Irene held up her hand, which she did when we asked too many things at once. “May’s life has been different. She hasn’t been to the same kind of school.”
“Why not?” asked Isobel.
“Because she lived on a boat. She wasn’t in one place.”
“Why didn’t her uncle Will teach her?” asked Caroline. “Or his friend Cat?”
“I’m sure they did,” Irene replied. “But they had their own work. And our school here is special. You all know more than May does. Just because she’s lived in places you haven’t, it doesn’t mean that what she thinks about things is right.”
“What does she think that isn’t?” I asked, very much wanting to know.
“That depends on the thing,” said Irene.
“It probably depends on the time of day,” said Robbert, “and the weather, too.”
Then he stood up, stuffing his notebook—because he’d been making lots of notes the entire time—into his satchel. He slung it over his shoulder and went off to his machines. We all waved good-bye, and Irene had us all do experiments where one of us left out every other word and the others tried to guess the sentence. It was easy until Irene began whispering in our ears to describe invisible things, like ideas and feelings, but even then we were able to guess because there was nothing on the island that the four of us didn’t know.
As we called out our guesses I saw this was a sign about us, like the perfect sounding of our words. It was a happy thought, because right answers made Irene smile, but also because knowing this about ourselves meant that May’s words—because that was where she lived—were themselves sounds of the sea, every bit as much as the crash of a wave or the cry of a gull.
• • •
More often than not May was with us, partly because she no longer needed so much sleep and partly because she finally decided to become our friend. Now that we knew about her missing school, we wanted her to answer questions, too, and get smarter. But Irene didn’t ask May questions often, and when she did they weren’t about the assignment. For her part, May wanted to know about Irene and about Robbert. What we first tried to tell her—how they ate and talked and moved and worked—wasn’t what May wanted to hear. What she did want to hear, like where Irene and Robbert were born, and why they had left that place and come to the island, we couldn’t say. Sometimes when we were alone, on walks or on the porch, May whispered questions about us as well, about why we were our size, or why some of us did different things. We always did our best to answer: about testing and control, or about being just the balanced size for our arms and legs—just like her—but our answers never made May feel better, at least not the way answers did for us.
Irene was good at not talking about what she didn’t want to, of course, so when she avoided May’s questions the rest of us would change the subject back to school. Even though May and Irene each kept trying to get the other to say something she wouldn’t, we were all still happy to have everyone together, especially with Robbert and Irene being snappy when they thought they were alone.
“I just don’t think we can,” Irene had whispered, standing with Robbert in the courtyard. She had taken him a cup of tea and stood with him while we watched from the kitchen through the screen.
“What are they saying?” May had asked, but we were all trying to hear.
“It probably depends,” said Robbert, talking into his teacup.
“We don’t know where they’d be going next.”
“No, we don’t. That depends on how much they know.”
“Then we can’t.”
“But what else—Irene, we can’t pretend—”
“She’s a child.”
“Who knows. If one word—one word, Irene—”
“If we’re not sure, we can’t,” Irene repeated, and walked away. When she got to the kitchen we were in a line by the table, except for May.
“Everyone ready for a walk?” In the time it took to climb the steps, Irene had found her smile, the same we always saw.
• • •
That day we walked to the woods, and the next to the dock, and the one after that to the cliffs. Irene split us up like she had before, into groups of three, with her in one and May in the other. The two of us in each group changed every time, though for some reason I was never with Caroline and May together. When I was with Irene, we always talked about what we had observed. I also observed Irene: when her smile went away, or when she stared out from the cliff tops, or when her hand fell to our heads or our shoulders, patting or caressing us, which she never used to do except when we were going to sleep. In all these moments I felt, like a bone beneath skin, the sadness Irene had shown with the ruined bird.
With May it was more difficult to make observations because May never wanted to make them and, instead of making them, wanted to talk. We wanted to talk, too, but we also wanted to please Irene, so walking with May became like my visit to the dock, where I had two tasks and no rules to choose between them except my own.
Part of me—like a coconut sent rolling down a hill—had been thinking about this problem ever since Robbert had made a point of asking me why. I knew that I hadn’t known there were two tasks—the second task, my own desire, had just appeared, and somehow I had made it more important. I could be surprised by thoughts I didn’t expect, because the world was more than school. May was proof enough of that—or, even more, proof that our real school was the world.
• • •
I stood in the woods with Isobel and May. Isobel and I were comparing the stiff plates of palm bark with the spiny leaves, needle-tipped and edged with tiny teeth. May wasn’t interested at all. While we squatted, she glanced back at Irene.
“What is she doing?”
Irene was studying another palm trunk with Caroline and Eleanor.
“With Robbert,” May said, interrupting me before I could say.
“Robbert isn’t here,” said Isobel.
May blew air through her nose. “You said there was a plane crash. Where did the plane come from? Where was it going? Who else was there?”
