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  When he reached six thousand feet, Jim leveled the plane and settled back for the short flight to Skin Island, hoping that in doing so, he wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

  THREE

  SOPHIE

  Sophie’s heart beat as rapidly as the propeller of the plane, as if it might saw right through her ribs and burst from her chest. She didn’t know which was stronger: her worry about her mother or her excitement to finally see the mysterious island that had stolen her mother from her. Her nails, which she’d had manicured just a week ago, were now bitten short, and she dug them into the denim of her jeans. As the plane clawed its way through the clouds, she had to force herself not to grind her teeth together, a habit various dentists had scolded her for on countless visits.

  I’m going to Skin Island.

  It hardly felt real.

  But the plane around her certainly felt real; it jolted and shuddered worse than a subway train. When it bucked suddenly, throwing her against the seat belt, she reached out and grabbed Jim’s arm, her stomach and heart tangled in her throat.

  “You okay?” His voice was muffled in her ears, the headset transmitting so much static she winced.

  “Fine.” She let go of his arm, embarrassed by her jumpiness. He had only one hand on the yoke, and the other rested lightly on a knob on the center console. His amber eyes studied her sidelong from behind his dark aviators, and his lips quirked into a half smile.

  “Scared of flying?” he asked. “We used to go up all the time with my dad, remember?”

  “Not scared,” she replied quickly. “It’s just been a while since I was in such a small plane. I forgot how bumpy—ah!”

  The Cessna tilted to the right, and she clamped her teeth onto her lower lip and slammed a hand into the window to steady herself. Jim laughed.

  “You’re doing great!” he shouted.

  “I should have known you’d end up here,” she said. “You loved this when we were kids.”

  He laughed again, and the knot of nerves in Sophie’s stomach slowly relaxed. There was something soothing in his easy confidence, the way his eyes lit up as the plane gained altitude. Compared to this Jim, the one she’d spoken to on the ground had been half-asleep. She found herself staring at the line of his jaw, the way the corners of his lips continually twitched as if he were always on the verge of a smile. His thick, dark hair crested over his forehead in an unruly wave, and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to attack it with a pair of scissors or run her fingers through it. She was intrigued and a bit shy of this grown-up Jim, unsure of how much of the boy she’d once known still remained.

  Realizing she was staring a bit too long, Sophie turned away and looked through the windshield. Above them stretched a ceiling of clouds, bending away to the horizon. She felt a flutter of claustrophobia in her gut—a strange feeling, considering I’m surrounded by the whole of the sky—and to distract herself, she reached out and ran a finger over the yoke in front of her, wondering how it worked. She gripped it with both hands and tried to imagine what it would be like to fly the plane.

  A string of white beads hung from the ceiling; they swayed with every movement of the plane. On each bead was carved a word in a language Sophie did not recognize. She reached up and took them in her fingers, running her thumb over the delicate letters. “What does it say?”

  Jim glanced at the beads. For a moment he didn’t reply, and she peeked behind his sunglasses to see his eyes had a faraway look. “It’s a Chamorrita poem.”

  Chamorrita. The call-and-response poetry sung by the Chamorro people, who were Guam’s original inhabitants. She remembered sitting on Ginya’s lap as she sat on the porch with the other Chamorro women, braiding jewelry to sell to the tourists and singing intricate, clever verses back and forth, like freestyle rap, except sung by grandmothers. I forgot how much I loved this place.

  “So what does it say?”

  “It says, ‘There is no brightness without darkness. There is no body without its shadow.’”

  She let go of the beads, and they swung hypnotically, the sunlight flashing off them. “Some kind of good luck charm?”

  He drummed his fingers on the yoke, and his tongue darted across his lips. “So your mom moved out to Skin Island full-time, huh?”

  “Yeah. I don’t remember the details, and she doesn’t talk about it, but I think she was promoted or something and had to move closer to the lab out there. That’s when Dad and I moved to Boston. He teaches biology.”

  “Remarried?”

  “Yeah. Her name’s Karen. She has two kids, younger than me. What about your folks?”

  “About the same as yours. Mom split three years ago, haven’t seen her since.”

  Sophie stared at her hands in her lap. “Sucks.”

  “Yeah.” He shifted in his seat, lifted a hand to massage the back of his neck. “Have you been to Skin Island before?”

  “Never.” But not for lack of begging. Sophie leaned her head against the glass window, then sat up again when the vibration made her teeth rattle. “I see my mom three times a year at least, and she e-mails and calls a lot. We’ve stayed close, considering.” Considering the distance. Considering how much my dad hates every moment I spend with her. She’d never understood why her dad loathed her mom so much, or what had severed them apart all those years ago. Maybe Skin Island held the answers; it had certainly been a recurring topic of contention in their house when she was seven.

  “We sure tore it up, didn’t we?” Jim asked, lightening the mood with a grin. “Back when we were kids.”

  Sophie snorted and propped her elbow against the window, resting her head on her hand as she looked at him. “It’s lucky I did move, or you might’ve landed me in jail.”

