Moonpenny Island Read online

  “What are you doing? You took my picture?” Flor shoves her dead phone into her backpack. Her face burns. “You’re spying again!”

  “No! Not this time.”

  “See! You admit it!”

  “Spying, observing, go on—waste time splitting hairs.”

  Pock pock pock! Three more shots dent the air. The girl turtles inside her XXL sweatshirt. Her eyes flick from side to side.

  “My father’s taking target practice,” Flor says. “It’s just practice bullets, not real.”

  “Your father’s the police officer.” The sweatshirt muffles her voice. “He should get a new patrol car. His spews out way too much exhaust. It’s very bad for the environment.”

  Her eyes are green and her hair is fizzy, like ginger ale. Flor’s waked-up foot is getting stabbed by fiery pins and needles.

  “He can’t help what it spews out. That car’s the best this island can afford.”

  “That’s too bad.” She pulls the sweatshirt down. “I’m doing reconnaissance for my father, who, as you probably know, is a geologist with a special interest in Phacops rana.”

  “No. I did not know that.” How strange is this girl? Very. And what is with that giant sweatshirt?

  The girl holds up her phone, which has a camouflage cover. She’s into being invisible, it seems. There’s something odd about how she palms and swipes the screen, but before Flor can think what, she’s being forced to look at photos.

  “Rocks,” says Flor.

  “Observe more closely.”

  “Oh. Fossils.”

  Once, forever ago, all of Moonpenny lay underwater. A great inland sea covered everything. If Flor had been alive back then—well, she’d have been a prehistoric shark or bit of coral, since no humans existed yet. Island limestone is perfect for the formation of fossils. Every island kid has a few in a shoe box.

  The girl pauses at a photo of a miniature cone, its tail curled in on itself.

  “Popular name, horn coral. Scientific name, Sterolasma rectum.” Swipe. “Brachiopod.” Swipe. “Rhipidomella.”

  She’s showing off, naming everything, like she owns the place, when Flor—Flor!—is the one who lives here. The girl, whose own name remains a mystery, slides her eyes sideways, making sure Flor’s paying attention.

  “And here we have Homo sapiens.”

  A blur of a girl, with skin the color of cauliflower and a useless phone pressed to her ear. You could put a whole apple in her mouth, that’s how wide open it is. Flor always looks bad in photos, but this wins the gold.

  Before she can squawk, the girl hits DELETE and the picture disappears.

  “Well,” says Flor. “Thank you for that.”

  Her phone really rings.

  “Hello, Father. . . . A few interesting finds. I’ve noted the coordinates. . . . Fifteen minutes. No more, I promise.” She drops the phone into the messenger bag slung across her chest, then stands there doing an imitation of someone who hates to go.

  “By the way, my name is Jasper Fife. Jasper is a form of crystalline quartz, and it’s often green.” She points at her eyes. “You’re Flora.”

  “Flor. No ah.”

  Overhead, a flock of ducks wings by. One brings up the rear, flapping and quacking. Wait up, guys! Wait for me! Then things get quiet again. Dad’s long done shooting. He’ll be at the police station now, carefully cleaning his gun before locking it back up. Afterward, he’s supposed to stop at Two Sisters and get the popcorn for their Saturday-night treat. Later, they’re all supposed to squish together on the couch and watch a movie. Flor tries her best to imagine all this happening.

  “Is something the matter?” Jasper is regarding her like a specimen in need of a scientific name.

  “What?”

  “You look pale and sickly.”

  “I always look like this.”

  Jasper starts climbing up the side of the quarry. She’s clumsy, slipping and sliding and clawing at saplings with one hand. It’s exhausting to watch. And a huge surprise when, finally at the top, she turns and calls down, “Do you want to meet my father?”

  “What?”

  “He’ll show you his fossils.” Jasper pauses. “Feel free to decline.”

  Flor has to go home. She absolutely does.

  “Okay,” she says. “Just for a minute.”

  Chapter Ten

  Every spring and fall, Moonpenny Island becomes a bird motel. Migrating across the lake, the birds stop here to rest and eat, and on weekends the Red Robin Inn fills up with people wearing fancy binoculars around their necks. Bird brains, the islanders call them. A couple of birders perch in rockers on the inn’s front porch and cock their birdlike heads at Flor and Jasper as they go inside.

