by Sara Saedi
“I mean it. Phinn can never find out. Promise.”
“I promise.” If Wylie didn’t know both of them so well, she would have thought Lola was afraid of Phinn.
“Thanks. And don’t worry, you’ve got at least another fifty years till you start to feel restless.”
Wylie felt guilty. She’d taken an oath to abstain from discussing the mainland, and yet whenever Lola asked questions, she dutifully gave answers. Wylie even promised that once they got through talking about the mainland, she would tell Lola about other countries and continents. Part of her secretly liked reminiscing about home. If she never mentioned her old life, then pretty soon she would feel like it didn’t exist.
“Do you ever think about your tribe?” Wylie asked. Up until now, she’d been too scared to broach the topic with Lola.
“Sure, all the time,” Lola answered.
“Did they have a name?” Wylie asked.
“We called ourselves the Batcheha. I wish you could have met them.” For a moment, Lola looked like she’d disappeared into a memory. She shook it off, then continued. “Sometimes I wonder what they look like now. They’d be so disappointed in me. I can barely remember how to speak Batchenise.”
“Do you ever regret that you didn’t go with them?” Wylie asked.
“No,” Lola admitted. “It wasn’t an easy decision, but in the end, I never could have asked Maz to leave and grow old with me.”
“What if things hadn’t worked out with Maz? Would you have regretted it then?”
Lola shrugged. “It never occurred to me that things wouldn’t work out, but that’s probably because everyone in my tribe kept their partners for life.”
I wish that was true of my tribe, Wylie thought.
“Okay, stop changing the subject. What are some other cities in California?” Lola asked.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow . . . after you take me to the kitchen with you,” Wylie replied.
For the past two weeks, living here had felt like being on an extended vacation. Wylie had spent her days flying above the palm trees, getting to know the locals, and sunbathing near the parvaz field. Micah was usually holed up in Tinka’s room, and Joshua was busy with his duties as chief of staff. Phinn had warned Wylie that most of his time was consumed with running the island, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. The two of them usually didn’t hang out till the evening, when they’d meet in the Clearing to roast sugar roots and share stories about their days. But most of her stories were beginning to sound redundant. Wylie wanted to find her niche. Lola had promised she would give her access to the kitchen, and it was time she kept up her half of the bargain.
“This, I can’t live without,” Lola said the next morning, holding up a long, wide knife with a rough wooden handle. The sunlight streamed through the kitchen window and shimmered against the blade. She sharpened it against a rock and handed it to Wylie with a basket full of onions.
“Onions, really?” Wylie asked. “Do you hate me?”
Wylie was actually quite skilled at dicing onions. Whenever things got really bad with her parents, she’d make French onion soup, and everyone would assume her tears were just a side effect of prepping the dish.
“If you run the knife, the cutting board, and the onion under really cold water, it won’t make you cry,” Lola advised.
“What are we making?” Wylie asked.
“Phinn’s favorite: Fried chipney-onion cakes. It’s an old Batchenise recipe.”
“I have no idea what those taste like, but they sound amazing.”
“Do you want to add anything? Maybe a dipping sauce for the cakes?”
Wylie had assumed she’d only be allowed to prep and slice ingredients. She never thought Lola would actually let her pitch in with a recipe.
“I make a mean pesto dip,” Wylie said, trying to contain her excitement.
“What’s pesto?” Lola asked.
“I’ll show you,” Wylie said, happy she had recipes she could teach Lola, too.
They spent the rest of the afternoon mixing the ingredients for the chipney-onion cakes, flattening them into the size of silver dollars, and setting them aside to fry right before serving. For a side dish, Lola whipped up a tomato salad with parvaz-infused dressing. Wylie watched and took dutiful notes, then walked Lola through the steps of making pesto. Lola only interjected once, when she suggested adding apple flower seeds as a substitute for pine nuts. After searching for them in the garden, Wylie discovered that apple flowers were a vegetable that resembled a giant red Brussels sprout. Lola directed Wylie to peel away the leaves and extract a cluster of edible seeds from the core for the side dish. Lola tasted the dip and nodded her approval.
“This is delightful,” she declared. “We make a great team.”
“If we lived in New York, we could open a restaurant together. No one’s ever tasted food like this on the mainland. People would have to wait months to get a reservation.”
Lola smiled wistfully. “There’s no rule against dreaming, right? But for now, how would you like to help me plan the menu for prom? If we combine our favorite recipes, we could do something completely original.”
“Prom?” Wylie asked, confused.
According to Lola, prom was an annual tradition Phinn had established years before when he started bringing new recruits to the island. For residents who’d spent most of their lives here, prom was a fun novelty event. And for newer recruits, it helped soften the blow of milestones they’d be missing back home.
“Phinn never mentioned it to me,” Wylie admitted.
“With everything he has to deal with, he probably forgot. I doubt he’d ask anyone else to be his date.”
Lola walked Wylie out to the dining room and showed her a bulletin board decked out with a handful of Polaroids from the previous year’s festivities.
“Phinn only busts out the camera for very special occasions,” Lola explained.
