CHAPTER ONE

An Island Missing From Maps

 Our little airplane bursts through the cloud bank into the sun, conquering in a nanosecond the turbulence that has plagued us since takeoff. My window shade is open, and I’m accosted by the sudden change of light. Severe clear. An Air Force term from my dad’s world.

Even though I’m seated in the last row, the solitary flight attendant rather thoughtfully serves me first. On the linen-covered tray rests an egg salad sandwich and a tiny piece of chocolate cake. It has been hours since my last meal, but I slide the tray table away from me and slump lower in my seat. I can’t think about eating.

Not now.

Not after what happened.

“Are you okay, honey?” the flight attendant asks. She looks crisp and neat, her dark uniform pressed and tailored to her frame.

“The hurricane,” I murmur. I don’t know how else to explain my disheveled appearance. My clothes are soaked and tattered. My hair is a tangled, windblown mess.

She either misunderstands me or is being kind. Her smile, it is sympathetic. “Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “We’re flying far ahead of it now. Your island will be fine, I’m sure.” She pats my shoulder and moves on.

My island?

Was it ever mine? Could it still be?

With Julian, perhaps.

I clutch the black velvet pouch tighter in my palm. I think of the journal I left behind covered in black lace by Becky with love. Black velvet and black lace. Black sugar and black diamonds. Storm clouds over an island gone astray, an island missing from maps.

How did it all begin? One second, I was an ordinary military brat, dreaming big. “Dreaming of prairies without fences,” my dad once said. The next second, I was somebody. But whom? The girlfriend of an uncrowned prince? The doppelganger of a dead island queen. Or, alarmingly, someone much, much more.

~

This saga started on what should have been a forgettable Thursday in May. Had the fire alarm not gone off in the middle of calculus, and had Mr. Carlton not accidentally locked the classroom door behind us when we evacuated and promptly lost his keys, I never would have seen the advertisement for the essay contest.

I never would have gone to the island. I never would have met Coco or Orchid. Or Julian.

Especially Julian.

The advertisement was thumbtacked to one of those bulletin boards no one ever looks at, and I wouldn’t have, either, except we were stuck in the hallway, waiting for Carlton to find a spare set of keys. For lack of anything better to do, I stifled a yawn and stared at the bulletin board. It was filled with club announcements on colored paper, all stamped with smiley faces and the words “Approved by the Administration.”

What caught my attention was a photograph near the top of the board. Next to a massive promotion for class rings was a picture of a beautiful place. Triangular, dark-green mountains draped by clouds. An aquamarine sea washing up on a beach lined with palms.

This Summer Learn Spanish Through the Immersion Method, the poster read in black letters. It was followed by a tempting invitation. Essay Contest: Win the Chance to Spend Eight Weeks on the Caribbean island of Carabajel with the Intercultural Language Institute.

There were little serrated tabs at the bottom of the poster with the contest information. It sounded pretty simple. I had to write one thousand words on how language unites the world and email it to the address listed on the tab. I knew it was a long shot at best. But I really did need to learn Spanish. And fast.

Two months before, I had received word I’d been accepted into the international studies program at Vassar College on one nearly impossible condition—I needed to arrive on campus in September with fluency in the language of my choice. Not an easy feat considering even though I was in Advanced Placement Spanish, my conversation skills were borderline non-existent.

I tore off one of the tabs and put it in my pocket when I thought no one was looking.

“Spanish, huh?” I jumped at the noise and turned to see one of the varsity baseball players standing over me. His name was either Ted or T.J.

“I saw you got into Vassar, Pipes,” he said. “I always knew you were a smart cookie.”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I heard you got in to…” I let my voice trail off because I actually had no idea where he had been accepted. Sandy Point High School prided itself on being college prep, and the guidance department put up a huge congratulatory poster in the main lobby with everyone’s name and college. But I wasn’t sure what this guy’s first name was, let alone his last name.

