1989
“Wake up, Little Wing.”
The quarry floor is solid underneath my right side, my upper arm my pillow. If not for the sleeping bag we unzipped and opened wide beneath us, it would have been the ground versus the Volt sisters.
I didn’t sleep well last night and not just ’cause of the hard ground. Something is different in me. My mom says its hormones. “It isn’t just your body changing,” she likes to tell me. “It’s your brain and heart too.” B.B. wouldn’t let my mom go on about it when B.B. got her period, so Mom saved up all her you’re-a-woman-now talk for me. I liked it at first, the attention, but she keeps saying it with worry in her voice, like she’s a little scared of me. Dad seems to be weird about it too, in the opposite way, like he’s afraid simply looking at me is gonna make me change into something he doesn’t recognize.
“Time is it?” I ask.
“Time to get up. Don’t make me lick your eyelids.”
I flutter my eyes open but do not otherwise move. B.B. has carefully paralleled her body with mine so that our noses almost touch.
“Liiiiittlllle Wing,” B.B. sings. “Rise and shine. No time to be grumpy. You’re fourteen today. This is gonna be your year. I can feel it.”
“Every year is my year,” I say, but my body is aching. Lately, I wake up feeling like I didn’t even sleep. My joints hurt and the soles of my feet are raw. B.B. says growing pains, but I say growing pains shouldn’t make new calluses form on your fingertips or split the skin at the corners of your mouth. Today my jaw is throbbing all the way up to my temples. I run my tongue over my teeth, and they feel sharper, more distinct—my molars little landscapes in my mouth that fill with saliva.
“I’m ignoring your attitude because I have a super-amazing, best-ever day planned for you. It’s an island scavenger hunt, and you’re gonna get everything you ever wished for, including the planet Saturn shrunk down small enough for your pocket.”
“I hate Saturn.”
“No one hates Saturn.” She leaps to her feet and, in her best circus voice, shouts, “This is the first day of the rest of your life, and it’s going to be stupendous! Magnificent! Lion-taming big! Plus.” Now she drops to her knees and gets close to my unmoving head. “At the end of this day, I will tell you my plan for getting Carrie and James back together for some rekindling of passions.”
I open both eyes. She’s just inches away. “Gross.” I sit up, but the scared little grump in me is already leaving. I try to get it back, screw up my face until I’m all wrinkles and squints, but B.B. has that magic, a way of making every moment other than the one we are in silly.
“Love is never gross. Up you go!”
I let B.B. pull me to my feet, and she gives me a full kiss on the lips that clanks our teeth together.
“Cut it out!”
“This is going to be the year for you. You’re already bleeding, you’ll get the boobies; you’ll make your first great work of art. Joshua will fall in love!”
“B.B.!”
“You love that boy.”
“I only love you.”
“True, true, but this is the year you’re gonna get noticed. Are you ready for it?”
“No, not at all.”
But B.B. is already reaching out her hand and tugging at my shirt, pulling me toward the quarry pond, and before I can think, I am running, leaping over rocks, and holding my sister’s warm hand in my own.
“Almost ready?” B.B. asks as the blue-green water of the quarry comes into view ahead of us. “It’s gonna be cold!”
“No colder than yesterday! Ready!” I scream, my voice banshee wild. We are climbing and will come out above the pond—maybe ten feet above the surface of the water. It isn’t the most dangerous point, that one is twenty feet up, but you still have to be careful and know what you are doing to not hit vicious underwater rocks. I catch when B.B. looks up at the highest point, and I wonder if she is picturing her mother up there. What kind of woman disappears when she has a little girl at home? A weak one, I conclude, and my mouth fills again with saliva, little killing ponds lined up in a row.
B.B. is already stripping off her clothes. The sun is just reaching its highest point, and my skin is sucking it up, greedy as I take off my shorts, then my shirt. The sun feels good on the top of my head and the back of my neck—my long hair pulled into a low bun. I’m hungry. My belly greedy for anything. I want to lap up the water, lick chalk off the limestone, shove the leafy green of the quarry pines and honeysuckle vines into my mouth.
