by Sara Saedi
“There’s a body in the lagoon!”
No, Wylie thought. Please, God, no.
Hopper followed the direction of Zoe’s index finger and reluctantly approached the lagoon. Wylie and Lola followed close behind.
Through the grime on the surface, they could see someone floating on his or her stomach. Lola gagged and turned away to throw up again. Jersey and Hopper volunteered to remove the body, and the rest of them stood back as green murk spilled out from the edge of the lagoon. They flipped the corpse over as Wylie steeled herself for the worst.
None of them recognized the man staring back at them. His eyes were closed and his pruned skin had turned a shade close to periwinkle. “Who is he?” Wylie asked. Nobody had an answer.
The body was still wearing a lab coat with the word BioLark embroidered in orange thread and an image of a bird trapped inside a test tube on it.
“What do we do with him?” a terrified Charlotte asked.
“We leave him here for now,” Lola said.
Next, they moved through the bungalows, and were relieved to find no signs of carnage or human remains. But most of the doors had been ripped off their hinges, and every drawer and closet had been ransacked. Several of the bungalows still had their doors secured and looked much tidier than the others.
“Someone’s been living in these,” Hopper pointed out.
There were suitcases full of clothing and toiletries, along with files labeled with the same emblem of a bird trapped inside a test tube, below the name BioLark. They sifted through the paperwork and discovered detailed notes about Minor Island, along with theories on how the island prevented inhabitants from growing old. The notes speculated that perhaps it was something in the water, the atmosphere, or the carbon dioxide released by the trees.
“It looks like someone went and blabbed about this place,” Jersey said.
Wylie struggled to keep a nervous breakdown at bay. She had no idea who was behind BioLark and what their presence on the island meant for Joshua and Micah, but falling to pieces wouldn’t do her brothers any good. She needed her sanity if she was going to find them.
Their next stop was the dining room. A layer of dust covered the tables and chairs, while remnants of cobwebs hung from the ceiling. It was Lola who noticed that none of the carefully carved spears were in their normal hiding place. Wylie ran straight to the floorboards that led to the panic room, but when she tried to pry them open, they wouldn’t budge.
“Someone sealed the entrance. Phinn would never do that,” Wylie said.
She pounded on the wood with her fists and screamed, “Is anyone in there? Can you hear me?”
But there was no response.
“What if they suffocated?” she said, frantically searching for a tool to tug out the nails. Hopper hurried to the kitchen and came back with a hammer. He fumbled as he tried to pull out the nails.
“This is a job better suited for someone with ten fingers,” he confessed.
Charlotte took over, and to distract themselves from the agonizing wait, Lola and Wylie left to check on the garden. They tried not to dissolve into tears at the scene before them: every herb and plant and vegetable had wilted and died. But then they heard the sound of the chickens squawking and crying for them. They looked like they hadn’t been fed in days, but they were alive.
“Hallelujah,” Lola said.
They flapped their wings happily at Wylie, as she sprinkled mounds of wheat in the coop.
“Go to town,” she told them. “We need to fatten you up again.”
It was hard to say how long the island had been deserted, but someone had clearly been feeding the chickens until recently. They wouldn’t have survived for more than a couple of weeks without sustenance.
Once they returned to the dining room, Charlotte only had a few more nails to remove. Hopper helped her lift up the door to the panic room, and Wylie didn’t know whether to be relieved or distraught when they found it empty.
The parvaz field was silent when they came upon it, and while the leaves weren’t completely shriveled up, they were on the brink of death. Wylie plucked a flower and was startled to notice another one didn’t grow in its place. She reached for another parvaz, and gasped when she realized its vines were wrapped around a human hand.
It belonged to a middle-aged man, also wearing a BioLark lab coat. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth and he had a look of frozen terror on his face that seemed to disappear when they closed his eyes. The plants had wrapped themselves tightly around his neck—it looked as if the vines had smothered him. They needed to cover more territory and search the rest of the island for any signs of life.
Wylie felt wrong flying in the presence of so much death, but she didn’t want to deprive the lost kids of their reunion with parvaz. Despite their drooping petals, the flowers still had the desired effect. The group soared away from the field. A bird’s eye view gave them a broader scope of the overgrown jungles separated by trails of sand, but they didn’t find any of their friends, even as they braved the Forbidden Side.
“We still have one more place to look,” Wylie told the others as they landed in the Clearing. “Phinn’s secret hut.”
She met with blank stares. No one, not even Lola, knew about a secluded bungalow, and Wylie couldn’t quite remember how to find the war room, hidden as it was behind layers of brush. They flew aimlessly for what felt like hours until, finally, Wylie spotted the rocky portion of the trail where she’d tripped and fallen with Tinka. It twisted and curved for about a mile before trees and thick ivy blocked the rest of the path. Wylie drifted to the ground and they followed her the rest of the way. A small opening already separated the ivy, but Hopper used his knife to widen the entrance, and helped each of them cross to the other side.
The log cabin was still intact. Perhaps no one in a lab coat had found their way to it. Lola’s jaw dropped when she saw the place.
“I had no idea this was here,” she confessed.
