by Sara Saedi
Phinn knew parvaz had the potential to be a multi-billion dollar industry. He’d even considered selling the few he was going to take back with him to the mainland to earn enough money to rent an apartment.
“Are you hungry?” Olivia asked.
“Hungry” was an understatement. Phinn was famished. He hadn’t had a proper meal since dining on granola in the garden.
Entering the dining hall, Phinn felt like they’d emerged from a time machine that had transported them to the island circa 1988, the same year Olivia was shipped away. The room brought back memories of one of their most contentious arguments. On her trip back from the mainland, Olivia had broken the rules by smuggling in cassette tapes and a cassette player. He’d confronted her about the contraband in the dining hall, but she’d refused to give up the tapes and instead played him a song by a guy named George Michael. She’d begged him to slow dance with her, and somehow the combination of keyboard, drums, and vocals broke him down.
“How did you do all this?” Phinn asked now as he slurped chicken soup. “Why did you do all this?”
“Isn’t it tropic?” Olivia replied. It seemed like she’d been waiting years for his approval.
“It’s certainly impressive,” was the most polite response Phinn could give, but a few other adjectives came to mind. Crazy and obsessive were good options. Olivia seemed pleased with his reaction, though.
“When my parents died, I inherited our family fortune,” she explained. “By then, I was at a crossroads in my life.”
“What kind of a crossroads?” Phinn acted like they were old friends catching up over lunch. The teenage Olivia had often gone from hot to cold without warning. If the adult version was the same way, then it was best to take advantage of her apparently cheery mood.
“It’s a tad embarrassing,” Olivia admitted. She blew on her own bowl of soup and took a tentative slurp. “I was a doctor. I am a doctor, but I had my license revoked. My specialty was in pediatrics. I would see patients who were terminally ill and I kept thinking about the island. If only I could get them there; if they stopped aging, then maybe the cancer would stop progressing, too.”
“Did you tell people about the island, Olivia?”
“I did,” Olivia confessed. “But it sounded like a made up story. No one believed me. Everyone just assumed I’d gone insane. The more I told my patients’ parents about a magical island populated by teenagers who don’t grow up, the crazier they thought I was.”
Olivia swirled her spoon inside the bowl of soup. Phinn got the impression she needed to contain her emotions before she could continue.
“There have been two times in my life when I lost everything. The first was when you forced me to leave the island. The second was when I lost the right to practice medicine. At least I didn’t have to worry about money. I went on to build BioLark with the Weckler family trust. If living on the island wasn’t an option, then maybe I could recreate it and figure out what kept everyone young. Maybe I could help people in the mainland and prove that I wasn’t crazy in the process.”
Or find a way to make yourself young again. Phinn did the math. She had to be pushing fifty by now, and she looked like she’d had work done to her face.
“How long have I been here?” he asked.
Phinn was always meticulous about keeping track of the number of days he spent on visits to the mainland. A million things could go wrong on a trip to New York that could keep him there past his eighteenth birthday, and he wasn’t willing to take any chances. His plan was to stop making trips to the states once he had sixty days left to spare, just to give himself a wide buffer of time.
“A few days.”
“When can I see everyone?”
“Soon. You and Maz are sharing a bungalow. He’s been very worried about you. The others ask about you constantly.”
Phinn shook his head. “I know you’re lying. The rest of them hate me now. They wanted me to leave the island.”
He wasn’t entirely sure why he made the admission to Olivia. Maybe he thought it would gain him sympathy points or that they’d be able to commiserate about karma. Phinn could beg for forgiveness and say that he understood what he’d put her through so many years ago. But she didn’t take the bait.
“Well, now we’re all living in exile.”
Olivia put down her spoon in her empty bowl. “What I want to know, though,” she said to him, “is what happened to the rest of them.”
“What do you mean?” Phinn asked, his face a mask of calm.
“There were some noticeable absences from the group we brought back. We scoured the entire island, but none of my men could find Lola, Tinka, or Wylie or Micah Dalton.”
“I wish I could tell you,” Phinn said. “We’ve had some issues with residents disappearing.”
It wasn’t a complete lie, but he couldn’t tell if Olivia bought it. He pushed his soup bowl aside and took a sip of water. He could smell cleaning fluid on the glass. Once they finished their lunch, Olivia revealed that she had a surprise waiting for him and carted him out of the dining hall.
“Close your eyes,” she said, as they were about to round a corner on the deck.
Phinn did as he was told.
“Are they closed?” she asked with the excitement of a kid skipping through the gates of an amusement park.
“Yes, Olivia.”
The wheelchair jutted forward, rocking back and forth over uneven plastic, then slowed to a stop. Suddenly, Phinn heard music. It was Bailey’s voice singing what had become an anthem of sorts back home.
Old enough to fight a war, but still too young to drink
Why abide by rules and laws that tell us how to think?
Seventeen forever and living on our own.
Blame it on our parents,
They reaped what they have sown. . . .
“Okay,” Olivia said, “you can open them.”
