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“Maybe she forgot where she was supposed to meet us and she’s waiting back at the hotel.”
Brick nodded. “Okay. Cool. Let’s walk back to the hotel then.”
My stomach plummeted with worry. I hadn’t paid attention on our walk here. And it had taken us a good ten to fifteen minutes to arrive. Our hotel could be anywhere.
I glanced at my brother, wincing because I already knew what his answer was going to be even as I asked, “Do you know how to get back?”
“What do you mean?” he cried, his eyes growing big with instant worry. “Don’t you?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” I admitted defensively, trying to remain calm. I didn’t want to scare him as much as I was scaring myself. Besides, I was the big brother. I had to be the fearless one.
“Hey, do you know where our hotel is?” Brick asked a passing woman. He glanced at me. “What’s the name of it?”
I didn’t know if we should tell just anyone the name of the place where we were staying, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. So I said, “Eden Rock.” Or maybe that was just the name of the single suite, not the entire resort where we were staying. It had a lot of windows and really fancy, old furniture. That’s all I remembered.
Brick repeated the name, and the woman frowned as if confused before she babbled out a bunch of French. We both shied away from her, not sure if she was offering to give us a million dollars or explaining how she wanted to chop us up into little pieces and feed us to her dog.
“Yeah, thanks anyway,” Brick told her with a wave and uneasy smile.
I took his arm, pulling him away and keeping him tightly against my side as I turned so we could walk in a different direction.
“Where are we going?” he asked, rushing his steps to keep up with me.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “Away.”
Breathing out a settled breath, he glanced back at the still babbling woman who was now making big, sweeping hand gestures before he faced forward again. “Good idea.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you sure you don’t remember how we got here?”
“We could see the ocean,” he offered with a wince.
We could see the ocean now, so I wasn’t exactly reassured.
Fear chilled my bones as the reality of what was happening took root in my brain. We were lost. We were lost in a foreign country, and we didn’t even know how to start looking for our mother or even ask for help.
“Holy fuck,” I said under my
breath.
Brick snickered. “Language, Hayden.”
“Shut it,” I muttered, even though I had to smile and shake my head as I spoke, already calming down. It didn’t matter what was happening; Brick was here. I had my brother beside me, and he was unhurt. I could deal with everything else.
“No. You—hey, look.”
For some reason, I hadn’t let go of his arm yet, unreasonably afraid I’d lose him too. So when he plowed to a stop and pointed at something on the ground, it jerked me to a halt right next to him.
“One of my Skittles. Sweet.”
When he bent and reached for it as if he were actually going to pick the piece of candy up from the ground and eat it, I yanked him back.
“What’re you doing! Don’t eat that, you idiot. It’s been on the ground all day. You want to go back home with some kind of foreign disease?”
Brick sighed longingly at the abandoned Skittle. “But I’m hungry.”
“Oh my God, you’re hopeless.” I slapped my hand to my forehead, only for a thought to strike. Suddenly, I was crying, “Oh my God, you’re a genius,” as I leapt forward and snagged the bright green piece of candy off the ground as if it were a lucky penny, which it might’ve just become.
Brick’s eyes went huge as soon as I palmed it. “Hey, I saw it first,” he cried, trying to take it from me.
