Never Ever

by Sara Saedi

  “Wylie,” Phinn interrupted. “Please, it’s not what you think. Whatever Tinka told you, she’s making it up. She’ll do anything to get between us.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Tinka chimed in.

  “How many of you knew Gregory?” Wylie addressed the crowd. “How many of you remember when he left the island?”

  About half the crowd raised their hands.

  “And how many of you have heard of him? The one guy who left of his own accord?”

  All of the hands went up in the air. Joshua and Micah looked at their sister, not exactly sure what she was saying.

  “Gregory is my dad. Our dad,” Wylie said. She turned to her brothers. “This was Phinn’s plan all along. My dad used to live here, but he abandoned the island, and Phinn brought us here to get his revenge.”

  “That’s not true. She’s lying,” Phinn insisted.

  “Phinn,” Wylie said. “You kidnapped us. You brought us here under false pretenses. You lied to us the entire time. But it stops now. We want to go home.”

  They would go back to New York, and Wylie would break the ultimate rule. She would alert the authorities about the island and the sociopath who was stealing runaways and at-risk kids from the mainland and bringing them here. They’d send a real army to the island and find Lola and the other lost kids.

  “You can’t make that decision for all of us,” Joshua intervened.

  “What are you talking about?” Wylie asked. “There is no decision. We’re leaving.”

  “I’m not going back,” Joshua replied.

  “Did you not hear anything I just said? Phinn only brought us here to mess with our parents. It’s my fault we came here, but I’m getting us home. Nothing Phinn’s ever done or said has meant anything.”

  “You don’t believe that, Wylie,” Phinn said calmly.

  Wylie looked around the Clearing as the locals started closing in on her. No one cared about what they had just heard about Phinn. They glared at her without sympathy or remorse.

  “I don’t care why Phinn brought us here,” Joshua said. “I’m not leaving.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” Phinn said as he took a step closer to Wylie. “Listen to your brother.”

  “Let us go home,” Wylie begged.

  “Take them to the Forbidden Side,” Phinn ordered. “All of them.”

  The residents leapt into action as they surrounded Wylie and her brothers. Nadia and Bailey grabbed Wylie’s arms. She was strong, but Wylie couldn’t fight off both of them. Maz and Bandit grabbed Joshua, while Elliot and Doug held Micah down. Tinka skipped to the palm tree, opened the cupboard, and pulled out a coil of rope. She used her knife to cut it into three equal pieces.

  “Why are you doing this?” Micah asked Tinka as she restrained his hands with the rope.

  “I’m just following orders,” Tinka replied casually. She moved on to Wylie and tied the rope tightly around her wrists.

  “Tough break, Wylie,” Tinka said with a wink as she patted her down. She was so busy gloating, she managed to miss the pepper spray and the compass in Wylie’s pockets.

  “He’s all yours now,” Wylie snapped. “The two of you deserve each other.”

  The walk to the Forbidden Side felt like it took an eternity. Phinn led the way and Wylie stared at the back of his head. He kept looking over his shoulder to see if she was okay, just like he had on the day he brought them to the island, but she refused to make eye contact. Instead, she kept her head down and caught sight of the mirror dangling from her neck. She felt silly now, for having felt so honored to wear it.

  “I don’t want to go to the Forbidden Side,” Micah kept saying over and over again. He wheezed between breaths, in the throes of an anxiety attack. But Joshua was the one who talked the most. He begged and pleaded with Phinn to show them some mercy.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “Give me five minutes with my sister. I’ll calm her down. I’ll convince her not to go home. Please. We’ll die over there.” Phinn ignored him.

  Once they reached the Forbidden Side, Tinka used her knife to cut through the caution tape and the weeds that had grown around the barricade. Phinn grabbed a key out of his pocket and unlocked the fence.

  It was darker on this side of the island, with most of the overgrown trees blocking out the blue sky. It was hard to tell what time of day it was. The stench of urine made Wylie wish her hands were free so she could plug her nose. Small patches of sand were cordoned off and the cages Wylie had spotted from above the gate looked much larger up close. Each was big enough for a human being to fit snugly inside. She glanced around and found Hopper’s bloody and faded calling card on a giant wooden box. Because she’d stared at the inscription in the kitchen countertop for hours, she could swear this one was in a different handwriting. Phinn opened the doors to the box, revealing whips and handcuffs and more rope.

  There was a reason the Forbidden Side was off-limits. It wasn’t the quicksand or land mines or the threat of Hopper. It was the fact that this place was being used as a prison camp.

  “Don’t put them next to each other.” As soon as Phinn made the order, Wylie and her brothers were flung into separate cages and the ropes were replaced with handcuffs. At least five cells separated Wylie from Micah, while Joshua was placed in a cell about a hundred feet across from them.

  “I’m sorry,” Nadia mumbled quietly in Wylie’s ear. She unlocked one of the cuffs from Wylie’s wrist and clasped it around the wire framing.

  “Maz,” Phinn said, “We’ll need a guard schedule again for the fence. I want two people here at all times to make sure they don’t get away. I’ll take the first shift. You’re all dismissed.”