Ahead is a large pile of rocks that angles up, creating a loose path, to the spot from which we can safely jump. A boulder is halfway up—before you get to the terrible top—a flat, gray plateau perfect for sunning or jumping.
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
Naked, we race to the edge hand in hand and leap into the air. The fall breaks our hold on each other’s hand, and I go deep. I love how quiet the world is underwater. I stay for as many breaths as I can hold and watch B.B. do the same. Our hair floats around our heads, our legs push together in imitation of mermaid fins. B.B. is sexy at sixteen. Even I can see that. She is all curves, her pink nipples bigger than mine and her hair blonder. Time is what stands between me and sexy, at least I hope that’s what it is, but I can’t help but hate my body when it’s next to B.B.’s. The straightness of my hips, my boyish chest.
I wait until my lungs burn, a surprisingly long time, proving I can stay under longer than my sister, before I surface, gasping.
“You trying to pass out?” B.B. splashes water at me with a flat smack of her full arm.
“Of course not.”
“You scared me.” Her voice is edged with anger.
“Don’t get mad about it.”
“I’m not mad. Just don’t play that trick on me. That’s our game. We do that to other people.”
B.B. and I like to play dead. We position ourselves in the road or crooked at the bottom of a tree or floating facedown in the water. Islanders ignore us, but sometimes tourists get fooled and try to save us. One time this older woman dragged us by our arms back to the house. When Dad answered the door, he shrugged and said, “They do what they do.” He was more irritated that she’d interrupted his writing time than concerned about our games.
“I’m sorry.” I am sorry that B.B.’s so angry with me, but I also like it. She wouldn’t be mad at all if she didn’t love me so much, if I wasn’t so good at faking my death.
“I don’t want to lose you, Henrie. That’s all. Not even in my mind. Not even for a second.” She’s talking about the separation. At least I think she is.
“You need to shave your armpits.” I feign disgust.
B.B. smiles and pushes through the water to grab me and put me in a headlock, but I dive fast. I swim deep, marveling at the clear water, how it shoots down sudden in the center and never seems to end. It’s at least twenty feet, and at the very bottom there is a hole big enough to poke an arm down into Lake Erie.
There is a layer of warm water as definite as the rock that cradles it. I pierce this layer, passing into ice-cold water, then my fingers stretch down to touch the quarry’s deepest point. My eyes rest on something B.B. has left me, a little present wedged in so it will not move. It lies, I assume, just where B.B. has asked it to—a green beer bottle with its label peeled off. I rock it loose.
We reach the surface at the same time. Wipe our eyes and catch our breath, treading to stay steady.
“What’s in it?” I ask.
“Your first clue, of course. Want to open it?”
On land, I remove the plastic and rubber bands B.B. has wrapped around the bottle. I can see a scroll of paper inside, dry if not for the drip that rolls in off my eyelashes. I try to get the paper out by shaking it, then by inserting my pinkie.
“Here, give it.” B.B. throws the bottle a little ways away so that the green glass shatters on rock, little emeralds reflecting the sun. I step forward to gingerly reach into the mess and find a piece of Dad’s typing paper filled with Beatrice’s handwriting. I start the first page: Henrietta and Beatrice Volt were the bravest sisters the world had ever known.
“Read it aloud!”
“‘Beatrice and Henrietta taught themselves how to appear and disappear. They knew how to fold themselves into two tiny fists that could be palmed and hidden in a pocket when necessary, or to blow themselves up so big they stretched as rubbery and invincible as the island monster. Most of all, the sisters—one called B.B. and one called Henrie—practiced how they’d float away, but on their birthdays, they’d come back to Fowler for a fantastical scavenger hunt. The first present was always tied to the choking tree.’”
