Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online

moonlight, which is bouncing on the ocean like a skipping stone. When I reach the stretch of beach in front of the apartment, I take off my sneakers and wade in ankle deep, bending to hold my singed fingers in the cold surf. My stomach growls.
    I retreat to the little knee wall that divides the yard from the beach and pull out my phone. It sits in my palm, bright as a star, fruitlessly searching for a signal.
    I miss you, I type in a text thread to Finn, and then erase the letters one by one. Somehow, it’s worse trying and failing to send a text than to never send it at all.
    If Finn were here, we would have laughed the whole way back to our hotel room, bonding over poisoned apples and rude locals.
    If Finn were here, he would have given me half of the KIND bar he always carries on a plane, just in case.
    If Finn were here, maybe I’d be engaged, and getting ready to start the rest of the life I’ve planned.
    But Finn isn’t here.
    The whole point of traveling with someone from home is to remind you where you came from, to have a reason to leave when you begin to lose yourself in the lights of Paris or the majesty of a safari and think, What if I just stay?
    But given that I don’t have a hotel room and I’m starving and I have blisters on my hand from a killer native tree, there isn’t much that makes me want to remain on Isabela. Except for the fact that I literally can’t leave.
    I am so out of my comfort zone that all I want to do is curl up in a fetal position and cry. I slip through the sliding glass door and turn on a light. On the kitchen table, beside the conch shell, is a plate covered by a tea towel. Even from across the room, I can smell something delicious. When I pull off the towel, the table rocks unevenly. On the plate is a quesadilla of sorts, stuffed with cheese, onions, tomatoes. I eat all six slices standing up.
    I take the box of G2 Tours postcards and set them on the kitchen counter. Pulling one from the stack, I use a pen from my tote and write a message. GRACIAS, I scrawl, and sign my name, and then trudge barefoot up to the front entrance of the home. It’s dark inside, so I slip the message under the front door.
    It’s possible that for every angry asshole on this island, there’s someone like Abuela.
    Back in my apartment, I write a second postcard—this one to Finn—before I pull off my clothes and slip into bed and fall asleep to the bated breath of the overhead fan.
Dear Finn,
    It feels really old school to be writing a postcard, but even if this island is a technology desert, the mail is supposed to work, right? First, I should tell you that I’m fine—there’s no evidence of the virus anywhere here. The ferries stopped running for two weeks, presumably to keep it that way. It’s not going to be the vacation I expected—tourism (and everything else commercial) is shut down here. But I’m renting a room from a nice old lady and what’s cooler than living as a local, right?! I’m just going to have to explore Isabela on my own, but that means I’ll be an expert when you and I take a trip back here.
    It is dramatically gorgeous here—I keep thinking that a painting wouldn’t do it justice, because you’d never capture the black of the rocks that glint in the sun, or the turquoise of the water. It feels kind of…rugged and unfinished. There are iguanas just hanging out everywhere, like they own the place. I’m pretty sure there are more of them than there are human residents.
    Speaking of residents—I hope you’re okay. I hate not being able to hear your voice. Yes, even when you’re singing off key in the shower.
    Love, Diana
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    From preschool, at my first easel, it was clear that I had some kind of gift for art. My father was the one who worked on paintings—from ceiling frescoes to giant canvases, doing conservation—but he would have been the first to tell you that he was not a creator, but a re-creator. When I was a freshman at Williams and one of my