For a little while, neither of them spoke. Then Erin said, “I wonder how many times it takes.”
“For what?”
“You know. To make you pregnant.”
“You tell me. You know everything.”
“I don’t know that,” Erin admitted. “I wonder if you have to do it, like, twenty times or something.”
“I wouldn’t know. You should’ve asked Dad.”
“Very funny. But don’t you think we’d maybe be pregnant by now if it only took once or twice or something?”
Alice sighed. “I guess so.”
“But we aren’t, right? He did us both the day he showed up for the first time. Then he got me twice more before he went away. So that makes a total of three, all the way back then.”
“Twice for me,” Alice said.
“But we had our periods since then, so obviously it wasn’t enough. So how many does it take?”
“Who knows?”
“At least it’s not us all the time, now that he’s got everyone else.”
Everyone else!
I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Excuse me,” I said.
They both gasped.
“It’s okay,” I told them. “Don’t be scared. I’m a friend. I’m here to rescue you.”
Erin said, “Rupert?”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Yes,” I said. “You know who I am?”
“Just a guess. They told us all about you. Where are you? I can’t see you.”
I crept closer. No moonlight, at all, made it down to where the cages were. I could see nothing. Not the cages, not the girls, not even my own hands. It was like being shut up at night in a closet.
Reaching out with one hand, I touched bars. “I’m at your cage.”
“I can’t see you,” Erin said.
“I can’t see you, either,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Alice asked. “You can’t see either one of us?”
“If we can’t see each other or him,” Erin said, “how is he supposed to be able to see us?”
“It’s possible. It all depends.”
“Alice is just worried ’cause we don’t have much on.”
“That’s okay. I can’t see a thing.”
“She’s Alice, by the way. I’m Erin. We’re Alice and Erin Sherman. We’re fourteen, and we’re twins.”
“Identical twins?” I asked.
“No,” Alice said.
“Yes,” said Erin.
“We are not.”
“In the technical sense, we are. Only we just don’t look exactly alike, that’s all. Alice thinks she’s prettier than me.”
“Liar.”
“But I’m actually the pretty one,” Erin said. I imagined her smiling as she said that.
“You’re so full of crap,” Alice said, “it’s not even funny.”
I started moving sideways, following the bars. They felt warm in my hands. They were at least an inch thick. The gaps between them seemed to be about four inches across.
“What’re you doing?” Erin asked. “Rupert?”
“I’ll get between your cages so we won’t have to talk so loud.”
“Have you been here long?” she asked.
I blushed, but nobody could see it. “No,” I lied. “Just got here.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” I explained—Mark Twain had said it first.
“Boy, this is great,” Erin said. “You being alive.”
“And not in a cage,” added Alice.
I found the corner of Erin’s cage, and crawled around it. To make sure I was between the cages, I stretched out my arms. I touched bars to my right and left. So I sat down and crossed my legs. “Okay,” I said.
From both sides came quiet sounds—rustling, sliding, breathing, a couple of small moans—as the girls moved in closer. The moans had come from my right, from Erin. After the beating she’d taken in the room, it probably hurt her a lot to move.
“Are you there?” she asked.
As quietly as I could, I slid myself toward Erin’s cage. I stopped when my upper arm touched a bar.
“Can you get us out of here?” Alice asked.
“I sure hope so. One way or another. Is there any way to open these things without a key?”
“Nope,” Erin said. Her voice was much closer to me than Alice’s. I thought I could feel her breath on my arm. Though I couldn’t see even a hint of her, I pictured her sitting cross-legged, leaning forward, elbows on her thighs, the tips of her breasts almost touching her forearms, her face only inches from the bars.
I wished I could see her.
I thought about the lighter in my pocket.
I didn’t go for it, though. Better for us all to stay invisible, at least for the time being.
“You can’t get in or out,” Erin said, “unless you’ve got keys. These’re really strong cages.”
“They were made to hold gorillas,” Alice explained.
Monkey Business
“Gorillas?” I asked.
“This used to be a gorilla zoo,” Erin said.
“Before we moved here,” her sister added.
“Yeah, a long time before we moved here. We’ve only been on the island a couple of years.”
“It’ll be two years in June,” Alice said.
“The gorillas were all dead before we ever got here. Long dead. Like before we were even born. This guy massacred them all. How do you like that? The same guy that brought them here.”
“To save them,” Alice added.
“Yeah,” Erin said. “There was some sort of revolution going on some place in Africa. Like back in the sixties? And this guy was afraid all the gorillas might get killed off.”
“He was a naturalist,” Alice explained.
“You know, like that Gorillas in the Mist woman. Sigourney Weaver?”
“Dian Fossey,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” Erin said, “like that.”
“He lived right here in the big house when he wasn’t running around places like Africa.”
“So anyway,” Erin said, “he captured like a dozen of these gorillas and shipped them over here to this island. He had the cages built especially for them. Made himself a nice little private zoo.”
“It wasn’t really a zoo,” Alice pointed out.
“Not if you wanta get technical,” Erin said. “It wasn’t like a public zoo. He kept the apes for himself, like pets. Then one day he slaughtered them all.”
“Killed them?” I asked. “Why’d he do that?”
“Maybe he got tired of them,” Alice suggested.
“Or they done him wrong,” Erin said. Again, I pictured her smiling.
“Nobody knows why,” Alice said.
