by Sara Saedi
“He told me I was beyond compare, too, Olivia. He says it to all the girls.”
The back of Olivia’s hand came rushing toward Wylie’s face, but she didn’t care. She knew she wouldn’t feel a thing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
moving on
“you deserve each other.”
Those were Olivia’s parting words. Her outburst was dramatically punctuated by a door slam, the clink of a bolt lock, and the tap-tap of her high heels drifting away. Phinn looked at Wylie, sedated in the corner, and wasn’t sure if he should try to wake her or let her rest. Phinn knew the moment she woke up and learned they were locked in a padded cell together, she’d claw at the walls and scream for help until her throat was as rough as coral.
He’d let her down again. He was supposed to keep Olivia occupied and it had started out fine. They’d traveled the perimeter of the building for a few minutes, reminiscing about “the Minor Island glory days,” as Olivia called them. After laughing at a few memories, she wanted his version of the falling out with Gregory.
“I only know his side of the story,” she said.
Phinn gave a dramatic monologue that crescendoed with a mea culpa. He’d been selfish and immature. He hated being the third wheel and couldn’t shake the feeling that Tinka and Gregory didn’t want him around anymore. His jealousy fooled him into thinking he was in love with Tinka, and he pledged his devotion to lure her back.
“I took her away from my best friend,” Phinn confessed, “And I didn’t even really want to be with her. It was an elder move.”
“You always were a piece of work,” Olivia said.
Phinn tried to find a natural segue to BioLark and Olivia’s research. He asked if they were making any progress. After weeks of submitting to blood tests and biopsies for tissue samples, he hoped the answer was yes. The thought had occurred to him that if she could actually figure out a way to keep mankind from aging, Phinn could stay young without returning to the island.
“We’re making baby steps,” admitted Olivia. “It’s a slow process. We might need to take a future trip to the island, but that would require your full cooperation.”
With two of her staff already dead from their excursion on the island, none of Olivia’s surviving employees were willing to follow in their footsteps. Olivia didn’t have much desire to put herself at risk either. But they could return and seek refuge on a boat while Phinn and a select few gathered materials for them.
“Think of yourself as a liaison between me and the island,” Olivia said. “We’d conduct the studies on my boat, and it would be your job to bring us what we needed.”
Phinn acted like it would be an honor to pitch in, but he wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the offer. Agreeing to help Olivia Weckler would be like giving his soul to the devil for free.
“Or this will be a moot point and we’ll get everything we need from Lola’s baby,” Olivia added, “Those are going to be some very valuable stem cells.”
“Where is Lola exactly?” Phinn asked.
“On bed rest.”
He wanted to tell Olivia to keep her hands off Maz and Lola’s baby. But any defiance would blow his cover and send them back into the building.
“Do you want to take a break?” he asked instead.
Phinn was already flying more slowly than normal, but Olivia still had trouble keeping up. Her breathing was labored as she struggled to fly and talk at the same time. The dark liner around her eyes was smudged and her unruly curls were damp from perspiration. She was either terribly out of shape or displaying the normal side effects of middle age.
The dose of parvaz would be running out soon anyway. They sat on the rooftop together, and Phinn made it seem like he was equally burned out from the flight. Once her breathing returned to normal, Olivia resumed their conversation.
“I need to thank you for something,” she said.
“What?”
“For exiling me. I thought it was cruel what you did, but you probably saved my life. I was eighteen and the island wouldn’t have allowed me to survive anyway. I thought I was just accident-prone at the time, but the place was already trying to get rid of me.”
“What do you mean?” Phinn asked.
Olivia described a few falls and mishaps that could have been a coincidence or a direct result of being an adult on the island. They would never know for sure, but Phinn decided to pounce on the latter scenario.
Phinn smiled. “See?” he teased. “I always had your best interests at heart.”
“Did you miss me at all?” she asked.
The honest answer would have been no. It didn’t take Phinn long to get over Olivia. He’d been looking for an excuse to break up with her before her gray hairs appeared. By the time Maz got back from leaving her in New York, Phinn had already moved on to someone else. He couldn’t even remember who it had been.
“Every day,” Phinn said.
Olivia tilted her face toward his. He wasn’t sure if she was going to kiss him or if she just wanted to decipher whether he was telling the truth. Either way, the sudden proximity made him flinch and he leaned away instinctively.
“We should go back inside,” Olivia said crisply.
Phinn asked if they could enjoy the fresh air for a few more minutes, but Olivia insisted that they’d been gone for too long.
“It’s almost past your bedtime,” she said.
Phinn looked up at the sun-streaked sky and decided not to point out that it was actually daytime. They made their way down the ladder and into the bungalow again, and before they stepped out the door, Olivia asked if he was interested in a nightcap in her office.
“I’ve got a couple of sugar roots with your name on them,” she cooed.
He tried to come up with excuses for them to join the party in the Clearing instead. Like how the other kids would only have more reason to hate him if they thought he was receiving special treatment. Or that he was feeling tired and disoriented from the daylight. She should save the sugar roots for herself. But Olivia refused to take no for an answer.
