Too much had happened too quickly. I couldn’t think, not even about Pablo and the old man. When Mel said we needed to get some rest and make decisions in the morning, I didn’t object.
I watched Rish and Chester tie Pablo’s ankles, too. Then they double-checked their knots. Betty asked Pablo if he wanted water or food, if he needed to go to the bathroom. But he wouldn’t even look at her, much less speak. Rish and Chester carried him into a tent and laid him down inside. We didn’t know what else to do with him.
Hours passed and night fell. As I crawled inside my own tent, I felt more paranoid than ever. It was true that we’d killed the enemy, or who we thought he was. But Rittika had proven to be the real cold-blooded killer. My mind replayed the showdown with the chief and Pablo over and over again. And each time I had the same takeaway. The only person we really needed to fear—the only person we’d ever needed to fear—was Rittika.
I edged closer to Mel, acutely aware that she was mad at me. I knew we needed to talk about how I’d told Rittika about the poison. I knew I needed to apologize. Although I was pretty sure Mel would forgive me—she wasn’t one to hold a grudge—I wondered if my disloyalty would change our relationship. Maybe after this she’d never trust me again. Maybe she’d always be a little on guard. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if she stopped thinking of me as a sister.
“Mel,” I whispered. I went to shake her, then heard the steady rhythm of her exhalations. She was sleeping. Damn, I thought. I wanted to get the difficult talk out of the way. But time passed, and pretty soon I fell asleep, too. I dreamt the monkey came back to avenge the old man’s death. To chew off our toes and fingers as we slept. Abruptly, I awoke, my heart racing, my body covered in sweat. But nobody was screaming in pain. The night was quiet, almost peaceful, except for the faint sound of Pablo crying.
I wondered if Rittika was listening to him, too. If she was, did she care? I wondered if she’d been lying to me when she’d admitted to having nightmares. I wondered if anything got under her skin.
At dawn I awoke feeling awful. My head pounded. I had a disgusting taste in my mouth, like something had crawled inside and died there. Also, I was disoriented—unsure for a few seconds where I was: Drake Rosemont, my own house, the island? Yes, the island. Once I had my bearings, I can’t say I felt any better.
Mel wasn’t beside me. Maybe she was out collecting the last of the supplies we’d need for the voyage. I wondered if we would leave the island that day, or stick around a while longer in light of Pablo’s return. When I left the tent, I was surprised to see everyone except Mel sitting in a circle around the dying embers of a fire. They were speaking in quiet, conspiratorial voices.
“He must have that disease,” Chester whispered. “What’s it called? Some Swedish word …”
“Stockholm Syndrome,” Rish replied.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Is that, like, even a real thing?” asked Avery.
“Yeah, it’s real,” said Rish. “It’s when you start to identify with your captor. You start to think he’s doing the right thing.”
“Well, that pretty much describes Pablo,” Chester said.
“True.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t blame Pablo,” Betty said. “The old man got to him while he was vulnerable. Pablo didn’t stand a chance.”
“No,” Rittika objected. “Let’s be honest. Pablo wanted to be with the old man. They were like two peas in a pod.”
“Does it even matter?” asked Betty. “Look, the old man’s dead, but Pablo’s still here—and he’s one of us. We’ve gotta help him.”
“She’s right,” said Ming. “We’ve gotta do something.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rittika asked. “You guys are way too forgiving. The old man and Pablo were threatening us. Stalking us. We were basically their prey.”
“I agree with my sister,” said Rish.
“I think we can help Pablo,” said Betty. “Rehabilitate him.”
“What are we—therapists?” Rittika asked.
“If not help, then what do you propose?”
“Look, he’s too far gone. There’s nothing we can do.”
“What are you saying?” Betty asked, her voice cracking.
“You know what I’m saying.”
“No, don’t even suggest it! That’s so wrong it’s beyond wrong. The old man—fine, he had to go. But Pablo, he’s our friend.”
“Was our friend.”
“At least give him a chance to explain himself!”
When Rittika sighed, Rish put his hand on her shoulder. “Maybe Betty’s right,” he said. “Maybe we ought to give him a chance.”
Rittika shook her head sulkily. “I don’t agree, but if you feel that strongly … go ahead.”
