August Isle

by Ali Standish

  With nothing else to keep me occupied, I took my time drifting back and forth across the room. I found two of my tank tops in her dresser, my sunglasses in her laundry hamper, and my headphones stuffed into a mug of pencils on top of her bookshelf. When I had collected all my things I could see, I lay on my stomach on Sammy’s bed and swung my head down to look under it. There was a single sandal, a potato-chip bag, and a book.

  I pulled out the sandal and the book. The sandal was one of mine—it had been missing since my first week in August Isle—but the picture book, I saw, was the one Caleb had brought back from the library. He had given it to Sammy, and she must have thrown it onto her bed, where it had dropped down in the crack between the mattress and the wall.

  I stared at the cover. I hadn’t really looked at it before. On it, a starfish was peeking out from behind a sprig of seaweed, looking scared, like maybe it was hiding from something. The book was called Cecil the Starfish Gets Lost.

  I felt a rustle of recognition deep in my chest. I flipped through the pages. It was about a little starfish who gets separated from his mother in a tide pool. He’s nearly stung by a stingray, eaten by a shark, and stabbed by a blowfish, but just when he’s about to give up, his mother finds him again.

  I saw why the librarian didn’t want the book. Some of the pages were stuck together, and there were marker stains on others. The paper was worn so soft, it felt like cloth.

  Someone had read this book many, many times.

  It seemed like kind of a strange thing for Mr. Taylor to have. Why would he own a book like this unless he had once had a child to read it to?

  I thought back to the way he’d looked after he had told us the story about Illari falling from the stars. How he had been so sad. I had known then, deep down, that he had lost someone. But I had never thought that it might be a child.

  When I turned to the last page—a full illustration of Cecil’s mom tucking him into his seaweed bed—I was sure that I had read the book before. Something about the colors the illustrator had used for the seaweed—deep blues and greens—made me feel comfortable and safe, like I was three years old again and being tucked into bed by my own mom.

  I turned the last page to reveal the inside back cover. As I did, something fell out. A picture.

  It showed a man on a mellow gold beach, bending down over a tiny kid in overalls who was stumbling through the sand.

  The man in the photo was Mr. Taylor, though it took me a few seconds of staring to see it. He had more hair on top of his head and no beard, but it was definitely him.

  As my eyes fell on the tiny kid he was hunched over, my heart came to a grinding halt.

  The child peered up at the camera with a mischievous smile. One of its hands was enveloped in Mr. Taylor’s.

  The other was clutching the flipper of a stuffed blue dolphin.

  A dolphin that was missing one eye.

  40

  When my heart finally began beating again, all the blood seemed to rush into my head, where I could hear it pounding.

  Minutes passed by as I stared at the picture, blinking, squinting. Trying to make sure that what I thought I was seeing was real. I even held Bluey up next to the picture to compare them. The dolphin in the photo was identical.

  Which meant that the kid in the picture had to be . . . me.

  “Why am I in a picture with Mr. Taylor?” I murmured aloud.

  The answer was right there, staring me in the face. It might as well have been painted in big bold letters across Sammy’s wall. I was Mr. Taylor’s family. That was the reason he had never talked about them. He must know who I was. He had known since Sammy had called my name on the night I broke into his house.

  That was probably the only reason he hadn’t turned us in to the police. Instead, he had told us to come back. So he could get to know his granddaughter.

  Because for some reason, Mom had kept us apart. She had lied to me about him dying in a car crash.

  Mr. Taylor wasn’t just some nice old man with interesting stories.

  “He’s my grandfather,” I whispered aloud. Saying the words made me even more certain they were true. They had to be. What else could explain the picture?

  I felt a momentary surge of joy so intense, it made me shiver. I had another grandfather. And he was the one person in the world I would pick to be my grandfather if I could.

  But then the questions came.

  Was this the secret Mom was keeping from me? But why? And why hadn’t Mr. Taylor told me the truth?

