I winced. "Hold on-"

Grant came closer to me. "Just hear me out."

I shook my head furiously and put my hands over my ears. "No no no no no..."

He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, but when I opened them again, he was still standing there like that.

"You’ve lost your mind!" I shouted, pointing at him.

A tiny smirk grew on his face, as though he wanted to laugh, but was forcing himself not to. I grunted in frustration and turned my back to him.

He walked to my side, but I spun so my back faced him still.

"Ryleigh," he pleaded as he tugged at my shirt. "Please, just listen to me."

I removed my hands from my ears and placed them angrily on my hips. "Fine! Go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say. But, just so you know, I think you’re insane."

He inhaled deeply before speaking. "I don’t know about you, but for me? I’ve hit my limit. I’m done! Yes, I want off this island. But I know I’ll never rest easy unless I know what the heck is really going on here. I’ll obsess over it; I know I will. I need to know why they brought me here; why they brought you here. All of us here! It can’t be for nothing. I can’t go through all of this without knowing the reason why."

I knew that deep down, I felt the same way. I wanted to get off that island and return home more than anything. But as I pictured myself back in my room, back with my family and my friends, back at school, back to normal, I knew that I’d have no real chance of feeling normal again unless I knew the reason for all of this. Leaving it a mystery would never be enough. Why did Dean and Gina kidnap me on this island? Why me? And what was going on there? I had seen people get hurt and some had even died. I had been hurt and almost killed. And for what?

Could I really go home without knowing?

"I’ve thought of being back home about a million times," I said. "I’ve never thought about anything after that though. I just imagine myself back at my house, in my bed in my room, and that’s where my little fantasy ends every time."

He waited patiently as I blinked tears away.

"And thinking past that moment now? I’m terrified. I’ll never sleep well again unless I have some type of...closure. I want to know why they took me. Why me? Why any of us? What’s it all for? Are Dean and Gina just two nut cases or is there a real reason they’re doing this? Did they kidnap everyone who’s here or just our group? I need to try to find an answer," I rambled.

His face had grown serious. "Let’s give it a shot. But safely! We won’t put ourselves in any danger- well, no more than we’re already in. Anything sketchy happens? We leave and go back to trying to escape this island."

As much as I felt myself leaning toward agreeing, I purposely exaggerated my irritation. He saw right through me, of course, and tried not to laugh again. A short chuckle escaped his lips and he masked it with a cough.

I narrowed my eyes and scowled at him. "Well, when you’re done being amused, I’d suggest we start coming up with a plan."

He coughed once more, loudly. "Agreed."

I rolled my eyes. Grant cleared his throat and started to walk away. "Come on, let’s find a better spot and see what we can come up with."

He spun and kept walking before I could protest. I groaned and followed him, stomping behind him on purpose.

Grant wanted to walk with minimal breaks until close to sundown. Then we’d look for a place to spend the night while plotting our attack. As we walked, we would take quick breaks or slow down a bit before picking up the pace again. During those times, since we weren’t gasping for breath, we’d throw ideas back-and-forth at each other.

We agreed that we didn’t want to come face-to-face with Dean, Gina, or anyone else if we could help it. We’d continue to look for Cal, Beth, and Will, but wouldn’t let that steer us from our newly paved path. Our goal was to search for information. We wanted answers to our many questions, and realized the police would, too. The more we could tell them, the better.

Grant said that if the police caught Dean and Gina now, they’d never be sentenced to life in prison. That meant that one day, sometime in the future when I least expected it, they’d be free. What if they came looking for me? The more we could prove to the police against them, the longer they’d be locked up far away from us.

We would go back to the cabin in hope of gathering information or clues we may have missed before. Then we would go to the other cabin; the one where we had tracked down Aaron at. If we still couldn’t find anything useful, we would hopefully find the boat keys and leave the island. Our last stop would be the cabin I had originally met Gina in where Dean had taken me. Once we were there, we agreed we could consider ourselves having escaped. We’d get to the highway and contact the police and then our families.

By sundown we had found a small alcove hidden away from where we assumed was too out in the open. Using a flashlight, we sat huddled together and drew a map on a piece of paper from the backpack. Grant thought he had a good idea of how long it should take us to get to each stop. If we did find Cal, Beth, and Will, we would update them on our plan and give them the choice of either coming with us or staying put, unless they wanted to go for help on their own. Any of those options was more than good with me.

We had started collecting food of any kind and storing them in the backpack. Even though I was completely terrified of going through with our plan, it provided a light at the end of the tunnel. At least I knew that once we were done, we would be finding a successful way off the island.

"Let’s try to figure out what’s going on here. Did you hear Aaron say anything that stuck out?" Grant asked me as we tried to get comfortable on the hard ground.

"You mean besides him wanting to kill me by throwing me off a cliff? Hmm..."

His face fell.

"Sorry," I said and paused. "Not that I can think of. What about you?"

"Well, I’ve been replaying it in my head over and over again," Grant said. "Aaron said something about playing and having a strategy. And then he said how he couldn’t believe he had gotten stuck with our group. That makes me think he knew there would be other groups here. But how?"

I sat silently before muttering softly. "You remember a lot of what he said. I don’t. I’m sorry."

"Of course I do," Grant replied. "I’ll never get his words out of my head. When he had you-"

His voice cracked and he stopped talking. I looked away, waiting a few moments before speaking again.

"Okay, so..." I said softly. "Aaron must have known this is all some type of game. I’ve never heard of any game that was like this."

"Me neither," he agreed. "But that’s what it sounds like. Maybe Dean and Gina do this every summer. Recruit kids like Aaron. Kidnap kids like us..."

I had grown too tired to sit up any longer. Laying down, I cushioned my head with my arm and looked up at him.

"If you’re right, and they get a bunch of kids like us and like Aaron and stick us all on this island?" I paused to yawn. "I still don’t understand how that’s a game."

Grant stretched and laid down beside me. "I don’t know either, but I think we’ll figure it out. Get some sleep, Ry."

As I slept, I had nightmares of Aaron holding me near the cliff. I could see the terror in Grant’s eyes as Aaron inched closer to the edge. Everything moved in slow motion in my dream. I woke up screaming as I was thrown off the cliff by Aaron, Grant being too slow to grab me. I sat up in the dark, panting and close to tears. Grant had heard me and bolted awake.

"Ryleigh! What- who? You okay?" he stuttered, still half asleep, his voice groggy sounding.

I caught my breath and exhaled slowly. "I’m okay. Everything’s okay. Go back to sleep."

Carefully I laid back down trying not to fully wake him. I rolled onto my side, facing away from him and forced my eyes shut. Tears burned behind my eyelids, but I squeezed them back and took a deep breath. Grant groaned and rolled onto his side, wrapping his arm tightly around me. I froze, thinking he had done it while completely asleep. But then he nuzzled me into him and whispered, "You’re okay, Ry. I’ve got you."

My heart pounded, but not from fear anymore. The images from my nightmare disappeared from my head. Grant was warm against me and I let him envelop me as I drifted back to sleep. It was barely after sunrise when we got up and reviewed our mapped out plan. After Grant had drawn it out, we thought we found a shorter route to the first cabin. If we were right, we’d end up going in a circle, returning back to the first cabin at the end. From there, we could retrace our steps and get to the boat dock. After refilling our water bottles and filling the backpack up with whatever food we could find, we headed out.

Next Chapter: Forty