The Case of the Three Kings / El caso de los Reyes Magos

by Alidis Vicente

  “Good morning! Welcome aboard,” said the flight attendant.

  She was way too cheery for me and, anyway, not the person I wanted to speak to.

  I looked at the captain and asked, “Has this plane been flown yet today?”

  He tilted his head and looked at me silently for a moment. The flight attendant gave him a puzzled look.

  “Why do you ask?” said the captain.

  Ugh. Why couldn’t he just give me a simple answer? People are always answering my questions with questions. It drives me crazy.

  “Well, if the plane has already been flown today and has gone somewhere and back safely, then it will probably get me where I’m going safely,” I said.

  My mom put her arm around me and tried to push me along, but I shrugged her off and stood my ground. “You’ll have to excuse her. She’s a little afraid to fly,” she whispered.

  “I am not!” I demanded. “I just need to know, that’s all, for safety reasons.”

  The captain nodded his head and smiled. “Nobody has ever asked me that before. You have a very smart way of thinking. Good point. And yes, it has been flown today.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Oh, and make sure you stay awake.”

  “Will do,” said the captain. He winked his eye at me, and the flight attendant showed us to our seats.

  I sat on the aisle in seat 14C. La Bruja insisted on having a window seat, and for once we didn’t argue. I wanted nothing to do with a plane window. My mother sat between us, and my father sat across the aisle next to me. I fastened my seat belt tightly and reviewed my packing check list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.

  MUST BRING:

  • Sunglasses

  • Straw hat

  • Abuelo’s glasses

  • Lots of shorts and T-shirts

  • Bug spray

  • Detective stuff

  • 10 tubes of sunscreen (apply every 90 minutes for 5 days)

  • Books on “How to Survive in the Wild”

  Yup, I had everything. When I was done going over my list, the flight attendants began their safety instructions. I stared at them and followed along in the packet on the back of the seat in front of me. I located every exit on the plan, flotation devices and the oxygen masks overhead. As I was carefully taking these precautionary steps, I noticed no one else on the plane seemed to be paying attention to the flight attendants. Men were reading or sleeping. Teenagers were on some sort of electronic device. Moms were busy trying to keep their crying babies quiet. How would anyone know what to do in an emergency?! Well, at least I knew what I was doing. My entire evacuation route was planned. I’d be the first one running down the aisle, ready to go down an inflatable slide on the side of the plane if I had to.

  The plane lifted off a little while later, and I felt my stomach crashing into my brain. My hands grabbed the armrests on my seat, and my head was cemented into my headrest. I locked my eyes on the exit sign in front of me and on the faces of the working attendants as they made their way up and down the aisle. If they looked happy, then everything had to be fine. And I know how to read facial expressions from my detective work, so I could tell they weren’t fake happy. I stayed in that position for almost four hours without moving, until the plane wheels finally touched the ground on the runway in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As soon as the plane stopped, something weird happened. Everybody on the plane began clapping. I joined in. I may have clapped the loudest. I had arrived . . . in one piece! Whew, that was close.

  “Welcome to San Juan, Puerto Rico,” said the captain on the overhead speaker. “The temperature outside is 86 degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy skies. On behalf of myself and my crew, thank you for flying with us today. Have a wonderful stay here at the Island of Enchantment.”

  I didn’t have a clue why this place was called the Island of Enchantment, but I was sure I wouldn’t be enchanted by much or falling under any magic spells. I had some Three Kings investigating to do.

  We waited forever to get our luggage with all the other passengers from different flights standing around the conveyor belts, elbowing one another for space to get their things. Once we got our suitcases, I opened mine immediately. I needed to make sure all my detective things and classified materials were in order, in case there were any slippery hands that had gone through my stuff. Everything was exactly the way I’d left it.

  It wasn’t until we loaded our luggage into the rental car at the airport that I asked what time we would be at Mamita’s house.

  “Oh, about that . . . ,” answered my father. “You guys might want to take a little nap. We’ll be there in about two and a half hours.”

