She kept still and quiet, which was the easiest thing in the world for her to do. She watched Mrs. Wixton pass once, then twice more. On the third pass, Mrs. Wixton was calling for her, though not very loudly.
She doesn’t want them to know that she’s lost me, Roo realized.
By her fifth pass Mrs. Wixton’s voice was sounding panicked. Her skinny legs moved faster. Roo couldn’t help but smile. The calls were louder and lasted for some time. Then they went quiet.
Roo wondered what would happen next. But when nothing did, she knew that nothing would. Mrs. Wixton wouldn’t want Ms. Valentine to know that her famously sharp eye was not quite sharp enough. She wouldn’t tell her that Roo was missing, not for as long as possible, and that would give Roo a few hours of beautiful freedom.
She curled up and lay down on her side, ear to the earth, and listened to the music. It was busy and insistent now, pulsing with energy. She slipped into the sound gratefully, the way a numb, cold body slips beneath warm blankets. When she had her fill, she propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her finger into the dirt, scraping until she found a thick pink-and-gray earthworm. She held it, watching as it nudged its tapered head in the palm of her hand to stop itself and let the rest of its body contract in ripples. After a while, Roo placed it back on the ground, poking her finger in the earth to give it a tunnel. It was then that she spied something on one side of the hole. A piece of green-and-white-striped paper. Carefully she extracted it. It was a Juicy Fruit gum wrapper with a red wax-paper wrapper inside. The same wrapper as the gum in the box beneath the floorboards. Roo remembered the flashlight in the box. Maybe the girl had found this cave too, all those years and years ago, and had escaped here, just like she had. Roo wondered if the girl had gotten well and gone home. But then she looked down at the ring with the two hearts, still on her finger. No, the girl had probably died here. She would have taken the ring with her if she had lived.
Roo stayed in her little cave for hours, watching the river change colors. Each time she thought she would finally come out of hiding, the river kept her rooted, enchanting her as its waves shifted from silver to copper to indigo. Evening approached, and she watched the sun slide down in the sky until it was just a splinter above the dark water. Layers of coral and pink smudged the horizon, peppered by a flock of Canada geese, their gulping barks bouncing off the surface of the river.
It began to grow chilly. Roo stretched her sweatshirt over her knees and huddled for warmth as she stared out at the water, black and silver now and moving gently, like a mind before sleep.
The water hissed suddenly. She remembered how it had reminded her of a snake when she first saw it. It hissed again, louder this time, and Roo lifted her head off her knee, frowning out at the river. There was a shadow moving along the southern edge of the island. It was long and narrow and it glided smoothly, like an alligator.
For the first time that day, Roo poked her head out of the cave. She glanced around quickly, making certain that no one was nearby. Then she crawled out of the cave and stood, stretching her cramped limbs. A cloud had drifted over the crescent moon, making the night so black that Roo had to search the river for some time before she spotted the shadow again. It had glided surprisingly far along the perimeter of the island. It drifted closer and closer to her before finally stopping several yards away. There it stayed, near to the banks, bobbing on the waves. Slowly, Roo approached the thing, making small decisions about it as she went along: It has a round head, a long snout. A bird? Too large for a bird. There, it moved! Some sort of animal?
When she finally reached it she saw that it was not an animal at all. It was a canoe, and sitting inside it was a boy of about fourteen with very pale hair tied back in a short ponytail. By the time she realized who she was looking at, she found that he was staring right back at her.
“You’re that boy,” Roo said, remembering to keep her voice low despite her surprise. “The Faigne.”
The boy smiled at her, as though he were pleased she had heard of him. “You can call me Jack.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“The river took me,” he said. “She was curious about you.”
“That’s not true. You paddled over here, I saw you.”
“I was curious too,” he said simply.
The moon sailed out from behind the clouds. Now she could see the boy more clearly. In the past, Roo had never thought much about boys. They had only ever teased her or called her trailer trash. Certainly she had never thought about the way they looked. But this boy, Jack, was so beautiful that it was alarming. She stared at him, as though his beauty were some sort of trick. He stared back in such a frank, pleased way that it embarrassed her.
“Do you really live on the river?” she asked him, trying to regain her composure.
“That’s right.” He watched her with an easy smile. He seemed to be asking his own questions about Roo without speaking a word, and finding the answers in her face.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
He gestured vaguely toward the far shores.
“Why don’t you live with them?” Roo asked.
He hesitated, then replied lightly, “I prefer the river.”
But Roo knew better. She knew that unless things were very bad at home, you still would rather be with your family.
Suddenly a black shadow swooped down from the sky. It was a heron, the tip of its tremendous wing skimming the air just above Jack’s head. It gave off a single harsh croak then flew away again.
“Someone’s coming,” Jack said, and with a push of his paddle, his canoe slid away.
Roo ran back into the little cave, squeezed in, and peered out of the opening in time to see Jack’s canoe melt into the black sky and disappear. The wind began to settle. The river seemed to stretch itself out, smoothing out its ripples, and the air grew less chilled. In a moment a pair of legs passed the cave opening. Mrs. Wixton. Roo heard her footsteps stop a few yards away, then they retraced their path past the cave. Soon the house door thumped closed and all was quiet again.
She should go in, she knew she should. But instead she watched the black water late into the night, listening carefully for the hiss of a canoe paddle and the slow flapping of a heron’s wings.
She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and when she awoke, it was to the sound of a violent downpour. She had no idea what time it was. From the lifting darkness outside, she guessed it was early morning. Five or six o’clock maybe. She poked her head through the cave’s opening to blink out at the rain. It bullied the island with its hard pecks, while thunder roared across the water and lightning flashed in the sky.
Roo glanced up at the house. The lights on the first floor were off. There were no lights on in the east wing and one light in the west wing. Mrs. Wixton was probably in a state of panic by now. Good.
Roo crawled through the opening and made a run for it across the rocks and over the muddy lawn to the front door. Once in her bedroom she sat on her bed and steeled herself for Mrs. Wixton. The old lady would certainly be listening for her in the next room. But when minutes passed and she didn’t appear, Roo stole into the hallway and peered into Mrs. Wixton’s bedroom. It was empty, the blankets on the bed neatly arranged.
The rain was pounding against the windows, but underneath the sound Roo now could hear another one coming from down the hall—the sound of someone crying.
Stupid woman! Roo thought. Ms. Valentine will hear her!
Roo hurried down the hallway, her anger growing by the second.
“Stop it! Stop it, Mrs. Wixton!” she called out as loud as she dared to. “I’m right here!”
She followed the awful bawling into the children’s dormitory. Here it was loudest but when she looked around, she found that the room was empty. There was a sudden, distant drumming sound—a fist against a wall maybe—and the crying changed to shrieks, raw and anguished. It was not Mrs. Wixton who was crying. The voice was too high, too young.
Every so often, people do things that are difficult to explain. Out of the blue, a person might suddenly feel like she should pull back a loose wallboard in her barn only to discover an abandoned litter of kittens hidden there. That morning, as the watery orange sun began to rise, Roo noticed a tiny, guttering light enter the children’s dormitory and dance across the floor. It climbed the far wall, like a spider lit from inside, until it finally settled on the brass latch of a little cabinet door set in the wall. Roo walked up to it, reached out to touch the light, and it was gone. All that was left was her hand on the cabinet latch and the oddest feeling that she should open it.