Her father said they couldn’t move. There had been layoffs at the distribution center, but his job was safe for now. They couldn’t afford another cross-country move. Howard County would just have to continue the hour per week of instruction. Margaret would just have to do her best.
Margaret’s mom didn’t give up. Almost every night, she and Margaret sat on their couch, practicing her words, flipping flash cards. As every school year concluded, they tried to convince her father that the time was right to move. They showed him pictures of Lake Tahoe, just outside of Reno. Margaret loved staring at those pictures of crystal-clear waters, lush forests and snow-topped peaks.
Still he refused. When Margaret entered the sixth grade, she overheard her parents fighting. Accusations, denials, raised voices. She tried to ignore it when she heard her name.
She kept a picture of Lake Tahoe on her mirror. Her sketchbooks, dozens of them, were filled with drawings of it.
By the time Margaret entered high school, her father had moved out. He lived in a one-bedroom, 20 miles away. Margaret was supposed to see him every other weekend, but he was on the road most of the time. Her mother picked up extra shifts at Kroger, and there was suddenly no time for evening flip cards.
Margaret spent much of her time on her own while her mother worked. She often caught the bus into the city, and hiked up to the top of Federal Hill, overlooking the harbor. There, she drew in her sketchbook until the sun went down.
With her set of colored pencils, Margaret filled the pages with beautiful images of burnt orange sunsets, glistening water and tall ships. She drew the residents of Riverside Park, a crumbling neighborhood of narrow row houses and corner liquor stores. Countless figures filled her sketchbooks. She could also draw, from memory, the pages from her grade-school picture books.
One day, halfway through her junior year, a classmate named Romero discovered one of her notebooks. As she fought him, he danced around the cafeteria with the sketchbook held over his head, out of her reach.
“Look, she is drawing scenes from The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” he mocked. “What’s the matter, Goodnight Moon too hard for you?”
As she watched in horror, Romero began to tear out pages and toss them around the cafeteria, where the other kids joined him in his laughter. Margaret started to cry, and gave up. She fled the cafeteria, sprinted from the school grounds, and did not stop until she was sitting on the hill overlooking the harbor.
The next morning, she returned to school, determined to ignore Romero and his cruel friends. She opened her locker … and took a step back.
Her sketchbook was inside. It had been carefully taped back together, with every original page flattened and reattached. She flipped through the pages; everything was there. She doubted Romero had done this. She wondered who her guardian angel was.
Something slipped out of the sketchbook and fluttered to the floor.
Margaret knelt to pick it up.
It was a gold envelope.
NINETEEN
Chance didn’t immediately say anything. He was trying to digest the story that Tahoe had just shared. It made sense now. Tahoe was Margaret, or at least she had been. It explained why she couldn’t read the letter back in the Darwin Room. Tahoe’s rough exterior finally made sense too. It was a protective shell, armor forged from years of mistreatment and crushing frustration. Tahoe wasn’t just a name; it was a dream.
“Well, say something,” Tahoe finally said.
“I am so happy that you shared all that with me,” Chance said quietly. “You are really quite amazing.”
“Don’t make me blush,” Tahoe said, her voice hardening already. “Your girlfriend will get all jealous.”
Chance glanced over at Jenny. She was still sleeping beside Kate on the metal bench, their heads resting upon a pile of orange life vests.
“I’d like to see your sketchbooks sometime,” he said.
Tahoe smiled. “We can talk about that after we get out of this mess.”
“So what made you go to the escape room?” Chance asked.
“My social calendar was remarkably free,” she said. “So I decided a bus trip would be fun. I packed up a few notebooks and just sketched my way up to Baltimore. Buses are good places to sketch people. Interesting characters, interesting faces.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So you got a golden ticket too?” Tahoe asked.
Chance told her his own story. The science fair, his poem, his father’s reaction.
“Look at us,” Tahoe said. “A couple of pathetic artists. Actually make that three, since Wolfie claims to be some kind of musician. Misunderstood in a harsh world.”
Something suddenly occurred to Chance. It was a question that he should’ve considered earlier.
“Why us?” he asked. “Why do you think we were the ones given the golden ticket?”
Tahoe lifted her head to meet Chance’s gaze. She looked at him with a puzzled expression.
“Think about it,” he said. “Leo said we were chosen specifically for this. Remember that?”
“Yeah, but I just thought that was part of his shtick. A script he follows every time, for every new team.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But now I’m not so sure. What if we really were specifically chosen for this?”
Tahoe laughed. “Like some kind of reward for losers?”
Chance smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Wolfie asked suddenly. “I heard something about losers, thought I’d join the gang.”
“You’ll fit right in,” Tahoe quipped. “We’re just shooting the shit. Chance asked how I got invited to Escape Room.”
“And?”
Tahoe gave Wolfie the short version, minus the dyslexia, minus the bullying. Minus everything except the mysterious placement of the invitation in her school locker. Chance wasn’t surprised she didn’t share the personal details with him. Sometimes the people we care about the most were the hardest ones to share the truth with. Chance told Wolfie his story, leaving nothing out.
“So, what about you?” Chance asked. “Did you get a gold envelope?”