The choking tree is a huge old oak with a ring around its trunk where a rope dug in years ago, scarring it and making us feel so, so sorry for it. Sometimes we bandage it just to make Daddy laugh. The note means a surprise for me is tied to our wounded tree.
“Get dressed, you fool!” my sister says. “There’s a present to find!”
My legs stick to cloth so that I have to hop and struggle before my shorts slide back on.
Tied to the tree is a small dog that looks wild, although he does not bark or howl or even pull at the long rope B.B. has fashioned into his leash. It’s his matted yellowed fur, I decide, that makes him look wild and not his posture or the way he pants.
“Where did you get him?” There are few pets on Fowler and none allowed on the ferryboat. A year or so back that was not the case. The tourists would show up with their pets for the summer, and some were left behind. Our dad dubbed these animals “the Intentional Lost Boys.” There got to be so many strays that they took to roaming the island together in a pack. They killed Ms. Sonia’s chickens and attacked the island dump, spreading everyone’s balled-up secrets along North Island Road. That’s when they banned pets on the ferry.
“I found him! He was in the quarry, wandering around with cut paws and no tags. He showed up just in time for your birthday, so I knew he was your present.”
“Dad won’t let me keep him,” I say.
“I told Dad you’d take care of him no matter what.”
“But Dad’s allergic,” I say. Nothing domesticated appeals to him. He likes nature. Things that roam.
B.B. shrugs.
“He must belong to someone,” I say, locking eyes with the small dog. I want him. Still, I hold back, and the dog does too. Both of us stand at attention as if the introduction is meant to be formal. How do you do? I think.
“He belongs to you! He’s half-starving and way dirty. He needs you.”
As if trained to confirm it, his tail wags.
“Hey, good boy.” I hold out my hand and get low to the ground. He licks my palm, digging for salt between my fingers, then going for my wrist. The formality is gone.
I sit and he climbs into my lap, still tied. His ribs are outlined as if he’s holding his breath. His white fur is yellowed, and the pads of his front paws are badly cut.
“He won’t run now that he’s with us,” my sister says. “He’s very loyal.”
Untied, the small dog walks stiffly like a soldier over to B.B., until, it seems, he realizes he can hop more efficiently. He leaps up, shooting himself forward in short spurts. “He looks like a piece of bread popping up out of the toaster,” she says.
“That’s what I’ll call him. Toast. His name is Toast.”
B.B. picks him up in her arms and delivers him back to me, where Toast begins to lick my face as avidly as he licked my hands.
“Do you love him?” B.B. asks.
“I do.”
“I want you to love him.”
“I do!”
“Is he the best present ever?”
“Yes, B.B.”
“Say it!”
“He is the best present ever, and I love you, sweet sister Beatrice, for rescuing him for me.”
“You’re welcome! We can bathe him later. I already fed him this morning so he should be okay while we scavenge.”
“Can he come with us? On the hunt, I mean.”
“Of course! Let me show you the next clue. You are gonna love this. I got everybody to participate.”
I think, Who’s everybody?
I scoop the newly named Toast up in my arms, and the small dog licks under my chin as I follow my sister’s bounding hop to the side of the house. A rope hangs from our bedroom window to the ground, attached to a pulley, and at the base of that rope is a woven basket, big enough for a pillow and a blanket.
Toast wiggles free and runs to it, curling up in the basket, then rolling over on his back for his belly to be scratched.
“We can pull him up at night to sleep with us, then lower him down to go poop in the morning. I rigged it up myself. Do you love it?”
“I love it,” I say, and I do.
“He’s rolling around on your next clue.”
“Well, get him off it.” I laugh at her and she grins back. “I want more presents!”
I leap forward. I pretend to dig around under Toast’s warm body for the clue, but really, I am scratching Toast. I put my face to his belly; he smells of the quarry. It is a strong, almost human smell, like our dad after he’d been cooped up too long in his study.
“Silly dog. Silly, silly dog.” My hand brushes the paper clue as Toast flips to standing. “Found it! Clue number two!”
