Moby Clique (16 page)

The drums seem to be coming at first from our right, and then from our left. I’m beginning to think we’re walking in circles.

“We should’ve waited for Heathcliff,” I whisper to Hana, watching Ryan trudge ahead of us into the brush.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe he wasn’t coming back?” Hana asks me.

“He’d never just abandon us,” I say sharply.

“Okay, but even if he didn’t, what if he was taken by force? By whoever took Lindsay?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Despite Heathcliff’s badboyness, maybe he really is in trouble. We walk by a big oak tree that looks familiar—too familiar.

“I think we’re walking in circles,” I tell Ryan.

“We can’t be,” Ryan says. “I’ve been watching the sun.”

“How can you even
see
the sun?” Blade asks him. It’s a fair question. The forest is so thick it’s hard to see sunlight or shadows.

“We’re not walking in circles,” Ryan declares.

“Well, if we’re not, then how come I’ve just found some of my footprints?” Blade asks, pointing downward in front of her. Her Doc Martens tracks are there, plain as day in the mud.

“That’s impossible,” Ryan sputters. “I know my way around the woods.”

“Um, Blade?” Samir asks, his voice catching a little. “Are those your tracks, too?”

Samir is pointing down at the ground and just a little ways off from Blade’s tracks are another set. A man’s boot print and a single, round hole.

“Peg Leg is following us!” Blade exclaims.

“You sound like that’s a good thing,” Samir says.

“Well, no, obviously, but if he has something to do with Lindsay’s disappearance, then maybe we’re on the right track.”

“There’s no such thing as Peg Leg,” Ryan says. “There has to be another explanation.”

We fall silent. None of us really believes there’s a practical, nonscary explanation.

I can tell we’re all a little unnerved. Being lost in the woods is bad enough, but having a potentially ticked-off pirate/ghost who likes hacking off limbs following you around just makes matters worse.

As we continue on, Hana pulls me back from Ryan. “What if Peg Leg is Ahab?” she whispers.

“The captain from
Moby-Dick
?”

“Yeah. He lost his leg and uses a wooden stump to get around. And since literary characters are always getting loose, it makes sense.”

I’m momentarily relieved until I remember that Ahab is completely insane and fixated on revenge.

“But what would he want with us? He was obsessed with finding a whale. And there aren’t any whales around here.”

“I don’t know…”

“What are you guys whispering about?” Blade asks us, leaning in. Samir scurries closer, too, so that the four of us are scrunched together away from Ryan, who is trying to hack his way through the forest ahead of us.

“I think Peg Leg might be Ahab,” Hana says.

“Who’s Ahab?” Blade asks, a bit too loudly. Ryan stops and turns.

“I take it you didn’t do your summer reading?” Samir asks.

Blade snorts. “As if
you
did,” she says. I try to tell Samir to lower his voice because Ryan is coming into earshot, but he doesn’t.

“No, obviously. But I did read Spark Notes,” Samir says. “Ahab is the captain of the
Pequod,
the ship that goes after Moby Dick. And if he’s Peg Leg, then we’re totally safe because all he wants is a whale. I don’t think any of us are whales.”

“Not you guys, too,” Ryan says, frowning. “Are you all in on Miranda’s little joke, too?”

“Joke?” Samir asks. “What joke?”

“You guys think it’s pretty funny just to laugh at me? Well, that’s fine. Go ahead. I’m leaving.”

Ryan’s mouth settles in a thin line of determination and he turns on all of us and stomps ahead into the woods.

“What’s his problem?” Blade asks.

“I tried to tell him the Bard secret,” I admit.

Everyone whirls on me.

“You didn’t!” Hana exclaims.

“That’s classified, sister,” Blade scolds.

“Totally top secret,” Samir agrees.

“But why?” Hana asks.

I decide not to tell them all the particulars. Ryan probably wouldn’t appreciate it. “He thought his life was mirroring a book and, well, I just told him that it could be, because of what Bard really is.”

“Unbelievable,” Blade says, shaking her head. “What? You’ve got to spill your guts anytime a remotely cute guy starts confiding in you?”

“Hey—I dated him for a whole semester and managed not to tell him that entire time.”

“Oooh. Give the girl a medal!” Blade says, rolling her eyes.

“You can’t just go around telling anybody we’re going to school in purgatory,” Samir says. “They’ll think you’re crazy.”

I nod. This is very true.

