Michael Grant - Lies

Sanjit was surprised to be asked for permission that first time. He was the oldest, but it had not really occurred to him that he was in charge.

“You’re asking me?”

Bowie shrugged. “I guess you’re the grown-up for now.”

Sanjit smiled. “Then, as temporary adult, I decree that we have ice cream for dinner. Grab one of those tubs and five spoons and we don’t stop till we hit the bottom.”

That had kept everyone happy for a while. But at last Peace raised her hand, like she was in school.

“You don’t have to raise your hand,” Sanjit said. “What’s up?”

“What’s going to happen?”

Sanjit had considered this for a few seconds. He was not normally a thoughtful person, he knew that. He was normally a joker. Not a clown, but not someone who took life too seriously. Taking life seriously was Virtue’s job.

Back in the days when he’d lived on the Bangkok streets and alleyways there were endless dangers: sweatshop bosses who would try to kidnap you and put you to work fourteen hours a day, cops who would beat you, shopkeepers who would chase you away from their fruit displays with bamboo sticks, and always the pimps who would turn you over to strange foreign men for their own purposes.

But Sanjit had always tried to laugh and not cry. No matter how hungry, how scared, how sick, he’d never given up like some of the kids he saw. He hadn’t become brutal, though he surely had survived by stealing. And as he aged on those wondrously exciting, terrifying, never-dull streets he’d nurtured a certain swagger, a certain attitude that made him stand out. He had learned to live each day, not to worry too much about the next. If he had food for the day, if he had a box to sleep in, if the rags on his back weren’t crawling with too many lice, he was happy.

“Well, we have plenty of food,” Sanjit said, as four faces looked to him for guidance. “So, I guess what we do is just kind of hang out. Right?”

And that was answer enough for that first day. They were all weirded out. But they had always pretty much taken care of one another, not relying too much on the indifferent adults around them. So they had brushed teeth and tucked each other into bed that first night; Sanjit the last to go to his room.

Pixie had come in and slept with him. Then Peace had come, holding a blanket to tearful eyes. And later Bowie, too.

When morning came they woke on schedule. They met for breakfast, which consisted largely of toast with lots of forbidden butter and forbidden jelly and thick slatherings of forbidden Nutella.

They went outside afterward, and that’s when they noticed the strange grinding noise.

They had rushed to the cliff’s edge. A hundred feet down they saw the yacht. The yacht-a huge, beautiful, sleek white boat so big, it had its own helicopter-had run aground. The knife-sharp prow was crumpled, wedged between huge boulders. Each slight swell lifted the ship and then let it grind slowly back down.

The yacht belonged to their parents. They hadn’t even known it was coming, hadn’t known their parents were nearby.

“What happened?” Peace asked in a tremulous voice.

Virtue answered, “It ran into the island. It must have been on its way…and then…then it just ran into the island.”

“Why didn’t Captain Rocky stop it?”

“Because he is gone,” Sanjit had said. “Just like all the other grown-ups.”

Somehow at that moment it had hit Sanjit. He’d never had much affection for the two actors who called themselves his mother and father, but seeing their yacht smashed heedlessly against the rocks had brought it home.

They were alone on the island. Maybe alone in the whole world.

“Someone will come for us,” Sanjit had said, not quite sure he believed it.

So they had waited. Days. And then weeks.

And then they had begun to ration food. There was still plenty of that left. The island was stocked for parties that sometimes included a hundred guests, all coming in by helicopter or private jet.

Sanjit had seen some of the parties. Lights strewn everywhere, all kinds of famous people in fancy clothes drinking and eating and laughing too loud while the kids were kept in their rooms, occasionally hauled out to say good evening and listen to people talk about how great it was that their parents had been so generous, rescuing “these kids.”

Sanjit had never considered himself rescued.

There was still a lot of food left. But the diesel fuel that ran the generator was running out despite all their efforts to conserve.

And now there was Bowie. Sanjit could usually manage to sidestep responsibility. But he couldn’t let Bowie die.

There were only two ways on or off the island. By small boat-and they had no boat. Or helicopter. And that they had. Sort of.

The time had come to seriously examine the most impossible option.

Sanjit and Virtue found rope in the groundskeeper’s shed. Sanjit anchored one end of the rope around the not-very-secure trunk of a sapling. He hurled the other end out into the void.

“Probably pull the tree down on our heads, huh?” He laughed.

Sanjit and Virtue went down. The rest were told to stay put, stay away from the cliff, and wait.

Twice Sanjit lost his footing and slid down on his butt till he managed to stop by digging his heel into a shrub or rock outcropping. The rope ended up being no use at all for the descent. It lay off to the right of the path, far out of reach.

The boat, the Fly Boy Two, was still there, battered, rusting, algae sliming around the waterline. It wallowed in the gentle swell, its bow seemingly hanging on for dear life to the rocks it had hit months earlier.

“How do we get onto the boat?” Virtue asked when they had reached the bottom.

“That’s a really good question, Choo.”

“I thought you were invincible, Sanjit.”

“Invincible, not fearless,” Sanjit said.

Virtue made his wry smile. “If we climb up on that rock, we can maybe grab the guardrail on the bow and pull ourselves up.”

From down here the boat was far larger. And the gentle motion that rocked the crumpled bow back and forth looked a lot more dangerous.

“Okay, little brother, I’m going to do this, okay?” Sanjit said.

“I’m a better climber than you are.”

Sanjit put his hand on his shoulder. “Choo, my brother, there aren’t going to be a lot of times when I’m brave and self-sacrificing. Enjoy this one. It may be the last you ever see.”

To forestall further argument Sanjit climbed up onto the rock spur and made his way carefully, cautiously, to the end, sneakers slipping on rock coated with algae and salt spray. He leaned with one hand against the white hull. He was at eye level with the deck.

He grabbed the frail-looking stainless-steel rail with both hands and pulled himself up until his elbows were at ninety-degree angles. The danger zone was just below him and if he let go, he’d be lucky to survive with just a crushed foot.

His scramble aboard the boat wasn’t pretty, but he made it with only a scraped elbow and a bruised thigh. He lay panting, facedown on the teak deck for a few seconds.

“Do you see anything?” Virtue called up.

“I saw my life flashing before my eyes, does that count?”

Sanjit stood up, bending his knees to roll with the boat. No sound of human activity. No sign of anyone. Not exactly a surprise, but in some dark corner of his mind, Sanjit had almost expected to see bodies.

He placed his hands on the rails, looked down at Virtue’s anxious face, and said, “Ahoy there, matey.”

“Go look around,” Virtue said.

“That’s ‘Go look around, Captain,’ to you.”

Sanjit strolled with false nonchalance to the first door he found. He’d been on the yacht twice before, back when Todd and Jennifer were still around, so he knew the layout.