Orphan Island Read online

  “What, me?” asked Jinny. “No way. You should. I mean, you’re much better at stuff like that.”

  “Truth is,” confessed Ben, “I have no clue what to do, and I don’t want to ruin it.”

  “Well, gosh, me neither,” said Jinny.

  “Well, someone has to do it,” said Oz. “Someone give me a knife. I’ll cut that sucker open right now!”

  With an exasperated sigh, Joon tossed both hands into the air. “You’re all ridiculous. Here, let me.” She reached down to the table, grabbed the knife, and then, as everyone watched, plunged it deep into the thick, meaty head of the inkfish. Then she drew a huge jagged tear through the flesh, which gave way easily. She stepped back. “I hope I didn’t do it wrong. Ben, you look and see.”

  Ben reached in, lifted the flap of flesh, and stuck a hand inside the creature. He rooted around, searching for something. “I think . . . this is it,” he said with a sigh of relief. “It feels fine. Hand me the small knife.” Then, delicately, he cut into the fish and extracted a blobby sort of sack. Carefully he pulled it free, then laid it on the table beside the carcass. “There!” he said. “It’s real and full. Ink!”

  “Ink!” chorused the others.

  “Someone else collect feathers and twigs. We’ll get rocks!” said Oz excitedly, already running in the direction of the tide pools. “C’mon, Jak! Let’s go!”

  While the littles ran to find feathers on the beach, Ben carried away the strange fish and then scrubbed the table down. In no time at all they’d gathered back at the same spot, where Ben set out the ink, portioned into several small bowls. Then Oz and Jak returned, lugging a bag of smooth white stones from the tide pools, and passed them around so that each had a rock to paint on.

  Jinny stared at her stone for a moment, and then up at the sky, trying to think what to draw. There was nothing else on the island like this. No way to make a mark. They all carved pictures with sticks in the wet sand now and then, but the tides or the night rain inevitably came to wash those away. Sometimes the kids drew with charred sticks on the sides of their cabins, but that too wore off. Or they carved with a knife, but crudely. Swink juice faded and ran. Only this—inkfish ink—had ever lasted. Jinny wasn’t sure what had happened to her rock from when she was little, but there were a few stones, on a high shelf in the book cabin, painted with flowers and stars.

  “Just think,” said Nat, staring at the flat white surface of her stone. “This will last. What we do now might still be here years from now. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Yes, even after we’re gone,” said Ben, eyes on his rock.

  “Yeah,” said Jinny, glancing his way. “After that.”

  Ben looked up. “Okay, guys, be sparing with the ink, so everyone gets enough. Share. But don’t take too long either, or it might all dry all up.” He dipped his feather gently into the bowl before him. Then he grinned. “Here we go!”

  Jinny held her feather lightly in her hand. Beside her on each side, both Ess and Loo were already scribbling and blobbing ink all over their stones. That was fine. They were having fun.

  Jinny wasn’t sure what to draw. At last, she wrote her name, JINNY. It looked funny. She wasn’t used to seeing it written out like that. After another moment, she drew a looping line all around the word, a frame. She meant it to look like the morning sky, with all its whorls and swirls. But the brownish-black line on the white stone didn’t look like the vivid bursting sky at all. When Jinny tried to wipe it clean and start over, it only smudged, as the ink bled into the tiny cracks in the rock. That was no good. Jinny wanted to make something special, something worthy of the ink. She might never get another chance at this, ever. She pouted and turned her stone over. She ran her hand softly over the fresh new surface, so smooth and clean. What to draw?

  Then she noticed that both Joon and Ben had stopped painting to stare at the other end of the table, where Nat was working in utter silence and concentration. Her tongue was clenched between her teeth, and her eyes were fixed on the surface before her. No part of her body seemed to be moving except her fingers, which clutched her feather tight and low, just above the inky point. Her fingertips were brown, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.

  Jinny stood up so that she could lean in and see what Nat was painting, what the others were looking at. When she did, she gasped. “Oh, Nat!”