“Not to mention what it does to the LITs,” Blade adds. “We can’t just go around admitting new members anytime you feel like spewing secrets.”

“And what about the faculty? They’re going to be pissed!” Samir lets out a low whistle.

Hana gives me a sympathetic look. “No they won’t,” Hana says. “It’s clear Ryan doesn’t believe Miranda anyway. So nobody has to worry about more LIT members, or what the faculty will think. Let’s just drop it, okay, guys?”

Samir and Blade grumble a bit, but decide to let it go.

“So what do we do about Ryan?” I ask the group. “We can’t just let him go off by himself.”

Right about that time, just ahead of us there’s a shout, then the sound of something big falling.

“Ryan!” I shout, and take off running. I break through the clearing, only to nearly fall straight off a cliff. I skid to a stop, balancing precariously on the edge of a precipice that must be at least a hundred-foot drop straight down. I flail my arms and just manage not to plunge headfirst. I regain my balance, just as Samir, Hana, and Blade join me.

“Watch out,” I say, holding up my hands. The last thing I need is for them to collide into me and send me over the edge.

“Um, a little help?” comes Ryan’s voice from somewhere below my feet. I drop to my hands and knees and peer over the edge. I see Ryan hanging by a root coming out of the side of the mud hill. He wasn’t as lucky as I was.

“Hold on, we’re coming,” I say. I look at Samir.

“What are you looking at me for? I’m scared of heights,” he says.

“And that’s a surprise, why?” Blade says, but she’s smiling.

“We need rope. Anyone got any?”

The three of them shake their heads. “We’ll have to make some.” I glance down at everyone’s Bard Academy standard-issue backpacks. “Empty your bags. We can tie them together.”

I hear scraping on the cliff wall. It sounds like Ryan is trying to climb up. I hear him slip, then curse as his body bangs hard against the cliff.

“Hang on, Ryan. We’re going to throw you a rope, okay?”

Furiously, we work to tie our backpacks together. Once done, Hana, Blade, and Samir act as anchors, holding on to the backpacks as I lean over the edge of the cliff and lower the string of backpacks down.

“You call this rope?” Ryan asks, reaching up and trying to grab hold of the low-lying strap of the last backpack in the chain.

“Best we could do.” I stretch a little lower, hoping to bridge the gap between the backpacks and Ryan. As I watch, Ryan lunges again for the strap, but misses, nearly losing his grip on the root.

“Hang on!” I shout, just as he manages to recover, grabbing the root in his right hand and steadying himself against the mud wall. I can see his feet aren’t getting any traction, and little bits of dirt and rocks are falling to the ground below. It occurs to me that the wall could shift at any moment and we could find ourselves in the middle of a mudslide.

“Lower, guys!” I shout to Hana, Blade, and Samir, trying to get the backpacks closer to Ryan’s reach.

“If we go much lower, we won’t be able to hold on at all!” Blade shouts.

“That’s as far as we can go,” I tell Ryan, who tries again to reach the backpack strap. But this time, his foot slips on the mud and he loses his grip on the root. For a second, my heart goes into my throat as I see him slide straight down, arms flailing. Ryan manages to catch himself on another root just in time to stop his complete free fall. He’s at least another two body lengths down the cliff and there’s no way our backpacks can reach him now.

“Dammit,” I hiss as Ryan curses and mutters to himself. “Maybe we can find something else to tie together!” I shout down to him, even though I know the outlook is bleak. There’s no way for us to save him.

“No, forget it,” Ryan says. “You’ll just end up falling down here with me.”

As I watch, Ryan looks for footholds. But instead of going up, he seems to be heading down.

“Where are you going?”

“I think it’s easier just to go down,” he says. “And besides, I think I see something down here. I think it might be the beach.”

I look down, trying to see where he’s looking, but there are still a few trees around the base of the cliff and it’s hard to make out. The leaves and branches block our view. Ryan, however, is below the top of the trees and seems to be able to see what we can’t.

“Yeah, there’s the ocean,” he says as he makes his way downward. “And wait. There’s something more.”

I lean down and watch him jump the last five feet down to the sandy ground. He shakes mud off his legs, then trots out of view for a second. He returns carrying a piece of paper. It looks like it’s been ripped out of Lindsay’s notebook.

“I think this is Lindsay’s handwriting!” Ryan shouts, holding it up for me to see. He’s right. “We’re close.”