“Our parents,” I said.
“Who were your parents?” asked May.
“Mothers and fathers who loved us,” said Isobel. May shook her head impatiently.
“What kind of people? What did they swear to? Where did they live? Why were they leaving? Who has a plane? There isn’t any place for a plane to land on this island. How did you get here?”
Isobel and I both stood. I tried to remember what Robbert and Irene had told us.
“Where they came from it rained all the time,” I said. “And it was cold, and they wanted to live with the sun shining, where it was dry.”
“What is ‘swear to’?” asked Isobel.
May pursed her lips. “That’s everything.”
“Our parents are the kind of people who speak just like us,” Isobel told May. “You speak differently.”
“So do you,” May replied.
“We don’t.”
“Well you sound different.”
“Did Uncle Will and Cat speak like you?” asked Isobel. “Did they say ‘black sand’ or ‘blok tsand’?”
May frowned at how perfectly Isobel had imitated her sounds. Then she shook her head and laughed, but it was a short laugh and she crossed both arms over her chest. She nodded at Irene.
“They don’t talk like anyone I’ve ever met,” she said.
“You don’t talk like anyone we’ve met either,” I told her.
“But I talk like more people than you,” May said.
“What people?” asked Isobel.
“Everyone.”
“But you don’t know everyone. You lived on a boat. You didn’t go to any school.”
Irene called for us to join them. We each took May’s hand on the way, careful not to pinch. “I didn’t is right,” she whispered. “And that’s why I know.”
• • •
Robbert would be waiting in the kitchen when we returned, and all duri
ng lunch he and Irene would ask us questions. At first May would answer with us, even though her answers were as if she had taken a different walk than the rest of us. Soon May stopped answering and just watched from the corner.
We were also back to taking naps. After lunch Irene would put the four of us down for a nap. There wasn’t a cot for May, so she went back to the classroom; we would wave good-bye as Robbert took her down the steps. When we woke up there would be more class and then another walk, depending on how long the nap had been. May wasn’t there when we woke up, but she would join us on the walk, except for the third day of our new routine.
We had gone to the dock with Robbert, but he hadn’t assigned any question in particular. Instead we all just stood at the end of the path, looking out. Then he asked, “Okay now, what do you see?”
Everyone saw lots of things. We all began to answer and he held up his hands. “No—stop—what do you see now? What do you see that you didn’t?”
This was more of a puzzle, and so we looked around very intently. Little by little our observations drew us onto the dock itself, though we kept to the middle. I remembered about light going through water. I crouched and pressed my face to a gap between two planks, lengthwise so both eyes could see. I could see the water moving, and not just the surface. I could sense the current beneath, just from looking. The real last time we had been at the dock it was to do with numbers—how hot it was and the wind and when the tide would turn. I rose from my hands and knees, with Eleanor coming over to help me.
“Do you see more?” she asked.
“The whole water.”
“And the birds.” She pointed to a pair of gulls gliding above the rocks. “I looked without getting caught. I looked as hard as I could.”
Robbert watched us with his hands in his pockets and a big smile on his face. Then May’s head came into view, bobbing above the crest of the path. Eleanor and I both waved to her, and Robbert spun around.
“What is it?” he shouted. “Where’s Irene?”
“She said I could come.”
Robbert saw us watching and waved us back to work. May caught up to where he stood and watched us, too. Her eyes were red. Even with the wind I could hear.
“Did you two have a talk?” Robbert asked.
May nodded. Her lip was shaking.
“We need your help, May. We need to know what happened. Why.”
“I don’t know why. I just woke up.”
Robbert sighed. “You don’t want anything bad to happen, do you?”
“Something bad already happened.”
“But this is to everyone, May. Even you.”
“I told her I don’t know.”
Robbert rubbed his mouth and stuck a finger in one ear, wiggling it. Then he clapped his hands and shouted to Isobel that she was too close to the edge.
That night I woke in the dark. At first I wasn’t sure where I was, but then I saw May, kneeling by my side. She put a finger in front of her mouth. I knew this meant not to talk, but I didn’t understand why. I spoke as softly as I could.
“May—”
Her hand covered my mouth and she looked over her shoulder, listening for a noise—for Irene. It was three a.m., so Irene was asleep, like she was always asleep, like everyone else. I had never been awake at three a.m. I remembered the footprint on the kitchen floor. Was being awake at night something May did all the time?
When did May learn how to wake me up?
Slowly she lifted her hand. I swung my legs over the edge of the cot, and May helped pull me to my feet. She looked into the dark of the stairs to Irene’s room as we slipped through the kitchen. She opened the screen door to just before the hinge began to squeak, then motioned me through. I didn’t have my smock on. What if it rained? I didn’t know what was wrong—though something had to be wrong—so I decided that the best thing was to find out. May eased the door shut and I felt her standing near me, warm.
