Cold.
So cold.
I raised my glass and took a sip.
I suddenly felt light-headed.
My legs grew weak. I felt as if the ground were moving. Pumping me slowly up and down.
Air.
I need air.
“Rachel, are you all right?” Mary Elizabeth asked.
“YYEEEEEAAAAA!”
They’re cheering.
For what?
What did I do?
“I’m — fine,” I said.
“You’re dehydrated. Here, drink more.”
“… SO LET’S RAISE OUR GLASSES HIGH TO THE NEWEST ONIERONIAN!”
I took another sip.
And I fell asleep.
One more night.
Are you proud of yourself?
Ask me tomorrow.
9
“SHE’S SICK.”
“She’s tired. She went through so much.”
“We shouldn’t have had that party.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“The Skipper’s.”
“Figures.”
Wes’s and Mary Elizabeth’s voices. Breaking through my dream.
I was still there. On Onieron. In the carriage.
Bouncing. Jolting.
With every rut in the road, my left temple throbbed. “Ohhhh,” I murmured.
“Rachel?” Mary Elizabeth asked.
“SLOW DOWN, WILL YOU?” Wes yelled to the driver.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You fell and hit your head,” Wes explained.
“You were in no condition for a party,” Mary Elizabeth said. “We never should have agreed to it.”
“Who’s the Skipper?” I asked. “Don’t tell me. This is Gilligan’s Island?”
They both looked at me blankly.
“I forgot,” I said. “No TV.”
“The Skipper’s our head counselor,” Wes replied. “Sort of.”
“What he says goes,” Mary Elizabeth added.
“A dictator,” I remarked.
“A grown-up,” Wes said.
“Same thing.”
Mary Elizabeth smiled and put her arm around my shoulders.
The ride to the cabins seemed to take years. As I stepped out of the carriage, I had to lean on Wes and Mary Elizabeth for support.
Some of the workers, the guys with the ripped clothes, were carrying a bed frame and mattress from the boys’ cabin to the girls’.
“For you,” Mary Elizabeth explained.
“But … they’re taking it from the boys’ cabin,” I remarked. “Doesn’t it belong to somebody?”
“It’s a spare,” Wes replied.
Another of the workers emerged from the boys’ cabin with an armful of junk — clothes, hats, shoes, a few wooden contraptions — and disappeared around the side.
“Lucky you, arriving on Cleanup Day,” Wes said, running off to follow the workers.
Mary Elizabeth was heading for the girls’ cabin. “Come on, Rachel.”
But my eyes kept traveling right, toward a gap in the tree line. To a wash of orange, rude and violent against the soft gathering purple of the night sky.
I knew what it was.
The cloud wall.
Reflecting the last rays of the sun.
Blocking the bay.
Hiding Nesconset.
Hiding home.
I walked toward it. Around me, kids were returning from the party. Some were playing ball, some chasing one another around in a strange version of tag. Still others were running into the dark woods, acting loud and boisterous.
Smiling.
Always smiling.
They called out, inviting me to join them. And I wanted to. But my head ached.
Sleep, Rachel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted flames.
From around the side of the boys’ cabin.
In a clearing between the cabin and the woods, a bonfire was flaring up. Wes was there, gesturing to some of the workers. Heaped up against the wall was a pile of junk covered with a tarpaulin.
I headed closer. The fire leaped, deepening, reaching upward toward the gap in the trees as if to join the cloud wall and swallow the world in orange.
Wes spun around. Smiling, he jogged toward me. “What are you doing here, Sleeping Beauty?”
“I thought I was Cinderella,” I replied.
“You’ll be a Wicked Stepsister if you don’t get some rest.”
In the light of the flames, my eyes caught an object sticking out from the bottom of the tarpaulin. A stuffed animal.
A bunny rabbit.
White.
A white rabbit.
Fluffy.
He slept with it all his life.
“Wes,” I said. “Whose stuff is this?”
He took me by the arm and walked me back to the girls’ cabin. “Trash. Junk no one wants.”
Stop it, Rachel.
Everything was a reminder. I had Colin on the brain.
Calm down.
Trust.
Believe that he survived.
Suddenly Carbo was pulling me away. “Come on, fortunes told by Vanessa! Cheap.”
Wes let go, and Carbo led me toward a circle of kids sitting in the middle of the field. They were all laughing like crazy.
In moments I was in the center of the circle. And Wes was running toward the bonfire again.
Vanessa was a raven-haired girl with small, intense eyes, staring at me from above a black veil. She took my hand and peered at it carefully. “Rachel, you are emerging from the darkness and beginning a new phase of your life. The people around you will figure prominently in your future.”
I wish.
Already I was thinking about tomorrow.
About leaving all this behind.
