“How did you…?” the Reverend begins, but then trails off. His cold, dead eyes find me as his wheels turn rapidly. “It doesn’t matter. What you heard happened a long time ago. I’m not that boy, not anymore. I’m something else now. I am the Goddamn director of this camp, and you all Goddamn answer to me.” The crowd’s whimpering tears silence as the Reverend searches for anyone not paying him the strictest attention. He finds no one. His hands, however, find my jaw. Two purple, pulsating clamps fit snugly around my entire face. No one breathes. His perfumed wrists suffocate my nostrils. He could pop my head clean off my shoulders like a dandelion or one of his chickens, but just as easily as he slid his hands into place, the Reverend removes them. “Such a little one. You never did get that growth spurt.”

The Reverend leaves us in petrified, mouth-agape awe as he clomps away after Briggs, now a speck in the distance, still slouching toward his punishment. “Mr. Major, I think I’ve had enough interruptions,” the Reverend barks over his shoulder. “I’ve decided to cut my losses…and believe you.”

Before my chowder-filled brain can process what he means, he turns again, producing a piece of folded paper from his pocket. As he approaches, tiny, inky footprints appear on the outstretched paper—Avery’s birth certificate.

Now? With Drew lying plastered to the ground ten feet away, he wants to do this?

“Sign,” the Reverend orders, clicking open a pen. He hands it and the certificate to me like he’s the Devil Himself collecting a soul. He pretty much is. Either way, my vibrating fingers accept the contract. Avery Woodbine, it reads. Mother: Victoria Woodbine. Next to father, there’s a vacant space just for me. “You know what to do. Sign your name as the father, commit to your family and a straight life…and I will put you on a boat home within the hour.”

Gasps rise from the crowd, but I can’t look at them. In one accidental glance left, I catch Marcos’s saucer eyes widen behind his chunky frames and then crumple. There isn’t time to explain. Everyone in camp is watching, processing a million new realities: I fathered a baby, I ran away from my baby, and worst of all…I’m ditching them in this snake pit to go home.

Home.

I’ll be in my bed tonight. After all my waking nightmares considering the possibility of spending years on this island, I’ll only have stayed a day. I’ll be able to text Ario. I’ll be able to see love come back into my mom’s face for the first time in months. Briggs and Miss Manners will fade into nothing but a bad dream.

But so will Marcos. And Molly. And Darcy.

And Drew…his face…his scream…that snap of his neck…