She turns away, and I follow her attention to a silver-framed picture of a teenage boy beside the TV. Time has bleached the photo’s colors into a single, reddish hue, but the boy’s apple-cheeked smile remains instantly recognizable. Ricky.

Mrs. Hannigan’s lips tighten, but nevertheless, tears escape her. “Whatever happened,” she says, “whatever the Reverend tells you…it wasn’t an accident.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE MISSING

TODAY

The other boys in the cabin are still asleep under their thin bed sheets. I push back the wavy hair swooping low over my forehead and I stare horizontally into space. Dim morning light creeps inside the mesh-covered windows, shining like a beacon onto the Winner’s Wall. Onto Ricky Hannigan’s teenage face. The boy’s eyes flare open helplessly, reaching out of the past and begging me to get out of this place before whatever happened to him happens to me.

“Whatever the Reverend tells you…it wasn’t an accident.”

I wish I could un-hear Mrs. Hannigan’s ominous words about her son, but it was all I dreamt about. Luckily, the generator outside was kind enough to spring on five minutes ago and wake me from my nightmare: I was in Ricky’s hospital bed and couldn’t move. I screamed for my mom and Mrs. Hannigan in the next room. They wandered in to see what was wrong, only they weren’t exactly themselves—they had on the pantsuits worn by those FBI agents. Mom took one look at me in Ricky’s bed, and then disappeared into a pillar of smoke and fog.

Dreams can be evil like that.

My drying lips cling to Ario’s recorder, still slung around my neck on its delicate leather string. I need to play it—I need the connection to him. I don’t care about waking anyone else up. If the clattering generator outside weren’t enough to shake these boys awake, some soft music wouldn’t either. I cover two of the recorder’s holes and blow out a hollow, arrhythmic tune. As the bitter taste of the instrument settles onto my tongue, a memory rises of Ario resting his curly head on my chest…

I stop playing. My chest hurts too much, and this recorder sucks. At the foot of the bunk bed, my backpack slumps against the floor. Somewhere inside it is a Playbill bearing a warning—HELP CONNOR—written by an ex-Nightlight camper. And his story didn’t turn out so well.

Seeing my backpack in the light of day only makes me angrier with Ario. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t the world he promised me. He promised it would be fine if I came out, and now, where am I? A camp with Ramona, the fifties housewife; Marcos, the fifties bebopper; and Darcy, the sixties dreamgirl. It’s permanently the past on this island, a relic untouched by any of the progress Ario insisted was waiting for me.

All I had to do was come out.

This is your fault, I curse silently at the pendant. Lying to my mom was safer.

While jungle birds chatter in a grove of trees outside our lodge, I slide one foot onto the cool stone floor, so gently I couldn’t crush an ant. Now, the other foot. I collect my shirt and shoes from under the bunk, pull them on, and edge toward the door. I forgot my backpack. I turn, and Marcos—pretty, nervous, pretty nervous Marcos—is already stirring in his lower bunk. Long, brown feet stick out the end of his blanket as he stretches and yawns at the morning, exactly how I imagine waking up next to Ario could’ve been like.