by Adam Gidwitz
Elliot glanced up from the backpack. He’d been too distracted by Jersey to follow the conversation closely. “On his plane? I bet it was during a landing. He can’t quite . . . you know, land.”
Professor Fauna scoffed. “Bah. More like you gave up, Alejandra. Children, you are looking at the only individual to ever formally renounce her membership to the Unicorn Rescue Society.”
Dr. Cervantes let out a loud laugh. “Ha! Yes, it was the ethical thing to do.”
The sound of her guffaw startled Jersey. He became visible and poked his snout out of the backpack, growling. Elliot tried to push Jersey’s blue head back inside. Jersey snapped at the boy’s finger with a frustrated snarl.
“What is that?” Lupita demanded.
Elliot sighed, glanced around to make sure no strangers were looking, and let Jersey’s head poke up out of the backpack. The little blue creature sniffed the air.
“And that!” Dr. Cervantes said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That is exactly what I mean! You brought a . . . What is that?”
Professor Fauna suddenly looked abashed. “A juvenile Jersey Devil,” he muttered.
“A juvenile Jersey Devil! You brought it to Texas, sealed up inside a backpack?! That creature should be in New Jersey, in the wild, studied at a distance by qualified scientists! They should not be treated like a pet!”
Professor Fauna sighed heavily. “Again with this? They need us!”
“They need us to leave them alone. The URS system? Conscripting well-meaning but misinformed adults and children to care for these legendary species? It is wrong. All interference with animals and their natural habitats is wrong. I have been studying the chupacabras here for years—but always from a distance!”
Mr. Cervantes mumbled, “Such a distance you’ve never actually seen one . . .” Dr. Cervantes shot her husband a withering look.
“Alejandra,” Professor Fauna went on, “if humans put these creatures in danger, then it is our responsibility to help them!”
“And,” Uchenna said, pointing to the backpack, “just so everyone’s clear, we didn’t mean to keep Jersey as a pet. If he had wanted to stay in the Pine Barrens, we would have been happy for him. He adopted us.”
At the sound of her voice, Jersey raised his upper body completely out of the backpack and licked Uchenna’s outstretched hand.
Dr. Cervantes shrugged. “So you say. But did you feed him?”
Uchenna and Elliot looked at each other and then at the pavement beneath their feet.
Lupita made a frustrated whine. “Mamá, you said last night that we needed to protect the chupacabras. Well, these folks want to help. It’s what they do.”
“Amigos,” Mr. Cervantes murmured, “careful.” He pointed his forehead at people mulling around the square. Several were staring at Jersey, pointing and muttering to one another. Elliot guided Jersey back into the darkness of the backpack. “Why don’t we continue this conversation over lunch?” suggested Mr. Cervantes. “En casa de la familia Cervantes.”
“Good idea,” Dr. Cervantes said. “Is your car nearby, Professor?”
“The Phoenix is across the street, in the parking lot.”
“You flew to city hall?”
Elliot shook his head. “No, ma’am. He drove it like a car from the outskirts of town. The wings fell off after landing.”
Dr. Cervantes couldn’t help but laugh. “Ah, qué hombre este. It figures. Well, follow us, then. Hopefully you won’t get stopped. Laredo police aren’t used to ratty old planes on their streets, wings or no wings.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
An hour later, they were relaxing around a rough-hewn, rustic table in the Cervantes family’s bright and colorful kitchen. Elliot was surprised at how much he had enjoyed the food Mr. Cervantes served them. No chili-dusted fruit on the menu at all, just piles of tightly rolled and fried chicken tacos called flautas, accompanied by a zesty salad, black beans, and the most delicious guacamole he had ever tasted.
Apparently, Professor Fauna agreed with this assessment, as several times during the meal the professor had seized the large stone mortar that held the guacamole and served himself heaping spoonfuls.
Sipping on his agua de melón—a refreshing drink of cantaloupe blended with water and honey—Elliot tried to gain some clarity on the problem at hand. “Okay, so I’m confused. It sounds like chupacabras just showed up thirty years ago. But that’s not biologically possible. Professor Fauna, you said something about them being much older, right?”