The one thing no one ever tells you about being an Air Force kid and moving around from place to place is people start to look the same. Not sort of the same, but exactly the same. Marlene from Austin looks exactly like Elizabeth from Albuquerque, and Tara looks even more like Jackie from Cheyenne. Chris resembles Angelo, and Angelo is a dead ringer for Adam. And if there is one thing in this life that will kill a possible friendship immediately, it’s repeatedly calling someone the wrong name. I always tried to be a part of my class and fit in, but sometimes it was too hard to keep track of whether it was Tara/Jackie who stole Adam/Angelo, or if I was remembering that from another school.

Meanwhile, Ted/T.J. was still grinning down at me. “I got accepted to Stevens Tech,” he said. “It’s still Jersey, but I’m going to party it up in Hoboken. You around for the summer?”

I nodded. “I don’t leave until late August.” And I’m counting down the days, I thought.

As far as I was concerned, Vassar was a ticket out of the dull towns and military bases that defined my life. I was dead tired of the regimented lifestyle, the gray buildings, and the talk of desert wars. I wanted exoticism instead of drabness. I wanted to see places where everything didn’t match, places unlike our duplex housing units with officers drifting about in identical uniforms.

In my seventeen years, we had lived on six bases in six states—Alaska, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming, New Mexico, and New Jersey—and each one was nearly indistinguishable from the others. To tranquilize myself against the sterility, I collected old maps, read travel blogs, and stared at my nightlight globe, plotting the day when I would escape the Air Force.

Someone at the end of the hallway of lockers yelled, “Richardson, let’s go!” and Ted/T.J. hollered, “Yeah, man!”

Before he headed off in the direction of his friend, he said, “Text me this summer, Pipes. We can hang out or something.”

“Yes, or something,” I replied, somewhat surprised. I didn’t get many invitations.

In the eight months we had been stationed on Sandy Point, I had managed to make all of about two friends and three acquaintances. I wasn’t against anyone, and no one was against me. I just didn’t make much of an effort considering it was already senior year. I was also kind of obsessed with studying. I realized early on a high grade-point average was the key to my future. Needless to say, I spent a lot of weekends hanging around the house with my father and his new wife, Becky.

For the rest of the day, I thought about the essay contest and how utterly random it would be if I actually won. I didn’t think I had a fighting chance. I never had exceptionally good luck. But later, after dinner, I was a little excited when I took the tab out of my pocket and turned on my laptop.

I wrote about my Finnish mother who came to America when she married my father. She died from mental illness because she couldn’t express the pain of her existence on the isolated Alaskan base with her limited English. I wrote about how I barely remembered her, but I knew from photographs she bequeathed me her face and her white-blonde hair even though she didn’t wear it in dreadlocks like me. I argued had she learned English properly through instruction rather than half-hearted attempts to pick it up from television, she might have been better able to communicate the extent of the demons that haunted her. I wasn’t sure I was writing the entire truth, but every so often, my dad lamented the inadequacy of the base hospital and his own inadequacy for not recognizing the warning signs of suicide.

She hid behind an extraordinary reserve, I typed, or so my father says. Language could have saved her life.

A few weeks later, a congratulatory letter from the Institute arrived the old-fashioned way—in our mailbox. I stood frozen in place, astonished I had actually pulled it off. Instead of spending the summer on base with a language tutor, I would be living on an island in the Caribbean Sea.

I didn’t know if I should laugh, cry, or jump for joy. First Vassar, then the contest. It was beyond belief.

I read the letter twice to be sure I had not missed anything. I couldn’t fathom it really said, Dear Ruth Pfeiffer, we are delighted to inform you…

It went on to explain, in a fashion a little too brief for my liking, that for decades the island of Carabajel had been closed to tourism, and its only communication with the outside world was based entirely on the exportation of a rare black sugar. Only recently had Carabajel’s military regime started to move the island out of its self-inflicted isolation.

The Institute noted my acceptance would grant me unprecedented access to an island shrouded in mystery. They used words like adventure, exploration, and intercultural communication. They said it was my chance to be a true ambassador of the United States, along with the seven other high school graduates who had signed up for the program.