  Tinka gave Wylie a little wave good-bye as she skipped off. She didn’t acknowledge Micah at all. Once they were alone, Phinn crouched down next to Wylie’s cage.

  “I never wanted this to happen,” he told her.

  “How can I even believe that?” she spat. “Everything you’ve told me from day one was a lie!”

  “Not everything. I love you, Wylie.”

  Wylie let out a laugh. “The only person you love is yourself.”

  Puddles formed in Phinn’s eyes. “That’s not true. No, it wasn’t an accident that we met. Yes, I was planning for a very long time to bring you here. But I never, ever planned to feel the way I feel about you.”

  The memory of locking eyes on the rooftop in Brooklyn would no longer fill her mind with silly words like “destiny” and “soul mates.” It had all been premeditated and carefully planned out.

  “I love you,” he said again.

  “You only brought me here to hurt my dad!” Wylie yelled.

  “The second we spoke to each other, I knew I was going to fall for you, and it changed everything.”

  “You lied to me over and over again.”

  “People lie to each other all the time, Wylie. It’s what human beings do. They lie until they think it’s safe to be honest.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.” When her parents had started dating, Wylie’s mom pretended to like oysters for months, because they were one of her dad’s favorite foods. Those were the kinds of lies normal people told each other, but Phinn’s indiscretion was in a category of its own.

  “I’m sorry I brought you here to hurt your dad, but you stayed because you wanted to hurt him, too.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You and I have something in common. Gregory Dalton left us both.” Phinn was crying now. Seeing him in tears brought up emotions for him Wylie didn’t want to have: sympathy, longing, compassion.

  “What’s your point, Phinn? We’re both equally terrible people?”

  “We’re not terrible, but we lash out when people hurt us. I know I deserve it, but after everything we’ve gone through together, it hurts tha
t you want to leave. It hurts to know you’re okay with never seeing me again.”

  Wylie could lie to him like he’d lied to her all this time. She could pretend she really was okay with never seeing him again. But the fact was, she didn’t know what it would feel like to go on without him.

  “I don’t know if I’m okay with never seeing you again.” It was the most honest response she could give.

  “Then I want you to know that I’m happy your dad left the island,” Phinn confessed. “If he hadn’t left, then you wouldn’t exist. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Wylie.”

  Wylie clanked her handcuff against the cell. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  Their time on the island kept rotating through Wylie’s head on an endless loop. Their first kiss in the parvaz field. Roasting sugar roots together in the Clearing. Flying through the air and shooting baskets. The day at the beach when she gave him a swimming lesson. It wrecked Wylie to think she would never be that version of herself again. This was what it felt like to get older, she realized. Being an adult meant accepting that life hadn’t turned out the way you planned. It meant having that constant, troubling feeling of regret and disappointment. A feeling that would probably take hold of her the second she found her way home.

  “I never wanted to grow up this fast,” Wylie said sadly.

  Phinn reached into the cage and took her hand. “Maybe growing up isn’t such a bad thing,” he said.

  Wylie was suddenly consumed by a memory of the day her dad moved out of the house. Maura had knocked on Wylie’s bedroom door. She’d said she needed some air and asked if she could sit on the fire escape. She crawled through Wylie’s bedroom window and sat on the ladder wearing nothing but a robe, despite the chilly weather.

  “Mom, you’re going to freeze to death,” Wylie had warned her, but she didn’t budge.

  Wylie placed a coat around her mom’s shoulders and sat with her, half scared she might leap off the fire escape.

  “Do you want to hear something sad?” Maura asked. Wylie didn’t know how to respond.

  “What?”

  “After all the lying and the fighting and the cheating, I still love him.”

  That is sad, Wylie thought. And maybe even a little pathetic. But she didn’t say that out loud.

  The memory on the fire escape took on a different meaning now. Wylie’s mom wasn’t weak after all. She was just human. Maura was trying to explain that love didn’t operate like a light switch. You couldn’t just turn your feelings off, even when someone has hurt you over and over again. Wylie didn’t understand it at the time, but it was exactly how she felt right now as she stared at Phinn. She nearly let out a laugh. Her worst fear had been realized: she could relate to her parents.

  “We could leave the island together, Wylie,” Phinn said. “We could start over. We could travel the world and grow old together.”

  Once he said it, Wylie knew exactly what she wanted. To live in the real world and to see every part of it. To have the freedom to make her own decisions without consulting any handbooks or showing up for a daily dose of birth control. To forge her own path. She looked at Phinn and told herself that one day, she would be able to stop loving him. She would meet someone else who was good and honest and didn’t use people. In time, she would look at that person and not see everything she had lost by leaving the island, but instead everything she had gained.

  She held Phinn’s gaze and did the one thing she knew would hurt him as much as he’d hurt her. She used her free hand to rip off the necklace that had belonged to his mother and dangled it in front of him, then said as coldly as she could:

  “I would rather die young than grow old with you, Phinn.”

