GHOST.
The word tumbled around the boy’s thoughts.
Could it be true? Was he really a ghost?
He pinched his arm. “Ow!” If he were a ghost, how could he hurt himself? How did he stub his toe, or hit his head, or get scratched by the Wolf?
He twisted to see the gash again. It was still there, or was it? It seemed to flicker on his skin.
“This is weird.”
“You’re weird if you believe any of this.”
The boy barely listened. He rubbed his hand over and over, replaying how the handle of the cooler had slipped straight through it. How the strangers had ignored him. How the ocean had been calm for them but had charged when he went into the gorge.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he whispered. “I can’t be a ghost if I—”
He broke out in a run. His feet took him as fast as they could back to the lighthouse. How could he break the floor of the house, but he couldn’t hold on to a handle? How could he make the desk into a boat, but he couldn’t make people hear him?
Wind swirled around him as he ran, picking up dust that trailed like ribbons. The snake of fear curled tighter and tighter in his stomach.
He reached the door and hesitated for a moment, two, three. If the house was as he had left it, with a hole in the floor and the desk missing, then he’d really done all those things and there would be no way he could be a ghost. But if it wasn’t . . .
“You won’t open the door.”
“I have to know.”
“You know what you are. You’re a lost boy who nobody wants.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not so sure?”
“The boys from the boat. The handle. The water . . .”
“It’s all in your head. Those strangers were rude and mean and—”
The boy flung open the door.
The room looked exactly the way it had the day he’d first come here. The desk sat by the wall. The floor was smooth and whole. And everything was covered in a sheet of dust.
“This isn’t right.” He stepped back, back, away from the house, his heart clamoring in his chest. “I broke that floor. I took that desk.”
He shook his head. This couldn’t be. This was wrong. Very wrong.
He touched his head, his legs, his arms. They were all there, right where they should be—and they were solid. His hand didn’t slice through them like it had on the cooler, like a ghost’s would.
But the room . . .
Had he imagined doing all those things?
The snake snapped taut in his stomach. Fear screamed through the boy. Thunder rumbled in the sky.
He dropped into a heap on the ground. Lightning clapped overhead and raindrops thwomped onto the gravelly sand around him.
He thought back to when he’d first woken up on the beach. Was there any sign that he wasn’t a real live boy? He had scared the birds when he’d shouted, but when he was frightened, they’d turned terrible. He had looked for footprints in the sand, but everything was smooth.
And he’d been hungry and thirsty just like a living boy—but only when he thought of food and water.
“Maybe I imagined it was all real,” he told himself. “Maybe because I believed it, it seemed like it really happened. But when Kyle moved the cooler, I couldn’t pretend anymore . . . my hand went straight through.”
“Sounds about right. And shows you’re even more brainless.”
“How was I supposed to know?” the boy said, bitterness shoved between every word. “If you don’t have anything useful to say, shut up.”
The bully fell silent.
The boy wished he knew something, could remember something, anything that told him why he was here, alone, a ghost and no closer to having any answers. No more memories that didn’t help him. He needed answers.
But now, he knew, he’d never get them.
Sadness permeated every inch of his being. All he had was nevers: He’d never see his family again. Never play with his brother. Never hug his mother. He had wished so hard for all those things—traveled so far to get them—and for what? He didn’t have a home. All he had was this beautiful island, and it was filled with horrors. Horrors he’d have to live with forever.
Fear wrapped around him, squeezed tight.
Thunder boomed. Rain gushed from the sky. The ground trembled beneath the boy.
“No,” he whimpered, wishing he still had the blanket. He had probably imagined that, too, but at least it had been some comfort.
Lightning carved gashes between the clouds overhead, and the boy curled up on the gravelly ground. He shoved his hands into his pockets and . . . his fingers closed over the piece of fabric.
He had found something else when he was on the beach. It hadn’t helped him then, but now the boy pulled the piece of fabric out of his pocket. It wouldn’t cover him like the blanket, but it was comforting all the same.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy who wanted to stop being afraid.”
He moved to rub the piece of fabric across his lip, but its color caught his eye. Bluish-gray, just like the blanket. He hadn’t noticed before how similar they were. And now that he looked closer, he could see the same vertical and horizontal lines that had been in the corner of the blanket. They weren’t just similar—they were the same.