“I’m the leader here, Phinn,” she reminded him.
It wasn’t until they moved past the double doors in the dining room that Phinn realized that she wasn’t luring him into her office to seduce him. Olivia suspected something was off. Her legs moved quickly through the sterile hallway, and Phinn had to speed walk just to keep up.
“I wasn’t going to kiss you, Phinn,” she said, her voice shaky. “I’m old enough to be your mother.”
Please, Phinn prayed. Please let Wylie not be in her office anymore. But apparently no gods were listening.
Now the sound of Wylie’s snores broke up the other ambient noises, and Phinn stole glances at her as she slept. She looked so different from the night she’d passed out on his boat, completely unaware that they were sailing to a magical island. Right now, Wylie was only a couple of months older than when they met, but the lines across her forehead made her look like she’d spent a few dismal years in the bubble of adulthood. She broke off mid-snore and squinted her eyes.
“What’s going on? Where are we?” Wylie groggily asked.
She propped herself up and scooted into the other corner of the room. There were only a few feet between them, but Phinn was too afraid to make eye contact. Focus on her chin, he told himself.
He started out his explanation with an apology, and swore that he’d tried to keep Olivia occupied as long as possible. He said he was sorry that he screwed up any chance of them getting rescued, but that was also a half-truth. For him, there were too many blank pages that followed an escape from BioLark. He didn’t know whether he’d have a place to sleep or if he’d have to call in every last favor to scrape up enough to money for a warm meal. There were homeless shelters he could spend the night in, and plenty of McDonald’s Happy Meals in his future, but the rest was uncertain.
Wylie heard him out, but didn’t respond. She seemed to prefer to keep silent.
A few hours passed and they didn’t say anything to each other. Phinn could hear Wylie’s stomach growling, but didn’t comment on the familiar sound. He knew it reminded both of them of the mornings they lingered in bed, too lazy to face the rest of the world and eat breakfast.
“How long do you think she’s going to keep us in here?” Wylie finally asked.
“I’m not sure. She seemed pretty angry.”
“I guess she figured out there were worse ways to torture me than plying me with drugs and conducting experiments on my body. That’s all sunshine and roses compared to being trapped in a room with you.”
Phinn didn’t bother to say he felt the same way. He didn’t think it was possible to hate himself more than he did in her presence.
“I never should have brought you to the island,” he blurted. “It was wrong to trick you and take you away from your parents.”
“Save it, Phinn. I don’t want to hear your apologies.”
He thought about biting his tongue and turning away from her, but there was more he needed to say.
“What’s it like to have a mom and dad who love you?”
The question caught Wylie off guard. He could tell she was debating whether or not to answer.
“I wouldn’t know,” she finally said. “My parents were a mess.”
“Bullshit,” Phinn replied.
Parents split up all the time. There was nothing that made the Dalton divorce more extraordinary than what any other broken family had experienced. Phinn wondered what Gregory thought when his kids talked back and stomped up the stairs in the face of the divorce. How hard did he have to bite his tongue so that he wouldn’t tell them they were just lucky their parents were still alive and capable of taking care of them?
“It’s not bullshit,” Wylie mumbled.
Phinn wanted to tell her that her dad would cross oceans and stand up to storms to rescue her. Phinn’s parents had never protected him.
“Your parents love you, Wylie,” Phinn continued. “It’s easier to pretend they don’t. You can feel less guilty that way.”
“I’d like to point out the hypocrisy of you lecturing me about guilt and denial.”
Wylie pulled herself up from the floor and approached the locked door. She banged her fists on it and screamed at anyone who was listening to let them out. Phinn knew their conversation was probably being listened to or recorded, but that didn’t matter to him. Olivia’s curiosity would finally be satisfied, too.
“My parents killed themselves,” Phinn confessed. “And so did your dad’s parents. Same goes for Tinka and Maz.”
Wylie turned around and looked at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s as much a part of my history as it is yours.”
There’d been a time when the Forbidden Side was just another patch of jungle. The plants were lush and overgrown and the pool of water was clear as day. Baby three-legs used to dance around the flowers and burrow into the ground whenever Phinn and the other kids tried to catch them.
“Come on, mommy! Play with me!” Phinn would beg, as he cupped his hand and chased the bugs.
“A little later, Phinny,” his mom would respond, barely able to keep her eyelids at attention.
Phinn and the rest of the children had to rely on the teenage natives to keep them company. Lola’s family looked far younger than their American moms and dads, but Phinn felt safer with them. He didn’t know what was wrong with his parents. He didn’t know that the flowers they were eating were making them feel like all was right with the world, as long as they nestled next to each other under the shade of palm trees and uttered random words that never came together in a complete sentence. None of them seemed to need food and they all lost interest in exploring other parts of the island. Before the Forbidden Side was forbidden, it was the only place their parents wanted to be.
“It’s dangerous everywhere else,” his mom would say to him.
The day they died, Phinn threw a tantrum at breakfast. Lola’s parents made him porridge out of boiled chipney and he told them it was disgusting. He threw the wooden bowl into the lagoon and screamed that he wanted Cheerios. And because he was the leader of the pack, Tinka and Maz and Gregory did the same. Meanwhile, Lola happily licked her bowl next to them.
