“What about your eyes now?” said la Grande Dame. The carefree way the old girl bobbed about in the frothy waters. Striker realized she herself was balling her fists.

  Anders spoke up. The teen’s cheeks flamed red, either from the sun or wind or shame. “We put a towel over his face,” they said in a small voice. “We weighted it down with rocks.”

  “Haven’t you noticed? Some of these birds have a ten-foot wingspan,” Striker said. “You think a couple of rocks are gonna keep them away from dinner?”

  That’s when she noticed Vadim sitting in the rock pool. Considering the guy’s arms had been a foot longer when they’d arrived on the island, he looked pale but otherwise okay, his arms back to normal, each one floating weightlessly on top of the water.

  “And you?” she said to him. She tried to soften her tone. “You good?” She knew she still sounded angry but she couldn’t help it. Her hand was throbbing.

  “I am very great,” he said.

  “He’s double-jointed,” explained Anders, eager to change the subject. “Turns out his joints slip in and out super easy.” The kid went on to explain that once Vadim regained consciousness, he just needed a little help sliding them back in. “My mom’s a doctor,” Anders said.

  Striker turned her wrath on Bobbi Sue. The image of Alexei’s tattered face—would it ever not be there in her rearview mirror? “A doctor? Why are we only learning this now?”

  Bobbi Sue sat upright in the water. She didn’t answer, the question not registering on her face. Striker noticed she hadn’t loosened the seal around her neck. Because of her seated position, the air in her dry suit had floated up to the top, inflating her chest like some kind of centerfold. Kevin was seated beside her. He seemed as if he’d forgotten all about his wife in the cabin under the ratty blanket and was currently more concerned with keeping his two dry bags afloat.

  For the first time since the accident, something inside Striker broke. Sometimes you have to hand over the keys and take the hint. If the day presents you with a hot spring, you say thanks and get your ass in. She climbed into the rock pool and sat down.

  It felt good. The blue sky, the balmy water, no sounds of traffic, no people yelling at each other, no screaming kids, no sirens. Everything—the leopard seal, the accident, Alexei with his ripped face—had been leading up to this.

  She put up her hood and lay back, let herself float. She thought of Percy, his naked body sliding over hers in the sauna. Was that just last night? The feel of his tongue on her lips, him telling her she tasted like cinnamon. Why not, she thought. Why not float away in the memory of being with Percy in the sauna until the Yegorov showed up and carried them back to the show? And if the boat didn’t come, if she was destined to be stranded here for the rest of her time on earth, why not wallow in the memory of Percy with his strong arms and his ripped stomach touching her in the dark until the forever sun set?

  “We should head up,” a voice said. “If we’re too hungry, it’ll make the climb harder.”

  Striker sat up and opened her eyes. In the distance she could see something small and yellow standing on a faraway rock. She knew if she peered through Anders’ binoculars, she would see Lucy and the gray rat preening itself on her shoulder, the kid and her little gray friend glaring at her or worse, grinning.

  “Okay,” the voice said. “Let’s go.”

  They brought nothing with them but their dry bags. Striker didn’t have much in hers. Some gum, lip balm, a second SD card and battery, plus both her cameras and phone. The nearest signal was likely five hundred miles away transmitting from some rocky crag on the tip of South America. She tried turning on each of her devices one more time but they all remained useless except for the Holga. On her phone, the screen was still frozen with the same time as her watch. 12:14 p.m. Had there been something electromagnetic about the insane winds that had killed Percy? She was glad she’d brought a vintage camera along. She wanted to take a picture of the group trudging toward the volcano single file like a scene straight out of Bergman but she knew she should ration her film. She only had two 24-exposure rolls.

  Kevin made the hike with a dry bag hanging from each of his arms. The bags were made of the same vulcanized yellow rubber as their dry suits. Occasionally he would walk off a little ways for some privacy and crack one of them open. Each time he did, Striker thought she saw a light pouring out, his face inexplicably brightening.

