Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green

by Helen Phillips

  I step behind Roo into a small room that feels way peaceful, no gold or red or pink here. It’s a very quiet, very gray room, lit only by a few candles tucked into crevices in the volcanic rock walls. In the center there’s a low table with a pitcher and glasses. The table is surrounded by many gray cubes, large enough to sit or lie on.

  “Well,” Roo says, “I guess this is it!”

  “Shhh!” I say. Somehow it feels wrong to talk here. It feels like the kind of place where you shouldn’t make any noise at all, where you should move in slow motion, but Roo skips over to the table and pours whatever’s in the pitcher into two of the glasses.

  We haven’t even had time to discuss the drink—is it iced tea? juice? water? and what’s that flavor? grapefruit? lavender? basil?—when we hear our names, very softly but coming from all around, as though the walls are talking.

  “Madeline. Madeline.”

  “Ruby. Ruby.”

  It’s too dim to see where they came from, but here they are, one touching my elbow and the other touching Roo’s, two women in gray pajama outfits, separating us and leading us out of the Silent Lounge through two different narrow doorways. I know it’s silly, but I start missing Roo the second she disappears through her doorway.

  I had no idea that getting a facial meant being blindfolded. But that’s the first thing this lady does after leading me down a short hallway and helping me onto a high bed and tucking the sheet in: She wraps something around my eyes so I can’t see. I get only a glimpse of the small, shadowy room (a pot of orchids in the corner, a gleaming gray wall) before my eyes are sealed.

  “What’s your name?” I whisper, but I guess she doesn’t speak English, because she just strokes my forehead and puts on some weird music that sounds like lots of gongs being hit one after the other.

  Then she spreads all sorts of things on my face, hot things and cold things, and then she rubs my face and then there’s all this steam blowing in my face, and then she starts picking at the one tiny little zit I happen to have high up on my forehead where it’s covered by my bangs anyway.

  “Ouch!” I say, but that doesn’t slow her down.

  Finally she’s done with the stupid zit and I don’t feel her hands for a while and I’m going, Thank you, it’s over, I’ll never be doing that again, thank you very much, when suddenly she lifts up my head and starts wrapping this too-hot towel around it, all the way down to my neck. I try to stay calm but really I can hardly breathe—the towel is so hot and I’m scared it’s burning my face off, I’m scared I’m going to suffocate—and then she takes her hands and holds the base of my neck and starts massaging my throat, and then her fingers start tightening and I’m like, Oh my god, she’s going to strangle me.

  I pull my arms out from under the sheet and grab at her hands. I feel her resisting but somehow I yank the towel off and rip off the blindfold and here I am, alive, in the gray room with its pot of orchids and gleaming wall, but then I realize it’s not a wall, it’s a window, and standing there in the golden light on the other side of that window is my dad, and he’s staring in at me with this horribly sad expression on his face. But before I can wave at him or move toward him or anything, the light flicks off and it’s just a gleaming gray wall again, and it’s like maybe I saw him, maybe I didn’t, and the woman flings the blindfold back over my eyes and says, very softly, in English, so I guess she does speak English after all: “Feel free to lie here as long as you wish to absorb the experience.”

  “Wow, oh wow,” Roo is going as we come up the marble staircase. “That was way wow! Oh my gosh. Did they put steam on you? Did they wrap a nice warm towel around your head? Didn’t it smell so good?”

  Roo doesn’t notice that I’m not saying anything. I’m still all trembly after seeing Dad like that. Dad, on the other side of the glass, staring in, looking sadder than anything, while that lady pressed on my throat.

  I want to tell Roo about it, but also I don’t.

  Roo’s babbling fades into a happy sigh, and we’re both quiet as we enter the lobby—so quiet that Patricia Chevalier and Ken/Neth, who are standing very close together behind the large golden rectangle of the reception desk, don’t notice us. Patricia Chevalier is whispering and yelling at the same time—like she’s screaming at Ken/Neth, but she’s doing it under her breath. Ken/Neth nods slowly as he listens to her. I hear her say something, something “pressure!” And then something, something “desperate.”