  There was a face, a set of eyes staring out of the stone. But it wasn’t a face Jinny had ever seen before. It wasn’t a child’s face. It was a strange face, unfamiliar, haunting. The face was lined and creased, with circles under its eyes. The face looked tired but happy. Wisps of hair framed it and looked to be in motion, caught in an imaginary breath of wind. The face looked old. Like a witch from a book. But loving.

  Even in brown and white, even on the hard cold stone, the face looked real. Nearly alive, as though it might speak to them all if they were quiet enough. Jinny watched intently as Nat leaned back, looking thoughtfully at her picture, then licked a fingertip and smudged at the stone in a way that shaded the face, made it appear even more alive.

  “Wow,” said Joon, peering down over Nat’s shoulder. “That’s amazing, Nat. How did you know how to do that?”

  Nat didn’t seem to hear her. Or anyway, she didn’t answer. She was still staring at her artwork, lost in her picture. At last, she looked up, and her tongue slipped from between her teeth. She glanced around at all her friends, as though she’d had no idea they were looking at her. “What?” she asked. “Why are you all staring?”

  “Because you just made that,” said Eevie. “And we made junk like this.” She held up her own stone, which had a crude tree drawn on it. A series of lines connected to one another in a rough way. “We’re jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous,” said Ben, shaking his head. “I’m just amazed. It’s really something special, Nat. A kind of magic. Inside you.”

  “Yeah, wow,” said Jak, awestruck.

  And for once Oz echoed him, nodding. “Wow.”

  “Who is it?” asked Jinny. “That face? Who did you paint?”

  Nat looked down at the stone and scratched her nose. When she did, she left a brownish-black smudge there, right on the tip. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think about it. I just painted what came to me, what was in my head. I guess maybe that’s who lives in my head? Maybe it’s someone I remember. A face from . . . before?” Nat looked around at them all, as bewildered by what she’d made as anyone.

  “It looks like a mama,” said Ess, nodding. “No, a gramma.”

  Jinny blinked in surprise. It had been so many sleeps since mama had meant anything to Ess but her bracelet. But she didn’t look upset. She seemed okay, so Jinny said nothing about it.

  After that they went back to their own attempts at painting flowers, dots, and in the case of Loo, a big blodgy handprint. None of them were memorable, though everyone had a fine time.

  Jinny watched Nat a little longer, thinking about the people who lived in her own head, and wishing she could make something so lovely. There was a face she’d paint, if she could. A face she’d like to be able to see peering out from a stone on her windowsill. Finally, she picked up her feather and made four more letters. Below her own name she wrote another word.

  Deen.

  When Jinny sat back, she saw that Sam was staring across the table at her stone. He read the upside-down name, his lips moving slowly. Then he looked up at her, and Jinny thought he might be about to cry. But before she could say anything, he gave a sniff and glanced back at his rock. Jinny felt a twinge of guilt. Sam was so easy to ignore, so quiet. On his stone was a picture of a fish. Just a regular old fish. Jinny wondered why he’d chosen to draw a fish.

  She stared at him working, head down, with his hair flopped over his face, and remembered Deen carrying the boy on his tall shoulders, too tired to walk home from a fetch. Sam had fallen asleep in just that same position, hair in face, without anyone realizing it, until he gave a loud snore and woke himself up. They’d la
ughed at the time. I remember how much fun we used to have, the three of us together, Sam had said. Maybe he wasn’t as sad as Jinny thought he was. Maybe he just seemed sad.

  But Jinny had plenty to think about without puzzling out Sam. Too much, really. And Sam wasn’t her job. It was Deen who’d owed him something—more than a sudden departure, at any rate. It was Deen who had left him. She glanced down the table at Ess, drawing flowers, and felt fiercely glad. I stayed, she thought. I did it. And I’m not ashamed of that. The others can be mad, but it’s a good thing. Everyone else lets go—Tate, Deen . . . whoever sent us here. But not me.

  After a while, the ink began to dry, leaving brown rings in the bottoms of their pewter bowls, and it was time to clean up. One by one the kids left the table and carried their stones off to their sleeping cabins. The stones would last. That was the main thing about stones and ink—they lasted.

