FIRE AND ICE: my first night in barracks was the coldest of my life, and one of the most painful, seared into my memory.
My finger, hot and sore from the tattoo they’d carved into me. I’d never been so glad to have a four-letter name.
Triple-decker bunk beds, twelve to a room, made of unfinished boards and too-long nails that threatened to impale me if I rolled over too far on the plank of wood I was supposed to pretend was a mattress. Really, we were like unwanted objects on storage shelves.
The other girls, some silent and some loud, some puffy-eyed from all the tears and some like steel, all of them—all of us—forced to learn how to deal without.
The chill left behind where our comforts had been ripped away, the burning anger that replaced it. The numbness that set in when those extremes became too much to deal with.
So I counted the knots in the wood above my head as I lay flat on my back and tried not to think of the pillowcase I’d had for as long as I could remember, with its faded, threadbare hearts, or the gentle hands that made it for me. I pressed the fleshy part of my thumb into one of the sharp, shiny nails until it broke through the skin and a little bead of blood popped out, just to see if I’d wake up from the nightmare. And when I finally slept, the actual nightmares were even worse, with Birch and his last two steps on an infinite loop.
Time hasn’t softened the nightmares: it’s simply given them more variety.
TWENTY-NINE
OCEAN WAVES CRASH against the shore under the dusky blue sky. I never thought I’d be this happy to see our little clearing, with its woven-mat beds and ashy campfire remains, but it is like running through a sprinkler on a hot summer day: the epitome of relief.
We’ve barely set foot out of the jungle when Hope stands up a little straighter. Everything about her is on alert. I follow her gaze, out to where we docked our boat.
“Am I hallucinating,” she says, her tone flat and muted, “or is our boat, like, a pile of broken boards floating out to sea?”
“I don’t think you’re hallucinating,” I say. But then again, maybe she is. Maybe we all are.
Regardless, I can absolutely affirm that what I see is no longer our beautiful green sailboat, lazily perched on the sand in one solid piece, but a wreck of debris littering the ocean.
My chest tightens, and tears prick at my eyes. It isn’t like I’ve been actively thinking We still have a way off this island, if it doesn’t turn out like it should, but that is exactly the disappointment that surfaces. Because let’s face it, this island isn’t turning out like it should.
And perhaps a way off it would be nice.
I keep these thoughts to myself. It’s my fault we came here in the first place, after all. Sure, they agreed to the plan, but only because I did everything I could to convince them it would be worth it. I convinced myself it would be worth it. And what have I brought on us? We’ve lost Finnley. We’ve been plagued by poisonous moss, bloodthirsty beetles, and nightmare-inducing tentacle plants.
Either we will look back on all we’ve endured and say, in the end, This was worth it—or we will be scarred, in all senses of the word, and worse off than before. Perhaps we won’t even be alive to realize what a grand failure this was.
Alexa kicks at the sand. Her fists are shoved as far as they’ll go into her tight shorts pockets, and her face says war. “I’m going to rebuild our fire.” She turns on her heel, doesn’t look back. “You’re welcome to join me.”
Hope runs in the opposite direction, toward the tide and the various pieces of our boat. Soon, she is waist-deep, wrestling with one of our massive white sails, trying to sever it from the boom and keep it from floating farther away.
And I stand, paralyzed, torn over whether I should try to save pieces of our past, or if I should run full speed toward the way things are now.
I’ve never been very good at letting go.
THIRTY
WHEN THE FIRE is blazing again, when it sparks and crackles and sends smoke swirling up to the stars, we huddle around it, all of us seated on the sail I helped Hope pull back to shore. We eat the last of our grasshoppers, a pair of stragglers Alexa found hidden deep in my cardigan pocket, their spindly legs tangled in loose threads; we boil ravine water in a metal cup salvaged from the boat on our first day here. Our shoes are tattered and caked with mud, lined up in a neat row to dry by the fire. Our toes are wrinkled from today’s rain, none of which—oddly—left our sand even the slightest bit damp.
Idly, I use a long stick to draw lines in the sand, thinking about how much better things would feel if only we had some marshmallows to roast. I pretend we are Girl Scouts, that we’re simply camping out overnight on the beach. That our fathers are a phone call away, that everything we’ve been through will earn us an entire rainbow of merit badges.
Somehow, I doubt a merit badge ever existed for surviving ancient temples equipped with highly advanced laser systems. Or for surviving the island itself.
I can’t take it anymore. I have to say something. If they’re going to blame me, they’re going to blame me. Nothing I can do about it, so I might as well get it over with.
“Things here”—I’m not exactly sure how to continue, because everything I could possibly say seems like the biggest understatement ever made—“are not exactly normal. Are they?”
I speak to the fire as if it’s my only audience. Scrape E-D-E-N into the sand with my stick.
“Today was the worst day I’ve had in a long time.” Alexa’s voice is a rare sort of quiet, like stardust and embers, full of energy that could flicker out in a heartbeat. “Maybe ever.”
I bite my tongue. Today was pretty terrible, but the worst ever? No one handed me a vial full of my father’s blood today. I didn’t have to watch Birch die.
“What did you see in the jungle?” Hope asks. “I heard you saying you were sorry, over and over.”
My head snaps up. I must have missed that part, somewhere between Birch’s hello/goodbye kiss and my heart breaking.
“Zero Day,” Alexa says, then immediately continues, “I know you probably think I have no right to painful memories from Zero, since I’m Wolfpack. Was Wolfpack.” She talks to the fire, too. Like if she directs her confession straight into the flames, her words will burn up and maybe so will her guilt. “But that day was hard for me. And I didn’t think anything could be harder than living it, but then today—reliving it—seeing Cass—”
Her voice cuts off, like the pain of the memory has congealed into something so thick it can’t get out of her throat. We wait for it to dissolve.