“What does it say?” B.B. asks, clapping her hands.
“You wrote it!”
“I know but I’m so damn clever. Read it aloud.”
“‘Henrietta and Beatrice Volt came from powerful women. Women so powerful that men had to keep finding ways to keep them small. The Volt sisters, however, were different, more powerful than all who came before them. They could not be broken up or broken apart. They used their magic to make art. They painted glittery pictures with stardust and cowrote novels with fairies. They dove with mermaids and came up with photographs of monsters gone Loch Ness. They were wizards and witches, painters and writers, and blower-uppers of rock. The youngest and most insatiable of the Volts was born with an artist’s eye, so her older sister climbed the magic mountain, called up to the yellowy clouds until they dropped low enough to hand over another, even more magical eye. One crafted by rainbows and angels and sky. A manufactured pupil that the girl could place to her own, and what she saw would translate, groove to paper, frame to walls, float livid with its own magic, and always show her sister’s true heart no matter what devil tried to come between them.’”
“Do you know what it is?” B.B. asks.
I picture a Polaroid camera, probably shoplifted from an island drugstore.
“Bet you don’t.” B.B. smiles. “Come inside.”
“Stay here, Toast.” I kiss him on the top of his dirty head and place him on the deck, where he sits panting up at me. He looks disappointed or maybe a little nervous, like I’m another owner who is abandoning him. “All right, come on.” He hops into the kitchen, delighted.
Inside, B.B. is standing at the kitchen stove, the gas turned up high so that the blue curves up like spider legs.
“What I’m going to do will hurt,” B.B. says, heating the ladled edge of a soupspoon over the front gas burner. “But it will be worth it. Get the bottle of gin out of the liquor cabinet.”
“Where’s Dad?” I ask.
“In his study. Like always.”
I used to love the storm of his typing, but since Mom left it’s been thunderous. So loud and certain I’ve made a habit of checking his fingertips later to make sure they are not bloodied. In his office are objects gone missing from the kitchen. Plates with hardened goo coating their surface—evidence of a yellow yolk or the sugar red of ketchup. Glasses and mugs with dime-deep liquids drying in them.
“It takes a whole army to get his attention when he’s writing,” I complain. “Why does he use that stupid typewriter? He could get something quieter.”
“It’s romantic. He says he’ll buy me one when I get my GED.”
“Why would you want that?”
“I just told you! Romantic. I’m going to mark us and it’s our secret. You should be glad he’s busy and won’t notice what we are up to.”
“What do you mean ‘mark’?”
“Like a tattoo.”
“That sounds ouch.”
“We need to mark this day.”
“Why?” I ask, but even as I ask, I’m standing on a kitchen chair to retrieve the bottle of gin from the cupboard.
“It’s the first step of my plan. Now shut up and take a gulp. It’ll help with the pain.”
Sometimes we sneak sips from the liquor bottles. Our parents never seem to notice. I like the way it makes my insides warm. It only takes a few gulps to make things seem fine. On a few occasions, we snuck a bottle out to the quarry and drank until we got silly.
“Here.” I hand the bottle to B.B. She takes the hot spoon to the sink and pours gin over it.
I’m still standing on the chair when I feel B.B. tug down my shorts and press the spoon into my left leg. The pain is sharp and sudden, and I suck in my breath, counting as B.B. taught me: One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi … At four, the spoon is gone. B.B. is already reheating the spoon for her own thigh.
“Put some ice on it.” B.B. nods at my skin, harsh with pink. I leap from the chair and try not to let the canvas of my shorts brush up against the burn, but this is difficult. I put a cube of ice in a kitchen towel and hold it to the wound.
The scar will be small, a crescent moon no bigger than a fingernail on the upper thigh of my left leg. Its edges are blistering.
B.B. drops her own shorts and holds it to her thigh without even a flinch. Toast whines and hops, launching himself up to our knees and down again to get us to stop what we are doing and pick him up.
