A moth flew into his eye and he swatted at the air, losing his balance, lunging toward the tree and hugging it to stop from falling. His cheek pressed against the mother moths and their egg sacs soft as velvet. They complained with a brush of wings against his cheek.
All those years, he’d feared what his father warned was true. You can’t trust that girl. The girl who could talk a pig into eating its own tail. After all that had happened on the island, all that was sure to come—he felt danger churning toward them like a hurricane gathering strength as it moved across the sea—he knew she had married him because he was the farthest thing from her own past, the very opposite of what her parents wanted her to choose. And now, it seemed she was through pretending and wanted back into the white world of the island. Where did that leave him? His children? His son? He’d been terrified when Brooks was born, and too ashamed to admit that he’d prayed for a girl in secret, even after all of Leslie’s miscarriages. This world, on and off the island, wasn’t safe for a black boy.
He stepped onto the top rung of the ladder and began his circular scraping. A voice echoed in the woods. He shook away what he assumed was his father back for another visit. But the voice—two voices now—grew louder. Thrashing through the ferns toward him.
It was Brooks and Maddie. Both out of breath, their thin, narrow chests heaving. They stared up at him. They looked so small down below. As if, he thought, he’d climbed into the clouds.
He couldn’t make out what Brooks was saying, only the shape of the boy’s mouth as it stretched. Then the ladder rattled and Jules clung again to the tree. His son was shaking the ladder. As Jules climbed down, his chest tightened with anger. He was going to let that boy have it, messing with him like that.
“What the goddamn?” he said on the ground. “You could’ve killed me up there.”
“I need you,” his son said. Jules stopped himself from smiling but the words were a gift. When had his boy last needed him? “There’s been an accident.”
“Eva? Your mom?”
“They’re fine,” Brooks said.
Maddie was already running back toward the Castle, looking back, begging them, “Please! Hurry!”
Jules saw her eyes. She was terrified.
*
He pushed through the circle of kids standing in the middle of the ballroom. The girl lay on the floor. Her foot was pointing in the wrong direction and Jules thought he must be seeing things wrong. Maybe the race through the woods, his own exhaustion, the unnatural glow of the black light was messing with his eyes.
“Bring one of those lamps over here.”
“Yessir,” someone mumbled.
A girl’s tinkling giggle echoed against the domed ceiling.
Jules stood, straightening so he was a head taller than most of the boys.
“You think this is a game?” he said. “Go home.”
The kids were slack-jawed and slant-eyed. Wasted. It was a muggy night and the stench of the ballroom—spilled beer and bong water mixing with the girls’ sugary perfume—hit him and his stomach lurched.
“Go!” He felt the vibration of his voice in his throat and it felt good.
He pressed his ear to the hurt girl’s chest and heard her heartbeat under the whispers of the kids’ feet across the ballroom floor. His head rose and fell with her ragged breath.
“You called an ambulance, right?”
Brooks looked at him dumbly. Maddie clung to his son’s arm. She started to speak but then one of the headbanger kids stepped forward. The one who had manners. Vinny.
“Me and Enzo…”—he nodded at that other kid, the one from the fair, the one Jules had caught going down on the girl in the study—“we’re going to drive her. It’ll save time.”
Enzo nodded.
“You got to be kidding me,” Jules said. “She can’t be moved.”
“I told you, Vinny,” Maddie glared. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
The Vinny kid stepped forward and grabbed Maddie’s arm, tugging so her bare feet slid across the ash-stained floor.
“Cuz,” he said in that smooth voice like he was flirting. “You know we can’t have the five-oh showing up.” He nodded at the ballroom walls covered in graffiti.
Jules could almost make the connection. The black letters sprayed sloppily across the ballroom walls, the vandalism on the island, the paint cans in Brooks’s backpack, but the hurt girl’s leg was twisted so her heel pointed toward her temple, making him lose focus.
“Get your hands off her,” Brooks growled at Vinny.
“Brooks,” Jules commanded, “run to the cottage. Wake your mother. Call an ambulance. Tell them it looks like she shattered her leg. Maybe her hip. Tell them what she was on. It’s important.”
“I think,” Maddie said, “she’d eaten some mushrooms. Smoked some weed. And beer, maybe four cups? Maybe more.”
Jesus, Jules thought. This was it. This was what he’d been waiting for. They would lose everything.
“Brooks,” Vinny said, and Jules heard the threat in the kid’s voice, “don’t move.”
“Fuck off,” Brooks said.
That’s my boy, Jules thought.
Vinny lunged toward Brooks, and Jules stood, taking a long step to block Vinny, whose chin thunked into Jules’s chest.
“You don’t want to test me, boy,” Jules whispered.
Leslie ran into the ballroom. Her white bathrobe fluttering behind her like she was one of the mother moths. The only one with working wings who could take to the air. Thank God, he thought. She’d take care of this mess.
“What happened?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
But instead of looking to Jules, her eyes turned to Brooks. Then moved to Enzo and Vinny.
“Brooks!” Jules shouted. “Go call the ambulance.”
“Wait,” Leslie said, raising a hand so her palm faced Jules.
“Wait for what?” Maddie cried. She was kneeling, holding one of the girl’s limp hands. It was then Jules saw the hurt girl’s bald head gleaming in the lamp’s light. Her blond wig had fallen to the side.
“It’s better,” Leslie began, and Jules saw she’d slipped into pretender mode. Smile on, brows lifted. She was ready to convince someone of something, “if I drive her. Vinny and Enzo can help. Maddie can come along.”
The two boys moved toward the hurt girl.
“Let’s do it,” one said, and Jules heard the tremor in the boy’s voice.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he shouted at Leslie. “What’s really going on, Leslie? Brooks, you go and call. Now!”
Brooks jogged toward the arched entrance.
“Anyone who tries to stop him,” Jules said, “will be reported to the police. You hear?”
He stood guard until the flashing ambulance lights hit the stained-glass windows so colored shapes danced across the wood floor, across Leslie’s and the boys’ faces, across Maddie’s wet cheeks, across the hurt girl’s still body. He held his arms out, protecting her, until they ached. He planted his feet on the wooden floor. He was a tree, he thought, centuries old, his roots long and deep, and nothing, nothing, was going to move him.
At least he’d do one thing right. He’d save one life on this island. Maybe, he hoped, it would make up for all he could not save.
41.