  “Nah. You were too cute to get in trouble. It was me they always blamed.” He winked at her, and she rolled her eyes.

  “You were the one that deserved it!” She studied him thoughtfully. “So how have you been, anyway?”

  “Oh. You know.” He shrugged. “Nothing changes here. Same old faces, same old drama.”

  “What about Ginya?”

  “She left when I was about ten, to take care of her mom in Yigo. I’ll see her every now and then. She hasn’t changed a bit. You’d recognize her right off. She’s like, ageless or something.”

  Sophie smiled, comforted by the idea that some people never changed, could always be depended on to be exactly the way they should.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Boston, huh?”

  “Ugh. It’s cold and dirty. I miss here.” She turned and looked down at the blue water below. “I miss the beaches and the never-ending summer.”

  He grimaced. “I’ll trade you. You know I’ve never been to the States? I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’ve never once set foot on the continent of North America.”

  “You have a deal,” she said. But it wasn’t Guam she wanted, not really. It was Skin Island. This was the argument that had her and her dad at each other’s throats lately. With her senior year approaching, Sophie was ready to make college plans, and her goal was to get through med school as fast as possible and then get a job with her mom. She couldn’t imagine anything more worthwhile to do than find cures for the disorders and diseases of the world. Her mom was a hero, and all Sophie had ever wanted was to be by her side, helping her. But for reasons her dad never seemed able to articulate, he was dead set against her plan. Well, if anyone can back me up, it’ll be Mom. If her mom was okay. Anxiety fluttered in her stomach like a wounded bird, and the note in her pocket weighed like a brick. Dozens of possible explanations came and went through her thoughts, from the mundane to the impossible. A broken limb? An incurable disease? The island was out of toilet paper? Was she being held hostage by a tribe of island cannibals out of a nineteenth-century adventure novel? Her imagination rampaged through a host of wild scenarios, and for the hundredth time she wis
hed her mother’s e-mail had been more specific. This wasn’t 1860, when people sent messages by telegraph and had to pay by the letter.

  She leaned her head back and stared up at the ceiling, which was covered with bumper stickers, most of them so old their colors were faded and their edges curled up. They blasted slogans like KEEP CALM AND FLY ON, I’D RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD, and CAUTION: AVIATION MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR WEALTH. One depicted a Pegasus soaring through stylized clouds, but instead of feathery angel wings it had sleek airplane wings fixed to its shoulders. There were at least a dozen different AOPA stickers. She glanced behind her; the backseat was cramped and in some places, the cracks in the leather were covered with duct tape. It made her a bit nervous, as her mind couldn’t help but imagine the engine being held together in a similar manner. Then she thought, Can’t go back now. Might as well make the most of it.

  Suddenly the plane burst out of the cloud and into another world. Sophie gasped. As a child, she’d flown in this same little plane, and she’d definitely seen the sky from above on the big Boeings, but she’d forgotten it could be like this. So close, so real, so immense. The clouds spread below and around them like some silent white city, with coiling spires and rivers and bulbous stacks, all made of the same pinkish white cloud. It was a dreamscape, a world that continually shifted and flowed, sparkling in the sun like ice cream. She felt the urge to open the window, reach out, and scoop the clouds into her hands as if they were foam in a bubble bath. It was dazzling and terrifying, and the more she stared the more impossible it seemed. The clouds seemed spun of silk the color of apricots, piled and folded and flung across the sky by an unseen hand. She had the strangest sensation that she was three years old, completely enraptured by childlike wonder, pressing her nose to the glass while Jim’s dad laughed and wobbled the plane on purpose to scare them.

  “Something, isn’t it?” Jim’s voice crackled through her headset.

  “Very,” she whispered, and she stole a look at Jim. Their eyes met and held, and he grinned. She found herself smiling in return, and feeling suddenly shy, she looked away.

  They dipped back below the clouds, and Sophie fell into a trance, hypnotized by the endless wrinkling sea. It sparkled with a million winking lights, like a sheet of gray silk peppered with golden white glitter. She saw a few islands, dark green and bent into irregular shapes, pebbles dropped carelessly across the sea. They looked so small it seemed she could pick them up and slip them into her pocket.

  Jim lifted one hand and pointed toward the east. “There she is.”

  Her reverie snapped in two. She leaned toward him and stared out his window as he took the plane lower.

  Skin Island expanded as they approached, became brighter, more green, its mountains more pronounced. They steepled down the center of the island like satin green tents, their foothills crowded with dense forests of palms and pines. The shadows of their ravines were a deep purple, testifying to the range’s steepness and height. A cloud cast a shadow over the southern rim of the larger island, where she thought she glimpsed something white—buildings, or perhaps just the beach. A smaller island graced the waters above the northern shore, like a dot over a fat, slightly bent lowercase i.

  “The airstrip is on the smaller one.” Jim’s voice crackled through her headset. “I guess she’s expecting you?”

  “My mom? Yes. It’s Friday, isn’t it?” Her mind still felt a bit fuzzy whenever she tried to reckon out the time change, factoring in the international date line as well.

  “It’s Friday,” Jim confirmed.

