It was a busy day, the day that Milton, Fig, Rafi, and Gabe found out they had inherited the Lone Island. There were lawyers to call and documents to scan and sign and send. There were more truths to tell, first to Uncle Evan and Dr. Morris, and then to the Alvarezes, who needed no convincing whatsoever and who were instantly as delighted as could be.
Yes, there were more truths to tell, but not all.
Uncle Evan didn’t want to know everything. None of the scientists did. They wanted to meet the island on their own. With Milton, Fig, Rafi, and Gabe acting as hint-giving field guides, each was on their own expedition to part the vines and discover what lay beyond.
That, the friends had decided after many consultations with Dr. Greene, Dr. Morris, and the Drs. Alvarez, was how they would continue to keep the island’s flora and fauna protected.
Their plan was to turn the island into an international wildlife refuge. That way it would belong to everyone—but also to itself.
“Everyone who wants to do research or visit here will have to pass the island’s tests,” Fig said.
“Even if it takes them nine years,” Milton agreed. “Even if it takes them a hundred.”
There was plenty of time for conversations like these because Milton still had the rest of June, all of July, and the first week of August left on the Lone Island. He had time to go on dozens of expeditions into the heart of the jungle, to discover wildlife that wasn’t on any Triple F Nature Sightings Checklist, and to be with his new friends.
Now that he knew there was electricity at the research station, he had time to charge his HandHeld too, but once he did, he never ended up turning it on. After finding that alive-right-here feeling, Milton didn’t want to lose it again. He did use the satellite phone at the station though. Once a week, he dialed his mother’s number and then his father’s. It was hard to tell over the phone, but Milton thought they missed him, and he missed them too (when he had time to think about such things).
One afternoon, during the last week of July, Milton was heading back to Uncle Evan’s cottage after a long day canoeing upstream (he and Rafi had their Tone-Deaf Warbler song down pat). The sky was getting ominously sunsetty, so Milton was double timing it to make sure he wasn’t caught in another mosquito invasion. Before he could step up onto the cottage porch, he spotted two figures coming toward him from the docks.
Two faces that were strange in these surroundings, but as familiar as his own.
His mother and father.
For a moment, Milton stood frozen. He didn’t feel one bit like a Bird Brain anymore, but seeing them here was a sudden reminder of all the totally, terribly, horribly, heinously rotten things that had happened that year. It was enough to stir his insides into the jumbliest of jumbles.
Then his mother started running toward him through the sand, and then Milton was running too. She caught him up in a hug so tight that the mishmash inside him seemed to be squeezing right back together.
“Look at you!” Milton’s father cried once Milton’s mother released him. “You look like an explorer.”
Milton let his father hug him, and he felt that achy-tender-nauseous-happy mishmash smooshing together even more. He could feel the spectaculous mixed in there too now. It was spectaculous that his parents were here.
But there was also some rottenness they needed to deal with.
He counted to ten, wrapped in his father’s arms. Then he pulled back and asked, “Are you divorced now?”
“Yes,” Milton’s mother replied.
“We are,” Milton’s father said.
“Okay,” Milton said. “I guess I knew that.” He adjusted his glasses and took a deep breath. “You know, I wasn’t super happy about how things were going before I left. And I’m still not. It was a really rotten year for me. Truly.”
“We know,” his mother said, leaning down to find Milton’s eyes under his hat brim, “and we’re sorry. It was a hard year for us too, but we should have—we should have done better. For you.”
“That’s why we’re here,” his father added, gesturing around at the sand and the waves and the jungle beyond. “To spend time with you and to talk about this next year.”
Milton didn’t know exactly what they would talk about or how it would be spending time all together, but he noticed that his father didn’t seem nearly as worn down and his mother didn’t seem nearly as tense as they had before he left.
They both looked ready to be here, right here on the shores of the Lone Island.
So maybe it wasn’t just Milton who was changing.
“As you know, I wasn’t one hundred percent thrilled about leaving home for the summer,” Milton told them as they climbed the porch steps. “But this trip turned out to be an adventure like you wouldn’t believe. I discovered like a thousand new species, escaped death on numerous occasions, and saved the island from an environmental disaster. Well, my friends and I did.”
“We want to hear all about it,” his mother said.
“We sure do,” his father agreed. “Tell us the whole story.”
So Milton did.