There is something seriously wrong with these people. I should have hired a real captain to bring me to the island, someone with leathery skin and wrinkles to prove he’s been at sea often and still hasn’t died. I should have rebelled for once and come here alone. Now I’m stuck on an abandoned island with a group of people who talk nonstop and hardly ever leave me alone. I scan the desolate beach. A stretch of sand is the toothy smile beneath a thick mustache of pine trees. Welcome, the island seems to say with a rustle of branches and the gentle shh, shh of waves hitting the beach. “We can make it before dark.” I follow Elliot’s gaze to an outcropping that divides the beach in two. The boys are unreasonably excited to see the Roaring Rocks formation. It doesn’t match up with a clue from the poem, but daylight’s fading—Gabe worked this morning, so we got a late start—and it’s as good a place as any to camp for the night. We leave footprints in the unspoiled sand as we trek down the beach. How many footprints has the ocean licked away, erasing all signs of discovery and exploration but the stubborn dock? If I crossed the beach and strode into the forest, would I find grass worn to dirt by trucks and excavation equipment, or has the island devoured those, too? “So, Ruby, with only two tents, you and I might have to share.” Gabe appears at my left, having somehow defied the wind that whipped everyone else’s hair into tangles during the boat ride here. “I’m with Anne.” Anne races to my side, sneakers swinging by laces knotted around her backpack strap. Her feet slap shallow water. It’s clear blue, not murky like the ocean that hugs the mainland. “I’ve never been invited to a sleepover before.” “You don’t sleep,” Gabe says. “Sleepovers aren’t about the sleep, Gabriel. They’re about what comes before.” “That,” Gabe says, “is exactly why I want to share a tent with Ruby.” I roll my eyes. How Gabe gets so many girls with his overthetop flirting is a mystery. We walk in a strange silence full of sound: the whisper of waves, the crunch of sand beneath our feet, the caw of gulls overhead. And when the wind blows a moment later, a whirling, belligerent thing, it seems to suck the sound from everywhere that’s not here. An hour and a half later, we stop on the last stretch of smooth beach before it turns rocky. After setting up the tents, we wander toward the Roaring Rocks—a collection of boulders jutting into
the sea. They curve around a narrow inlet and connect with a twelvefoothigh crag on the other side. Beyond that are more beach and a cliff that may or may not be our starting location. The sun dips its belly into the water, and my shadow steps away from me. I know I should follow Anne and the boys into the ocean, but I just need a moment. A short little second to get past the fact that I’m here with four people and not one of them is my twin. Elliot squints in my direction, lips slowly tipping into a smile. It’s the kind of look that makes me want to be seen. “Get over here, Ruby!” he yells. “You’re blurring around the edges.” I wave but stay put. Sadie never understood it, but I’m a perfectly content observer of fun. The boys don’t know this. Elliot shakes his head, mutters something to Gabe. I can already tell it’s nothing good because Gabe’s face takes on an expression that, I’ve learned, foreshadows roguish behavior. I’m proven right when he scoops me up from the stone, flings me over his shoulder, and carries me to the rocky inlet where the others have gathered. Charlie smiles when he sees me. “You can’t miss this, Ruby. Well, I guess you could, but then all of us would be laughing and telling stories about the Roaring Rocks and you’d be left out. Then we’d feel bad, and it’d ruin the whole memory.” My cheeks warm with embarrassment, but I’m smiling. There’s something about Charlie that feels like magic, like just being near him might bring the dead to life. I toe the edge of the rock and peer over. The water recedes down a narrow passageway walled in by tall rocks, revealing a small, semisubmerged cave. “This is the best time to see it,” Elliot says. “Before high tide, when the waves are high and fast like this.” I glance at his profile: eyebrows raised, teeth biting his lip ring. He cranes his neck to the ocean. “Are we waiting for something?” I ask. The look he gives me is an unnerving mix of mischief and glee. “When waves push down this channel with enough power, air gets trapped in that cave. It’s supposed to make this rumbling sound before the water escapes. It’s why they call this place the Roaring Rocks.” “That’s not even the fun part,” Charlie says. He says something else, but his words are lost in the ferocious water that rockets down the passageway and into the cave. White surf hits the back of the cave with a thunderous reverberation. Water in the channel is frothy white and rising, and when it leaves the small cave it shoots skyward, drenching us from head to toe.
I push salty strands of hair from my eyes and watch the water recede before it spits a shorter blast of ocean at us. Elliot is whooping. Anne and Gabe are giggling. I’m smiling in a way I haven’t for a very long time. And Charlie, well, he looks like he’s soaking up all the life he can before he goes. The sun drips light down the face of the sky, fierce reds and oranges pooling on the surface of the water. For the long moments before the sun dunks beneath the waves, we’re kings and queens with skin like fire.