Orphan Island Read online

  Everything was happening too quickly.

  “Welcome,” Ben said. “Welcome to our island.” Then he stepped back and it was Jinny’s turn.

  She knew what she had to do. What she was supposed to do. If only she could make her feet listen to her head. This all felt so familiar. So much like the day that Deen had left. One year ago. Everything on the island was ruled by this moment, measured by proximity, either before or after, to this moment. Jinny hated it, hated the boat. Still, she knew she had to step forward. It was time. It was her time.

  Jinny stepped. She turned, as Deen had turned, to face the others. This was her chance, to face them all. The line of them. Sad faces, even Eevie’s, even after last night. Nothing else mattered now but that they were her people. Her family. So familiar. And she had to leave them. Jinny felt the cramp inside her turn to a sharp pain beneath her ribs, as if she was a fish being gutted with a small, sharp knife. As if everything inside her might spill out onto the sand at her feet.

  Jinny took another deep breath. “I guess . . . it’s time,” she said. Her voice caught in her throat, trembled. The roof of her mouth felt strained, unnatural. It was hard to speak, but she forced out more words. “I guess I have to go now.”

  Ess made a choking noise. “Jinny, you hafta go?”

  Jinny closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and nodded. “I do.”

  There was a sob, a torn sob as Ess brought her hands up to cover her face. “No! Why?”

  Jinny began to shudder. She couldn’t handle it. This was too much. She looked away from Ess, up at Ben. Ben would be okay. Ben was safe. Ben would get her into the boat. Somehow.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Jinny, still staring at Ben, though she was speaking to Ess. “It’s too late now to explain, Ess, but Ben will help you. Okay?”

  Ben nodded gently.

  Ess whimpered.

  “I’ll miss you so much,” said Jinny in a shaky voice. “All of you. I’ll miss the stories and the fire and the fishing and the prairie and the games we play. I’ll miss everything.” Her eyes filled and her heart broke. “Everything, everything, everything.”

  Ess spoke. “Stay,” she said faintly.

  It was like an echo. And in a flash, Jinny was back a year, back on the beach, and the boat was there. The day was gray and overcast, and it was Deen leaving, and Jinny calling out, “Stay!” Only—Deen was leaving anyway. He wasn’t listening to her. He wasn’t doing what she asked. He was angry, until suddenly he was gone.

  “Stay?” Jinny repeated after Ess in a whisper. She found the girl’s eyes, and held them with her own. Then Jinny looked down at the line of them, all of them. She forced herself to make eye contact with each of them, as best she could. One by one by one.

  Ben, kind Ben. Holding her warmly in his gaze, even though she’d let him down. He nodded at her, and it was too much to bear. Jinny’s eyes darted to Sam. The little boy stood staring at his feet. He was sniffing wetly, and Jinny was certain he was thinking of Deen. Sam still remembered this moment. Too clearly.

  Next Jinny glanced at Joon, her eyes on the horizon. Pretending not to care. Impatient for this to be done. Because it was hard. Jinny understood that feeling.

  The two boys together of course, the brave loud hunters, shoulders squared, chins up. Jak wouldn’t cry unless Oz did. Jinny flashed them a quick smile. She moved on to Nat. The girl’s eyes were closed, hands clasped behind her back. Jinny knew Nat would miss her but also that she’d accept this, as she accepted everything.

  And then there was Eevie. Jinny looked at Eevie and was surprised to see there were tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed at Jinny. She buried her face in her hands.

  Last of all Jinny shifted her gaze back to Ess. She took in the small face framed by an unruly dark halo. Ess’s chin was shaking as she cried. Her arms were crossed over her chest, but through her tears, she stared at Jinny, unblinking. Waiting, like the rest of them. Though she didn’t understand—how could she? Jinny hadn’t prepared her. Jinny hadn’t done her job for Ess any more than she had for Ben. She’d let them down, and now she’d abandon them. Sail away. Because she didn’t know how to do anything else. Because nobody had ever done anything else.

  Jinny stepped forward and leaned down to hug Ess. She felt the thin bones shaking in her arms. She let go quickly, turned. She couldn’t bear this anymore. She couldn’t. . . .

