The Sabotage Read online

  On this swing, the willowy tree picked up some momentum. It curved out and bent nearly sideways with her weight, until it was right over the waiting palm on the other side.

  “She’s got it,” Vanessa said, just before Mima let go. She dropped for a silent moment, and then landed with a rustle and a crash in the crown of the other tree.

  Carter noticed the way she drew in as she flew through the air and then splayed her arms and legs wide to catch as much of the palm as she could. It was an amazing trick, but not impossible.

  Now it was his turn.

  He shinnied up the narrow tree, aiming for a spot near the one Mima had used for her own takeoff. He was probably a little heavier than her, and he needed to be careful about snapping the tree as it swung.

  As he left the ground behind, he could feel the tree start to sway under his weight. It was a delicate balance and already scary. Mima gestured at him to climb just a little higher, which he did. She stayed where she was in the crown of the palm—waiting to catch him, he supposed. Even now, he wanted to impress this girl, especially after the embarrassment of puking up the fruit she’d warned him not to eat. But he couldn’t hide his nervousness. Hopefully, Mima wouldn’t notice his shaking hands.

  “You ready?” Vanessa called up.

  “Yeah,” Carter said, because there was nothing else to say. He pressed his feet against the trunk, bent his knees, and put all his weight into pulling the tree away from the gap, just like Mima had done.

  On the first swing out, his empty stomach swooped with a nauseating wave. His breath seemed to rush out of his lungs, and a flush of terror came over him. It was like some kind of carnival ride, but not one he wanted to be on.

  No stopping now, though. He shifted again, swung back toward the slope, and put everything he had into the second swing out.

  The opposite side seemed to rush at him. He stared into Mima’s eyes like they were two targets, waiting until the tree seemed ready to snap back again—and then he let go.

  For a second, maybe less, he was in the air—but it felt as though time had stopped. There was a whoosh in his ears, and then a violent, scratching crash of fronds as he landed. Mima was right there. Her arms wrapped around him, and she pulled him close before he could fall back, or out of the tree. His heart raced.For several seconds, he was just glad to have made it across, while his siblings cheered from the other side.

  Then, just as quickly, his cheeks flushed. The closeness to Mima seemed to cut through everything else. They were tangled up in each other, face-to-face, inches apart. Carter knew he had to keep moving, even while some tiny part of him wanted to stay right where he was.

  It was a stupid thought, he knew, and he hoped Mima couldn’t see him blushing.

  But he also imagined that maybe, just maybe, he saw her blushing, too.

  She indicated for him to climb down through the fronds and make room for the next to come across. With the slope of the ridge beneath him, he wasn’t nearly as far off the ground as he’d suspected. He pushed his legs through, grabbed on to the heftiest frond near the trunk, and dropped to the ground.

  By the time he’d done that, Jane was already high up in the tree on the opposite side.

  “You’ve got this, Jane!” he called out. “Just watch Mima and do like we did!”

  As Jane got ready to go, Carter heard another voice somewhere behind him. He turned to look uphill and saw the other four Nukula runners again. They hadn’t moved on at all. Now, they were working their way down the slope toward him.

  And something told Carter they weren’t coming to help.

  “Carter! Watch out!” Vanessa shouted across. She could see the other team hurrying toward the base of the palm where Carter stood.

  “I see them,” he said.

  “What are they doing?” she called back. It was easy to imagine this had something to do with erasing the shortcut Mima had found. And right now, Carter and Mima were outnumbered. “Buzz, Jane—we need to go!” Vanessa said, putting a hand on the tree. In a few moments, the other team would be on top of Carter. And the palm on the far side looked just old and scruffy enough that four strong Nukula could knock it right out of the muddy ground.

  “What do you mean? All three of us at once?” Buzz said.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Do it, all of you!” Carter called back.

  Vanessa could see that he meant it. If she, Buzz, and Jane wanted to get across, it was now or never.