  Anders unscrewed a paddle, breaking it apart into two separate oars. They handed the Baron and their mom each a half. The Baron held his part with the paddle pointing up, the other end a stick he could lean on when needed. It wasn’t great but it was better than nothing. Bobbi Sue dragged her half on the ground. When they reached the foot of the volcano, she gave it to the Baron. The old guy now plodding along with a stick in each hand, an aged king gripping his spears.

  Slowly the group made their way up the slope. Striker kept expecting to arrive at the spot where Taylor had fallen, but nothing looked familiar. Back on the beach, she had asked Anders to give them some privacy as she told the other adults what had happened. She couldn’t be sure Kevin or the Dame had mentioned it, the Dame because she was a narcissist and it didn’t involve her, Kevin because it did. Afterward, Striker wondered if maybe she should have included the teen in the debriefing. Only Vadim showed any interest in the story. He’d given her a thumbs-up the way one might when asked for their opinion on a new recipe you were trying out, but in this context, she wasn’t sure what it meant. The Baron had remained uncharacteristically quiet as if even talking about death might bring it on, all the while Bobbi Sue intently scanning the beach for her babies.

  And now they were almost to the top without ever seeing the blood trail.

  We must be going a different route, Striker thought. Yeah, there’s no reason to lead a kid past a murder scene.

  Still, if it were up to her, she’d have marched Kevin onto the nearest ice floe and pushed him out to sea. If you were hoping to kill someone, a chance like that—being hundreds of miles away from the nearest police station after a terrible accident with nobody left in charge—came around only once in a lifetime. Lucky duck. Someone like Taylor probably had a Lloyd’s of London–level insurance policy plus a stock portfolio that went on for days. The guy had opportunity and motive. Wasn’t that all you needed? If she found the time, Striker would hunt down a pen and some paper and write down her impressions. It might be enough to interest the police on multiple continents. After all, there are certain things you shouldn’t be able to get away with no matter where you are.

  Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a pointy rock smeared with goop. She rushed past the others to check it out, but it was only freshly coated with guano.

  Finally there was the mama cairn rising on the lip of the crater, the other formations coming into view.

  “Magnificent,” said the Baron. “Reminds me of the Bixi at Harvard.”

  “Is perfect place for human sacrifice,” said Vadim brightly.

  The spot was just as she’d left it. The small black hut still clung to the side of the volcano, the door flung wide open after she fled in panic. She hadn’t mentioned that. About a voice talking to her out of thin air. Also didn’t tell the others about the tunnel in the underground room or the tiny fingers sprouting up out of the ice. Life was complicated enough. She’d simply said there was a grotto of sorts under a trapdoor, a space full of trash and probably inedible food.

  Back at the beach they’d decided to abandon what was left of Alexei to the elements seeing as how Mother Nature had already done half the job. Vadim dragged his fellow countryman’s body to a distant spot and cut off the rest of his dry suit with an eight-inch utility knife Kevin had whipped out of nowhere. Nobody asked why he had it. It had to be the thing that made his face glow each time he opened his dry bag. Great! As if the idea of getting your brains smashed in with a rock wasn’t bad enough. Now they had to worry about their new widower slicing an array of holes in their bodies.

  Vadim bowed his head over Alexei before walking away. Only Anders asked if he was all right. The Russian simply grunted and kept moving. The teen turned to Striker and told her about something called a sky burial, which they’d read about in World Civ. The yogis of Tibet butchering a dead body so that the birds of the air might make short shrift of it. Been there, done that, Striker thought, studying the gash in her hand. Wasn’t nothing spiritual about it.

  Now at the top of the volcano, Kevin was the one to suggest they put Taylor down in the ice room far, far away from the island’s feathered friends. Outside the hut, he took a deep breath and threw his shoulders back. Honey, I’m home, Striker imagined him saying as he entered.

  “Can I have a second?” he asked. “A moment alone with my wife?”

  “Da,” said Vadim. “Do what doing needs.”

  The rest of the group waited outside as Kevin bowed his head and entered.

  He’s cutting off her finger so he can access her phone, Striker thought.

  Almost as soon as he’d gone in, he came back out laughing. He hugged the dry bags closer to his chest. He laughed some more, the pitch rising and rising into the realm of hysteria (that word again). He stood there glued in the doorway, the others peering around him.