  Jinny wished she could undo the moment. She owed Ess more than this. She owed Ess a real good-bye, an explanation. At least that much. If only there was time. If she had time, she could do this better. But there was no time left. And now Ess would forget her. Ess would forget. Jinny would be forgotten.

  She turned to face the boat.

  She took a step.

  She took another step.

  She leaned forward and stared out at the water beyond the boat. The cold water shrouded in mist. Full of dark fins like knives, vast creatures beneath. Jinny shivered.

  And then . . . before she knew what she was doing, she had pushed the boat sharply away. Out into the water. Empty.

  “Jinny?” asked Ben in his measured voice.

  Jinny ignored him, kept her back turned to him. Watched the green boat drift for a moment.

  “Jinny?” Ben repeated himself. “Are you okay?”

  Still Jinny ignored him. She was watching the boat, waiting for it to wander, to float out to sea. “Shhh,” she said, a finger to her lips.

  The problem was that the boat didn’t drift. It sat for a moment a few feet away, as though confused. Then it zipped right back up to the shore beside Jinny’s legs and gave a gentle nudge, bumped her shin softly. “Ouch,” she whispered.

  “Jinny?” asked Ben one more time.

  Now Jinny grabbed the sides of the boat forcefully and stomped out into the water until it was up to her knees. She pulled the boat along with her as she waded farther, until the water was up to her waist, until her tunic pockets filled with air. She pushed the boat again, as hard as she could, away from her.

  The green boat tried to double back again. Jinny grabbed it and gave it a shake. “Go!” she shouted at the boat. “Go home!”

  “Jinny,” called Ben again from the shore. “This is crazy! What are you doing?”

  “I’m staying!” said Jinny, slapping the side of the boat wetly, sending a splash up into the air. “Can’t you see? I’m not going. Except the stupid boat isn’t listening to me.”

  As if on cue, the boat zipped back past Jinny again, up to the sand.

  Jinny stomped after it. “Stupid boat. Do as I say. Go home!”

  “Can you do that?” asked Eevie. “Can she do that?” But nobody answered.

  “Jinny?” Ben reached out to touch Jinny’s shoulder as she came back ashore.

  She shrugged off his gentle touch. “Leave it alone, Ben.”

  “Jinny,” Ben urged. “This . . . isn’t what’s supposed to happen.”

  Jinny flipped around and shouted. “I don’t care! I’m not going. You don’t know where the boat goes. You don’t know what’s out there. It could be horrible. Out there.”

  Ben urged. “You just have to believe in it. You just have to trust.”

  “Trust who? Why? Why should I trust anyone? There are no reasons, only rules. Why should I get in a boat just because it happens to show up one day?”

  “Everyone else has done it,” said Ben.

  “So what? I’m not everyone else. Maybe everybody else has drowned.”

  “Maybe they haven’t.”

  “Anyway,” said Jinny, “the Elder lessons. You aren’t ready. I’ve done . . . a bad job. I still have to tell you things.”

  “I’ll figure it out,” said Ben sadly. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Well, Ess. She needs me. I don’t want to let her down. And she isn’t ready,” said Jinny.

  “She’s ready,” said Ben.

  “She’s sad. She’s crying! Look at her.”

  “We all get sad. We all cry,” said Ben.
“But that doesn’t mean we won’t be okay. You have to go.”

  Jinny set her hands on her hips. “Make me,” she said firmly.

  Ben stared at her for a long minute. Then he said slowly and softly, “You know I won’t do that, Jinny.”

  Jinny stared back at him. Ben was so gentle. He took such care of them all. But right now it was too much care. “Yeah,” she said at last. “I know.”

  “Don’t do this, Jinny,” said Ben. “What do you think will happen now, if you do this thing? If you stay? Please . . .”

  Jinny stared back. “What do you think will happen, Ben? What? The sky will fall, like in that silly rhyme?”

  Ben shrugged. He looked worried. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well,” said Jinny, “I guess we’re about to find out.” And she turned back around. But this time when she reached for the boat, instead of sending it back out to sea, she pulled it up onto the sand.

  Almost as if it could read her intentions, the boat fought her. It pulled and struggled. It wanted to be in the water. It belonged in the water. But Jinny was strong, and the boat was a boat. In the end, Jinny managed to drag it all the way up onto the beach. “There,” she said with finality, drying her hands on the shoulders of her tunic.

