Nadia Knox and the Eye of Zinnia

by Jessica McDougle

  Nadia Knox and the Eye of Zinnia

  Jessica McDougle

  Published by Plum Street Press

  ISBN 978-1-943169-24-5

  Copyright © 2017 by Jessica McDougle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Afterword

  About the Author

  More Nadia!

  Chapter One

  “Oh no,” my brother said next to me on the plane, reaching for the white bag in the seat pocket. The airplane shook and dropped. “Nadia, I think I’m going to—” He leaned over the sick bag, and I covered my nose.

  It wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend my summer vacation: stuck on a plane between my airsick brother and my dad who snores like a chainsaw. But my life isn't exactly normal, so I've learned to accept whatever comes my way. My mom always tells me, "Nadia, look at the good points of our extraordinary life," as she adjusts her purple-rimmed glasses. By extraordinary, she means weird. Unlike a lot of kids my age, though, I don't think weird is always bad.

  But what do I know? I'm just a slightly clumsy, home-schooled thirteen-year-old bookworm—otherwise known as Nadia Knox. That's right, Knox, as in the famous Fort Knox in Louisville, Kentucky. Fort Knox is a vault that holds the majority of the gold that belongs to the United States. It's locked up airtight and heavily guarded—you have to be pretty special to get inside. My mind pretty much works the same way; it's a vault full of secrets that people have trusted me with, and I've never let one slip.

  My parents are anthropologists who have traveled all over the world trying to discover the untold secrets of cultures and civilizations. My brother Chris and I have been following them on their journeys across the globe since we were little. We've been to countries the kids back home in Virginia have never even heard of, like Tuvalu and Guyana. My dad says every continent has its secrets, and this summer we were hoping to uncover some of the ones hidden in Africa. I know tons about secrets. Everyone always tells me their secrets like my English tutor who admitted she never read William Shakespeare, or my dad, who told me he used to take ballet lessons to help with his rock climbing.

  “I’ve never been any good at flying,” Chris hiccuped, rolling down the top of the sick bag and looking around for an unlucky flight attendant to give it to.

  No secret there. No one seemed bothered by all the hours we'd spent on a plane besides Chris, who grabbed for a bag every time the plane bounced. In the row behind us, my mom was talking to one of her teammates about the path we'd be following through Uganda during our trip. In an effort to get away from Chris and his sick bag, I tried to turn around to face my mom and Mrs. Haynes, but I leaned over too far, and my hand slipped off of the armrest, which made me toss myself towards the aisle instead. Luckily a stewardess caught me by the arm before I could hit the floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, I straightened myself up and smiled Sheepishly.

  "Thanks," I said embarrassed.

  "No problem," said the stewardess smiling. "You're not the first person to throw themselves out of a seat on a flight this long."

  I checked to see if Chris was paying attention. He was usually pretty insistent of pointing out my lack of balance, but he was preoccupied with trying to keep his soda down.

  Thinking I was in the clear, I cringed when I heard Teddy laughingly belt out, "Way to go Tumble-ina, don't take the whole plane down with you next time."

  Trying to play it cool, I pretended not to hear and turned my attention to mom and Mrs. Haynes.

  "Let's think about what we do know about the area," my mom said to her partner, Mrs. Haynes. "African civilizations, both modern and ancient, were centered on the availability of water. It was essential to their physical survival, as well as their spiritual survival." She held up the map. "That means that we should start by following the rivers."

  Mrs. Haynes nodded, wearing a headscarf that matched her shirt just right. Even after all those hours on a plane, she still looked picture-perfect.

  Sometimes my parents work alone, but that summer they are working together with the Haynes family to compete for the FISH award, which doesn’t have anything to do with the trout we eat back home. It stands for Finding Inaccuracies in Science and History. It’s one of the most famous prizes in the world, given once every five years. Last time around, my parents lost to a team of paleontologists who discovered an ancient snake fossil proving that snakes once had feet. Because of that discovery, scientists had to rewrite the whole history of the Cretaceous period. So, my parents’ team has to come up with something pretty big. They are determined to win at any cost.

  For the last four years, my mom and dad had been searching for lost ancient civilizations, trying to prove whether or not they still exist. To have an even better chance at winning the FISH award, they've teamed up with Mr. and Mrs. Haynes, or as my parents call them, Tim and Joyce. They're famous anthropologists like my parents, and they have two kids, Teddy and Charlotte. I've known the Haynes family forever, but I'd never spent much time with them on projects. All put together, the eight of us were a pretty weird group. Like I said before, weird isn't always bad. But isn't always great, either.

  “How many hours left?” Chris asked, reaching across me to nudge my dad. He popped up like he’d been awake the whole time, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head and looking at his watch. “We’re almost there,” he said with a big smile. “Only eight hours left.”

  “Eight hours? How can you call that almost there?” my brother whined, kicking the seat in front of him. A man in a suit turned around and glared at him. Chris stopped kicking but kept whining, trying to add up out loud how many minutes there were in eight hours.

