The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

“No, he can’t. He can’t possibly.”

Startled by her forcefulness, and that she’d referred to him in the third person, Finn spun to see if someone had joined her.

Her attention fixed outward, she appeared to have been addressing the island itself.

In the waning light, her sharp features looked softer. In her cerulean eyes, Finn detected sadness.

Convinced that she hadn’t meant to reveal that emotion, he averted his gaze to her braided hair, tied off with a piece of vine. “I want to help you, but I can’t if you won’t tell me what’s going on here.”

“You? Help me? Yeah right.” She backed away from the window and bumped into a counter, her head almost hitting the bottom of an empty hanging cupboard. It was the first clumsy move he’d seen her make. Her first sign of weakness.

“My dad’s using you in his research, isn’t he?”

Her eyes widened. “Your dad? You do look like him. But he’s never mentioned you. Why would he do that?” she asked herself, or the island. “Because he felt guilty,” she answered.

Unsure how to interpret that, Finn wrinkled his nose. “He didn’t tell me about you, either.”

“Your family always has loved secrets.” She coughed.

His stomach twisted, but he had to know: “I found an old note that my mom had written to my dad. She wanted him to leave a woman alone, who’d suffered.” He stepped toward her. “If you’re that woman, and he’s still hurting you, I’ll make him stop, I swear.”

She arched her eyebrows. “How noble.”

“Not at all. Anyone faced with this same set of facts would do the same. My mom would have made sure he’d followed through if she could.”

Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she lowered her head. “How is Sylvia?”

Does she know about the Lyme? Finn wondered. “Hanging in there.”

“Your father called,” she said, her expression hardening.

Finn groaned at his bad luck. Rollie rarely called him during the workweek.

“He was surprised, to say the least, when I answered. Naturally, he threatened me. So, I chuckled sinisterly.” She groaned. “That was an adverb. I really try not to use those. Great, I just used another. Anyway, I told him to be here at exactly two o’clock tonight. Your family always has been obsessed with punctuality.”

Finn pictured Rollie methodically preparing for the trip, his worry, as well as his anger that Finn had defied him, completely bridled. “My dad claims he hasn’t set foot here since 2001. That’s not true, is it?”

“His most recent visit was”—she looked upward—“two nights after I caught you peeping.”

Furious, Finn balled his fists.

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, “I didn’t mention you.”

“Did he give you those scars?”

“No.”

“Has he harmed you in any way?” She rubbed her breastbone. “Yes.”

The veins in Finn’s temples throbbed. “Let me go, and I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”

She laughed. “You really are clueless. I love that word, by the way, especially in this usage.”

“That may have been the case, but I’m catching on pretty quickly, and I’m not going to let him hurt you again,” Finn said, trying to hide his anger. “There are shelters that can help you. I’ll find a good one.”

“I can’t leave here, okay?”

“I don’t see any chains.”

“They call it VZ. The day it was injected was the worst of my life.” She looked past him. “It’s a weaponized pathogen. My own personal—what do you call it? Electric fence. It’ll kill me if I clear the shallows.”

Speechless, Finn couldn’t believe Rollie had duped her with such a twisted subterfuge. Yet a part of him did. To keep Finn in his room at night when he was little, Rollie had told him the monster lived in the hall closet—not his bedroom’s. To compel Finn to get his chemistry grade up, Rollie had dangled a formula for a compound that would boost the muscle shakes Finn drank each night after baseball practice. Rollie always had been good at mind games.

“So anyway,” she said as if they’d been discussing the weather, “I’ve got something for you.” She ducked out of sight, and Finn’s heart pounded.

A moment later, a magazine protruded from the slot in his cell’s door. Grabbing it, he caught a whiff of antiseptic. He hadn’t imagined that smell earlier. The worn cover depicted a cowboy shooting a Native American. Embellished letters stated that this was number 1,004 in the Dime Library: “Buffalo Bill’s Death-Deal.”

“I’ve got the full series,” she said, reappearing at the nurses’ window. “Each one cost me dearly.”

“I can’t keep this.” Nor did he want to, given its glorification of the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples, though he sensed now was not the time to raise that issue.

“It’s only to borrow, until Rollie arrives, when you’ll either die or scurry home.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder and turned toward the exit.

“Wait.” He racked his brain for a way to keep their conversation going. “How’d you pull off that trick with the birds?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in it,” she said, clearly not to him, and took a sip from her canteen bottle. “The raccoons love anything shiny. I knotted the foil wrapper from the Toblerone around the end of a rope. Then I strung the rope over a branch and tied its other end to a log.”

As she described the rest of the mechanics, Finn thought his own death might occur in a similarly complex fashion. “Apparently physics is another of your strong suits.”

“I do have a Rube Goldberg cartoon collection.”

“I’d love to see it sometime.” It had sounded like a lame pickup line, whereas he simply wanted to give her another reason to keep him alive. “How do you move so fast in the treetops?”

“Basically, I use a network of boards and branches.” She smiled shyly. “I stick to the treetops to stay clear of any vandals that make it ashore. Obviously, I dismantle the boards before each winter because if I didn’t, the park workers would notice them. Those months, I hunker down to stay warm. Each spring, I rebuild. Mostly I move around