“Let’s talk about this some other time.” Teacher waved away my words like mosquitoes, as if to say, We can hardly worry about you when my life is on the line.
A ball of fury had been building deep in my chest since I’d realized Jeremiah’s story was true, since I’d held my mother’s annotated death certificate in shaking hands. For hours I’d swallowed my anger, kept it simmering beneath the surface so I could do what needed to be done. Now that rage cracked, spilled out, broke free. My tongue itched to lash.
“How come your moments of need are always more urgent than ours?”
Teacher gave me a scathing look. “Have we not discussed your pitiful mother enough in my office? This sounds like a path regression.”
People had always underestimated me. Easygoing, amiable Kit—She’ll go along with whatever we say; nothing but empty blue sky in that head. Teacher still didn’t understand what this was.
A final chance.
“I can’t have my favorite student backsliding, can I?” she cooed.
Yesterday that comment would have been enough to appease, to nourish, to silence. It had taken me far too long to recognize that she saw me—saw all of us—as a tool, not a person. Mom’s death certificate was something to hold over me, to control me with if I ever stepped out of line. In an instant Teacher could have released me of my guilt and suffering; instead she’d let me writhe in it for half a year.
She patted the seat next to her, but I stayed put. “Do you know how special you are to be this close to me? To be the one to save me?”
She loves you, a voice whispered.
I used to agree that Teacher was irreplaceable. Everyone on the island believed she was what made Wisewood special. Only recently had I come to understand it was the principles, the workshops, the community. Together we had all turned Wisewood into magic. If I was a cog, then so was she.
“Is this a game to you?” I said. “A social experiment to see how far you can push people? Do you even believe in your own program?”
“Don’t you dare insult me.”
“Wisewood’s principles mean something to me. To all of us. I value being in the IC. I take the quests seriously. You’ve built something more vital than power games.”
She glared at me. “I was merely trying to protect you. I knew you would suffer setbacks if you discovered your mother and sister had been colluding against you.”
She wants to keep you safe.
No, she was an egomaniac with big dreams who had manipulated me into becoming her lackey. Why had I ignored the signs? How had I been so completely taken in? I was as furious with myself as I was with her.
“Since when has our pain mattered to you? The more the better—isn’t that right? You love nothing more than to jam your finger in our open wounds and twist.”
“Keep this up, and I’ll send you home.”
For six months she had been the sun—my entire world revolved around her. Just when I’d rid my body of grief, that impossible heaviness was coming back. “You can’t do that.”
“Wisewood is my island.” She jabbed the cushion. “I’ll do as I please.”
My heart pounded. I could not bear to leave this place—not when I’d made so much progress, found my people, improved the lives of other students.
If the cleric abused his power, you abandoned him, not the faith.
“Yes, Teacher.” I bowed my head. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.” A not-small part of me meant it. She sat back in her seat, satisfied.
The thing about friendly people was that if you pushed them hard enough, they snapped like anyone else.
I drove and drove, waiting for my gut to tell me we had reached the spot. After forty-five minutes I found a tiny island miles from its neighbors. I circled it to ensure there was no sign of life within the small thicket at its center. Teacher didn’t notice. She scoped the fog-riddled horizon behind us, as if expecting Jeremiah to come skulking out of the mist any minute. I stopped the boat near the island’s shore.
“How about here? Not exactly the Ritz-Carlton, but you’ll be safe. It’s only for a few hours.”
She nodded but didn’t move. I wanted to turn the Hourglass around.
As soon as I returned to Wisewood, I would tell Gordon, teary-eyed, that Teacher had demanded I take her back to Rockland. I’d say she was convinced that someone on the island was out to hurt her, though she wouldn’t say who. She’d given me no contact information but mentioned she might go back to Ohio—she had some unfinished family business there. In the meantime we were to keep Wisewood going, no matter how arduous the task became. “Arduous” was a good word, a Teacher word. He would believe the command had come from her mouth.
I could already hear him lecturing me for giving in to her erraticism. He would lay the blame in my lap, never in hers. I would suffer his reprimands. Eventually he’d become suspicious, search high and low for his beloved teacher. By then it’d be too late.
I know for a fact you’re braver than you think.
I cut the engine and picked up the small silver ladder. She recoiled when I walked past her with it. I set the ladder off the back of the boat. She eyed it, unmoving.
“Here.” I leaned over her feet. “I’ll help you with these.”
“I’m capable of taking off my own shoes.”
It took her what felt like hours to remove her boots and socks. Once she had, she carried them, ghostlike, to the ladder. She clung to the top rung, eyes squeezed shut. What a curious woman; I never understood the things she feared, considering all those she didn’t. She stepped from the rung onto a boulder.
“We’ll take care of everything back home. I’ll come for you as soon as I can.”
Like a deer in headlights she stared, oblivious that she was transitioning from one reality to the next. For a moment I wondered if she knew. Was she onto me?
Then she straightened her back, claiming every inch of space that all six feet of her took up. “Thank you, Kit. For all of it.” She turned away.
You’re exactly the person Wisewood needs.
“It’s been an honor,” I said with a knot in my stomach. If she heard me, she didn’t acknowledge that she had. She moved slowly over the boulders, never turning back.
It took everything in my power not to call out to her. For Wisewood, I thought as I returned the ladder to the boat’s floor. For Wisewood, I chanted silently as I used an oar to push the boat from the boulders. For Wisewood, I reminded myself as I restarted the Hourglass’s engine.
Bile rising, I watched Teacher’s streaks of lustrous white hair disappear in the arms of the birch. The forest devoured her whole.
I drove away.
As I sped through crest after crest, tears freezing my eyes, the sense that I had forgotten something nagged at me. Halfway back to Wisewood I realized what it was.
My mother’s scarf.
47
Natalie
JANUARY 10, 2020
IT WAS YOU.
I want to believe Rebecca was the one who messed with my sweater, stole my phone, concocted my punishment in the forest. It has to have been her or Gordon or Raeanne.