  “What?!” I exclaimed. I had just been on a torturous, hazardous four-hour flight, and now they wanted me to sit next to my sister in a teeny, tiny car for over two hours? I thought things couldn’t get much worse. But they soon would.

  “It’s not that bad, Flaca. Look around you. Take in the scenery. It’s a beautiful drive,” my mom said.

  I looked around me, like she said. I took in the scenery. I had sweat stains forming under my armpits. Heat was smacking me in the face like a wet, hot blanket I couldn’t get away from. And from what La Bruja said, there was no air conditioning where we were going. My parents said I had gone to Mamita’s house when I was much younger, but I didn’t remember anyone or anything. I was going into a foreign land totally unsure of what I was going to confront or where I was even staying. During the long car ride, I could talk to La Bruja and ask her more about Mamita’s house, but her information couldn’t be trusted. I just got in the car, put my straw hat over my eyes and hoped we’d be there soon.

  Two long, terrible hours later, my father said, “Almost there, girls. Just have to drive up.”

  I looked out the window and saw mountains everywhere. There was an especially large mountain in front of us.

  “Up where?” I asked.

  La Bruja grabbed me and pressed my face against the window. “Up there.” She pointed to the top of the mountain and gave me an evil smirk.

  She wasn’t joking. My father began to climb up the mountain with his car. The higher he went, the more winding the roads became. I felt myself getting carsick and lowered the window for air. But the air was too hot to handle, so I just fanned myself with my hat. The road was getting more and more narrow. Our car barely fit. My dad started to honk his horn.

  “Why are you honking? There’s no one in front of you,” I said.

  “I’m not honking for people in front of me. I’m honking so people driving down the hill will know I’m coming up the hill. We won’t be able to see each other going around these curves.”

  “Wait, what? This lane is meant for two cars? But we won’t fit. We’d crash and go right over the . . .”

  “Edge,” said La Bruja.

  I looked out the window. There was nothing on the other side except down, just like on the plane. No guardrail on the road, no houses, no buildings. Just cliffs. I buried my head into the middle of the backseat and covered my face with my hat again.

  “Don’t worry, Flaca. We’ll be there in just a few minutes,” said my mom.

  I held my breath the entire rest of the way to Mamita’s house and told myself that when we had to go back to the airport, I would go down the mountain blindfolded.

  When we finally got to the house, my father turned down a dirt road. Everyone waved as we drove along. My father honked and waved back. They were all strolling, with absolutely no rush in their steps.

  “Do you even know these people?” I asked.

  “Some of them. But if they’re on this street, chances are they’re related to us somehow. This is all family land,” my father said.

  The houses were way different than what I was used to seeing at home. They were colorful. Like orange, pink and purple colorful. And they were made of cement, lots of them with tin roofs. The windows didn’t open like in the houses where I lived. They had screens and planks that opened upward. Weird. Clothes were b
eing hung to dry on lines. I had never seen that before either, except in old movies. There were also kids running after dogs and chickens in the street. Some of them had no shoes on. The ground had to be boiling hot in the heat. How could they not be burning their feet? That was something worth investigating.

  The rental car rolled up to a white cement house. Behind it were two other houses. All around were trees, chickens and, at the end of a pasture, cows. There was a person staring out a window in the white house. I couldn’t see his or her face, just a pair of eyes that weren’t staring at us. They were looking past us, out into the land.

  We climbed out of the car with our things and walked up to a back entrance into the house. Again, no railing. What was wrong with these people? Plummeting cliffs, treacherous stairs. The accident rate had to be through the roof!

  Mamita was sitting in a rocking chair. Her hair was white and was styled in a boyish kind of cut. All of her skin was sagging. A lot. Folds and folds of leathery sagging skin. I wondered if they would tell me her age if I counted the folds, you know, like tree rings inside a trunk. Nobody knew exactly how old she was, but I thought she had to be almost a hundred. Her eyes were superblue, unlike anybody’s I had seen in my family. And when she smiled, she had perfectly white, square teeth. I knew they weren’t real, though. They were probably just like my Abuelo’s dentures back at home. Mamita got up from her rocking chair and got her cane. She might’ve been ancient, but she had a lot of energy.

