Milton lay awake long after everyone else had fallen asleep. All that heart-to-heart (to-heart-to-heart) talk had gotten him thinking about a whole new problem. He stared up at the stars (the ones that were leaves and the ones that were burning balls of plasma light-years away) and tried not to think anymore. He listened to the inhales and exhales of his three tentmates (and Rafi’s snores, which were nothing compared with Uncle Evan’s nightly hyena-laugh-walrus-grunt-kangaroo-coughs). He tried really hard to ignore the rotten thought that kept playing over and over and over in the stillness of the tent.
Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He turned toward Fig and whispered, “Fig? Are you awake?”
Fig didn’t answer, and when Milton scooted closer to her, he saw that her eyes were shut. She was breathing deep, fast-asleep breaths. But he needed to talk now.
So he positioned himself near Fig’s ear and let out a bird-of-prey call. Not full volume, of course. Not very loud at all. Just loud enough. Then he rolled back over (lightning reflexes!).
Fig’s eyes flew open. “What’s going on?” she cried.
“Oh, hello, Fig,” Milton whispered.
Fig gave a sleepy groan. “Why are you awake, Sea Hawk?” she muttered.
“I don’t require much sleep,” Milton replied. “Or maybe I do. But I have, at times, been able to survive on very little.” He shifted in his sleeping bag so that he was facing her again. Without his glasses, she looked like an Impressionist painting, like a smudge in a world of smudges.
“Well, what is it?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking, Fig,” he said. “And the thing is … what if we don’t find the treasure? What if we don’t save the island?”
Fig frowned and rubbed her eyes. She kept her hand over her face while she answered, “We can’t worry about that, Sea Hawk. Think of everything we did today—we made it through the vines, we survived the river, and we know we’re supposed to go to the center of the island. We’ll find the treasure.”
“But if we don’t,” Milton persisted, “then this whole trip will be for nothing. The Culebra Company will get the island. Uncle Evan will be totally crushed. You and your mother will have to leave.” He inhaled sharply, then finished with an exhale that might have literally been made of fear. “And you won’t want to be my friend anymore.”
Fig didn’t respond for such a long time that Milton thought she had fallen back to sleep. Which was probably just as well. He didn’t want to hear her say that he was right.
But then she pulled her hands from her face. The moonlight caught her wide, round eyes, and turned them into moons of their own, enormous and shining (at least to Milton’s spectacle-less eyes).
“Treasure or no treasure,” Fig said, “I’ll still be your friend, Sea Hawk. Now go to sleep.”
And after that, Milton did.