  Only Striker managed to squeeze past. She walked around and around but it was just the one room. She stopped to gaze down the ragged hole where the hot air hissed forth but the radiance poured out the same as ever, nothing plugging it up.

  The ratty blanket lay in a heap. Taylor was gone.

  Instinctually Striker made the sign of the cross. She pulled out the little gold necklace hanging around her throat and kissed—

  << it’s summer on Zinnia Trace, the full moon a piece of lint caught in the oaks that loom over the houses big as cruise ships. There’s Striker and Ama and the other children on Zinnia gathering by the hydrant. What should we play? Red light green light? Kickball? Freeze tag? Two of the boys want to get a game of street hockey going, but the girls say no, soon the lights’ll be on and we’ll have to go inside plus this time of day the puck’s too hard to see. So as usual it’s hide and seek, you in? It’s what we play every night, every night the neighborhood children disappearing one by one while our mumsies and daddies sit reclining in the den, the living room, the home office, the room with the TV and minibar, our parents with their own rituals for disappearing, tumblers in hand, letting themselves hide in the way adults hide, erasing themselves bit by bit through drink or later when the funny men on TV have gone to bed in sunny California, mummy and daddy erasing themselves through what the nuns at Our Lady call the offices of the flesh, what Evangeline’s mummy who phones home to Paris once a month calls la petite mort, the little death, Evangeline’s mummy telling her oldest amie in the world that she does not die a little death nearly enough because Evangeline’s daddy is selfish, yes, late night the parents on Zinnia Trace eager to disappear and forget their perfect lives with their perfect families, the Lord their soul to overtake with the deliciousness of forgetting through the body’s one bliss until morning when all will arise again in Thee to go forth conquering with Thy flag in hand. Rinse and repeat.

  Ama and Striker have lived on Zinnia Trace since the end of June. At the local elementary school this coming fall, there will be no one else like them in the whole building, Sonia Gonzalez the only one even close, Sonia’s daddy a hero from Cuba. All the other girls with their long, shiny hair pulled back, tied up like the tails of horses. Same thing at Our Lady of the Annunciation, where Ama and Striker go each Sunday with Doug and Trish and also on Tuesdays for the special classes that teach them when to stand, when to sit, when to join hands and lift them to the sky, what to believe. Each week Ama and Striker living the story of Ruth peering from the alien corn, Ruth on her own in a faraway land. Same on the youth soccer team Ama and Striker will both play on, same in the pool where on Thursday afternoons they will learn to swim. The water the reason why Doug will take the clippers he uses to trim his beard and carefully cut the sisters’ braids off, their heads shorn close, two little black lambs. Their old hair ratty and matted because when Mabel got more and more poorly feeling, she didn’t have the energy to twist it, then the ravages of Trish and her white lady hairbrush plus the effects of chlorine, in Ama’s case, the thirty minutes each week spent just trying to learn to float, Striker taking to it easily, Striker a little rain cloud on top of the water, progressing up the ladder from minnow to fish to flying fish and beyond, at the end of every lesson, Striker racing the boys up and down the lanes, meanwhile Ama by the side of the pool crying in that high-pitched way of hers the adults on Zinnia Trace call shrieking about the water being inside her head, taking up all the space, the water sloshing around in her ears, up in her nose, and where is she supposed to live, there’s no room left for her until Trish and Doug decide it’s not worth the shrieking, the therapist agreeing there might be an unknown trauma there, something about water and the face, maybe abuse, it’s not in the file but who knows? Striker knows, knows that’s just Ama with her funny little original way of being, her sister an open book. If she wants to shriek, she shrieks, why shouldn’t she? And so now it’s Striker alone at the YMCA on Thursdays, Striker in the locker room with the other shiny little girls like the one who circumspectly asks Striker why her skin is like that, is she dirty, the girl wanting to understand what she has never seen before, skin like soil. That last year with Mabel the apartment in the small brick house growing darker and shabbier, the flowers choked with weeds, the curtains crooked. After the haircuts, Doug’s clippers nicking Ama’s scalp, the braids lying on the bathroom tile like trash, Doug and Trish pleased with what they’ve done, so pleased they will start showing The Wiz on a continuous loop in the playroom as the therapist recommends, telling the girls they’re beautiful, you’re beautiful like Dorothy, just look at you and your beautiful head of hair like nobody else on this street in this school at this church in this pool in this town in existence.