Wylie pressed the side of her body against the logs, but they wouldn’t budge.
“Just give me a minute,” she said.
Suddenly, the door burst open from the inside and someone tackled Wylie to the ground. Before she had time to react, the blade of a knife pressed against her neck. Tinka’s crazed face was mere inches from her.
“No freaking way!” Tinka blurted. “Wylie Dalton?”
“In the flesh,” Wylie managed to say.
Tinka put the knife away and stumbled off of Wylie.
“Micah!” Tinka yelled. “Get out here! It’s your sister!”
Wylie had spent the last twenty-one days imagining this moment. It was the only thought that kept her going while she’d been biding her time in the middle of the ocean. Micah drifted out of the cabin. His face was covered in coarse stubble and he looked like he’d lost a few pounds. He didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by tears freely falling from his eyes. He and Wylie threw their arms around each other.
“You’re alive,” he sobbed into her shoulder.
“You’re alive,” Wylie answered.
“Either that or we’re all dead and this is hell,” Tinka broke in, her gaze landing on Hopper, Lola, and the rest of the lost kids. “What the hell is going on here? Where did you come from?” She brandished the knife.
“I’ve only got seven fingers left,” Hopper said calmly. “I’d prefer to hold on to them if you don’t mind.”
Tinka dropped the weapon to the ground.
“He’s not dangerous,” Wylie assured Tinka. “He’s . . . well, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
“No shit,” Tinka replied.
Before they could continue, another voice yelled out from inside the bungalow.
“Help! Somebody! Get me out of here!”
“Give it a rest, Dr. Jay!”’ Tinka yelled back.
“Who’s th
at?” Wylie asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
She peered inside the bungalow and saw a man, probably in his late twenties, tied to a chair. He had distinctive eyebrows that offset his shaved but stubbled head. His brown eyes twinkled in the dim light, and his rich dark skin looked smooth and flawless. He wore a BioLark lab coat with a T-shirt of Albert Einstein underneath it.
“That’s our hostage,” Tinka said. “Say hello, Dr. Jay.”
“Hello, Dr. Jay,” he said, drily.
His eyes silently pleaded with Wylie before he spoke up again.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said. “My colleagues are dead because of this awful place. I just want to go home.”
It took four guys to lift up Dr. Jay in his chair and fly with him to the dining room. He begged for his life the entire way, and Lola assured him they had no plans to kill him. They sat him at the head of a table, his arms and legs tied together and tape covering his mouth. If it were up to the old Wylie, they would have untied him, but the Wylie of today knew not to trust as easily.
It was Lola who revealed to Tinka and Micah that Hopper was not the villain Phinn had made him out to be. He hadn’t kidnapped anyone. In fact, he’d rescued each of the lost kids. The same way he’d rescued her and Wylie.
“Phinn left you to die?” Tinka asked Lola.
“Yes. I confronted him and he lost it.” Lola shuddered at the memory. “Phinn doesn’t want people around who are going to hold him accountable. I don’t know why it took us so long to understand that.”
Hopper shrugged. “You were brainwashed.”
The events that had taken place since she’d left the island were a lot for Wylie to absorb: Phinn’s impending exile, the return of Olivia Weckler, the trio of BioLark scientists who’d been left behind to collect evidence.
Micah and Tinka had hidden above in the palm trees as Olivia and her team injected the kids with syringes that put them to sleep, and then dragged them to a boat. Before most of the BioLark scientists departed for the mainland, they collected boxes of sugar roots and parvaz and rahat flowers, along with the herbs that were native to the island.
“I watched them take Joshua,” Micah admitted, near tears again. “And I didn’t do anything. I’ve never felt so arthritic in my life.”
“You’re not weak. There was nothing you could do,” Wylie replied, though she couldn’t be certain that was true.
“Olivia tried to find everyone,” Tinka said, “but we hid in the war room, and she never found it.”
Micah and Tinka had stayed hidden for days until they were desperate enough for food and water to brave the outside world. They came across the bodies in the parvaz field and the lagoon as they made their trek to the dining room, but it wasn’t until after they’d eaten berries and vegetables that they flew to the Forbidden Side and found Dr. Jay.
“He was up to his waist in quicksand,” Micah explained. “We rescued him, but then we had to take him hostage.”
A rush of empathy took hold of Wylie as she recognized the look of fear and panic in Dr. Jay’s eyes. Lola walked over to him and gently removed the tape from his mouth.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t hurt me. I just want to get off this crazy island.”
“What exactly were you assigned to do here?” Lola asked him.
Wylie lifted a cup of water to his mouth and allowed him to take a sip before he answered.
“Collect data, compile notes, and document any changes on the island. Olivia never told us it would be dangerous here. She called it paradise. She made it sound like we’d be taking a paid vacation. She even told us it might reverse the aging process.”
“What happened to the other scientists?” Lola asked.
Dr. Jay bit his lower lip.
“I saw them die. Kevin and I were collecting parvaz samples when the vines wrapped themselves around his legs, and then his entire body. It happened so fast. We tried to save him, but they wouldn’t let go. Then Charlie got sucked under the lagoon. I did everything I could to pull him out, but there was something in there that was much stronger than me. They were my friends and I couldn’t save them.”
