She froze, her eyes locked on the face.
No. That’s impossible.
Behind her, the door swung open and light from the corridor burst into the room and washed over the sleeping girl. Sophie’s muscles seized, urging her to turn around, to run, to hide—but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t understand . . .
The girl on the gurney, her eyes shut and her skin pale and her breathing so shallow she might have been dead, was all too familiar to Sophie.
Because she was looking at herself.
Then she felt a shattering pain on the back of her head and she dropped into deep and all-consuming darkness.
EIGHT JIM
Jim woke with a start, launching himself out of the seat only to slam his head into the roof of the cockpit. Sucking in a breath, he fumbled with the door. It swung open and, caught off guard by a sudden pitch of the plane, he tumbled out of the cockpit and fell straight into the sea, where he swallowed a salty mouthful of water and startled a school of bright yellow fish.
Choking and now fully shocked to wakefulness, Jim dragged himself onto the beach and sat in the sand, blinking through the dripping hair that had fallen over his face. He shook his hair and coughed out seawater, then winced up at the sky. It was still dark, but now the moon was behind him, so he figured it was still a few hours until dawn. His back was stiff and sore and his arms burned from hauling the logs and the plane around. The Cessna rocked on the waves, and a fallen coconut bobbed against one of the floats, clunking with each roll of the surf.
He climbed to his feet and looked around. There was no sign of Sophie or Nicholas or anyone at all.
Jim wandered up the beach and found his shirt where he’d left it the day before after diving in after the tires. He shook out the sand and pulled it over his head, then found his boots. His socks were damp, so he pulled the boots on without them. Then he stood staring across the channel. The tide was on its way out, slowly and reluctantly pulling away from the islands.
“Where are you?” Jim muttered, scanning the trees on the opposite island.
He swore and scrubbed at his hair, kicked the sand, started back to the plane then turned around and came back. This isn’t your problem, he told himself.
He could just go. He hadn’t made any promises to Sophie Crue. Sure, they’d been friends once and all that, but he’d already gone out of his way to help her reach the island, had done as much as could be expected. She probably found her mom, and they’re both catching up over coffee. Safe and sound. He told her he wouldn’t stay past nightfall. She knew he wasn’t going to wait around. Maybe she thought he was already gone. Maybe he was waiting for someone who would never come. She could have at least come back and said goodbye. For old time’s sake.
This was what he got for ignoring his own inner voice of alarm. He’d known better the moment he heard the words Skin Island. He’d known things would get messy.
Jim stormed around the beach for a bit longer, deliberating and justifying, somehow always finding himself feeling guilty. But for what? He’d done what he said he would do and more—he ought to have gone home hours ago. I don’t owe her anything. In fact, it’s the other way around. He looked at his wrecked plane, wincing as the dollar signs began to pile up in the back of his mind.
“Hey!” he yelled across the channel. “That’s it! I’m going, you hear? I’m counting to ten and then I’m outta here!”
Jim stalked back to the plane. He kicked off his boots, knotted the laces together, and slung them over his shoulders so he could wade out to it. Once he was back in the cockpit he tried the engine; it took a while, but it finally cranked. He was skipping nearly every point on his preflight checklist, but with the landing gear gone, it seemed to hardly matter. Already his mind ran through landing scenarios, trying to plan the best beach to put down at. Then he’d have to find a way to haul it to a mechanic. And then he’d have to find a way to pay the mechanic.
But try as he might to keep his mind occupied with these problems, his thoughts kept coming back to Sophie Crue. The initial surprise when he’d first realized who she was. Her constant nervous movement in the plane, toying with the instruments and with his mom’s beads. And then that Nicholas, his hands on Sophie’s, drawing her away, his eyes devouring her like a circling shark.
“Damn,” Jim whispered, letting his head fall against the seat. He stared at the beads swinging from the ceiling. They glowed white, as if lit from within, and he could almost hear his mother’s voice singing the poem: Taya’ mina’lak sin hinemhum, taya’ tatauau sin anining . . . She was the only American he’d ever known who could sit with the Chamorro women as they wove hats to sell to the tourists, and who could sing and compose verses out of thin air. She’d taken to Guam more quickly and deeply than Jim or his father ever had, but that hadn’t stopped her from running away to the U.S. with the first stranger who gave her a second look.
Jim shut his eyes, let out a deep sigh, and then slipped out of the plane for the second time. He waded ashore, his boots over his shoulder, and walked through the shallows until he reached the point where the channel was narrowest. He twisted his torso back and forth, loosening his sore muscles as best he could, then plunged into the water.
The tide was low, but not so low that the current flowing between the islands was gone. It pulled at him, drawing him ever east, and he struggled with all his strength against it. The water had been rising instead of falling; the tide was coming in, not out, as he’d assumed. After over a decade of living on an island, he had the tide schedule fairly well memorized. It must have been later in the morning than he had thought. It took the last of his strength to make it to the opposite shore, and when he reached it, he collapsed in the sand and gasped for air, his body screaming with pain from the crash, hauling the logs and the plane, sleeping crunched up in the cockpit. Should have gone home and left well enough alone.
Well. It was too late now. He couldn’t swim back, not until he’d rested and the tide had receded. Either he could sit here and wait or he could follow through on his harebrained plan of finding Sophie and making sure she was okay.
He rolled onto his back and groaned, then slowly rose to his feet. Water trickled down his face and his back and dripped from his hair. He had a nearly overwhelming thirst; what little water he’d brought with him he’d drunk the day before. To top that off, he was starving enough to catch a fish and eat it raw.
Maybe they’d have something to eat at the Corpus center. If he said he was with Sophie, maybe her mom could pull some strings, get him cleared, and just give him some food and a Coke and then they could all go their separate ways, no harm done.
He laughed aloud. If only. He doubted it would be as simple as that.
Jim pulled on his wet boots and began the trek across Skin Island.
When he reached the southern shore, dawn was already unfolding in the east, an origami masterpiece of scarlet and orange. The trees seemed kissed with fire, the edges of the leaves glowing with golden light. The beauty of the tropical sunrise was lost on Jim, who had seen it a thousand times already. His attention was divided between keeping a sharp eye on his surroundings and thinking of reasons why he should turn around and go home while he still had the chance.
He stood on a narrow beach at the foot of a high bluff, below the big hotel building that seemed to be the center of activity on Skin Island. He’d seen it on his approach, watched a few doctors and guards come and go. Then the bluff rose to hide it from sight, until he could only make out the roof from where he now stood. He climbed up the bluff, finding ample footholds where the water had eaten away the rock. The downside of this was that the rock was rough and left his hands scraped and bleeding. But he wasn’t going to chance approaching the building from the north or east, through the trees, because he would be too easily spotted in the strengthening light.