Until the Day I Die(90)

Then another person’s screams replace mine.





54

ERIN

As Shorie and the moped slide together toward the sulfur pit, they kick up a cloud of gray dust, obscuring them from view. Everything slows down then, my thoughts crystallizing in a physically painful way.

I am the one who set all these events in motion. I summoned my daughter—my child who loved me and trusted me to always protect her, to always have her best interests at heart—to this island. But even before that, I’d been so selfish. I’d pushed her to keep going the way I did, insisting she go to school, brushing aside her pleas for my attention. And now I was about to watch her die.

All of this is my fault.

I sprint toward her, every cell, every building block that makes up my body, reaching for Shorie. Every day of my life, since the first moment that I held her, since I looked into her baby face, when I dried her tears when she was six, when I watched her draw that simple icon on her easel. The silent ride home the night Perry left us, the hours we cried, each of us hidden away in our separate rooms. Even the screaming match at the fraternity house—it has all led to this moment.

She’s so close now, within a couple of feet of me. I can see her perfect Shorie hair, her freckled face and hazel eyes the same color as Perry’s. They are fastened on me, full of all the hope and belief that a daughter has for her mother. Full of love.

I dive, a spectacularly awkward, Pete Rose headfirst thing, reaching for my daughter. But she reaches too, and our hands meet and clasp, just as the bike splashes into the mud. We scramble away from the pool and bear crawl up the slope, finally collapsing in the dust and rocks at the top.

By then, I can hear Lach’s high, staccato screams ripping through the air.





55

PERRY’S JOURNAL

Monday, March 18

TO DO:

Set up meeting with Sabine—Global Cybergames issue / next step?

Drinks with Roy @ Epic—Columbus, GA—3/20, 8pm



Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

It is the star to every wandering bark

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken . . .

(for Erin and Shorie, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, no constraint because it’s too damn perfect already)





56

SHORIE

Using my phone’s spotty GPS to guide us toward the ferry terminal, Mom and I head through the jungle. As we go, I tell her everything I know about Sabine and Arch. How they’ve been carrying on a secret relationship for years and stealing money from Jax so they can run off together. How Ben figured it out, but that he seemed unsure how to handle Sabine, maybe even reluctant to blow the whistle on her. And how he definitely didn’t want me involved.

“Does Gigi know?” she asks.

“I don’t think so.”

Just as I can see the glint of water through the trees, a river it looks like, Mom puts her hand on my arm.

“What?” I whisper, but she doesn’t answer.

“Nice to see you all,” comes a voice from the wall of leaves, and then a woman steps out, like the star actor from behind a stage curtain in a Broadway play.

She’s blonde, tall, and pretty and wearing a sleek all-black hiking ensemble. Her hair is braided in this really complicated crown around her head. She has a gun holstered under her arm.

“Antonia—” Mom says.

The woman whips a walkie from her shorts. “I’ve got them,” she says crisply. “By the river.”

Mom puts her hand on my back.

A man’s voice scratches back on the woman’s walkie. “Copy.”

She looks at me. “Hi there. What’s your name?”

“Don’t speak to my daughter,” Mom says.

“Shorie,” I answer.

“Shorie,” she says. “I’m Antonia Erdman. Owner and operator of Hidden Sands. So nice to meet you.”

“Antonia,” Mom cuts in. “It’s over. Let us go.”

“And I’m so sorry to hear about your father.”

I don’t answer.

“I think he’d be impressed with what you’ve done today. What you’ve tried to do.” She smiles. “Did you know, Shorie, that when my father turned Hidden Sands over to me, it was almost bankrupt? It was; then I took over and came up with the idea to turn it into a new kind of rehab. A restoration. I’m the one who came up with the L’élu challenge, then L’élu II. And finally, our premium service, L’élu III.”

I don’t have to ask what she’s talking about. I wasn’t on Zara’s computer for more than a few minutes, but it was long enough for me to see everything I needed. What’s weird is that she’s bragging about it.

“We’ve had sixteen women participate in L’élu III. That’s sixteen problems, solved. Your mother and the other woman are the only ones who’ve ever given us a hint of trouble.”

“If you want to talk,” Mom snaps, “talk to me.”

Antonia regards her. Unholsters her gun and examines it. “All right, Erin, let’s talk. I see you got away from my brother.”