“What’s that?” I ask.

“Good luck charm.” He drops it into the bucket. “I don’t fly without it.”

I kick off the cheap, plastic flip-flops Briggs gave me and place them in my own plastic bin. Soon, it’ll be my turn to step through the body scanner with its robot arm whirling inside a clear, plastic tomb. Ario’s bamboo recorder bounces on its leather string underneath my hoodie. If I step through that gate, I’ll be flying away from my boyfriend.

“This boot camp…how long will we be gone?” I ask.

“A few days,” Briggs replies, slapping my back. “Come on, your mum bought you a vacation. Don’t you want a break?”

The word “break” breaks me. Like a magic word, it loosens my shoulders and lifts my heart. A Goddamn break. I need one so badly from this horrific summer. I allow a glimmer of hope into my thoughts: Mom said she’s tired of fighting. Is this really a vacation? Could this be a peace offering? Mom loves me. She hasn’t shown it lately, but she does. So, either my mom hired men to kidnap and hurt me…or she hired them to get me out of her hair and toughen me up on a sandy beach somewhere.

Which one sounds more like Mom? The latter.

The image of a tropical beach worms its way into my brain’s pleasure center, and in that moment, I choose to believe in my mom.

Briggs digs one final item from his pocket: my phone, boxed in its turquoise case. He must have taken it out of the wall charger after…after he carried you screaming out of your home, a nasty voice argues inside my head. “This phone is your reward for good work,” he says. “All you have to do is put in the effort, and in a few days, I hand it back to you and send you home.”

There isn’t any time to reach for my phone before Briggs lobs it into the bucket already traveling away on a conveyor belt through security.

Briggs loads me up with trashy snacks and trashier celebrity magazines for the flight, which is a six-hour journey to San José. It isn’t until we’re seated for our flight that Briggs clarifies this isn’t San Jose, California, but San José, Costa Rica.

Costa Rica? That’s another country. That’s Central America, like some Jurassic Park shit.

The urge to bolt out of the jet overwhelms me, but the flight attendants have already closed the cabin doors. I could scream, but every time I play that scenario in my head, it ends with the authorities confirming that, yes, my mom wants this to happen.

“My mom actually paid for me to fly to Costa Rica?” I ask shakily as I weigh whether to buckle my seatbelt.

“Costa Rican beaches, bright blue as a sapphire,” Briggs says, the crinkles reforming around his young eyes. “You’re gonna love our island, but I have to tell you: we’re not cheap. And we’ve only been paid half. You’re free to go home whenever you want, but if you break our contract, we still send you the full bill. And your mum’s made it clear that if you break our contract early, you’ll have to pay back everything yourself.”