by Sara Saedi
She used the scissors to trim his facial hair. Once it was short enough, she poured water over his cheeks and jaw line. As tufts of hair disappeared from his face, Wylie noticed high cheekbones, meandering freckles, and full lips that had been impossible to make out all this time. The angles of his face were more defined than she’d expected. She thought he’d look younger or boyish without his usual scruff, but he looked even more like an adult now. If he worked on his conversational skills, he might just have a chance of stealing Nadia away from Patrick.
“How old are you?” It suddenly occurred to her to ask. She wasn’t sure.
“Seventeen. Same age as you,” he answered.
Phinn had said the same thing to her when they met. It had been a half-truth, but so was most everything else he’d said that night.
“I was sixteen when Phinn recruited me to the island.”
Wylie used the bottom of her T-shirt to dry off Hopper’s face. He let his fingers graze over his cheeks.
“You survived. I didn’t slice your neck open.”
“And for that I am grateful.”
They didn’t have to say it out loud to know what the other was thinking. Tonight was their last night on the boat. Tomorrow, they could die or end up in cages on the Forbidden Side again. Or, they could start over on the island. With any luck, Wylie and Lola would be whipping up a hearty breakfast for the kids. Between bites, Micah and Joshua would talk about how much they’d missed their sister’s cooking. Phinn would be halfway to the mainland. Slowly, Wylie could put the pieces of her heart back together again and forget that a certain boy ever existed.
“Now what?” Hopper asked.
Wylie picked up his guitar and handed it to him.
“Play me something.”
Hopper strummed a few chords. Wylie curled up on the chilly planks of wood, closed her eyes, and listened to the melody slowly forming beneath his hands. Hopper said the guitar was out of tune, but Wylie didn’t know the difference. The thoughts in her mind slowly swirled, and the rooftop in Brooklyn came into view.
Don’t think about Phinn, she told herself as she saw his face and drifted into sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
operation exile
the boat was moving too fast. Wylie wanted to yell at Hopper to slow down, but he had no control over the wind speed. The sun was about to retire for the day, but they still had several hours before they were close enough to stake out the island. She tried to conjure up the moment it would reveal itself in all its glory. She imagined the palm trees swaying forward in the wind, almost bowing at them in welcome, as they ventured through the trail. She wondered if the fireflies would help light their path, and if the tempo of parvaz flowers would go from languid to allegro, to announce their presence. But even joyous thoughts of the island did nothing to calm Wylie’s nerves. With every sudden movement of the boat, she could feel her breath quicken and her limbs tremble. Don’t let them see you like this, she told herself as she slipped off into the cabin of the boat and locked herself inside the shoebox-sized bathroom. She would only allow herself to hyperventilate in private.
Breathe in, 1-2-3. Breathe out, 1-2-3.
If it worked for Micah, then it should work for her, too. She thought back to the night her parents announced they were getting divorced and how Micah had barged into her bedroom gasping for air.
“I think I’m dying!” he told Wylie, frantic.
“You’re not dying. You’re having a panic attack,” Wylie had told him.
She walked Micah back to his room and got him to lie down on his bed. She told him to inhale and exhale deeply. His heart rate gradually returned to normal, and his eyes fluttered as he fell asleep. She stayed by his side until she was certain he was in a deep slumber, and then she collected the half-empty bottle of bourbon from his nightstand and dumped the remainder of the booze into the sink.
Breathe in, 1-2-3. Breathe out, 1-2-3.
Wylie wasn’t dying now. Her heart wasn’t going to stop. She was just having a panic attack. She tried to battle her anxiety by closing her eyes and repeating the words from Hopper’s manifesto over and over again in her head.
I’m going to exact revenge on my captor. I’m going to take away everything that means anything to him. I’m going to take his land and put him behind bars and do everything to him that he did to me.
A knock on the door interrupted her fifth go-round.
“Who is it?” Wylie managed to ask.