  In the lobby, a small man with a big white beard and boots that are a replica of Jasper’s greets them.

  “Here she is! My little animalcule!”

  A bony Santa. If Santa dressed in hiking boots and a tool belt. A dirt comet streaks across his cheek. Licking her finger, Jasper rubs it clean. She’s as tall as he is.

  “And who’s this?” His dark eyes twinkle, which is something Flor thought only happened in books. He grabs her hand and pumps it. “I’m Dr. Fife.”

  “Father, this is Flor.”

  “And are you native to the island, Miss Flora and Fauna?”

  “Umm, I guess so.”

  He shakes Flor’s hand for a century or two. She gets the distinct feeling that Jasper doesn’t bring people home every day.

  “You look hungry!” he says. “Follow me!”

  The wooden steps creak. Dr. Fife’s socks droop around his ankles. Up, up, up they climb, to the top floor, where they step into a big room with a slanted roof and a tall window at either end. Beneath each window there’s an unmade bed. In the room’s center, chaos. A couch swamped with dirty dishes, and a long table buried under maps, rocks, rolls of strapping tape, a laptop, rocks, notebooks, a camera, wadded-up paper towels, rocks, spray bottles, tools, knives, and labeled ziplock bags. And rocks.

  “Give us a moment,” says Dr. Fife.

  He sweeps aside mugs and forks to make room on the couch. Meanwhile, Jasper pulls a ham out of the mini refrigerator and starts hacking it up. The sight sets Flor’s mouth watering. She didn’t eat lunch, and she loves ham.

  Ham, it turns out, is it. Ham and more ham, with a couple of slices of bread thrown in for a second food group. It’s like camping out indoors. Dr. Fife wolfs down a few chunks, then goes to the worktable. He chooses a rock and a teensy pick that reminds Flor of the one the dental hygienist uses to clean her teeth. Pick pick pick, till he switches to a knife, and then whittle whittle whittle. His movements are small and quick. The couch, the floor—everything’s covered with fine, stony dust. Something tells Flor there’s no mother in this picture.

  Dr. Fife shows her the rock. Tiny tunnels run through it every which way.

  “Trilobites,” he tells her. “Expert burrowers! Humble heroes of the remarkable Cambrian period.”

  Flor knows about trilobites. They resembled a cross between a beetle and a miniature armored tank and scuttled around in the mud at the bottom of ye olde prehistoric sea. When they took an all-school field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Mrs. Defoe demanded they admire the dusty case of trilobites, the state fossil. Yawn! Snooze! The real stars of the show were the dinosaurs and the prehistoric sharks with teeth the size of bananas.

  “So the trilobite’s your specialty?” she asks, trying to be polite, thinking, You can’t map the ways of the heart.

  It’s like Jasper’s father got plugged into a socket. She almost hears him start to hum. Yes, it is his specialty, and specifically the trilobite eye. Does she know the trilobite was among the very first creatures to develop eyes?

  Flor shakes her head. Wait. Does this mean there were once creatures without eyes? A shudder goes through her.

  “The wily Acaste, the lumbering Paradoxides, and the ubiquitous Phacops—they all evolved to have high-quality vis
ion! And let’s not forget those entrepreneurs who developed eyes mounted on stalks. That enabled them to immerse themselves in sediment but still keep an eye out for predators.” Dr. Fife claps his hands. “Literally keep an eye out!”

  “But I thought all creatures had eyes,” Flor says. “I mean, I thought eyes were part of being a creature.”

  “Sight had to evolve, just like everything else,” says Dr. Fife.

  “Do you know what evolve means?” Jasper’s deep voice makes everything she says sound like a lesson.

  “Of course I do! Like, we evolved from apes.”

  “Wrong.” Jasper shakes her head. “A common misconception.”

  “Yes, well. Our Flora and Fauna has the general idea.” Dr. Fife looks pained, either at Flor’s ignorance or Jasper’s rudeness or maybe both. “I bet she knows who Charles Darwin was.”

  “She does,” says Flor. “I mean, I do.” Charles Darwin? She’s heard that name somewhere.

