“Excuse me?” I say. The women have brought in pitchers of water and begin rinsing vegetables in a basin. They don’t turn around, so I say it again, louder this time.
One woman pivots slightly. She looks at me, furrows her brow, and goes back to work. “Asku?” I try, hoping his name will catch. The woman looks up, but then she goes back to what she’s doing.
There is a deck off the kitchen that looks down on the ocean, and I wander outside. I try to find the place we came in. I think maybe there are markers, now, of the crash—maybe something has washed up to shore. But just like a few days ago, I’m met with only blank sand.
One of the women beckons me inside and sets a plate of food down in front of me. It’s modest. An apple—rotted. It needs Noah’s touch. A root vegetable and a patty of some sort of grain. I eat the patty and vegetable in minutes. The women watch me silently, and it’s not until I’m finished that I recognize the looks on their faces—they’re hungry, too. I hold the apple out to them, but they just shake their heads.
“Please,” I say. “Take it.”
One of the women bows her head and comes forward. She takes the apple gently and cuts it in half. The two women turn their backs as they eat.
I bring my plate over to them. “Thank you,” I say. They wipe their hands and then take my plate and look me up and down. My eyes follow theirs down and I remember, suddenly, that I’m practically naked. I cover my stomach with my hands and attempt an apology, but one of the women motions for me to follow her.
We leave the kitchen and turn right down a small hallway at the end of which is the bedroom. It’s beautiful—a canopy bed sits in the middle of the room with white sheets and woven blankets. There is a small room off to the side with a basin in it, and the woman nods for me to get in.
I take off my clothes slowly, aware that I am naked with her. Embarrassed at how dirty I am. But the moment I first step into the basin all thoughts of shame melt away. The water is warm, and as I sink lower, I notice it’s spiked with herbs—rosemary and lavender and the faintest hint of peppermint. I close my eyes.
I feel hands on my scalp, and I lean my head back so it’s resting on the ledge of the tub. I open my eyes and see a scrub brush floating on the surface. I pick it up and start running it over my arms and legs. The dirt comes off immediately. I keep scrubbing. My hands, fingernails, the bottom of my feet. The woman pours water over my soapy hair until it’s clean.
Then she holds a blanket out for me. I know I’m supposed to leave, but the water is so warm, and it smells so heady, I can’t bring myself to stand.
I do, though, and my legs nearly give out beneath me. My lids are so heavy I think I may fall asleep right on the floor. She wraps me in the soft fabric and leads me to the bed. I dive into it, so grateful for the opportunity to not be standing anymore. It is so soft and so warm.
I am barely able to utter “Thank you” before I’m pulled into sleep.
I dream I’m back at Ed’s house. We’re sitting in his room, doing homework. I’m lying on his bed, flopped on my stomach, highlighting some passage from a history textbook.
“You’re wonderful,” he’s saying. “I love you.”
“You’re biased,” I say. I stick the pen between my teeth and look up at him. His brown hair is falling into his eyes, and he’s wearing his blue button-down, the one I bought him for his birthday last year. “But I love you, too.”
He smiles. He bends down next to me and turns me over. He takes the pen out of my lips and kisses me. His hands trail up my sides. I breathe out into his ear. “I’m so lucky,” he says before I pull him down closer.
Then we are flying. But not metaphorically, not like on our love, or whatever, like really, seriously, in the sky. My arms are wings, and as I spread them out, I soar higher and higher. I can feel the sun on my face, the wind at my back. I’m high above the earth, but I’m not afraid. I know I have everything I need to land safely somewhere.
Ed is next to me, but then I realize he’s not flying with me. “What’s the matter?” I ask, because he’s dragging behind, and the next thing I know he reaches out for me. He’s pulling on me now. I can feel his weight, so heavy it’s hard to stay in the sky.
“Help me,” he says.
I reach to pull him onto my back, but before I can he’s already falling. The last thing I hear before I wake up is the sound of his scream as he plummets down to earth.
Chapter Five
When I wake up, it takes me a moment to remember where I am. I bolt upright. I rub my eyes to try to get a clearer picture. But then I remember. The plane crash. The beach. The tribesmen. Ed was the dream. This is reality.
“Hey.”
Noah is in the doorway. He’s cleaned up, too, and he’s dressed in loose cotton pants and a top.
He sits down on the edge of my bed, and I pull the covers up to my chest. I realize I slept with no clothes on, and I’m naked under here.
“Noah…” I start. “What’s going on?”
He puts his head in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he says. I loop the blanket around me underneath the covers and crawl toward him. I put my hand on his shoulder. He lifts his face up to meet mine.
“Noah,” I say. “You have to tell me what you know. You have to tell me everything. I remember passing out at that river. I was sick and—”
“I couldn’t heal you,” Noah finishes. “I tried, but I couldn’t.” I see his jaw working. “Asku showed up. I know you met him. He fed you herbs, and you fell asleep. Asku asked me to go with him.” Noah’s eyes look into mine, and I see the pain there. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to trust him.”
I nod, thinking about Asku’s smile in the forest yesterday. About how readily I followed him.
