“Except for being thrown into this van by you, my life is fine!” Mom planned this. Whatever this is—kidnapping or not—it’s something she arranged.
“We’re a bit unusual, but we help scrappy lads like yourself get back in line.” Briggs pats my arm with fatherly cheer. “Let’s get you some fresh air, some physical routine, and your confidence will flow right back.”
A fitness camp? Mom had me abducted for exercise? Is this like Tough Mudder or something, where grabbing you out of bed is all part of how “extreme” it is?
There has to be more to it than this.
I shrug. For now, it’ll be best if Briggs thinks I believe him. He’ll drop his guard, and when that happens, I won’t hesitate to run.
Streetlights pass through the tinted backseat window, briefly re-illuminating Briggs. His gray shirt clings to perfect, bowling-ball-round biceps. “Your mum says your dad isn’t with the family no more,” he says, popping a stick of gum into his mouth. “He lives in the U.K.?”
“Um…yeah. A town called Tipwich.”
“All right, I’m from Colchester, and that’s a stone’s damn throw! My family holidayed in Tipwich once. Seaside village. Aw, I miss the seaside…” Briggs’s crinkled eyes drift, lost in some beautiful, watery memory, but then a memory of my own sweeps over me: Dad’s Tipwich home lies along a rocky shoreline where waves chop against a massive lighthouse. A boardwalk overflows with a promenade of taffy shops and hundreds of different places to eat (Ambrose only has the one pizza joint). Before my dad screwed up our family, we’d constantly fly to Tipwich. Dad took me rowing and sailing; he taught me knot-tying and navigation. Life had variety then. Mom and Dad were already separated but didn’t scream at each other as much—or at me—and for a few years, things were just…special. Then my grandma died, Dad ditched us, Mom went hyper-Jesus nuclear, and I’ve been staring at cornfields ever since.
“So, Connor, when’s the last time you saw the water?” Briggs asks, as if he could hear my nostalgic thoughts. It’s impossible, but…something in Briggs’s voice relaxes me. He has Dad’s accent.
“It’s been a long time,” I admit.
A warm, gum-chewing grin spreads across my kidnapper’s face. “Well…you’re in luck.”
The moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment Briggs drops his tense, watchful guard over me, never arrives. After another hour, the van dumps us off at O’Hare Airport, just outside Chicago. A plane. They’re planning on flying me somewhere. Briggs hums cheerfully, but always trots a few inches behind, his hands—as toughened as coils of shipping rope—never farther than a single grab away from my neck.
I can’t get on a plane with these people.
At some point in the chaos of the airport, I’ll duck away and scream my head off until security swarms all over this British bastard.
What’ll happen then? I catch a ride home, back to my mom, the person who planned for Briggs to fly me somewhere? What if she just tries again?
Briggs, his team, and I wade through O’Hare’s packed, early morning security line until finally reaching TSA. My nerve never shows up. I could run, but my brain is too agile at gazing into the future, a gift and burden belonging to all anxious people. Mom would try again. Or Briggs would inform the police that my mother asked him to bring me here, and a simple phone call would confirm this. Then there’s the vague possibility that this really is nothing more than a bougie boot camp (one that’s a bit overzealous), I make a big, gay, embarrassing federal case out of it, and the only one who ends up in trouble is me.
Now isn’t the right time, and once again, I defeat myself.
Briggs approaches the TSA agent and flashes my passport—a picture of a ten-year-old with round, smiling cheeks, looking nothing like me now: shitty postured and frowning, with cheeks already scruffy from a day of no shaving. Briggs’s coworkers—short, scowling men who keep tossing me sideways glares—load their bags onto the X-ray belt while Briggs empties his pockets. Once Briggs pours his wallet and change into a plastic basin, he carefully removes a stick that looks like an all-black Pez dispenser.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Good luck charm.” He drops it into the bucket. “I don’t fly without it.”
I kick off the cheap, plastic flip-flops Briggs gave me and place them in my own plastic bin. Soon, it’ll be my turn to step through the body scanner with its robot arm whirling inside a clear, plastic tomb. Ario’s bamboo recorder bounces on its leather string underneath my hoodie. If I step through that gate, I’ll be flying away from my boyfriend.
“This boot camp…how long will we be gone?” I ask.
“A few days,” Briggs replies, slapping my back. “Come on, your mum bought you a vacation. Don’t you want a break?”
The word “break” breaks me. Like a magic word, it loosens my shoulders and lifts my heart. A Goddamn break. I need one so badly from this horrific summer. I allow a glimmer of hope into my thoughts: Mom said she’s tired of fighting. Is this really a vacation? Could this be a peace offering? Mom loves me. She hasn’t shown it lately, but she does. So, either my mom hired men to kidnap and hurt me…or she hired them to get me out of her hair and toughen me up on a sandy beach somewhere.
Which one sounds more like Mom? The latter.
The image of a tropical beach worms its way into my brain’s pleasure center, and in that moment, I choose to believe in my mom.
Briggs digs one final item from his pocket: my phone, boxed in its turquoise case. He must have taken it out of the wall charger after…after he carried you screaming out of your home, a nasty voice argues inside my head. “This phone is your reward for good work,” he says. “All you have to do is put in the effort, and in a few days, I hand it back to you and send you home.”
There isn’t any time to reach for my phone before Briggs lobs it into the bucket already traveling away on a conveyor belt through security.
Briggs loads me up with trashy snacks and trashier celebrity magazines for the flight, which is a six-hour journey to San José. It isn’t until we’re seated for our flight that Briggs clarifies this isn’t San Jose, California, but San José, Costa Rica.
Costa Rica? That’s another country. That’s Central America, like some Jurassic Park shit.
The urge to bolt out of the jet overwhelms me, but the flight attendants have already closed the cabin doors. I could scream, but every time I play that scenario in my head, it ends with the authorities confirming that, yes, my mom wants this to happen.
“My mom actually paid for me to fly to Costa Rica?” I ask shakily as I weigh whether to buckle my seatbelt.