  We all exchanged hugs and everyone started speaking in Spanish. Now is most likely a good time to tell you that I don’t speak a ton of Spanish. I can understand everything, but sometimes having conversations can be hard, especially when everybody is speaking at 100 miles per hour. So just know that the rest of the talking on vacation was in Spanish. But I’ll just write it in English because it’s easier for you and me to understand.

  “Look at my Flaca,” said Mamita. She looked me up and down and just stared.

  I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. I felt like she could see right through my skin. What I was thinking, what I was feeling. It was creeping me out.

  She walked us over to a bedroom. It had a tall fan, two dressers and two beds. The strangest part was the beds had nets over them. Of course, I needed to know what they were for.

  “What are those?” I asked, pointing to the nets.

  Mamita giggled. “Mosquiteros,” she said.

  “What is a mosquitero?”

  “It’s a net over the bed, so mosquitoes don’t bite you,” said my mom.

  Oh, great. The mosquito infestation on this island was so bad I needed a net to protect me from them at night. Or maybe they were meant to make you stay in your bed so you weren’t off snooping on the eve of Three Kings Day. And a fan? What was a fan going to do for me besides blow hot air in my face? Sleeping was going to be impossible.

  “Okay, so which bed is mine?” asked La Bruja.

  “That is your bed,” said my father, pointing to the bed in the corner. Then, pointing to the other bed, he said, “And this is our bed.”

  “Looks like Flaca is sleeping on the couch,” said La Bruja.

  “No, you two are sharing a bed,” said my mom.

  Both La Bruja and I were unhappy about that. If we had been anywhere else, like an air-conditioned hotel or a cabin in a forest, even, I would sleep on the couch. But I had just seen little lizards running on the living room walls and floor. There was no way I was sleeping anywhere but under a bed net.

  That night, I showered with cold water (which wasn’t so bad, since the air was blazing hot) and crawled into a corner of the bed so I wouldn’t have to come anywhere near my sister. No matter how much she denied it, I knew she snored louder than an orchestra. It was going to be a long night. The only thing that made me feel better was knowing I only had four days left until we went home.

  CHAPTER 4

  Staying at the Zoo

  At about 5 am the next morning, I was woken up by the scariest sound I have ever heard in my whole entire life. I had barely slept all night long. Puerto Rico was so noisy at night. It sounded like I was staying in a zoo, surrounded by rattlesnakes and what my mom told me was the song of a tree frog called a coquí. When I had finally fallen asleep, the petrifying noise made me jump out of the bed. It sounded like a shriek or a yell. Maybe it was a cry for help! I sprang into action and got my flip flops on. Just as I was about to get my detective flashlight, the noise happened again.

  “What is that?!” I yelled.

  La Bruja groaned. My father kept sleeping.

  “It’s the roosters, Flaca. Go back to bed,” yawned my mother.

  “How can I go back to bed? That thing is screaming by the window!”

  Again and again that evil animal crowed. It wouldn’t stop. I wanted to go outside and tape its beak shut. Since it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to go back to bed, I decided to go lurk around the house with my flashlight. I needed to get a good feeling of what it was like at night around those parts . . . what it would be like on the night before Three Kings Day. I also wanted to see if I could find any unusual items laying around, like I had written on my outline. I wasn’t on my turf anymore. If I was going to find out what was really behind this new holiday, I needed to get a clear picture of what kind of environment I was dealing with.

  I was going to begin outside but figured it probably wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t know what kind of enemies or animals were out there before dawn. I didn’t want to be anything’s breakfast. So I started my investigation in the living room. I flashed my light on the walls, taking a mental picture of how everything looked. The pictures on the mantels, the books on the shelf, the giant cockroach on the wall in front of me. Wait . . . the giant cockroach on the wall in front of me?! I froze. Seriously, I was stuck dead in my tracks. Not from fear; clearly, I couldn’t possibly be afraid of a simple bug. But that thing was huge. I mean GIANT. I had never seen anything like it before. I told myself the mutant roach was more afraid of me than I was of it, but that only lasted until it launched itself toward me. I ran for my life. All I could hear were its wings flapping behind me, like I was a squirrel being hunted by an eagle. I must’ve been screaming, because Mamita came running into the kitchen from her bedroom.