Chester and Rish looked at each other, then went to get Pablo out of the tent. They untied his feet and helped him up. When he emerged, he was the same as yesterday: pissed off and agitated. He stood there, his back against the bark of a tree, staring at us with contempt.
“I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and untie this,” Rish said, untwisting the knots that bound his wrists together. “But don’t do anything stupid. Because we can do today what we did yesterday.” Pablo glanced at him scornfully, then spit on the ground.
“Do you want something to eat?” Betty asked, her tone accommodating, like she was desperate to make peace. “Or some water? You must be thirsty.”
He looked at her and shook his head, his first attempt at communication since the old man’s death. I felt a little relieved.
“We don’t want to hurt you, but we don’t want you to hurt us, either,” Betty said gently.
“Don’t baby him,” warned Rittika, flipping back her hair.
“I’m just trying to be nice.”
“He doesn’t deserve it.”
At that, Pablo glared at Rittika with a hatred so pure it made me recoil. “I wish it was you that got poisoned,” he hissed.
She got up and walked over to him, leaning in close, getting in his face. I wasn’t sure which of them to worry for more—Rittika or Pablo. “It must have sucked to lose someone you loved.”
“The chief called you an evil sow,” he retorted, staring into her eyes. “He said we should stick you—stick you like a pig.”
“Hey!” Rish said, jumping in. “Do not talk about my sister like that.”
Pablo gave him a sly, rancorous smile. “Oh, and here comes the sidekick—right on time. What are you so afraid of, Rish? That someone will finally tell the truth about your family?”
At that, Rish lunged forward, shoving Pablo in the chest. Pablo put up his hands, blocking another shove, and continued. “And your father—the Maharaja of India—where’s he, Rish? Wasn’t he supposed to sweep down in his diamond-encrusted helicopter and save us?” Pablo turned his head, pretending to look around. “Where’d he go?”
“Oh, let him talk,” Rittika told her brother. “That’s all he has now—words.”
Fuming, Rish took a step back. I could see that it took effort. Rage simmered in his eyes, threatening to boil over.
“Words? Yeah, I got more of those,” said Pablo. “What I think is that your father spent about three minutes looking for you, then went back to his mansions and Maybachs.”
“Keep pushing me, man. You’ll regret it,” Rish seethed. Then he put his hand in the pocket of his threadbare shorts. He pulled something out—something I didn’t recognize at first. It was made of tattered leather. The old man’s sheath. I guess Rish, like his sister, had taken a trophy from the kill. With trembling hands, he opened it and held up the knife. It was twice the size of Mel’s blade, and twice as formidable.
“If I don’t stop, then what?” asked Pablo. “You’ve always been all talk, dude. It’s your sister who calls the shots. You probably don’t even know how to use that thing.”
“Shut up,” said Rish. But as if to reinforce Pablo’s point, he stole a look at his sister. She locked eyes with him and shook her head.
“Bingo,” Pablo said.
“I said, shut up!” Rish warned, turning to Pablo again. He gripped the knife a little tighter. I didn’t think for a second he would use it. Pablo might have been trash-talking, but he was right about Rittika being the boss.
“Honestly, dude, what does it matter what I say? Don’t you get it? The chief’s gone. It’s over. Everything’s lost. So you can stop pretending to be a hero. You can go back to who you are.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Rish cried, his whole body trembling.
For the first time, Pablo took a step forward. The early morning sunlight glinted in his mocking eyes. “Oh, I know a whole lot. Like how you’re probably glad we got stuck on this island. Because now you can finally admit it. You and your sister are totally into each other.”
It happened so suddenly that I didn’t register it at first. Rish, embarrassed and furious, sprang forward and jabbed the knife into Pablo’s stomach. One swift play, in and out. Pablo winced and toppled over awkwardly on his side. On the ground he moaned. Blood dripped brightly from his wound, forming a gruesome, dark blot on the waistband of his shorts. A blot that kept growing as the seconds ticked by.
“Oh my god, Rish, what did you do?” Betty whispered.