“There, now we can’t be separated,” B.B. says proudly. “We will always be linked. The identifiable Volt sisters. Like a birthmark. The day of your birth! We are twins now. Born together.”
I jump down off the chair, and B.B. wraps her arms around my neck. “I love you, B.B., but you’re weird,” I say. “Where’s my present?”
“Upstairs,” B.B. says. “With Dad.”
We are not allowed to interrupt him when he is working.
“But…”
“I’ve arranged everything, little sister. Trust me.”
B.B. grabs my hand and we head for the stairs. Banging up them in a way that would usually make our father holler, “Girls! Girls! Be quiet, girls!”
“We’re coming in!” B.B. calls to Dad.
He swivels in his desk chair and smiles at us. The desk is cluttered with glasses and discarded shells of sunflower seeds.
Toast has hobbled up the long staircase behind us, but he stays standing at the study door as if a gate separates him from the room.
“Come on in, Toast. Meet Daddy,” I say, but Toast will not come.
I think of the bumpety ghosts in the walls and know they are strongest when our father is working. Slamming about, trying to disrupt our father’s thoughts. Toast is smart for staying out.
“Now, why are you girls interrupting me?!” he says, feigning anger.
“It’s a very special day, Daddy,” B.B. says. “Remember?”
“Is it my birthday?” Dad strokes his chin and looks perplexed.
“It’s Henrie’s birthday, Daddy! She’s fourteen. It’s gonna be the best year ever. It’s gonna be her year of discovery.”
“Henrie who?” he teases.
B.B. stands on her toes and points both her fingers at the top of my head.
“My birthday,” I say.
“What? Whose birthday?” He puts his hands behind his ears.
“Mine!” I say a bit louder.
“I’m confused. Is it your birthday, B.B.?”
“Daddy! It’s my birthday!” I can’t help but giggle. Our father has eyes flecked with the blue B.B. and I inherited, and when he’s happy and looking at me directly, I feel like I am sitting on the lakeshore looking out at the blue-green water.
“Your birthday? Yours? Huh. I’m pretty sure you were born in July.”
“It is July!”
“Daddy,” B.B. says, “quit teasing. Give her the present.”
He walks to his bookshelf. I cannot see what he’s reaching for, but I might know, and I feel nervous, wanting so badly to be right.
“Well, since I forgot it was your birthday, I don’t really have anything for you. I guess I’ll just have to give you something of mine. Let me see here.…
“All I have is this old camera.” He holds his 35 mm with a red ribbon tied around it. It’s the one thing he never lets us touch. He takes it on his island walks. “I don’t suppose you’d want it?”
“Serious?” I want it more than I ever even knew.
“It’s for you, my girl.” From his pockets he pulls two rolls of black-and-white film.
“Thank you!” I say and throw my arms around him.
“Time for you to be an artist.” He smooths my hair.
Olivia Rose was a sculptor. She liked to work with nature best and could make anything emerge from the center of a rock just by slowly shaving away the outside. Her sculptures still litter the island. We find them sometimes, unexpectedly. B.B. wants to write, like our dad. My mom is a builder, which is art. I want to be a photographer.
The camera is heavy. I hold it to my eye. The lens sets a frame that makes the day, the year, the news, manageable.
“Come here,” Dad says. He is sitting on the pea-green couch, patting the cushion next to him. “Let me show you how to load it.”
I already know. Ms. Sonia has let me use her camera on numerous occasions, but I let my daddy show me. He opens the back of the camera, and a folded piece of notebook paper falls out.
“It’s the next clue,” B.B. says, snatching it up for me. “You can read it in just a sec.”
“You have to thread the film carefully to not waste any frames. There you go.” He lets me shut the back of the camera myself once the film is loaded. “Now, once you take both rolls, I will pay to get them developed. If you still want to take pictures after that, I will give you all the darkroom equipment I have.”
“Really?” I feel almost breathless.
“Really.”