Once I was confident I was not dreaming, it occurred to me for all my love of geography, I knew absolutely nothing about where I was going. I raced up to my room and turned on my laptop.

At first, the online map registered the island as a tiny speck in the blue Caribbean Sea, due north of Colombia. But when I zoomed in to try to get a closer look, the detail of the island refused to load. Even the satellite view displayed nothing more than a green blob.

Undeterred, mostly out of fear of telling my dad I was going to spend the summer on an island I knew absolutely nothing about, I opened up my browser and searched Carabajel.

But the Internet was little help. It described the island as remote, impenetrable, and mystical—a place cut off by reefs and drenched in fog, its surrounding waters littered with the wreckage of downed ships and planes. On Wikipedia, a mid-century navigator was quoted a bit disconcertingly as saying it was a land of sacrilege. The few photographs I managed to find showed a paradise of lush beauty, just like the essay contest poster. The sharp, triangular mountains. The palm trees lining the banks of a black sand beach. A city hidden by mist.

“Of all places!” my dad exclaimed when he heard the news. We were having dinner at the Officers’ Club where we ate every Friday night. He was wavering between being thrilled I won an essay contest and being deliriously unhappy I was leaving home sooner than August.

Becky, however, said, “Piper, how fantastic.”

“It is fantastic she won, yes, but heck, she can learn a language here without flying off to some deserted island.” He slapped the table with his palm for emphasis.

“It’s more than learning a language, Dad. I’m going to be an intercultural ambassador.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?”

Becky jumped in to save me. “Steve, she beat out hundreds of other applicants to win this contest. The Intercultural Language Institute is very prestigious. This is an honor, indeed.”

My father looked skeptical, and I was shocked Becky had even heard of the program. Unless she just pretended to know it to help me. Before my father could get back to his original question about what I would be doing in my role as an ambassador, I blurted out the concrete details. “I will be gone from June 17th to August 17th, and everything is paid for—my flight, accommodations, meals—everything.”

The fact all the costs were covered by the program pacified my father a bit. It is no secret the budgets of military men are always a little tight. I conveniently left out the tiny detail about the Institute suggesting I bring a small amount of spending money, but I wasn’t too concerned. I had a little saved up from working afternoons and weekends at the library on base. Besides, I couldn’t imagine what I would need to spend my money on, considering I was going to an isolated island in the middle of the sea.

“Also, Dad,” I added, “at the end of the program, I’ll be able to take the language requirement exam at Vassar.”

“This will count at Vassar?” he asked.

I nodded.

My father shook his head with resignation. “I’m not sure why we are even discussing this, Piper, because you are going to do what you want to do anyway.”

“You make it sound like I’m rebelling, but I swear, I’m not,” I protested.

“That’s a first,” he said sounding annoyed. But he was smiling.

When we got home from dinner, I signed the acceptance letter and dropped it in the mailbox on the corner. Then I took Arthur, my Shiba Inu, to the abandoned stretch of beach by the old fort. I sat down on the sand and leaned back on my elbows while Arthur ran in circles, chasing seagulls.

Way off in the distance, I could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the parachute jump on Coney Island. I watched as a jumbo jet took off from JFK airport and headed east above the anchored freighters in the channel. The thought I too would soon be on a plane lifting off for somewhere filled me with a rush of excitement. The seventeenth of June was less than a month away. I had little to do except finish my senior year, graduate, and apologize to my boss at the base library for bailing on her for the summer.

I stayed on the beach long after dusk and waited for the stars even though I never could quite see them on Sandy Point. Not like the way I used to out west.

“The glow of the city lights obscures the night sky,” the speaker at the Museum of Natural History’s planetarium once told our class. “Go offshore, and the stars will fall around you as though you are in a snow globe made of diamonds.”

A snow globe made of diamonds.

Black sugar and black diamonds. Black velvet and black lace.

How ignorant I had been then to worlds beyond my own….