  “Go, Buzz,” Vanessa said. “Jane, go higher!”

  Jane didn’t wait. She was already climbing.

  “You sure I should be next?” Buzz asked. A month ago, he’d weighed more than all of them. But now, he was getting downright skinny. He’d lost the most weight in this whole experience.

  “I’m sure,” Vanessa said. She was the heaviest now, and she would be the anchor.

  “Stop talking and climb, you guys!” Carter yelled.

  The two boys and two girls from the other team were swarming the palm, with Carter on the ground and Mima up above. Carter had his hands full. He couldn’t stop all of them. Two of the others had begun to climb, and they started tearing away the fronds themselves, erasing the only landing pad Vanessa, Jane, and Buzz would have. Mima was trying to loosen their fingers from where they held on, but it was a losing battle.

  Was this really happening? Another sabotage attempt? As Raku Nau got closer to the finish, the stakes seemed to be going up, and the competition was rising. Nobody was safe now.

  Vanessa boosted Buzz into the tree and then pulled herself up. Maybe the tree would hold them, maybe it wouldn’t. There was only one way to find out. And taking risks was turning into second nature here on Shadow Island.

  No winning without boldness, Vanessa thought. She couldn’t remember who had told her that. But she remembered something else—something that her social studies teacher had said one day. The adventure you get is the one that you’re ready for. So maybe they were ready for this, right now.

  And ready or not, here they came.

  Jane clung to the thinnest part of the tree. The branches were too flexible to be much use up here. She wrapped herself around the upper trunk like it was a sliding pole and held on tight.

  By the time Buzz and Vanessa had climbed up from below, the whole thing had begun to sway back and forth. It felt as though the tree might tip over at any second.

  “Use that momentum!” Carter shouted. “You can do it! Now pull!”

  Jane held on while Buzz and Vanessa leaned toward the slope behind her.

  “And push!” Carter screamed as they reversed direction and swung out, faster than she would have thought.

  There was no time to think, and no need for a second swing. The tree bent farther than ever, until Jane was looking straight down at the top of the palm where they needed to land. Mima was still there, but so was the other team, pulling fronds away as fast as they could.

  “Vanessa, go! Buzz, go!” she screamed, and they dropped.

  At nearly the same moment, the tree snapped with a loud crack. Jane had no chance to let go at all. The breaking trunk did it for her. She fell straight down and onto the waiting palm, along with the broken tree itself. The other team scattered and leaped to the ground.

  Buzz and Vanessa had landed a fraction of a second earlier. Jane crashed into Vanessa, and all of them kept moving as the fronds snapped away under their weight.

  Jane reached, trying to grab onto anything at all. Her hands scraped over the rough palm trunk. It slowed her down a bit, but she hit the ground hard and rolled several times downhill. For several confusing seconds, it was a tumble of bodies, before she finally came to a stop.

  And then, almost as if it hadn’t happened, everyone was scrambling onto their feet again. Her rib cage throbbed with pain, and her legs were badly scratched. But more than that, she knew they ha
d to get to the crest of the ridge and keep moving. They were in a race for their lives—and that was no exaggeration. Securing a necklace was the only thing that mattered. Otherwise, it was all for nothing.

  The next thing Jane knew, she was clawing her way up another muddy slope. It seemed as though nothing could stop her now—until Mima shouted out furiously from somewhere behind her.

  “Jane! Car-tare! Ba-nessa! Buzz!”

  When Jane checked, Mima was standing still on the hillside, where a rocky piece of ground gaped open at her feet. The opening was dark. There was nothing more to see from here.

  “What are you doing?” Jane shouted. She pointed toward the top. “We need to keep moving!”

  “Ekka-ka!” Mima called out even more forcefully, and pointed at the ground instead. A second later, she’d disappeared into the black hole below.

  Vanessa was the first to follow behind Mima. There was no discussion among the family. They had to trust her and keep moving—period.