  It might have been a lie, but she could tell by the broken look on his face that he bought every word of it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  rescue mission

  the water started out choppy, but Gregory managed to keep the boat afloat. He had to make this journey alone. The police department wouldn’t be easily convinced that he suspected his children were being held captive on an island no one knew existed. The circumstances of their disappearance haunted him even more now that he’d seen the sketch of Phinn. Were they smuggled to Minor Island, or did they go willingly? Did they know Phinn’s connection to their father? Were they living there freely, or were they being held prisoner? If his voyage continued to go smoothly, he would have all the answers by tomorrow.

  Though he hoped for an easy passage, Gregory had given his lawyer a sealed envelope and asked him to release it to Maura if no one had heard from him in a month’s time. For now, he had told her he was going on a quick trip to raise funds to help continue their search efforts. Maura might think he was insane after reading the contents of the envelope, but he directed her to get in contact with Dr. Olivia Weckler. Olivia was the only other person who could confirm to Maura that the island actually existed. She’d been exiled from Minor Island when, after returning from a one year sabbatical on the mainland, she started showing signs of aging.

  Gregory wondered what Olivia would think if she came across the police drawing of Phinn. The sketch was already plastered everywhere in the city, but Gregory knew there was little point in looking for Phinn in New York. His visits were rare, and when he did come to the mainland, he never stayed very long.

  And he couldn’t wait any longer to find his kids—or to tell them the news he’d just received.

  The call from Joshua’s lawyer had come a couple days before, and Maura was the one who had answered the phone.

  “Katie Anderson came out of her coma,” he said. “It’s too soon to tell if she’ll be able to walk, but she’s awake. She has a long road ahead of her.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Gregory. The Andersons had their daughter back, while their kids were still missing. But not for long. Gregory placed Wylie’s birthday present at the top of the things in his suitcase. The gift was an old painting of parvaz flowers that Tinka had made him years before. He’d had it restored and framed for Wylie. He had wanted so badly to give his daughter a tiny piece of his past, even though he’d planned to lie and tell her he’d found the picture at an antique shop. The thought of giving it to her in person helped keep his nerves at bay once he boarded the sailboat and maneuvered it away from the docks.

  Decades had gone by since he’d sailed on his own, but he couldn’t hire a captain for the ride. Bringing a stranger to the island was far too great a risk. Sailing a boat was like riding a bike, he tried to convince himself. As soon as he hit the open waters, it would all come back to him. And it did, for the most part. He remembered how to hoist the sails. It wasn’t easy to accomplish by himself, but he managed to shackle the clew, release the mainsheet, pull the halyard tight, then cleat it. First the mainsail, then the jib, all with the objective of keeping the boat steady.

  It was several hours into the ride when he noticed an anvil-shaped cloud up ahead: the sign of a white squall. Phinn had taught him that. The bow began dipping as the wind quickly picked up speed. Gregory thought of using the GPS to turn back to New York, but then an image of his kids came into his mind. Wylie, Joshua, and Micah. The three best things he’d ever done with his life. The reasons he never regretted leaving the island. No threat of bad weather would stop him from rescuing them. Phinn didn’t know anything about being a parent. He had no clue the lengths a father would go to protect his children. But he was about to find out.

  IT WAS COLD AT NIGHT ON THE FORBIDDEN SIDE. Instead of a lagoon, there was a thick swamp with mosquitoes buzzing around. Wylie’s arms and legs were already covered in red welts where they’d bitten her as she tried to sleep. A small patch of flowers and herbs grew along the periphery of the cages. They were probably the plants Lola had mentioned she missed cooking with. After three days locked up behind the caution tape, she no longer found the smell on this side of the island as offensiv
e as on the day they’d arrived. The stink of urine was not as strong, and Wylie knew it was only because her senses had gotten used to it.

  So far, the routine had been the same every day. Wylie, Joshua, and Micah were let out of their cells for a few minutes to relieve themselves and stretch their legs. Tinka was assigned to Wylie. It was humiliating, squatting behind a tree to go to the bathroom with Tinka handcuffed to her, to ensure that she wouldn’t try to run away. Once they were locked up again, Phinn would arrive to bring them leftover scraps from breakfast, along with water. He fed her brothers first, then made his way over to Wylie.

  “Please tell me you’ve changed your mind about going home,” he’d plead, and Wylie would always answer the same way.

  “No.”

  “You don’t know how much it hurts me to see you like this,” he’d say, on the verge of tears.

  “You’re the one who’s doing this to us,” Wylie reminded him.

  “Because you didn’t give me any other choice.”

  “I don’t want to go home!” Joshua would yell from across the way. “Please! Let me out!” But Phinn always ignored him.

  “You’re all staying here until your sister changes her mind.”

  Once the narrow streams of sunlight faded, Wylie would sit awake in her cage, unable to sleep. It wasn’t just the whine of the mosquitoes that caused her insomnia, but also the racing thoughts about her parents. She wondered if her dad suspected where they might be, or if her parents had stopped searching for them. Wylie liked to imagine that the tragedy had brought her mom and dad closer together. Perhaps the loss would remind them why they fell in love with each other in the first place. She knew it was wishful thinking, but maybe once she and her brothers found their way back home, they could all be a family again.