“It’s me, Lola. Are you okay in there?”
She wanted to tell Lola that she was never coming out of the bathroom. That she would prefer to go on living out the rest of her life in here if it meant avoiding Phinn.
“Just a minute.” Wylie splashed water on her face from a bucket and took one last deep breath, as she opened the door. Lola looked at her and frowned.
“You look like crap,” she said.
“That’s good, right? Phinn’s never gonna buy my story if I look like I’ve been yachting for the last month,” she replied, trying to smile through the panic.
“What’s going on with you?” Lola asked.
There weren’t many places for privacy on the vessel, but the rest of the lost kids were currently sharpening their spears and practicing their drills. Wylie stepped out of the bathroom and sat down on a pile of blankets. She looked up at Lola, her hands still shaking.
“I can’t do this,” she admitted.
“Can’t do what, exactly?”
Protect my friends. Seduce Phinn. Occupy the island. Wylie hated herself right now. She wanted to be brave. She wanted to be like Lola. She wanted to be the kind of girl who could charge her way through the Clearing with a spear in one hand and a torch in the other. She wanted to be like the heroines in the books she loved to read. The ones who didn’t fear death and never doubted themselves.
It suddenly felt wrong to fake her confidence. At least this way, if everything went awry, she could say that she’d rung the alarm and given Lola fair warning. It wasn’t too late to come up with a contingency plan.
“I’m sorry,” Wylie said, verging on tears. “You picked the wrong girl. I’m a mess. I’m a screw-up. I will ruin this for all of you.”
“No, you won’t.” Lola placed an arm around her. “You’re the strongest person I know. You got away from Phinn. You swam for your life in the pitch-black ocean. You’re a survivor, just like the rest of us.”
“I’m going to get you killed. You’re all going to die because of me, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself,” Wylie cried.
“Let’s get some air,” Lola suggested.
The temperature had dropped on the deck. Wylie’s teeth clanked together as she tried to listen to Lola’s pep talk, but at least the wind and sprays of mist from the ocean helped slow down her breathing. They’d spent every day of the past three weeks going over their plan. Wylie and Hopper would be the first to enter the island. They’d go through the trail together, and part ways briefly as Wylie scoped out the Clearing to make sure everyone, even the insomniacs, had retired to bed. And that’s when she’d make her way to Phinn’s bungalow and pretend she had gone through hell to make her way back to him. He’d be so distracted by their happy reunion that he wouldn’t hear Hopper enter the room to restrain him. The rest of the kids would divide and conquer. They would split up into groups of three to take over the clinic, the dining room, and the Forbidden Side. The three locations were vital to life on the island. If they cut off access to food, medicine, and the prison camp, then the locals would have to fall in line. Lola would go to Maz’s room to recruit him to their side. Wylie had argued against the Maz portion of the plan. She didn’t like the idea of her friend roaming the island alone, but Lola reminded her that if anyone could get Maz to turn against Phinn, it was his girlfriend of two decades.
“Remember the day we met?” Lola asked
Wylie nod
ded. How could she ever forget it? Lola was the only person she’d ever seen look graceful while gutting a fish.
“I had so much kitchen envy,” Wylie recalled. “You were nice, but you didn’t want to have much to do with me.”
Lola laughed. “I knew from the moment I saw you that we would be friends, and you would change my life . . . in a good way.”
“I ruined your life.”
If Wylie had never moved to Minor Island, then Lola wouldn’t have discovered the secret about Wylie’s dad. Lola wouldn’t have confronted Phinn and been left for dead in the middle of the ocean.
“You helped me see Phinn’s true colors. You helped me see that we’d been bowing down to someone we didn’t need to bow down to. Before I met you, I didn’t believe we could live without Phinn. But now, with your help, we’re going to take the island back from him. The best days are ahead of us, Wylie. And that’s why you have to stop doubting yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Lola said, “you’re my best friend, and you’re the only one I trust with my life.”
