When I got back into the car, Lea still sat with her face pressed to the window. She was detached from the conversation. Our parents had been fighting ever since we had left our house in Paris. They had fought in the car on the way to the airport because father had arrived late. They fought at the airport when father realized that mother had forgotten the small attache case he had reminded her three times to bring. They fought on the airplane because mother had not thought to specify seats on the plane and as a result they were in the smoking section by the kitchen, where mother was more inconvenienced because she was not a smoker but where father complained because he was being bumped by the air hostess every time she passed. Mother had offered her seat but father had to be on the aisle because of his long legs. Mother had even offered to have me move to her side, but by then we were no longer allowed to move from our seats. The only respite from their fighting came when the plane was buffeted by the wind. Drinks were spilled. Ice cubes dropped down the shirt of the woman across the aisle from us. Lea was the only one to have fun. She enjoyed the sudden drops, the sudden hikes, people's cries. "It's like a roller coaster," she said. I sat as still as I could, my fingers resting on the sick bag.

Now, in the car, Lea did not laugh at being thrown against me as we turned round a bend. From time to time she would glance at the tiny gold wrist watch father had just given her for her thirteenth birthday, or she would point out a rock formation she thought she recognized from the summer before. "Look, there's the falcon rock." she called out. "The hat. The giant." There was not much for her to recognize. We were unfamiliar with this part of the island. We hardly ventured beyond the small enclave surrounding our villa.

The cab driver pointed out a "nuraghe." Lea said she saw it and then father did. I did not know what to look for. All I could see were pastures cut by stone walls, sheep gathered in circles beneath bushes. From the pastures we passed suddenly around a corner into a blackened area, where some trees were reduced to stumps while others retained only a few branches that stretched like withered arms towards the sky. The smell of burnt wood pervaded the air. The cab driver told us that there had been a terrible fire. A whole family died trapped in their car.

"What is a nuraghe?" I said. "I can't--"

"Shush," mother said, as the driver took one hand off the wheel to point in the direction of the nuraghe. "We'll all be killed. It's just a tower. There're thousands like it on the island."

I wanted to know what the nuraghi were for, but mother, who was studying Art History, said that even the archaeologists were not sure. Some kind of tomb built out of stone without mortar. I did not know what mortar meant either, and mother had to explain. Lea wanted to stop by the next nuraghe we passed.

"Just for a second," she begged.

Mother did not want to. There was no place to stop, a car might round the curve.

"It's dangerous," mother said, and father said, "now don't you pick on my favorite." He liked to tease us in this way; alternately calling me his favorite then Lea. She shrugged, the back of her dress unbuttoning, revealing the bathing suit she wore underneath.

I recall Lea's dress. It was purple with mutton sleeves edged with white, the bodice closely gathered with bright red thread.

Later, mother would insist that Lea was wearing the purple dress the day she disappeared. But the police found it hanging in the closet along with the clothes everyone else had said she was wearing. Father swore she wore a bathing suit and towel. Mrs. Ashton, a blue and white sailor suit. Mr. Ashton said that he did not notice that sort of thing. I can still hear the police saying, over and over again, "nessuno sa," nobody knows, in an accusatory tone.

They did not ask me. If they had, I would have told them that she wore a white dress, no shoes--just a white towel dress, with a matching bikini. She complained the bottom piece was too tight around the legs and the waist. I remember her lifting up the skirt of the dress to show me the red marks. It was one of my favorite dresses. I was eleven years old at the time, Lea thirteen.

A rainbow hung over the arch leading to the villa, the slab of granite where the name of our villa should have been inscribed still blank. Mother and father could not agree on a name. Mother wanted to call it Crossways after the house she had owned as a child, while father wanted to give it an Italian name, L'Aventura. The cab driver insisted on carrying our suitcases. Despite his small frame, he carried two suitcases in each hand. He complimented father on the villa, saying he had never seen the like. And he knew almost all the villas in that area. Take the one beneath ours, Mr. Peters's villa, a complete wreck--not surprising since everyone knew that he was-...-he pointed to his head. And the one on the other side which belonged to the famous writer, nice, but the windows were too narrow, the garden not landscaped. Now our villa was perfect; the only thing missing, a swimming pool. If father needed someone to build a pool, he knew just the man. Even after father had paid him, tipping, as he always did, exorbitantly, the cab driver lingered, peering into the living?room, as if he wished father would offer to give him a tour. He left only after he had mopped his forehead several times with the sleeve of his shirt.

Father was very proud of the villa, which he had designed with the help of a famous architect from the island, particularly proud of the landscaped garden built on a slope. He insisted on inspecting it. Lea wanted to go down to the beach immediately. "You promised," she said, smiling up at father, holding the bridge of her glasses with one finger.

"It'll just take a few minutes," he said. "Look at the lemon tree."

"But it's sunny now," she said.

"Don't whine."