  “The earliest eyes were simple optic nerves coated with pigment. Very primitive, but they gave those creatures a definite advantage.” Dr. Fife tugs his beard. “They could find food more easily and avoid their predators. Over time, those eyes changed and developed, and the most useful variations were passed on to the offspring. Again and again and yes, again. And so the eye evolved into one of the most complex organs imaginable.” His own deep-set eyes shine. “Darwin’s theory, as you know!”

  Flor nods. Sure! Got it! Meanwhile, a voice inside her squawks, What! What if eyes didn’t develop? What if people had to fumble their way around using their noses or ears or—gross—tongues instead?

  “Trilobites were sturdy little fellows. They very thoughtfully left behind an abundant fossil record. By studying it, we can trace how they evolved to have sight as crystal clear as any animal living today.” He picks up his drill. “We’ve already found some prime specimens here, Flor. Your island is a tectonic treasure trove!” Switching on the drill, he gets back to work.

  “Well, if trilobites were that amazing, how come they went extinct?” Flor asks. Bent over his work, Dr. Fife doesn’t hear, so she turns to Jasper, who’s now playing a game on her phone. “How come . . .”

  “Asteroids. Changes in climate,” says Jasper, not looking up. “And they were invertebrates. They wore their protection on the outside and kept the soft parts inside, the opposite of us.”

  “But wouldn’t that keep them safer?”

  “Only one problem. They grew. Their shells became prisons they had to cast off. Till they grew a new one, they had to go around naked. They were easy targets for predators. Eventually the predators wiped them all out.”

  “That’s so sad. That’s pitiful.”

  “Many of their predators went extinct too. Due to other, larger predators.”

  “I hate predators.”

  Jasper looks up. Her eyes are so green. “Me too.”

  Dr. Fife keeps working. Flor wonders if this is how things go here every night, Jasper and her father, the two of them together but alone.

  “You don’t go to school?”

  “I did for a while. Speaking of predators.” A shadow crosses Jasper’s face, and she looks back down. “It was not a successful experiment. So now I’m homeschooled.”

  “Isn’t that kind of, you know. Lonely?”

  “I’ve observed you in the school yard. You look like the last remaining member of a species on the verge of extinction.”

  Flor stiffens. “My best friend moved away.”

  Jasper’s thumb pauses midair. “You’ll make a new friend.”

  “Impossible.”

  Jasper’s thumb hovers. “Then you’re doomed to friendlessness.”

  “I didn’t say that.” But did she?

  Jasper’s thumb descends, too late. Boom. Game over. She makes a disgusted sound.

  “How come you only play with one hand?”

  Jasper’s green eyes get darker, like when you walk deeper into a forest. She’s struggling to decide something, Flor can tell.

  “I only have one,” she finally says.

  “Only one game?” Flor’s confused.

  “Hand.”

  Jasper hesitates another moment, then makes up her mind. With a last look at Flor, she’s rolling up one of her mile-long sleeves. Rolling and rolling, but nothing appears.

  Until it does. A dented pink nub. A few inches up, there’s a normal elbow and the rest of an arm. But that nub. Flor stares. She can’t help it. It’s like a sightless creature.

  “It’s a birth defect.” Jasper could be the voice on an educational film. “It’s called amniotic band syndrome, or ABS. It happened in utero—in other words, before I was born.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Flor’s voice squeaks. She looks away. “I didn’t notice. I mean . . .”

  “I know. You’re not very observant.” Jasper rolls her sleeve back down. “Now you really are pale.”

  Across the room, Dr. Fife has missed the whole thing. He might have forgotten she’s even here. It’s him and the trilobites. The room’s lonesome feeling suddenly becomes so strong, all Flor wants is to go home. Even if Mama and Dad raise the roof again tonight, home is where she wants to be.

  “I have to go,” she squeaks.

  She takes her plate to the sink, which is full of rocks, and swings her backpack over her shoulder.

  “Thanks for everything.” she says, and starts for the door.

  “Going already?” Dr. Fife looks up, distressed. “Would you like more ham? Or some lemonade?” He glances around the room, like maybe there’s something else he can offer to make her stay and be Jasper’s friend. But all he’s got are rocks.