“I sense happiness in your soul, Rachel. In a corner that hasn’t been open for a long, long time.”
Yes.
I felt myself choking up.
They were all looking at me. Smiling.
Don’t take it seriously.
It’s a game.
With total strangers.
“And you can stay there.” Vanessa’s glance was like an embrace. “You can stay as long as you like.”
She’s hooked.
She’s happy.
10
EEEEEEEE …
The door hinges needed oil. I thought they’d wake up the whole cabin.
Nope.
Everyone was fast asleep.
They sleep hard on Onieron. Sleep hard, play hard.
It had to be the wee hours of the morning, but still a few die-hard campers were running around, laughing.
Vanessa. Randy. Tim. Jennifer. Barbara.
I knew more names now.
They were all so cool. Even Carbo.
And they were going to stay up as late as they pleased.
The way they always did.
Every single night.
I giggled.
I never giggle. Well, not since I was about ten.
What was happening to me?
It was just a late night. Some dumb games. No big deal.
Fun.
That’s what it’s called, Rachel.
I was wide-awake.
But I knew I should at least try to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.
Back to Mom and Dad. And Seth. And Mr. Havershaw. And prep school.
My mood plummeted.
I stepped inside the dark, silent room. I was thirsty, so I headed for the bathroom. Squinting. Hoping my eyes would adjust to the darkness soon —
CLUNK.
My foot clipped a metal bucket.
“Sorryyyy …” I murmured.
No response.
No one cares.
Cool.
Totally cool.
At home, I’d be in the doghouse.
Sit, Rachel. Fetch, Rachel. Beg, Rachel. Good girl.
“Ruff, ruff!”
I couldn’t beli
eve it. I was barking.
Rachel, you are too weird.
No. Not weird.
Happy.
I picked up the bucket. It was empty. I lifted it onto a table, pushing aside a pile of clothes.
THUD.
Oops. It wasn’t just clothes. A book had been under the pile. Now it was on the floor, where the bucket had been.
Klutz.
I stooped and grabbed it.
In the dim firelight that trickled through the window, I could see what it was. A photo album. The one I’d seen in the bathroom. The one that Mary Elizabeth had taken away.
It’s not yours.
You didn’t ask permission.
Now, would I look at someone else’s pictures without asking? Moi?
Into the bathroom I went.
(Okay, I love looking at other people’s pictures. Always have. It’s a weakness.)
I saw two candles on the wall. Below them, a funny little flint striker. Carefully, quietly, I lit the candles and shut the door.
The letters NJHS stood out on the cover. Just as I’d seen them before.
But now I noticed the scrawl underneath.
A date.
A very old date.
Sixty years ago.
Weird.
I opened the book.
Each page was filled with vintage black-and-white photos, curled at the edges, pasted to the page with funny little corners.
Guys with weird clothes and haircuts. Girls in prim, formal poses.
I was about to close it, when I saw a familiar face grinning up at me.
Wes.
No. Someone who looks like him. His grandfather, maybe.
I brought the book closer to the light.
The guy was a dead ringer.
I flipped ahead, page by page. The images were small. Many were out of focus. I thought I saw a Carbo lookalike, but I couldn’t be sure.
Then I stopped. At a picture of a party in the school gym.
In the background. Against the wall. Trying to hide his face.
It was Colin.
Can’t be.
Keep looking.
One more page … another …
THERE.
I stopped.
This time I recognized three faces.
Mary Elizabeth was on the left. Wes was on the right.
But I was staring at a third kid, standing between them.
Dark hair, a little overweight. No one I’d met on Onieron, I was sure of that.
But I knew him.
Something about the smile. And the eyes. A suggestion of someone else …
Then I read a faded note, scribbled onto the page under the photo:
The book. I should have destroyed the book.
11
HOLD ON.
Breathe.
Think.
I was hyperventilating.
A minute ago, it all made sense.
A minute ago, I felt okay.
It’s him.
It’s Grandpa Childers.
He was smiling at me. The way he always did. With a tiny pinprick of light in his eyes that said, “I know you. I know just what you’re thinking.”
THINK!
And again I read the words (Can’t wait for the birthday cruise! Thank you for inviting me), saw the faces of my two friends (the same age, all the same age), and flipped around until I saw him again (Yes, it is Colin, he lived here), and my mind was sparking and flaring in all directions like the flames outside (It was Fluffy, they were throwing Fluffy in the fire along with the other stuff— HIS stuff), and in that moment the world turned upside down and inside out until everything was so far off that it all made sense again, horrible sense —
They all went for a cruise on his birthday.
During the last appearance of the cloud wall.
Grandpa Childers was the only survivor. The only one who …
Who what?
Lived?
Yes.
And no.
The only one who returned. To Nesconset.
The others didn’t.
They’re here.
