by Jen Blood
Jenny raised her hands, stood, and stepped away from me. I staggered to my feet and spit blood on the rocks. I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. Below us, Einstein continued to bark with rabid intensity.
“You okay, champ?” Monty asked. Diggs remained conspicuously silent.
“Fine,” I said. “I was just about to finish her off.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Jenny said. I went in for a second round, but Diggs stopped me with an arm around my stomach. Meanwhile, Monty waved the gun toward Jenny and nodded her back another step.
The plastic container I’d taken from the rock had fallen to the ground, still sealed tight. I stooped to pick it up.
I’m not sure exactly what happened next. I heard Monty shout, and a second later Jenny shoved me aside, grabbed the container, and bolted for the woods. I started to run after her but Diggs grabbed my arm before I’d gotten two steps, nearly wrenching my shoulder out of its socket in the process.
“What are you doing? She’s getting away!”
Monty ran past us, gun still in hand, moving at an impressive clip considering the darkness and the fact that we were twenty feet up on a hunk of granite.
“Let him go after her,” Diggs said. “You’ve done enough tonight.”
“The hell I have. She has the box.”
“What box?” he asked. “What in hell are you doing out here?”
I thought of everything I’d remembered tonight, everything I’d seen…everything I suddenly knew about my past. Instead of answering, I pulled my arm from Diggs’ grasp and stalked toward the edge of the rock, mouth still bleeding, and half limped and half slid back down the steep face to the ground below. I untied Einstein and knelt to reassure him I was alive. Diggs was a few steps behind me, still quiet.
Monty returned a minute or two later, gasping for breath. I wasn’t surprised to see that he was empty handed—no box, no Jenny.
“She got away,” he said. “Sorry. The bitch is fast.”
“It’s all right,” I said numbly. “I wouldn’t have done any better. How did you guys find me?”
“Monty saw you on the monitor,” Diggs said. “He came up and woke me. Imagine my surprise.”
“Sorry,” I said. Diggs kind of grunted.
“We should head back,” Monty said. “That run warmed me up, but it looks like you could use a medic, princess.”
He started back on the path. I hesitated. “Can you just give me a second?” I asked Diggs.
I didn’t wait for him to answer before I dove back into the Crack. This time, I knew what I was looking for: I climbed up to the rock shelf, shoved my hand in, and retrieved a bundle of plastic-wrapped papers I’d pulled from the box before I handed the thing over to Jenny.
Diggs didn’t say a word when I emerged this time.
He went in ahead of me when we got back to the house. I found him in the kitchen, putting water on the stove for tea. Cameron was with him. Monty was nowhere in sight.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Cameron demanded. I’d stuffed the bundle from the Crack down the back of my ski pants. I made no move to take it out.
“I went for a walk,” I said.
“And you didn’t think to wake someone? To tell someone where you were going?”
“It’s been a rough few days. I figured they could use the sleep.” The cold had frozen the blood on my mouth, and my lip had already swollen impressively. I wiggled each of my teeth with my tongue; none were loose. Always a silver lining.
Cameron shook his head and walked away. Diggs stood at the stove waiting for the water to boil. I considered telling him the whole watched-pot deal, but figured I’d be bludgeoned for it so I kept quiet.
After Cameron had paced around the kitchen a couple times, he pulled up a chair and sat across from me. “What happened?” he asked.
“I ran into your daughter,” I said. “We had a nice chat.”
“Can you be serious for a moment, please?” he said. “What the hell were you doing out there? Did you remember something?”
I hesitated. The tea kettle whistled; Diggs removed it from the stove.
“You went to that crevice in the rocks, didn’t you? That’s where Monty said he saw you on the monitors. What were you doing there?”
Another second of hesitation. Cameron was as tense as I’d ever seen him. He leaned in toward me. For a second, I thought he might grab me. I flashed on my father, inexplicably—his hand digging into the wound in my side that last night in Coba. I shifted my chair away from him.
