Jack had vowed he would never travel with his parents. He had a severe case of “will to live” that prevented him from risking his life in foreign lands. There was no end to the diseases, ferry sinkings, volcanic eruptions, train derailments, earthquakes, landslides, blizzards, plane crashes, animal attacks, and military coups that could kill a person.

Jack was surprised each time his parents made it back to Pennsylvania. It was a miracle they were still alive. They were more like cats than people. But Jack knew it was only a matter of time before they arrived at life number nine. Sooner or later, they would get ambushed by a lion or swept away in a tsunami. Then that would be that.

So far, his mom and dad had

• panned for gold in the Amazon (which had not produced any gold but had produced intestinal parasites)

• bought a van in Nairobi and took unsuspecting tourists on safari (which might have worked out, had his parents brought them all back again)

• attempted to export precious stones from India (which the US Embassy had called “foolish” and the Indian police had called “smuggling”)

• leased an olive grove in Greece and started the Berenson Olive Oil Company (which had fallen apart when his parents couldn’t solve the whole “how do you get the oil out of the olive and into the bottle” problem)

• taught English in Japan (which had led to being chased out of Tokyo by Japanese parents who thought haiku full of swear words were neither educational nor amusing)

• And opened a fish-and-chip shop in Budapest (which had been shut down by the Hungarian health authorities for reasons apparently too grim to even talk about).

More than once, an American ambassador had mentioned to a British ambassador that granting Richard and Claire Berenson US citizenship had been a computer error. The country that had spawned them should take them back. The British liked to cite their “no returns policy.”

Jack rested his forehead on the cold plastic of the plane window and stared at the whitecaps dotting the blue Caribbean Sea. How had this happened to him?

His mom and dad clinked their Salva Vida beer bottles.

“Here’s to living in paradise,” his dad said.

“Cheers,” his mom said. She patted Jack’s arm. “We have heaps of plans. Shall we tell him, Richard?”

Dread crept up the back of Jack’s neck like a thousand baby spiders. Plans. Heaps of them. His parents’ plans had the same effect on Jack as telling him, “By the way, did you know the bubonic plague is in town? You should have those swellings on your neck checked out.” He had always figured that when his parents ran out of spare lives, their tombstones would read, They had plans.

“Tell him everything, Claire,” his dad said.

“Right,” his mom said. “First up, we’re going to bond.”

“Who is?” Jack asked.

“Us,” his mom said. “You and me, you and dad. It’s been ages since we saw you. You must have tons to tell us.”

“Oh.”

Jack wasn’t sure what to say to that. He had made a serious and years-long effort not to know his parents too well. That way, when they died, it wouldn’t be any worse than hearing that the neighbor’s gerbil had got loose and disappeared into a heating duct. Hard to ignore the smell for a few days but the tragedy would quickly pass. When Jack was asked at school about their untimely end, he could coolly say, “By all accounts, they never saw the elephant stampede coming.”

“Second, we’re going to make piles of money so we can buy you a pony,” his mom said.

A pony?

“And once we get our business going,” she said, “we’ll sort out this homeschooling thingy.”

Great. In a week, Jack’s best friend, Zack, would start the sixth grade. Jack would start a thingy. Zack would be on the soccer team again. And Jack wouldn’t. Zack might even get to play this year. And Jack wouldn’t. Although Jack had to admit, he probably wouldn’t have played even if he’d been there.

And what about Diana? Beautiful, blonde Diana, with the light brown freckles across her nose? Even on the day she’d sat next to Jack on the bus, he hadn’t had the nerve to talk to her. He had been waiting for the sudden growth spurt Aunt Julia had sworn would happen. Would Zack hang out with Diana now that Jack was out of the way? Jack was well aware that love was a battlefield. He had seen what had happened when Aaron Schusterman had moved to New Jersey. Two weeks later, Linda Carmichael was like, “Aaron who?”

He came back to the present as his mom said, “As soon as we’ve got a boat.”