  Jinny sat longer at the table than anyone else, watching the others leave. When they were gone, she picked up her feather and the last dish of ink, almost gone now. But instead of walking down to the water to rinse the bowl, she had a thought. She looked around and took note of Ess and Loo, playing on the beach with Nat. Safe with Nat. Clutching her stone and the bowl, Jinny left the table and sprinted up the sandy path to her own cabin.

  When she got to her room, Jinny shut the door carefully, and—moving as quickly as she could, because someone might always come knocking—she pulled the letter from Abbie through the rip in its cushion. She turned it over and ran her finger across the pale yellow back of the paper, the empty expanse. Then Jinny spit into the ink bowl to rewet it, dipped her feather in, and wrote.

  Dear reader . . .

  Jinny stopped then and sat, trying to think. Distantly, she heard the cries of the other kids from the beach. She looked back down at the sheet of paper, dipped her pen again, and continued.

  Dear reader who finds this, if I am gone,

  My name is Jinny.

  I lived here on this island.

  I loved it.

  I stayed.

  I held on.

  Jinny stopped writing again and stared down at the words, her words. They didn’t seem like very much. They didn’t seem to say anything at all, really. But they were the words she wanted to put down on the page. Her vision suddenly blurred. Why on earth was she crying? “It doesn’t matter what I write,” she said to herself. “The thing is to have written something.”

  When she was finished, Jinny looked back at what she’d made, tried to imagine what it would look like to the kid who found it. Her letters were nothing like Abbie’s loopy, pretty writing. They were shaky, and the inkfish ink was uneven, drying in scratches and clumps. But it was still a letter, a real letter. She’d written it.

  Once the ink was dry, Jinny folded the letter in half and slipped it back into her cushion. Maybe someone would find it someday, the way she’d found Abbie’s letter.

  Even if nobody ever found it, Jinny had left it behind.

  19

  A Funny Coincidence

  That night for dinner, Ben set out several different platters of food, none of them exactly full. In the center was the grilled inkfish, its tentacles curling crisply. As he arranged them on the table, he called out to nobody and everybody, “Hey, you guys should probably start helping more, with the meals, from now on.”

  “Why should we?” asked Eevie, arriving at the table. When she saw the inkfish, she wrinkled her nose and added, “Ew! We aren’t really going to eat that, are we?”

  “It’s what we have, so it’s what we’ll eat,” said Ben. “And you need to learn to cook because it’s something everyone needs to know how to do.”

  “We all know how to cook,” said Eevie.

  “Sort of,” admitted Jak. “We wouldn’t starve.”

  “Well, you need to know more. Because I won’t always be here to do it for you.”

  “You won’t? Really?” asked Joon, who had just walked up. “When do you plan to go?” She looked down the beach in the direction of the green boat.

  “Oh, I don’t mean that,” said Ben. “I mean, no particular time. Just . . . maybe, someday.” He glanced at Jinny, who busied herself with sitting down at the table, reaching for a plate, looking the other way.

  Jinny didn’t know what to think about this conversation. It made her feel itchy, because it was about her, and it wasn’t. Jinny didn’t want to leave the island herself, but for some reason, she didn’t want anyone else to take her place either. And with the green boat sitting up on the sand like that, it was true that anyone could go, at any time. Jinny hadn’t thought about that before, and she was pondering it when Loo, beside her, began to bash his spoon against his metal plate for no apparent reason.

  “Jeez!” Jinny was suddenly pulled from her thoughts. “What is it now?” she shouted, whirling around and facing him.

  Standing on the other side of Loo, Joon shot Jinny a critical glance, then leaned over to help the boy. “Hey, look,” she said, pointing to all the different bowls and plates. “So many things to choose from for supper. What would you like?”

  Loo only pointed at the inkfish, stuck out his tongue, and made a retching sound. When Joon looked disgusted, Jinny couldn’t help smiling to herself. See, Joon, she thought. Not so easy.

  Oz, surveying the table, managed to keep his tongue in his mouth, but he didn’t look exactly pleased either. “What’s this all about?” he said, pointing at the little bowls. “Besides the inkfish, there’s just scraps here.”

