Elin Hilderbrand - The Island

Tate hadn’t read the confession, and this was an infraction Chess couldn’t forgive. Tate had said she wanted to understand about “all that had happened,” and there it was, written down in minute detail, and yet Tate hadn’t even opened the front cover. She’d moved the journal to the dresser, but Chess could tell it hadn’t been opened.

There were only three days left. On the one hand, Chess was glad. She couldn’t stand the tension between her and her sister. They weren’t speaking except when absolutely necessary. Chess had accidentally opened the bathroom door while Tate was on the toilet, and Tate had barked, I’m in here!

And then at dinner, she said, Pass the salt.

The discord between Chess and Tate was a fog settling over the house. And yet Chess didn’t want to leave Tuckernuck. One thing had become true: she was safe here. She wondered if she could stay here alone, and if she did stay here alone, what would happen? She would become some kind of strange hermit, unwashed and unshaven, who talked to herself. But she could read and write and cook certain things; she could take up astronomy or fly-fishing. She could be self-sufficient, and after a while, she guessed, her memories of other people would fade away.

After dinner, Chess retreated to the attic. Tate had taken the Scout and gone to watch the sunset off the west bluff; Chess wanted to go, too, but hadn’t dared ask. She lay on her bed, knowing she should go downstairs to sit on the screened-in porch with her mother and her aunt, but she lacked the motivation. She shouldn’t be allowed to stay on this island by herself; it wasn’t healthy. She would have to go back to New York and start over. The mere thought exhausted her. She lay on her bed until the light faded and the evening purpled. Chess listened for the Scout pulling in. There was nothing but the thickening silence.

And then she heard a noise. A whooshing sound. A presence, there in the room. She knew what it was, somewhere around her head, the flap of black, scaly wings. She sat up in terror. Oh. My. God. Her whole life she had been afraid of this: evil black sacks unfolding into the vampire’s spawn. A bat! It flew past her head; she could feel the air from its beating wings. And then another one. There were two of them, diving for her.

Chess put her arms over her head. She considered crawling under the covers, but she didn’t want to trap herself. She needed to get out of the attic, but she was too terrified to move. Tate had always belittled Chess’s fear of the bats-first saying there were no bats, then saying that even if there were bats, they echolocate and would never brush Chess’s hair or face. But these bats must have been genetic mutants because they were going crazy; she could hear them keening, a sharp, high-pitched whine.

Chess didn’t know what to do, so she started to shriek. She shrieked at the top of her register. Aaaaaaaheeoweeee! Help me! Aaaaaaaaheeowee! She waved her arms over her head. Then she was afraid she might accidentally touch one. She didn’t want them near her with their beady eyes, their sharp little teeth, their creepy, black lace wings, which would cover her mouth and suffocate her. She screamed. The screaming felt good, letting it out, expressing not only her terror but her sadness and her anger. Aaaaaaaaaheeeowee! She shrieked until her throat was sore.

The door flew open and Tate burst in, wielding the broom from the kitchen. She was wearing work gloves, which she must have snatched from Barrett’s tool box. She had always told Chess that bats ate mosquitoes, not people, yet if she believed this, why was she wearing work gloves? Chess wanted work gloves; she wanted a suit of armor. Really, she thought, she had never been so glad to see her sister.

Tate swung at the bats with the broom. They flew around her, dodging her attacks. There was a third one now-Chess was able to open her eyes and see three bats!

Tate said, “I’m trying to encourage them toward the window.”

Chess nearly smiled. It was such a lovely word, “encourage,” when what it looked like was that Tate was trying to beat them to death. Chess remained huddled on the bed while Tate ran around the attic with the broom, swatting in the bats’ general direction. The one pathetically small window was open, but getting the bats to move toward it-toward open sky, night air, the all-you-can-eat mosquito buffet-didn’t seem to be working.

Tate said, “I have another idea.” And she left.

“Nooooooo!” Chess screamed. She tented her knees and hid her face, then covered her head with her hands, the preferred posture for most emergencies and natural disasters. “Tate! Taaaaaaaaaate!”

Tate returned with a long-handled net, the net their grandfather had used for fishing and crabbing. She ran around the room trying to scoop up the bats in the net, and as Chess watched her-Tate was still wearing the work gloves and now an ancient baseball cap from a tackle shop on Nantucket, probably long defunct-she realized that Tate was afraid of the bats, too. She was afraid! This made Chess feel better, and watching Tate chase the bats around the room with the net in what was clearly a fruitless endeavor suddenly seemed… funny. A chuckle erupted from Chess’s throat; then she laughed. She laughed and laughed until she was holding her stomach and hiccuping.

Tate glanced at her and stopped dead still. She dropped the net to the floor with a clatter. Then she came over to the bed and hugged Chess.

She said, “I give up. Let them come and get us.”

“Let them eat us,” Chess said.

“Maybe we’ll turn into vampires,” Tate said. “Vampires are very hot these days.”

They sat quietly, half-embracing, to see what would happen.

Chess whispered, “Where are Birdie and India?”

“On the porch,” Tate said. “I told them whatever it was, I’d take care of it.”

“Oh, you took care of it all right,” Chess said.

They were quiet. The bats seemed to calm down. They circled, they swooped, they did figure eights. They were graceful, Chess decided. The bats moved upward toward the ceiling, and then they would swoop down-one, two, three-in their own particular ballet. Their movements became hypnotic as Chess watched. What were they after? Chess wondered, though she knew the answer was prosaic: they were after bugs. The bats gathered in a cluster; for a split second, they seemed suspended in the hot attic air. And then, one by one, they discovered the open window, that square of opportunity, a gateway to their wildest dreams of freedom.

Chess and Tate stayed up most of the night. They were worried about the bats returning, so they closed the window and endured the stifling heat. Tate poked and prodded the far corners of the attic to make sure there were no more bats lurking. They were safe from bats.

Chess read Tate her confession by the beam of her flashlight, and Tate listened in rapt attention. It reminded Chess of long-ago years when she would read to Tate from their storybooks. Tate didn’t comment on what she heard; she might have been appalled, or she might have been accepting, Chess couldn’t tell. Tate just lay back with her eyes glued on Chess. The confession read like a story, a piece of fiction, and God, Chess wished, she wished, it were fiction.

After Chess shut the notebook and the truth was out, floating in the air around them, Chess said, “So what do you think?”

“What do you think?” Tate asked.

“I should have told Michael how I felt about Nick,” Chess said. “But I wasn’t sure my feelings were real, and since they were maybe not real, they were easy to hide.” She looked at Tate, and even in the near darkness, she saw a new expression on her sister’s face. Chess startled; it was almost like she was here in the attic with someone else. Tate looked serious; she looked thoughtful.