The Speed of Falling Objects

by Nancy Richardson Fischer

  Is he talking about himself or me? Gus and Jupiter help me stand. The bite is a deep throb. I’ll live. I grab my dad’s arm. “I turn seventeen tomorrow.”

  Cougar runs a hand over his face. “Cass told me before the trip. Sweet sixteen just played better and you didn’t seem to mind.” He moves to the front of our group and starts clearing our way.

  Gus is glowering at me. “What?”

  “Don’t ever do something like that again.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Zip it,” Jupiter says. “I agree with Gus. Uncool.”

  My cheeks get hot. “I’m sorry.”

  Jupiter shakes his head, follows Cougar. “Completely insane,” he says over his shoulder. “Like father, like daughter.”

  Gus asks, “Can you walk?”

  Tentatively, I weight my leg. It hurts. “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m too pissed off to carry you.”

  “I was trying to make sure you didn’t get bitten, too.”

  Gus closes the distance. “Who does that?” he demands.

  “What do you see?” I ask, standing my ground.

  Gus searches my face. “I see Danger Danielle Warren. And I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  He leans in, like he’s going to kiss me, then spins me toward the trail, gives me a push. I actually smile. Me, the girl who’s afraid of her own shadow, was in a plane crash, is now lost in the Amazon rain forest and risked a snakebite to save her friends’ lives. My mom would be beyond furious. Who does that? I guess that I do.

  When we stop to rest it’s beside a leafy green tree with yellow fruits that are a bit rounder than lemons.

  “Passion fruit,” Cougar says, pulling one free. He tosses the camera to Jupiter, who starts filming. “You can only eat them when they’re ripe and wrinkled, like this one.”

  “What if you eat them before they’re ripe?” Gus asks.

  “They’re cyanogenic. That means they produce cyanide compounds. Basically they’ll make you really sick. Understood?”

  Cougar waits until we all nod before he splits one open, handing half to me, half to Gus. Inside are seeds that look like they’re wrapped in clear goo. I touch my tongue to one. It’s sweet. Gus squeezes the fruit and fills his mouth. Juice drips down his chin. I have the urge to lick it off. Who am I? I try the fruit a bit at a time. It’s delicious. We pick the four remaining ripe ones and Jupiter and Cougar split one of them. My empty stomach cramps, demanding more plus the unripe ones. We’re burning way more calories than we’re consuming. Hunger is now a constant, pissed-off companion.

  Cougar says, “Let’s go. I’m ready to get out of this place.”

  He’s moving slowly. This is taking it out of all of us. We follow a narrow stream for several hours before it slowly disappears below ground. When I looked at pictures of the Peruvian rain forest, it seemed like there were rivers everywhere. I didn’t think about the scale of the forest between them, or how slow it would be to travel on foot.

  “We’ll make camp early,” Cougar says.

  We work as a group to make the shelter, Jupiter and Cougar cutting the bamboo and tying a quick frame together with vines while Gus and I pile palm fronds on top of it.

  “Not mad anymore?” I ask.

  “Still mad. I’ll let you know what you can do to help me get over it.”

  I think about doing more than just kissing Gus and my insides twist.

  Cougar asks, “What’re you two whispering about?”

  “Dinner,” Gus says.

  “Come skin your nonpoisonous snake,” Cougar says, holding it up.

  “You want to learn how?” I ask Gus. He nods. This time, I’m not queasy about touching the snake. It’s about three feet long but really skinny, not a lot of meat. Still, it’s protein. Before I slit the skin I close my eyes, breathe in its abilities. If Gus notices, he doesn’t say anything. I show him how to peel the snake, cut open its belly. “Careful,” I say as he pulls out the guts.

  Gus makes a face. “This is truly disgusting.”

  The snake’s heart rests in my palm. “But also kind of amazing, right? The sac around it is called the pericardium. And I’m pretty sure snakes’ hearts can move around their bodies because they don’t have a diaphragm.” Gus gives me a weird look. “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just, you’re kind of unbelievable.”