Phinn stormed out of the Clearing where they ate most of their meals, and set off to find his parents in the small enclave they called home.
“They all slept most of the day,” he explained to Wylie, “So it wasn’t strange to find them lying down with their eyes closed.”
He always felt an urge to cry when he remembered the day all of the adults left them. He told Wylie that he’d climbed on top of his mother and begged her to wake up. That he scraped her flesh, hoping the scratches and cuts would summon her from sleep. He even admitted that he rubbed his hands together and placed them on her skin, hoping to warm her up. There were no longer any rahat flowers in sight. Their parents had ingested every one. Their hearts simply gave out. It didn’t sink in that they were dead until he watched Lola’s family dig four graves, for each set of parents who’d overdosed. Tinka was an orphan. Gregory was an orphan. Maz was an orphan. And Phinn promised to take care of them.
Lola’s mom and dad told them that what happened was none of their faults.
“The island doesn’t take kindly to adults,” they’d said.
But Phinn thought they were lying just to make him feel better. He couldn’t help thinking if he were cuter or more playful or didn’t whine as much, then maybe his parents would have preferred his company to fading away and disappearing completely. He was so engrossed in the memories that he didn’t realize that Wylie was quietly weeping.
“My dad had to keep that to himself his whole life,” she said, sniffling. “I can’t imagine what that must have felt like.”
“I can,” Phinn said.
“Did you tell me that story to make me feel sorry for you?”
“No,” Phinn insisted. “I told you because your dad never had the opportunity to. There were two tragedies that took place the day our parents died. The first was that we grew up without them. The second was that they didn’t get to see us grow up.”
Wylie cleared her throat and looked him in the eye for the first time.
“Your parents loved you, too, Phinn. Don’t you think it was the island that tempted them with rahat flowers? It’s what happens to adults that live there. They don’t survive.”
Phinn shrugged. The truth was, they’d never know for certain. Maybe the island didn’t see the need to retaliate against unworthy adversaries. It didn’t bother to kill people who were already killing themselves.
“Do you know how Olivia found her way back to the island?” Phinn asked.
Wylie shrugged. “She’d probably been searching for it for years.”
Phinn shook his head, then told Wylie what he knew from Olivia: that a police sketch of his face had circulated throughout New York City and Gregory had seen it. That years before, Tinka had given Gregory a map to the island, and that he’d purchased a boat and set out to sea to rescue his kids.
“He knew the risks,” Phinn said. “He’d heard the rumors that the island wasn’t hospitable to adults, but he made the trip anyway.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Phinn?”
Phinn didn’t tell her that he was trying to right a wrong. He didn’t regret taking Wylie and her brothers to the island, but he’d let them believe that their parents wouldn’t be completely gutted by their absence. He was scared to touch her, but he placed his hand on her shoulder anyway.
“He’s alive, Wylie—don’t worry. He was swept up in a storm and nearly drowned, but was rescued by the coast guard. And while he was recovering, he asked Olivia to go find his kids.”
“He risked his life for us?” Wylie asked.
Phinn nodded. “He’s a good father.” With those four words, Phinn felt the hope of redemption. Maybe not in Wylie’s eyes, but hopefully in Gregory’s.
* * *
The temperature of the broth was lukewarm and the flavor was bitter. Gregory watched as Maura took a bite and politely pretended to like it. He’d forgotten to salt the eggplant and let it soak in cold water before frying it in hot oil, and now the stew was almost inedible. Wylie didn’t have much patience as a child, but she never took shortcuts in the kitchen. She had an impressive ability to know when to improvise and when to be methodical. Gregory was a much lazier chef. Just days before she went missing, Wylie and her dad had a huge argument at their neighborhood grocery store after Gregory placed pre-chopped onions in their cart. Wylie had scoffed in disgust and argued that freshly sliced onion was necessary to enhance the flavor of the meal. Anything less than would ruin the integrity of the dish.
“It’s so like you to do everything half-assed, Dad.”
They both knew she wasn’t talking about onions when she mumbled it.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Gregory told Maura now. “It’s not as good as Wylie makes it.”
Maura pushed the bowl away. “It reminds me of her,” she admitted. “I thought that would feel nice, but it just hurts.”
They tried to do things every day that reminded them of their children, but the efforts usually brought them more sadness than comfort. Gregory’s recovery was slow and steady, but he was beginning to feel more mobile and less reliant on the pills the doctor had prescribed for the pain. Earlier that day, they’d taken the subway to the East Village to visit Micah’s favorite comic book store, and he’d been able to leave his cane at home.
Each morning, he woke up in their living room and told himself that this would be the day that he’d tell Maura everything about Phinn and the island. But by nighttime, he’d lose his nerve. Maura was getting more fragile by the hour and the shock could cause a stroke or a heart attack. He estimated that in a week he’d be able to sail again and would find the island without the help of Olivia. This time, he would make sure to avoid any inclement weather.
