Pay for this entire trip myself? Whatever she’s already paid, it has to at least be a few weeks of her pulling extra shifts in the ICU. She can’t even afford to buy me new shoes.

“Why do we have to go to another country just for a boot camp?” I ask. “There’s, like, a thousand of them in Illinois.”

“Because Illinois isn’t gorgeous,” Briggs chuckles. “Why put Disney World in Florida, why not in Illinois? Why go to Paris, there’s paintings here in Illinois? Because Illinois sucks, mate. It’s where people live; it’s not where you holiday. We don’t want our camp to be a bunch of hard work in some dreary bunghole of a strip mall. The unplugging and the beauty of nature are part of it all.”

Unplug. After a century without my phone, I don’t need any more unplugging. I need to be plugged in, I need my life back. I also need some beauty, it’s true. I have had it with wall-to-wall soybean fields and nothing pretty in my life. Sometimes, a gay boy needs a little beauty, a little fanciness, a little luxury, or he’ll starve.

This is a vacation away from the snake pit at home, Major. Try to enjoy yourself.

I buckle myself into my window seat. Around me, dozens of untroubled people leaf through magazines and nap against their shuttered windows. Satisfied that I’ve chosen to cooperate, Briggs grins, his salt-and-pepper scruff circling two bullet-hole-shaped dimples. He pulls out his black Pez dispenser and tucks it into the front pocket for takeoff.

As the flight crawls by hour after hour, Ricky Hannigan’s note—NIGHTLIGHT—seeps back into my thoughts. He wrote it over and over. His dying words. HELP CONNOR.

I can’t help you, Mr. Hannigan. I’ve got my own bag of crap to worry about.

By the time we land, it’s daytime, but I don’t know how many hours have passed because the sky is blistered with storm clouds. Guided by Briggs, I stagger through a large, sleek airport crammed with passengers in floral-print shirts and walls dotted with palm trees. This lifts my heart a bit; I haven’t seen palms since Mom and I left Jacksonville. The possibility that this kidnapping is indeed a vacation continues to prove itself.

Briggs’s two other men continue glaring at me as we navigate the emptying terminal. I’m dying to change out of these ratty clothes. I’ve had them on since…yesterday? It all feels like one day. It wouldn’t take much to convince me I’m still in my bed in Ambrose—that there is no luxury boot camp, and I’m having one weird bastard of a dream.

WELCOME TO JUAN SANTAMARÍA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, a sign reads in English beneath a similar greeting in different languages. My mouth falls open as reality registers: Costa Rica. I’m not in America anymore…Pins and needles invade my head; being kidnapped was startling enough, but finding myself in a new country is a YIKES of a different color. I only have Briggs’s word (and my mom’s approval) that we’re headed to a fitness camp.