St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

This story concerns brothers Timothy (age 12) and Wallow (age 14) as they go on a quest to find out what happened to their sister Olivia, who disappeared into the sea. The story begins shortly after the boys discover the “diabolical goggles,” which are pink girl’s swimming goggles that they found in a wrecked boat in Gannon’s Boat Graveyard (26). These allow Timothy to see the ghost of sea creatures underwater, though they do not work for Wallow in the open ocean.

Timothy, who narrates the story, describes how their parents met while birdwatching and named all their children after birds: Timothy Sparrow, Waldo Swallow (Wallow), and Olivia Lark. They used to take their children on bird excursions but have stopped since Olivia’s death. They frequently travel to the Third World to distract themselves from their pain, leaving the boys with Granana, who subsists on mostly bananas because she has no teeth.

Timothy explains that “Olivia disappeared on a new-moon night,” which means “our grief is cyclical, synced with the lunar cycles. It accordions out as the moon slivers away. On new-moon nights, it rises with the tide” (31). The last time the boys saw their sister was at twilight, when they left her alone after a day of crab-sledding. She wanted to keep sledding on the giant hollow crab shells that Herb rents out on the beach. However, no one noticed how fast the tide was going out and “when they finally found Olivia’s sled, it was halfway to Cuba, and empty” (33).

When Wallow fails to make the diabolical goggles work for him, he makes Timothy try. It is a new-moon night, which makes him nervous. However, he jumps in and sees an amazing light show of sea creature ghosts under the water. He spends two hours watching the spirits until a pack of ghost shrimp appear and spell out the word “glowworm grotto” (35).

The boys believe this is a message from Olivia, as she had been “a cartographer of imaginary places” and had once drawn a map of a glowworm grotto from the perspective of someone floating on their back, so that the worms resembled stars (35). Timothy wishes he hadn’t seen the message at all.

Wallow kept Olivia’s drawings, and the boys return to Granana’s to study them. Granana notices them looking at the cave drawing and muses that it looks like a cave where she and their grandfather used to go skinny dipping. The boys wonder if her body could have washed back to the coast and into one of the caves. Timothy doesn’t like to think of her body being anywhere and has nightmares about a hand rising from the sea to knock her from her boat. Wallow, meanwhile, just sees “my own hands, you know? Pushing her down that hill” in her sled for the last time (39).

The boys go to Herb’s Crab Sledding Rentals the next evening and rent a crab sled, bribing Herb to overlook the safety rules instituted after Olivia’s death. They begin paddling around the island, going a little farther every night. Wallow mans the boat while Timothy uses the goggles to look for Olivia and the opening to the glowworm cave.

On the third night, Timothy asks Wallow what they will do if they find Olivia’s ghost. Wallow suggests bringing her home in an aquarium or finding some other way to preserve her memory. But Timothy worries that “all the Olivia-ness has already seeped out of her and evaporated into the violet welter of clouds” so that there will be “nothing left of our sister to find” (42).

On the fourth night, Timothy sees a ghostly group of drowned children and is frightened. To him, “the goggles are starting to feel less like a superpower and more like a divine punishment” (43). But Wallow is determined to keep looking. The next night, he sees the ghost of a plesiosaur.

Later, after a brief nap in the boat, Timothy wakes up to hear Wallow telling the sky that he just wants to apologize to Olivia. They have covered nearly all the coastline, but finally find the opening of a cave that must be the glowworm grotto. The opening is too small for Wallow and the sled, so Timothy must swim inside alone. He does not like this plan and tries to smash the goggles or get Wallow to leave Olivia there for dead, wishing the whole family could do the same. However, ultimately, he agrees to swim inside for Wallow.

Once inside, he sees the glowing ceiling and calls for Olivia. When he dives under the water, he sees a real fish, which bumps into his goggles and swims away. He follows it, looking for his sister. However, “it’s hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can’t tell the living from the dead” (48). He sees only light and concludes that “Olivia could be everywhere” (48).