The Lost Kids Read online

  I deserve to die, Phinn told himself.

  A blinding light broke through the surface of the water.

  “Phinn. . . .”

  The voice was crisp and clear. Wylie was here with him.

  “Wylie!” he responded, but it came out garbled.

  He felt a pair of arms wrap around his waist. Phinn looked behind him and saw Wylie’s face, smiling at him in a way that reminded him of the day he built her a basketball court.

  “You’re safe now,” she whispered in his ear.

  “I knew you’d come back for me,” Phinn said, but he wasn’t sure she understood him through the distorted sounds of salt water.

  Wylie maneuvered her body to face him, and that’s when he noticed she had fins where her legs used to be. She was naked from the waist up, but her long brown hair covered her chest.

  “There are no crocodiles in the ocean, silly,” Lola had teased him when they were kids. “Only mermaids.”

  * * *

  Phinn coughed, half-expecting a stream of water and a school of fish to pour out of his mouth. His face felt raw and hot from what he hoped was just a sunburn. Grains of sand had made it into his nostrils and eyelashes. He opened his eyes, but all he could see was pale blue sky. The last thing he remembered was hallucinating, as he sunk in the ocean.

  “Of course the bastard didn’t die.”

  He knew the voice better than he knew his own.

  Tinka’s face came into view, staring at him from above. Years ago, they had gone to the parvaz field and climbed the willow tree together. They’d agreed they wouldn’t do it under the influence of magical flowers, and would rely on their strength to get to the top. But Phinn had miscalculated the sturdiness of a branch, and had plummeted to the ground as it snapped under his weight. When he’d opened his eyes, Tinka’s face flooded with relief. It was the happiest he’d ever seen her: that moment when she’d discovered he was still alive. The girl staring at him now looked disappointed. Phinn broke eye contact and noticed that the entire population of the island surrounded him. No one looked relieved to find him alive. He scanned their faces, hoping to spot Wylie among them, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “We need to get him to the clinic. We have to take his vitals,” Patrick said, his face inching into Phinn’s line of sight.

  “Not until he takes us to his bungalow,” Bandit said.

  Something had shifted during the night. Did they find out what he did to Lola? He looked more closely at the faces of his friends, hoping he could get a better read of their expressions. Micah and Joshua glared at him from the front lines. So they hadn’t escaped, but no one had thought to put them in handcuffs. Bailey fidgeted and let her eyes travel over anything other than Phinn. Patrick ignored Bandit’s demand and placed a stethoscope against Phinn’s chest, but Aldo didn’t bother coming to his aid. Maz was the only one with an expression of sympathy on his face. Or maybe it was pity. It was hard to tell.

  “I’m sorry,” he mouthed, but Phinn was too afraid to ask what he was apologizing for.

  “I told them your secret, Phinn,” Tinka said. “I told them about the war room where you keep your secret files on everyone. I’m done protecting you. Now everyone else can know what an elder you are. Get up. Take us there right now.”

  Phinn quickly pulled himself to a seated position and scooted his body away from the mass of concerned citizens.

  “No,” he said. “Not until we find Wylie.”

  “Our sister’s gone.” Joshua’s voice fell an octave when he said it. “We’ve looked everywhere for her . . . except your secret bungalow.”

  * * *

  “Follow the leader, Phinny.”

  He could still hear his mom’s voice in his head sometimes, though he wasn’t sure anymore if that was really what she sounded like. But he did have a distinct memory of standing in the Clearing with Tinka and Gregory and Maz when they were little. Their parents stood in a line in front of them and taught them how to play Follow the Leader. Even then, Phinn preferred to do all of the leading and none of the following.

  “He’s going to run his own company someday,” his father had joked.

  “His own company?” his mother said. “Our Phinny’s gonna run the world.”

  Phinn remembered shaking his hips side to side and giggling as he watched Tinka, Maz, and Gregory do the same. He remembered that afternoon he didn’t miss any of his toys they’d left back home, and that he was content sleeping on piles of leaves, and that even though food was scarce, he could almost ignore the fact that he was hungry. His parents were with him, and they were laughing, and they didn’t yet need to eat a handful of red flowers to make themselves happy.