Phinn would have preferred to keep them shut. The off kilter replica of the Clearing was smaller in scale and the positioning of the lagoon and waterfall weren’t right. The lagoon was such a bold shade of blue that it looked like buckets of dye had been poured into it, but the unappealing hue wasn’t stopping Helen and Nadia from swimming in it. Phinn spotted Joshua and Maz helping themselves to what looked like sugar root mocktails. Olivia had probably pilfered the ingredients from the island.
“Splash!” They shouted as they clinked their cups. They seemed inexplicably happy.
If Phinn squinted his eyes, he could almost make believe they were home. Except that in this version of the Clearing, the kids wore hospital scrubs and adults in lab coats milled about, watching their every move.
“Surprise!” Olivia said. “It’s your very own residency party. Welcome to your new home.”
Olivia cupped her mouth with her hands and yelled out to the group:
“Phinn’s back!”
She carried herself with the same exuberance she had as a teenager. It had been charming and contagious back then, but witnessing the same energy from an adult in this weird fake place was sadly comical.
The kids stopped what they were doing and looked at Phinn in unison. Their movements were so in step with each other that it felt like the entire moment was rehearsed or choreographed. The greeting only got more bizarre when they cheered for him. They were supposed to hate him. They were supposed to vote him off the island. Maz leaped into the air and landed on the stairs where Phinn was sitting.
“We missed you, brother!” he said, tossing his arms around Phinn and giving him a hug.
“I don’t understand,” Phinn replied. “They hate me.”
“Pish-posh,” Olivia dismissed. “You’re their fearless leader, Phinny.”
No one had ever called him Phinny but his mom. He almost asked Olivia to stick to “toy soldier,” but a part of him loved hearing his childhood nickname
again.
“Maz, tell him how happy you are here,” Olivia encouraged.
Maz’s face lit up with a smile. His eyes sparkled in a way they hadn’t since Lola’s disappearance.
“What’s not to love? BioLark’s been great to us.”
Maz took a parvaz out of his pocket and tossed it at Olivia. She playfully caught it in her mouth. Phinn couldn’t shake the notion that he was trapped in an alternate universe. Between their perky dispositions and the glossy surroundings, it felt like his friends were turned into mindless robots.
“We’ve been waiting for you to join the party,” Maz added.
He handed Phinn a parvaz, and Phinn promptly swallowed it. He needed a break from beds and wheelchairs. Within minutes, he fluttered up in the air. He flipped onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. It had gone from cotton candy pink to a burned charcoal. Tiny stars began to glow from every corner. Phinn waded through the air with his arms until he got higher and higher. He reached with his fingertips and touched the screen. It felt like being held hostage inside a planetarium.
Maz followed closely behind him. A few feet away, an oblivious Olivia did back flips and yelped with joy. Phinn noticed a necklace slip out from the safety of her sweater and dangle from her body. As he inched closer, he realized it was the one that had belonged to his mother. The same piece of jewelry he’d given to Wylie the morning after prom night. Olivia must have stolen it from his pocket after bringing them here. His first instinct was to fly toward her and reclaim his property, but Maz pulled him back before he could. He placed his lips next to Phinn’s ears and whispered so low that Phinn wasn’t sure he heard the words correctly.
“We’re going to die here unless you get us home.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
confessions of a dangerous mind
within a day of their return, the parvaz field slowly hummed and crackled again. The garden was already thriving. The vegetables and sugar roots had renewed their lease on life. The pame leaves were the palest shade of lavender, but they were growing darker by the hour. New eggplants were bulbous and ripe for picking. Wylie sliced them open and soaked them in water and sea salt to remove any residual bitterness. She’d been awake since dawn, collecting and prepping the ingredients for Sweet Honey Stew. The clock was ticking to complete the recipe by sundown for their journey to the mainland, but Wylie didn’t mind spending most of the day in the kitchen. She’d forgotten that preparing a meal was her preferred method of meditation. The repetitive motion of the knife distracted her from thinking about Phinn’s note. Wylie kept the letter in her back pocket, but hadn’t found the nerve to read it. And she hadn’t mentioned its existence to anyone else. Instead, she focused on supplying her friends with the meals they’d fantasized about in exile. Lola was the most eager for Sweet Honey Stew, since Phinn was no longer able to stop her from eating her childhood favorite. But she’d been complaining of nausea, so Wylie added a generous helping of sliced mint leaves to help settle her stomach.
“I won’t be able to hold it down,” Lola said, as she watched Wylie toss the vegetables into a pot of boiling broth.
“It’ll make you feel better. My dad used to cook it for me any time I felt sick,” Wylie said.
“I’m not that kind of sick. It’s anxiety. The only thing that will cure it is seeing Maz again.”
Wylie smiled and nodded. She didn’t dare say so out loud, but she was jealous of Lola. She envied the fact that her friend was one half of a stable relationship, even apart. It must be nice to believe in things like love and forever. It must be nice to trust someone to the point that you felt ill without them.
Lola took a few sips of the soup, but refused the rest when it seemed like her insides wouldn’t tolerate it.
“Don’t waste your cooking on me,” she said. “Save it for the kids who are staying behind. Charlotte’s the only one who knows how to put a meal together, and her food is still barely passable.”