  Surely he would tell me now. Now that I knew who he was.

  I wasn’t going to give him any other choice.

  I sprang out of bed and headed for the door, tucking the picture into my pocket.

  I could hear the TV playing, and Uncle Amar snoring over it. How long had he been asleep?

  I bit my lip. I knew I shouldn’t leave. What if Uncle Amar woke up and found me gone? It would be much better just to wait until tomorrow afternoon to go see Mr. Taylor.

  Except that I couldn’t. I couldn’t wait a whole day to find out if he really was my grandfather.

  I won’t be gone long, I told myself. Uncle Amar will never even know.

  Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I was slipping through the front door and onto the porch.

  Music and laughter floated over the Isle like a cotton-candy cloud as I ran the distance to Mr. Taylor’s house, but the streets were deserted. Everyone was at the festival.

  Mr. Taylor wouldn’t be there, though. He had told us so.

  I broke into a sprint when his house came into view, racing down the path and up onto the porch stairs. I pounded against the door and waited, panting.

  There was no answer. Nothing stirred inside the house.

  My fingers hovered above the door handle for a second before pressing it down and pushing.

  Just like it had the first night, the door swung right open.

  The house was dim inside.

  “Hello?” I called. “Mr. Taylor?”

  I walked into the living room. No Mr. Taylor there or in the dining room. I tried the library next, but there was no sign of him there either. And it wasn’t just Mr. Taylor who was missing. Safira wasn’t in her cage, and Slug wasn’t in his usual spot on the living-room rug.

  Why would Mr. Taylor take Slug and Safira with him, unless he was going to be gone a long time?

  The house felt different now that I was sure there was no one here. The silence was eerie, and I wanted to leave, just like I had wanted to the night I broke in. But I made myself keep going, through the library and into the kitchen. If Mr. Taylor had left any clue as to where he had gone, I had to find it. I needed to see him, maybe more than I had ever needed to do anything in my life.

  The kitchen was tidy but old-fashioned. No dishes sat in the sink, no leftovers on the stove. I glanced at the ancient refrigerator, but it was a blank canvas. No birthday cards or appointment reminders.

  In the opposite corner of the room was a simple wooden table with four chairs around it. I wondered how long it had been since the chairs had had people to fill them. Then, with a start, I wondered if I had ever sat at this kitchen table. Maybe as a baby on my grandfather’s lap.

  I ran my hands over its grooves, like I might be able to feel my chubby baby hand reaching out to me from the past, doing the exact same thing.

  As I stared down, wondering about every scratch and scar in the wood, something else caught my eye. Some kind of markings on the wall behind the table.

  When I peered closer, I saw that they were little red horizontal lines. Next to each line, a label had been scrawled.

  “Miranda, 1 year, 29 inches,” read the line closest to the floor.

  I let out a little gasp. It sounded loud in the silent house. My fingers traced my name on the wall, then the red lines as they moved up. One for every six months until I turned three (39 inches). Then they stopped.

  So I had been in this house before this summer. But not since I was th
ree years old. Too young to remember it, even.

  Just as I was straightening my knees to stand, my gaze landed on the other wall that came together to form the corner behind the table. And I froze.

  There was another height chart drawn onto that wall, this one in blue.

  The lines on the second chart went higher than mine, so I barely had to bend to see what was written next to the top line.

  “Matthew, 7 years, 47 inches.”

  For the second time in an hour, my heart seemed to stop beating. I forced out a breath that shook my whole body. I closed my eyes and opened them. The name was still there.

  “I don’t understand,” I said aloud. “Who is Matthew?”

  But the empty house returned no answer.

  41

  I was not the only child who had been in this house, whose height had been lovingly recorded on this wall.

  There was someone else, a boy, who my grandfather had loved for seven whole years.

  “Matthew,” I whispered, the name trembling through my lips.