  Now he wanted to stop the march through the jungle. He wanted so badly to be a child again and go back to that moment. He wanted to turn to the fifty kids that were following him in single-file and tell them to shake their hips or rub their bellies and pat the top of their heads. Instead, he forged ahead, determined to atone for his sins.

  “It’s not too late to turn around,” Maz advised him under his breath. “Or if you’ve got any matches, I’ll set the place on fire before anyone gets a chance to walk in.” Maz and Tinka were the only people Phinn had ever taken to the war room.

  Phinn shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

  He could have come up with a million reasons to ignore Tinka’s demands to bring the kids here, but he was exhausted from lying and making excuses. And part of him hoped if he made amends for every terrible thing he’d done, the universe would somehow reward him with Wylie.

  They reached the end of the trail where the trees and coarse layers of ivy came together to obscure the bungalow. Phinn borrowed a knife from Maz and hacked into the vines, creating a small enough crevice for them to squeeze through one by one.

  “This is tropic,” Elliot said as soon as he feasted his eyes on the structure. Phinn couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. Elliot was an expert architect, and Phinn was proud he’d created something that met his approval.

  “Why’d you keep this from us?” Bandit asked.

  Because it would end our friendship, Phinn wanted to say. Bandit had only lived here for two years, but he’d quickly become Phinn’s favorite recruit. He was smart and considerate and usually brimming with joy. He never took the island for granted and loved it nearly as much as Phinn did. And that was why Phinn had invited him to be a member of the inner circle, even though he’d known him a fraction of the time he’d known everyone else. Phinn trusted him completely.

  “I needed a place to . . . conduct business,” Phinn replied.

  The kids watched as Phinn pressed his body against the logs and a door opened. The last time Phinn had visited the bungalow was hours before prom, when he’d carefully removed several bundles of dynamite to set off the explosion on the beach. He’d purchased it the same day he’d kidnapped the Daltons from New York, not quite sure when he’d use it. A potential recruit had taught him how to construct a makeshift timer so the dynamite could explode without anyone being there to ignite it. Phinn couldn’t remember the kid’s name anymore, but he’d been put off by his passion for explosives, and decided not to invite him to the island.

  The war room was far too small a space to fit everyone, so people crowded around the entrance, trying to peer in. With everyone watching, Phinn broke open the floorboards and took out the box of files he’d hidden underneath them. He handed the kids every file he had on them, including the less incriminating ones he kept in locked drawers.

  It was Bailey who let out the first guttural scream.

  “My mom died!” she cried. “She died ten years ago. . . .”

  Bailey’s mother had been sick with breast cancer for three years before she lost her battle. Maz had learned about it on a trip to the mainland, and he’d thought they should offer Bailey an opportunity to return home and say go
od-bye. But Phinn refused. If they let one person go back to the mainland for a family emergency, then they’d have to let everyone go back whenever they pleased. Within a year, the whole world would learn about Minor Island, and someone would have successfully invaded. Besides, everyone had agreed to renounce their old lives when they stayed here.

  The files included information about sick or deceased relatives, but they also came with Phinn’s psychoanalysis of each desired recruit, and the ways he could manipulate them into following him to the island. The information was for his eyes only, so he’d never been careful or eloquent with his word choice. Terms like “pitiful,” “naïve,” and “feeble” showed up in several files. He remembered in Bandit’s, he’d scribbled: So unloved and unwanted that he’d follow me to hell if I asked him to.

  Bandit’s paperwork documented his mother’s struggle with drug addiction, including the months she spent sober after child protective services had taken him in as a ward of the state. Days before Bandit was supposed to be released back into his mother’s custody, she’d fallen off the wagon. What Bandit didn’t know until now was that Phinn had caused his mother’s relapse. He’d found someone to slip her rahat flowers, and when Bandit was told he’d have to remain in foster care, he ran away and slept on the streets. Shortly thereafter, Bandit agreed to leave everything to come with Phinn to the island.