Among the Polaroids, Wylie spotted a picture of Lola and Maz sporting wooden crowns on their heads.
“It’s an embarrassing tradition,” she explained to Wylie. “I don’t know whether it’s supposed to be sweet or funny, but they crown us king and queen every year. No one even votes on it. I guess it’s our reward for being together the longest.”
Wylie saw a picture of Bailey and Bandit, who, according to Lola, had been each other’s date the previous year and were still casually seeing each other. Nadia and Patrick had gone to prom merely as friends, but they’d been dating ever since. Some of the pictures seemed to be missing from their allotted slots, but Wylie assumed those couples had kept them as souvenirs. And then her eyes landed on a candid photo of Tinka and Phinn. He had his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, and his mouth was perched right next to her ear. It looked like he’d just whispered something that made her laugh out loud.
“Phinn and Tinka went together last year?” Wylie asked.
“Only because no other guy had asked her, and Phinn felt bad. No one wants to waste their time dating her when she’s just going to be infatuated with Phinn her whole life.”
What had Phinn whispered in Tinka’s ear just as the photo had been taken? The question ran through Wylie’s mind as she walked through the garden, picking strawberries for dessert. She tossed one in her mouth. In New York, when her girlfriends had vented about their complicated dating lives, Wylie had tried to be supportive, but she sometimes felt like they were talking in circles. She’d always told herself that was why she didn’t bother with relationships. They were too confusing and could turn the most confident girl into an insecure mess. Now she was finally seeing what it felt like from the inside.
“Stop thinking about it,” she said to herself. The chickens squawked loudly, seeming to agree, but they’d just been startled by the creak of the kitchen door. Wylie looked up to find Phinn headed toward her, smiling ear to ear. He pulled her i
nto a hug and gave her a tentative kiss on the lips. They were still in the early stages of their relationship and hadn’t quite mastered the casual greeting.
“Is Lola working you to the bone?” he asked.
“Not at all—I love getting to hang out in the kitchen. I learned to make chipney-onion cakes today.”
“Now you know the way to my heart. They’re even better than Chicken McNuggets.”
“Whoa. Coming from you, that’s a huge endorsement.”
“Do you have time for a break? I’ve got a surprise for you.” Phinn smiled and bounced around on both feet. His energy was contagious and anxiety-inducing all at the same time.
“Uh-oh. Am I gonna wake up on your boat in the middle of the ocean if I follow you?”
“Definitely not. You’ll like this, I promise.”
She dropped off the tray of strawberries in the kitchen and followed Phinn outside. They rounded the corner to an outdoor dining area where all the benches and tables had been cleared away. Wooden beams created a rectangular boundary around the sandy dirt, which had been smoothed and leveled. It looked like Phinn had taken a couple of benches apart to construct the border.
“Check it out,” Phinn said. He pointed to where a basket, woven together with bamboo sticks, hung from a tree.
Wylie had never considered herself sentimental, but this was quite possibly the nicest thing anyone had done for her. He had built her a basketball court.
“I love it,” Wylie said. “The only thing missing is a ball.”
Phinn handed her a box. Inside she found a rubber ball. It was the type kids used to play dodgeball or four square in grade school.
“Next time I go to the mainland, I’ll bring you back the real thing.”
Wylie turned the ball over in her hands and noticed PROM? written in large black letters. Her mind was suddenly bombarded by the visual of Phinn whispering in Tinka’s ear.
“What’s wrong?” Phinn asked, placing an arm around her. “I thought you’d be happy.”
She took a deep breath, then told him about the photos Lola had shown her.
“I wish Lola hadn’t done that,” Phinn said.
“She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“It’s not easy to explain my relationship with Tinka, and yes, she has feelings for me,” Phinn replied, “but to me she’s always felt more like a little sister. It would be like if I got jealous over how close you are with your brothers.”
“It’s not even remotely the same,” Wylie pushed. “You guys have . . . slept together, right?”
Phinn sighed and looked up at the basket.
“Yes, but that’s over now. It’s been over for years.”
Wylie nodded. There was no point in pressing him further. She believed him.
“Wylie, here’s the thing,” Phinn said. “I knew the moment we met on the rooftop that if I never got to see you again, I’d spend the rest of my life thinking about you. The memory of you would never be good enough. I wanted the real thing. So I didn’t just bring you here to help your brother. I brought you here to make myself happy. Maybe that’s selfish, but it’s been a while since I’ve felt this happy.”
It wasn’t until she heard the sentiment that she realized it was exactly what she’d needed him to say.
“So, you want me to go to prom with you?” she asked.
“More than anything.”
“Okay. I will go to prom with you, on one condition.” Wylie handed him the ball. “You make this shot.”
Phinn focused all his attention on the basket, holding the ball firmly in his hands.
“I’ve never even played before.”
“Tough. Now, don’t mess up,” Wylie teased.
“This is a lot of pressure.” Phinn took a deep breath. “But here goes.” He popped a parvaz into his mouth, then flew straight up to the basket and tossed the ball in effortlessly.
“I made it! I’m taking Wylie Dalton to prom!” he shouted from the sky, flaunting his victory.
