13
WE SLEPT BY THE WATER. The beach was half sand, half mud and was littered with jagged shells and tree roots, but I felt more dead than tired, so I stuffed Noah’s bag under my head and crashed anyway.
The feeling came back into my legs in a trickle, not a wave. When I woke up, my muscles ached with soreness, my mouth tasted spoiled, and my stomach hurt. I was itchy and filthy and miserable, but when the sun peeked through the trees and I realized that I could stare at it, bask in it, worship it if I wanted to, my mouth curved into a smile. I was free.
Jamie and Stella were still sleeping. Mist crept up from the gray ocean onto the beach, reaching for their feet, clinging to the tall sea grass. I stood quietly, weak-kneed but able to walk on my own. Seagulls picked over something on the shore. They scattered at my approach.
My papery hospital gown was crusted with blood and sand and dirt. I had no clothes, so I brought Noah’s bag with me, figuring I’d wash myself off in the ocean and change into something of his. But my hand froze on the zipper.
I didn’t know if I could keep it together if I opened his bag and smelled his scent and felt the fabric that had touched his skin. I knew he was alive—knew it—but he wasn’t here.
I walked back just as Jamie was waking up, stretching his arms up to touch the tree branch above him.
“I feel like ass,” he said.
Stella yawned loudly. “You look like it too.”
“So, what’s for breakfast?” Jamie asked.
Stella rolled her eyes. “Cute.”
“My gastric juices are dissolving my stomach lining,” Jamie said. Stella made a disgusted face. “My stomach is eating itself. And I’ve never been this sore in my life.”
Stella propped herself up on her elbows. “Maybe there are coconuts or something?”
“We’re not foraging for coconuts,” I said. “We have to get off the island.”
Stella agreed. “I grabbed some files from Kells’s office, but I didn’t really look at what I took. We could go back—she had to have a way of coming and going. Maybe we can find it.”
“Then what?” Jamie asked.
“There’s a resort on No Name Island,” I said. “If we go back, we might be able to find a phone . . .”
But my voice trailed off as I followed that train of thought. Who would we call?
“And what would we say?” Jamie added, seeing where I was going with it.
“Kells mentioned Phoebe and Tara before—” Before I killed her. “Said that it would look like I was the one who’d killed them.”
“But Jude did it,” Stella said.
“Right in front of us,” Jamie added.
“Dr. Kells—that was self-defense,” Stella said. “We’ll back you up.”
I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “It won’t matter. Everything is already in my file. We can’t count on anyone”—even my parents—“believing any of us.”
Even my brothers.
“If she told anyone about it before she died, showed anyone my file,” I continued, “then, depending on what was in them, people”—my family—“will think we’re crazy and still under her care, or crazy and missing, or crazy and dead. But no matter what, people”—my family—“are going to think we’re”—I’m—“crazy.”
“And dangerous,” Jamie added, giving my bloody hospital gown a long look.
“And dangerous.” I really needed to change.
“So okay,” Stella said. “We don’t call anyone we know to get us out of here. There’s the ferry, though? What about that?”
I looked down at myself. “We look a little—”
“Suspicious,” Jamie said.
“Exactly.”
“Is there anything of Noah’s you can wear?” Stella asked.
“I . . . haven’t looked yet.”
Jamie and Stella were quiet. Then, “Here,” Jamie said, reaching into his bag. He handed me a black T-shirt with the word TROPE upside down in white, and a pair of baggy carpenter shorts.
Stella frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Subverted trope,” Jamie said.
“Wouldn’t that be inverted?”
“You’re so literal. Jesus.” He marched off to let me change.
The ocean air chilled my skin as I stripped off my clothes and dipped into the water, the sand slimy between my toes. It felt like a lake, not the ocean. You couldn’t see the bottom, even though the water was shallow. I rinsed my arms and legs, pulling goose bumps from my flesh. A memory of the warmth of Dr. Kells’s blood came to me unbidden, drawing a spike of pleasure in its wake. I felt sick and gleeful at once.
“Oh no. No, no, no, no!”
It was Stella. I stumbled into the shorts Jamie had given me and rushed over to see what had happened. She and Jamie were looking out at the water.
No. Not at the water. At a massive column of smoke, rising from No Name Island into the sky.
The three of us looked at one another, thinking the exact same thing.
“All right. Let’s have a vote,” Jamie said. “Jude—misunderstood good guy, or bad guy with unknown motives? I vote bad guy.”
“Bad guy,” Stella said.
I paused before I spoke. “Undecided,” I finally said. “You think he did it?”
“WTF, Mara? Of course he did it.”
“He helped us get out of there.”
“Yeah, but—”