknown. “I don’t want to be Nameless Boy.”

  “How about Bart? It fits you.”

  “I look like a Bart?” I blow out a low breath. I’d forgotten about finding a mirror while we searched for someone who knew me. I’m tempted to find my reflection in a car window, but this day keeps getting worse and worse, which means I’ll probably find out I do look like a Bart.

  Bishop rolls his eyes, which is strange for a guy so old. “The way you act. You have a Bart-ness to you.”

  “What the hell’s that even mean?”

  “Don’t curse,” he says. “And it means that I had a really nice dog named Bart and you remind me of him.”

  “I’d really rather not be named after a dog.”

  “He was a good dog.”

  “How’d you like it if I called you Rover instead of Bishop?”

  “You have a dog named Rover?”

  I slump against the store window. A flyer for the one hundred and fifty-eighth annual Festival of Souls scratches at my neck. “Obviously I don’t know that. I don’t know anything. But I could.”

  “Oh, do whatever you want. It’s your fake name.”
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  I roll my head. COOPER COUNTRY STORE screams in yellow.

  “Cooper,” I tell Bishop. “My name’s Cooper.”

  There’s a battle going on, and I’m not the only one watching. I stand in the lone shadow amid the swirling lights of the merry-go-round, letting my body fade until I’m as visible as the wind. Across the dirt path, Elliot, Charlie, and Gabe grab their guns. A bell dings, and the boys shoot, streaming water at moving clamshells with bull’s-eyes on their backs.

  Elliot grins at Gabe. It’s the kind of smile I imagine the devil might have before he swindles you out of a soul. Water arcs over the clams, over the counter, over Charlie. Lines of wet crisscross Gabe’s chest. Elliot laughs, and it’s loud and deep and magnetic. It’s a sound I swear I’ve never heard before.

  My mouth smiles without my permission. I’m high on their energy, their excitement, their hope. Sadie would tell me to barge in on their fun and make some for myself. But I can catch the buzz just fine like this.

  A group of Sadie’s friends approaches, and I’m glad I didn’t bridge the gap between me and the boys. With me, the effervescent mood would flatten. It always does. I don’t even blame them—I’d have a hard time talking to someone who looked just like Sadie, too.

  Elliot cranes his neck and scans the crowd. I feel it the moment he senses me, a warming of my skin that makes my body reappear.

  “Ruby!”

  I give a single wave, then shove my hand in my hair. “I think I need a funnel cake.”

  “Wait!” He jogs across the dirt path, kicking up pebbles as he goes. “You disappeared there for a bit.”

  I shrug, embarrassed. “Nice game.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a badass these days.”

  I’m pretty sure badasses don’t go around telling everyone they’re badass. I do my best to hold back a smile. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

  “Inconceivable. I’m a linguistic prodigy, you know.”

  “That I believe.”

  He laughs, then it’s back to business. “C’mon, let’s round up the guys. Anne’s meeting us at the Ferris wheel at eight-thirty.”

  While Elliot wrangles Charlie away from the pirates’ ship, I head for Gabe, who’s on the verge of disappearing for an entirely different reason.

  He’s sandwiched between two girls on a picnic table, beneath a sign that shouts, 165TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF SOULS CARNIVAL! His shirt hangs from his hands, swaying in the slight breeze. I’d like to pretend I don’t notice his muscles, but it’s hard not to with the sunset giving Gabe’s skin an unnatural glow.

  “Your shirt’s dry,” Elliot says as he approaches the table.

  “Looks like the fun police have officially ended this party,” Gabe says with a pout, though he almost looks relieved. He trades phone numbers with the girls as Elliot reads a book and Charlie unwraps a lollipop the size of his head.

  “Want a lick?” Charlie leans his shoulder against mine, sticks his rainbow pop in my face. I shake my head. He touches the sticky candy to my lips. “It’s okay. I don’t care about your germs.”

  I lick the top because it makes Charlie smile. He’s going to die soon, so the least I can do is eat some of his candy.

  “Finally,” Elliot says when Gabe saunters over. “Let’s go find Anne.”

  As we wander the carnival, the purple-streaked sky darkens to deep cerulean. Fairy lights flicker on, illuminating trees on the outskirts of the grounds. Chinese lanterns strung overhead light the walkways with brilliant color.

  My neighbor Alfie Barker sidles up to Gabe. “Got a job interview tomorrow. If I don’t get it, I’ll be bent-backed by sixty for all the clam digging I’ll be doing. Could really use some divine intervention, if you don’t mind.”

  He won’t say no. Hasn’t since he was ten and ran from a lobsterman looking for a bit of luck. When the season was bad, half of Wildewell was sure Gabe cursed us all. I’ve always felt a little awful for him, all those people thinking they can treat him like a charm. It makes me glad I’m so unremarkable.

  Gabe sighs, opens his arms. The older man engulfs Gabe in a hug.

  I wait beneath a fat tree. Miniature wolves spot its branches, foam-and-fur creations with clay fangs. The Junior League makes them each year, a nod to the famous island that we pin to the old tree with our greatest desires.

  “I’m going to wish your lips here,” Gabe tells me, tapping his neck with a wolf’s Styrofoam snout. He attaches his wolf to a low branch, then stands in front of me, waiting. A shadow passes over his face, and I look up to find a tall Native American boy with spiked hair blotting out the lamplight.

