Chapter 1 Gil
One
Gil
Present Day
I’m dead.
Gilbert Monroe considered this grim possibility every day he’d been trapped on Evelyn’s Island.
How else could he explain being stuck here?
All he could see was sea and sky. No land in sight, as if they were adrift in the middle of the water, which made no sense because the island was right off the shore near Greenport.
It felt like only yesterday he and his friends had dashed across that sandbar to this island.
Evelyn had said there was a treasure waiting—one that would save his life.
Her letter had explained it all: they would walk onto the island holding coins she had stolen from the treasure chest, and boom!
Their lives would be spared. It all sounded so simple.
Then Axel, the rat, screwed everything up.
And now, they were all trapped on Evelyn’s isle of (for)ever, and Gil didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Was this some sort of purgatory he was trapped in for stealing a piece of the treasure?
Aggy kept telling them all to be patient. “Evelyn has a plan,” she’d say, and then she’d smile in a way that told him she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
He just had to trust Aggy was right.
Gil marked the passage of time on Treasure Rock, as he called it.
This massive boulder sat at the shoreline on the east end of the island.
He’d carved different things in the rock during his time here, but the passage of time was what was most important.
Every day he used a white rock to make a mark in the boulder.
Today was day two hundred. At this rate, they would be stuck here till 1826.
He was trying to see the bright side—the island’s weather never changed.
It was always warm and sunny, as if summer lasted all year, which wasn’t the way life worked in Greenport.
Winters were long and hard. There were no winters on the island, which was splendid. But…
He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have hope. And that was saying something, because Gil considered himself an optimist.
When he was younger, back in England, his parents died of typhoid fever, and he’d been shipped off to the United States to live with an aunt and uncle he’d never met.
They were in their late sixties and never had children, and suddenly they were stuck with a fourteen-year-old.
They put him to work in the mercantile his uncle ran, stocking shelves, delivering medicine to people in town, and doing whatever was needed.
Gil never complained, because he was thankful they also let him go to school.
It was there he met the friends he considered his true family: Evelyn, Aggy, Thomas, Laurel, and, if he was being particularly kind, Axel Rudd.
Though they weren’t all quite the same age, they spent any free time they had together.
Evelyn was his closest confidant. “Sparrow” was a good listener, feisty and quick like the bird that flew along the shore (hence her nickname).
She looked out for all of them and was always up for an adventure.
It should have come as no surprise Evelyn discovered the island.
She was the only one who seemed to know how to find the stretch of beach that led to the sandbar they’d sprint across to reach the island.
There they’d collect shells as big as Gil’s fist, lie on the warm sand, soaking in the tropical temperature, and listen to the wind whistle merrily through the palm trees.
It was paradise.
Gil didn’t think too hard about how out of place an island such as this was. Or why no one other than their friends knew of the island’s existence. When he told his uncle and aunt about the island one night at dinner, his uncle had looked at him.
“There is no island in Greenport’s harbor,” Uncle Otto said. “If there was, every ship coming to port would run aground.”
Gil stopped talking about the island after that.
Then the Cough took hold of Greenport, and he and his aunt and uncle fell ill.
When Evelyn said the island had treasure that she thought could cure him of the Cough and save his life, it sounded like a fairy tale, but how could Gil resist?
He dragged himself out of bed and found his way to the beach to meet Sparrow and the others.
He remembered racing onto the island with Thomas by his side, then fighting with Axel for the coin he’d stolen, the coin that was supposed to be his.
But Aggy had somehow found another coin.
The moment she handed it to him, the cough was gone.
Just like that. His breathing was no longer ragged.
He no longer felt a thousand sandbags were sitting on his chest.
He looked for Sparrow to celebrate, but Aggy said she hadn’t joined them on the island. Gil didn’t think to ask why. He was just so happy to be alive and well. And then as they were busy celebrating, something happened.
Gil still wasn’t sure how to describe that moment, but he felt a shift in the air, a thrumming beneath his feet, and then a rumble.
The landscape around him seemed to waver for a moment, and then the shoreline of Greenport disappeared.
All he could see around him was water for miles.
It was just like being on the ship from England again.
Everyone was frantic when they discovered the sandbar was gone.
At first, he and the others tried swimming away from the island; they’d made a boat and attempted to sail from the shore.
They’d even ventured into the cave behind the waterfall and tried to explore a new way off the island.
No matter what they tried doing to escape, they somehow always found themselves standing back on the beach, as if their efforts had been a dream.
Thomas, who was the oldest, thought the reason why they couldn’t leave was because of the stolen coins.
Return the coins, and they’d be free. Aggy was the one who knew of the treasure chest hidden in a fort on the island.
She collected their coins (Axel was against this, but he was outnumbered.) and returned them.
But moments after they’d all left the fort, they’d turned back and found it was gone—the structure disappeared, as if swallowed by the island.
They never saw the treasure chest or fort again.
That was months ago.
Now, as Gil made the latest line on the rock, marking two hundred days, he couldn’t help but sigh.
“I miss you, Sparrow,” Gil whispered, his voice carrying on the wind. “I wish we were on this adventure together.”
At that moment, Gil heard a loud crack like thunder.
The air around him seemed to vibrate, the ground beneath his bare feet vibrating.
When the shaking stopped, Gil blinked in surprise.
Suddenly the shoreline looked different.
Was that land he saw across the water? Could it be that Greenport was in sight once more?
And what was that strange vessel gliding through the water at such a speed?
He’d never seen a boat like it before. What was happening?
Had Sparrow finally found a way to free them?
Yes, something told him. Gil gave a loud crow of excitement and dropped the white rock into the sand. He had to go tell the others—Aggy, Laurel, Thomas. Even Axel.
He started to run but stopped short, his breath catching in his throat when he spotted distant figures on the beach.
People—but not his friends. Newcomers. On Evelyn’s island.
As they came closer, he could see there were four of them: two youths, walking alongside a man who carried a large sleeping boy.
Who were they? Why wasn’t it Evelyn who’d come?
Gil suddenly sensed Aggy by his side. Thomas, Laurel, and Axel had appeared out of nowhere too, all of them gravitating toward the beach and the strangers.
He could feel a charge in the air. He looked over at Aggy.
Her warm brown eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled knowingly and took his hand.
It was almost as if she were expecting them.
“Everly Benedict?” Aggy asked as the strangers came closer. She seemed to be addressing one of the strangers. It was a girl with chestnut-colored hair and inquisitive eyes.
“Yes,” the girl said, her eyes filling with tears. “Are you Aggy?”
Gil heard his own sharp intake of breath. How did she know that? And how did Aggy know who this girl was? Gil wasn’t sure what was happening.
“Welcome to the island, Everly Benedict,” Aggy said. “We’ve been waiting for you a very long time.”