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mirror from the shower, coffee brewing, morning eggs on the stove; we were still in bed, some of us, half-awake and fumbling for early-morning sex. I was stone sleeping while the others nodded over breakfast or got the jump on commuter traffic to the mainland two bridges and one island away from Kraven island.
    Between heartbeats, we were picked up and— what— transported .
    We came as we were, in whatever we slept in or put on to face the day, a hundred thunderstruck citizens of Kraven island, set down in the middle of nothing. We don’t know how it happened or what happened. We were all happily doing whatever we did every morning on Kraven island, hitting the snooze alarm, walking the dog or bringing in the morning paper, texting or skimming the Web, ordinary people sleepwalking through the moment, not thinking about what our lives would be like if all this luxury that we took for granted, ended.
    Then without transition, we were here.
    Missing? Me? Why a minute ago I was  …
    Sand gusts into the bleak enclosure where we— fell? Landed in this compound, enclave, porcelain basin set down in a desert, contained in this glossy, bleached out— what?
    What is this place?
    Dropped into a square of gleaming, featureless buildings in a dead desert town where nothing grows, shaken and muttering, most of us, we try to locate ourselves, while at the periphery of the plaza where we landed, Father bellows, bloated with rage. Mother woke me with tears in her eyes the night she fled him. “Look after your baby brother,” she said and I have, until— where is he? Oh God, oh, God!
    â€œNed, do you hear me? Neddy! Ned! Edward Lamar Poulnot, you stand up and signify!” It’s so crowded that I can’t make him out. Whirling under the bleached sky, I fix on the flagpole, standing tall in the middle of this mob. There’s no flag at the top to identify this place or tell us what country we’re in or whether it’s a country at all, just a windsock flapping, loose ropes rattling against the shaft.
    â€œNed Poulnot, do you hear?” Together, we shuffle and fret under the murderous sun, miserable and confused, struggling to orient ourselves, to comprehend, while Father runs around the margins with his knees going, like pistons on a broken machine, battering the universe with that big, ugly voice.
    â€œNed?” If I can only find Ned, then I know I’ll find Davy. I’ll find him and. Then what? “Davy! Dave! Has anybody seen Dave Ribault?”
    But all I hear back is Father, raging like Moses with the tablets raised, ready to smash them on the cement in the plaza of this weird, dead town. Then people I thought I knew fix on the one thing they recognize in the confusion and turn to Father for orders, forgetting the drunken rages and how that usually ends.
    Thank God, Ray Powell cuts him off at the pass. My excellent friend and the real power behind Kraventown; he’s famous for his soft touch. They don’t know it, but Ray keeps even the worst of us in check. Last year he removed Father from the bench so smoothly that the town thought he was retiring to write the history of the Poulnots, three centuries’ worth. While the rest of us were flailing, Ray’s been scouting the plaza— the glistening surfaces of the buildings that dominate on four sides. Four exits: four diagonal roads that lead out of the square, and at its center, the flagpole. Mounting the marble steps to the top of the pedestal, Ray has found the highest point in this place, a square apparently designed to level or subdue anyone who enters here.
    Standing tall, Ray shouts, “Over here,” and everyone in the plaza turns to him, all at once, leaving Father to rail on, forgotten.
    â€œThis way!” Ray lifts us with his voice and turns us around in that easy, commanding way he has. “Fresh clothes!”
    Furious, Father rants while the rest of us, undressed or