I don’t mention how Dad pulled me aside in secret, just before the Wolfpack took him. How he told me he’d been called in for questioning by the head of our gulag, interrogated for hours about his engineering and sailing background. That happened often, Before, as he was the lead innovator for the project that set the Envirotech scandal in motion—the project that set the world war in motion. He’d suffered more interrogations than I could count. This one was not like the others.
I don’t mention how his eyes glittered when he said he’d rather die than help the Wolfpack with anything, not even the hopeful-sounding proposal they’d made him: they wanted him to develop a neutral island territory, a secluded spot where war-ending negotiations would take place. It would be a venue to display proof that the Wolves weren’t violating our basic human rights—that they were capable of offering kindness, even amnesty, to at least a few of their imprisoned. A sugarcoated show for the rest of the world, in other words. One I hope to be part of.
And I certainly don’t mention the way Dad never came home—how two officers showed up at my barracks door with his wedding ring, his pocket survival guide, and a vial of his blood and teeth.
Spilling those particular details would be a surefire path to Matamoros, because who’d trust me if they knew the truth? That my father’s work led straight to this war, to all we’ve suffered at the Wolves’ hands? That Sanctuary could very possibly mean our death, not a better life?
I certainly wouldn’t trust me.
Alexa moves to where I can’t avoid her. “Even if the island itself exists, and the ocean hasn’t swallowed it whole, do you really believe freedom does?”
The ring I wear on a chain at my throat, and the vial of death in my pocket: these say no.
But the information I found inside the survival guide, written in his perfect and distinctive handwriting, says otherwise: I am convinced Dad changed his mind, convinced he believed lasting freedom could indeed be found on the island—that he gave his life to establish it. That he was trying to lead me there, if only I could find a way out of camp.
And I have.
“I have to believe in something.” I dare to meet her eyes. “And I think you do, too. No one runs with that much conviction unless they know what they’re running toward.”
“You’re wrong,” she says, holding my stare. “I was only running away.”
THREE
PAGE FORTY-SEVEN OF Survival: A Pocket Field Guide is covered from edge to edge in pencil markings, narrow cursive stretched thin, letters leaning heavily to the right with no regard whatsoever for the original printed text. No blank pages or margins remain in the book—he used every bit of space and then some. I’ve read Dad’s notes so many times I’ve practically memorized them, but it’s a comfort to hold the actual pages his hands touched, run my fingers over the spots tinged brown by dirt and sweat.
Sanctuary Island, it says at the very top, with a double underline. The rest of the page is a single unbroken paragraph, but my eyes land immediately on the passages that have always fascinated me.
Neutral territory. Weapons-free zone.
Temples hiding among ferns, structures formed of stones and secrets.
Monks who grant refugees immunity from both sides of the war by inducting them into their monastery. Hologram tattoos given to all who approach peacefully, without any hint of hostility. All of these things wait for us, according to Dad’s notes.
But no one knows for sure.
I adjust the sails according to the hand-drawn map at the back of the field guide, using the setting sun for directional reference. I feel the other girls’ eyes on me, but no one objects, so I take that as permission to choose the direction I want.
“Alexa?” I ask. “Was there a compass in that bench?”
Earlier, we pried open every inch of the sailboat—the fallen officer’s keys helped with only half of what we were able to get into—and found a respectable supply of emergency bars, along with a single Havenwater bottle. The cartridge is nearly dead, but it should be good for at least a few more days’ worth of sterile, desalinated water if we ration things right. Alexa also discovered a pile of navigational equipment—mostly charts and instruction manuals and two bright orange life vests tucked away in one of the benches.
She pulls a compass from one of her pants pockets and tosses it to me. “Knock yourself out.”
“You could help, you know.”
“Yes,” she says. “I could.”
But she doesn’t. She retreats to the far end of the boat, as she has for all but half an hour of our first day at sea. I hear her tear into the wrapper of an emergency bar.
“It’s probably for the best,” Hope says. Her voice is so soft and sweet, she doesn’t even have to lower it. “She makes me uncomfortable.”
“Because of her gun?” I ask. “It’s out of bullets, if that’s it.”
“Not the gun so much as how she shot it,” Hope says. “Just . . . everything. How she is.”
Hope’s too kind to throw out specifics, but I’m not blind. The way Alexa acknowledges us only when it’s absolutely necessary—how she can’t be bothered unless her own comfort is directly threatened. “I get it,” I say. “Makes me uneasy, too.”
I reach for Dad’s field guide on the bench where I left it a while ago, but it’s not there. I go from zero to panic fast, ready to turn the boat on its sails if that’s what it takes to find it. I scan the wooden deck, and the benches, and finally spot it: its mustard-yellow cover winks at me, bright between Finnley’s hands. Something inside me snaps at the sight of her holding it. It’s not like she’s Alexa—Finnley’s prickly and stubborn, yes, but Hope knew her before they ran for this boat. Hope trusts her. The problem isn’t Finnley, it’s that the field guide is private.
It’s only a book, I remind myself. It’s only a book about bugs, and plants, and making shelter, and starting fires, and purifying water, with Dad’s own personal notes written in along the way. And then there are his entries about Sanctuary Island, his charts and his maps, and a few sketches that remind me of the year he won an award at work for his architectural blueprints. He took me out for three-hundred-dollar steaks with the bonus they gave him.
The map to the island became public knowledge as soon as I pulled the book from my pocket, but the questions they’ll inevitably ask about the other things . . . I’m not quite ready to answer.
“What?” Finnley says, glancing up over the top of the field guide. “Do you want it back?”
I want to say, You don’t just take other people’s things without asking. I want to say, That’s all I have left of him. But what comes out is, “No, it’s fine.”
I don’t have to let it bother me. She didn’t mean anything by it.
“Where’d you get this thing, anyway?” Finnley’s eyes narrow as she flips from page to page. “Must have taken a lot of work to keep the Wolves from noticing it.”
She has no idea.
That it landed in my hands at all had to have been a mistake. They would never have given it to me if they’d bothered to crack it open. Surely they read it—why wouldn’t they?
But they gave it to me that day and never looked back. I’ve been more than careful ever since.