The plane circled over the long, narrow island. It landed with a thud on a thin runway parallel to the sea. When his parents first mentioned the Caribbean, Jack had been delusional enough to think they meant somewhere like the Caymans. A place that had movie theaters and malls. But they hadn’t meant that. They had meant “the undiscovered Caribbean.”

Jack had read about the place on the internet. Both English and Spanish were spoken. The island was inhabited by the descendants of pirates, native islanders, scuba divers, the occasional fugitive, and people who “backpacked.”

Jack didn’t know anybody that backpacked. Except his parents. But they were British, so it didn’t really count. For the millionth time, Jack wished his parents had been born American, like he had been, and that they would take him somewhere normal, like the Grand Canyon. Of course, he reminded himself, if they went to the Grand Canyon, his mom and dad would probably bungee jump into it.

His parents got through immigration after swearing they had just come for a two-week holiday. Jack mentally checked off crime number one.

They dragged their bags to customs, and with the aid of a forty-dollar tip, his dad explained why three people would need twenty-five sets of snorkel gear. Crime number two and they weren’t even out of the airport.

The small, unair-conditioned taxi wound up and down hills and screeched around the tight turns of the island’s narrow roads. They sped past the ramshackle town of Manda, where houses stacked on steep slopes appeared to hang by their wooden fingernails. Trees as big as oaks, covered with shiny green leaves, stretched thick branches overhead.

They were headed to a village called Lee Beach.

The sky darkened as the sun dipped below the trees. The thick, humid air smelled of wood smoke.

The paved road turned to sand at a T-shaped crossing. The taxi faced the beach, idling next to a stone building with a sign that said Blue Bay Convenience Store. The driver said, “Which way? Where you going?”

“We don’t know, actually,” Jack’s mom said. “We need a place to stay.”

Jack pressed his lips together. They hadn’t even made reservations. So this was what his parents did when they went to a foreign country. Just arrived.

The driver asked what kind of hotel they were looking for. Jack’s mom told him that their top priorities were cheap price and an indoor loo. Then she explained that a loo was a toilet. The driver muttered, “Gringos,” and swung the car to the left.

The taxi bounced down the rutted road. A whitewashed church, topped by a brass bell, sat at water’s edge. Outdoor restaurants on either side of the lane were painted with pictures of palm trees, fish, and coral reefs. Workers lit tabletop candles, and a few sunburned tourists wandered along the beach.

The sun dropped fast to the horizon. The pale blue sea deepened to a turquoise splashed with patches of dark purple. Jack wondered what the dark patches were. Bull sharks, probably.

The taxi pulled into a dusty courtyard, laid before a white stone building with a red tile roof. A blue-and-green sign filled with flying parrots read The Deep Water Inn.

The manager of the hotel agreed to take 150 bacsira a night for a room that would fit all three of them. Jack did a quick calculation in his head. That was only fifteen dollars. They hauled their luggage up to the second floor.

Jack was afraid to look at the place. He didn’t see how it was possible to even rent a tent to sleep in for only fifteen dollars. He braced himself and went in.

The rectangular room had whitewashed walls and a dark tile floor. One frail-looking bamboo table leaned near the door. Three beds were pushed up against the walls. Each had a white clump of fabric hanging over it.

Jack peered into the bathroom. The pipes under the sink were surrounded by broken tile, as if someone had hammered through to fix something and then just got bored and left. A large cockroach stared defiantly from the shower floor. A sign printed in bold letters hung over the toilet: DO NOT PUT TOILET PAPER IN TOILET!

Over the next few hours, Jack learned a lot about living in the undiscovered Caribbean.

The cockroach in the bathroom could fly, and it landed in Jack’s hair twice. His dad thought that was funny and named the cockroach Fred.

The sign about no toilet paper in the toilet was no joke. The girl that showed up with the mop muttered something in Spanish that ended with “Gringos!”

The hotel’s parrot despised the color orange. Which Jack found out when the parrot attacked his can of insect repellent. Sand flies were the piranhas of the air, and they would attack any man who dropped his guard, which Jack did while fighting off the parrot.

