The Island

3. Dylan

THREE

DYLAN

THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

I don’t like change. It’s never been good to me. I like things static. The same. I like days when nothing happens because nothing is better than bad, and when something happens there’s always a chance it’ll be bad.

I like it when things stay the same.

They never do.

Change always creeps in.

And ruins everything.

It’s another one of those things where Aunt Nina makes me wear a suit.

It’s hot and the collar is too tight.

Mom never made me wear suits, even if she did take me to one of Aunt Nina’s parties. But Mom’s not here anymore. A stormy night, a bend in the road, and a tree made sure she could never come back home with me again.

A stretch of rain-slick road in the middle of a thunderstorm and endless minutes that ticked into forever, where I listened to her breathing get shallower and shallower while lightning raged all around us.

Thunder and lightning and seconds that lasted forever and ever.

It’s been five years.

The sound of thunder will always make me think of dying.

Now it’s only me and Aunt Nina left.

Aunt Nina. Mom’s younger half-sister. Same mother, different fathers.

They were polar opposites, Mom and Nina.

Mom liked to dance in the kitchen.

Nina never dances.

She’s busy. She wants to make partner by the time she’s thirty-five.

She told me I was giving her a headache when I tried to sing once.

I never tried again.

But…

I have to be grateful.

I am grateful.

I have to behave.

I leave the collar alone.

There are so many flower arrangements everywhere that the air smells sickly sweet, and it’s hot because there are so many people in this restaurant tonight.

Why do we have to celebrate the Fourth of July in a restaurant? Why can’t we do what everybody else does and have a picnic?

I just want to go home and play Rocket League with Adrian.

I suppress another yawn.

A chair scrapes across the floor and Preston stands up. A hush falls over the room. Preston clears his throat.

And goes down on one knee in front of Aunt Nina.

The proposal is the catalyst for a whole lot of change.

The wedding is in June. A huge affair with three hundred and fifty guests. Or “our closest friends and family” as Preston puts it.

I know almost nobody there.

Aunt Nina looks calm and cool like an ice statue when she walks down the aisle. Her hair is very blond, and she’s beautiful. Preston’s teeth are blindingly white.

They both make the wedding planner cry at least twice during the reception.

It’s a match made in heaven.

Preston moves into Aunt Nina’s house.

I breathe out a sigh of relief. I thought we had to move. But Aunt Nina puts her foot down.

“Real estate values are down. It would be sheer lunacy to sell right now,” she says briskly when I ask her about it, then tells me to go read a book. Do something useful, Dylan, dear God.

They renovate the place. Gut it. Take down walls and put up new walls until it looks like a whole different house.

Nina changes her name to Bettencourt.

“Mrs. Nina Bettencourt,” she says, sending Preston a dry look along with a cup of coffee.

“It’s got a ring to it, darling.” Preston goes back to his iPad.

Along with Preston comes Parker every other weekend and during school breaks. During the week, he lives with his mother in a penthouse apartment in the middle of Boston.

“Much bigger than this dump,” Parker tells me snidely.

I get to move to the smallest bedroom. Preston says it’s a fair trade since Parker sees so little of his father. I couldn’t care less where my bed is. I’ll move into the basement if it means I get to stay next door to Adrian.

I try to be good. I try to be the best I can. I try not to stay in the way.

Maybe then they’ll forget I’m even here.

Maybe then they’ll let me be.

Maybe there won’t be any more changes.

I hope.

Adrian’s smile melts off his face when he sees me, and he tilts his head to the side.

I thought I was hiding my feelings.

Clearly I’m not.

I’m supposed to have dinner with his family.

Aunt Nina and Preston went to a party. I like when they do that, which is often, because it means I get to go over to Adrian’s house and eat with them, and they’ll ask me how my day was and actually listen to the answer, and I know all the inside jokes, and we all tease and laugh and talk and stay up way past my bedtime.

“We’re going out for a while,” Adrian shouts into the house.

Mrs. Olsen’s head appears in the doorway. “Dylan.” She grins, wiping her hands on the towel she’s holding, then comes and ruffles my hair. “I’m making étouffée. Be back on time.”

She knows it’s my favorite. I only ever get to eat it when I’m here nowadays, because Preston is allergic to seafood.

So he says.

I’ve seen him eat oysters and scallops.

I guess those don’t count.

“With shrimp?” I ask.