“What does it say?” I shout down to him.

“Um…” He pauses, reading. “It looks like she’s just practicing signing her name. Except she’s signing it ‘Lindsay Kent.’” Ryan sounds a little embarrassed.

Geez. My sister is a dork.

“You don’t think Peg Leg got her?” Samir asks.

“There’s no such thing as Peg Leg,” Blade says. “Besides, I thought we agreed it was Ahab.”

“Do you see anything else?” I shout.

“No,” Ryan says. “There seem to be some footprints, though. And what looks like a cave, maybe. I’m not sure. I’m going to have to go look. You guys stay there, I’ll be back.”

Ryan disappears again.

“I guess we just have to wait for him,” I say. I wish for the hundredth time that Heathcliff was here.

I hope he’s okay.

Hana and Samir are sitting on a fallen tree. Blade sits down in a patch of grass and I lean against a tree stump.

“You guys think Heathcliff is in trouble?” I ask them.

“Heathcliff is probably eating a Big Mac at the nearest McDonald’s. He’s no fool,” Samir says.

“Technically, he wouldn’t know what one is,” Blade says. “They didn’t have Mickey D’s in 1847.”

“Details, details,” Samir says, waving his hand. “By the way, what is edible around here? Isn’t that supposed to be part of your witch training?”

“We’re taught how to do spells, not how to forage for berries,” Blade says.

The drums start up suddenly again, causing us all to jump. They’re louder than ever and coming from down below, where Ryan disappeared.

“You hear that?” Samir whispers.

“You’d have to be deaf not to,” Hana says.

“You think that means Ryan’s in trouble?” I ask.

Back behind us, in the forest, we hear the sounds of branches cracking under feet. Samir jumps, everyone else stiffens.

“Maybe it means
we’re
in trouble,” Hana says.

“Maybe it’s just Heathcliff?” I ask, even as more branches crack to our left, then others to our right. There isn’t just one person coming our way. There are at least three or more. We start to hear the distinct grumble of voices. Men’s voices.

“What do we do?” Samir hisses at us.

“Hide,” Blade whispers back.

Twenty-one

Samir and Hana jump
behind a big tree trunk, Blade crawls into the hallowed-out log, and I’m left to hide myself behind some bushes. My breath nearly stops as I get hit by a serious fit of déjà vu. I realize that this is the
exact
spot I dreamed about the night before. The bushes, the footsteps, everything. As the footsteps get closer, I suck in a breath and hold it.

The crack of branches comes closer and I hear the crunch of leaves under someone’s feet.

A shadow crosses over my head and I freeze, peering out through the brush. I hope I don’t see Peg Leg like I did in my dream. And then, in front of me, I see one dark bare leg and then another. Whoever is standing in front of me is barefoot, and he has spiral tattoos on his ankles.

I’m almost certain now that he sees me. I glance through a hole in the bushes and see that Hana is crouched opposite me in her hiding space. She sees that I’m about to be caught and I can tell she’s going to do something silly.

She starts to stand up, even as I shake my head vigorously
no.
She shouldn’t sacrifice herself for me. But then, she’s already doing it.

“Hey, you! Over here!” she cries, jumping out from her hiding spot and drawing the man away from me. Before I can do a thing about it, the tattoo guy is off, running toward her, and she takes off at a sprint straight into the woods. I pop up from my hiding place, but it’s too late to distract Tattoo Man. He’s thumping off through the forest after Hana. I get a glimpse of his back. He’s wearing what amounts to rags and has a completely bald head.

“Hana!” I shout, but Blade and Samir grab me before I can take off after her.

“Shhhhhh!” Blade says, covering my mouth with her hand. “Listen,” she whispers.

I realize then that we’re not alone. Tattoo Man wasn’t alone, either, because his friends are coming at us through the woods. All I see are shadow figures, making their way through the trees.

“We’re trapped,” Samir whines.

“We’ve got only one way to go,” Blade says, glancing over the cliff. “Down.”

“We can’t leave Hana,” I say.

“We have to!” Blade shouts, as she slings her backpack over her shoulder. Then she grabs a root hanging out from the cliff and starts to rappel down the muddy ledge.

“I don’t know how to climb,” Samir says.

“Neither do I,” I say.

We both look at each other and then at the trees in front of us. Two pirate men break through. They’re just like the ones I saw in the woods with Heathcliff. They’re wearing rags and no shoes.