  When Patricia Chevalier spots us, she stops talking midsentence. Ken/Neth looks up and his worried face turns into a smiley face.

  “Heya, girls,” he says, as though he wasn’t getting screamed at two seconds ago.

  “Hello, little ladies.” Patricia Chevalier gives us her prettiest smile, not at all like the last time we saw her. “How were your facials?”

  Rather than saying Horrible/Scary/Awful, you freaky woman, I let Roo respond: “It was SO COOL! I got this papaya stuff, and these hot towels, and now I feel bea-u-tiful.”

  Patricia Chevalier giggles politely, but I can tell she’s bored by Roo and is thinking about other things. “Mr. Candy will be taking you back to the Selva Lodge now, all right, señoritas?” she says before Roo even finishes the word beautiful.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m exhausted by the time we get back to the Selva Lodge. It’s tiring to be around someone who’s always trying to be funny. Ken/Neth seriously needs to be reminded that we’re nine and twelve, not three and six. We’re too old for pirate accents.

  “Go and tell Kyle you’re ready for Spanish, okay, girls? Got to head back to my big-boy business at La Lava.” Big-boy business—what’s wrong with this guy? “Toodle-oo!” he hoots, creepy-friendly, as he steers out of the parking lot after dropping us off.

  Roo was all droopy and yawny in the golf cart on the way over, and I’m sure she wants to take a nap, just like I do, so I head toward our room. It wore me out, seeing Dad like that.

  “Let’s not tell Kyle we’re back yet,” I say. “I forgot to tell him we wanted a Spanish lesson this afternoon anyway.”

  “Yeah!” Roo whispers excitedly, skipping ahead of me. I look over at her, surprised. A few seconds ago she looked like she was about to fall asleep.

  But when we get back to our room, Roo doesn’t flop down on her bunk. Instead, she starts grabbing things—water bottle, sunblock, bug spray—and shoving them into her backpack.

  “Come on,” she orders. “Hurry up!” She pulls my backpack from under the bed, which makes The Very Strange and Incredibly Creepy Letter slide out from where she hid it. I kick the letter back into the shadows. Roo reaches into the closet and throws my raincoat at me. “Quick! Pack this.”

  Excuse me, but who’s the older sister here?

  “This is our big chance,” Roo says, talking fast. “NoKyleNoMom NoKen. Now we can go figure out what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on where?” I stand there, arms crossed, my backpack and raincoat relaxing on the floor while Roo freaks out.

  “I told you I had to show you something, remember?” Roo yanks some Jolly Ranchers from the front pocket of her backpack. “Oh good,” she says, examining the bright handful, “we have food.”

  “What’s going on where?” I repeat, as if I don’t already know. As if I’m not already filled with dread.

  “In the jungle on the volcano,” Roo says. “Duh,” she adds, but not in a mean way.

  “Roo. I am your babysitter.”

  “I think we’re sort of babysitting each other now,” Roo says. But she’s not really paying attention to me. She’s tugging at the zipper of her overstuffed backpack. It’s a tiny backpack. It can barely hold anything.

  “I forbid you to leave this room,” I tell her.

  With a huge final tug, she zips her backpack closed.

  “Don’t forget your raincoat,” she says as she heads toward the door. “You’re going to need it. I can just use a jungle flower.”

  What, she doesn’t think I’m capable of turning tho
se blue flowers into umbrellas? I’m offended. Even though she’s right.

  “Roo,” I repeat, “I forbid you to leave this room.”

  “Mad. I forbid you to forbid me to leave this room.” She pushes the heavy orange door open and as soon as she steps out it slams shut behind her.

  I run to the door, open it, and yell after her, “I’m not coming. Mom will kill you!”

  Ten feet away and counting. Roo shrugs her shoulders in that bratty way of hers. I close the door. For half a second I lie down on Roo’s bunk and pretend to fall asleep, betting she’ll be back any instant. But then I realize Roo won’t come back. Of course she won’t. She’s way, way, way more stubborn than I am. So I shove my raincoat and a water bottle into my backpack. I run out the door and across the courtyard to the back gate.

  She’s only thirty or so feet up the trail, strolling slowly, knowing I’ll be coming along.