  Sophie’s eyes were fastened on the island. The whole situation didn’t feel quite real. Skin Island. She had to keep reminding herself that this was it; there was the island rising up from the sea, the island that haunted her her entire life though she’d never seen it until now.

  She’d lost count of how many times she had begged her mother to let her come to Skin Island, always to the same negative result—so why now? What had changed? She hadn’t hesitated a moment when she saw the e-mail. It was if she’d been waiting an excuse to do this very thing, running off to Skin Island to see her mother in her element. She’d always wondered why she’d been sent to Boston with her dad, instead of here, with her mother. She didn’t recall having ever been asked what she wanted to do. All she remembered was that one day, her mom kissed her on the forehead and said she’d see her at Christmas, and a month later Sophie and her dad were on a plane to the States. It was a whirl of dizzying changes that had assaulted her too quickly, too wildly for her seven-year-old mind to digest. She’d always resented her father for whisking her away to a new life and new family she’d never wanted, and always dreamed her mother would whisk her back. She’d just never imagined it would happen quite like this.

  “They are expecting you, right?” Jim’s voice crackled through her headset.

  She blinked at him. Were they? A sudden, new scenario burst into her thoughts—what if the emergency had to do with the company her mother worked for? Sophie had never trusted the shadowy corporation and its penchant for secrets. What if they’d done something to Moira? “I . . . I don’t know. I mean, my mom is, but—”

  His fingers gripped the yoke tighter, making the veins stand out on the backs of his hands. “Look,” he said, “I just want to stay out of it, okay?”

  “What do you mean?” She slid him a confused sideways look.

  “Just saying.” He kept his eyes trained ahead, but she could see the tightness in the skin around them, even behind his glasses. “All I want is to fly in and fly out, okay? I don’t know what your mom’s got going on in that place, and I don’t want to know.”

  She shrugged and turned back to her window. That makes one of us.

  Jim tilted the yoke, and the plane sank through the air. Sophie’s stomach rose and for a single moment she felt entirely weightless. Within seconds, she was looking straight ahead at the island instead of down at it; the plane seemed so close to the sea that she imagined she could reach down and drag her fingers through the water.

  The plane began to jerk and shudder the lower they went, and Sophie gripped her seat and felt her stomach turn over, threatening to slosh up her breakfast. Jaw clamped tightly shut, Sophie trained her eyes on Jim, as if somehow she could will him to make the wind stop throwing itself against the plane.

  He must have noticed her discomfort, because he gave her a lopsided grin. “Don’t worry,” he said, rolling his shoulders as if he was on a casual stroll down the beach. “I can handle this.”

  “Then shut up and start handling it,” she said through her teeth.

  Jim laughed. The plane tilted violently onto its side, and for a moment, she was certain they would roll over and slam into the ocean. The grin on Jim’s lips slipped, and then she really began to feel nauseated.

  “What’s wrong?” she shouted, resisting the urge to grab onto his arm and hang on for dear life.

  “We’re fine!” he insisted.

  The island rushed up to them. Too fast too fast, she thought, pressing into her seat with her eyes stretched wide and her heart pounding. Palms whipped past them, and suddenly there was a ribbon of tarmac unraveling below.

  The plane slammed onto the ground, and Sophie was certain that was the end, it was over, she would die—but Jim was laughing and saying, “See? No problem! That was easy as—”

  POP POP POP.

  Something snapped, something Sophie knew was most likely not supposed to snap, and the plan went into a violent spin, skidding out of control across the pavement. She was thrown against the door, then against Jim, her seat belt cutting into her diaphragm and making it hard to breathe. Everything whirled around her as if she were caught in a giant blender, colors and shapes coalescing into a dizzying rush. An earsplitting screech sliced through her head, a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards, or forks scraping china plates, so loud that she felt it vibrating in her teeth.
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  She felt Jim’s arms around her, holding her tightly against him, and she pressed herself into him and was so seized with terror that she couldn’t even manage a scream.

  FOUR

  JIM

  Though it felt like the crash dragged on in slow motion, it lasted only a few seconds before the plane ground to a stop, propped on its wing and nosing slightly upward. The propeller still spun in front of them, clawing at a sky it could not reach.

  For a long moment, Jim couldn’t move. His arms were still locked around Sophie, who had her hands over her face. Her slim form trembled against him. She was utterly silent, and had been through the whole ordeal. He was dazed and shocked—the landing had been going perfectly, smooth as water over glass, and then . . . What? The runway was clear, but it felt as though they’d hit a boulder.

  Carefully, Jim extricated himself from Sophie, keeping one hand on her shoulder. He gently pulled her hands away and found her staring blankly at nothing, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He shut off the plane and the propeller slowly wound down.

  “Sophie?” He looked her in the eye, but sensed she couldn’t see him. “Sophie, are you okay?”

  Slowly, her gaze focused on his. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and for a moment, he thought she might start hyperventilating. Hell, what do I do? He thought vaguely of a brown paper bag, but he didn’t have one, and anyway, he didn’t see how that would help.