Wolfie nodded. “Yep. Just found it one day in my trombone case.”
“Hold up,” said Tahoe. “You play … the trombone?”
“I told you already, I am a budding musician.”
“Yeah, but I just figured —”
“What, that I was a rapper?”
“I didn’t say that,” Tahoe said sharply. “And I wasn’t thinking that.”
“I know, I know. Sorry. Defense mechanism.”
It wasn’t the first time Wolfie had been pigeonholed, he told them. Growing up as a black male in Southeast Washington, D.C. limited his options. The schools weren’t great, the teachers too often seemed checked out. Not that he could blame them. It was a rough area. It was one of the last neighborhoods in the nation’s capital that hadn’t been overrun by frozen yogurt shops, bike-share stations and exorbitant rents. His high school was the kind that still had chains wrapped around the front doors.
Wolfie hung with his grandfather most days after school, on a small porch a few blocks from the Anacostia River, the poor man’s Potomac River. Pops wasn’t much of a talker, but he always had a fresh pitcher of iced tea. He had an old record player too, and not one of those hip retro versions they sold at Urban Outfitters in Chinatown. He had a stash of records too, stored in several milk crates that he kept stacked in his living room.
He and Pops spent their afternoons together in the shade of the porch, listening to big bands like Cab Calloway and Billy Eckstine. Wolfie liked the rolling tempo of the bands, the big sound.
“We’re swinging now,” his Pops would say.
It wasn’t exactly the type of stuff that his friends included on their Spotify playlists. He liked some of the older Jay-Z stuff, but other than that he was on an island of music all his own. Population: 1.
His high school did not have money for a proper school
band, but it did have a music teacher. He wasn’t much younger than Pops and shared an affinity for big-band music. Mr. Turner was partial to a vocalist named Bullmoose Jackson and a song called “Do the Hucklebuck.” When Mr. Turner caught Wolfie loitering outside his classroom one morning, he invited him in and gave him a rust-streaked trombone. “Learn to play this,” Mr. Turner told him. “And you’ll be a badass motherfucker.”
Within a year, Wolfie was playing like an old soul, but his only audiences were Mr. Turner and Pops. He fell in with a junior girl who played the piano and had a keyboard with a drum machine in her apartment. They started writing some original stuff, blending big-band tempos with alternative beats. They thought they were on to something.
The girl’s name was Marigold, and Wolfie called her Gold. It was just she and her mom, and then one day, her mom didn’t come home. Gold moved away to stay with relatives in Maryland. It was only a dozen miles from Southeast, but felt much farther. Dejected, Wolfie pitched his trombone into the music room closet.
“And then one day, maybe a week later,” Wolfie said. “I got to school and found my trombone in my locker. And the envelope just sitting there, tucked into the bell.”
“So I’ve got a joke,” Tahoe said. “A poet, an artist and a trombone player walk into a bar.”
The three of them laughed. They tried to stifle themselves — Jenny and Kate were asleep, after all — but it was futile. They laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Chance recognized that they were releasing the stress and tension of the past 12 hours.
Jenny sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What did I miss?” she asked. “What’s so funny?” Kate roused too, leaned up on her elbows.
“Nothing,” Chance assured her. “Really, nothing. Sorry we woke you guys up.”
Kate stood and stretched her arms in the low space. “Where are we?” she asked.
The cramped air inside the lifeboat had fogged the portal windows. Wolfie ran a forearm across one and squinted through. He pulled away for a second, and then started furiously rubbing away the remaining streaks from the window.
“Guys,” he said. “I see land.”
They rushed to the windows and cleared their own views. Chance hurried to the door, and slid it open. A blast of cool air and salt water lashed him. He wiped the salt water from his face, and stared at the scene before him.
There it was. Land. About a mile off their bow. A thin strip of white sand was visible just above the white-capped swells of the gray water. On the far side of the beach was a lush wall of trees. Even at this distance, Chance could see the gnarled roots protruding along the rim of the beach. The impenetrable forest seemed to stretch for miles in either direction.
Beyond the trees, a series of low mountains loomed over the shoreline. The sun blazed high in a cloudless sky. There was no sign of anything remotely looking like habitation.
“Does that look like Virginia or North Carolina to anyone?” Tahoe asked.
Nobody answered. They were too shocked at the sight of a jungle to speak.
Tahoe then asked the question that they were all thinking.
“Guys,” she said quietly. “Where are we?”
TWENTY
They drifted south with the current, keeping close to the shoreline. They could still scarcely believe the view that stretched out before them. It looked like a scene out of The Lost World: an impenetrable jungle, towering cliffs shrouded in mist and miles of green, with not so much as a spire of smoke to indicate that anyone lived here. Wherever they were, it certainly wasn’t Virginia Beach.
When the first sign of habitation finally hove into view, it wasn’t exactly reassuring. A scattering of half-crumbled huts with thatched roofs and corrugated tin walls was set along the tree line. There was no sign of people around, but the huts were enough to prompt Chance to run the lifeboat up onto the beach.
One by one, they stepped from the lifeboat into the shallow surf and then up onto the beach. Driftwood and seaweed littered the shore.