There was no guarantee that Wylie wouldn’t screw it up, but Lola had suffered enough because of her. This was the only way she knew to make up for the pain she’d caused.
As the boat picked up speed, they distracted each other by talking about the chickens and how much they missed them. They agreed they would throw themselves an epic homecoming party, and they would find someone else to cook the food.
“You’ll get to see your brothers again,” Lola said.
“I will,” Wylie agreed.
In a matter of hours, she’d be standing in front of Phinn. And regardless of how much he beamed at the sight of her, and regardless of how many apologies he made, she would not deviate from the script. She would not, under any circumstances, tell him she was the bait and he was the hostage.
* * *
Emotions were high at the sight of the island, but nobody could scream at the top of their lungs the way they wanted to. They couldn’t make any noise at all. All Phinn’s boats were parked in their usual spots. Unless Phinn had found a way to fly to the mainland, he was most likely sleeping in his bungalow right now.
“Are we ready?” Lola asked.
Wylie was the first to nod her head.
Hopper carefully steered the boat toward the deck as the rest of them got their weapons ready, in case they met any unexpected visitors. They were on high alert as Hopper stepped off the boat and tied it to a wooden pole. He gave Wylie the thumbs-up signal, and she quietly stepped onto the deck and jumped into the water. If Phinn was going to believe that she had swam back to shore, she had to be soaking wet. She pulled herself back onto the deck and waved good-bye to the group.
“Be careful, Wylie,” Lola said, as she pulled her into a hug.
“I will.”
The walk along the trail filled Wylie with dread. Hopper and Wylie knew better than to risk speaking to each other, so she silently tolerated her terror. Even the slightest noise had potential to wake up the entire island and destroy weeks of careful planning. Wylie was scared that if she breathed too loud or coughed or sneezed, they’d find themselves surrounded. Every step either of them took seemed to be amplified with the island so eerily quiet. This is a good sign, she thought. No one’s awake in the Clearing. Everyone’s asleep by now. They’ll never know what hit them.
Hopper didn’t seem nearly as terrified. The only time Wylie noticed him falter was when they walked past the Forbidden Side. Overgrown ivy covered the fence and obscured the graffiti that had supposedly been Hopper’s calling card, created by Phinn to keep everyone afraid of him.
After a few more yards, they arrived at the point in their journey where Wylie would have to enter the Clearing by herself. Hopper gave her an encouraging nod, and Wylie resisted the temptations to hug him or run all the way back to the boat. Instead, she kept walking. She heard none of the music or partying she had witnessed the first time she’d seen the Clearing. She picked up a jar to catch fireflies, and though the source of light was weak, she was surprised to see the lagoon covered in leaves and debris. Beneath her feet, she heard the crackling of dead sugar root. The memorial they’d erected for the lost kids was scattered in pieces all over the ground. And there were no lights or movement coming from any of the bungalows. Something was very wrong.
Wylie headed back down the trail and found Hopper swinging his spear in the air.
“It’s too quiet,” Wylie told him. “And the Clearing’s a mess. It must be some sort of diversion. Maybe they’re hiding. I think they’re waiting for us. Someone tipped them off.”
“No one could’ve tipped them off. Let’s go to Phinn’s bungalow.”
But as they made their way past the Clearing and up their stairs toward the row of bungalows, Hopper knew Wylie was right. Aside from rustling leaves and the now inconsistent pop-pop of parvaz flowers, there were no other sounds they would have expected to hear on a populated island. Broken doors and lost possessions lined their path as they walked past the huts and noticed that each one was empty. When they arrived at Phinn’s bungalow, they discovered the hinges on the door were broken. They slowly entered, but there was no sign of him. His bed was damp from a leaky roof, and the floor was crawling with roaches and spiders—insects Wylie had never seen before on the island. His closet and drawers had also been ransacked. Hopper placed his brittle hand on her shoulder. Wylie wasn’t sure if he was trying to comfort her or keep himself steady.
