After the Incredible Symphonic Cicadas’ song, everyone dove into the tent. The humming-bird-size mosquitoes tried their hardest to follow, but the nylon tent sides kept them out.
Milton set up Uncle Evan’s sleeping bag between Fig and Rafi, with Gabe squashed on Rafi’s other side. He considered taking another peek at the field guide and maybe trying to find another clue to really wow everyone with, but then he wriggled into his sleeping bag instead. He had never been so exhausted.
Everyone else must have felt the same way, because for a while, it was silent in the tent. All year, silence had been Milton’s enemy. But he found that tonight, even though those same old rotten thoughts were still there, even though he had spent the day talking about his horribly heinous year more than ever before—tonight, he didn’t mind the silence.
Tonight, the silence reminded him that he was here, here in the jungle in a tent with the rainfly folded up so that there was only a layer of mesh separating him from the sky. Here with thousands of stars shining down between the star-leaves of the trees that surrounded them. Here beneath a moon that was almost full and bluish white in the black sky.
He was here, and there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
As Milton watched the sky, he saw movement high above, as faint as a shadow. Then the moving shadow crossed the moon. For just a moment, the silhouette of a wings-outstretched bird was framed against the lunar glow. The bird shape was covered in gleaming points of light.
“I think that was an Astari Night Avis,” Fig whispered.
“Did anyone see a shooting star in its tail feathers?” Rafi asked.
Milton had seen something, but he wasn’t sure what. It could have been a shooting star. It could also have been the light from the real stars shining across the avis. But after the year he’d had, Milton thought he deserved a little luck, so he said, “I did.”
“Did you make a wish?” Fig asked.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Whadja wish for?” demanded Gabe, who appeared to be doing a headstand in his corner of the tent.
Milton thought he was going to reply If you tell a wish, it won’t come true. But what actually came out of his mouth was … the truth. “I wished that my parents would stay together,” he admitted. “They’re getting a divorce.”
Fig turned onto her side in her sleeping bag so that she was facing him. “I didn’t know that,” she said.
“I haven’t made it common knowledge,” Milton replied, still staring up. “But that’s why they sent me here. They didn’t think I could handle being around them. Or they couldn’t handle being around me maybe. Probably both.” He let out a sigh that came from the deepest depths of his sensitive stomach. “If ever there was a year that needed a Restart, it was this one.”
Fig had opened her mouth to reply, when, much to Milton’s surprise, Rafi spoke up. “I wouldn’t mind a Restart either,” he said. He didn’t roll toward Milton and Fig, but he turned his face their way. “I used to actually like moving around all the time, but we stayed at our last site for three years, and I … I didn’t want to leave. I wish I could go back.”
“Then you wouldn’t be with me!” Gabe hollered indignantly.
“Not by myself, Gabe,” Rafi said. “You would come too, obviously. Anyway, we’re supposed to go somewhere new in the fall, and my parents promised we would stay there for good, but they change their minds sometimes.”
“They really love the—the bugs?” Milton asked.
“Yeah, but also this whole island,” Rafi replied. “Because they’re scientists, but also because they think the island has, I don’t know, like, special energy.”
Rafi sounded embarrassed saying this, but Fig rose up to her elbows and peered over at him. “Maybe it does,” she said. “We came here after my dad died, and my mother is … well, she’s much happier than she was. And I am too.”
“I didn’t know your dad was dead,” Rafi said. “I just thought he was … not here.”
“It was a car accident,” Fig replied. “Two years before we came to the island.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafi said quietly.
“I’m sorry too, Fig,” Milton said.
“It was a long time ago,” Fig replied. “It doesn’t bother—” She cut herself off. Slowly, she lay back down, now facing the sky again. “It still bothers me sometimes,” she said. “But not as much as it used to. And I’m sorry too. About your parents, I mean, Sea Hawk.”
“Me too,” Rafi said.
“And I’m sorry you had to leave your home, Rafi,” Fig continued. “The Lone Island feels like home to me now, and I know I don’t want to leave.”
Milton wasn’t sure what was happening right now. There was no Truth-Will-Out Vine in sight, but everyone was telling truths and reaching out hands, left and right.
“I think the worst part of the year, for me,” he said to the sky and to his tentmates, “was how lonely the rotten parts were.”
“You don’t know lonely till you’ve lived on an almost-deserted island,” Rafi said.
“Or thought about having to leave one,” Fig added.
“You don’t know lonely till you’ve given your favorite teacher a bloody nose in a terrible but unavoidable accident, lost all your friends, and then had your father move to a downtown apartment.” Milton took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them, the whole sky was a wild blur of colliding light and darkness. “But today I was sucked up and spewed out, I hiked farther than I ever thought possible, I was almost absorbed by a vicious flora, and it was both rotten and spectaculous. But not one bit lonely.”
“That’s because you’re not alone,” Fig said.
“Yeah,” agreed Rafi, “like it or not, we’re in this together.”
“Together, my hearties,” Gabe mumble-sang, a half-asleep lump now. “Whadaya think about that?”
“I think that may be the most spectaculous part of all,” said Milton.