This wasn’t any piece of fabric. It was the corner of the blanket. And it was in his pocket. Had been since he’d woken up on the beach!
The boy sat up, not caring that lightning flashed above him.
The blanket wasn’t from a hotel. It must have been his blanket. Somehow it had found him on the island, but before that, he had the square. He kept the square in his pocket, so it was always close. But why . . . ?
The storm grew around him. Shielding himself as best he could, he gripped the square in his hand, staring at it with all his concentration. “Once upon a time, there was a boy who could remember.”
Wind roiled past his face, churning the dust and sand. The air grew thicker and thicker, until it blocked out the lighthouse and the Green Wall and the sea. The boy was trapped in a cocoon of wind and dust.
“See? We’ll put it right in this corner.” The words were calm and light, out of place within the dust storm. But they comforted the boy. He knew that voice now.
“Mom.”
The haze parted in front of him and his mother came into view. She was sitting at a table, light streaming in from the window behind. The boy sat next to her, younger, elbows propped on the tabletop. A blue blanket was spread out on the table in front of them.
His mother placed the tip of a red Sharpie on the material.
“E-T-H-A-N. Ethan. It’s all yours.”
Smiling, she pulled the blanket off the table and held it up so the younger boy could see his name, red lines drawn onto the corner. He grinned.
“That’s my name,” the boy whispered, watching his memory. “That’s what the lines were on the corner of the blanket. My blanket.”
“Thanks, Mom,” the boy in the memory said, taking the blanket into his hands.
The dust began to settle between the boy and his mother, and he reached out to touch her. But she was gone.
“Noooo—”
“The pirate king drew his sword on the knight. ‘You won’t take me,’ he said.” The voice surrounded the boy in the swirling dust. Another voice he knew: his own.
He whipped around and saw the dust clear again, this time showing him and his brother kneeling together on a wooden floor. The blanket hung off the tops of two chairs, forming a tent above them.
A book lay open between them, and the boy saw himself hold up a paper-towel tube like a sword. Next to him, Ollie said, “I’m not a knight. I’m a pirate too. See, I have a pirate hat.” He adjusted the brown woolen hat on his head. It stuck out in the corners like ears and had strings that hung down over his cheeks.
“Nice pirate hat,” the boy in the memory said, and they both broke into laughs.
Watching, the boy laughed too. But as quickly as the memory came, the dust closed it away.
“More,” the boy shouted, and the dust obeyed.
“Is that tight enough?” His mother’s voice.
She was with his younger self on a patch of grass. The blue blanket was draped over his shoulders, and the boy’s mother was tying the corners around his neck.
The younger boy shook his head. “Make it tighter.”
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
And his mother did.
“You’re the handsomest superhero ever,” she said.
“I’m a knight,” the boy corrected.
“Of course you are,” his mother said.
“You remember the knight’s motto?” Another voice echoed over the scene, as though it came from a different room. This voice was deeper, his dad’s, and the boy in the memory nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “The smaller something is, the more it needs protection.”
“That’s right.”
The dust covered them and the boy looked for the next memory. This time it was him and his brother in his bed, the bed he’d seen in the lighthouse keeper’s house. The blanket was spread over them and the boy was rubbing the corner on his lip. A new sound mingled with the din of the wind, an angry howl that sounded like the Wolf.
The boy stiffened. Was the Wolf close? Even though he had beaten it once, the boy didn’t want to face it again.
But in his memory, he and his brother scrunched farther under the blanket. And the boy realized the growl wasn’t from the Wolf here, but from the wolf that scared them at home.
The sand shifted again, showing the boy riding a purple bike, the blanket streaming out from his shoulders . . . and again, showing the boy brushing his teeth under a dome of blue, lifting the blanket to examine his teeth in the mirror . . . and again, showing the boy and his brother playing tug-of-war with the blanket, until it started to tear. . . .
The rapid memories played one after another in the swirling dust, until they stopped on an image of the boy’s father standing in the shallow end of a pool. The boy could see his father clearly now. They had the same nose, the same curly hair. He stood tall and wide.
And his eyes were a bright, shining green.