“Hey, Meals on Wheels, I’m proud of you,” Agent Elms says as she turns onto White Eagle’s main thoroughfare, past the bookstore where Ario first punched his number into my phone. Agent Elms is exactly as I remembered her from the day Ricky died: decked in an impeccable black suit, with short, severely parted blond hair draping to one side. “The look of a power lesbian,” all the news sites have said about her, from LGBTQ media to the right-wing hatemongers. They all bow to the chic queer power of Special Agent Diane Elms—the woman who finally brought Bill Hannigan to justice.

“Proud of me?” I ask.

“For how well you’ve been keeping it together.”

“Not crying is something to be proud of?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry—”

“No, I’m sorry. I just…”

“Escaped a place that forced you to act like a manly man?”

I chuckle dully as I summon the strength to look at my phone. I’ve allowed myself one glance every hour—the notifications were too much, so I shut them off. Friends, family, supportive strangers, and strangers who wish I was dead all message me around the clock from every possible avenue. There’s no keeping up with it, but the only thing I want to see on my phone right now is yesterday’s Instagram post.

The post—eleven smiling, triumphant Nightlight survivors taking a selfie on the bow of our escape boat—couldn’t be posted until everyone’s families had been notified. But once it hit, it struck like a pipe bomb. In less than thirty-six hours, the pic has gained over three million likes. Vance texted the group chat that that’s almost as much as Beyoncé’s Lion King promo. Perspective.

Sadly, our turmoil didn’t end when we escaped the island.

After two hours at sea, we reached mainland Costa Rica and were shuttled to San José by local authorities. The Costa Rican government put us up in a hotel, but it became clear that we were once again prisoners. No one was allowed to leave the hotel or discuss anything about our situation with anyone except our families. For two days, frantic emails and phone calls pinged between the hotel and the American embassy until this tangled mess could be sorted out. It turns out Nightlight’s island wasn’t leased by anyone in the Packard family, but instead a dummy LLC called Nightlight Management. As I expected, all listed means of communicating with Nightlight Management had been disconnected.

Somehow, Miss Manners had gotten to her bosses a message to go dark.