“Don’t say it,” Wylie begged.
“There’s no one here,” Hopper said. “There’s no one on this island.”
CHAPTER THREE
phinn and all his faults
Three weeks earlier
“wylie!” Phinn screamed as he kicked and flailed in the sky. His eyeballs were on fire. But with his vision temporarily impaired by the pepper spray, his hearing seemed to improve. He could make out the sound of water splashing below as Wylie swam away from him.
“You’ll drown out there, Wylie! Swim back to the island!”
As the splashes below receded, he had no idea if she could hear him anymore. Maybe she was swimming back to shore. He tried to open his eyes, but the cool air made them sting even more. This was not how their love story was supposed to end. They were supposed to live happily ever after together. Phinn had planned to tell Wylie the truth about her dad in his own way, in his own time. He knew she’d be upset. He’d promised he’d never lie to her again. But he was certain she’d never dream of going home and giving up a life free of responsibility. Besides, her father had hurt her probably worse than he’d ever hurt Phinn. Gregory left Wylie’s mom for another woman. It was his decision to break up their family. Phinn had merely taken Wylie away from the dysfunction.
“Wylie! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
The burning in his eyes was slowly beginning to subside. His body dropped a few feet as the effects of parvaz tapered off. Phinn never hated his parents as much as he hated them right now. Couldn’t they have at least taught him how to swim before they took their own lives? Couldn’t they have taught him something? It was their fault that he couldn’t dive into the ocean and swim after Wylie. It was their fault that he was scared to death of the water.
Phinn opened his eyes again, and this time, it didn’t feel like tiny needles were pricking his irises. But all he could see was the vast darkness of waves below. There was no sign of Wylie. He turned his body toward the beach, and screamed for help, but no one could hear him. He moved his arms and legs as quickly as he could to fly back to solid ground but kept dipping closer to the current.
“Wylie, please!” he yelled again. “I need your help! I’m going to drown if I fall in!”
After their parents died, Lola’s family had warned them there were crocodiles in the ocean. For years, he believed them, but as he got older, he realized it was just a tall tale to keep
the kids out of the water. If the orphans they were stuck raising believed there were monsters in the sea, then they would never go in the water and drown. And now, if they were watching somewhere from the heavens, Lola’s family would probably be happy to see him sink. He was, after all, the person who’d stolen the island from them.
He thought he’d plummet quickly into the water, but the parvaz took its time wearing off completely. Inch by inch, he moved closer to a certain death. Phinn tried to float on his back the way Wylie had taught him, but the current was violent. His head bobbed above the surface, but the tide pulled him farther away from land.
Don’t fight it, he told himself. Even if there were no witnesses, he could still choose to die gracefully. Why live if the only person he’d truly loved wanted nothing to do with him? Phinn had hurt a lot of people in his lifetime, but he’d never been more disgusted with himself than the day Wylie confronted him in the Clearing and screamed at him that she was merely a revenge plot against her dad.
“Never hold grudges,” Lola’s mother had warned him when she and the rest of Lola’s family left the island. “It’ll poison you.” At the time, it seemed like empty advice from the people who would rather leave their home than coexist with him.
Phinn relaxed his body and let the waves carry him to the end of his life. He wanted to think of Wylie and the handful of happy moments they’d shared together, before she learned he was completely unworthy of her. But none of those memories came into view. Phinn’s life wasn’t flashing before his eyes; his mistakes were. The day he’d seduced Tinka when he knew full well his best friend was in love with her. The vulnerable and naïve kids he’d plucked from the mainland for his own amusement. Every sad and desperate face that begged for mercy from inside his cages on the Forbidden Side. The horror and confusion in Lola’s eyes when she realized that Phinn was going to sail off without her. And lastly, Wylie’s look of sheer hatred just before she showered his face with pepper spray.