  As she dropped onto an uneven rocky floor, she could barely see. Mima was just an outline, standing outside the small pool of light that spilled from above. They were in a cavern of some kind. At the far end, another jagged sliver of light showed the way out, maybe a hundred yards off. It was to the east, anyway, which was the direction they needed to travel.

  “Come on down,” Vanessa said, putting her hands up to help Jane with the jump. Carter and Buzz followed quickly behind, everyone still catching their breaths after the last five minutes of chaos.

  “Are they following us?” Vanessa asked Carter as he hit the cavern floor.

  “No,” he said. “They kept going uphill.”

  “Good.”

  “Wow,” Buzz said. “It feels amazing in here.”

  “Right?” Carter said.

  The cool of the cave was like air-conditioning after the wet humidity of the jungle. Vanessa’s sweat-covered skin was prickled with goose bumps. But it was a good feeling, like stepping into an air-conditioned store from a hot sidewalk on an August day.

  “I hear water,” Jane said.

  “Me, too,” Buzz said. “I guess we shouldn’t drink it, should we?”

  “No!” Vanessa answered at the same time as Carter. He knew better than anyone what contaminated cave water could do to a person’s system, from that one awful night on Nowhere Island.

  It was strange, the way their time on the last island was turning out to be a kind of advantage, Vanessa thought. It had been a true crash course in survival, for sure. But even more than that, the thirteen torturous days they’d experienced there had left her as determined as ever to make it home. There was no thought of quitting here, because it wasn’t an option. Not after everything they’d been through to get this far.

  “Everyone put a hand on someone else,” Vanessa said. She could already feel Jane reaching up to rest a palm on her shoulder. “Buzz? Carter? Where are you?”

  “We’re here,” Buzz’s voice came from the dark. “I’ve got my hand on Jane, and Carter has me.”

  There was a sudden splashing ahead, and Vanessa jumped. But it was just Mima. She was already wading into the water, heading toward the far end of the cave. Mima never slowed down unless she absolutely had to. It was no wonder Carter liked her so much. She was just like him that way.

  The water was icy cold as Vanessa stepped in. It came up to her knees, and she shuffled forward, feeling along the bottom with her feet, her hands held out in front of her. Something slimy rubbed past her leg, and a shiver passed down her back.

  “What is that?” Jane asked.

  “I think it’s just a plant or something. Don’t worry about it,” Vanessa said.

  “No,” Jane answered. “I mean, up ahead.”

  Vanessa squinted through the dark. It was hard to see, but it looked as though they were walking toward a slight glow, coming from inside the cave. The contours of the rock walls around them began to show up as shadows, just slightly more visible than before. And the space around them took on a strange, blue-green color, almost as if it were lit by electric light. Which was impossible.

  “What . . . is going on?” Carter asked.

  “Mima, are you there?” Vanessa said.

  Mima spoke back in Nukula, but there wasn’t enough light for hand signals. She sounded excited, anyway—in a good way.

  As they moved deeper into the cave, the glow brightened, and Vanessa began to see why. It was coming from the ceiling and walls up ahead. The rock there was lit with thousands of small points of light, like a universe of green stars over their heads. They cast enough glow to illuminate something that looked like clear threads beaded with glass, hanging down everywhere.

  “What the . . .” Carter said, his voice trailing off in awe.

  “What is this?” Vanessa asked.

  “I think they’re glowworms,” Jane said. “And those strings are how they catch bugs, like in a spiderweb.”

  “Glowworms are for real?” Carter said. “I always thought that was just something in a song Mom used to sing when I was, like, five.”

  It was the strangest thing Vanessa had ever seen, and one of the most beautiful, too. The whole cave was truly stunning. It was as though this little universe had been created just for them.

  There was something comforting about that. It felt safe, the way the glow held them there together in the cool air, staring up with green-glowing faces and not saying a word. Even Mima seemed to be enjoying it.

