“No, but she’s okay…as far as I know.”

“What happened? How’d you get this water?”

“She and I got pretty far when they stopped sounding the alarm for you. I know my way around the forest a little, so I told her I was gonna go back for you. Molly came up with the plan—there was no talking her out of it. She wanted to go to the cabins to get Lacrishia and the Beginners out of there before any staff could round them up. We went to the boys’ lodge first, but nobody was there. That’s when I got the water out of my pack. The lake was like a ghost town. We couldn’t believe it. Really creepy. Then Molly ran ahead to the girls’ cabin—there was no stopping her—and I said I was going back for you before you dehydrated.”

“So, Molly’s plan is to take everyone…where?”

“To hide, I think. We agreed that, if I found you, we’d meet up at the waterfall by sunset.”

“We still have to get Darcy. They put her in the bunker.”

“Yeah…” Neither of us comfortable with this rapidly unfolding crisis, Marcos and I wait in the center of our tropical hedge maze. He softly snaps his fingers. For all his anxiousness, Marcos carries himself as someone all too familiar with having to acclimate quickly to unpleasant realities.

“You came back for me,” I say. “You’ve had to do that a lot today.”

“Well,” he says, snorting, half-embarrassed, “if you quit causing trouble, maybe I could catch a break.”

I meet his eyes, my neck craning upward like I’m in the front row of a movie theater. As I gaze at him, cool breath soothes my burning lungs. “You know, keeping up with my bullshit is full-time work, so I hope you’re up for it.” I catch his lips wanting to smile, but then a cloud passes over my thoughts. “You had some strong feelings at lunch about staying at Nightlight. Given things changing around here, would you be cool leaving the island…today…with me?”

His lips part, his eyes soften. The hope in my question has pricked him painfully, but he recovers with a nerdy giggle. “Don’t think I have a choice anymore.”

That’s not what I asked, dummy. “Do you want to leave with me?” “I don’t have a choice.” Just what a girl wants to hear. But literally, what did I mean by “leave with me”? Like every other word that’s slithered past my lips today, what I just asked Marcos was unplanned and loaded with chaos.

“Let’s get going to the falls,” he says. “It’s only a fifteen-minute hike, but there’s storms rolling in and we’re gonna lose light.”