And someone named Tom.
Anders squinted, trying to ascertain who Tom was—or rather, where he was.
When Piper was within a few feet of the bench and finally took note of Anders, she didn’t scowl in disgust or roll her eyes as he had feared; she looked directly in his direction, her dimples deepening in her cheeks, and said, “Mornin’,” catching Anders even further off guard. He opened his mouth to say “Hi,” but his brain thought it was going to say “Good morning,” and he ended up making a strangled nonsense sound, causing his face to turn a brighter shade of crimson.
If Piper noticed, she didn’t say anything, and then she was past him, walking down the dock, leaving a sweet scent in her wake, reminding Anders of one of those Strawberry Shortcake dolls Kelsey used to play with as a girl. He inhaled deeply. Apples, he thought. Or peaches. Something fruity and pleasant, and he wondered if it was her shampoo or a fragrance she dabbed on her wrists every morning or a lotion she— He shook his head. And then trained his gaze on where Piper had stopped, in front of a skiff tied up to the dock ten yards down. “Glad you decided to show,” the man in the boat was saying. “Like your old man used to say—you always catch more crabs when you’re out than when you’re not.”
Piper laughed, the sound bright as a bell, trilling in the open air. “I’m glad you’re still here,” she said to the man. “We weren’t sure we were going to catch you.”
Anders’s forehead crinkled in further consternation. Piper had said “we,” even though she was alone—and he puzzled over it for a beat until a voice from behind interrupted his thoughts.
“You gonna sit there all morning?”
Anders turned and met BobDan’s grizzled face.
“Get up, son. Charlie here runs the buy boat. He’ll take you, you don’t mind sharing a seat with the crabs.”
The buy boat. “I thought that left at five thirty,” Anders said.
BobDan narrowed his eyes. “What are you, time management?” He shook his head, mouth turned in half a grin. “You want a ride back or not?”
“Yes,” Anders said, chagrined. “I do.”
And that was how Anders Caldwell ended up standing on a skiff, the bay wind whipping his cheeks, surrounded by cardboard boxes packed with hundreds of soft-shell crabs wrapped in seaweed, their briny juices leaking on his already-rain-ruined suede loafers. Anders didn’t care. The smaller Frick Island—and Piper and BobDan and the One-Eyed Crab— shrunk behind him, the easier he breathed, resting in the knowledge that by this time next year, he would have moved on to a bigger, better paper and would not ever be returning to this godforsaken island for the Cake Walk—or anything else, for that matter.
Chapter 6
The musty scent of manure commingling with wet hay hung thick in the air as a 250-pound Andean bear named Baloo swatted a log, trying to dig out a piece of honeycomb from its hiding place—a knot in the wood. A zookeeper narrated, her voice reverberating in a cheap handheld microphone: “We’ve hidden pieces of the honeycomb around his habitat, creating strategic challenges to encourage the bear’s natural problem-solving ability.”
The problem, Anders thought, was that this zookeeper had been talking for forty-five minutes, and the crowd (of fifty-seven onlookers; Anders had counted), who most likely had attended more for the free cupcakes and punch than for the unveiling of the zoo’s newest addition, was getting restless. The mosquitoes were nearly as thick as the heat and Anders slapped at one on his arm before snapping a few more photos of the bear with the newspaper-issued Nikon. He checked the counter. Certain that sixty-three pictures was more than enough to choose from, he let the camera hang around his neck and dug his phone out of his back pocket.
He scanned Instagram, expecting idle entertainment, but all the photos of feet in sand, perfectly plated quinoa bowls, and groups of smiling friends hugging each other only threw the depressing nature of his current situation into sharp relief.
Instead, he clicked onto his podcast website, to check the current status of his latest episode. He had recorded it on a whim, two days after he got home from Frick Island. Whereas most of his episodes were meticulously researched, carefully written and edited over weeks of time, this one he recorded in just one night—simply telling the straight story of his experience on the island (well, everything but the unfortunate and embarrassing encounter with the girl at the restaurant). And to his surprise, in the past week and a half that it had been live, it had garnered a whopping 123 listens. Not anywhere near Serial’s 250 million downloads, of course, or even close to his sixteen-thousand-plus record with the Mark Harris episode, but it more than quadrupled his audience for the poultry episode, and at least he was on an upswing for the first time since graduating.
Now, he saw the number had risen again—152—and instead of the one comment he expected to see right after he first posted it (LeonardC404: Reminds me a little of Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina from Conroy’s The Water Is Wide. Great detail; felt like I was there.—Dad), he now had three. Three!
He scrolled down to the second one.
MacLuvsCheese: Is this for real? I’ve never heard of this place! And I live in Virginia. Crazy.
Anders grinned. A comment! From a stranger! And he had felt the same way, not ever having heard of the island before. He moved on to comment three.
41NM241: Earn $175,000 working from home! Click here to learn how: bitly.sjfl53
Oh. He tried to swallow the disappointment at not having a comment from the one person he hoped to have a comment from, and focused on whether to delete the spam (three comments was still better than two), when the email alert on his phone dinged.
From: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Your Cake Walk story
You came all the way to Frick Island and missed the biggest story out here. For a reporter, you’re not very observant.
Anders’s forehead crinkled as he scrolled down for the rest of the message—or a signature, at least—but that was it. He read it again and scoffed—there were plenty of things Anders could be accused of, but being unobservant was not one of them. He returned his attention to the stocky zookeeper, who was now droning on about the efforts of the various teams of people it had taken to relocate the bear from Ecuador to the United States. She was thanking each one by name, and if it were the Academy Awards, an orchestra would have long drowned out her words with music.
He looked at the email once more, his thumb hovering over the delete button. Though he’d only been a full-time reporter for a little over three months, he was used to getting weird missives like these. Even at his college paper, reporters got more than their fair share of calls, emails, and even old-fashioned letters from people who always said they had the next big story waiting to be uncovered. Nine out of ten times, they did not. In his experience, they often just wanted attention. Anders read the missive a third time, but instead of deleting it, he let it be. Just in case.