  “Hey,” she says when I get to her.

  “Hey,” I say.

  We walk along together as though this adventure is something we both agreed to.

  “I have to protect you,” I say, to prove I’m not here just because Roo bossed me.

  “I have to protect you,” she says.

  “Hello, is there an echo here?”

  “Hello, is there an echo here—here—here?”

  Dad used to do that. Make echoing sounds at the end of sentences. He loves echoes. Once we went on a trip to the canyons in Utah. Echoes everywhere. Dad was so happy, yelling up at the canyons. It makes me sad to think of it, of that time when Dad was happy, when we were all happy, and for some reason thinking of it makes me feel extra worried about me and Roo, worried about what we’re doing right now and what might happen in the jungle and what kind of dangerous things there are in the world that we don’t even know about. So I try one last time.

  “Roo. We’re going back. Right now. This is too dangerous. If you don’t come back right now, I’m going to tell Mom.”

  “If you don’t stay with me, I’ll bite you,” Roo says, speeding up, forcing me to speed up alongside her.

  Okay, I’ll admit it—I’m scared of Roo. Her bites can draw blood. For some reason I don’t even question her logic (if I don’t stay with her, she’ll bite me—but if I’m not with her, how can she bite me?). Instead, I give in.

  “If we get in trouble …,” I say in a voice that I hope makes her at least a little bit nervous.

  Then, suddenly, without even wanting or trying to, I get excited, just the way Roo is. I borrow the KangaRoo hop in her step. The jungle gets darker and darker, louder and louder, stranger and stranger, with each step. But for some reason it feels more magical than terrifying.

  It’s no surprise when Roo leads us off Normal Path onto Invisible Path. I gave up the fight a while back, but just to make sure, Roo turns to me and whispers “I’ll bite you!” as she dives deeper into the jungle.

  On Invisible Path, I start to imagine we’re two sisters in a fairy tale, a haunted forest, a place where sprites battle monsters. This jungle feels older than history. The air smells of rotten eggs and flowers. Hanging above us, vines draped with moss like the hair of witches.

  I feel shivery and dangerous and thrilled. It’s fun, marching up the volcano with Roo, past flowers brighter than any cartoon. A few huge blue butterflies flutter slowly overhead, and neon lizards dart by our feet. A trio of turquoise parrots flaps among the branches. Roo bounces along in front of me. Even though it’s practically impossible to see the path, she doesn’t seem to have any trouble following it. A good companion for a tricky journey. Just me and Roo. On our own. Exactly the way it should be. We can handle anything. Maybe we can even handle things better than Mom, aka Ms. Yoga Brain. We don’t need anyone. We just need each other. Slippery roots stretch out to trip us. Huge ferns try to tickle and poison us. But we keep on and on and on. It seems like fifty years might have passed. Maybe we’ll go back to the Selva Lodge and Mom will be a very old lady, still waiting for us after all these decades. Or maybe the Selva Lodge will be gone, taken over by the jungle, the pool just an invisible rectangle under the dirt and leaves.

  We hear the waterfall before we see it, a swift rushing sound up ahead, and then we turn the bend and there it is: a pure blue gush of water pouring out of the side of the volcano thirty feet above us. And I mean pure blue, blue like someone is standing up there dumping sky-colored paint off the ledge. When the water hits the stream below, it’s still that crazy blue, and I can’t even put into words how magical this whole scene is.

  The impact of the waterfall on the stream creates a cool mist, and Roo and I just stand there feeling the mist on our faces, which is a very splendid feeling, except for the fact that the mist reeks like rotten eggs.

  “Man, it stinks,” I complain as soon as I stop being thunderstruck from the beauty.

  “Whatever,” Roo says, shrugging, “it’s just a little bit of sulfur from the volcano. That’s what makes it such an awesome color—so if you like the color, you gotta like the stink.”

  “Sulfur?” I repeat. “How do you even know that?”

  “Hey, check it out!” Roo says, ignoring my question. “Isn’t that the back of La Lava?”

