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They called it adoption

They named him Wisdom But they, and every other adult on San Francisco de Sales Island, were gone The Irish nanny? Gone The ancient Japanese gardener and the three Mexican groundskeepers? Gone The Scottish butler and the six Polish maids? Gone The Catalan chef and his two Basque assistants? Gone The pool guy/handyman fro on an ornate balustrade, and the artist-in-residence froone, and gone

Who was left? The kids

There were five children all together In addition to "Wisdom," they were: Virtue, who Sanjit had nicknamed "Choo" Peace; Bowie; and Pixie None of them had started their lives with those nao, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, and China respectively

But only Sanjit had insisted on fighting for his birth naured he was closer to being invincible than he was to being wise

But for the last seven months he’d had to step up and at least try to make smart decisions Fortunately he had Virtue, as just twelve but a s kids," as opposed to Peace, Bowie, and Pixie ere seven, five, and three andcandy froe of the cliff

Sanjit and Virtue were at the edge of the cliff theish yacht a hundred feet below

"There are hundreds of gallons of fuel down there," Sanjit observed "Tons of it"

"We’ve been over this about a et that fuel up the cliff without blowing ourselves up, ould just be delaying the inevitable"

"When you think about it, Choo, isn’t all of life really just delaying the inevitable?"

Virtue sighed his long-suffering sigh

He was short and round where Sanjit was angular Virtue was black Not African-American black, African black His head was shaved bald--not his usual look, but he hadn’t liked the way his hair looked after three months without a haircut, and the best Sanjit could do for him was a buzz cut with the electric clippers Virtue had a perpetuallythe worst Like he was distrustful of good news and ratified by bad news Which was true

Sanjit and Virtue balanced each other perfectly: tall and short, thin and beefy, glib and pessimistic, charismatic and dutiful, a little crazy and utterly sane

"We are about to lose electricity No DVDs We have enough food, but even that won’t last forever We need to get off this island," Virtue said firo out of Sanjit "Brother, I don’t kno to do it I cannot fly a helicopter I’ll get us all killed"

Virtue didn’t answer for a while There was no point in denying the truth The small, bubble-canopied helicopter perched on the stern of the yacht was a flionfly It could lift the five of them off the island and to the mainland Or crash into the cliff and burn Or crash into the sea and drown them Or just spin out of control and chop theiant food processor