“Back off,” Diggs said. Cameron looked up, like he’d forgotten Diggs was even there. “It was a stupid move, but she’s hurt. She’ll tell you everything after I get her cleaned up.”
“We don’t have time for games,” Cameron said. He didn’t move.
“We have five minutes for me to make sure she’s still got all her teeth and she’s not about to lose anything to frostbite,” Diggs said, intractable. “Take five. Or better yet, go find your lunatic of a daughter before she kills anybody else.”
To my surprise, Cameron stood. He brushed past Diggs, seething. He paused at the door. “When she ran, it looked like Jenny had something with her. She took that from you? From that rock?”
“No,” I lied, no longer sure who to trust. Jenny had said he wasn’t telling me everything. Why? “I don’t know what she had. I told you, I went to get some air. I remembered how we used to go through there as kids; I just wanted to check it out.”
It was obvious he knew I was lying. “If you’re going to pull something like that again, I’d appreciate it if you told one of us,” Cameron said. “I don’t care who. But take someone other than the dog with you, if you decide you have to roam this island in the middle of the night again.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Excellent.” He redirected his focus to Diggs. “Patch her up. Then I’d like to ask a few more questions.”
Diggs acknowledged the comment with a nod. He sat down in the seat Cameron had vacated, while Cameron shrugged on his jacket and went out the backdoor, leaving us alone.
Diggs dipped a rag in hot water and handed it to me. Sort of shoved it at me, actually. No playing doctor tonight, then.
“I know you’re pissed,” I said.
He went to the backdoor and locked it, then stalked to the door leading from the kitchen to the corridor and blocked it with a chair.
“Pissed doesn’t begin to cover it,” he said. He came back, started to sit, then stood again. He paced the room.
I dabbed at my lip, winced, and set the cloth down. I was still in my ski pants and parka, shivering beneath all the layers. The sides of the bundle I’d retrieved from the Crack dug into my back.
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” I said.
“Neither do I.” He was on the opposite end of the room. “Do you have any idea how stupid what you did out there is? Going out there in the middle of the night? Even without J., it would be an idiotic move this time of year. With them, though… Jesus, Solomon. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, all right?” I said, my own temper flaring. “I just want to figure this out. I couldn’t get to sleep, and I knew… I just knew there was something there.”
“That bundle you took from the rock,” he said. “Are you planning on showing me what it is, or am I not in on the big secret, either?”
I reached behind me and awkwardly extracted the bundle—a stack of letters, photos, and cards in a disintegrating plastic bag. I set them on the table. Diggs just stood there, watching me. Waiting for an invitation I couldn’t bring myself to extend.
Finally, he came to the table and reached for the letter at the top of the stack.
Without thinking, I lay my hand over it. Pulled everything back toward me.
Diggs just stood there. He was angry, without question—I don’t know if I’d ever seen him so angry. The hurt was the killer, though.
“Fin
e. Fuck it. You want to do this alone? Do it alone. Give a shout when you’re ready to actually talk to me.”
He walked out without another word. The door slammed behind him. I was alone with my ghosts once more.
Chapter Seventeen
Dear Erin,
I know you won’t ever get this. Or maybe someday you will—maybe someday you’ll remember. You just come to the Crack, and it’ll all be here waiting for you. Make it through the Crack, and I’ll live forever. Allie will live forever. No matter what happens, we’ll be right here. Nobody else knows—Isaac hasn’t found out about our spot. He still tries to get me to tell him. I think the only reason I’m still alive is he’s too afraid of what I have out here. If I die before he finds this, he’s screwed.
He’ll kill me one day, though, just like he did Allie. I’m glad you got away. I don’t know what they told you. I tried to find you—I really did. I would have saved you, if I could. I’m sorry I let them hurt you.
Turns out I can’t save anybody. Not you. Not Allie. Not me. I try to get my mom to listen. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. You got away. Allie did too, in a way. Sometimes I wish he’d just kill me too. Get it over with.