And they haven’t changed.
They haven’t aged a day.
“Rachel?”
Mary Elizabeth’s voice.
I jumped so fast I nearly knocked over the candle.
“Rachel, is that you in there? Is everything okay?”
“FINE!” Too loud. Stay cool.
“Do you need anything?”
“I — ”
Stop.
Don’t tell her.
You can’t trust her.
She didn’t want you to see this. She took it away from you.
“I’m just getting a drink of water,” I called out.
“Okay. ’Night.”
“ ’Night.”
I had to get out.
I had to be totally by myself.
Away from Mary Elizabeth.
I peered out the window.
One of the workers was still there. Pacing outside the cabins, like a guard.
The campfire was still going, and in its light I could see faded word fragments on the back of his ripped burlap shirt.
A bag of rice made into a shirt.
More than two hundred years old.
Like captives, bossed around by buccaneers.
I remembered something. From social studies.
The British empire shipped its prisoners away. Far away from home.
To Australia.
To its colonies.
To America.
Scenes of the party flashed through my mind, of the different getups — the World War II uniforms, the Pilgrim costumes —
Shipwrecks.
Nesconset Bay has a history of them.
Disappeared, never found.
Swallowed up by the clouds.
Ships from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A World War II submarine.
Grandpa Childers’s party.
An idea was forming, an idea so crazy I laughed aloud.
They didn’t disappear, did they?
They’re all here.
All the shipwrecks.
Here on Onieron, the island where no one grows old.
They just passed through. From one side of the clouds to the other.
To a place that no one ever sees.
Suddenly I remembered Captain Neil’s words. What he had said about the clouds.
Twenty-four hours. That was how long the wall lasted. Then —
“Poof — they’re gone without a trace.”
Gone.
In twenty-four hours, the clouds vanished.
And so does something else, Rachel.
When the clouds are gone, what do you see, Rachel?
Nothing.
No island.
No Onieron.
“Oh my god …” I murmured.
“Rachel?”
Mary Elizabeth again. Louder. More urgent.
“Rachel, have you seen … that book?”
I tried to reply, but the words stuck in my throat.
“RACHEL?”
She knows.
She knows I know.
The door was rattling now.
Rattling hard.
They want me to stay.
To stay until the morning.
“Everything will be back to normal.” That’s what Wes had said.
Yeah. Normal for them.
They’ve been here sixty years.
And now they want me.
WHY?
I dropped the book and looked out the window.
The guard was disappearing around the corner.
Go.
Somewhere.
Find a boat.
Swim if you have to.
I lifted myself onto the sill and climbed out.
I hit the ground running.
They can’t keep her.
They have to.
12
FASTER.
Past the back
of the cabin. Toward the pitch-blackness of the woods.
Something hit me. Hard. As if I’d run into a tree.
A tree with arms.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I couldn’t see him.
But I recognized the voice.
Wes’s.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!” I shouted.
The hands.
What are they?
A dead person’s?
A ghost’s?
A seventy-five-year-old’s frozen in time?
I shook myself free and tried to run.
Wes blocked my way. “Where are you going?”
“Into the woods. Away.”
“You can’t!”
“Watch me!”
I feinted and lunged, but he jumped in front of me again. “Rachel, what’s gotten into you?”
“I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.”
“Of course you do — ”
“No, I really know. You were my grandfather’s friends. All of you — Colin, too! You knew him and you’re trying to hide all traces — ”
“Rachel, you’re exhausted — ”
“DON’T PLAY WITH ME, WES! You were out on a cruise — sixty years ago — and you got lost in the cloud wall. You ended up here and stayed — but he escaped to the real world! It’s true, isn’t it? And don’t try to lie to me!”
‘Yes,” Wes said.
“Yes, what?”
“It’s true.”
“It is?”
“Every word.”
He admits it.
He was looking me straight in the eye.
“Then … you lied to me,” I said.
“White lies,” Wes said softly. “For your own good. To protect you.”
“From what, Wes — the truth about the cloud wall? Tell me what happens when it disappears. The island goes, too, doesn’t it?”
Wes shook his head. “No, Rachel. We stay. We stay exactly as we are. It’s your world that disappears.”
“My world?”
“When the cloud lifts, we don’t see it. To us, it’s gone.”
Two realities. One here. One there.
Never existing together.
Except when they’re brought together by the clouds.
“But my world is your world, Wes!”
“Not anymore. I can never go back.”
“Colin did! He swam through, right to Nesconset.”
Wes’s face tightened. “He betrayed us, Rachel. He almost destroyed us. And he paid.”
“How is that betraying you? It’s his own life — ”
“There are laws here. Laws you don’t know about — ”
“It was his choice, Wes. His life. So get out of the way, because it’s my choice, too.”