Page 1 of Grave Matter

CHAPTER 1

The girlI was talking to the entire flight has disappeared.

I’ve stepped off the floatplane, the propellers still sputtering in rotation as I take the hand of a lanky man in a rain jacket who introduces himself as David Chen, manager of Madrona Lodge. But as I look behind me for the bright and bubbly Amani in her pale pink hijab, who I just spent an hour conversing with in the seat across from mine, she’s no longer on the plane. The two other passengers are still on board—a bushy-browed man and a thin-lipped woman whom the co-pilot told me were new staff at the Madrona Foundation—sitting in the back row and watching me with idle curiosity.

But no Amani.

“Are you alright?” David says, giving my hand an unsettling squeeze, which brings my attention back to him. “I said I’m David Chen.”

“Oh. Sydney Denik,” I absently introduce myself, pulling my hand away from his as subtly as possible as I find my balance on the dock, meeting his inquisitive dark eyes for just a moment before I start scanning the plane again. “Sorry, I…I was just talking to someone on the plane, and now she’s gone.”

“Amani?” he asks, and I nod. “She went up ahead of you.”

I look up the dock. There’s a steep ramp, thanks to the low tide, and a long wharf leading to the land, but there’s no sight of her. I frown. How is that possible?

“You likely didn’t notice,” he goes on. “Wouldn’t be the first time a new student has become enraptured by the scenery here. We’ve even had a person fall off the dock because they were so distracted. It was quite the welcome, I’m sure,” he adds with a chuckle.

But I was the first to step offthe plane, I want to tell him.I swear I was. But I realize that arguing with the manager of the lodge wouldn’t be the best start for me, especially when things are already so precarious. And perhaps he’s right. Maybe I didn’t notice Amani disembarking before me. Already, my brain feels a little fuzzy, probably from the relief of finally getting here without a hitch.

Amani talked the entire flight about how excited she was about being selected for the Madrona Foundation’s student program, and I could hardly get a word in edgewise, which was fine by me. I try to stay silent when I first meet people, trying to figure out how to wear my mask, what kind of person I need to be for the conversation. So I listened and stared out the window at the scenery for the flight from Vancouver to this remote inlet on Vancouver Island’s northwest coast, soaring over glittering straits dotted with white ferries, thick green forest, milky blue alpine lakes, and craggy, snowcapped peaks that have yet to thaw in the May sunshine.

But the further north we went, the more the landscape was blotted out by clouds and fog. In fact, our pilot had to circle for about twenty minutes before we landed, waiting for the mist to clear enough for a clear view of the water.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” David remarks. His hands go behind his back, and he rocks on the heels of his fancy dress shoes, whichseem out of place on the dock. He sniffs the air in a perfunctory way, as if he’s encouraging me to look at the scenery.

I expected the location to remind me of home—I grew up in Crescent City, California, so I’m no stranger to fog, ocean, and towering trees—but here, the elements are amplified, as if they have an edge to them. The fog is more corporeal yet delicate, reminding me of cobwebs that don’t seem to move butstretchacross the tips of the trees. The trees themselves—Douglas fir, western cedar, Sitka spruce—aren’t as wide as the redwoods, but they’re taller, their boughs are heavier, their trunks rich with moss and lichen. The undergrowth, too, is wildly overgrown, and my eyes have a hard time taking in all the different vegetation in riotous shades of green—salal bushes, Oregon grape, wild ginger, and massive sword ferns.

It’s a biologist’s fever dream.

And exactly why I’m here.

“I take it you didn’t get a very good view of the Brooks Peninsula on the flight,” David says, watching me as I look around. He gestures across the narrow inlet, the water dark emerald, glassy, and still, to the bank of clouds on the other side, obscuring what I assume is a forested slope. “Don’t worry, you’ll be up close and personal with the area soon enough. All the cures to humanity’s woes, hidden just behind that mist.”

I watch as the fog seems to creep across the water toward us.

You’re finally here, I tell myself.You made it. Relax.

The weirdness of earlier has already faded. My ADHD brain is easily distracted, even when medicated, so it’s entirely possible that Amani got off the plane before I did and I wasn’t paying attention.

“Why don’t I show you to your room and give you a tour of the lodge,” David says, holding his arm out toward the dark, looming wood building at the end of the dock.

“What about my bags?” I glance behind me at the pilots as they start opening a hatch on the plane’s pontoons and pulling out my luggage, a metallic black carry-on suitcase with a wonky wheel and a duffel bag I won at school that has The Cardinal emblazoned on the side, Stanford’s basketball team.

“The stewards will take your luggage,” he says. I hesitate, watching as they place them on the dock beside the plane. Something here is amiss, but I don’t know what it is. “Come now, Ms. Denik,” he adds with a touch of impatience.

He gestures again with his arm, and finally, I give him an apologetic smile. “Yes, sorry. Just getting my bearings.”

“That’s perfectly normal,” he says, his voice jovial again. “And getting a tour will get you centered quickly.”

Yet, as we walk down the dock, I have to look over my shoulder one last time. The two passengers are still sitting at the back of the plane, staring out the window and watching me. I wonder why they aren’t getting off the plane, but I know I’ll only annoy David if I ask another question. I have to put in more of an effort to get on his good side. He’s not the one running the Madrona Foundation, but he is in charge of the lodge where I’ll be spending the next sixteen weeks, and I don’t need to give anyone here any excuse to check in with my school and find out the truth.

We start walking side by side down the dock. Aside from the floatplane tied up at the end, there’s a handful of dinghies, Zodiacs, and fishing boats, crucial for getting around in a place as remote as this, plus a large, sleek sailboat calledMithrandirand several kayaks and paddleboards that are stacked on the dock. At the end of one slip is a small building that reads “Floating Lab.”

Cool air rises off the water, washing over my cheeks, and I zip up the rest of my trusty Patagonia jacket I scored off a sales rack.

He notices. “Glad you dressed appropriately. You’d be surprised how many people arrive here in the summer expecting hot, dry weather.”

“I’ve been living in the Bay Area for the last few years. I’m used to it,” I tell him, even though the area around Stanford can get really hot in the summer. You could be hiking the dry trails under the Stanford Dish, baking under the sun, while San Francisco is in a bank of cloud.

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