But of course, it wasn’t over. I slept through the police boat’s arrival and subsequent dismissal, but from the story that Kevin told me later, they were all too happy to get off Cavador Key as soon as they were told the police call was a misunderstanding, a “boating accident.” “Salt and Gehry put on an Academy Award level performance,” he said. “Quite astounding, really.”

“And the rest of them?”

“Stayed out of it!”

I remember getting on the Myers’ yacht, but not why it took so long, and blessedly, I don’t remember a single moment of the trip back to the mainland.

Somehow, I wound up in a fine hotel suite in town (possibly on Jenny’s dime and Odile’s reputation), cocooned inside a massive white comforter, while my fellow knights debated about whether or not to send me home to Ohio. I remember that conversation for sure. Because I remember sitting up and telling them no.

“I don’t agree with a lot of your judgment calls lately, Amy,” Demetria said.

“I don’t care,” I replied. If I went home now, I didn’t know if I’d ever come back again.

“But, Amy,” Clarissa said, “you have to tell your parents.”

I compromised and told my folks I’d been in that alleged boating accident (true) and got tangled up in some ropes (also true), and was banged up a bit, but was okay now (remained to be seen). My mother started crying, and my father begged me to spend the rest of Spring Break at home, where they could keep an eye on me. I basked in their parental love and concern, but I told them I’d rather go build houses in Louisiana with my friends, as planned.

Within a day—thanks to Odile’s no-fail detox diet—I felt back to normal, with nothing more than the scabs on my wrists and ankles to show what had happened to me. From what I was conscious for, there had been a lot of debate among the other members of the club about whether or not they could pursue a case against Darren Gehry without my consent, or barring that, if they could just leak it to the media.

The oath of fidelity was invoked quite a lot. It was my secret, and they were sworn to keep it. As soon as I felt up to the argument, I told them all about Darren’s confession to me on the island, and explained his strange conviction that everything he was doing was par for the course in society pranks.

“But how could he possibly conflate kidnapping and what we do?” Clarissa asked, baffled.

“What we do?” Demetria said, and I practically saw the bulb light itself over her head. “Like breaking and entering? And robbery?”

“And vandalism,” said Ben.

“And hacking and stalking, and…assault.” Jenny bit her lip, and I could see the figure of Micah Price looming large before all of us. “We’re pretty bad.”

No one wants to be shown just how low their moral high ground really is. After that, most of the others came around to my way of thinking, and those who didn’t at least respected my decision.

It bothered me a lot that Poe never called. I don’t remember seeing him on the dock that night, but then again, I couldn’t remember much beyond the stricken faces of the Gehrys.

I stopped Clarissa the following afternoon. I was sitting on the couch of the suite, pretending to watch videos and veg out while I fretted over the situation. “Do people…know where we are?” I asked.

“Malcolm called yesterday,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t want visitors yet. He’s going back to Alaska, but I’m sure…”

“No, that’s fine,” I said. Malcolm had called. But what about Poe?

That evening, while we were repacking to leave for Louisiana, Josh and Lydia phoned from Spain. The knights had left him a message earlier, asking about the legal ramifications, and Lydia was frantic to know that I was okay. I allayed their fears and reiterated to Josh that there was no way I was pursuing charges against Darren, but all the while I wondered what our patriarch who was actually in law school thought about the matter.

During the long drive up the Gulf Coast with the other Diggers, I finally got to hear bits and pieces of the story from the others’ point of view.

WHAT I KNOW FOR SURE

1) They hadn’t decided that I’d broken the plates in the tomb that day. In fact, Poe had never even brought it up. They were still blaming the campers on the other island by the time Clarissa and Odile reported that I was missing late that afternoon.

2) In his rush, Darren had left his backpack (name conveniently sewed inside) behind on the beach, along with the bottle of bright blue Gatorade and my flip-flops, which must have fallen off when he dragged me to the boat. Inside the backpack was the empty bottle of ipecac syrup and some broken pieces of china. “Trophies,” Demetria had said with a shudder.[14]

3) They’d gone to the Gehrys to see if Darren knew where I was, but found the Gehrys had little clue as to their son’s whereabouts, which is when Demetria and Ben put two and two together about the location of the backpack and the missing rowboat.

“But how did you know that he’d taken me against my will?” I asked Demetria.

“Well, Amy, it’s not exactly a secret that you don’t like the water,” Jenny said.

Odile looked up. “It was Jamie. Jamie knew you weren’t about to get into a boat.”

“Where’s Jamie now?” I asked.

But no one knew the answer to that question. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask them where he’d been while I was being rescued that night. Would they find it odd that I cared? And, more important, would I hate the answer?

Two days later, I was enjoying the catharsis one derives from a well-stocked nail gun in a small bayou town in Louisiana. The days were long and no one in the Diggers’ crew (who, for the purposes of the trip, were undercover as nothing more than a group of friends) was going to win any cuisine awards at the end of the week. Still, the work and lifestyle kept my mind off all the things I wanted to obsess about: the future, Darren, and Poe. I’ll tell you this: I hadn’t had one nightmare about drowning since I’d started sleeping on a church floor with fifteen other ersatz construction workers. (And only once had the memory of Poe and me in the shower house made me flush red from something other than the southern sun.)

I was stacking roofing tiles when George approached, hands in pockets. “Your tattoo is showing,” he said.

I yanked my tank top down in back, but then wondered why I’d bothered. Clarissa had been sailing around all week with her shoulder-blade symbol flying free. Demetria’s tattoo was almost always on display, but you barely recognized it in the midst of all her other ink. And still, no one had seen Jenny’s. I was starting to suspect she didn’t have one.

George looked at the ground for a second. “Have you spoken to Jamie recently?”

“No.”

He nodded, slowly. “I was just wondering what he thought about the no-pressing-charges thing.”

“Yeah, I was wondering myself,” I said, then laughed. “He’s probably fine with it, though. He’s so gung ho about our status above the law. Wouldn’t want me to do anything to hurt the society.”

George’s expression turned confused. “What do you mean, Amy? He’s the one who called the police.”

“What?”

George shook his head. “Didn’t you know? Jenny couldn’t get any reception with her battered cell phone, and Salt wouldn’t let anyone use the radio on the island’s boat. He insisted he be the one behind the wheel if we went out to the other island to look for you guys. Such a bastard. I can’t wait until we’re on the Trust board and can fire his ass.”

“But…Jamie?” I asked. Stay on subject, George.

“Yeah, so we figured Salt was trying to protect the Gehrys at that point, and we were all pretty angry, but when Salt wouldn’t budge, Jamie jumped on the Myers’ yacht and released the rope so Kurt Gehry and Salt couldn’t follow him aboard. It drifted out and he radioed the police. That’s when we left to get you.”