by M. G. Harris
It seems odd that they don’t include me on the whole plan for 2012. In almost a year I’ll be sixteen, able to take my place as a Bakab on the ruling Executive. If Montoyo ever lets that happen! I wouldn’t put it past him to change the rules so that I have to be eighteen. That way he gets two more years as my proxy on the Executive. Basically, running the whole show.
Another thing that freaks me out is the way Emmy just popped up, commenting on a blog that I was sure was private. Knowing things she couldn’t know, like that Simon Madison left me beaten up on Port Meadow, the night I discovered that Ollie and Madison were working together, for the Sect.
Emmy did not see me “all beat up”. After I got away from Madison I spent the night frozen in some crummy coal shed. Then at dawn, Benicio picked me up, plucked me right out of there, flew us straight to Ek Naab.
Emmy didn’t get a look in. So what is she going on about?
I’m paranoid enough as it is, being the focus of all this attention in Ek Naab, worrying about what the Sect of Huracan have done to my genes. (Apart from turning my eyes blue.)
I guess I can sort it out later. For now, I decide to concentrate on the task at hand.
A motorbike race. What was I thinking? I’ve never raced a bike in my life.
The banana plantations lie to the north of the citrus groves, about a kilometre away. There’s a wide, dusty avenue between the two, about three kilometres long. At the end it bends to the right, forms a perimeter to the banana trees. Smaller dust tracks criss-cross the banana plantation, and the fruit pickers drive their pickups down tracks as wide as two-carriageway roads, loading up with stacks of green bananas.
I’ve never met anyone in Ek Naab who picks fruit, and the other day I found out why. They’re all Mexican locals, from outside the city. “Think how suspicious it would be to the people who live in Mexico around Ek Naab, if they didn’t know anyone who worked on these plantations,” Montoyo told me. “So we employ outsiders. They come in, they pick fruit and coffee. That way we seem no different to any other big farming company.”
“You’re rich, powerful landowners,” I’d commented, but he didn’t take it the way I meant, which was ironically.
He just nodded and muttered, “Something like that.”
As Benicio and I ride our bikes slowly to the starting point, I think about Ek Naab and its weird relationship with Mexico. It doesn’t seem to feel like it’s part of the country, or part of anywhere.
If the Big Secret Plan doesn’t work out at the end of 2012, would they really care what was going on in the rest of the world?
I have to start thinking about stuff like this. I’m going to be sixteen in a bit over a year, and then I’ll have to make decisions. The outside world most definitely does matter to me. It’s where I plan to spend the rest of my life.
When we get to the starting line, Ixchel is already there. This time I succeed in not staring at her. In fact, I hardly give her a glance. Instead I make out I’m doing a careful check of my bike, the fit of helmet, my gloves and leather jacket. It’s sizzling hot even in the shade; the air is almost choking with dust. Under the jacket, my sleeveless T-shirt is already soaked with sweat. I don’t care, though; this is a chance to wear the whole motorbike outfit in front of Ixchel. No way I’m missing out.
I cast a quick glance over at Ixchel. My blood begins to boil when I see Benicio’s hand rest lazily on her waist, see him giving her a light kiss on the lips. I guess he thinks it’s OK, now that I “officially” know about them. I can hear Ixchel speaking to him quietly in Spanish. “Are you sure I can’t talk you out of this, pet? You don’t need to impress me.”
“Hey, don’t lay it on me!” he replies with a wide grin, holding up his hands. “It’s your fiancé over there who insisted!”
He says fiancé with a really snide, sarcastic air.
“You’re a lousy liar,” I interrupt, not even bothering to disguise my anger. “I said I was better at handling a bike than you, and that’s a fact. You’re the one who wants me to prove it.”
“Listen, guey, around here a boast like that means something. It’s gonna cost you. You get what I’m saying?”
I’d rather hit him. Right now it’s hard to restrain the urge to do exactly that.
“You’re a great fly-boy, Benicio, I’m not arguing with that. But a motorbike is all about balance, and mine is better. It’s simple enough.”
Benicio laughs. He turns his attention back to Ixchel. “The kid’s grown some stones since he got here, you gotta admit it. But it takes more than talk.”
I rev up the engine and lower my visor. “Then why don’t you stop talking?”
“OK, OK. Once around the outer perimeter. You’ll be OK, dude – just follow my dust.”
Benicio takes a red bandana out of his jacket pocket, kisses it once and hands it to Ixchel. She gives him a wry grin, then looks over at me. I could swear her eyes soften, just slightly. I make my face very hard then, gaze back at her with a flat expression.
Benicio winks at Ixchel, then leans forward. He lowers the visor on his helmet. “Just don’t crash into the bananas, cousin. So, are you ready?”
