Free Micah's Island by Shari Copell Page B

going to pop and
allow my arms to drop off into the sand, like one of those poseable figures
held together inside by rubber bands.
      He enjoyed hurting me. I was trying to
do my level best not to let him hear me whimper.  Bravery in the face of the
enemy and all that.
    How the hell did he find me?   I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I had
to know.
    “Why aren’t you dead?” I demanded.
    “Same reason you aren’t.  But we need to
begin at the beginning.” He eyed me with his snake eyes, bright with amusement.
I was waiting to see a forked tongue come slithering out of his mouth.
    “Go ahead.  I’m listening.”
    “Do you remember the day that you stood
in front of Calvin and signed all those papers? You thought you were severing
his guardianship of you. You were actually signing the island and all of its
assets over to Calvin.”
     “I remember.”
    “You signed and dated them exactly as
you were asked to do.  You dated them the day you signed them, four days before
your 21 st birthday.”
    “So?”
    He rolled his eyes at me. “Had I known
Calvin was such a fucking moron, I would’ve stopped him. I would’ve made him
wait. There was really no hurry to have you sign, but he wanted you gone.”
    “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “You hadn’t turned 21 yet, and you dated
the papers as such.  Because you were still considered a minor under Calvin’s
guardianship, there was no legal way for you to pass title of the island to him. 
He might as well have wiped his ass with the papers you signed, because that’s
all they were at that point. Toilet paper.”
    Ice froze my spine. I stared dumbly at him
as the information settled into my brain. I guess I should have said settled
around my neck .  Like a noose.
    “I still own Tiago then.”
    “Yes, you do.  Calvin went nuts, trying
to force the paperwork through in Florida.  His… exuberance... to claim
Tiago only made people wonder where you were. Some of the island employees
started asking questions. They noticed you were missing.”
    Good for them , I thought. I said nothing. 
    “Pretty soon the Florida State Police
showed up on the island asking questions. When Calvin couldn’t produce you, he
fed them some cock and bull story about how you ran off all the time. Then he
wrote me a big check and sent me out to look for you.  Or your body, to be more
precise. If I could find your body—and I was sure I would—and it could be
established that you’d drowned, then all Calvin’s problems were over. I had an
idea where the ship went down.  I chartered a helicopter and started looking.”
    “I still don’t understand…”
    He cut me off.  “Did you know that this
island has a habit of disappearing?”
    “What?”
    “Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s
not.  I can’t explain it.  The first two or three times I took the helicopter
out looking for you, this island wasn’t visible.  The last time, it was.  I
knew you were on it somewhere.”
    “How?” I was stupefied. When I heard the
helicopter that morning, I’d wondered if someone was looking for me. Even so, there
were no physical signs of my presence here.  Were there?
    “I saw the orange lifeboat in the center
of the beach.  I knew it was from the yacht that sank.  I also knew that
someone would’ve had to pull it that far up into the center of the beach. You
thought you’d need it again, and you didn’t want the tide to wash it back out
to sea. Am I right?”
    I could only nod my head. The giant lump
in my throat was back. I’d screwed both of us—Micah and me—by trying to be
practical.  Dolph never would’ve found me if not for the lifeboat, a bright
orange beacon screaming ‘ Gianna landed here’ in the middle of an expanse
of white sand.
    “So how did you survive the wreck?” I
asked.
    “Same way you did. Lifeboat. I floated
around for a day or two. Another yacht found me and took me back to Tiago. This
island isn’t that far away from