  I didn’t know any Matthews, and yet the name rang some distant bell, the same way the picture book had done. Had I known him? Was he Mr. Taylor’s grandchild, too? That would make him my cousin. Or a brother who had somehow been hidden from me my whole life. I dismissed that thought. Even after everything I had learned, I couldn’t believe that Mom and Dad would keep something like that from me.

  But if I had a cousin, Mom must have lied to me about her being an only child.

  Why, though? I wondered desperately. Why would she lie to me about so much? And what did it all have to do with Ben and Keeper’s Island?

  I looked back at the highest marking on the wall. It came up to my shoulder. Seven years. Matthew had been seven years old when the last mark was made.

  Either Matthew had stopped coming to this house after he turned seven, or he had never gotten any older.

  My gaze lingered on the name for one last second. Then I turned and ran, only stopping when I was safely out on the porch. I slumped down onto the bottom step, where I tried to make myself take deep breaths.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  I snapped my head up to see a woman standing over me. I recognized her as the woman who lived next door. She was wearing a bathrobe and slippers and held out a glass of water. “I saw you from my window,” she said in a nasal voice. “You’re shivering. Looks like you’ve come down with the same thing I have.”

  I took the water gratefully and drank it down in a couple of gulps. “Thanks,” I croaked.

  “You’re one of the kids who’s been helping over here, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing me curiously. “I’ve seen you from my window.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m glad. This place has been such a mess for so long. I tried to get the town to condemn it so it would get torn down, but they wouldn’t do it. Of course, now that Taylor’s back, I have to deal with the noise. That bird is like an ambulance siren at night.”

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked.

  “He left here just a little while ago,” the woman said, sniffling. “Looked like he was headed for the harbor. He probably wanted to watch the fireworks from his boat. It is nicer that way—you don’t have to fight the crowd. Though I’m not sure why he had to take so much stuff.”

  “Stuff?” I asked, stiffening. “What stuff?”

  She frowned at me. “Well, I didn’t ask. It’s not really my business what was in all those crates. Although whatever it was, it was heavy, because he had a job lifting them into his truck. I watched him haul things back and forth for a good ten minutes. Do you need me to call someone for you, dear? You really don’t look well.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.” I stood up and shoved the water glass back into her hands. “Thanks a lot.”

  I started off, then stopped. “Actually, you said . . . you said the man who lives here is named Taylor?”

  It had just occurred to me that if Mr. Taylor was my grandfather, he must have lied to us about his name. Mom’s maiden name was—

  “Crawford,” the woman said, at the very same time I thought it. “His name is Taylor Crawford.”

  She was looking at me funny now, saying words I wasn’t listening to. All I could hear was the name Crawford echoing in my head. So it was true, then. Mr. Taylor was my grandfather. And he hadn’t lied about his name. Not exactly.

  I started off again, running for the harbor.

  If he was just going to watch fireworks in his boat, why would he have packed so much stuff? Why would he have taken Slug and Safira?

  Maybe he was headed for Keeper’s Island.

  Or maybe leaving runs in the family, said a voice in my head.

  He wouldn’t do that, I thought. Would he?

  Then again, what if Sammy and Caleb had been right about him? What if he wasn’t the person I thought he was, and he had just come home to find the rest of the treasure? And now that he’d found it, he was taking off again?

  I had to catch him before he set sail.

  I tore down Oak Street, past the August Oak, its leaves rustling in the breeze like hands clapping me on, and past the darkened shops with Closed signs hanging on their doors. I didn’t stop when I felt a cramp biting into my side. I only slowed down enough to wriggle my phone from my pocket.

  I started typing a text to Sammy and Caleb.

  MEET ME AT THE HARBOR ASAP—HAVE TO

  But before I could finish, I felt myself go flying as I shot my hands out to break my fall. I had stumbled over the same square of sidewalk I had tripped on before.

  I could tell right away from the sting that I had scraped my knee really bad. Sure enough, when I stood up again, pricks of blood were beginning to appear all over it. My phone was lying a few feet away, the screen cracked into about a thousand slivers. When I tapped it, nothing happened. The phone was dead.

