St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell Read Free Book Online

can’t remember which:
    There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.
             
    I wake up from one of those naps that leach the strength from your bones to a lightning storm. I must have fallen asleep in the crab sled. Otherworldly light goes roiling through an eerie blue froth of clouds.
    Wallow is standing at the prow of the sled. Each flash of lightning limns his bared teeth, the hollows of his eyes. It’s as if somebody up there were taking an X-ray of grief, again and again.
    “I just want to tell her that I’m sorry,” Wallow says softly. He doesn’t know that I’m awake. He’s talking to himself, or maybe to the ocean. There’s not a trace of fear in his voice. And it’s clear then that Wallow is a better brother than I could ever hope to be.
    We have rowed almost all the way around the island. In a quarter of an hour, we’ll be back at Gannon’s Boat Graveyard. Thank merciful Christ. Our parents are coming back tomorrow, and I can go back to playing video games and feeling dry and blameless.
    Then the lighthouse beacon sweeps out again. It bounces off an outcropping of rocks that we didn’t notice on our first expedition. White sequins of light pop along the water.
    “Did you see that? That’s it!” Wallow says excitedly. “That’s gotta be it!”
    “Oh. Excellent.”
    We paddle the rest of the way out in silence. I row the crab sled like a condemned man. The current keeps pushing us back, but we make a quiet kind of progress. I keep praying that the crags will turn out to be low, heaped clouds, or else a seamless mass of stone. Instead, you can tell that they are pocked with dozens of holes. For a second, I’m relieved—nobody, not even string-beany Olivia, could swim into such narrow openings. Wallow’s eyes dart around wildly.
    “There has to be an entrance,” he mutters. “Look!”
    Sure enough, there is a muted glow coming from the far end of a salt-eaten overhang, like light from under a door.
    “No way can I fit through there,” I gasp, knowing immediately that I can. And that the crab sled can’t, of course. Which means I’ll be going in to meet her alone.
    What if the light, I am thinking, is Olivia?
    “It’s just worms, bro,” Wallow says, as if reading my mind. But there’s this inscrutable sadness on his face. His muddy eyes swallow up the light and give nothing back.
    I look over my shoulder. We’re less than half a mile out from shore, could skip a stone to the mangrove islets; and yet the land draws back like a fat swimmer’s chimera, impossibly far away.
    “Ready?” He grabs at the scruff of my neck and pushes me towards the water. “Set?”
    “No!” Staring at the unlit spaces in the crags, I am choked with horror. I fumble the goggles off my face. “Do your own detective work!” I dangle the goggles over the edge of the sled. “I quit.”
    Wallow lunges forward and pins me against the side of the boat. He tries to spatula me overboard with his one good arm, but I limbo under his cast.
    “Don’t do it, Timothy,” he cautions, but it is too late.
    “This is what I think of your diabolical goggles!” I howl. I hoist the goggles over my head and, with all the force in my puny arms, hurl them to the floor of the crab sled.
    This proves to be pretty anticlimactic. Naturally, the goggles remain intact. There’s not even a hairline fracture. Stupid scratchproof lenses.
    The worst part is that Wallow just watches me impassively, his cast held aloft in the air, as if he were patiently waiting to ask the universe a question. He nudges the goggles towards me with his foot.
    “You finished?”
    “Wally!” I blubber, a last-ditch plea. “This is crazy. What if something happens to me in there and you can’t come in after me? Let’s go back.”
    “What?” Wallow barks, disgusted. “And leave Olivia here for dead? Is that what you want?”
    “Bingo!” That is exactly what I want. Maybe Granana is slightly off target when it