  Standing on the sand, looking around at all the shocked faces, Jinny felt a tremor. Though she couldn’t be sure if the tremor was inside her body or in the world around her. Maybe it was both. Maybe everything was shaking.

  Jinny pivoted to inspect the new boy, the lump in the sand, sitting exactly where Ess had sat a year before. “Enough of this!” she shouted lightly, tossing her hands in the air. “Enough about the boat. New topic. You! Who are you? What’s your name?” She stomped up and stood right in front of him, her hands on her hips.

  The boy gazed up at Jinny. Though his face was wet, he didn’t look scared. “Loo,” said the boy, pointing to his own chest.

  “Well, welcome, Loo!” Jinny called out in a loud false brave tone. “Welcome to our island. You’ll love it. I’m Jinny. Now, how about we all go get a snack?”

  Loo nodded, and Jinny reached for his hand with one of hers. With the other she grabbed hold of Ess, who looked utterly bewildered. “Let’s go,” said Jinny. And she marched back toward the fire circle with the two smallest children firmly in her grasp. They had to run to keep up with her.

  15

  Ben’s Turn

  If things had gone as usual that night, the other kids would have withdrawn to their cabins, leaving Ben and Loo to get acquainted. Instead, Ben silently served up nine bowls of root soup, and then, finding himself out of bowls, poured his own dinner into a pewter mug and drank it down. They all ate more quickly and silently than usual that night, with their eyes on the new arrival, who seemed strangely at ease, and made a huge mess of his soup, not so much eating it as spilling it.

  On the other side of Jinny, Ess sat extra close, so that their elbows brushed each time Jinny scooped another spoonful of soup. She glanced down, and Ess gave her a soft smile and bumped her elbow into Jinny’s again. There was that, at least. But when Ess spilled her soup, getting up from the table, and Jinny moved to help her wipe up the puddle, Ess said quickly, “No. I can do it my own self.” Jinny didn’t understand, exactly, but she felt like everyone was watching her, so she just nodded and went back to her dinner.

  Usually, on the night after a Changing, the kids wouldn’t have gathered at the fire circle after dinner, but Jinny hadn’t left in the boat, so everyone was a little unsure of what to do. What was supposed to happen now? Jinny took the lead and started for the fire. And though the job of storyteller would have otherwise gone to Ben, it was Jinny who picked up where she’d left off the night before, reading from a book about an intergalactic traveler in love with a rose.

  Though they all did the same thing they did every night, there was tension in the air, a nervous silence. Nobody argued or joked. Oz and Jak didn’t shove or punch each other, and even Eevie offered none of her usual commentary. Sam looked stricken. Only Loo was squirmy, fidgeting and grunting. He seemed to be struggling to sit still, itchy in his skin, so after only a few pages, Jinny closed the book and said, “Let’s make it an early night, shall we?” There was an audible sigh of relief as everyone rose from the fire circle to seek the privacy and rest of their own cabins.

  When she stood up, Jinny reached automatically to her right for Ess’s hand. Then she reached to her left for Loo’s. “Come on, guys!” she said to them both. “You look tuckered. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Eevie looked over sharply at that. “Wait, what?” she said. “Are you taking Loo?”

  “Um, yeah,” said Jinny, across the dying embers. “I’m the Elder.”

  “But it’s Ben’s turn,” argued Eevie. “Isn’t it? Isn’t Ben the Elder now?” For some reason she looked to Joon for help.

  Joon nodded, a thin frown on her lips. “That’s right,” she said.

  “No!” said Jinny, shaking her head in confusion. “That’s not right.”

  “Of course Eevie’s right,” said Joon. “You got Ess, Jinny. Loo belongs to Ben. You know that. It’s his turn.”

  Loo looked up each time someone said his name, glancing from speaker to speaker. His mouth hung slightly open as his bright eyes darted keenly.

  “But,” said Jinny, “I’m oldest. So I’m Elder. I’m in charge. That’s what Elder means. Ben only becomes the Elder if I leave. There can’t be two Elders.” She looked over at Ben. “Right?”

  Ben didn’t answer her. It was awful. Jinny had never seen him look at her like he was looking at her right then. She was suddenly out of breath. “Look,” said Jinny, glancing around the circle, “I’m not trying to take anything away from Ben. It just makes more sense. This way, Ess and Loo can play together. Plus, I have experience at this now, and Ben doesn’t know all the things I do. He doesn’t know all the Elder lessons yet—”

  “Whose fault is that?” asked Eevie.