“He brought us to that clearing. I laid you down—” Noah looks at my bare shoulders. I pull the covers up farther. “And then the other men were there. And—”
“Noah, you speak their language. You have powers here.”
He nods. He maneuvers himself off the bed, and I sit back against the headboard. He starts to pace. “I know it sounds crazy,” he says.
“I’m on an island in a bed with no cuts after a plane crash,” I say. “It’s going to sound crazy. I get that.”
He inhales, looks at me. “I’m just trying to figure out where to start.”
“The beginning,” I say.
He blows some air out of his lips. “My aunt had always said that my father came from somewhere else. She used to tell me these stories about an island, about his history. How he left when he was my age, and found his way to the mainland. How he met her sister and married her. My parents never said anything like this to me when I was young, but when they died and I went to live with Teresa, she said my mom used to tell her about his history. Neither one of them thought it was real.” He stops, looks at me. “You know my dad wasn’t the most reliable guy.”
I remember how Noah used to spend nights at Ed’s when we were younger. About how his mother worked and his dad would disappear for days at a time.
“What was the story?” I press on.
Noah takes a breath. “My father was a descendent of an ancient tribe of Native Americans. The Sooike. They were smart, driven by shamanism. They were the most evolved tribe in the magical arts. The legend was that they had a supreme connection to the land. That it would do things for them. It would allow them shelter where others could not find it.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. I try to read his face—I have the feeling that what isn’t in his words is written there.
“When the settlers came and forced tribes out of the Pacific Northwest, the Sooike moved to an island. They knew it was just a matter of time before their culture was forgotten, and they didn’t want that, so they called on their connection and sealed the island shut to keep out the new world. With the exception of my father’s escape—leaving, whatever—it has been sealed for over a hundred and fifty years.”
“Oh my God.” My heart is beating wild
ly. “Noah…” I sit up and cover my mouth with my hand.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re on that island.”
I run my hands over my forehead. “But how did we get here? Where are Maggie and Ed and everyone else?”
Noah’s eyes falter, and for a moment I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking, what has to be true. They’re not here because they’re not anywhere. They’re gone.
“I don’t know for sure,” he says. “All I know is that the plane was going down and I grabbed your hand.”
I feel his gaze on my body.
“The island—it recognized me. These are my people. I’m—that’s why I was able to…” His eyes trace up the blanket to where my ribs are.
“Heal me,” I whisper.
He swallows. “Yeah.”
“But why couldn’t you after? How come you can speak this language?”
Noah pauses. “The language is—I know it because my dad taught it to me.” He looks at me, trying to gauge my reaction. I keep my face still, and he continues. “When I was younge, he used to teach me these words, phrases. It was like a game—a little joke we shared. When I got older, I thought he was a quack. But now I know he was teaching me my—this language.”
This whole thing is ridiculous. So absurd I don’t know whether to hysterically laugh or cry. “We need to find Ed and Maggie,” I say. I sit up in a rush. I feel frantic.
“Hey,” Noah says. He comes to kneel on the bed, and then he’s wrapping his arms around me. I feel his hands on my bare back—strong and warm—and even with all that has happened, my heart starts racing. Maybe I should be scared of him. But I can’t be. Because he saved me.
And how many times have I thought about being with him like this? How many times have I shut down the thought? This is the most contact we’ve had in nearly two years, and I mentally kick myself for feeling anything good. Anything that’s not total devastation. “You’re going to be okay,” he says. He whispers it into my ear. “I promise. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
The same thing he said to me on the beach. I close my eyes and remember the touch of his hands. How he took me from the brink of death and brought me solidly back to life.
I pull back. I rub my hand over my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say.
Noah runs a hand through his hair. “They were at the front of the plane,” he says. “They’d have radio control. They’d have a way to communicate and get help. If we’re alive, they might be, too.”
My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them away. I try to go back to the story. To focus on what we know. And then it hits me.
“If the island is sealed…”
Noah’s gaze meets mine. “No one knows we’re here.” He swallows. The next part is painful to get out, I can tell. “And there is no way to leave.”
I exhale. “But we got here,” I say. “If we got here, we should be able to…”
“They told me it opened to protect me,” he says. “It won’t do it again.”
I tug the blanket around me and get out of bed. Now I pace while Noah sits. “But your father!” I say. I practically scream it. “He left. If the story is true, he left.”
Noah nods. “I know,” he says. “But I don’t know how he did it.”
“Did you ask?” It’s accusatory.
“Of course I asked!” he says. “Do you think I…” His voice trails off.
Want to be stuck here with you. I mentally finish the words for him.
I swallow. Look away. “We’ll figure out how he did it,” I say. “We have to.”
Noah doesn’t say anything, and I keep on. “Noah, my sister is out there. Ed is out there.”
This time he looks right at me, and when he does, it makes the air freeze around me. “I know,” he says.
At that moment one of the women from earlier appears in the doorway. Noah greets her with that same language—but this time the words seem to come easier than they did in the clearing.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Sa-we,” Noah says.
“Sa-we,” I echo.