There was no moon, but the stars were bright. May took my hand and we crept down the steps, keeping on the canvas runner to muffle sound. She pulled me to the beach.
I paid attention to as many things as I could, even as May hurried me along, because this time on the island was so new. We stopped on the path and May tugged me down out of the wind, with our heads just at the level of the whistling grass. If anyone did look from the kitchen porch we wouldn’t be seen.
“She told you something, didn’t she?”
I didn’t know who May meant, or when. May shook her head with impatience. “The other one, the one they work on more—who has dreams—”
“That’s Caroline. You should know her name, May. Her hair is brown.”
“Caroline. Caroline knows something, doesn’t she?”
Caroline had nodded to the path, so I could tell Isobel and Eleanor, but did that include May? Would it make her mad again? I remembered Irene’s story of the girl who knew things. Each time you learned something it was like a forking path that made you think something else. Would you speak or be silent? Would you finish the equation or look away? Would you follow the rules or make new ones?
“How did you know how to wake me up?” I asked.
“Sssh!” May hissed.
“Why don’t you want anyone to hear?”
“Because it’s a secret.”
“What’s a secret?”
“What they know. I heard them. They can’t decide what to do with me.”
“That’s because you haven’t been going to school. You have a lot of catching up to do, and you don’t always pay attention—”
May put her hand over my mouth.
“No one can hear, May,” I said through her hand.
“You don’t know that. You have to whisper.”
I didn’t want her to be upset, so I did my best. “How did you know how—”
“I watched them—when they—when you take naps. I saw what they do. You have a spot—do you know that?”
I nodded.
“When they—when they push down—do you feel it?”
“It’s the way we sleep, May. Just like you.”
“I don’t have a—a button.”
“Everyone’s different. But if you want to know what Caroline knows, why didn’t you wake her?”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she likes you, May.”
“I see her looking.”
I couldn’t say anything to that, because Caroline did look at May, but we looked at everything, which May didn’t seem to understand. May was wearing her black shirt with little sleeves and her bare arms were covered with tiny bumps, because of the wind. She tucked her hands between her knees.
“I like being your friend, May. But you should be friends with everyone.”
“This is stupid,” May said. “You didn’t tell on me, so that’s why. What did she say?”
That was when I had to decide. I pointed into the grass. “There’s something to look at.”
“What is it?”
May pushed past me on her hands and knees, quick as a rat through a heap of palm fronds. I came more carefully because the dunes were sloped and it was hard to see. I reached Caroline’s spot. May had gone past, rooting impatiently through the grass.
“Back here,” I called, trying to whisper.
“There’s isn’t anything.”
“Then it must be buried.”
“Bloody hell,” May muttered.
“What does that mean?”
May snorted. “It means bloody hell. It means we’re stupid.”
“But we aren’t stupid. We’re finding out.”
May didn’t answer. There was only one spot not covered by grass, so that’s where she started digging, scooping handfuls of sand between her legs. The hole got bigger and May spread her legs to straddle it. The deeper ground was moist and stiff. May’s fingers knocked against something hard. She pulled back a hand, wiped the dirt on her shorts, and stuck it in her mouth.
“Bloody hell,” she said again,
like she was angry.
Something lay stretched across the bottom of the hole, disappearing into the dirt on either side. May scooped more sand until we could see it all.
It was a wooden plank, covered with slick white paint, hard and shiny like the lacquered box for Irene’s hairpins. Straight through its middle were three round holes—like a nail had been punched again and again. I’d never seen a nail that thick, and I didn’t know why anyone would put a nail through a plank like that after it had been painted.
May stared down.
“It’s a wooden plank,” I said. “Painted white.”
All at once May began to refill the hole, shoving dirt back with both arms, then scooping clean sand on top. She pushed past me back to the courtyard.
“Let’s go.”
“What was it, May? May!”
“Keep your voice down!”
“You have to tell me. I’m your friend.”
May spun round. “It was on purpose.” Her cheeks were wet and her voice was thick. “Someone did it. And I’ll do them.”
She started off without another word, keeping quiet all the way to the steps. May brushed the sand off my legs and we crept inside. There wasn’t a sound from Irene, or anyone. I lay down and saw May’s face above me.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered.
May opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t afraid, but then just nodded. She groped behind my ear but couldn’t find the spot. I turned my head to make things easier, and she finally got it right.
When I woke it was Robbert’s face above me, with Irene past his shoulder.
“Thank goodness,” she said, and sighed.
Robbert leaned back and patted my leg. The other cots were empty. “Do you know what time it is, Veronika?”
I did know. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Can you tell us where you’ve been?”
I hesitated and Irene spoke more gently. “You wouldn’t wake up, Veronika. We’ve been working very hard all day to help you.”