He took Lea by the arm but she broke away, running ahead, disappearing down the steep path. I lingered with mother by the hydrangeas, while father walked on, swinging his head from side to side. Mother explained that in order for the hydrangeas to be blue you had to put dye in the soil.

The garden was redolent with the scent of oleanders, juniper and lavender. It had never been as luxuriant. Pine trees had shot up several feet. Vines now shaded the veranda completely. Kumquats, gardenias, blue plumbago, verbena, amanti del sole grew in profusion overriding the carefully planned flower beds.

All summer I mistook the verbena for the amanti del sole, thinking that the name, lovers of the sun, must be coupled with the beautiful tiny red and orange flowers, when, in fact, the amanti del sole were purple flowers with waxy green leaves that overhung walls.

The sun slipped in and out of the clouds, the garden changing moment to moment from black and white to color. Mother said what a shame that so many lemons had gone bad. She was reaching to pick one that seemed about to drop, the branch bending under the fruit's weight, when Lea emerged from the bushes, startling us.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," mother said. Behind one ear Lea had placed a flaming red hibiscus. She pulled me by the arm and we ran, down the path, past father, all the way to the wall at the bottom of the garden where eucalyptus trees gave off a strange odor.

She ducked behind a bush. "Let's go down to the beach," she said.

"But we'll get into trouble," I said, hesitantly, knowing this was not what she wanted to hear.

"You're such a bore," she said, in the cynical tone she had recently adopted.

"I'm not a bore."

"You are."

She pushed me against a bush. The hard leaves scratched my arm. I pushed her back.

Just then we heard our parents' voices. We crouched down, knees touching.

"How could you?" mother said.

"He really did go too far--"and then father laughed. He imitated the cabby cupping his hands to demonstrate the size of the woman's breasts.

"It's not that, although that was in very poor taste." she said. "You know what I'm referring to."

"No, I don't. What are you talking about? Just come out with it."

"If you're going to lie about it now--"

"Oh fuck," he said, "Don't be ridiculous--"

Mother turned and ran up the steps. We waited for the sound of their footsteps to die before climbing up the hill, not along the path but through the pine trees and oaks. In some places the trees were so densely packed there was no light. The ground was covered with brown pine needles which crunched beneath our feet. Several times I slipped and almost lost my balance, regaining it at the last minute by clinging to a branch, or the trunk of a tree.

At the villa, Lea told me to pick out the pine needles from her socks. I bent over and tried to extract each pine needle. But some were so deeply embedded they were hard to remove and Lea grew tired of standing and flopped down on the couch. In the end, she simply leaned over and pulled off her socks, leaving them in the middle of the living?room. She sent me for our straw baskets, snorkels and masks. We were already wearing our bathing suits. All we had to do was pull off our dresses. Still our parents did not emerge from their room. We pressed our ears to their door. We could not hear a sound, so we roamed through the villa, revisiting each room.

As a child I liked the colors of the villa: the white walls, the glazed terra cotta tiles, the kitchen tiles with their pattern of blue boats. The tile felt cool beneath our feet. The house smelt slightly musty after remaining closed for so many months. Most of the furniture, the desks, even the base of the sofa, were carved out of the rock of the island, immovable. The rest was constructed of wood and painted a light blue: blue chairs and blue bed frames and blue bedside tables decorated the rooms. I particularly liked the light fixtures, mother of pearl shells, larger than any I had found in the sea, glass lamps filled with tiny pink shells.

In retrospect, I see the villa differently. On the one hand, it seemed very private, each bedroom had its own bathroom, its own patio with potted geraniums, thick walls. On the other hand, because the villa was mostly glass, it now seems to me exposed and vulnerable. It was also highly impractical, but that too, I realize only now. I remember the caretaker, Adriana, cleaning the glass doors and the white tiles in the bathrooms and kitchen. The bathtubs were so immense we could not fill them. The water supply was limited and the water pressure was never very good so that the best you could hope for from the showers was a steady trickle.

Finally, Lea grew impatient and knocked on our parents' door, announcing, "We're going down to the beach." At this point, though I would not have taken the initiative, I felt her action was justified. We flew out the house, down a paved road that twisted and turned, over a wood gate, onto a dirt road where the scent of myrtle and rosemary and lavender, machia, they called it, pervaded the air.

We stopped only once to peer down an overgrown alley; through a mass of brambles, at Mr. Peters' villa, the same villa the cab driver had referred to earlier as a wreck. It seemed even more neglected than the summer before, crumbling beneath a mass of vines and bougainvillea. The paint peeled off the shutters. The garden was overgrown, littered with paintings. Several canvases were torn, branches growing through them.