“You sure about this?” Tahoe asked. She looked uneasily at the abandoned huts on the far side of the beach. “Maybe we should’ve kept going. Found a bigger town with, you know, people.”
Chance splashed down from the boat. “Our boat is almost out of fuel, and this is the first signs of civilization we’ve seen in hours. And where there’s buildings, there’s people, and where there’s people, there are phones.”
“That’s optimistic,” Wolfie said. “These huts don’t exactly look lived-in.”
Warily, they approached the grouping of huts. The walls were thin and streaked with rust. The roofs were in various degrees of disrepair. The largest of the huts had a small porch, but no front door.
Chance ducked his head through the gap. “Hello, anybody home?”
Nothing. Something squawked loudly from the jungle. A flock of birds rose from the trees and disappeared toward the distant hills.
Chance took a step inside a large hut. There was a cot covered with a frayed blanket, a chair and a table, strewn with papers. Everything was covered with bird droppings. It was obvious nobody had lived here in some time.
“Somebody used to live here,” he said, returning to the others. “So there must be a path or something. I mean they had to get here somehow.”
“There doesn’t have to be a path,” Tahoe said. “They could’ve used a boat.”
Chance nodded, conceding the point.
“Hola?”
They all whirled at the sound of the voice. A young girl, no older than 7, stood barefoot at the edge of the jungle. She wore a faded yellow dress, stained along the hem. Her hair was dark and tousled. She stared at the five strangers with wide eyes. It seemed as though she had materialized out of nowhere.
Chance took a step toward the girl. “Hello there,” he said. “Do you speak English?”
The girl didn’t respond. She just stared at them, unblinking.
Chance took another step. “Do you live here?” he asked. “Where is your mom?”
The girl bolted. In a blur, she turned back toward the jungle and vanished into the lush green foliage. Chance followed. He didn’t want to scare the little girl, but he didn’t want to lose her, either. There must be a trail, or better yet, a town or village somewhere close. The girl couldn’t have wandered far from home.
He plunged into the jungle, the others on his heels. There was no sign of the little girl, but he found a faint trail, marked by cracked branches. Brushing aside leaves and thorny branches with his forearms, Chance pushed through the foliage.
They emerged into a clearing, huffing in the muggy heat. It was a village. A dozen small shacks circled an open plaza of well-trod dirt. Wisps of smoke rose from several of the huts. Men and women and children scurried across the plaza. Dogs panted in the dusty, tongues hanging out. The smell of free-roaming chickens filled the air.
“This definitely ain’t Virginia Beach,” Tahoe said.
The little girl in the yellow dress emerged from one of the shacks, followed by an older man and woman. Chance assumed they were her parents. He approached them slowly; he didn’t want them to feel threatened by the sudden appearance of five bedraggled strangers.
“Hello,” Chance said slowly. “We need help. We are lost. We landed our boat on the beach, and we just need to get to a phone.” With his hands, he mimed the words “boat” and “phone.”
The girl’s parents stared blankly back at them.
“Chance,” Wolfie said. “I don’t think they understand.”
Kate stepped forward. “Let me try,” she said. She approached the girl and her parents, with her hands spread in a gesture of supplication.
“Necesitamos ayuda. Estamos perdidos. Llegamos a nuestro barco en la playa y sólo tenemos que llegar a un teléfono.”
The others exchanged puzzled glances. Kate had said very little since the moment she arrived — late — at the escape room. She hadn’t shared much about herself, and had spent most of the time on th
e lifeboat asleep. Now, Chance was surprised to learn that she apparently spoke flawless Spanish.
The mother and father relaxed visibly. They waved Kate to them and huddled together, speaking animatedly, just out of earshot of the others. When Kate returned to the group, they surrounded her with fretful looks and anxious questions.
“Here’s the deal,” she said, cutting them off. “We’re a long way from home.”
“How long?” asked Wolfie.
“Colombia,” Kate said. “We’re in South America.”
TWENTY-ONE
“That’s impossible,” Wolfie exclaimed. “South America? There’s no way we traveled, what, a thousand miles south from Baltimore?”
“What the hecking heck,” muttered Tahoe.
Chance’s mind reeled. Wolfie was right, it seemed impossible. They hadn’t been at sea long enough. And yet, here they were, clearly in a foreign land, with native Spanish speakers, surrounded by impenetrable jungle and mountains. A quote from Sherlock Holmes came to mind: If not impossible, then the answer, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
So what was the least improbable truth here?
The cargo ship, he realized with a start. The lack of oxygen must’ve knocked them out for longer than they thought. What they thought was only a few hours was closer to a full day. The sunset they were now seeing over the jungle canopy was a full day later than they thought.
The Colombo must’ve sailed south for nearly 24 hours, with the five of them trapped inside the shipping container. By the time they started the fire and freed themselves from the container, they must’ve already been well south of the equator.
Jesus. They were in Colombia.
The girl’s parents — Felipe and Maria — told Kate their small village was just north of a remote town called Capurgana. There was no phone in their village. Capurgana was their best hope to make contact with home.
They sat in a circle in the dirt plaza, exhausted and confused.
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