“I thought if I was in a position of power, I would be able to save him, find some untouched place in the world where we could just be together,” she says, still talking to the fire. “But part of earning that power meant I had to tie a rope around his neck, tight, and drag him to barracks. He cooperated—he trusted me. I promised I’d find a way to get us out. This”—her voice gets even smaller; her lips barely move—“the explosions, everything, it was supposed to be our escape plan.”
Hope stiffens, presumably adding up the details of all things Alexa for the first time. But instead of demanding an explanation, or another place to sleep, she says, “What went wrong?”
Alexa wraps her arms around her knees, looks up to the stars. “Kind of hard to escape with someone when they’ve been relocated without warning, and when no one will give an explanation.”
“So that’s what you saw today?” I ask. “Your—boyfriend? And how you had to pull him with a rope?”
She rests her chin on her knees, lowers her eyes. “Yes and no. I saw my very favorite memory with him, and then suddenly, things morphed and he had the rope around his neck, with the end of it in my hand. Except it wasn’t the same, exactly. The rope was thicker, with splinters that dug into his skin and made him bleed. He was sweaty, and dirty, and his eyes—it was his eyes that were the worst.” She shakes her head. “So accusing, and bloodshot, but also so . . . empty? And he just kept saying, ‘You promised! You promised! You promised!’”
Her tears shine in the firelight. “I thought I could save us both,” she says. “But it looks like I can’t even save myself.”
“He’s the reason you ran away, then?” I ask. “Cass?”
She nods. “He was the only reason I ever joined,” she says, “but it turned out to be hell on us. I wanted out a long, long time before he went missing.”
“Well,” Hope says, “you’re sitting here now. And we’re not dead yet—that has to count for something, right?”
It’s good that Hope is taking the reins on working through this with Alexa. It isn’t that I don’t care, or that I don’t feel, because I very much do. I feel so much, in fact, that if I let it all out—the fullness of sorrow and fear and guilt that have grown together inside me—it’s likely my bones would collapse, into the void where those things have lived for so long.
So instead, I focus on the more concrete things: bits and pieces of information we know, things that might make a picture if we can fit them together. A picture that might provide answers, answers that could lead to freedom.
From more than just the Wolfpack.
“It’s fascinating to me,” I say, when there’s a lull, “that our hallucinations were so similar . . . similarly structured.” I tell them about Birch, about Emma. I tell them the facts of what happened with as little emotion as possible, peel open my wounds only as much as I have to. “Plants don’t do that, right? They don’t latch on to you, and they don’t have the ability to make you see your very best memories and your very worst fears—right?”
But no one speaks up. Because apparently, here, that is exactly what plants do.
“And the moss,” I continue. “And the beetles. And the laser security system, and the monsoon that didn’t leave so much as a puddle out here, and the way our boat is in pieces.”
“And Finnley,” Hope says, quiet.
“And Finnley,” I agree. “But her disappearing seems like it’s in another category from all the weird island things, because none of us ended up in obvious pain because of it. Or maybe it’s just me who sees it that way?”
Alexa tosses more sticks into the fire, and sparks fly. “It’s almost like the jungle doesn’t want us anywhere near the temple. But that doesn’t make sense, because jungles aren’t sentient.”
“Also because the temple is deserted,” I add. “What’s left to protect?”
My voice dies out as Hope’s finger goes to her lips. She holds herself perfectly still. “The water,” she whispers, careful enough to blend with the crackling of the fire.
But her eyes aren’t on our boiling ravine water, which one of them set aside to cool when I wasn’t paying attention. I follow her eyes out to the ocean, where black waves crash on the moonlit beach.
And farther out: a shadow on the horizon, a blackness that blots out all the stars behind it.
A ship. A rather large and intricately designed ship, from what I can tell—booms and masts and rolled-up sails and a web of lines holding the whole thing together. Like a pirate ship, if I had to name it.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” Hope says, still in a whisper.
In studying the ship’s outline against the night sky, I completely failed to notice the shadow of the smaller rowboat headed for our shore, the glint of moonlight on its oars. Now that it’s docked, though, and now that they’ve lit a torch, I can’t look away.
Especially because of who’s inside it: three boys—all of whom look slightly older, and a good bit more muscular, than we are—and one girl.
One Finnley.
THIRTY-ONE
HER HAIR IS different.
That’s the first peculiar thing: torchlight shining on her copper hair, which is short and sleek and angular and altogether un-Finnley-like. Not that I knew her for long before she disappeared. But when I met her, her beach-wave hair looked like it hadn’t touched scissors or a comb since before the war, unruly grown-out layers tied in a low ponytail. I’m sure it’s her, though. Clean clothes and fresh hair can’t hide the distinctive splash of freckles across her nose, or the way she carries herself, with a sort of curious confidence.
The second peculiar thing: she is in no hurry to return to us. Surely her group sees our camp, with its blazing fire, but they don’t acknowledge us if they do.
Finnley strides alongside the three guys as if she’s one of them, toward the tower of stones farther out on the beach. If not for her haircut—which makes me inexplicably uncomfortable—I’d be inclined to trust them, seeing someone I know so at ease in their company. Trust by association. But I’m suspicious of this new hair of hers and, really, the entire situation. So suspicion by association it is.
Confrontation is inevitable—may as well get it over with. I get to my feet, grab one of our whittled spears just in case. Alexa and Hope follow my lead.
Our footsteps are quiet in the sand. We slip closer, study them as they examine the stone totem pole. The guys have at least a full foot of height on Finnley, who’s barely over five feet. They’re solid but not bulky, muscles clearly shaped by working enormous sails over rough seas. With their V-neck shirts, tight-cut pants, and boots—heather gray to charcoal gray and every gray in between—they look nothing like the pirates from the movies Emma and I used to watch. Only one of them has longish hair, wavy and especially red in the torchlight, while the others wear theirs—one dark, one ashy blond—much shorter. They appear to have thrown their communal razor overboard within the past day or two.
The dark-haired one bends down, runs his fingers over a section of the lowest part of the tower. A thin blue light, as vibrant as the temple lasers, snakes over one smooth face of the stone.
“Excellent,” the blond says, when the image is fully drawn. Obviously pleased, but not surprised. His lean, muscular arms are covered in tattoos, a bright jungle of Hawaiian flowers and ferns.