  I said a word I wasn’t supposed to say, then tucked what was left of the phone back into my pocket and started running again, pushing myself faster and faster. Finally the bridge over the harbor came into view. I hurled myself toward it, only stopping when I reached the guardrail.

  Then I stood, gasping for breath, looking out at the harbor. A large sailboat was just about to cross into the open water. It was hard to tell at first with twilight settling down on the Isle, but I could just make out the word “Albatross” painted on its side.

  My grandfather was already gone.

  I began to panic. What if he was leaving for another ten years? Or even for good this time?

  “Wait!” I bellowed. “Please, don’t go! COME BACK!”

  But I knew he couldn’t hear me. All he would be able to hear was the sound of waves crashing into the hull of his boat.

  I dropped my face, dripping with sweat, into my palms and let out a sob.

  He was gone, and I was alone.

  Unless . . .

  When I let my palms slide from my face, I found myself looking straight down at the sailing beach.

  Three little sailboats were just sitting there, bobbing merrily in the water.

  Could I do it? Could I sail after his boat all on my own? Small boats could be faster than larger ones, I knew. And Mr. Taylor didn’t have that much of a head start.

  Jason had been a good teacher. I knew I could sail after Mr. Taylor. I just didn’t know if I was brave enough to actually do it. Even looking at the water was making my throat feel like it was about to close up.

  Right then, the wind began to blow, tangling through my hair and whisking it toward the ocean.

  And I remembered how Mr. Taylor had told me that family was the most important thing of all.

  Even more important than fear.

  After all, what good was being brave if you weren’t brave when it really counted?

  I took a last deep breath. Then I was sprinting down to the beach, stuffing my arms through a life jacket, and unclipping a boat from its line.

  “I am Miranda,” I whispered as I pushed
it away from the beach, “brave and bold. I am Miranda, brave and bold.” I kept going until I was splashing waist deep in the water.

  Then I hauled myself up onto the boat, unfurled the sail, and headed for the open sea.

  42

  My toes clung to the slick plastic as I moved around the boat, putting in the daggerboard and securing the sheets. Salt water stung my scraped knee, which was still bleeding.

  When I was done, I pulled my life jacket so tight, I couldn’t breathe. I loosened it again, but only a bit.

  As the boat glided out of the bay and into the open water, a scream rose up from the back of my throat. The sound of it was drowned out by the first wave charging into the prow. I held tight to the mast, sure that the surge would capsize the boat and send me flying into the water. But the boat merely bobbed up and down as it plowed on.

  After that, my breath became steadier, and I pulled the sail tighter, urging the little boat on faster.

  I looked back at August Isle then. A wreath of rosy lights around the Ferris wheel blinked to life as I watched, and I could just catch the sound of a giddy scream and a few cheerful notes of music over the hum of the ocean.

  If something happened to the boat and I fell into the water, would someone hear my cries and come save me? Or would I just float until I couldn’t float any longer? Or until . . .

  Images of man-eating sharks filled my head.

  I pushed them away, instead imagining my guardian sea turtle pedaling her flippers below my boat, keeping watch over me, ready to swim me to safety if I fell in.

  I did not look back again.

  I felt the first bit of hope when I began to gain on Mr. Taylor. Every couple of minutes, I would realize that his boat had gotten bigger. Closer.

  But then I lost sight of it as it sailed around the far side of Keeper’s Island. Was he stopping? Or sailing out to sea? It was one thing to sail from August Isle to Keeper’s Island. It was another to chase Mr. Taylor out into the endless horizon. If I couldn’t catch him before he passed the island, I would have to turn back.

  As I rounded Keeper’s Island, I saw the Keep Out signs Jason had told us about, posted in the water all around it. I squinted at the island through the last scraps of daylight. The trees were ghostly shadows, the beach a gloomy stretch of gray.