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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. She didn’t see any people, or any buildings, though they could be hidden in the trees or situated on the southern half. 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 her entire life for 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,