“That’s not fair. You used performance-enhancing drugs!”
Wylie tossed a parvaz into her mouth. She grabbed the ball as it rolled down the court, then flew up in the air and dunked it like an NBA player. She gripped the rim of the basket and hung from it.
“This is amazing!” She whooped.
Phinn flew toward her and grabbed the other side of the rim, sticking his head through the basket.
“I did good?” he asked.
“You did good,” Wylie confirmed. She pulled him into a kiss, then proceeded to crush him in a game of parvaz-enhanced one-on-one.
By the end of the game, all she could think about was how lucky she was to be here. It was the happiest she’d ever been in her whole life, and no one could ruin it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
kings and queens
after all this was over, Gregory told himself, he would buy a new couch for the living room. The one he’d been sleeping on was hell on his back. There had been a glorious period in his life when every joint in his body didn’t hurt so much when he woke up in the mornings. How naive he’d been to think that would never change.
It didn’t feel right leaving Maura alone in a house that used to be filled with teenagers. She’d told him he could sleep in their bed if the sofa was too uncomfortable, but he was afraid he would reach for her in the middle of the night and she would pull away from him. And there was no way he could sleep in any of his kids’ beds. All the artifacts they’d left behind, still in disarray from the police search, seemed to taunt him. Besides, as long as he stayed in the living room, he would be able to see them as soon as they walked through the front door.
One month had passed since his kids had gone missing. The police had sifted through their drawers and snooped through their computers, but found no evidence of plans to run away or clues that anyone might have taken them. Gregory had discovered that Wylie used her spare time to teach other teenagers how to poach an egg or make fresh pasta from scratch, and had quite an Internet following. The birthday gift he had given her was still sitting by her bed, unopened. Joshua’s computer was filled with instant-messaging chats between himself and Abigail that he’d saved. Maura had insisted they read through them for clues, but all they found were a string of sweet nothings and plans for the future. Abigail’s parents said she was inconsolable since Joshua had disappeared, and that he hadn’t responded to any of her texts or phone calls.
And then there were the items they’d found in Micah’s room. Gregory was well aware that his youngest struggled with social anxiety and that the medication hadn’t helped as much as they’d hoped. He knew Micah was a talented artist; his desk drawers were filled with sketches and storyboards for graphic novels he wanted to write. But Gregory didn’t know about the drinking. The police had found several bottles of alcohol under Micah’s bed. Gregory requested they dispose of them before Maura had a chance to see them.
The NYPD hadn’t officially closed its investigation, but all signs pointed to three teenage runaways. Joshua was a fugitive, so the manhunt for him would be ongoing, but the search lacked the effort that would go into a kidnapping case. Maura and Gregory already had a website, a hotline, a volunteer center, and friends posting flyers all over the city. They were also bombarding their Facebook feeds with photos, but no one had come forward with any tips on where their children might be, despite the handsome reward they’d offered. One month, and none of the kids had used their cards or cell phones. They had vanished without a trace.
Shannon had been relatively understanding about the distance Gregory had put between them. He had made her promises for the future, but ever since the kids had gone missing, Gregory couldn’t bear to look at her or hear the sound of her voice. What if the affair was the reason they’d left? He didn’t know for certain that Maura knew about his transgressions, but who else could have told Wylie? Though
Maura had never mentioned it, he suspected she knew, from the way she looked at him like all of this was somehow his fault. Deep down, Gregory worried that she was right.
That was why he left the volunteer center early that day and waited outside Harper Academy until school got out. The other parents nodded at him politely; some even stopped to tell him they were praying that his kids would turn up soon. He didn’t blame them for not knowing how to treat him. He was living out all of their worst nightmares, and nothing they could say would make him feel better.
Vanessa stumbled out of the building with a few friends Gregory recognized but didn’t know by name. He felt his blood pressure rise when one of the girls said something and the rest of them, including Vanessa, collapsed with laughter. Wylie had been missing for barely thirty days, and Vanessa was her best friend. How could she be laughing like nothing in her world had changed? He crossed the street toward them. When they saw him approaching, they immediately went silent.
“Hello, girls.” Gregory addressed them with all the parental warmth he could muster.
“Hi, Mr. Dalton,” they mumbled back.
“Vanessa, can I speak with you for a few minutes?”
Vanessa nodded at her friends and they walked off toward the subway station without her.
“Is there any news about Wylie?” Her voice trembled as she asked, and Gregory felt slightly vindicated. Gregory shook his head.
“The police are still searching for clues, but they seem convinced the kids ran away. Vanessa, is there anything you remember from that night?”
“I already told the police everything I know.”
Gregory couldn’t get past the feeling that she was lying.
“You’re absolutely certain?” he asked. “There was no one you saw them talking to? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“I wish I knew more. We were all hanging out at our apartment in Williamsburg, and then the three of them left to go home. And that was the last I saw of any of them.”
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. He wanted to scream that her lies weren’t protecting Wylie, they were only hurting her. The lengths kids would go to avoid getting their friends in trouble with their parents was infuriating.