I imagine us in the darkroom, talking for hours, thinking about art, making it. “I’ll make good pictures. You’ll see.”
“We’ll make sure you know what you’re doing before the summer is up.”
And there it is. The end point.
As if B.B. can feel the dread in me rising, she says, “Read the note, quick! Our next stop is almost here.” She presses the note into my palm, and I unfold it to find a short clue.
“‘The sisters loved to eat off-island foods. Star-shaped fruits, grape leaves stuffed with rice, pickles to make your face go sour, and bars of chili chocolate to set their throats on fire.’”
On cue, Toast begins to bark. A car door opens and slams outside.
My heart thumps in my chest, and for one glorious moment I know it is my mom and that she has been gone all this time because she went out into the real world to bring me back all my favorite things. She would be the best present I could get, better than the camera, better than the dog. B.B. would know that. B.B. would make it happen.
I see the glance that flashes between B.B. and Dad. My heart sinks down sad into my stomach.
“Henrie?” a voice calls up to the house. It is not my mother’s. I rush down the stairs toward the front door.
Ms. Sonia covers her squinting eyes with her hand as she looks up at me. We hug awkwardly. She kisses the top of my head, then scowls at Toast in my arms. “That dog stinks.”
“He’s my present. From B.B.”
“He looks a bit used.” She laughs, ruffles my hair. “And you look a bit sad for a birthday girl.”
I shrug.
“Fourteen! It’s a special day, no time for worry.” She takes my face in her hands, staring into my eyes as if my mom is inside of me in a real and physical way. She leans in to whisper in my ear, “I can’t tell you where she is, but I promise your mother’s okay.”
I pull back. She’s not lying. She is waiting for me to accept what she’s said. I nod.
“Now where’s James?” The question is rhetorical. Ms. Sonia knows Dad’s inside. “I bought you guys some goodies. Made a special off-island trip just for you, my girl.” Then back in her whisper she adds, “And your mom helped me remember all your favorites.”
“So, it’s kind of from her too,” I whisper back.
“Absolutely.”
And the joy is back, filling my chest, making my legs want to hop and run and leap. I love you, Mama.
B.B. comes forward to help carry in bag after bag. Ripe strawberries and blood oranges. Cashews and yogurt pretzels and green leafy vegetables like small green bouquets of flowers. Fancy chocolate and my favorite kind of potato chips.
I think of how my mom sometimes says, “Remember, Henrie, it doesn’t take so much effort to be happy. Even when things are horrible, happiness can come on sudden.”
“Does your father know about the dog?” Ms. Sonia asks as she unpacks a bag.
“Yes, he says it’s fine.”
“Good. Come here. I have your next clue.” She hands me a tightly folded piece of paper.
I read, “‘Eileen and Elizabeth—their great-great-aunt and -grandmother—were the original island heroes, and the reason the island had a Main Street, where groceries could be bought, letters could be mailed, and treasures could be exchanged. Deep in the dark of the thrifted treasure chest were back rooms of books, used and new, of which the youngest Volt had once swore she’d read every word. Within the shelves and shelves of browning books on which lives unstrung themselves, the littlest Volt would find love.’
“The bookstore!” I holler, looking up at Ms. Sonia. B.B.’s tiny smile tells me I’m right.
I lead the way with Toast at my heels, B.B. quickly catching up. We race past tourists in rocking chairs on rented porches, maps spread wide on their laps.
We run past the now-defunct Fantasy Land—a place that could never decide what it wanted to be, part haunted house, and part putt-putt course. We run past the diner and the ice cream shop and into Island Thrift. The back rooms are wall-to-wall books; a small sign above the curtained doorway says THE PANTRY.
Mr. Cooper knows it is us. “Good morning, girls!”
We shout a greeting back and are past the curtain and into the must of ink and pages. It is dark—the windows are covered with newsprint so that the books won’t fade any further.
My chest is tight from running when B.B. says, “Don’t be mad.”
A figure steps out from the back, and my heart slams to a halt. It’s Joshua, walking toward me.