Pablo began to writhe in agony. He tried to use his own hands to cover up the wound, but there was too much blood, and it was coming so fast. Out of nowhere, Mel appeared. She dropped the fruit she was carrying and knelt down beside him, putting her own hand against the incision, desperately trying to staunch the flow. Alas, it kept coming, dripping wetly around her fingers, trickling onto the mossy earth. I began to wobble, feeling the same dizzy, disbelieving sensation as when Anne Marie had fallen into the tar pit. In that instant, I couldn’t look at Pablo’s face because then I’d know what was happening was real. I could only look at the blood. I’d seen enough of that on the island to last me the rest of my life.
The color draining from his face, Rish dropped the knife. In the blink of an eye, he went from enraged to disbelieving. He hovered around Mel helplessly, watching the blood—Pablo’s very life—pour out faster than we could think. Watching everything unfold, I realized with sickening certainty that Pablo was going to die. And I knew that his death was the most barbaric one of all, because we’d all played a part in it, one way or another.
After Pablo stopped breathing, Rish sat down next to him on the ground, or rather collapsed. No one spoke. No words felt adequate.
“You were right to do it,” Rittika said at length, breaking the silence.
“No,” Rish whispered.
“Yes. He pushed you—he pushed you too far. It wasn’t murder. It was … it was …” She groped in vain for the word. “Justice,” she said at last.
At that, Rish hunched over and started sobbing.
Rittika tiptoed around the puddle of blood and put her arm around him. She whispered, “It’s all right,” over and over again, but he shrugged her off. Rebuffed, she wiped away the tears that had gathered in the corners of her own eyes. After a minute or two, she straightened her back and lifted her chin, looking more composed. More like the Rittika we were all used to seeing.
“Maybe this is what had to happen,” she said, looking at us all. “Now there is no one else against us. We can finally be here without worrying. We can live. Rish and I have traveled everywhere, to the best places in the world, and none of them beats this island. I can promise you that. Isn’t that right, Rish?”
He looked away, his face still streaked with tears.
“This is where we should be,” she continued, her voice a little hollow. “We’ll make our own rules, without anyone telling us what’s right or wrong. We’ll live how we want—for as long as we want.”
She ended breathlessly, her eyes roaming hungrily until they settled on Avery, the one she knew, without a doubt, she could persuade. Avery licked her lips, seeming to consider the enormity of the decision before her. Or perhaps she’d already made the decision and was only basking in the rare glow of Rittika’s absolute, undivided attention.
“I’ll stay as long as you do,” she replied.
Of course. It was exactly what we knew she’d say. Avery had always done whatever Rittika wanted her to do—robotically and automatically. Why would now be any different?
Together, the two girls turned their attention next to Ming, another link in Rittika’s chain.
Feeling their eyes on her, Ming began to scratch nervously at one of the many mosquito bites dotting her legs.
“Okay, I guess. Me too,” she said weakly.
Rittika smiled at her. “You hear that, Rish? No one holds this against you. They know it had to be done. It had to be done for this island to be ours.”
It was as if they’d already forgotten about Pablo. All of them. Even Chester and Betty were focused on Rittika, absorbing her words, submitting to her point of view. And I guess that made sense. I remembered what I’d learned about ants and damselflies. About all creatures. Some dominate, others submit, and still others die. It was the way of nature. At Drake Rosemont, we’d pretended to be outside those savage rules. We’d pretended to be civilized.
We’d lied to ourselves.
Mel and I told the others we were leaving immediately. After this, I couldn’t imagine staying. Most of our classmates just stared at us apathetically. Only Betty expressed concern. She worried about our safety. She talked about how fragile the previous rafts had been. Was ours really any better?
The truth was, I didn’t know.
Rittika was concerned, too, but that’s only because she thought we’d rat out her brother.
“We wouldn’t tell,” I promised her, meaning it.
“You can’t admit what Rish did. What any of us did …,” she whispered, her face close to mine.
“I won’t.”
“Swear to me—as a Gold.”
“I swear,” I said, putting my hand over my heart.
“But what about Mel?”
“She won’t tell either. If we make it back, we’ll just say Pablo and Anne Marie didn’t survive the crash—just like Warren and Jeremiah didn’t. In a way, none of us survived it, did we?” I looked at her meaningfully. “We’re different people now.”