  Jinny didn’t look at Eevie, and her eyes fell the ground. “Anyway, Ben has a lot to do already, with the kitchen.”

  Even as the words left her mouth, Jinny wasn’t sure why she was fighting for the boy. If she stopped to think about it, two Cares just sounded like a lot of work. But standing there by the dying fire, facing Eevie and Joon and the others, Jinny felt as though she’d walked too far down a path to turn back now. Like she’d be admitting she was wrong about everything if she changed her mind about this.

  “Where will he sleep?” asked Ben softly in a practical tone. “You don’t have room for three in your cabin.”

  “Sure I do,” said Jinny. “It’ll be fun for them to share.” Then she had a thought. “I know—I’ll just borrow the cushions from the sofa in the book cabin. Ess and Loo can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor, on the cushions. All right?”

  Ben just shook his head, looking at the sand.

  Eevie frowned. “Not really.”

  Joon stared at Jinny, but said nothing. Jinny could feel her judgment.

  Everyone else was silent too.

  “Well, anyway,” Jinny said again, breaking the silence, “I’ll just go do that, get the cushions, before it gets any later. We could all use a good night’s sleep.”

  She didn’t wait for anyone to answer her this time. She didn’t want to argue, and she didn’t want to look at Ben’s sad face. Did none of them want her there? Did they all just want her to leave forever? Nobody even seemed happy she was staying. Except Ess.

  As she sprinted up the path to the book cabin in the darkness, Jinny told herself it would all be fine. “This isn’t bad,” she said to herself as she opened the door. “It’s just different. It’ll only take getting used to. They’re all just confused right now. It’ll all be fine.”

  However, when she attempted to dismantle the old brown sofa she’d spent so many hours lounging on, Jinny found that even the cushions didn’t want to cooperate with her. They were stitched to the frame, and no matter how she pulled, they did
n’t want to come off. In the end, she had to fumble around in the darkness outside the cabin for a sharp-edged shell to cut the cushions loose. It took a while sawing at the cloth with the clumsy shell, and she ended up ripping the cushions quite a lot. Jinny, staring at the ragged brown fabric, knew she’d never be able to put things back the way they had been, but at last she had the three large cushions gripped awkwardly in her arms. That was something.

  Then, just as she was turning to leave, Jinny happened to notice a slip of white paper sticking up from the side of the couch frame, pale in the dim room. It had been covered by a cushion and was now exposed, but what was it? Jinny dropped the cushions, leaned over to tug the paper free, and was shocked to discover herself in possession of a sealed packet.

  When she heard a noise at the door, she instinctively slid the envelope into her pocket. “Hello?” she called out.

  “Jinny,” said Ben in the darkness, his voice sharp but quiet.

  “Oh, hi,” said Jinny awkwardly. “Do you maybe want to help me with these?” She picked up a cushion and held it out to him, though when she looked up, she found she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Never mind,” she said.

  “This isn’t how it works, Jinny,” said Ben, surveying the ragged cushions and the destroyed couch. “Or . . . it’s not how it’s supposed to work. Can’t you see that?”

  Jinny shook her head and said, “What makes you sure you know so much, Ben?”

  “I know you’re scared to leave,” said Ben gently. “I can tell. And I know Ess doesn’t want to see you go. But you still have to follow the rules, Jinny. We all do. Can’t you see that? I don’t know why you’re doing this, breaking all the rules . . . but it’s not fair, to anyone. It feels . . . wrong, and dangerous.”

  Jinny didn’t answer. She only moved forward, walking past Ben and out into the night, dragging the cushions behind her into the path. She blinked, and was surprised her cheeks were wet. “What rules? We don’t have any idea why we do what we do. None at all! Nobody ever told us anything.”

  Ben followed after her. He stood in the doorway, stared out into the starlight. “Maybe that’s true. There’s a lot we don’t know. But this, what you’re doing now, it doesn’t fix anything. It only makes a mess. Everyone is scared down there tonight. In a way they’ve never been scared before. You know that, don’t you? Can’t you see it? You’re letting everyone down.”