  “What’s wrong, Flaca?”

  “¡La cucaracha! ¡ La cucaracha!” I yelled, still running.

  Mamita put on the light in the kitchen and spotted my attacker on the wall. She laughed. Laughed! Then she hit it with her cane. Once it had fallen on the floor, she smashed it again. You won’t believe what happened. The cockroach CRAWLED OUT of its shell! It literally crawled out and began crawling away with its nasty white body. Mamita slammed into it one final time and swept up all its pieces.

  I stood in the corner of the kitchen, horrified. At that moment I was probably paler than I have ever been (and I’m pretty pale to begin with). My hand covered my mouth, trying to hold down the vomit I felt rising from the depths of my stomach. I had no words for my great-grandmother. I just stared at her, unsure of what to say. She was a warrior. A fearless heroine stuck in an old woman’s body. I had never known from whom I had inherited all those traits until then.

  So I said what I would say to any fellow hero. “Thank you.”

  “De nada. Now go back to sleep.”

  I listened. And as I walked back to my room, I heard her singing an old song, “La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar . . .”

  Was she mocking me? Singing about a cockroach that could no longer walk? To top it off, I walked back into a bedroom where everyone was so sound asleep they hadn’t even heard me screaming for my life. I could’ve been attacked by lizards or pecked by that wild rooster and nobody would’ve noticed. I unzipped the mosquito net and crawled back into my corner of the bed. I wouldn’t be coming out for the rest of the day, except for maybe food and bathroom breaks if absolutely necessary.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bugs vs. Boogers

  Two days had passed
since my deadly insect encounter. Since then, I’d been attacked yet again, by a violent hen who thought I was trying to steal her baby chick. I also found out the hard way that toilet paper clogs toilets very easily at Mamita’s house. Another embarrassing moment I won’t bother going into detail about. Besides all that, I was kind of excited because it was now the day before the Three Kings holiday, which meant I would be going home in two days. OH YEAH! At the same time, I felt totally bummed out. For the first time in my career, I didn’t want to complete an ongoing investigation. I felt empty, drained . . . like the dozens of bug bites covering my body had helped suck my crime-fighting skills right out of me. Even when I stared at the mirror, I saw a different girl. I had bags under my eyes from how little I had slept while on this “vacation.” My long black hair was tied in a bun, so it wouldn’t suffocate me in the heat. (I never do my hair, by the way.) And my face looked like I had broken out in a bunch of zits, from all the bug bites on it. I was covered with those hideous marks from head to toe, forty of them to be exact. The bugs on this island must have been immune to insect repellant. The strange part was, Mamita had no bug bites. Not one, and she didn’t even have a mosquito net on her bed. Maybe the pests in her house saw what she had done to that cockroach and didn’t want to suffer a similar fate. The truth was, I didn’t want to be at her house anymore. I didn’t want to celebrate any holidays or get any presents. I just wanted to go home, where everything made sense, where I could watch the crime channel in peace, where I could just be me.

  The afternoon before Three Kings Day had come, and many of my mother’s family members started arriving at Mamita’s house to prepare for the evening’s festivities. There would be a huge family dinner, music and dancing and, finally, the kids would all fill shoe boxes with grass for the camels to eat. Tons of adult relatives entered the house and came over to hug me and tell me how big I had gotten. I had never met these people before, but my parents said I visited Puerto Rico as a baby. I stood awkwardly and let them hug me while my mom gave me a look that said, “You better be nice.” La Bruja, conveniently, was nowhere to be found. She had been hanging out with one of our two hundred cousins who lived in the house behind Mamita’s.