Page 2 of The Chaperones

They both start to get dressed.

“No,” Charles says. “It’s not . . . Ray’s not—”

“We can’t find him,” Sofía intercepts. “Or the boys.”

The cooks eye each other, confused.

“Did he sleep here last night?” Charles asks. “Did Lei come to find him?”

The cooks wordlessly communicate, debating how to answer.

“We haven’t seen him since the storm started,” Evan admits.

“Maybe they went to the bathroom?” Stefan suggests, and Sofía is off. She opens one latrine door, then the next, hit by the ripe smell of human feces. The boys aren’t here either. They aren’t with Raymond. They’ve wandered off on this wild island.

“Javi,” Sofía screams, so loud her voice radiates through her core. Goose pimples sprout on her arms, but it’s difficult to distinguish between the cold and the fear. “Javi.”

The wind carries her pleas to the hills, across this modest chunk of land that feels infinite with the disappearance of her son.

She trudges through the camp, Charles, too, banging on tents, searching for the boys.

One parent emerges, then another, ushering their confused children back to sleep. They congregate beneath the eucalyptus trees of the common area where they had last gathered for the talent show. The parents swing their flashlights, stalking the space around them with their headlights. The campground is quiet, seemingly calm other than the wind.

“Sawyer’s asleep,” Brady says. “Wyatt too.”

“So’s Lily.”

“And River.”

The parents rattle off their children’s names, relieved that their kids didn’t run off into the night with the boys.

“We need to find them,” Sofía pleads.

“We’ll find them,” a father promises.

More fathers and mothers appear from their tents, so many that, in the frenzy and the darkness, it’s hard to keep track of the plans they all make. Of who, if anyone, is in charge.

One father says he’ll get the ranger. Another offers to go with him.

“I’ll check the lower loop,” someone announces.

“I’ll go to the beach.”

“I’ll try the kayak huts.”

“The Visitor Center.”

“Do you think they would have gone into the hills?”

Everyone falls silent. The trail over the hills toward the other side of the island is tough to follow in daylight, let alone at night.

“I’ll check up there, then loop back toward the coast,” Cassie says. Even in the confusion, everyone recognizes Cassie’s voice.

“A few of us should stay here, make sure none of the other kids—” The mother falls quiet.

Sofía sets out with an infantry of parents toward the lower loop, the flattest and most logical direction the boys would have gone. Charles races after them. His husband is missing, too, but no one has mentioned Ray.

Their flashlights dance with the wind, darting from side to side as they shout for the boys. Sticky mud cakes the soles of their boots, slowing them down like they’re wading through water. They don’t scrape it off. They charge ahead, because as soon as they stop, as soon as they doubt, the impossible becomes possible: The boys are missing. They might not be found.