“I’ve done this before,” the captain replies. “I kept the bearing.”

Splashing thunderously, Briggs clomps across the deck, snatches a rounded handle at the base of the bow’s floodlight, and scans it over the rollicking sea. In Ambrose, we use floodlights on winter nights to avoid colliding with deer. What is Briggs afraid we could collide with out here? A whale? A shark? A reef?

“They don’t know where we are,” Molly whispers, her whole body shaking. I wrap my arm around her shoulder to warm her, but she smacks me away with a stinging jolt. I mumble an apology as she throws me a jittery glare. It’s not like I was trying to feel her up.

“Out there, do you see it?” Briggs hollers.

“I don’t see a thing but open water,” replies the captain.

Same, old man. There isn’t even a horizon line. Endless black sea merges with a thunderhead-choked sky; we’re in a rickety vessel flying through a void. I’m nowhere near home. Thousands of miles gone from my mom and Ario. He doesn’t even know what happened to me. Or that I’m gone at all.

I have to get away from these people.

Then a greenish glob—only a speck at first—pierces the obsidian sea. A chorus of other kidnappers begin to speak up about how they’ve spotted land, and Briggs cries into the rain: “Do you see what happens when you BELIEVE?!”

Molly and I find each other’s eyes at the same time. We don’t need to say our fears out loud because we seem to instantly think the same thing: that was quite a churchy outburst from the man abducting us.

As we approach our unknown destination, white flashes of lightning play peek-a-boo with the newly visible horizon. Flash! Peek-a-boo. The outline of an island. Then darkness. Lightning comes again. Flash! Peek-a-boo. Dense jungle and a high rock cliff.

No lights. No life.

My stomach lurches as our boat slows into the island’s mouth, a crescent-shaped bay eager to swallow us whole. “Look sharp, lads,” Briggs orders. “Coming ashore.” My soggy feet twitch on the edge of the dock as a shitty idea takes over me: we aren’t handcuffed anymore. I hook Molly’s spindly arm inside mine. There’s no time for her to jerk away or even ask “What are you doing?” before I fling both of us into the water.

The sea is warm. Molly kicks toward the shore with vigor—she’s latched instantly onto my idea; it’s wild how you can sync up with a stranger during a crisis. Beneath the surface, everything blurs. One of my flip-flops disappears into a briar of brightly colored sea plants, but I have scarier concerns: as surge after surge rushes up my nostrils, my limbs struggle to swim or even kick against the surf breaks that fight powerfully to keep me away from shore. Energy evacuates my body like a stuck pig. A spike of fresh adrenaline forces my arms to paddle faster, but pins and needles fill my limbs and stiffen my fingers.