  If I'm the ears of the group, my brother is the mouth of the group, not only because of what comes out of it but because of what goes in it. Chris can say anything he wants and get away with it because he's "precocious," and he's hungry every hour of the day. He can eat as much as my dad, even though he's only eleven. You'd never know it looking at him. He's tall and skinny as a rail, and that's why we all call him Bean Pole, even though he hates it. People say he looks just like my dad, but they must be looking in a funhouse mirror. My dad is tall, but he isn't skinny. He’s built up with muscles from rock climbing. He looks more like an Olympic athlete than an anthropologist.

  You can't say the same about my mom, though, who looks like she walked out of a National Geographic article. She's a foot shorter than my dad, but the big ponytail she wears on top of her head almost makes them look the same height. Mrs. Haynes is always trying to get my mom to do something different with her look, but she won't go for it. I know she'd especially never give up her purple glasses; it's like they make my mom who she is. I saw the pictures from the night I was born, and she was even wearing them then, in her hospital gown.

  “I’m hungry,” Chris said. I wasn’t surprised. All the food the flight attendant had given him earlier he’d just handed back to her.

  “I’m bored,” Teddy said from across the aisle. I wasn’t surprised by this either. This is Teddy’s first big trip. He’s only eight, so he usually stays behind with his grandmother who lives in Athens, Georgia. Being
on a plane for this long has really taken a toll on his attention span.

  “I’m sick of everyone complaining,” Charlotte complained, seated next to Teddy. Sticking his tongue out at his sister, Teddy slouched in his seat.

  “Has anyone seen my passport?” Mr. Haynes asked, standing up next to Teddy at the window seat, feeling around the pockets of his cargo pants.

  “The first compartment of your briefcase,” Mrs. Haynes said loudly, not looking up from the map my mom had given her.

  Most of the time I don't mind the Haynes family. Mr. Haynes has an IQ of 140 and is a member of MENSA, which is a super exclusive club for super smart people, but sometimes he forgets to match his socks or button his shirt right. Then Mrs. Haynes has a fit.

  Mrs. Haynes paid her way through college by being a beauty pageant queen, and even in the middle of a steamy jungle, you can tell. She's always ready for the camera because there's always one around her neck. Don't let her looks fool you though; she's more than just a pretty face. She's a genius too. Before the Haynes joined up with us in Africa, Mrs. Haynes was the head of her own research project preserving ancient Indian scrolls that could possibly serve as the missing link to the idea that Asians and Africans are more closely related than we once thought. You could call her the eyes of the group because she's the one who captures so many of the wonderful things we see.

  Their daughter Charlotte is my age and not much different from her mom, except for the neon yellow sweatshirt she always wears. Mrs. Haynes calls it a "travesty." Charlotte turns her nose up and wears it anyway. She wants to stick out wherever she goes. I'm the opposite, always trying to blend in, but Charlotte never misses the chance to tell me how unfashionable my green hiking boots are. The boots keep me steady on my feet, and even if they came in hot pink, I'd keep wearing my moss-green ones.

  Even though we're different, Charlotte and I get along sixty percent of the time. She might look weak in the knees, but once she helped give her dad stitches when he cut his hand on a sharp rock, while I turned away, too afraid to look. She's tough, even if she doesn't look it.

  As for her brother Teddy, he's a nuisance ninety percent of the time. He's eight years old, and as my mom says, "cute as a button." Teddy looks like a little kid on an apple juice commercial, but he's not nearly as sweet: his main hobby is playing pranks on other people that are never as funny to anyone else as they are to him. But he never gets in trouble because his dimpled smile melts all the adults' hearts like ice cream in the sun.

  “I can’t make it four hundred and eighty more minutes!” Chris said.

  I could tell Teddy and Charlotte were just as miserable. It's hard keeping yourself entertained on a plane for so long when you've seen the in-flight movie three times already. I turned back around to hear what my mom had to say to Mrs. Haynes. Usually, before we leave for an expedition, my parents give Chris and me most of the details about where we're going and what we're doing, but this time they'd been weirdly quiet about everything. And I didn't like it.

  “Getting a nomination for a FISH isn’t going to be easy this year,” my mom said to Mrs. Haynes. “We’ve got to come up with something big. And we’ve only got three months before the foundation needs our evidence.”

  "Relax, Shannon," Mrs. Haynes said. "Everything will be fine. We've got plenty of time to follow these leads. We're not only going to get the nomination; we're going home with that award," she said forcefully.

  "You're right. But the Department of Anthropology is competing with the other science departments for investors. Anthropology really needs something that makes us stand out. This documentary has a lot riding on it."

  “You and Tim have given them so many valuable documentaries. They should trust you to take your time on this one,” Mrs. Haynes said.

  My dad turned around in his seat. He said, "It's because the president of the foundation heard about what we were doing. He thinks that us finding this tribe, and winning a FISH would catch the attention of donors willing to give money for even bigger projects."

  "More money for what bigger projects?" Mrs. Haynes asked, folding her arms.

  "I'm not sure. I didn't ask," my mom said. "But I can be sure that it would mean huge projects for all of us."

  "It would be nice to head a research team to connect that mysterious tomb that was found in Egypt to King Tut's family," my dad added.