We paused only for a moment, eager to plunge into the water. "I'll race you to the beach," Lea said, setting off. I ran as fast as I could but she was faster. She ran and ran. Then all of a sudden she stopped. We were about half down the road. "They're trespassing," she said, pointing to people in the distance. "They must be punished." She handed me a stick. We crept up. My cheeks were burning. I did not believe I could do it. One woman with bright red lipstick smiled at us. Lea whipped out her stick, hitting the lady's behind. I whipped out the stick from behind my back and hit her bum. She screamed. We ran and ran, laughing. We did not turn back until we had emerged, beyond the green golf course, a few feet from the Piccolo Pevero beach.

Lea laughed again because I would not take off my towel. I wanted to drop it by the edge of the water. She ran across the beach and jumped into the sea, holding her knees at the last minute, like a bomb we used to call it. On the horizon, we could see a motor boat pulling a water skier. The water skier zipped back and forth over the waves. At first we swam in the bay, where the water was shallow. I held onto Lea's waist, kicking my legs while she breast stroked. I pretended we were one person. She was the arms, I was the legs. Then I floated onto my back in Lea's wake, feeling the pulse of her kicks, still connected, until she outdistanced me.

We swam beyond the clear blue water to shadowy areas where I had never ventured, searching for sea urchin shells. We could not resist collecting shells even though we knew that after only a few minutes outside the water they would lose their color, becoming pale reflections of themselves. The shells came mostly in green and pink. I can still see Lea turning round under water, waving for me to follow, her face strange and white behind her mask, her lips distorted by the snorkel.

She had spotted a purple shell, eight or nine feet below the surface, between two rocks covered with live sea urchins. Lea dove first but missed the shell. I did not want to dive. I was afraid of brushing against the live sea?urchins. "Go on," she said, treading water, "I dare you."

I took a deep breath and dove. The water became progressively colder and darker. I could not see the shell: just rocks and seaweed, then a frond of dark seaweed moved back like a hand and I caught sight of the shell. I hesitated, but I could feel Lea gazing down at me. I reached out, trying to avoid touching the seaweed, visualizing the sea urchins' black spines catching on my hand. Gently, I lifted out the shell, holding my hand half-open because the shells crumbled so easily.

By then I was out of breath and kicked furiously to get back up to the surface. In my haste, I must have opened my hand too wide. The shell floated out of my grasp, wobbled and then dropped, landing a few feet further into the reef. Lea said she would try again, but I begged her not to. I wanted to return to shore.

I watched her dive for it, her fuchsia bathing suit fluorescent against the black water. She reached it easily and turned to look at me before coming up to the surface. I knew she was thinking, "See, it's easy." Instead of returning to the beach, she swam out further. I called after her, but she either didn't hear me or had decided she was going to go on no matter what. I did not want to return alone. I tread water for a time, then decided to return to shore since she was already so far from me.

The return journey seemed to take much longer; one cove lead into another and yet another. I kept turning to see if Lea was following. I didn't like the black water. I couldn't even see my legs. I kept my eyes glued to the turquoise water sparkling ahead. Now and again I felt something brush against me. I saw a dark shape and remembered Lea telling me that sharks went for you if you panicked. They were attracted to blood. There were no sharks off Bella Terra, but a few years before two had got lost and found themselves in the port of Dolia. Several times, I had to hold myself back from screaming, from flailing my arms and legs about.

When I reached the clear water, I saw that Lea had somehow contrived to get to the beach before me. She must have walked part of the way, cutting across land, swimming just the last stretch.

She stood with her back to the beach, carefully removing the shell from inside the bottom piece of her bathing suit. She was just starting to get a thin down of golden hair which she liked to show off to me. She was also getting breasts, which she had let me touch once. I called them "lumps" to annoy her and because that was what they felt like to me.

I did not follow her as she skipped across the beach to where our father now lay alone. There was no sign of mother. I busied myself by emptying the sand from my bathing suit. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I observed her. A few feet from father, Lea shouted, "Daddy, look, I found a purple shell." Father did not move. He appeared to have fallen asleep in the sun. He had forgotten his umbrella and his back was already pink. It was one of those strange quirks of nature that father and I should be so dark and burn so easily, while mother and Lea were so blond and could lie in the sun with impunity. Lea tiptoed up to father. She leaned over him then twisted her long hair so that drops of water fell onto his back. He leapt up, shouting, "don't you do that." He tried to grab at her legs, but she ran away laughing, kicking up sand as she raced across the beach toward me.

I returned to my task. I could not get the sand out from my bathing suit completely. I even had sand in my hair. I could feel it in my scalp.

"Don't you want to see it?" she asked. I shook my head.

"Go on," she said. "Very well."

When I turned round, she had disappeared. The purple shell lay in pieces on the sand. I knelt and tried to reconstruct it, but it was impossible, and after arranging the pieces in the form of a boat I wandered over the dunes where the sand was fine and soft. Here and there nettles grew but they were bright yellow and easy to spot.

—Reprinted from The Forgotten Island by Sasha Troyan. Copyright © Sasha Troyan, 2004. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.