“Costa Rican beaches, bright blue as a sapphire,” Briggs says, the crinkles reforming around his young eyes. “You’re gonna love our island, but I have to tell you: we’re not cheap. And we’ve only been paid half. You’re free to go home whenever you want, but if you break our contract, we still send you the full bill. And your mum’s made it clear that if you break our contract early, you’ll have to pay back everything yourself.”
Pay for this entire trip myself? Whatever she’s already paid, it has to at least be a few weeks of her pulling extra shifts in the ICU. She can’t even afford to buy me new shoes.
“Why do we have to go to another country just for a boot camp?” I ask. “There’s, like, a thousand of them in Illinois.”
“Because Illinois isn’t gorgeous,” Briggs chuckles. “Why put Disney World in Florida, why not in Illinois? Why go to Paris, there’s paintings here in Illinois? Because Illinois sucks, mate. It’s where people live; it’s not where you holiday. We don’t want our camp to be a bunch of hard work in some dreary bunghole of a strip mall. The unplugging and the beauty of nature are part of it all.”
Unplug. After a century without my phone, I don’t need any more unplugging. I need to be plugged in, I need my life back. I also need some beauty, it’s true. I have had it with wall-to-wall soybean fields and nothing pretty in my life. Sometimes, a gay boy needs a little beauty, a little fanciness, a little luxury, or he’ll starve.
This is a vacation away from the snake pit at home, Major. Try to enjoy yourself.
I buckle myself into my window seat. Around me, dozens of untroubled people leaf through magazines and nap against their shuttered windows. Satisfied that I’ve chosen to cooperate, Briggs grins, his salt-and-pepper scruff circling two bullet-hole-shaped dimples. He pulls out his black Pez dispenser and tucks it into the front pocket for takeoff.
As the flight crawls by hour after hour, Ricky Hannigan’s note—NIGHTLIGHT—seeps back into my thoughts. He wrote it over and over. His dying words. HELP CONNOR.
I can’t help you, Mr. Hannigan. I’ve got my own bag of crap to worry about.
By the time we land, it’s daytime, but I don’t know how many hours have passed because the sky is blistered with storm clouds. Guided by Briggs, I stagger through a large, sleek airport crammed with passengers in floral-print shirts and walls dotted with palm trees. This lifts my heart a bit; I haven’t seen palms since Mom and I left Jacksonville. The possibility that this kidnapping is indeed a vacation continues to prove itself.
Briggs’s two other men continue glaring at me as we navigate the emptying terminal. I’m dying to change out of these ratty clothes. I’ve had them on since…yesterday? It all feels like one day. It wouldn’t take much to convince me I’m still in my bed in Ambrose—that there is no luxury boot camp, and I’m having one weird bastard of a dream.
WELCOME TO JUAN SANTAMARÍA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, a sign reads in English beneath a similar greeting in different languages. My mouth falls open as reality registers: Costa Rica. I’m not in America anymore…Pins and needles invade my head; being kidnapped was startling enough, but finding myself in a new country is a YIKES of a different color. I only have Briggs’s word (and my mom’s approval) that we’re headed to a fitness camp.
Why is it so easy for me to trust scary, unpredictable men?
Oh, that’s right, my dad.
All Briggs needed to do was speak confidently with a country English accent, and I let him smuggle me to another country without asking for so much as driver’s license verification.
There’s nowhere to run now. Even if I were coordinated enough to duck away from these men, I’m multiple countries away from anyone I know and I’m still in the clothes I fell asleep in, without money or a phone. Continuing with Briggs is the most sensible plan…for now. Then I’m going to need proof he’s telling the truth—a pamphlet, at least.
The airport is refrigerator cold, but it’s a sweet relief from the stinging, wet heat of the tarmac. Our caravan of exhausted bodies clomps toward the next gate, where a terrified girl waits for us. Around my age and height, she shivers in a pale pink, spaghetti-strap dress. Dark brown, highlighted hair hangs in messy strands around her neck. Two other men, also dressed in black, surround her as she trembles in place like a frightened dog. But not her eyes—they’re furious.
She’s been taken, just like me.
The black-dressed men give Briggs a hard time about being kept waiting, but he charges ahead toward the girl and says, “Molly Partridge, I’m Ben Briggs. You’re freezing. They keep it so nasty cold in here. Let’s get you a coat.”
“She won’t wear a coat,” says one of the men.
“No coat?” Briggs stares into Molly’s steady, bloodshot eyes; she shakes her head quickly. “You don’t have to wear one. Come on, we’re late.”
A gale wind kicks up as our endless journey continues with a Jeep ride through a lushly green Costa Rican party town. Store signs and posh hotels advertise the pleasures of Jacó to American tourists, who slurp booze out of coconuts as they stagger through the streets despite the worsening weather. Coconut palms spring out of every corner, their fronds beating frantically in this dangerous wind. The afternoon sky might as well be midnight. Rain hasn’t fallen yet, but it absolutely has plans to do so.
I sneak my hand under my hoodie to hold Ario’s recorder and try not to think of how we’re thousands of miles apart.
The ominous weather has long since emptied the beach of its guests. Deck chairs are shuffled away by hotel workers, while out in the darkened ocean, catamarans bounce in the breaking waves against the pegs pinning them to shore. We arrive at a vacant dock with two massive, iron pylons tied to an open-shelled patrol boat, the kind they use in the Coast Guard. Molly and I turn to each other, neither of us able to open our eyes more than a slit.
A van, a plane, a Jeep, and now a boat? In this ocean? In THIS near-monsoon?
A heavy gale whips out from the gulf, tossing around my already unkempt hair. The pitch-black water…to say it scares me is an understatement. Anything could be out there—anything could be down there. Briggs scoots us along the dock as the other team members board their seacraft and secure our luggage with bungee cords. Time to climb aboard. I breathe steadily to psych myself into this, but as I grip the stern’s ladder, Briggs tugs me back.
“Ladies first,” he orders. I shrug at Molly, and she rolls her eyes before hoisting herself on board. I’m about to follow her when something stops me: a word stenciled in white along the boat’s starboard side. A word I can’t believe I didn’t notice until now. A word that assaults every nerve in my body:
NIGHTLIGHT