Dr. Jay explained that, once alone, he’d gotten lost en route to the beach and found himself trapped in quicksand.
“It came out of nowhere,” he said. “I would have died if your friends hadn’t found me.”
Lola nodded. “You were guinea pigs.”
“What do you mean?”
“Olivia Weckler used to live here. She knew about the rumors that the island didn’t take kindly to adults. That’s part of the reason Phinn forced her to leave when we discovered she was aging. So she left you behind to see if the island really is dangerous.”
Wylie had heard rumors about the island’s discriminatory practices against adults. She never believed the stories she’d heard about the plants and trees and waterfalls that could defend themselves against interlopers who were older than eighteen. But now it seemed they had proof.
“No. . . .” Dr. Jay shook his head. “Olivia wouldn’t do that to us.”
“Think about it,” Hopper added. “It would have been a lot easier to stay here than to drag fifty kids back to the mainland. Why not stick around and study them on the island unless she knew it was too dangerous?”
“We were expendable,” Dr. Jay mumbled.
“If it makes you feel better,” Charlotte piped up, “the rest of us can relate.”
“Do you know where Olivia took our friends?” Wylie asked. “Do you know where she took my brother?”
Dr. Jay nodded. “I can help you find them.”
“Why should we believe you?” Lola asked.
“Because,” Dr. Jay said, “You don’t have a choice.”
* * *
If Wylie was ruled by emotion, Lola was ruled by logic. Wylie wanted to hike to the beach, get back on Hopper’s boat, and be in New York by morning to storm the BioLark building and save Joshua. But Lola argued that they’d spent weeks planning Operation Exile, and needed at least a few days to come up with a proper plan to save their friends.
“They’re the lost kids now,” Zoe pointed out.
That night, everyone picked out bungalows they could comfortably sleep in. There were enough beds that had withstood the damage, and most of the kids were secretly thrilled to get to rest on mattresses and not on a boat that rocked back and forth. Dr. Jay seemed terrified by the prospect of spending one more night on an island that wreaked havoc on adults, so they assigned shifts to keep watch over him on Hopper’s boat. Wylie and Lola found themselves back in their old room, and Hopper, not wanting to be alone, asked to sleep on their floor.
“Tell me about the Big Peach again,” Lola said, sounding exhausted.
“It’s the Big Apple, Lols,” Wylie reminded her. Hopper let out a chuckle.
“That’s what I said. The Big Apple. . . .”
Wylie sighed.
“That’s not where we’re headed. Dr. Jay said something about upstate.”
“I’m not looking forward to going back,” Hopper added. “If you’re not careful, the mainland can eat you alive.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Wylie said. “You’ll be—”
Before she could finish making reassurances, Wylie heard Lola steadily breathing in and out. She was sound asleep. It had been a grueling day and they needed to give their minds a break.
Wylie was still worried about Joshua, but at least she’d been reunited with one brother. If someone had told her when she was marooned on a rock in the ocean that she’d wind up back in her room on Minor Island that Lola would be sleeping in the bed next to her, and that Hopper would be hanging out with them, she never would have believed it.
“Are you sad that Nadia wasn’t here?” Wylie asked.
“Nah,” Hopper said. “The fantasy is always better than the reali
ty.”
The floors of the bungalow made a creaking sound as Hopper rolled over to make himself more comfortable. A jar of fireflies added enough light to the room for Wylie to see Hopper twist his face in pain. After months of sleeping on the boat, he’d refused Wylie when she’d offered him the bed.
“Trade me places,” she whispered now, careful not to wake Lola.
“No, I’m fine. Go to sleep.”
“Foot to head, then,” Wylie said. “Come on. It’ll be better than sleeping on the floor.”
“Not for you. My feet stink.”
“I’ll survive. Otherwise, you’re gonna need a wheelchair when you wake up tomorrow.”
But his feet didn’t smell. They’d bathed in the ocean that evening, and were cleaner than they’d been in weeks. Wylie grazed her finger along the bottom of his foot, and he nearly kicked her in the face.
“Somebody’s ticklish,” Wylie said, giggling into her pillow.
“Goodnight, Dalton,” Hopper replied.
“Goodnight, Hops.”
Wylie turned her head away from Hopper’s feet, and curled one arm under her pillow, but felt something sharp poke her elbow. She lifted up her pillow and discovered a note, neatly folded, and pulled it out, trying to be quiet. It took her eyes a moment to decipher the words in the half-dark.
On the front, in pen, it read:
To: Wylie
From: Phinn
CHAPTER SIX
old friends
there were eight steps from the sidewalk to the front door of their brownstone. Gregory, in a hurry, usually took them two at a time, but today, getting to the top felt insurmountable. A wheelchair wasn’t feasible. There were no ramps in their house, and Gregory’s doctor had advised him that a cane would help speed up his rehabilitation. The apartment he’d rented after separating from Maura had an elevator, but he didn’t want to sleep away from his children’s home. It would feel like existing in an alternate universe. Like this is how his life would have turned out if he’d never met Maura, or if they’d stuck to their original decision to not have kids.