The lost kids hadn’t shown much desire to leave the island to rescue those who’d held them prisoner. As far as they were concerned, they had what they wanted: their island back. So Lola decided it was best they stay behind to repair the bungalows, take care of the chickens, and nurse the herbs and vegetables. That left Wylie, Hopper, Lola, Tinka, and Micah to carry out the rescue mission.
Dr. Jay was their only way into BioLark. They’d been making sure he was well fed, properly hydrated, and had a warm place to sleep in the cabin of Hopper’s boat. Wylie hoped he was a fan of eggplant.
Once the vegetables had cooked and softened, Hopper volunteered to carry the heavy pot of stew to the boat, while Lola and Wylie trailed behind him. It was strange to see him roaming around on dry land. The ship was claustrophobic, and yet he still preferred to pass the time there. On his rare visits to the island, he took up far more space.
“What?” he asked when he’d catch Wylie staring at him.
“Nothing,” she’d always reply.
But she wanted to tell him that he seemed like a different person. Happier, lighter, carefree. The last time he was here, he’d been crammed in a jail cell. Of course he’d want to swing his arms, widen his stance, and leap up the stairs two at a time. She liked this side of him. She didn’t want it to go away.
“We come bearing gifts,” Hopper crowed as they made their way into the cabin of the boat.
Dr. Jay sat on the bed, poring over the BioLark binders while Tinka and Micah stood guard. For the last three afternoons, they’d gathered here for briefings on Olivia Weckler. Dr. Jay said he believed in transparency, but he also believed in saving his own ass. Which was precisely why he wouldn’t reveal everything he knew about their destination.
“I’m not about to make myself expendable,” he explained during their first briefing. “I’m sure y’all are good kids, but that doesn’t mean you won’t leave me here to die.”
Even though he’d told them that the lab was located in upstate New York, he wouldn’t say where. The only way they’d be able to get to BioLark was with Dr. Jay acting as their GPS.
Wylie wouldn’t admit it to Lola or Hopper, but she liked having an adult in their midst. Something about being in the presence of Dr. Jay made her feel safe. She could tell that Hopper liked him, too. They’d both grown up in the foster care system and though Dr. Jay had more than a decade on Hopper, they had some of the same caseworkers in common.
“I can’t believe you knew Sherry Hinton!” Hopper had exclaimed. “She was always my favorite. The woman couldn’t sugar coat things if she tried.”
“Sherry’s a rare gem. She’s what you guys would call ‘tropic.’ She drove three hundred miles just to come to my med school graduation.”
According to Dr. Jay, Olivia had a tendency to hire employees who had no families.
“We don’t even have to commute to work because we live there. It seems crazy when I say it now, but it didn’t feel crazy when I got the job. It felt like work was my family.”
Dr. Jay had a dimple in each cheek that appeared at the smallest hint of a smile. His lashes seemed to go on for miles, and he had a nervous twitch that involved biting his lip and placing a finger to his chin. If Wylie were still capable of trusting her gut, she would have been confident that they were in good hands. But months ago, she’d thought the same of Phinn. Now every intonation and every gesture made her wonder whether Dr. Jay was someone who would help them or destroy them. Those lines seemed increasingly blurred.
Wylie poured him a bowl of stew and he complimented the aroma of mint as he took his first bite. His dimples came into full view.
“It’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied. It was nice to be reminded that she was good at something.
“Have you come up with any more options for us?” Hopper asked.
“Nope. I keep coming back to the same conclusion: you’re either looking at a quick
fix or a long con,” he told them.
The quick fix meant going to the authorities as soon as they docked their boat in New York. There were several problems with this plan. First, it required telling the world about the island. Once their parents and family members learned of their true whereabouts, it would be close to impossible to sail back to the island and stay seventeen forever. Wylie’s mom and dad would never let her or her brothers out of their sight if she turned herself into the police. It was hard to imagine leaving Minor Island without any assurance that she’d find her way here again.
“That’s not an option.”
It was Micah who said what they were all thinking.
“We’ve gotta find a way to bring everyone home without exposing ourselves in the process. We have lives here,” Micah added with a glance toward Tinka. “We can’t let some bitter old lady take that away from us.”
“Then,” Dr. Jay replied, “we enter the lion’s den. I bring you to BioLark on a silver platter. At least that’s what it’ll have to look like. Olivia’s all ego. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met, but she’s also deeply insecure and she needs validation. You wait until she gets comfortable. You wait until she feels like you love her. Like you owe her a debt of gratitude. You wait until she’s least expecting it, and then you pounce.”
He’d already warned them that the facility was filled with security cameras and audio bugs. Surveillance was Hopper’s area of expertise on the mainland, and based on Dr. Jay’s descriptions of the spy ware, he’d been able to confirm that BioLark would monitor every word that came out of their mouth. No conversation was safe. They were always watching and listening. An uprising would have to take place when the staff was least prepared for it and a swift exit was critical.
“There’s only one entrance into the facility that I know of, but Olivia’s always claimed there were underground tunnels,” he added.
“Tunnels?” Tinka asked. “You’ve been keeping that one in your pocket.”
