Island by Peter Lerangis

Author:Peter Lerangis [Lerangis, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4824-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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