  “Hey, Gabriella.” Ronnie Lansing smiles like he knows a joke and Gabe’s the punch line. “Things so desperate you have to beg a ghost to get with you?”

  “Last night it was your girlfriend doing the begging.”

  “You don’t talk about my—”

  Elliot’s fist shoves the rest of Ronnie’s words back into his mouth. “The next one’s on Gabe.”

  “Unhinged.” Ronnie spits blood on Elliot’s shoe. “Just like your dad.”

  Elliot lunges for Ronnie, but Charlie holds him back.

  “Move,” Ronnie says. “Unless you want me to be the one who kills you.”

  “You could,” Charlie says. “But I can’t promise I’ll stay dead. Not to say you’d be an inefficient murderer or anything. It’s just that I’m planning to die somewhere else.”

  “You have fun with that.” Ronnie turns to Gabe with teeth made of razor blades and tongue spitting blood. “Let me know if you find that Y chromosome.”

  And then he’s gone.

  Elliot jerks out of Charlie’s grasp. “I was handling it.”

  Gabe wraps an arm around my shoulder, tucks me into his side. “Ronnie’s totally jealous of my good looks and raw masculinity, isn’t he?”

  It’s a dark sort of magic that can turn a person’s anger into something potent enough to poison lives. I’m just thankful Ronnie’s picking on someone who has enough ego not to feel its effects.

  “So jealous,” I say as I approach the wishing tree. Two dollars gets me my own wolf. I pick a higher branch, one not already covered in artificial wolves. I close my eyes, real tight. I wish Sadie were alive.

  The boys find me like that, too afraid to learn my silly wish didn’t come true.

  “So, what was your wish?” Elliot says when we’ve left the tree and our hopes behind. “To find the treasure?”

  I don’t say anything at first, then I whisper, “I wished my sister back.”

  He nods. “I waste all my wishes trying to bring back my brother.” He’s talking about Toby, who was so taken with the idea of a treasure that at age ten he attempted to walk straight through the ocean to Gray Wolf Island. “Think one day it’ll work?”

  “I think if grief and hope could bring people back from the dead, Sadie would be leading this treasure hunt.”

  The boys are quiet for once, letting the carnival swallow us whole. The Tilt-A-Whirl plays an upbeat song and the air is a mix of spun sugar and salt. If it weren’t for the person missing from my side, this moment would be perfect.

  I’m a liar, so I tell myself it’s perfect anyway.

  We find Anne by the Ferris wheel, its blinking lights turning her shirt green then blue then purple and back again. She’s the exact opposite of Ronnie—all soft edges, wide eyes, and a dreamy smile—yet she’s unmistakably his sister.

  Anne cranes her neck to look at Charlie. Her crown of flowers slips to the side. “I was just thinking of candy.”

  She plucks the lollipop from Charlie’s fingers and takes a cracking bite. A soft breeze sticks her chin-length hair to the rainbow surface. “Don’t worry,” she says, returning the lollipop to Charlie, “hair’s clean.”

  Charlie shrugs and licks away. “They need your help, Anne.”

  She tilts her head to the side. “I’m cheapest in the summer, but I still charge based on interest. I may have
more hours in the day than the rest of you, but I don’t like to spend them bored.”

  Gabe turns to Elliot. “What’s she talking about?”

  Anne’s small nose scrunches. “Buying hours.”

  Everyone knows that Anne Lansing doesn’t sleep. She hasn’t needed to since her parents took off that hot summer night. Since her aunt and uncle, both important people with too little time, prayed for more hours in Anne’s day.

  But the ever-churning Wildewell gossip mill has never whispered about an hour-buying business.

  “My spare time,” she says, head tilted back to watch the Ferris wheel make its slow circle. “Buy hours, and I’ll spend them doing whatever you need to get done.”

  “Yeah, we’re not buying your time.”

  “What Elliot means,” Gabe says with the kind of smile that should come with a license, “is that we’re inviting you on a trip.”

  “As friends?” Anne’s big eyes widen. She looks so small beside the towering ride, next to these towering boys and me, the tower of a girl.

  “Well, as our sailboat captain.” Elliot grunts as Gabe’s elbow meets his stomach. “But also as friends.”

  If possible, her eyes get even bigger. “I don’t have any of those.”

  It’s probably true. Sadie thought Anne lived in her own head a little too much. I never said so, but I always liked that about her. I got the sense that if we ever became friends it’d be because she liked me for me, not because my face matched Sadie’s.

  “We’re searching for the Gray Wolf Island treasure,” Elliot says. “Your great-grandmother already said she’ll cover for you with your aunt and uncle. So you’re coming.”

  “This is so exciting!” Anne shouts, and it’d be ear-piercing loud if it weren’t for the carnival music that muffles everything else. She bounces on her heels, jostling her flower crown. “So, when do we go?”

  My mother can’t contain her excitement. She tucks her bare feet beneath her, bounces on the oversized armchair. Wild auburn hair and a red-lipped smile make her look younger than she is, though there’s a chance her skin has been wearing crushed daffodil petals, which she swears can reverse aging. “It was awfully nice of them to invite you.”