Mateo waved a flauta back and forth. “Yah, they just got that name recently. They’ve been around for a long time. Dad knows all about them. He runs a hierbería—like an herbalist shop, but with traditional folk medicine from Mexico and stuff. He’s a curandero.”
Lupita jumped in. “Yeah, Mamá may be the scientist in the family, but Dad’s got all the ancient indigenous knowledge. Best folk healer in Laredo.”
Mr. Cervantes ruffled her hair with a smile. “Ya. Not quite, m’ija. But it’s true that I have access to older traditions. So, I know that chupacabras have been around for a very long time, well before the Conquista, the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica.”
“What’s Mesoamerica?” Uchenna asked.
Elliot said, “Mesoamerica means, you know, Mexico and Central America. Before Columbus and Cortés.”
TOZCOYOTL
“Exactly,” Mr. Cervantes continued. “For example, Mesoamerican mythology speaks of a beast called the Tozcoyotl: yellow-feathered coyote.”
“Those I’ve heard of!” Elliot exclaimed, wheels turning in his head as he began to put the chupacabras in a historical context. “Could those feathers be like chupacabras quills?”
Dr. Cervantes grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. “You nailed it, Elliot. I’ve studied a few quills we’ve managed to collect from old warrens—chupacabras make their lairs underground—and they share many characteristics with feathers.”
AHUIZOTL
“But that’s not the only evidence,” Mr. Cervantes continued. “The local Carrizo tribes spoke of the glam pakua’m or ‘biting beast.’ The Aztecs drew images of a spiny-backed creature known as the ahuizotl, nicknamed ezzoh or ‘bloodthirsty thing.’”
“Wow. So there’s a long history of these vampires?” Uchenna said. “Draining people’s blood all over Mesoamerica?”
Elliot felt his stomach churn. “Maybe death by blood-draining isn’t the best topic for lunch conversation.”
“Oh, the chupacabras doesn’t normally drain its prey,” Dr. Cervantes clarified, putting a reassuring hand on Elliot’s shoulder. “Like a vampire bat, it drinks a little blood from a sleeping animal, without killing it. However—”
A scraping noise stopped her midsentence. Professor Fauna was using his spoon to get every last bit of guacamole from the stone mortar. He noticed the others staring at him, and he set the bowl down sheepishly.
“Perdón. Your guacamole is truly spectacular, Israel.”
“Gracias, Profesor. I can make more if you like.” Mr. Cervantes half rose from his seat.
“No, no. Qué va. I have had more than enough.” Elliot could tell from the obsessed look in Fauna’s eyes that this wasn’t completely true. “You were saying, Alejandra?”
“Well, perhaps if something disturbs a pack’s feeding pattern, the chupacabras might go into a frenzy, draining too much blood. It’s just a theory, of course.”
“What sort of things could disturb their feeding pattern?” Uchenna asked.
“A disruption in their lifestyles, I would guess,” Dr. Cervantes replied.
“Like hunters?” Mateo asked.
“Highways?” suggested Uchenna.
“Radiation from cell phones?” Elliot added.
Suddenly, the conversation was interrupted by strange, wet, slurping sounds. Everyone tu
rned to look at Professor Fauna.
He was licking the guacamole bowl, streaks of green smearing his beard.
Dr. Cervantes snapped at him, “Erasmo!”
Professor Fauna looked up, half crazed. After a couple of seconds, his eyes refocused, and he blushed.
“My apologies,” he said, and gingerly put down the bowl.
Uchenna was shocked, not by her teacher’s behavior (which she had learned to roll with), but by his name.
“That’s the second time she’s called you ‘Erasmo.’ I thought you were Mito Fauna.”
Dr. Cervantes laughed. “Oh, he is, dear. Mito is a nickname for ‘Erasmo.’”
Lupita made sharp gestures in the air with her hands, as if showing the evolution of the word. “Yeah. Erasmo. Erasmito. Mito.”
Uchenna and Elliot both looked shocked.