“I’ll put in extra just for you, sweetheart,” Lynn promises with a laugh.

Adrian gets me a pair of sneakers and one of his sweatshirts. He doesn’t ask why I’m here in shorts and a T-shirt with no shoes or anything. That’s the thing about Adrian. Sometimes I don’t know how to talk about stuff. He never makes me.

We grab our bikes and pedal down the street, then take a left on the street corner.

There’s no need to speak. We both know where we’re headed.

There’s a playground close to the shore where nobody usually goes because it’s the worst playground in the area.

It hasn’t been painted in ages, and everything is a bit broken.

Responsible parents keep their kids away because they don’t want them to get tetanus or something.

Most of the attractions are crap there anyway, so we don’t usually bother with those, but they replaced the swing set a couple of years ago in an effort to fix this place up. Then the city ran out of money again.

Adrian takes the right swing, and I take the left.

Our eyes lock for a moment, and then we both move as far back as possible to get a good speed for the first swing.

For a while we swing in silence. We go back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster.

I’m at the highest point I can be when my feet fly up and the words fly out.

“They’re making me change schools,” I say.

Adrian slams his foot down on the ground, kicking up a heap of dust, before he turns so abruptly he almost falls off the swing. “What? Why?”

“They got me a spot at Parkside Academy. Nina wants me to go there.”

“Parkside Academy. But that place is?—”

He clamps his mouth shut, but I know what he was about to say, so it doesn’t matter.

“Why?” he asks a second later.

I shrug. “Because there’s an academy in the name, so that means it’s fancier to say your kid goes there? Because stupid Parker goes there, and it’d look bad if I didn’t? I don’t know. I don’t want to go to stupid Parkside Academy! People who go there are assholes.”

We both fall silent for a while after that outburst.

“Hey,” Adrian says.

I turn my head and look at him.

“Why was Cinderella so bad at soccer?” he asks.

I stare at him.

“She kept running away from the ball,” he says.

I blink at him for the longest time, and he looks so damn proud of himself.

“Wow,” I eventually say. “That’s… a joke.”

“How do you make an egg roll?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t know, Adrian. How do you make an egg roll?”

“You push it, dummy.”

I snort.

He grins, still so pleased with himself.

I dig the toe of my sneaker into the dirt below. “Do one more,” I mutter after a second.

He looks even more pleased.

“Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?”

I think about it for a second, and then I get it.

“Because the P is silent?”

He pumps his fist in the air. “The P is silent, Dylan!”

“Terrible,” I mutter, lips twitching. He does that a lot.

Makes stupid jokes when things get tough.

They help. Last year he kept up a steady stream of them the whole day on the anniversary of my mom’s death.

And then he came with me to the cemetery.

Eric drove us, then he took out a book and gently told me to take as long as I needed, so I got to stay for as long as I wanted to, not like usual, when Aunt Nina and I just drop off the flowers and get going.

“It’s a really good school,” Adrian says, which makes me snap my head toward him. He shrugs. “I mean, it is.”

“I guess,” I say dully.

“It better be. They probably have, like, tuition fees and stuff?”

I start digging at the dirt with the toe of my sneaker again. “I don’t think they’re allowed to call a school an academy if they don’t ask for a lot of money from the parents. You want to say your kid goes to an academy, better cough up the cash.”

“Then… I mean, it’s a good thing, isn’t it? You’re smart, so you should go to the kind of school where smart people go.”

“Uh-huh,” I mutter.

“I bet they have all sorts of interesting things going on there. After-school programs and clubs and stuff we don’t get here at all.”

The ground is starting to swim in front of my eyes. I don’t care how good the school is or if there are clubs where they go bungee jumping or hand out free money.

“You’ll make a bunch of new friends. You’ll see,” Adrian says with the kind of misplaced confidence in me that makes me think he’s mixing the two of us up by accident.

“Yeah, I’m known for being good at that.” And now I sound downright hollow.

Adrian gets up from his swing. His fingers wrap around my wrist, and he pulls me to my feet too. And then he’s hugging me.

My mom used to hug me a lot. Aunt Nina almost never does, so before I met Adrian and the rest of his family, there was a pretty serious hug drought in my life. I was starving for hugs. Even just for a casual touch. A pat on the shoulder. A hand in my hand.

Something.

Anything.

I got numb over time. The craving dulled.

