Milton’s thoughts remained a smooshey mishmash of a mess the next morning as his mother drove him to the airport, where his father met them. They went through security together and then to the terminal, and before Milton knew it, his parents were hugging him goodbye and a flight attendant was guiding him down the gangway.
He was on his way to the Lone Island, whether he wanted to be or not.
That first flight took Milton across the country on a medium-size plane. He played Isle of Wild and sipped grape soda from a tiny plastic cup. That was all the flight attendants would give him even though he made several (very eloquent, in his opinion) requests for the full can. He had never flown before and, aside from the grape soda–stinginess and his many reservations about the trip itself, he found aviation life to be quite enjoyable.
The next flight was overnight and took Milton out of the country on a huge plane with a tiny TV on the back of each seat and eight blue-water toilets. He tried a new tactic this time: He told the flight attendants that his parents didn’t want him anymore and were sending him to live on a deserted island, which was almost-kind-of-sort-of true. He wasn’t sure if the flight attendants believed him or not, but they gave him one of those baby-size pillows, a blanket, and as many cans of grape soda as he wanted (he wanted seven). He snuggled into his seat, slurped his drinks, and played Isle of Wild some more, pressing Restart every time Sea Hawk met yet another untimely end.
The third and final ticket was for a supply-filled biplane that was so rusty and rattly Milton was absolutely positive it was one millisecond away from bursting into a thousand pieces and launching him into the smack-dab center of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Mighty moles and voles! I want to go back to the mainland,” he groaned as grape soda tidal-waved in his stomach. There weren’t any airsickness bags in the supply plane, so he kept his new explorer hat at the ready, and his HandHeld safely tucked away in his bag.
He wished he had protested more.
He wished he had locked the door to his room and refused to come out.
He wished he was still in fifth grade with a best friend and married parents.
He groaned and wished and kept his explorer hat under his chin until—
“Look out your window!” called the pilot, who seemed entirely too calm considering the extreme danger they were in.
Milton looked. And there it was: the Lone Island.
The island rose up out of the sea like a green jewel, bright and lush and—
Moving! For half a second, it looked like the entire island was in motion, shivering and writhing, like something growing, like something alive.
“Great flapping falcons!” Milton cried, nose pressed to the window. “What is the meaning of—AHHH!”
The plane had begun to descend.
Down, down, down the biplane sputtered and jerked, down toward the long strip of concrete on the far side of the Lone Island, where it came to a teeth-shattering landing that flung everything—crates, mailbags, straw-hatted passengers—around the cabin.
“Have we arrived?” gasped Milton P. Greene from the floor of the plane.