  Outside, Vanessa knew, the night skies could be just as stunning. The stars over Shadow Island seemed to go on forever. But those always reminded her of how huge the world was, how wide the Pacific could be—and how lost the four of them really were out here.

  That’s why they needed to keep moving. It made no sense to linger here in the cave. All this staring in silence was a waste of precious time. And yet . . .

  Maybe just another minute, Vanessa thought.

  Just one tiny bit longer . . .

  “We should get going,” Carter said, after a long silent moment.

  There was only so much standing around they could afford to do. In fact, they couldn’t afford it at all.

  “Mima, ready to go?” he asked. She’d been standing quietly but seemed to pick up his meaning when he spoke.

  “Ah-ka-ah,” she said, and turned to go. As she did, Mima stumbled and splashed into the water. Carter was right there, and he put out his hand to help her back up.

  She looked at it for a second, her face glowing in the greenish light. It was a strange color, but still, she looked prettier than any girl he’d ever seen. Anywhere.

  “You need a hand?” he asked. “Some help?”

  Mima closed her grip around his, and he pulled her out of the water. She was lighter than he would have thought, and popped right up.

  “Ratta,” she said.

  Ratta. It meant “thank you,” he supposed.

  For a moment, nothing happened, except for the feelings that welled up inside of him. His head swirled with thoughts about Mima, and about things that could never be—even if they were back at home.

  How weird would Chicago seem to Mima? Probably just as strange as this place was to him. Would she be amazed? Scared? What would she think of all that concrete and noise? Or even cars?

  “Car-tare,” Mima said then. She reached up and seemed to scoop a handful of light off the cavern wall. Her fingers shone bright green as she spread the color around, and then held up two glowing handprints in the dark. It was like a magic trick.

  “Awesome,” he said.

  “Ah-some,” she said.

  As she reached out to touch his face with the color, Carter couldn’t help flinching a tiny bit. She made one stripe under each of his eyes, the way he might with football eye black. It was the same pattern he’d made on his face with dirt at the very beginning of Raku Nau, like h
is own warrior paint. He never would have guessed she’d even noticed it.

  She gave herself two similar stripes then, and the feelings inside of him doubled with a warmth that matched the glow all around them.

  “Carter, you coming?” Vanessa called from ahead. When he looked up toward the sound of her voice, he could see the other three, silhouetted against the jag of daylight at the far end of the cave.

  “Yeah,” he said, even though the last thing he wanted to do right now was step away from Mima, much less into the hot, sweaty, and buggy jungle outside.

  But this wasn’t a place that offered a lot of choices.

  “Ekka-ka, Mima,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jane poked her head out into the sunlight. The sky seemed impossibly bright after the cave, and it took a minute for her eyes to adjust. She scooted across the rock table onto which she’d just emerged, making room for the others.

  They were in a new and unfamiliar valley. This one was wider, with fewer trees, and Jane could see much farther in either direction to her left and right than in any of the previous valleys.

  Straight ahead was yet another steep hill, but there was no reason to climb this one. The open grassy plain below curved down and around it, seeming to head for flatter ground in the direction of Cloud Ridge.

  Vanessa slid next to her as Mima, Buzz, and Carter climbed out of the cavern, blinking in the sun. Carter had some kind of disgusting mash on his face, just under the eyes. Mima, too, Jane realized. It reminded her of the grubs they’d choked down on Nowhere Island.

  “What’s on your faces?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Carter answered, wiping his away. He seemed embarrassed about it, and Jane didn’t ask any more.

  Instead, she held up her hands, indicating the two directions in front of them. “Which way?” she asked Mima.

  But it was Vanessa who answered. “Down there,” she said, pointing off to the left. “There’s all kinds of bushes disturbed, and somebody has been chopping wood. It looks like they’ve started making camp. I bet it’s for us. And I bet Ani and the elders are there, too.”