I have to go, somebody’s coming. I miss you. I hope I’ll see you again someday.
Your friend,
Will
The letter was dated October, 1989—a month after my mother took me away from Payson Isle. There were more than a dozen letters here, all addressed to me, dated all the way up to a day before the fire. That wasn’t all that was there, though. Will had documented everything. Photos of Isaac, notes from the other kids, descriptions of Isaac’s conversations that Will had overheard. The kid was an investigative reporter waiting to happen—he didn’t miss anything. He wrote about Zion Ashmont coming out to the island; about how obsessed Isaac got with him.
The new kid is crazy. He keeps telling us he’s Jesus—that we’re all going to die, and he’s going to live. Him and Isaac. I shoved him down the other day and beat the snot out of him. I know it was wrong. I’m just so tired of all of it. Then Isaac let Zion beat me till my back was bloody. Took that stupid puppet Isaac gave me. I hate them all. I’m so glad you got away, Erin. I just wish I had too.
It was the photos that brought it all home, though.
Every memory locked in my head came spilling out as I looked through them.
I was in bed, Einstein beside me. The lights were low, the darkness outside very, very dark. It was four a.m. My lip was swollen, and I’d been too intent on reading the letters to worry about cleaning the blood on my face. I’d deal with it all tomorrow—or today. New Year’s Eve. I had no clue what to expect anymore; no clue what Jenny might have gotten away with in that plastic container.
The door to the bedroom opened. Diggs came in. As far as I knew, Jack was asleep. Cameron still wasn’t talking to me. And Diggs looked…lost. Hopeless, in a way I’d never seen him before.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
I set the letters down and looked at my hand, tracing patterns into my palm. “We should probably talk.”
“Probably so.” He sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh, and shook his head. “Honestly, kid? I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried listening; I’ve tried steamrolling you; I’ve tried being patient and just waiting for you to come to me. I’m here, Erin. I’m not going anywhere. But we keep coming back to this same brick wall with you.”
“I’m trying.”
“You keep saying that, and then you keep pulling the same shit.” His voice was surprisingly even, like at this point he was more baffled than pissed off. “Why would you not wake me, if you were going out there tonight? How the hell does that make an ounce of sense? At the very least, you knew Jenny was out there earlier.”
“I wasn’t thinking.” My voice broke. I hated how cool he was, how totally unreachable. At least when he was angry, I knew what to do. Lacking any other possible solution, I pushed the pile I’d pulled from the Crack toward him. “These are it. Read them. These are my childhood, apparently. Whatever the hell that means.”
My eyes watered. I took a second to get on an even keel before I spoke again, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. I bumped my lip in the process, and my eyes watered that much more. “Ow. Shit.” I sort of laughed and sort of cried and tried to find at least some semblance of dignity.
Diggs shook his head at me. “God, you’re a mess,” he said. He pushed everything aside for the moment and scooted closer to me. Gently pushed my hair back behind my ears and held my cheek in his cool, soothing hand. “What the hell am I gonna do with you, Solomon?”
A couple of tears broke loose and tracked down my cheek. “I trust you more than anyone in my life. More than anyone I’ve ever known,” I said. “It scares the shit out of me, how much I trust you. I’m not holding out on you because of that.”
“Then why?”
He sat back, giving me space. I scratched the back of my head and tried to figure out how to explain the cluster fuck that was my past. “I spent so many years telling you the fairytale version—what I thought was real. And now I’ve got this brain-meld thing in my head, scrambling everything. But if I tell you the whole truth…” I stopped again. My vision blurred.
Diggs slid his hand over mine.
“What?” he asked. “You think what happened changes who you are now? I know you, kid. I know you better than myself—every flaw, every hair trigger, every obsession. This,” he nodded to the letters, “doesn’t change a goddamn thing. The only thing that changes any of it is if you keep shutting me out.”
“I still don’t know how to talk about it,” I said.