  I’ve been so distracted by the waterfall on our left-hand side that I haven’t even glanced at the right-hand side. But now I follow Roo’s gaze down from our little waterfall lookout, and sure enough, there’s the unmistakable glowing white back of the palace at La Lava, a long ways down the hillside. The bright blue stream flows directly toward La Lava and then disappears beneath the palace—funneled out, I bet, to all those colorful pools on the other side.

  “I’m confused,” I confess. “How can we be all the way over here by La Lava?”

  “Oh, Mad,” Roo sighs wearily, “you’re so bad with distances and directions.”

  “Please, stop with the compliments,” I shoot back, but Roo is already launching herself across the stream, hopping from one mossy rock to another. And as I follow her over the dazzling blue water, I have to admit to myself that she was 110 percent right about coming up here—this is way more exciting than Spanish class or any other thing we might be doing.

  Soon after we cross the stream, Invisible Path steepens. As we clamber up it, I notice lots of extra-bright lichen growing on the rocks, yellow and pink, purple and orange. Now we’re going pretty much straight up the hillside (or, I guess, volcanoside), and the path is just sort of clinging to it. On our right it’s practically a cliff, all messy and jungly down below, and then on our left it’s a black rock face stretching up and up. For the first time since we started, Roo’s not marching. Instead, she’s stepping very carefully, her legs shaking with her fear of heights. It’s kind of miraculous that I’m not scared of heights, but I’m not, so I keep my eyes on her wobbly feet, ready to reach out for her if she slips.

  Roo moves slower and slower, and when she turns back to look at me with this weird expression on her face, I bet she’s going to say, Hey, Mad, I’m bored. Let’s go back. She always pretends to be bored when she’s nervous.

  But that’s not what she says. She just says “Mad,” and lifts her finger, and points.

  Ahead of us, the trail peters out into a patch of jungle that looks, if you can believe it, lusher and more brilliant than the whole rest of the jungle. Trees heavy with bunches of red bananas. Fat yellow mangoes dangling down. Flowers in a hundred different colors. It’s as strange and shimmery as something from a myth, this glowing jungle grove crouched here between two cliffs, one falling away below and one stretching way up above.

  “I knew it!” Roo whispers. I’m glad she at least knows to whisper. This definitely isn’t the kind of place where you want to draw attention to yourself. “I knew there was something up here! Yesterday, when I came a little ways up the secret path, I knew, but then I had to turn around ’cause I thought you guys might be starting to worry, plus La Lluvia was coming.”

  “Well, cool,” I whisper to Roo, relieved that we can go back down now
that we’ve reached the end of Invisible Path and seen what there is to see. I guess Kyle made us swear not to come up here because he was worried about us on the steep cliff. Which is very cute of him. So, in honor of him, we’ll be sure to take it extra slow on the way down. “Do you want to lead the way?”

  But Roo starts walking toward the grove.

  “Uh, Roo?” I say. “I meant the way down.”

  She ignores me.

  “Uh, Roo?” I say again, trying to sound bossy without raising my voice.

  As wonderful/beautiful/amazing/et cetera as this may be, it’s simply not the kind of place you walk into. You just enjoy it from a distance for a few minutes and then head home.

  Not Roo, though. Roo runs right up to where the path ends.

  I notice a weird ringing sound in my ears. Maybe it’s my own blood rushing around, but I have this feeling like it’s the moan of the jungle, warning intruders to KEEP OUT.

  I follow Roo to the end of the path. “Let’s get out of this freaky place,” I whisper.

  But she’s staring thoughtfully into the pathless muddle of leaves and vines and tree trunks. It looks like there’s no way, absolutely no way, to go even a step farther.

  From here I can see that the mangoes are actually more golden than yellow, and that the red bananas practically glitter among the shiny leaves. I spot a flower that’s neon green, truly neon. I’ve never seen such a crazy flower before—it looks sort of like an iris but three times larger than normal. I’m wondering if that chocolatey smell is coming from the neon flower when Roo suddenly hurls herself forward into the grove and vanishes.

  “Hey!” I croak. Roo! I can’t lose Roo!

  I whack forward through a patch of high ferns—probably rubbing up against tons of bugs and other poisonous things—just in time to see Roo’s little bum waggling its way between a pair of moss-encrusted tree trunks.