Mateo gave a small chuckle. “Dude. You actually thought his parents named him ‘myth,’ right?”
Elliot shrugged. “If they’re as weird as he is . . .”
Professor Fauna said, “Enough about me. How shall we help these creatures before this overzealous community captures them . . . or does something even worse?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Dr. and Mr. Cervantes, Professor Fauna, Elliot, Uchenna, Mateo, and Lupita sat around the table, Jersey began to sniff around the glossy clay tiles of the floor. First, he appeared to be searching for food scraps from their lunch—which he found plenty of under Professor Fauna’s chair. He gobbled them up hungrily.
But then it became clear that Jersey was looking for more than just a snack. He sniffed his way over to a corner where a small niche had been built into the wall to hold a statue of a woman in flowing robes.
Uchenna noticed what Jersey was doing. “What’s that statue Jersey’s sniffing?” she asked quietly, as the adults continued discussing the chupacabras problem.
“Oh,” Lupita replied, “we’re Catholics. That’s our nicho, with the Virgin Mary.”
“Dad calls her Tonantzin,” added Mateo. “She watches over us.”
Jersey was sniffing his way over to a long, low table, covered with a frilly cloth and set with photographs and candles. Rising up the wall behind the table were more photographs. They all seemed to be of the same person.
“And what’s he sniffing now?” Elliot asked, leaning over to join Uchenna and Lupita’s conversation.
Mateo answered, “That’s our altar to our abuela, Concepción.”
“We called her Mamá Conchita,” Lupita added wistfully. “She was the family matriarch.”
Jersey was now wandering through an open doorway, sniffing the ground . . . the corners . . . the air . . .
“What’s with him?” Elliot asked.
“Dunno,” Uchenna replied. “What’s in that room, Lupita? Is he allowed to go in?”
“That’s my mom’s office. Maybe we should go get him,” Lupita replied. “Apparently, my mom doesn’t like people snooping around in there.” She looked at Mateo and they both shrugged guiltily.
Lupita turned to her mother to ask to be excused from the table—when a loud CRASH erupted from Dr. Cervantes’s office.
“¡Dios mío! ¿Qué pasa?” Dr. Cervantes cried. The four kids were already up on their feet and sprinting toward the office. CRASH! SMASH! It sounded like Jersey was taking a hammer to a chandelier.
When they made it to the office, they saw that Jersey was scrabbling at a tall cabinet. The room was full of glass jars holding animal specimens—stuffed opossum and mice and hawk feathers and jackrabbit skulls. But at least three jars were lying on the floor, cracked or shattered. And as Jersey tried to leap up the side of the cabinet again, beating his wings to gain altitude, he knocked into another jar, which sent both him and the jar tumbling toward the glossy brick floor.
Uchenna ran and slid, pushing broken glass out of her way with her extended foot, like a baseball player sliding into home plate. The jar fell directly into Uchenna’s arms.
“Wow!” Mateo cried. “That was awesome!”
Unfortunately, the jar had fallen into Uchenna’s arms upside down, and dozens of brown pellets spilled all over her.
“Uh, what is this stuff?” she asked, holding a brown pellet between her fingers.
“Uh, that would be spoor,” Lupita answered.
“Better known as poop,” Mateo added.
Uchenna dropped the pellet and scrambled to her feet, frantically brushing the pellets off of her.
Jersey was trying to climb his way up the cabinet again. Elliot grabbed him before he could smash anything else. Jersey fought against Elliot’s grip.
“What has gotten into him?” Professor Fauna asked. The adults had arrived at the doorway of Dr. Cervantes’s office and were surveying the destruction.
“This is what happens when you keep a wild animal in captivity!” Dr. Cervantes scolded them. “Their instincts—”
Suddenly, Jersey got free and launched himself from Elliot’s arms into the air. His wings lifted him up on top of the cabinet. There, he attached himself to a rough wooden box and started gnawing at it.
“Let me guess,” said Professor Fauna. “You keep almond bars in that box.”
“He is obsessed with almond bars,” Elliot agreed.