In reply, I rev the engine a couple more times. Ixchel stands in the alley between us, lifts the red bandana high, her arm pointing at the sky. There’s a rapid motion; she whips her arm downwards; the red cloth flashes in the air. I release the throttle and brakes; the bike pulls hard beneath me, wheels spinning. Benicio pulls away even faster. Within a second he’s a whole length ahead. Swiftly, I catch him. He pulls away again. I check my speedometer. We’re both hitting sixty. He pulls further away. But he’s too fast, by my estimation. At this speed he’ll have to decelerate too hard to make the first bend.
Just as I expected, Benicio has to brake hard as we approach the bend. The bike tilts, wobbles slightly, but amazingly, he stays in control. I slow down more gradually, but manage to maintain a higher average speed. By the time we pull out of the turn he’s only ahead by half a length. He turns his head very slightly, flashes me a grin and then speeds off in a cloud of dust.
OK, maybe I was wrong about who is better on a motorbike. I didn’t count on Benicio turning into a speed-and-danger freak.
The second turn isn’t as sharp; it’s the fuzzy end of the plantation where they haven’t bothered to delineate the edge quite so well. We both make the turn with a hard lean to the left, hardly dropping any speed. For a fraction of a second, my knee scrapes the ground. A surge of adrenaline bursts through me.
That was close. Another centimetre and I’d have lost control.
The third, final, turn looms. My face and hands are still hot from my brush with disaster. I can feel sweat pouring, not trickling, down my back.
And Benicio is still ahead, by a length.
Without thinking, I twist the throttle and accelerate. In the next second I’m level with Benicio, the front wheels of our bikes seemingly clamped together by an invisible thread.
He hesitates. I sense it, for just a beat.
Then he pulls ahead. I don’t even have time to think about whether to follow him when he throws his bike into the final turn.
It’s as though I see a snapshot of the whole event in an instant. Benicio’s dramatic lean, the bike tilting almost horizontal, the wobble, the fatal wobble. The bike and Benicio hang in space, almost parallel with the ground, boy and machine suspended in a cloud of warm dust.
Then chaos hits.
The bike careers off course; I hear Benicio’s muffled yell, the high-pitched grind of brakes, the smell of scorched rubber and hot, metallic sparks. The machine spins a couple of times, scrapes along for about twenty metres with Benicio trapped underneath. Finally it smacks into a banana palm and comes crashing to a halt.
I start slowing down the instant it all begins. I’m already leaping off my bike and dashing to Benicio’s side before his machine has stopped. I’m dimly aware of Ixchel rushing alongside me too. When we reach Benicio he’s groaning loudly, very much conscious and in
pain.
“Get it off me, get me out. . .” he moans. There’s blood all over his left side. Heart slamming with anxiety, I lift the bike off him. The wheels are still spinning.
I’m about to undo his helmet when Ixchel grabs my arm angrily.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she yells.
“So he can breathe!”
“You don’t move someone in a road accident! Not unless you know what you’re doing!”
“He needs to breathe! He’s gonna get all overheated in there!”
Benicio’s moans are turning into sobs. He’s trying – unsuccessfully – to bury them. There’s a spectacular amount of blood on his arm. Gingerly, I lift the sleeve of his T-shirt to see the damage. One quick glimpse is enough. The bone is broken, and there’s a sharp tip of white bone poking through a bleeding, fleshy wound. I drop the fabric quickly, before Ixchel can see.
“What did you see?”
“Oh . . . he’s broken the arm,” I say, all light, casual.
Benicio isn’t looking at his arm; he’s actually doing his best not to look. I guess he has some idea of how bad it is.
“How do you know it’s broken?”
Ixchel leans in closer to Benicio. Gently, I restrain her. “Don’t. Just call for help. Please, Ixchel. He needs to get to hospital.”
“A proper hospital? Or the surgery in Ek Naab?”
“I’m not an expert,” I begin.
Ixchel fixes me with a hard, very pointed glare.
“Oh, you’re not an expert? Well, Josh, I wish you’d thought of that a few minutes ago. . .”
I stared at her, baffled.
“Huh . . . what?”
She turns her back on me then, makes soothing sounds over Benicio. His eyes have closed, his face contorted in a silent grimace of pain.
“Ixchel, I think I dropped something before I fell. My bandana. Can you go see?”
She looks a little puzzled, but this isn’t a time to argue with Benicio, I guess. A second later I’m alone with him.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry it turned out this way. You’re faster, OK? You’d have won.”
Benicio laughs, chokes a bit, then finishes the laugh. “It wasn’t about speed, it was about who handles the machine better. I guess you proved your point. At least, I did.”
“No, no, it was a freak accident. Listen now, you’ve got to stay calm in front of Ixchel. She’ll be worried.”
“Yeah.” He nods, pensive. “But not so worried as if things had turned out another way. . .”
“Huh? What other way?”
Benicio closes his eyes. “Get lost, Josh.”
Within thirty minutes the emergency jeep from the underground city arrives. Two young women dressed in blue jumpsuits put Benicio on a stretcher and carry him into the back. When I try to climb in along with Ixchel, she pushes me back.