  “Yeah,” echoed Jak. “What’s this all about?”

  Ben shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but we had nothing in the nets this morning except the inkfish, and the chickens aren’t laying well. It’s weird that both happened at the same time.”

  A funny coincidence, thought Jinny. She picked a splinter from the rough wood of the table and said nothing.

  Ben continued. “Since we didn’t have quite enough of anything to make a proper meal, I just cooked up all that was left in the kitchen. Everyone can eat whatever they like best, and then we can all go on a big fetch tomorrow. How does that sound?”

  “Can we go for honey?” asked Nat. “We’ve been out of honey for so many sleeps I can’t even remember what it tastes like.”

  “Certainly,” said Ben, sitting down and reaching for the leftover mussels. Everyone else took that as a cue to begin the meal, and they all found something to eat, even if it wasn’t quite enough.

  Loo, however, was not pleased with the arrangement. “Loo want pomms,” he said. “More pomms. Pomms, pomms, pomms!”

  “Ugh,” grumbled Eevie. “Can someone please shut him up?”

  Jinny opened her mouth to respond, but after their last horrible fight, Jinny didn’t want to start another. She ignored Eevie for once, and turned to Loo. “Here you go,” she said, setting a wedge of fruit on his plate. “You can have the last plomm.”

  Loo poked at the unfamiliar object on his plate. “Pomm?”

  “It’s not stewed,” said Jinny. “But it tastes the same, I promise. Now eat.”

  Loo looked up at Jinny and scowled, as though he wasn’t convinced. But he ran his finger over the fruit, licked the finger, and decided it would do. He picked up the half plomm in both hands and buried his face in it. Which meant that however big a mess he was making, at least he was no longer chanting.

  Jinny felt a tug on her sleeve. When she turned around, she found that Ess was pouting up at her.

  “Not you too now!” said Jinny. “What’s wrong?”

  Ess’s voice was small when she said, “I wanted plomms. Like Loo.”

  “Oh . . . well, I’m sorry,” said Jinny, looking at the slobbery remnant in Loo’s hands. “I don’t think you want to share what’s left with him, do you?”

  Ess shook her head slowly.

  “I promise we’ll pick more tomorrow, okay?” said Jinny. “In the meantime, how about some nuts?”

  Ess stared at Jinny blankly.

  “Ess?” Jinn
y said.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Did you hear me, Ess? You want some nuts?”

  Ess shook her head slowly. “No,” she said at last. “I don’t want nuts.”

  “No? Are you sure?”

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” said Ess. “Scoose me.” She slid down from her bench and headed back for the sleeping cabin, her steps more determined and regular than usual. She plodded evenly and didn’t trip or stumble even once.

  “Ess?” Jinny called after her. “Ess, are you okay?”

  Ess didn’t turn. She just kept walking. Any other day Jinny would have followed, but Loo was dripping his fruit everywhere. So she reached for a rag instead and mopped his face with it.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Oz, watching Ess go.

  “She said she wanted a plomm,” said Jinny.

  “I bet she’s jealous,” said Eevie in a matter-of-fact tone, taking a gulp of water.

  “You always think everyone is jealous,” said Joon.

  “Jealous of what?” asked Oz from across the table.

  “Eevie might be right this time,” said Ben. “At least a little bit. I think maybe Ess is having a hard time.” He motioned at Loo with a jerk of his head. “I mean, is she still even your Care now?”

  Around the table the others all nodded. Loo, oblivious to the conversation, went back to shoving his face into the fruit, smacking his lips and dripping.

  Jinny snapped. “Well, you guys are forever telling me I baby her, aren’t you? So maybe this is a lesson she needs to learn—that I can’t be in two places at once!”

  “You aren’t supposed to need to be in two places at once,” said Ben.

  Without quite meaning to, Jinny slammed down her fork. “Look, I’m doing the best I can,” she said, before glancing around at everyone. “I can’t make plomms appear out of thin air. And I didn’t see any of you suggesting we take away Loo’s plomm.”

  “Gosh, no,” said Eevie. “We don’t want to start that howling ruckus up again.”