The woman nods. She holds out a mug to me, and I take it. It smells like roots and vines, and I drink it quickly.
“Thank you,” I say.
Sa-we takes me into the bathing room and gives me something to put on—a canvas dress and pants. I see the remains of my clothes from the crash, clean and lay out in the corner.
As I make my way into the kitchen, I see the sun shining. The ocean looks spectacularly, impossibly blue, and I think how remarkable, how unbelievable, it is that no one has ever been here. That no person besides the tribe knows this place exists.
Noah and I eat on the sundeck. A modest meal like yesterday. We don’t talk much. There is too much to say. I also know that Noah isn’t a guy of a ton of words. He used to take speech when we were younger—eight, maybe. When his parents were still alive. I remember because the speech therapist would pull him out of our homeroom and all the kids would tease him until Ed told them to shut up. Even then people respected Ed. Even then he protected Noah.
“I’m going to meet with the chief today,” Noah says. “Maybe he can tell me more about what my role in all of this is.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Maybe he has more news about the crash.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say.
Noah sets a hand on my knee. I suck in my breath. We both look at it, but he doesn’t take it off. “You can’t,” he says. “They already don’t want you here.”
“So why am I?” I move away from his hand. I stand. “Why did they let me live? Why not just spear me? Or give me some magical dose of poison and not let anyone heal me?”
Noah knits his hands together. He looks out over the ocean. “Because you’re with me,” he says.
That’s all. “Because you’re with me.”
I glance sideways at him, and I know we’re remembering the same thing. We’re calling up the same memory. Sophomore formal. Ed had to cancel and go to some leadership seminar. He told me I should go anyway. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be there with him. But I had a dress, and Miss Opportunity and my dad were making such a fuss about the whole thing—“You’ll cherish these memories forever!”—so I went.
Jessica Eldridge stopped me at the door. She was checking people in and wanted to know why Ed wasn’t with me. “You’re alone?” she said. Her look was dripping with pity and glee—I could read it. Predictable. Like you could ever hold on to Ed.
I heard someone behind me. In the next moment Noah was there. He was dressed in a suit. To this day, I have no idea where he got it from, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he put his hand down on the check-in table and said, “She’s not alone. She’s with me.”
I’ll never forget the way Jessica’s jaw unhinged.
He put his hand on my waist as we made our way into the dance. Girls eyed him up and down, but girls were always eyeing Noah up and down. Ever since we hit puberty. I knew what they saw. I saw it, too. I tried not to, but I did. His insanely perfect abs. The rippling muscles of his shoulders and arms. His piercing blue eyes.
I knew Noah hooked up with girls. I’d hear Ed asking about them when they thought I wasn’t listening. But Noah had never had a girlfriend. It was the one thing that kept me sane. The one thing that kept the insanely inappropriate jealousy at bay.
Which was crazy. I had no idea what these girls meant to him. And besides, jealousy wasn’t my right. I was with Ed. I loved Ed. But that night at sophomore formal was different. Ed was away, and it felt, somehow, when we walked in together, when we got drinks, when he asked me to dance—pressing me up close against his chest—that we were living in some kind of alternate reality, one where Ed wasn’t just not there, but maybe didn’t exist at all.
Noah blew off Alison Sussberg and Kendall Highdell, and when he drove me home that night, I can’t ever remember being so nervous. I sat in the passenger seat of his pickup, my hands in my lap, my heart hammering against my ribs like a priso
ner at his bars, screaming to be set free.
“I had a good time tonight,” I said. “Thanks for filling in.”
“Thanks for letting me.”
I turned to him. I don’t know how I let the words slip out. Probably because I had been holding them tightly, pinned down in my throat since the night Ed had asked me to be his girlfriend, and tonight my grip wasn’t so steadfast: “I liked being there with you.”
Noah set his hands on the wheel. He blew some air out of his lips. “August…” he started, but I just shook my head. I opened the door before he could say anything else. I ran from the car, into my house, and we never talked about it again. We never really talked about much again.
“She’s with me.”
“Because you’re with me.”
I never have been. I’ve never been with him. Not until now. As we sit looking out over the ocean, the memory hanging between us like it’s projected on a television screen, something else starts to grow, bloom. The fear, the anxiety, is replaced a small bit with anticipation.
Hope.
Chapter Six
A week goes by.
Noah and I share a house, but he sleeps on the mats in the living room. We have breakfast on the deck, then Noah meets with the chief. He says he’s learning the language, but I know they’re talking about more than that—a lot more. But he doesn’t offer, and I can’t push him. At least one thing is clear: We haven’t found a way off the island yet.
It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped trying.
The week that I went with Ed’s family to Mexico was also our one-year anniversary. It was mostly a crazy family vacation—three little brothers does not allow for a lot of alone time. But Ed took me down to the beach after dinner one night. He held a package in one hand and my fingers in the other all the way down to the water’s edge. He was wearing this really cheesy shirt I bought him at the hotel gift shop. I remember thinking that he still looked crazy handsome even in embroidered flowers. He was the only guy I knew who would wear that stupid gag shirt just because I had bought it for him.
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