  “You gave my mom drugs!” Bandit confronted Phinn as he shoved him against the wall of the cabin. Phinn felt like his spine might become dislodged, but he found the damage to his body comforting. He deserved it. He would have liked Bandit to beat him to a bloody pulp, but Maz yanked him off.

  Some of the kids had been more easily convinced to follow Phinn on his boat, and he hadn’t needed to topple any chess pieces in their lives to recruit them. But the files didn’t just evoke despair for what Phinn had done to his followers—they were just as upset by the secrets he’d kept from them. How could he casually suggest Bailey name her band the Youth Brigade when he knew her mother was dying? How could he make jokes with Nadia during a fitting when he knew that her little brother had tried to commit suicide on the anniversary of the date she’d gone missing? How could he badmouth Elliot’s parents for kicking him out of the house for being gay without telling him they’d become gay rights advocates after the disappearance of their son?

  There was guilt and regret and plenty of remorse and self-hatred, but none of his feelings mattered to anyone. He tried his best to keep his own tears at bay while mumbling apologies.

  Now you know the real me, he wanted to say. Now you know I’m not a good person. Now I can stop pretending.

  Between the threats and the punches and the spit hitting his face, Phinn looked around for Tinka. He expected to find her laughing or applauding as she watched the charade unfold, but her expression was grim and solemn. She’d asked for Hopper’s file, and was sitting on the ground with it still unopened on her lap.

  Joshua kept a safe distance from him throughout the ordeal. Phinn wanted to check on him, but he kept getting ambushed along the way. Of all the recruits he’d invited to the island, Joshua had been the most skeptical and the hardest to convince to stay. If memory served him correctly, the file stated that “chief of staff” was merely a vanity title to appease Wylie’s brother. And though that had been true at the beginning, it stopped being the case only days into the job.

  Micah didn’t share his file with Joshua, but Phinn knew its contents were far more upsetting. It was nearly sixteen years ago when Phinn’s curiosity got the best of him, and he sought out Gregory in New York City. Before then, he’d been too angry to look up his old friend and see what had become of him, though he’d heard through various sources he’d been living with Olivia Weckler and her wealthy family. Phinn had exiled Olivia after she’d taken a sabbatical in the states and returned past her eighteenth birthday. Over time, he’d realized she was aging and forced her to leave the island. A few years ago, Patrick and Aldo had returned from the mainland with news that Olivia had gotten her medical degree and started her own pharmaceutical company.

  “She’s specializing in anti-aging medications,” they revealed to Phinn, and they’d all laughed at the irony.

  Gregory’s career path, however, had nothing to do with his past on the island. He’d made a name for himself in finance and had earned enough money to buy a brownstone in a fancy neighborhood in Manhattan. Sixteen years ago, Phinn had sat on a stoop across the street from the Upper East Side dwelling and watched it for hours. He was almost hypnotized by it. What was it like to live in a house? He didn’t remember. What was it like to be an adult and have children? The sheer thought of it made his stomach turn.

  Eventually, a woman stepped out with one hand to her stomach. She skipped down the stairs in a hurry and hailed a cab. Even with the cold and faraway look in her eyes, Phinn could tell she was strikingly beautiful. She had to be Gregory’s wife. He quickly flagged down a cab and followed her. The taxi dropped the woman off in front of a medical clinic. Phinn’s cab idled by the curb, and he watched as she paid the driver and clumsily got out of the vehicle. She was so focused on the contents of her purse that she hadn’t noticed Gregory standing outside of the clinic. Phinn rolled his window down and slid low in his seat. They were yelling, so it was easy to hear every word of their argument.

  “You were just going to get rid of it without even telling me?” Gregory yelled.

  “We didn’t plan for this,” the woman argued. “I never wanted kids in the first place. I definitely never wanted three.”

