Behind me, Ben Briggs marches at the rear of our chain. Ahead, Molly hikes up her knee-length party dress and stomps over wild underbrush, her path illuminated only by her phone’s flashlight. I reaffirm my watery grip on my own phone as its flashlight cones outward, painting the jungle walls and the backs of kidnappers in bluish-white. A washed-out color. The color of dead things. But this jungle is very alive. Rain streams off palm fronds from shorter-growth trees as the shadows of tiny creatures scatter up the bark. To a calmer person, they might be harmless frogs or insects, but I’ve seen enough Planet Earth to know better. I’m convinced they’re bizarre island spiders or some other poisonous assassin.

Don’t touch anything, Connor.

With every squish of my bare feet through this wilderness, I promise myself it’s just leaves and mud. The sharp pricks jutting into my toes are brambles or broken twigs—definitely not a family of scorpions angry that I’m carelessly stomping through their home.

Ario smiles back at me from my phone’s lock screen—a cruel reminder of just how miserable turning seventeen has been: coming out, my grades tanking, my best friend having a baby and letting everyone think I’m the father, my boyfriend realizing I’m shitty at sex and wondering why he ever asked me out, my Meals on Wheels client dying, and my mom deciding having me kidnapped would be the cherry on top of this shit sundae.

Directly ahead, a kidnapper grunts as he slings one leg over a snarled tree root, followed by the other leg with more difficulty (and more grunting). I don’t fare any easier. As I traverse the root, my foot slips in the unstable mud, sending my leg sharply right. A hand catches me by the shoulder—a large hand with a confident grip. “Take it slower, champ,” Briggs whispers in his gravelly East Ender accent.

This man having my dad’s voice shoots stabbing pains up my spine. Dad ditched me even worse than my mom is currently ditching me. Not long after their separation, Mom became uber-religious and didn’t want anything to do with Dad after that. And he didn’t fight her. Mom moved us to a town brimming with Jesus-y rednecks, and I never saw him in person again. Would Dad have let strangers pull me out of bed and fly me to an island for some unknown reason?

Maybe not, but the reason for Mom sending me away is less of an unknown than it was an hour ago. Surrender your sins, read the sign on the crucifix…

“Road!” shouts the kidnapper at the head of the chain. Our movement slows, but I stop too short. Briggs’s taser—the Pez dispenser thing that fires a thousand-volt charge—pokes me in what might as well be my asshole.

“Sorry,” I whisper. I actually apologized to my abductor. I’m the World’s Silliest Dildo. After a long, marching beat, I ask, “How’d you get it on the plane? Your good luck charm.”