LITMIR.BIZ

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age.” Mimi nodded toward Natasha. “Little and skinny and already tripping over your own feet.”

      “Where do you think I came from?”

      “No idea. No idea where any of us are from.”

      “I know,” Eddie said. They looked at him in surprise. They’d begun to think he didn’t know how to use words. His voice was stronger than they would have thought. His eyes were the same brown as Luisa’s, and his soft hands had the same crooked little fingers, but he seemed older now that he had a voice. “I was awake when they put me in the barrel.”

      “You were not,” Mimi said. She kicked him. He yelped, and then he kicked her back. They scuffled briefly, but there wasn’t much room for fighting inside the net.

      “I was lying in my bed, fast asleep in the castle. Then something shook me. I thought it was my nurse, and I opened my eyes, but it was a man, and he said it was time to go. He said I was joining my sister, that I should have been sent away with her right from the start. He said that they should have known I’d break as many things as she did. He said they should have known I’d be just as much of a disaster. My sister.” He looked at Luisa. Then he spat. “They blindfolded me, then they took me riding somewhere on a horse, and then we were on a ship, and then they stuffed me in a barrel, and then you found me.”

      “Why didn’t you say anything before? Why did you make so much noise in the cave?”

      “I was hurt,” he said. “The ocean? My legs? Remember?”

      “Kids on the island don’t make noise,” Andrew said. “We listen, and we feed the pigs, but we don’t draw attention to ourselves. You messed up.”

      “I didn’t mess up,” Eddie said. “I was hurt. I’m allowed.”

      “What a jerk,” Mimi said.

      “Total jerk,” Luisa said. A disaster. She shut her eyes and saw herself pushing him into the gray water. She wanted to kick him. If she hadn’t pushed him, he probably wouldn’t have screamed. If he hadn’t screamed, who knew if the hunt would have started? So now they were in a net because of her. She couldn’t do anything right. Her brother. He might look like her, but that was where the resemblance ended. She didn’t even know what a brother was supposed to be.

      “Nothing’s going to happen,” Eddie said. “We’re kids.”

      Far away, the ship blew its horn. Night was coming. The garbage would wash up soon.

      “How many fingers do you have?” Mimi asked.

      “Ten,” he said. “Why?”

      “Count mine,” she said. She held up her hands. Luisa had never really looked at Mimi’s hands. She’d been so aware of her own lost finger that she never thought to see if others had lost fingers as well. Mimi was missing three. Two on her left hand—her pointer and her middle finger—and one on her right—her innocuous pinky, so small. Luisa knew from experience that the loss of a pinky didn’t really make a difference, but a pointer?

      “The thumb’s the next to go,” Mimi said. “What do you have to say about that?”

      Eddie kept quiet. He looked at his hands, and then slowly began to clean his fingernails.

      A breeze picked up. The wind was blowing toward them, salty air across rocks and through wild roses. The sun was low on the horizon. The ship had sailed beyond their line of vision. The grunting of the pigs had grown to a soft murmuring that blended in with the waves lapping across the rocks. The voices of the grown-ups carried down from their villa, the delicate clink of ice against glass, the laughter at some droll remark or another.

      Eddie was shivering now. The other children looked at one another and rolled their eyes, but Luisa reached out and put her hand on his.

      “I loved the castle,” Eddie said. “My bedroom was in a tower, and it had a fireplace, and my bed had purple curtains that I could pull shut whenever I didn’t want to see the maid. My mother and father came at night to tuck me in. I had a lamp that I could light to read by late, late into the night. Nobody ever came to tell me to turn it off. I was on my own as much as I wanted, and when I didn’t want to be on my own, there was always someone there. I had books and a guitar and they were going to get me a phone for my next birthday. The ocean was a treat: a hot day, sandy, sit under an umbrella and occasionally go get an Italian ice treat. I don’t like this net.”

      Luisa felt her face get hot and she pulled her hand away. She’d give anything to see a world like that up close. Purple curtains. Italian ice. She’d give anything to get off the island, even for a single day.

      Mimi and Andrew nodded. Natasha, silent as always, put her little head on Mimi’s knee. The pigs snorted, loud and impatient. They would be hungry in the morning. They would open their mouths for anything.

      After Eddie fell asleep, the children looked at one another and rearranged themselves. Mimi settled into the far corner of the net, pulling Natasha in to cuddle with her. Andrew curled down by her feet. Luisa climbed silently over Eddie and nudged him until he lay between her and the net’s opening. All four were huddled as far away from him as possible. He was her brother, but what difference would that make once the grown-ups returned? He had slept in a bed. He had read books. He knew what it was like to ride a horse. He was as much a sacrifice as anything the children had to offer. Take him, Luisa thought. Take him. He’s not one of us. Take him and do whatever it is that makes you happy. She lay awake far into the night, listening to Eddie’s breathing, hoping that when the grown-ups came, they came to untie the net with their hard nailed fingers instead of cutting it open with long knives. Either way, they’d pull the one closest to the opening out first. Either way, it would be Eddie and not her.

      Otis couldn’t stop crying even though he knew he was wasting whatever liquid his body had left. His eyes were full of sand. The tears washed the grit from his eyes, which was some consolation, but not enough. At least it restored vision, which after five days drifting on the lid of a packing crate at sea was a pretty big deal. If he lifted his head slightly from where it was wedged into the sand he could see the coast. Rocky. Dry. Dotted with bursts of purple flowers pushing out of cliffs. Maybe enough driftwood on the beach to build a shelter. There were birds—seagulls anyway. They stood in a line and looked at him. He could swear they were looking right at him. He thought he heard a dove.

      Get up, he told himself. Move. Take responsibility for your life. You’re not a child. Nobody’s going to take responsibility for you.

      He crawled away from the water, and his body left a long track behind him on the sand.

      He had no idea how long it took to be able to stand up, but it happened. At one point his cheek was shoved against a rough pillow of sand and at the next he was standing with his knees shaking, the breeze from the ocean on his neck. Even though it had happened five seconds ago, he couldn’t say how he’d gotten from one position to the other. Something rubbed against his throat. He lifted his hand and felt the smooth surface of a metal pendant. A necklace? He remembered he’d had a necklace. The chain was heavy against his battered skin.

      He dragged driftwood into a pile. He hobbled to the place where the sand stopped and vegetation began. He listened and heard a stream, and bushwhacked through thorny bushes until he found fresh water. Then, he got back down on his knees and stuck his face in and drank. Alice had once washed his hair under the bathtub faucet when he’d had the flu and was too sick to climb into the tub. It felt like that now, head in the stream, water in his mouth—it felt like someone loved him.

      He thought he could drink that water forever.

      But before too long he started to shake again and he thought, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. Where did he know that from? Boy Scouts? Had he really ever been a boy? He’d learned the rule during some kind of wilderness training. Was this the wilderness? Somehow he’d always imagined wilderness to be about trees. Shelter, water, food. He cupped his palm and lifted water to his mouth and took

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