She let that penetrate, then told me to wait a moment; she had something for me. She disappeared into her tent, returning with the giant conch, the one that had changed everything. “For you,” she said, trying to hand it to me. “For good luck.”
“I don’t need luck,” I told her, shaking my head, repelled by her offer. “I have Mel.”
My best friend and I took a little longer to collect the rest of what we needed, including various herbs and medicines from the jungle, and to say our good-byes. During that time, Betty approached me.
“Can’t you guys take a few more days?” she asked. “To think it through?”
“I feel as strongly about going as you do about staying.”
“Do you really?”
The way she looked at me, I knew what she meant—that Mel and I were ludicrous to think we had any chance of getting to safety. That when you compared our schlumpy, tacked-together little raft to the deep and boundless ocean, things looked pretty bleak. I guess she just wanted me to admit it. But I wouldn’t.
“Betty, when we get there, we’ll send for help.”
“Whatever,” she replied stiffly.
Once again, I wanted to yell at her. To get her to see reason. I wanted to share what Mel had said—about people becoming unhinged, about terrible things happening. Of course they would. Pablo and Anne Marie were already proof of that. “Tell me,” I said, more hotly than I intended to, “are you really ready to celebrate your eighteenth birthday here? What about your thirtieth? Tell me, are you ready to die here?”
She took a deep breath and looked away, but not before I saw the doubt in her eyes. “I guess someone has to go,” she admitted. “I just wish it wasn’t you.”
Hesitating, she put her arms around me and we hugged each other tightly. We didn’t mention the obvious, that we might never see each other again. But the truth was, a part of me was already gone, adrift at sea. I felt it was my destiny to be aboard that raft with Mel. If she and I made it to safety, then we’d make it back together. And if we went down, well, we’d do that together, too. We were sisters, after all. United till the end.
Mel insisted we go over what we were bringing one last time. We discussed each item, one by one. As I put them into a backpack, I finally got the chance to say how I was sorry—for telling Rittika about the hidden syringes, for everything. She just shrugged. “I don’t blame you. Not at all. Rittika can be very persuasive.”
“But I let you down,” I said.
“Then we’re even. Because I let you down, too.”
“What?”
“After the crash, when we found each other, I told you everything was going to be okay …”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s just agree not to do it again—disappoint each other, I mean,” I said.
“Deal,” she said, and we shook on it.
At some point, Ming and Avery approached us tentatively. They looked uncomfortable, glancing all around, worried that someone was watching. Then Avery took my wrist and squeezed it hard, willing me to listen.
“I know Rittika wouldn’t want us to say this,” she whispered. “But please don’t forget about us, Samantha Mishra. Don’t you dare.”
Mel boarded the raft first. Then I, too, climbed on, and our classmates pushed us out beyond the shallows. Rish and Chester swam up to their necks before letting go. Rittika stood alone on the beach. When I waved at her, she raised one hand briefly, and I got a bittersweet feeling, as if I’d lost and gained something at the same time.
I just had one more thing to do. It had to do with what was in my hand: the glass eye. The thing I’d taken from the old man. My talisman. I thumbed it one last time—memorizing its cool, smooth shape—before hurling it as far as I could. It made a satisfying little splash somewhere in the sea. Then Mel and I looked at each other, knowing that it was time.
I took an oar and began to paddle into deeper ocean. The boys stayed behind the barrier of the reef, in the tranquil turquoise water. Mel tried to stabilize a corner of the shade tarp, which had come loose.
Because there was little wind, the sails couldn’t do their job, not yet. But I rowed steadily, making slow progress against the waves, which instinctively pushed us back toward the shore, toward our classmates and all that had been. It felt strange when the island finally began to shrink, receding little by little, my classmates fading into tiny dots. After a few minutes, I couldn’t see them at all, and the island was just a dark smudge on a blue canvas. I wondered if someday the details would fade: The sounds and shapes, the textures and tastes. The buzz of mosquitoes and the endless green. I didn’t know. The only thing I was sure of was that I’d never forget my classmates, especially the ones I’d lost.
Mel and I were quiet, nothing to say, nothing to hear but the sloshing waves and the whistling wind. Together, we looked back, watching the island till it grew fainter and hazier, till I couldn’t quite be sure it was still there.