“That’s okay.”
I hesitated. Swallowed past the heart-sized lump in my throat. “But I’ll try. You want to know what happened to my friend? What Isaac did?” I kept myself carefully apart from him as I settled in bed. Diggs took off his shoes and his sweatshirt, and got under the covers beside me. “This is what I remember.”
◊◊◊◊◊
“He’s getting closer,” Will whispers to me.
I don’t know how long we’ve been hiding in the Crack, but it’s getting dark outside. Isaac keeps talking to us, standing out there somewhere, waiting for us. He quotes Bible verses to us. Tells us how families don’t keep secrets from each other. My legs are numb from holding myself up so long, while we stay suspended toward the top of the rocks. Allie is leaning on Will—he’s practically holding her up, to keep her from falling down that long stretch to the bottom of the Crack. She’s stopped crying, but I can hear her sniffle when it gets quiet.
It’s been quiet too long now.
“I think he left,” Allie says.
“Sssh,” Will says. “He didn’t. He’s still out there, I can tell. He’s waiting for us.”
“We can’t stay here forever,” she whispers.
“Allie, be quiet,” I hiss. “We’ll go when it’s safe.”
“If we just tell him…”
I see Will take hold of her arm. He looks at her, and I imagine I can see his eyes glow in the dark. “We can’t tell him anything, Al,” he whispers. I’ve never seen him so serious. “He can’t find out. This is our place, not his. You have to promise.”
I’m surprised when she doesn’t start to cry again. Instead, she nods. She’s serious, too. “I won’t tell. I promise.”
We wait forever. It’s dark before Will finally agrees that we’re safe, Isaac must have given up. We shimmy back down the rock. My legs have never hurt so bad. I have scrapes on my knees, scrapes on my elbows. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad when he sees.
When we get to the bottom, Allie’s the first one out. She’s been quiet for a while now. I know Will thinks she’ll go off and tell her mom or Isaac where we’ve been, but I know better. She might be a pain sometimes, but Allie never breaks a promise. If she said she won’t tell, I know our secret’s safe. Allie runs ahead on the path, but I stay behind and walk with Will. He sli
ps his hand into mine.
A second later, he pulls me back from the path.
“We’ve been looking for you, Allie,” I hear Isaac say. He’s using his friendly voice—the one that makes you think you’re his best friend. “Come on along. You missed dinner.”
Will holds me back.
“Where are your friends?” Isaac asks.
“I was out here alone,” Allie lies. She’s the worst liar I’ve ever met. Her voice shakes, and she won’t look you in the eye when she’s lying. I think that’s part of the reason she doesn’t do it much.
“Oh, come on,” Isaac says. He’s still using his friendly voice. “I saw you leave with Will and Erin a little earlier. Where’ve you been all this time? You’re getting so grown up these days—spending time with boys. Keeping secrets. What will I do with you, Alison Tate?”
She giggles when he uses her whole name. There’s a lump in my stomach. Will won’t let go of my hand.
“I was with Erin,” Allie finally confesses. “And Will, for a little while. We were just taking a walk.”
“I’m not comfortable with you two being alone with Will,” Isaac says. “He’s a troubled boy. There are things I haven’t told you about him.”
“Like what?” Allie asks.
Will’s hand tightens around mine.
“I don’t know if I should say,” Isaac says. I don’t like him talking about Will like this, but I can’t help but want to hear what Isaac’s saying. “Tell you what,” he continues. “How about I tell you a secret, and you tell me your secret.”
“I don’t have a secret,” Allie says immediately.
“I think you do,” Isaac says. His voice is more dangerous now. Not so friendly. “The secret of where Will disappears sometimes. I think he took you there today.”
“We just played in the woods.”
“I don’t believe you, Alison. You know it’s not right to lie. God doesn’t save liars—no matter how pretty they might be.”
Will and I creep forward, getting closer and closer. My heart is pounding. Will’s hand is still in mine, holding me back.