  The compliment is glitter on my skin. Rain begins to fall. By the time the snake is ready, there’s another downpour. We huddle together in the mostly dry shelter and eat our meager dinner.

  When we’re done, Cougar replaces the camera’s battery, pushes Record, then says, “Question of the night.”

  Jupiter, using a leaf to fan away the gnats, states, “I’m out.”

  Cougar shakes his head. “You’re on the clock.”

  “Better get double time, then.” Jupiter rests his chin on his knees. “Hit me with it.”

  “Worst moment of your childhood,” Cougar says.

  “I’d rather tell you my favorite flavor of ice cream,” Jupiter jokes. “Mint chocolate chip. Next?”

  Cougar says, “You of all people know how this works.”

  “Fine,” Jupiter says. “Probably third grade. I wanted to join the Cub Scouts and the guy in charge said I couldn’t without a dad. So I asked my mom to call my dad and that’s when she told me that even if she had his number, she wouldn’t cause he didn’t deserve me.”

  Cougar didn’t deserve those letters.

  “Didn’t she get that it was about you, not him?” I ask.

  Jupiter shrugs. “Moms are human. Turns out he lived two towns over. Had another family. Three boys. My mom told me right before I went to college.”

  “Were you furious?” Gus asks.

  “At first. But I never called him, not even when I got his number. What would I ask? What did those kids have that I didn’t?”

  Gus says, “That’d be a start.”

  Jupiter shakes his head. “There’s no acceptable answer. Instead, I studied hard. Graduated from film school. Became a kick-ass sound guy.” He grins. “Made my mom proud.” He reaches for the camera, turns it on Cougar. “Your turn.”

  “Worst day of my childhood?” Cougar scratches his head.

  I notice my dad’s hair is thinning. What I know about his childhood is the same bio anyone can look up online. His parents died in a house fire when he was eleven. No close relatives so he grew up in foster care. Had a passion for the outdoors. Read voraciously, mostly true adventure stories. Ran away when he was fourteen and lived off the grid all over the United States. Ended up in Washington State, where he somehow snuck across the Canadian border into British Columbia. In Canada he honed his survival skills, hunting, trapping and fishing. Came back to the US and spent a few years as a climbing guide in Yosemite Valley before creating the concept for his show, growing the brand by filming himself in extreme circumstances beating the odds, defying nature with his personal tagline: Wits. Strength. Ingenuity.

  “My parents were heroin addicts,” Cougar says.

  My insides lurch. He’s a complete stranger. “What? I never knew that.”

  Cougar shrugs. “That kind of backstory isn’t sexy and definitely doesn’t attract fans. Anyway, they weren’t the totally gnarly kind of addicts who sell themselves for drugs. They had jobs to pay for their addiction. My dad worked at a gas station in The Dalles, Oregon. My mom was the cashier. One of them fell asleep smoking. I was at the neighbors’ trailer playing when our mobile home burned down with them in it.” Cougar takes a sip of water. “Worst day of my life. They were shitty parents, but they were mine.” He looks at me. “It’s something your mom and me had in common.”

  “She’s never said her parents were shitty.”

  “Maybe not. But there wasn’t a lot of affection in her house, either. Regardless, I’m talking a
bout losing your parents young. It’s probably what attracted Sam and me to each other. But the absence of something isn’t enough to make the glue that’ll hold you together.”

  “Mom is beautiful, smart, capable, driven.” Bitter, angry and vindictive.

  Cougar winks. “We had that in common, too. But she’s also an army kid who moved every two years to different military bases and schools. Developing long-term relationships wasn’t exactly Commander Sam’s forte.” Cougar shrugs. “Believe it or not, we both tried. But I wasn’t sure who I was yet so the things that initially attracted me to your mom, like her confidence and smarts, ended up repelling me.”

  It’s hard to imagine my dad as insecure. But. It explains why he has to put other people down.

  “Anyway, after my parents died, I was moved from foster family to foster family. No one wanted to adopt an older kid.” His voice catches. “But hey, I survived. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”

  Not always. Cougar’s story has the ring of truth, but sharing it, on camera, seems...manipulative. I think back to all the episodes I’ve watched. There’s almost always a moment with each celebrity where my dad taps into their fears or deepest wounds by sharing bits of his own. Now I understand that every moment was calculated.

