His eyes flicker, and he squares his shoulders to face me. “I do. I have money; I’ve been saving most of my life.” His stare turns cool and serious. “You could come with me.”
I draw in both my lips, holding back a betraying smile.
“You don’t have to stay in this town—you could escape too, leave this place behind if it’s what you want.”
“I have school.”
“I’ll wait for you.” And he says it like he actually means it.
“But my mom,” I say. . . . Just another excuse.
His mouth hardens in place.
“It’s just not that easy for me,” I explain. I feel wrenched into halves, torn between the wanting and the prison that is this island. “It’s not a no. But I also can’t say yes.”
I can see the hurt in his eyes, that he doesn’t understand even if he wants to. But he slides his fingers around my waist, gently, like he’s afraid I’ll spook like one of the island birds, and he pulls me to him. “Someday you’ll find a worthy enough reason to leave this place,” he says.
I once read a poem about love being fragile, as thin as glass and easily broken.
But that is not the kind of love that survives in a place like this. It must be hardy and enduring. It must have grit.
He’s strong, I think, the same thought I had the other night. I blink up at him, the sunlight scattering through the trees, making the features of his face soft at the edges. Stronger than most boys. He could survive this place. He’s made of something different, his heart weathered and battered just like mine, forged of hard metals and earth. We’ve both lost things, lost people. We are broken but fighting to stay alive. Maybe that’s why I need him—he feels like I feel, wants like I want. He’s stirred loose something inside my chest, a cold center where blood now pumps, a hint of life, of green pushing up toward sunlight.
I might love him.
And it has tilted my universe off center, the frayed edges of my life starting to unravel. Loving someone is dangerous. It gives you something to lose.
I lift up to my tiptoes, his lips hovering over mine, and I know he’s looking for answers in the steady calm of my stare. But he won’t find them there, so he presses his mouth to mine, as if he might press some truth out of me. But I can only give him this moment, and I climb my fingers up his chest, breathing him in, tasting the salt air on his lips.
I wish suddenly that I could promise him forever, promise him me. But it would be a lie.
*
I try to call Rose. I leave messages on her phone. I tell her mom to have her call me back, but she never does.
Where is she? Why won’t she call me? But I can’t leave the island. I can’t risk leaving Bo alone—I’m afraid Olivia might try to lure him into the harbor again.
But after several days, I can’t take it anymore. The not knowing is making me edgy and nervous.
I wake up early, hoping to slip out of the cottage before Bo sees me. Olga trails me to the door; her eyes are watery from the cold, and she blinks, as if curious about what I’m doing awake at this hour.
I pull on my raincoat hanging from a metal hook beside the door then turn the knob; a swift breeze rips into the cottage, spraying raindrops over my face. Olga zips past my feet and trots up the boardwalk. But then she stops short, ears alert, tail swishing back and forth. Something has caught her attention.
It’s still an hour or so before sunrise, but the sky has turned aqueous and lucid, morning pressing down, breaking apart the night clouds and sheering the island terrain in a hue of blush pink. And in the distance, I see what Olga sees: A light is wavering across the water, and an engine is sputtering toward the island dock.
“What is it?” Bo asks, his voice a shock to my ears. I wasn’t expecting him to be awake. The door is partway open, and I glance back inside. He’s standing up, rubbing his face.
“Someone’s here,” I say.
FOURTEEN
A boat knocks loudly against the dock, motoring too fast across the water. It’s Heath’s boat; I recognize it as the same one we took out into the harbor to make wishes at the pirates’ ship when we found the first body.
But Heath is not driving it. It’s Rose.
And someone is with her: a girl.
Bo grabs my arm, stopping me from getting any closer to the boat as Rose struggles to tie a rope around one of the cleats on the dock. He recognizes the girl before I do. It’s Gigi Kline.
“Rose?” I ask. And she notices us for the first time.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she says frantically when her eyes meet mine. She looks scared, in a state of shock, and her red wavy hair is windblown like a person who’s recently escaped from an asylum.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I had to help her. And I couldn’t hide her in town, they’d find her. So I brought her here. I thought she’d be safe. You could hide her in the lighthouse or the other cottage. I don’t know—I panicked. I didn’t know what else to do.” She’s speaking too fast, and her eyes keep flicking from Gigi back to me.
“You broke Gigi out of the boathouse?” Bo asks.
Gigi is sitting silently in the boat, meekly, innocently. Her fa?ade is well practiced as she makes slow, measured movements. Each blink of an eyelash looks rehearsed.
“I . . . I had to.”
“No, you didn’t,” I snap. “This was a very bad idea, Rose.”
“I couldn’t just let them keep her locked up like that. It was cruel! And they could just as easily do it to anyone else. To me—to us.”
“And they probably will when they find out what you’ve done.”
“Penny, please,” she says, stepping from the boat, palms lifted in the air. “You have to help her.”
I didn’t realize Gigi’s imprisonment upset Rose this deeply, enough that she would break her out and bring her here. I know they were friends once, years ago, but I never imagined she’d do this. She couldn’t stand to see someone she once cared about tied up and suffering. Made to be a cruel spectacle. It didn’t seem right to Rose from the start. And I can’t fault her for that.
“This is dangerous, Rose. You shouldn’t have freed her.” I lock eyes with Gigi, and with Aurora tucked inside her—watching like an animal waiting until it’s safe to come out of its hiding place. She didn’t have to enchant Davis or Lon to save her, Rose did it out of the goodness of her heart. But she’s set loose a monster, and she doesn’t even realize it.
“Maybe it’s better that she’s here,” Bo whispers to me, out of earshot of Rose and Gigi.
I feel my eyebrows slant into a scowl. “What are you talking about?”
“We can keep an eye on her, lock her up, make sure she doesn’t kill anyone else.”
I know why he wants to do this: He wants to ask Gigi about his brother. And if he decides that it was Aurora—hidden inside of Gigi—who killed his brother, then what? Will he try to kill her? This is a mistake, I can feel it, but both Bo and Rose are staring at me, waiting for me to decide what to do.
This can’t be happening.
“Fine. Get her out of the boat. We’ll take her to Old Fisherman’s Cottage. Then we’ll decide what to do next.”