  “How much would something like that cost?” Chris asked.

  My dad said, "It takes quite a bit of money to run a project like that. First, the proper authorities would have to give permission for us to have access to the other tombs. Then dig teams would have to help us navigate through the unknown tomb, as well as the others that we would try to connect it to. Not to mention all of the research that would have to be combed through, and artifacts that would need to be restudied. It's pretty close to a $200 million project."

  "$200 million?" I asked. "That's a huge project. Do you think that we have a chance of getting funded for that?"

  "If we can find this hidden tribe, it almost guarantees that we would." My mom said smiling.

  "Doesn't this seem like an invasion of privacy though?" Chris asked. "I mean, we're going to look for a tribe that may not exist, and obviously doesn't want to be found if they do exist." I had to admit that I agreed with Chris. It seemed like we were sticking our nose where it didn't belong.

  All the adults ignored his comment and kept talking.

  “Winning a FISH award could really open a lot of doors for all of us,” my mom said, looking at Mrs. Haynes.

  "So, what happens if we don't find this tribe, or we don't win the FISH?" Charlotte asked looking over the edge of her magazine. "Well…" my dad hesitated. "The foundation has threatened to pull our funding if we come up empty-handed. They've complained in the past about the amount of money we've had to spend to complete our projects before, but this time I think they mean business."

  Pull their funding? I couldn't believe that my parents could lose everything we'd worked for and that we might have to go back to living like regular people. On the other hand, I thought that invading someone else's privacy and threatening to expose them to the whole world was awful too. I couldn't believe my parents were even considering helping the foundation do something like this.

  "Mom, you're not really going to help them find these people so they can turn them into a zoo exhibit? Are you?" Chris asked.

  “It’s really not as bad as it seems, dear. We haven’t found anything yet, so there’s no need to worry,” my mom answered.

  “What tribe are we looking for?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Chris said. “Why’s everybody being so secretive?”

  My mom and Mrs. Haynes looked at one another.

  "Well," Mrs. Haynes said, "It's a very old tribe, written about for centuries, although no one has proved its existence."

  “You mean we’re looking for Big Foot?” Charlotte said from across the aisle.

  “They’re said to possess powerful magic that runs through an uninterrupted bloodline,” my mom said. “Some of which is said to be…well…”

  “Dangerous,” my dad spoke up. “Known for their curses.”

  “Curses?” Teddy said, sounding panicked.

  “Yeah right,” Charlotte said. “Sounds like a big stack of baloney.”

  “I’m hungry,” Chris said.

  Mrs. Haynes folded her arms. “We have good reason to believe this tribe exists. We aren’t just chasing shadows here.”

  “And what if the people are there and they get mad because we found them?" Teddy asked. "If there are people there and we go in without permission, are we gonna get cursed?"

  Shaking his head, Mr. Haynes answered, "I'm not exactly sure if that's how it works. But we would definitely take the utmost care to follow their customs correctly."

  “Why are we going into an area that might have people in it anyway?” I asked. “We normally don’t go into places like that. Didn’t you always say we shouldn’t do things lik
e this without permission?”

  Clearing his throat, my dad answered, "If we want to even be considered for a nomination for the FISH award, we have to dispute a major theory. Finding the Kamju tribe would do that."

  I couldn't believe that my parents were actually going to invade someone else's territory, and not only that but also expose them to the world. It was totally unlike them. The FISH award had them grasping at straws. I could remember how disappointed they were when they didn't win five years ago. It had taken my mom a while to get over it. The only person from my parents' foundation who won an award that night was Mrs. Haynes. She got the Artistic Eye award for her photographs of a family of endangered Mountain gorillas during a rainstorm.

  Folding up his map, Mr. Haynes said, “If we’re going to do this documentary right, we need to get an account from someone who knows the tribe’s history.”

  “How would we do that?” I said. “We don’t know anyone who lives there.”

  “Our guide,” he said. “The foundation has connected us with a young man who knows the history of these people, and who will be very helpful in navigating through Uganda.”

  “How is he connected with the foundation?” Chris said.

  “He’s a top university student who shows great promise. He’s reviewed some of our research and knows the region we want to search in,” my mom said.

  “But what if the tribe still doesn’t give us permission, and we can’t do the documentary?” I said.

  “Then I guess we would have to figure something else out,” she said quietly.

  I shuddered at her words. She didn't have to say it, but I knew what she meant by figuring something else out: hoping that some other foundation would fund us for a new project, or we would have to go back home to Virginia. They would go back to teaching college courses, and I would go back to regular school. I wasn't super excited about the possibility of having to go back home. It's not like living in Virginia was terrible—at least it wasn't if you were a cheerleader or a basketball player. If you were into books, the cool kids didn't have much to do with you until they needed help with their science projects. I'm great at science, so I spent the spring semester avoiding the cool kids in the lunchroom so that they won't ask me to do their projects for them. While they were watching TV, I was reading books. I could never find anything to talk about with other kids. That's why I was so excited when my parents got offered the chance to do more fieldwork. It meant I would get a chance to meet people who were interested more in other cultures than in PicChat filters.