For days it had been inside her mind, using her to heal.

To heal who?

She dropped her hand to the vodka bottle, raised it to her lips, and swallowed the liquid fire.

To heal what?

FOURTEEN

30 HOURS, 25 MINUTES

ON THE FIRST day of the disappearance-or, as Sanjit secretly thought of it, the deliverance-he and his brothers and sisters had searched the entire estate.

Not one single adult had been found. No nanny, no cook, no groundskeepers-which was a relief because one of the assistant groundskeepers seemed like kind of a perv-and no maids.

They stayed together as a group, Sanjit cracking jokes to keep everyone’s spirits up.

“Are we sure we want to find anyone?” he’d asked.

“We need grown-ups,” Virtue had argued in his pedantic way.

“For what, Choo?”

“For…” This had stumped Virtue.

“What if someone gets sick?” Peace had asked.

“You feel okay?” Sanjit asked her.

“I guess so.”

“See? We’re fine.”

Despite the undeniable creepiness of the situation, Sanjit had been more relieved than worried. He didn’t like having to respond to the name “Wisdom.” He didn’t like being told what to do just about every minute of the day. He didn’t like rules. And then, suddenly, no rules.

He’d had no answer to the repeated questions from the others as to what had happened. All that seemed clear was that all the adults were gone. And the radio and phones and satellite TV were dead.

Sanjit figured he could live with that.

But the little kids, Peace, Bowie and Pixie, had been scared from the beginning. Even Choo, whom Sanjit had never seen upset, had been creeped out.

The simple silence of the empty island was oppressive. The huge house, with some rooms the kids had never even seen, rooms no one had ever used, seemed as big and as dead as a museum. And searching through the butler’s home, through Nanny’s upstairs suite, through the bungalows and dorms, left them feeling like burglars.

But everyone’s mood had improved when they returned to the main house and opened the walk-in freezer in search of a long-overdue dinner that first evening.

“They do have ice cream!” Bowie accused. “They’ve had ice cream all along. They lied to us. They have tons of ice cream.”

There were twelve big five-gallon tubs of ice cream. Sixty gallons of ice cream.

Sanjit had patted Bowie on the shoulder. “Are you really surprised, little guy? Cook weighs three hundred pounds, and Annette isn’t far behind.” Annette was the maid who cleaned the children’s rooms.

“Can we have some?”

Sanjit was surprised to be asked for permission that first time. He was the oldest, but it had not really occurred to him that he was in charge.

“You’re asking me?”

Bowie shrugged. “I guess you’re the grown-up for now.”

Sanjit smiled. “Then, as temporary adult, I decree that we have ice cream for dinner. Grab one of those tubs and five spoons and we don’t stop till we hit the bottom.”

That had kept everyone happy for a while. But at last Peace raised her hand, like she was in school.

“You don’t have to raise your hand,” Sanjit said. “What’s up?”

“What’s going to happen?”

Sanjit had considered this for a few seconds. He was not normally a thoughtful person, he knew that. He was normally a joker. Not a clown, but not someone who took life too seriously. Taking life seriously was Virtue’s job.

Back in the days when he’d lived on the Bangkok streets and alleyways there were endless dangers: sweatshop bosses who would try to kidnap you and put you to work fourteen hours a day, cops who would beat you, shopkeepers who would chase you away from their fruit displays with bamboo sticks, and always the pimps who would turn you over to strange foreign men for their own purposes.

But Sanjit had always tried to laugh and not cry. No matter how hungry, how scared, how sick, he’d never given up like some of the kids he saw. He hadn’t become brutal, though he surely had survived by stealing. And as he aged on those wondrously exciting, terrifying, never-dull streets he’d nurtured a certain swagger, a certain attitude that made him stand out. He had learned to live each day, not to worry too much about the next. If he had food for the day, if he had a box to sleep in, if the rags on his back weren’t crawling with too many lice, he was happy.

“Well, we have plenty of food,” Sanjit said, as four faces looked to him for guidance. “So, I guess what we do is just kind of hang out. Right?”

And that was answer enough for that first day. They were all weirded out. But they had always pretty much taken care of one another, not relying too much on the indifferent adults around them. So they had brushed teeth and tucked each other into bed that first night; Sanjit the last to go to his room.

Pixie had come in and slept with him. Then Peace had come, holding a blanket to tearful eyes. And later Bowie, too.

When morning came they woke on schedule. They met for breakfast, which consisted largely of toast with lots of forbidden butter and forbidden jelly and thick slatherings of forbidden Nutella.

They went outside afterward, and that’s when they noticed the strange grinding noise.

They had rushed to the cliff’s edge. A hundred feet down they saw the yacht. The yacht-a huge, beautiful, sleek white boat so big, it had its own helicopter-had run aground. The knife-sharp prow was crumpled, wedged between huge boulders. Each slight swell lifted the ship and then let it grind slowly back down.

The yacht belonged to their parents. They hadn’t even known it was coming, hadn’t known their parents were nearby.

“What happened?” Peace asked in a tremulous voice.

Virtue answered, “It ran into the island. It must have been on its way…and then…then it just ran into the island.”

“Why didn’t Captain Rocky stop it?”

“Because he is gone,” Sanjit had said. “Just like all the other grown-ups.”

Somehow at that moment it had hit Sanjit. He’d never had much affection for the two actors who called themselves his mother and father, but seeing their yacht smashed heedlessly against the rocks had brought it home.

They were alone on the island. Maybe alone in the whole world.

“Someone will come for us,” Sanjit had said, not quite sure he believed it.

So they had waited. Days. And then weeks.

And then they had begun to ration food. There was still plenty of that left. The island was stocked for parties that sometimes included a hundred guests, all coming in by helicopter or private jet.

Sanjit had seen some of the parties. Lights strewn everywhere, all kinds of famous people in fancy clothes drinking and eating and laughing too loud while the kids were kept in their rooms, occasionally hauled out to say good evening and listen to people talk about how great it was that their parents had been so generous, rescuing “these kids.”

Sanjit had never considered himself rescued.

There was still a lot of food left. But the diesel fuel that ran the generator was running out despite all their efforts to conserve.

And now there was Bowie. Sanjit could usually manage to sidestep responsibility. But he couldn’t let Bowie die.

There were only two ways on or off the island. By small boat-and they had no boat. Or helicopter. And that they had. Sort of.

The time had come to seriously examine the most impossible option.

Sanjit and Virtue found rope in the groundskeeper’s shed. Sanjit anchored one end of the rope around the not-very-secure trunk of a sapling. He hurled the other end out into the void.

“Probably pull the tree down on our heads, huh?” He laughed.

Sanjit and Virtue went down. The rest were told to stay put, stay away from the cliff, and wait.

Twice Sanjit lost his footing and slid down on his butt till he managed to stop by digging his heel into a shrub or rock outcropping. The rope ended up being no use at all for the descent. It lay off to the right of the path, far out of reach.