“Henrietta Volt,” he says. There’s a lift in his voice as if he’s glad to see me.
“Are you my clue?” I ask, and immediately wish I hadn’t.
“Do you need help?”
“No.”
He looks good, different. He’s holding a pile of books.
“You work here?”
“Summer job. Mr. Cooper thought I could help him get the place organized.”
He’s wearing a small golden name tag clipped to the left side of his shirt that says CLARENCE. He sees my look. “Sometimes I’m Tod. Or Larry. Sadly, none of the tags say Joshua.”
I love this bookstore. I love closing my eyes in the fiction room and imagining the dialogue stuck between the spines of each book. They talk to me, these books, whispering into my ears just like our Quarry Hollow ghosts, teasing stories that make me pick them up and take them home. Even now I can hear the clamor of all those characters. But Joshua’s being here changes all of that. I feel my face flush and am glad for the dark space.
“Is that your dog?” he asks.
I’d forgotten about Toast, hiding small and stinky behind my ankles. “My sister found him.”
“B.B.?” I notice she’s disappeared. And I don’t like the way he says her name, as if he’s picturing her, liking the different pieces of her even as I’m standing here alone.
“It’s my birthday,” I say too loudly. “My father gave me this camera.” I weave my arm out of the strap and hold it out. “It’s the one he always uses for his nature walks. It’s mine now though, and I’m going to be a famous photographer.”
“Famous?” He finds a rare empty spot where he can put his books down. “Can I see?”
I hand the camera to him.
He points it at the floor, at a pile of books. Focuses and refocuses. He lands on my face. “You have beautiful eyes,” he says and snaps a photo.
“My sister is the pretty one,” I blurt.
Joshua lowers the lens and hands me back my camera. “She’s pretty but she’s not prettier.”
The compliment feels so good, taking the warmth from my face and spreading it down into my body. I grab his hand and kiss his cheek. I have to stand on my toes. Behind me, Toast barks at us—once, twice.
Then I turn on my heels, dashing out of the dark store and into the sun. B.B. is waiting and all I can do is grin at her. I know I’ll be embarrassed later, but right now, I feel brave and proud and loved.
B.B. grabs both my hands and pulls me to her. “Did you do it? Did you erase my kiss with yours?”
I nod, gleeful.
“Happy fourteenth, Henrie!” B.B. shouts so that the street will hear. “Ready to hear my plan?”
We are running again, my big sister leading us to a new spot.
In the cemetery, we sprawl over bodies above Olivia Rose’s grave. The sun shines hot on our faces, burning our retinas. We hold hands—my right in her left. The grass underneath us itches my bare skin.
“Want me to tell you more of the story?” B.B. asks.
I nod my yes, my head rocking up and down against the grass.
“The fabulous girl magicians were also descendants of the infamous and stupendously terrible Seth Volt. A man who arrived on island with nothing except the name of his family’s excavation business, his massive ego, and his crippling fear of open water. He crossed Lake Erie only once, and he did it with his eyes shut as a storm rocked the boat that had agreed to carry him. As he crossed, the boat filled until he and the sad old fisherman who’d agreed to take him were up to their britches in storm water and fang-toothed walleye.
“Egged on by his own stupid survival—he was too much of a baby to possibly cross the lake again—Seth began excavating limestone and building an enormous house on the edge of his newly minted quarry. The house was meant to woo Elizabeth Fowler and drag her away from her sister, Eileen. She was beautiful, our Great-Great-Grandma Elizabeth. A tall woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She always said what she meant. She warned him of the island monster, and of the absurdity of arriving in a new world only to immediately dig a hole aimed at its heart. Maybe if Eileen had been with Elizabeth that day, or if there hadn’t been something like an electric current that flashed between Elizabeth and Seth, he would not have been so successful at winning over Elizabeth and then her father, making them both realize the island could or should be dominated.”
“This story is too sad,” I say, interrupting B.B.’s reverie.