  “She has to go!” says Jasper. Probably she wishes she hadn’t shown Flor her arm. Probably she’s wishing this pale, squeamish, unobservant girl would leave as quickly as possible. She walks Flor to the room’s door, then shuts it firmly behind her.

  The inn’s porch is empty. The birders, who get up before dawn, must have gone to bed. Bats swoop in and out of the yellow light at the end of the walkway, and high in a tree, a ghost shrieks.

  Stop it right now, Flor tells herself. That is a screech owl and you know it!

  She hates the dark. She’ll have to ride as fast as she can.

  No! She smacks her forehead. Her bike! It’s still back at the quarry, where she left it when she walked here with Jasper.

  Flor doesn’t know what to do. She can’t go all the way back to the quarry now. She can walk home, but it will take forever, and the dark is very dark. Streetlights are few and far between on Moonpenny, and where is the moon? No moon. She could go back in and ask to borrow the phone, but her parents will already be angry at her, and having to pick her up will make things worse. Why didn’t Dr. Fife offer to drive her? A normal parent would never let a kid leave by herself after dark.

  That pink nub where an arm and hand should be. Flor rubs her own two arms, creepy with goose bumps.

  Walk. She’ll just walk, that’s all. She’s way too old to be this afraid of the dark.

  Within seconds, the friendly yellow light of the inn is history. Some closed-up cottages and then it’s nothing except a wall of trees on either side. If she cranes her neck, she can spy a few cold white pinpricks. She could be a trilobite, crawling in the murky mud at the base of the inland sea. She could be a sack of bones lying at the bottom of the swim hole. If it had a bottom.

  Sylvie tried to help her get over her fear of the dark. Flor strains to remember some of the things she’d say. “Night is when the world does stuff it doesn’t want people to see. Trees and flowers grow, and beautiful moths come out of their cocoons. Little baby fawns get born. Nighttime is magic time, Flor!”

  Sylvie would die before she’d let Flor walk home alone in the dark.

  All that ham made Flor so thirsty, she can hardly swallow. That owl screeches. Predators! She hates predators. One foot in front of the other. Her backpack bumps between her shoulder blades. Her heart bumps in her chest. In the distance she can h
ear the lake. Grow up, it scolds. You silly scaredy-cat girl.

  Above her, the air goes electric, then hollow. Something swift and silent scoops it clean, and Flor flings her hands over her head. The grass beside the road parts, and she can sense the owl, his spread wings, his sharp beak and steely talons. Eeek! A pitiful scream rises from the grass. It cuts off abruptly, and the night closes back up, once more deathly quiet, except for that small whimpering sound.

  Which is her. Flor herself. She leans against a tree, scooped out and hollow herself. Home is still so far away. Her legs are so heavy.

  “I am all alone,” she whispers.

  Headlights sweep the road. If only they stop! If only they offer her a ride!

  And they do! The headlights pick her out, blinding her. It’s not till the truck stops and the passenger door swings open that she can tell who it is, and by then it’s too late.

  “You!” says Peregrine Pinch the Fourth. “Where the freak have you been?”

  Chapter Eleven

  His blond hair shines in the dark. It hangs over his eyes so he has to keep pushing it away, but of course it just falls right back. Even Sylvie’s beautiful hair isn’t that bright and shiny, like a star burning itself up.

  In the passenger seat, Flor puts as much distance as she can between her and him. She surreptitiously sniffs the air, trying to detect the smell of beer or drugs, though who knows what drugs smell like. Perry drives with one hand, practically one finger, which is precisely how someone who nearly killed himself in an accident should not drive.

  He smells like soap, that’s all. He’s tried to wash away all the badness. He can’t fool her, though.

  “What are you doing out all alone?” he demands. Like he has any right.

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “A friend?” He turns to look at her. “You made a new friend?”

  Flor stares straight ahead. “Would that be so amazing?” she wants to say. “Keep your eyes on the road,” she should say. “Shape up and do not even think about running away,” she promised Sylvie to say.

  But her tongue is in a knot. From the corner of her eye, she watches him push his blond, blazing hair out of his eyes. Last year, Lauren Long tried to bribe Sylvie to steal one of his T-shirts for her. His hair flops back in his eyes.