The trail that had led to the banyan continued, not farther into the island but parallel to the beach now. Milton hurried that way, picking seeds and squishy fruit pieces off his poor beautiful hat.
If he still felt like Sea Hawk at all, he felt like a mauled-to-death-by-rabid-fauna Sea Hawk. It was the Bird Brain Incident all over again, down to the avian moniker.
So long, Milton.
He wished he hadn’t left the cottage. He wished he hadn’t followed the trail. He wished he could hit Restart.
“Who needs friends? Who needs a super cool tree ship?” he said out loud as the path took him through a cluster of scarlet flower–covered trees. “If I can just find an outlet, then I’ll have Sea Hawk, and Sea Hawk is all I need.”
“Good thing,” a voice said, “because that kook isn’t into sharing the tree ship.”
Milton spun around so fast that he stepped on his own feet and toppled to the ground. He stayed down, hands held up in the self-defense pose he had learned at his one-and-only karate lesson (martial arts were not really his thing).
“Who goes there?” he called, twisting left then right.
“Up here,” the voice said.
Milton looked up. Perched in one of the flowered trees was a girl. She had large owlish eyes, deep brown skin, and a bun of dark hair on either side of her head. She was holding a book.
Here was Rafi’s tree-climbing reader.
The urge to yell and run struck again, but Milton didn’t do either. As mortifying as the last fifteen minutes had been, he realized that something extraordinary had just happened.
He had been brought back to life. This was a Restart.
“Are you Dr. Greene’s nephew?” the girl asked. “He told my mother you were coming to visit.”
Milton scrambled to his feet and held his hand up. “Indeed, I am!” he cried. “Greetings. The name’s Sea Hawk. How do you do?”
The girl jumped down from the tree. Now that they were on level ground, Milton could see that she was much, much taller than he was. He also noticed that she was wearing a utility belt that was very similar to his own. Hers had a water bottle hanging from it and a little pouch into which she tucked her book (Riveting and Remote: The Island of Fernando de Noronha by Dr. Ada Paradis). She didn’t shake his hand. Instead, she raised one eyebrow and asked, “Is that really your name? Didn’t you just say something about Sea Hawk being all you need?”
“Oh! Did I?” Milton replied (very loudly). “That’s right. Well. I was referring to … myself. All I need is me. Yes. I’m very … self-confident.”
“So you’re Sea Hawk?” the girl asked, eyebrow still up.
“Yes,” Milton said. “That’s me. Sea Hawk P. Greene. I don’t know why everyone around here is so dubious about my name.”
“Maybe because you don’t seem like a Sea Hawk,” the girl replied. “You strike me as more of a Grover or a Franklin or maybe a Percival.”
“Despite my outward appearance,” Milton said, “I have the heart of an adventurer. And my name is Sea Hawk. What’s yours?”
“My name’s Fig. Fig Morris.” She crossed her arms, like she was ready to handle some name-dubiousity herself.
But Milton nodded enthusiastically. “Fig!” he said. “Fig. I really like that. You know some people think the fruit in the Garden of Eden was a fig?”
Fig relaxed her arms slightly. “Is that true? I didn’t know that,” she said. “Did you know that the banyan is actually a type of fig tree?”
“That’s right!” Milton cried. “Sea Hawk’s studied—I mean I’ve studied figs. I have.” Fig’s eyebrow was back up again. Milton rushed on, “So really you should be the captain of the banyan-tree ship. You’re named after it.”
“Maybe I should be,” she replied with a shrug. “But Rafi would disagree. We don’t exactly get along.” She started to walk away from Milton. There wasn’t a trail of any kind here, but she seemed to know where she was going. The sun shone through the leaves and lit up pieces of her as she went by, a patchwork of bright and dark on her khaki shorts and green T-shirt.
“Why not?” Milton asked, following her.
Fig glanced at him over her shoulder. “He made it very clear when he arrived that his family wouldn’t be here long and that he wasn’t interested in making friends,” she said. She paused a moment, then added, “Also he called me Big Fig a few times, which I obviously did not appreciate.”
“How heinous!” said Milton.
Fig waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t care. He doesn’t bother me. He’s just intimidated by me.”
“Because you’re tall?” Milton asked, walking double time now so that they were side by side. “I’ve often wished I was tall. As a species, humans are getting taller, so evidently natural selection favors the vertically superior. I’m due for a growth spurt any day now, so I could catch up to you, but I highly doubt it. Plus, you might have another growth spurt too. I wonder what height you’ll—”
“Seriously, Sea Hawk?” Fig cut him off, coming to a sudden stop. “I like the way I look, but that doesn’t mean I want to have a conversation about it with you.”
If Milton was tall, he was pretty sure he would like nothing more than to converse about his tallness. But it was clear that for Fig, this was Things You Do Not Say territory.
“Got it, Fig,” he replied quickly. “Whatever you say, Fig.”
Maybe it was because his HandHeld was dead and Isle of Wild was out of reach. Maybe it was because things had gone so terribly wrong at the tree ship. Maybe it was because she wore a utility belt (like him) and seemed fearless (unlike him). Maybe it was because he had spent the last year or maybe even longer feeling loneliness like a dull, constant ache that started in his (very sensitive) stomach and spread over his entire body, from the tips of his cowlicky brown hair to the ends of his poorly tended toenails.
Milton wasn’t sure exactly why. But he was sure of this:
More than anything in the world, he wanted Fig to be his friend.
He wasn’t going to mess up this Restart.