“This island is sad.” In B.B.’s voice, I hear that she is, deep down, scared. “Ms. Sonia says a male heir always has to live in Quarry Hollow. A male. That means not you and not me.”
I squint at her. Light surrounds her hair like a halo, and it’s hard to see her eyes. “Those are all just stories,” I say.
“We can’t stay here, Henrie. We are stronger than our ancestors … stronger than my mom or your mom, but we have to convince Dad and Carrie that it’s time to leave. Break the curse.”
“Leave?” I have a bad feeling in my tummy at that word. It feels heavy and then sharp, pushing against my skin from the inside, pulling me to the island. I groan. It feels loud, odd in the brightness of the day, but B.B. doesn’t seem to hear it.
“We are going to pretend that the island tried to eat us too!” B.B. says.
“I don’t understand what you’re on about,” I say, trying to act like this is all still part of the game we’ve been playing for my birthday and that my body isn’t aching, as if it is being stretched apart.
B.B. sits up on her elbow. Her silhouette blocks the sun and she is a dark shadow over me. I still cannot make out the contours of her face, and I wish she was still holding my hand.
“I’ve thought a lot about this. We’ll jump. From the highest point! And then play dead when we hit the water. It’ll be easy to make it look like we hit the rocks. I know how we can carry something on us that will turn the water red, and you are excellent at holding your breath. We can make it so Daddy is there, so he saves us. He’ll know we have to go if the quarry tries to get us.”
“But the island would never hurt us,” I say.
“Henrie,” she says, “you know it already has.”
“I do not know that.”
“Where do you go at night?” she asks. “I wake up and you aren’t in your bed. What about those blisters on the bottoms of your feet, remember those? They were fucking gross, like you burnt them somehow.”
“It’s summer,” I say weakly. “We love summer.”
“Something is happening, Henrie. We have to plan our escape. You get that, right?”
I can hear in her voice that she is serious. That she is excited about her plan. That she is certain in a way I am not. I do not want to fight with her. Not on my birthday.
“Sure. I get it.”
“Good. Thank god. So here is my plan.” She is impatient with me but also too thrilled by her idea to notice that I am lying, playing along just to keep the day going. I know in my heart that I will never leave this island. It is my home. “We know the quarry better than anyone ever. We can figure out how to jump without hitting the rocks. We’ll jump together, and when they save us, we can act disoriented, scared. Not ourselves. They’ll know the island has turned. We’ll get out. You. Me. Daddy. Carrie. My mom.”
“Your mom?”
“Maybe,” B.B. says. “Do you think we can take her?”
“Toast?” I ask.
“Toast can come.” B.B.’s voice is stern now. “Henrie, this is gonna work. We won’t be separated, and we’ll break the Fowler Island curse. It’s had a hold on our family for generations. I’m gonna get us out. Jailbreak Volt-sister-style!”
She reaches down and begins to tickle me, but her fingernails are too sharp in my armpits and under my chin. I sit up quickly, pull my shirt down. I try to laugh. I try to tickle back. I try to pretend that I am normal, that something fundamental hasn’t changed, but I’m angry. I push too hard, dig my fingernails into her upper arms. The tickling quickly turns into wrestling. Me rolling over her and then her over me. She thinks it’s still a game, but that anger writhes beneath my skin. I can feel it wanting to wrap its arms around her. Hurt her.
Finally, I dig my teeth into B.B.’s forearm. I stop before I break skin and the anger eases off.
“Ouch!” she yells. “Jesus!”
We pull apart. She points at her arm. I see the delicate shape of teeth. My teeth.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
We’ve wrestled our way under the old cemetery elm. I can see my sister’s features now. Her need for me to agree. Her hope and love and excitement. She is my everything.
“This is the plan,” she says. “Our best bet. Are you in?”
“I’m in,” I say, quiet as I can.
“Say it again!” she shouts.
“I’m in!” I scream so it tears at my throat.