But then, the Olsens are huggers. They hug to greet and congratulate, celebrate and comfort. They hug just because they feel like it and they hug because there’s somebody close enough to hug.

They’re all tactile. All of them.

Fingers raking through hair. Adrian’s shoulder bumping against mine when we walk around the neighborhood. Movie nights on the Olsens’ large sectional, flanked on either side by Jackson and Mia, with Charlie and Daisy climbing all over everybody, settling in one lap or another.

I melt into the hug. He smells like grass and sun and summer.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he says into my neck. His hair tickles my cheek. “You’re gonna be fine. If anything, we should feel sorry for me here.”

“How come?” I mutter.

“I’m the one whose grades are gonna get way worse come September. You know, if you want to stay, we should just go tell my mom you’re switching schools. She’ll probably go bribe Nina to keep you with me, so you can keep me in line.”

Something like hope raises its head inside my chest. Tentatively. But it’s there.

I pull away.

“We can,” I start tentatively. “We can still study together after school. We can still help each other out.” My face heats, but I keep going because I need to know. “We can… we can still be friends?”

I wait.

Bated breath and a manic heartbeat.

Adrian looks confused.

You’re leaving. He’ll find new friends. He’ll replace you with somebody else. Why wouldn’t he?

“Well, yeah. Were you going to drop me or something?” he asks.

“What? No,” I say quickly.

He pushes my shoulder. “You better not. We’re like?—”

He stops speaking and gets that look. The I’ve-got-an-idea look that usually gets us both into trouble. And that’s fine. I’ll gladly get in trouble if that’s what he wants.

“We’re like what?” I ask.

“We should make a pact.”

“A pact?”

The spark in his eyes burns brightly. “Yeah. A blood pact.”

I didn’t expect that.

“Seriously?”

“It’ll be cool!” He looks ridiculously excited. I’m not. It’s blood. I don’t like blood.

My mouth is uncomfortably dry.

“Sure,” I say slowly. “Yeah. That’s… cool.”

He grins, ignores my hesitancy, throws his arm over my shoulders, and steers me back toward the bikes.

“Treehouse,” he says. “We need a needle or something sharp like that. We’ll write the pact down on paper, and then we’ll sign it with blood.”

None of it sounds appealing. None of it.

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

We race back home, where Adrian gets a needle, a pen, and paper, and once he’s back outside, I send him in again to get bandages, antiseptic, and a candle.

That done, we head to the treehouse.

It’s twilight outside by the time we’re sitting on the floor, cross-legged. The tip of Adrian’s tongue peeks out of the corner of his mouth as he writes.

“Dylan Emerson Lang and Adrian Elias Olsen promise to be best friends and have each other’s backs.” He drops the pen and looks at me with raised brows, as if asking if that’s okay.

I snort out a laugh. “You’re…” I don’t know what to say. Crazy? Perfect? Crazy perfect?

Adrian waggles his brows. He lights the candle and holds the needle in the flame for a while before he scrubs it clean with antiseptic.

He glances at me once he’s done.

“Me first,” he says.

I blow out a breath of relief. “Fine by me.”

There’s no hesitation or any lengthy debate about how best to do this, he just stabs the needle into the tip of his index finger until there’s blood, then scribbles his name at the bottom of the paper.

The letters are all wonky, but you can definitely tell it’s Adrian’s name. He seems happy with it.

I put a bandage on his finger then take the needle.

I sterilize it again before I take a deep breath and follow Adrian’s example of not overthinking this.

I stick the needle into the fleshy part of my own index finger.

It stings, and my throat goes uncomfortably dry as the red dot blooms on the tip of my finger.

I’m not gonna be a little baby about this.

I’m not gonna faint.

I sign my name.

Adrian bandages me up too before we roll up the paper, tie it with a string, then lock it inside a metal box that’s already home to a few other treasures we’ve gathered over the years.

There are a few pieces of sea glass there, a small plastic penguin figurine we found on a school trip, some kind of translucent rock that looks really nice, and a few other odds and ends.

“We should do more of those,” Adrian says. “For all sorts of stuff.”

It’s my first genuine smile today as I nod and let my shoulders relax. “Sure. Totally worth the hype.”

He meets my gaze with his laughing eyes. “See? We’re already making plans.”

I smile back, still just a bit hesitant. “Am I in them?” I ask jokingly.

He sees right through me because his eyes get a soft look in them.

“In every sentence on every page.”