  Cougar takes the camera from Jupiter. “What about you, Gus? Was the worst day of your childhood the day your dad died, too?”

  Gus runs his thumb over the scar on his jaw. “Um.”

  His discomfort makes my skin feel too tight. “You don’t have to tell us.”

  “True,” Cougar agrees. “But I’m sure that if Gus’s father had been given the gift of more time, he would’ve told his son that unloading the bad stuff sets you free.”

  In the flickering light I see the lost kid Gus was when his dad died. He turns his hands over, spreads his fingers, like he’s looking at something.

  Cougar prods, “Give it a shot. See if I’m right.”

  Gus sighs. “Okay... I guess... It was... It was a few weeks after my dad died. My mom couldn’t function. I mean, not at all. She’d lost her husband and had four boys, ages six, three, and the twins were one, and no idea how she was going to support us.” His chin quivers. “I couldn’t understand it at first.”

  “Leave it, kid,” Jupiter says. “This is private stuff.”

  “She was in the bathtub. The water was so red—” Gus’s voice snags. “Danny, I lied to you.”

  Goose bumps break out on my skin. “About what?”

  “My scar. My mom? She’d slit her wrists. Her arm was hanging over the edge of the bathtub. I tried to pull her out but I was too small. I slipped on the blood, hit the edge of the tub. Eleven stitches. My mom got seventy-eight and a stay at a psychiatric hospital before she came home, exhausted and tuned out from the meds.”

  Gus tries to smile, fails miserably. It’s tragic. I hug him and whisper, “I wish it was skateboarding with your dad.”

  “I wish Cass was here,” Cougar says. “She would’ve been all about this moment.”

  A flint inside me strikes, sparks. “Did you even realize how much she loved you?” I demand. “Like, she’d do freaking anything to be with you?” The monkeys in the forest’s canopy ratchet their chatter, as if they’re furious at him, too. The rain comes down harder.

  My dad holds up one hand. “Easy. I’m just saying this conversation is raw, real, and Cass loved that. It’s the stuff that makes people watch my show. They can’t be honest in their own lives, but I tear people down to the basics, force them to face their biggest fears so they can get in touch with who they are, at their cores.”

  Frustration is a fist crammed down my throat. “You’re not a psychiatrist!”

  “Agreed. But look at you.”

  “What about me?” I demand, hands balled into fists.

  “The kid I recall after the accident was scared of everything. Probably been about the same the past nine years, right?”

  Grudgingly, I nod.

  “But out here, you’ve survived a plane crash, been lost but found your way, climbed trees, dealt with lots of shit that bites or stings, waded through a caiman-infested swamp and gone after two snakes in a misguided attempt to save people you barely know.”

  “You included.” My look dares him to correct me.

  “Me included.”

  The spark ignites. Heat floods my veins. “You know what my worst childhood memory is? It’s not losing my eye. It’s not the migraines that tore my head open or the unending nausea. It’s not learning to live in a world without three dimensions, or being called Pigeon by kids because of the way I moved my head. My worst day was waking up from surgery and being told you weren’t there. You disappeared after the accident. I knew you were mad—I’d disobeyed and left the tent. But I was sure that you’d show up for my surgery. Mom told me you might have to work, but I didn’t believe her because we were buddies. When I woke, you weren’t sitting by my hospital bed. The entire day I waited for you to walk through the door so I could tell you that I was sorry for everything. But you never came. You didn’t even call. I’d been bad and now I was broken. My little kid brain made the connection. You didn’t want me anymore.”

  Cougar is still filming. It’s more important to record this confession than meet his daughter’s working eye. Truth.

  “You want honesty? The thing I’ve figured out from spending time in the Amazon with you is that you’re an insecure guy who can’t let anyone shine brighter, and still that foster kid no one wanted. So you spend every second building your brand, getting more fans, trying to be a movie star, making tons of money, but it’ll never be enough. It’ll never fill that hole inside you. My mom wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. Cass wasn’t, either. Nothing ever will be.”