“There’s no room for you,” she says. I can’t tell if she means literally no room in the jeep – or that she doesn’t want me there. Either way, her manner is pretty cold. I step down.
“I’ll get the bikes back to the city,” I say, in the briskest, most businesslike voice I can manage.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ixchel says. She’s already turned away. I watch them leave, then pick up Benicio’s Harley. It’s not damaged, as far as I can tell. Just a few scratches. Just to be on the safe side, I ride it back very slowly. Even though I’m tempted to give the machine a quick speed test, I don’t. The memory of Benicio’s broken arm is kind of off-putting. After replacing the Harley, I go back for the Honda. It’s a long, sweaty walk, with a blazing-hot leather jacket slung over my shoulder.
By the time I’m done with the errands it’s mid-morning. I swing by the surgery, which is on the campus of the Tec. Benicio’s being operated on, they tell me. Having his arm pieced together with some titanium screws and the wound getting all stitched up. Ixchel has already left, they tell me. They don’t know where she went.
There’s not much I can do while I’m waiting for Benicio to get out of his operation, so I head down to the blue cenote, strip down to my shorts and dive in. After about fifteen minutes I hear a voice calling to me from the water’s edge. There’s the usual tingle of excitement, the anticipation of seeing Ixchel alone. Especially after what Benicio said to me before he told me to “get lost”.
I climb out at the ladder trying to look casual, dripping with water, trying not to wonder how it is that Ixchel looks more gorgeous each time I see her.
“So. Um. Ixchel. Are you, like . . .?”
She looks up.
“. . . mad at me?”
Without warning, Ixchel lunges out with both hands, shoves me so hard in the chest that I stumble backwards.
“You IDIOT!”
Before I can recover my balance, she pushes me again. I’m dangerously close to the cenote’s edge.
“What were you thinking?”
I can see that she’s going for me again, so I lean forward and try, gently, to restrain Ixchel’s wrists. “Hey! Please don’t do that again, I don’t want to fall in.”
“You’re an idiot! How could you encourage him like that?”
Encourage him? It was Benicio’s idea! And Ixchel seemed keen enough on the contest – at the beginning. But I don’t want to rub salt into the wound.
“I know.” It’s hard to stop at that, but somehow I do.
“What made you go along with a stunt like that, anyhow?”
“Guess I wasn’t thinking,” I say, still holding her hands in mine. It feels nice.
“Let go of me,” she says with a sigh. “I won’t push you any more.”
“Promise?”
But she throws me such a look then that I let go right away. There’s a long, very uncomfortable silence. She won’t look at me. Eventually, still gazing into the cenote, she murmurs, “This is why I don’t want to be with you.”
Well, that just about takes my breath away.
“You . . . don’t want to be with me. . .” I echo, hardly believing my ears. “And this is why?”
“You and your incredibly dangerous life. You think I want that? Someone who’s going to end up dead? I thought Benicio had more sense, but . . . obviously he’s as crazy as you.”
“He may be crazier.”
“Oh, stop it.”
You like that I’m a bit crazy, I want to tell her. That’s what you look for in a guy. I’d do anything to have the guts to be able to say it aloud but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. . .
With difficulty she says, “My father went through hell when my mother died. You know that? I don’t want that. To be with someone only to lose them.”
Slowly, incredibly, I start to understand what she’s saying. “You don’t want to be with me . . . because you’re afraid of what will happen to me?”
“One day,” she pronounces, angrily, “you’ll forget me. You’ll be gone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You . . . Arcadio . . . Susannah St John. Your adventures with time travel. Love affairs in the past.”
“Huh . . . what?!”
“Your future,” Ixchel states firmly. “Yours! Time travelling and who-knows-what? Where am I in all of that, Josh? Nowhere.”
“The Arcadio thing? You’re so sure I’m Arcadio?”
“Of course! Ever since we met Susannah St John in Tlacotalpan. I felt it right away. Something about her, something between the two of you. Like she knew you already. How?”
It’s true; I remember how oddly Ixchel had behaved around Susannah. It seems incredible to me now, that Ixchel was already thinking about me back then. I’m sure it took me much longer to realize what was starting between us.
“Look. Montoyo has actually met Arcadio,” I say, trying to stall her. “Years ago. And even Montoyo’s not sure that I’m Arcadio. That he’s me. You know, whatever.”
“Montoyo?” Ixchel says, incredulous. “Since when is he reliable? Susannah St John believes that you are Arcadio, I know it. And she was in love wi
th him! It was disgusting to watch her around you, you know that? She looked at you like you were her beloved son. Only that’s not what she’s thinking really, is it? AT ALL!”
Tears are brimming in Ixchel’s eyes now. Desperately, I search for the right words, but I can’t find them. And she keeps going. “I know you’re mad about me and Benicio. And maybe you even want you and me to go ahead with the arranged marriage,” she says, choking on her sobs. “You don’t need to say anything, it’s kind of obvious. But I don’t want to be the girl you forgot.”