It was exactly as they had planned.
Rafi’s pictures were taped up all over the clearing. There were pictures on the oak trunks. There were pictures on the palm fronds. There were pictures spread out along the overgrown path. There were pictures hanging in the Truth-Will-Out Vine.
They should have been pictures of the Lone Island’s many mind-boggling wonders—the remarkably leafed treescapes and the rainbow-hued blossoms, the briny-fruited Sweet Pickle Tree and the neon maw of the Menu-You Bush, the tentacle-frothed river and the letter-writing Yes-No-Maybe-So Tree and the bucktoothed grin of a certain (disloyal) lemallaby.
They should have been pictures that would convince absolutely anyone and everyone that the Lone Island was a wild and wondrous place, a place worth protecting.
But something had gone wrong.
Well, it was going wrong, right before their very eyes. Each picture was at a different stage of fading into an indecipherable gray blur.
“I don’t know what’s happening.” Rafi was standing in the middle of his smeary, monochromatic exhibit, looking frantic. “Maybe the photo paper got too hot on the supply-plane ride here or—or maybe I went too fast this morning and missed a step.”
Milton felt like his sensitive stomach had been drop-kicked off the top of an Enmity-Amity Tree as he watched his uncle survey the scene from the porch. He didn’t know what more he could do. He didn’t know how to fix the pictures. More than that, he didn’t know how to fix the disappointment that had weighed his uncle down bit by bit, year by year, as the Lone Island remained elusive and impenetrable.
As Uncle Evan turned back to the house, back to the desk, back to that terrible stack of papers, Milton’s thoughts were tidal-waved by all the things he could not fix, by all the rottenness he could not get rid of.
He didn’t know if he could fix his friendship with Dev—or if he even wanted to anymore. He didn’t know if he would be able to speak up if those kids at school bullied him again or if they would even listen.
He didn’t know how to fix his parents.
No matter what he did, there was always going to be some rottenness.
But then he remembered that he already knew that.
And he knew this: There was always going to be some spectaculousness too, even if it was sometimes as hard to find as a treasure hidden under the ground in the center of an island in the middle of the sea.
No, Milton couldn’t fix everything, but he knew what he could do. He could keep going through the rottenness. He could keep searching for the spectaculous. He could call himself by his own name. He could make friends who would stick with him when he needed them most. He could believe in the message that his heart was pounding out again and again and again: The adventure isn’t over. The adventure isn’t over.
But how, how, how to get Uncle Evan to hear that same message?
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, Milton saw a flash of teal. The Truth-Will-Out Vine on the sides of the clearing swayed in the breeze, and their rustling sounded like someone whispering a secret.
Milton had one last idea.
“Uncle Evan, I’ll let you get right back to signing those papers without another word if you’ll come with me for just a minute!” he cried.
Uncle Evan, in the doorway of Dr. Paradis’s house, slowly turned back around. He looked tired. He looked defeated. He looked like a man who knew he couldn’t fix things.
But he came down the steps and toward his nephew.
He dropped the pen.
And he reached out his hand.
Milton led his uncle around to the back of Dr. Paradis’s house, to the place where he had first found the field guide. He positioned him right in front of the vines, so that the cords of brilliant green and the petals of blossoming white filled his vision.
“You told me that Dr. Paradis used to bring you here,” Milton said, standing a little behind his uncle. “She wanted you to find the true Lone Island, and I know you think you’ve given up, but if you really had then you would have signed those papers and sent them right back. You didn’t. You came here. To Dr. Paradis’s house.”
Uncle Evan reached out a hand again, this time to the Truth-Will-Out Vine. He ran his fingers along the wall of green that he had not been able to climb over or see through for all these years. “I came to the island with a plan,” he said. “I was going to figure this place out, then move on to the next discovery. And when that didn’t happen right away, I got discouraged.” He shook his head, hands now winding through the vines. “I never really understood what Dr. Paradis was trying to tell me when we had our conversations back here. After she died, I worked harder and harder. I studied the vine, the cicadas, whatever wildlife I could find—but it always felt like I was missing something. I started spending less time outside and more time in the research station.” He let out a choky laugh. “Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent years hiding in that concrete building. Like I’ve been here, but not here.”
“I know the feeling,” Milton said to his uncle’s hunched shoulders. “But you know, Dr. Paradis lived here for fifty years. It probably took her a super long time to understand the Lone Island too. And that something you were missing—that something Dr. Paradis was trying to show you—I think you still want to find it. And I think the island is still waiting for you to come out to meet it.”
When Uncle Evan spoke, his voice was so soft that Milton could barely hear it. “I hope so, Milton,” he said. “Because you’re right. I’ve tried to give up, but I can’t. Even after all these years, I still love this island, and I’m never going to stop trying to protect it.”
Yes, Milton could barely hear his uncle, but it didn’t matter. The words weren’t for him anyway. They were for the Truth-Will-Out Vine, and the vine heard him loud and clear.
Under Uncle Evan’s fingertips, the green strands began to move. He leaped back as they shivered and shook, then rolled up and spun out, leaves waving, flowers opening, the entire wall of vines seeming to dance and sway.
Then the vines went still.
There, lying on the ground, was the complete field guide and the satchel of samples that were supposed to be at the bottom of the sea.