“It is going to bankrupt me,” the professor added. “And the nice lady at the grocery store thinks I have a problem.”
“That’s not a box of almond bars!” said Dr. Cervantes. She pushed a chair over to the cabinet and climbed up on it. “Look!” She picked up the box—which was about the size of a toaster—and, with Jersey still clinging to it, passed it to her husband. Mr. Cervantes put the box down on a desk. Jersey was still gnawing on it.
“Please take hold of your captive wild animal,” Dr. Cervantes said.
Uchenna grabbed Jersey and pulled him away from the box. Dr. Cervantes removed the carved lid and pulled out a strange object. It was long and yellow and looked like a cross between a porcupine quill and an eagle’s feather.
“Is that . . . ?” Elliot murmured.
“It is,” said Dr. Cervantes. “A single barb of a chupacabras.”
Jersey strained at Uchenna’s grip, trying to get at it.
“What’s with Jersey and the chupacabras spine?” Lupita asked. “It’s like he’s obsessed with it or something.”
Elliot reached out for the chupacabras barb. “May I?” he asked. Dr. Cervantes nodded. Elliot gingerly took the spine from Dr. Cervantes. Jersey followed its path like his nose was iron and it was a super magnet. “Maybe,” Elliot said, waving it slowly in front of Jersey, “this is what he smelled out on the highway when he went running into the desert.”
“Where did your captive wild animal run into the desert?” Dr. Cervantes asked.
“Highway 359,” Elliot answered, as Uchenna glared at her.
Lupita looked at him incredulously. “You know 359? Have you been to Laredo before?”
“There was a sign,” Elliot said, as if everyone remembered every street sign they ever saw.
Dr. Cervantes was getting excited. “The grazing territory out by Highway 359 is where I have long suspected chupacabras activity! But I could never find them!”
Elliot waved the barb back and forth, back and forth. Jersey’s eyes followed it like a metronome. “Well, now,” Elliot said, “we have a bloodhound.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dr. and Mr. Cervantes climbed into their minivan, which was beige with a sparkly sheen. But Mateo and Lupita hesitated.
“Can’t we all ride in the Phoenix?” Mateo asked, jerking his thumb at the wingless plane.
Dr. Cervantes glared at her children. “Listen, we may be running around with Erasmo, but—”
Professor Fauna interrupted her, “I am afraid that for our current project, the anonymity of a minivan better suits our purposes.”
As Lupita walked past her father and got into the minivan, she said, “Ay, Papá, eres un gran perdedor.”
“I am not a loser!” her dad said. “I am just enthusiastic about this ride . . .” He started doing the hand gestures over the hood again. Lupita buried her face in her hands. Everyone else laughed.
Soon, they were standing on the side of the highway 359, looking out across a flat land of sagebrush and tiny, twisted trees. Heat rose from the dirt in visible waves.
Jersey was in his backpack on Uchenna’s stomach, scrabbling to get out.
“So,” said Professor Fauna. “We let him out. And he runs. And we run after him. And we see what happens. Yes? This is the plan?”
“Not as scientific as I would like,” Dr. Cervantes muttered.
“You have a better one, dear?” Mr. Cervantes asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.
She shook her head and squinted at the desert.
“Just to be clear,” said Elliot. “We are going to be running through the desert, where there are rattlesnakes and probably scorpions—”
“Definitely scorpions,” clarified Mr. Cervantes.
“Okay, rattlesnakes and definitely scorpions, trying to locate a pack of spiny, bloodsucking monsters?”
Dr. Cervantes nodded and kept staring at the desert. “That’s about the size of things.”
Elliot asked, “Would this be an appropriate moment to say Dios mío?”
Lupita grinned. “Yup.”
“Ready everyone?” Uchenna asked. “Here goes nothing.”
She unzipped Jersey’s backpack. He launched himself from it and went scampering across the dusty ground, zigzagging this way and that, following his snuffling nose. Suddenly, he seemed to catch the scent, and he went galloping off through the chaparral. The whole team went running after him. Jersey ran, and then leaped and glided for a few moments, and then ran again.