  But that is yet to come. This is Ama and Striker’s first summer on Zinnia Trace, their first weeks in the big yellow house the size of ten barns. Everything new. The way their clothes smell. The ugly foods they eat. How they have to come in when the streetlights turn on. The way the street has lights that stay on all through the night until the sun comes back. The two sisters have never been around so many shiny people who walk like ducks. Who move around believing whatever they touch is important. Their children the same. Little ducks with stiff legs, nothing fluid in their movements, no grace, no pouring yourself back and forth the way the women did where Ama and Striker used to live before Mabel got stiffer and stiffer, Mabel on the floor unmoving. Here the people expect the universe to open for them like the doors to the mall when you step on the black pad. Only the chosen allowed in.

  How did Striker end up here?

  Oh yeah. Summer nights on Zinnia Trace. Hide and seek. The children circle up, put their feet in. One of the older boys begins the work of counting off, tapping each foot with his finger as he chants:

  My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.

  My mother punched your mother right in the nose.

  What color blood came out?

  The song ends on Striker’s foot. She knows it’s a trick. All summer long she has watched and listened as these strange children say the strangest things when asked the color of blood. Orange, blue, purple, green. Have they never seen blood on asphalt, Striker thinks, blood on a doorjamb, blood beading on a man’s lip, trickling down his chin?

  “Red,” she says.

  R-E-D spells red and you shall be the one.

  A small blond girl sighs, whines that she always gets tapped. Are you playing or complaining, the older boy says. The girl sighs one more time and turns her face toward a tree as if kissing it, and begins to count.

  One. Two. Three. Four—

  “Come on, Ronnie,” says Ama, pulling her sister’s arm. Ama is eight, Ronnie six. The children scatter like birds. Children like Ama and Ronnie don’t live on Zinnia Trace. Until they do. For starters, there’s a circle at the end of the street where the road ends, which means you barely need to look out for cars. Ama and Ronnie run and run, searching for the perfect spot. The houses big as entire apartment buildings where Ama and Ronnie used to live, buildings with whole families, the people with hundreds of years among them. Here the houses have three or more garage doors that roll up like blank faces at the push of a button. The yards bigger than the dusty parking lot where Ama and Ronnie used to play, these yards like fields, like what’s that word Trish and Doug use to describe the part of the backyard beyond the stream? The meadow. Trish and Doug saying don’t go into the meadow. The meadow is off-limits.

  Ronnie hopes Ama isn’t taking her into the meadow. At night, the meadow with its tall grass, its alien sounds. Ama is crazy enough to hide in the meadow among the unnerving animals the two sisters have never seen before, the rusting car where teen couples come to put their hands all over each other, gaze deep into each other’s eyes and pretend they can see themselves there forever. The meadow where Ama ran and hid for an hour after they came home from swimming because the teacher had finally had it and threw her in, the teacher a teenager, a boy with shaggy blond hair who said she was wearing a life vest so nothing too terrible could’ve happened anyway, and afterward everyone frowning and making Ama feel bad about the shrieking instead of the kid, who was smiling when he did it, Ronnie saw, the small smile on his lips as he launched her dark and shrieking sister into the air.

  When they find the spot, the smell is bad, real bad, Ronnie’s eyes watering from it. Why does she know things her sister doesn’t? Like how to hide the unrecognizable food Trish is constantly slopping on their plates. How to stash it in a napkin and then go to the bathroom, flush it down the toilet. That Mabel isn’t coming home, that they’re not going back to the place they used to live across the street from the pickup store and the Dominican restaurant where the music played in that language that itself sounds like music. They are not going back. This is their life. They still have the green T-shirts from Catholic Charities that they wore to that party and now they live with Doug and Trish. Why does Striker know this and her sister doesn’t? Those green T-shirts their tickets to this heaven which will give them everything they never knew they wanted if only they play the game and watch and listen and imitate, merge.