  Cougar lowers the camera. Bull’s-eye. We stare at each other, the silence stretching like skin ready to rip.

  “How’d you lose your eye?” Gus finally asks.

  I can smell the pines, hear the needles crunch beneath bare feet and feel that crisp night’s breeze tangle loose hair. “It’s anticlimactic,” I say. “Definitely not worthy of one of Cougar’s death-defying episodes. I was seven. We were on a camping trip. My mom was mad because Cougar spent all day climbing with a friend. She wanted him to spend time with us. Or maybe she just wanted to take something away from him because she was saddled with me.” I can see the angry indents between her eyebrows, the compressed white line of her mouth. “When Cougar got back that night, we had dinner in silence but they were both drinking, simmering. My dad told me to stay in the tent and they went into the woods to have it out. I followed them, hid behind a tree. They called each other names, made accusations. Cougar threw his whiskey bottle against the tree. I stepped out at the wrong time and a shard of glass sliced open my left eye.”

  Jupiter says, “That’s messed up.”

  Cougar is filming again, hiding behind the camera. I stare through the lens. “I was seven, so leaving the tent, even when you told me to stay put? That’s what kids do. It wasn’t my fault.” I take a breath, see the moment like it wasn’t me, like I’m a bystander watching a family detonate, each one irreparably damaged by that whiskey bottle. He didn’t know I was there. I say, “It wasn’t your fault, either.”

  “Your mother blamed me.”

  “Did you blame yourself?”

  “A little.”

  “But that’s not why you left.”

  Cougar puts the camera down. “No.” He swipes at damp eyes. “Danny, it was never personal. As to that foster kid no one wanted, yeah, I’ll always fight to be seen as more. Always.”

  I let his words settle and finally get it. He needed to be Cougar more than he wanted to be a husband or father.

  Truth.

  DAY FIVE

  30

  Two thoughts float through my brain as I wake in the rain forest: I’m seventeen. It was never
about me.

  I’ve based my entire life on the idea that my dad ditched because his daughter was bad and defective. That it was my fault my parents’ marriage failed and my mom had to give up her dreams. But everything I’ve come to understand the past few days coalesces. Leaving the tent wasn’t my fault. My dad ditched because he needed to be Cougar. He would’ve done that with or without me around. Everyone, even Sam, had a choice. So if I’ve created myself out of those building blocks, and they’re lies, who am I now?

  “Happy birthday,” Gus says.

  I open my eyes. He’s holding out a passion fruit.

  “Wrapped it myself.”

  “Song?”

  “Marcus Halliwell. ‘Chase.’”

  “Sing it?”

  “No way.”

  “It’s my birthday wish.”

  Gus leans in, softly sings, “‘Sunshine chase the dark away and warm my lonesome heart. Dreams are made from rays of gold. Your touch is just a start.’”

  It’s horrible, off-key and perfect. He gives me a quick kiss. I’m lost in the Amazon. Three people are dead. I’m dirty, sweaty, hungry, but in this moment? It’s the best birthday I’ve ever had. I’m not sure what that means about me.

  “Happy B-day, Danny,” Jupiter calls out while simultaneously taking a leak, his back to us.

  My dad is watching me. He looks kind of awful. Scruffy, too thin, pale. He pulls a bouquet of yellow and purple flowers from behind his back. “Happy seventeenth.”

  It’s like I’m outside my body, waiting to see what the girl with two different colored eyes is going to do. She takes the flowers but doesn’t smile. “Thanks.”

  “And I’m watching you,” Cougar says to Gus. “That’s my daughter.”

  I imagine Cass filming this. Perhaps she did have a director’s eye and her footage would’ve captured profound moments. Maybe, someday, my dad would’ve seen her as more, given their relationship a chance. I blink back tears. They’re for both of us. Cass will never get to live out her dreams and it could’ve been me sitting in her seat on the plane. I could still die out here. Never have I felt the fragility of my own life so completely. Never have I wanted to live in each moment more. When Cougar isn’t looking, I kiss Gus.