Page 25 of The Chaperones

That night, 2:41 a.m.

Sofía runs over to the UTV that Ranger Emmy has just pulled to a stop at the lower loop. “Did you find them?”

Emmy grabs her floodlight and slowly steps out of the vehicle, like she doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Or worse, she’s scared too.

“My son,” Sofía’s voice wavers. “Did you find my son?”

“Ma’am, I’m getting up to speed here. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I woke up, and he wasn’t in the tent.”

“When was this?”

“An hour ago? I was sleeping deeply. I don’t—” Sofía falls to the ground, her knees digging into the soft mud. She catches her face with her hands. Her shoulders convulse with each cry. “Javi,” she whispers.

“Ma’am, I know this is difficult, but—” Emmy has to stop herself before she promises that they will find her son. They will find him. It’s an island. A small one. They’ve never lost a camper before, not permanently. They’ve never found a dead one before either. They’ve also never had a child wander off at night during a storm. Two children. And if they decided to go for a swim . . . she cannot promise this woman anything. “I just need a little more information.”

Sofía remains on the ground, crying and begging for her son.

“Over here,” a voice calls from across the campground. The beam of a flashlight dances in the air. “They’re over here.”

Emmy focuses her attention on the voice, somewhere in the darkness, as a symphony of boots splats against the wet earth when campers start to run. Sofía floats up and sprints toward a light now waving in the distance. Emmy jogs, too, until they all stop at site nineteen in the lower-loop campground.

Outside a cavernous tent, two of the mothers are huddled over a boy, saying again and again, “Are you okay? Lei, sweetie, are you hurt? You gave your dad a real scare.”

“Charles?” one of the mothers calls, shining her flashlight at the campers who have amassed around them. “Where’s Charles?”

“I had to pee,” Lei says. “And when I got out of the tent, I saw a fox, so I got Javi and we followed it. Then it started raining, and we didn’t know where we were—” He starts to cry, and the moms hug him tighter.

“Shh.” They quiet the boy. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Emmy casts her wide light across the scene: the zipped-up tent, the camping chairs lying on their sides from the storm. She directs the beam of her flashlight at the boy. He squints in protest, but she needs to examine his face, to make sure he’s not hurt.

“Javi,” Sofía screams, brightening the area with her flashlight. Lei points toward the tent. Without hesitating, Sofía crawls into the strangers’ tent. It smells strongly of sweat, marijuana, and the damp earth that surrounds it.

“Mamí!” Javi greets his mother exuberantly. He sits alone inside the tent, piles of cards face down around him. “I’m playing poker.”

“He’s got a good poker face.” A man laughs.

Sofía bounces up and approaches the man and his two friends, standing helplessly beside the tent. The other campers slowly close in on them.

“What the hell were you doing with my son?” Sofía barks.

“What?” one of the men says, startled. His pupils are dilated, even with several flashlights aimed at them. Sofía recognizes him from the boat, how he sat with his long legs outstretched across the aisle like he owned the row, forcing her to step over them to pass.

“We found them wandering around,” his friend says, stepping in front of the long-legged man. The beams now congregate around him instead. “It was raining pretty hard, and they were scared, so we brought them into the tent to wait out the rain.”

“We were playing cards. I guess we didn’t realize the storm had stopped.”

“Did you touch them?”

“Jesus, Sofía,” one of the mothers says.

Sofía ignores her and crawls into the tent where her son is sitting cross-legged. She inspects his wide, unblemished face. “Did they touch you?”

“Of course we didn’t touch him.”

“What the hell are you trying to imply?”