  “Maura, how could you say that?”

  The mixture of anger and desperation in Gregory’s voice revealed how much he cherished his children, and that he considered it a blessing to have more. Phinn could play a long game. He could wait until Gregory’s kids were teenagers, and then he would take them away from their father.

  Eventually, Gregory and Maura stopped fighting and left in a cab together. A year later, Phinn visited the brownstone again, and saw a tired Maura walk down the stoop with an infant tucked into a Babybjörn. Until today, only Gregory, Maura, and Phinn knew just how close Micah Dalton had been to never existing. But now that Micah had sifted through his file, he knew the truth. His mother hadn’t wanted him. Phinn knew the feeling.

  “I can’t live here with Phinn.” It was Bandit who made the declaration. “Either he leaves the island, or I leave.”

  “Bandit, please . . .” Phinn started to beg. He couldn’t let Bandit return to the mainland. The United States weren’t safe for a black kid from Brooklyn.

  “No!” Bandit cut him off. “If Phinn doesn’t get exiled, then I’m getting on a boat and leaving. I’d rather get old than stay here with him.”

  Phinn could still hear the hurt and fury in Wylie’s voice when she had told him she would rather die young than grow old with him. The other kids echoed Bandit’s sentiment. No one wanted to live with Phinn. In one day, he’d gone from their leader to the resident pariah.

  “Don’t send me away,” Phinn blurted. “Please. Lock me up in a cage on the Forbidden Side and keep me there forever, but please don’t send me away.” He knew he sounded hopeless and terrified, but he didn’t care about looking strong anymore.

  “Lock you up?” Bandit asked. “Like you did to Grace and Charlotte and Jersey and the other kids? You want us to stoop to your level?”

  Phinn could feel himself getting frustrated now. They were all complicit in what had happened to the lost kids. Bandit had been a prison guard for months. He could have easily used a key to set each one of the lost kids free, but he never did.

  “It’s not a harsh enough sentence,” Aldo spoke up. “If we lock him up, he’ll stay young. If we really want to punish Phinn, we need to make it permanent. He needs to go back to the mainland and grow old.”

  Most of the kids agreed with Bandit and wanted Phinn to leave the island immediately. For once, Tinka remained silent
. Maz stepped in to put a stop to the protest.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “No more bullying or rash decisions. I think we should take the subject of Phinn’s exile to a vote.”

  Dozens of hands shot up in the air.

  “Not now. We’re acting on emotion. We’ll have two weeks to consider Phinn’s fate. Each of you will cast an anonymous ballot, and we’ll count the results publicly. If the majority of you call for Phinn to leave, then Bandit and I will personally take him to the mainland and drop him off.”

  No one argued with Maz, and Phinn didn’t put up a fight. It was a fair solution, and he would accept his fate. But if there was a God or anyone watching over him, then he hoped Wylie would make it back to the island before the day they sent him away for good.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  toy soldier

  the fourteen-day grace period felt like a death sentence. Only a handful of locals had been exiled back to the States. Phinn had never been liberal with the punishment because he knew the more people he shuttled back to New York, the sooner the whole world would know about the island. But those decisions had been abrupt and without much warning. There had been no time for the person being exiled to say their good-byes or count the hours and the minutes before they were forced to leave Minor Island. Some thought it was cruel to make them depart so suddenly, but Phinn was now certain it was humane. It was so much worse to make a person wait out the days in mourning. How was Phinn expected to say good-bye to the parvaz field he’d worked so hard to nurture and grow? How could he leave behind the cascading waters of the lagoon that allowed him to cool off without any fear that he could drown? Worst of all, how could he walk away from feeding the chickens and watering the herbs and vegetables? He’d spent the bulk of his free time over last two weeks in the garden making sure the plants thrived in Wylie’s absence, and he didn’t want his hard work to go to waste. He made Maz promise to find someone who could remember that the apple flowers needed more sunlight than water, but that the woodmeg and chipney dried out if they weren’t properly doused twice a day.