The undiscovered Caribbean had run out of Coke, but there was plenty of banana soda, which tasted like bubble gum.

A man named Jed wanted to sell one of his boats. His T-shirt said “Jed’s Dive Shop—We haven’t lost anybody yet!” Jack’s parents thought that was hilarious, and they bought Jed a lot of beer. They also bought themselves a lot of beer, so Jed wouldn’t have to drink alone.

And lastly, the clump of fabric hanging over Jack’s bed had to be unraveled and tucked around the mattress so that mosquitoes would not give him malaria. As an added benefit, the net would keep Fred away from him during the night.

Jack drifted to sleep listening to the drips plopping out of the old air conditioner and thinking about Aunt Julia and Pennsylvania.

Jack woke up and blinked. He was trapped in a white cocoon. Was he dead? No, it was the mosquito net. In the moment of waking, Jack had forgotten he wasn’t in Aunt Julia’s house in Pennsylvania anymore.

He was in the Caribbean. With his parents.

Jack rubbed his eyes and fought his way out of the net. The room was empty. A short stack of bacsiras and a note in his mother’s handwriting lay on the table.

Morning, Jack! We’re off to see Jed about the boat. Here’s 80 bacs. Buy candy and explore!

Explore? Who did they think he was? Christopher Columbus? Where was the supervision? The whole island could be filled with pirates and hardened criminals on the lam. And who tells a kid to have candy for breakfast? The kid is supposed to ask for candy while the adult says, “Absolutely not. It’s Cheerios or nothing.”

Jack peeked around the door and checked the shower floor. No sign of Fred. After an icy shower, he turned off the air conditioner, which sounded as though it was about to turn itself off anyway.

The courtyard was quiet, except for a pretty woman mopping the restaurant floor in slow motion and a girl with her head resting on the wooden counter. Jack woke the girl, ordered toast and pineapple juice, and took his breakfast out to the jetty in front of the hotel.

Two skiffs tied to the pilings floated motionless on the still water. Jack sat on the dock and watched slender silver fish dart around the shadows cast by the hull. An orange starfish stretched out on the white sand. He ate his toast and sprinkled the last pieces over the fish.

It occurred to Jack that Zack’s parents might agree to adopt him if they found out he had already nearly lost his life at the claws of a deranged parrot.

Jack pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed Zack.

It wasn’t ringing. He pulled it away from his ear and looked at the screen. No service.

At the end of the dock, Jack tried again. No service.

The middle of the road. No service.

Great. He’d have to e-mail instead. Jack crossed the road back to the hotel.

Across the courtyard, a sign read, Oficina. There was nobody inside, but a young couple sat on the steps in front of the door. Jack asked them if they knew where to find the internet.

“What’ya reckon, Kelly? Did we see any signs?”

“I reckon we did,” Kelly answered. “Either here or in Guatemala.”

“Sorry, mate,” the man said. “But hey, Kel, who was the bloke we met last night? The one who said he knew where to find everything?”

“Jonas, babe. He’s a local guy. Works in the restaurant next door.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. He figured the couple must be some of those backpackers he had read about. What else could explain that they’d been to Guatemala?

Jack spent the next few hours talking to Jonas Babe. Jonas said he needed a thirty-bacsira tip for finding the internet, tried to get Jack to book a fishing trip, told Jack he could get him a discount on beer, asked Jack if he had any sisters that wanted to get married, and finally said he didn’t know anything about the internet.

It was noon by the time Jack headed out to the sandy lane that ran through the village.

Hand-painted signs leapt out at him everywhere. Jack hurried down the rutted road at a fast clip, alternately reading signs and watching his feet so he didn’t trip in a hole. Jewelry for Sale! Open Water Certification Starts Today! Island-Style Cooking! T-shirts! Mopeds for Rent!

No signs for the internet.

Jack had just passed the church. The Blue Bay Convenience Store was directly ahead. He stood in the middle of the road, not sure what to do next.

A voice came from nowhere. “You lost, baby?”