Chapter 8: The Flight

"No," I said.

I hung up on him for the second time in four days.

Then I opened the fireproof box on the motel bed.

My passport was in there, under the certificate. I'd put it there at twenty-four with everything else that mattered.

It had two years left on it.

The cheapest flight out of San Francisco left at eleven that morning. Two connections. Thirty hours, door to door.

It took most of what was left of my prize money.

I booked it.

At one-fifteen I texted Casey.

He was the only person I knew in a hundred miles with a car that didn't have a cracked cup holder.

"I'm sorry. Emergency. Milo almost drowned. I need to get to SFO by nine."

He called before I could put the phone down.

"Is he okay?"

"He's okay. He's alone with them. I'm going."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

He was there in sixteen.

Bean was asleep in the back seat in her pajamas, a blanket tucked around her and a broken camera in her arms.

"She wouldn't stay," he said. "She said you'd need someone to hold your hand and I'd be driving."

Bean held my hand from the back seat, asleep, all the way down the mountain.

Casey drove four hours through the dark without the radio.

At the curb at SFO he got out and lifted my bag from the trunk.

"Go get your kid," he said.

That was all.

I've never been so glad someone didn't give a speech.

Thirty hours.

Taipei. Then Singapore. Then Denpasar in the wet heat, at eight on Tuesday morning.

I'd slept maybe three hours, sitting up.

The taxi driver took one look at me and turned the air conditioning to max.

The resort was white stone and orchids and fountains. Everyone wore linen.

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