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Chapter Three

Friday Morning, 11:48 a.m., fourteen hours earlier

Sofía, the single mom

Javi and I sit on a log, watching the waves crash against the rocky shore. The other families raced ahead to the campground, but Javi’s still a little pale, and I’m hoping the salty air off the ocean will calm his stomach.

“You all right, mi amor?” I wipe his hair off his sweaty forehead. He nods, too nauseated or embarrassed to speak. I wish I’d thought to bring crackers. I didn’t know Javi was prone to seasickness. He’s never been on a boat before. Nearby, a group of girls in their twenties sit in beach chairs, laughing as they swap stories. I’ve never had girlfriends like that, not when I was their age, not when I was younger either. I was always too serious, and then I was too pregnant, a mother too young, working too many hours. Even now, with the nurses at work, we’re cordial, but I’ve never been able to connect with them for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Then, my connection to Cassie was equally confusing. The ease of it. The intimacy.

I watch one girl toss grapes into another’s mouth. When she misses, I think of what the ranger said about not leaving anything behind and wonder what they will do with this sandy grape. Maybe that’s why I’ve never had many friends. Other people would look at these girls and see joy, while I see the litter they leave behind.

I need to talk to Cassie. I don’t have any experience with this sort of situation. Juan and I don’t fight. He teases me endlessly, and I pretend to get offended by it, but our relationship is at a place where it’s easy to keep the small promises we make to each other. We show up when we say we will. We don’t cheat. We don’t ask for more. This last one feels fragile. I know there’s an argument waiting there, too, and it’s one I’m equally unprepared to have.

A gust of wind sweeps off the water, and I shudder. It doesn’t have to be an argument. Not with Cassie, at least. I shouldn’t think of it that way.

“Mamí?” Javi taps my shoulder. Color flushes his cheeks. I brush my hand through his hair again. The sweat has dried, leaving salt like sand across his skin. “Can we go check out the campsite?”

I help him off the log. We grab our backpacks and head along the path in the direction everyone else went. Dave carried our gear ahead. Now that we’re here, the island’s isolation isn’t scary. It’s beautiful. I pull Javi to my side, feeling as much promise at this trip as my son does.

Ahead are several huts that I assume are the campsite. When we arrive at them, they are filled with life jackets and paddles, kayaks stacked beside them. A too-tan white man with a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to his belly button stands in a kiosk that sells sunblock and T-shirts with the adventure-company logo.

“Where’s the campsite?” I ask.

“You with the school?” he asks, and I nod. “You all are at the upper loop. Just take this path past the bathrooms and the lower loop. Keep going, and you can’t miss it.”

I say thanks, and he adds, “Hope we’ll see you this afternoon for a paddle.”

Javi’s eyes light up. While the idea of being in the ocean with jellyfish and sea lions, possibly sharks, makes me queasy, I can see in his face that we are not getting out of it.

We pass the bathrooms, and Javi beams. “Lei told me they look like toilets but they’re really giant holes in the ground that fill with poop. They never get, like, totally full because animals go down there and eat it.” He grins ear to ear. Clearly, his nausea is gone.

“All right.” I put my hand around him, feeling sour in the stomach myself at the idea of using those bathrooms. “Enough poop talk.”

We get to the first campground, and I scan the area, recognizing several people from our boat—the three guys who looked like experienced campers, the family with a child too young to be here, and a couple that are so affectionate they must be new—but I don’t see the families. I ask the three camping experts if they’ve seen a big group, and they repeat what the kayak guide said, that there’s another loop of campgrounds above. I thank them, and one salutes me, causing Javi to giggle.

“Do we have to keep walking?” Javi complains, arching his back like he’s too tired to take another step.

“We’re almost there.” I guide him forward.

We follow the dirt path in the direction of the mountains. Javi whines with every step. When the campsite appears in the distance, Javi straightens up, not wanting any of the other third graders to see him acting weak. There are tables and metal lockers scattered around the campground. It’s like the school cafeteria at a parents’ dinner. I have no idea where to go. The PO moms have staked their four tents to the left, where a tree grows horizontal to the ground. Sawyer and her followers walk across the sideways trunk like it’s a balance beam. I don’t see Lily with them. The working moms—and by working I mean lawyers at Hollywood studios and doctors at Huntington Hospital—have claimed the next spot up, a collection of six tents farther from the bathrooms. At the center of camp, Raymond and his cooks have set up folding tables in a U. My heart races as I inspect the area, knowing that we don’t have a place in it. Then I hear my name and see Dave in the distance, swinging a pole above his head to get our attention. A tent is already set up beside him, and Cassie fans out the fabric square of another, which I assume is the one that belongs to me and Javi. The blood rushes to my head as Cassie’s eyes find me across the open field and she smiles, eager for me to join them.

“We have to sleep near Lily?” Javi asks as we head in their direction, where our tent is now shaped into a dome.

“I’ll be with you the whole time.” I nudge him along.

If I were Cassie, I’d want to know. She will be glad when I tell her.

“Can’t we be with Lei?” Javi pleads.

I scan the campgrounds for Charles. Raymond is setting up a stovetop and laying out cutting boards in the kitchen area, ordering his two cooks around like he’s on TV. Even I have seen Knives Up. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s barking orders as he leaves the parenting and all the bonding that comes with it to Charles.

For his part, Charles is standing beside Raymond and seems as overwhelmed as I am while he decides where to set up his tent.

“Lei,” Javi shouts. “Come with us.”

Lei runs over to us, and the boys take off toward Dave.

“Do you mind?” I ask Charles as he trudges over to me, weighed down with too many bags. “Dave’s already setting up our tent, and Javi really wants Lei by his side.”