Jeez. My sister really is brave sometimes. And idiotic.
There’s barely enough of a gap between the trees to let a nine-year-old body squeeze through. I’m not at all optimistic about a twelve-year-old body. Besides, I have zero—let me repeat, zero—interest in bashing my way into a totally wild part of the jungle that’s obviously abnormal or enchanted or haunted or something.
So I pause there, frozen, waiting for Roo to squeeze her way back to me so we can return to the Selva Lodge and, I don’t know, go swimming or drink licuados.
But then Roo’s face appears again, on the other side, staring back at me between the gap in the tree trunks. And for the first time ever, I spot a look of terror in her eyes. She quickly covers it.
“Hey,” she whispers, “that was fun! Come on!”
If it weren’t for how terrified Roo looked for that one instant, I might have said I’ll just wait out here, thank you very much, Miss Fearless, because part of me has this paranoid feeling that once I go in I’ll never come out.
But because of that expression I glimpsed on Roo’s face, I find myself sighing and stepping forward and sucking in my breath and shoving myself between the trunks (skinning a knee, getting smeared with moss) to follow Roo into this weirdness.
When I emerge on the other side, Roo doesn’t even thank me. She just gives a quick nod and forges ahead.
The mangoes seem to ripen before our eyes as we press our way through layers of leaves—leaves bigger than kites, than elephant ears, than sixth graders! Flowers bloom at our feet and at waist-level and face-level too, flowers tower above us and reach out to brush against us. These have nothing in common with the pretty little pastel flowers you might see in a florist shop in Denver. They’re all strong colors, orange and mustard and maroon, purple and brown and black. They all look poisonous. And they all release rich, peculiar smells—chocolate and chile, dirt and honey, nutmeg and curry.
The magnetic force that pulled Roo between the trees—I start to feel it pulling me too as I follow her inward, slipping over roots and ducking beneath vines. From outside, the grove didn’t look so large, hovering between the cliffs, but now that we’re in here it feels endless. I’m still scared—terrified, really—but for some reason the terror starts to feel farther and farther away, as though it’s floating ten feet above my head.
After who knows how long, we come to a big hunk of volcanic rock with a trickle of steaming red water running down it. I have this half-second thought—Wait, is that blood?—before I realize it’s just that the rock is reddish, probably from rust or minerals. Roo is reaching out to touch the steaming water when my strange calmness vanishes, because suddenly I hear something coming, something coming!—a rustling on the other side of the rock, plus that water definitely looks hot enough to burn, so in super-bossy Roo-style I yank her away from the water and back into the underbrush, where I pull one of those ginormous leaves across to hide us.
I’m not just imagining things—there is something coming. Roo hears it too, and looks up at me, and for the second time I see terror in her eyes. I hug her with my free arm and feel her shaking, or maybe it’s me shaking. Or probably both of us, trembling about whatever’s going to happen next. What volcano monster is going to appear from behind the rock? What jungle witch is going to come claim Roo as her daughter?
It’s hard to believe we’re still on the same planet as the Selva Lodge, as Ken/Neth and his dumb jokes, as piña coladas and miniature decorative umbrellas and coconut sunblock and yoga retreats and Denver.
Here it comes, here it comes, whatever it is. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to our leaf.
But then Roo pokes at me and I open my eyes and peek around our leaf and what do I see but two men in safari hats and those white jackets doctors and scientists wear, standing about eight feet away from us, on the other side of the steaming water.
Relief washes over me. It’s just people. People I can handle—it’s monsters I’m scared of. Still, we’ve got to stay hidden, because it’s pretty obvious that we should not be here.
Their backs are to us. The taller one reaches upward, and it’s only as he shoves his hands into what looks like pure jungle that I realize there’s something there, camouflaged among the leaves. I can just make out its boxlike form amid the layers of green.
Taller pulls a metal cage-thing down.
“Zip, zero, zilch,” he says to the shorter guy, shaking the box. “Big surprise. And that movie star wants someone’s head, I hear.”
“A trap is useless and irrelevant in this situation,” Shorter says, so softly I can barely hear him.
“You’re one to talk!” Taller retorts. “We’re just trying to do everything we possibly can!”
Shorter doesn’t reply.
“You’ve gotta find another,” Taller continues. His voice is annoying. It pretends to be friendly. “Gotta, gotta, gotta. If you don’t find a new one by the gala—”
Shorter nods sharply.
“Look,” Taller says in this snobby way, as though he thinks Shorter is pretty darn stupid, “Chevalier’s under some major pressure, clients on one side, investors on the other, the old rock-and-hard-place routine. The investors have no idea where it comes from, and we gotta keep it that way. And the sorts of clients we’re getting around here these days! Who could’ve guessed. But nowadays, these last nine months or whatever it is, ever since that loudmouth rock star, everyone who’s anyone wants what we got. And these people are not familiar with the word no. So she’s got all kinds of super-rich folks from all over the world breathing down her neck. And when she feels the squeeze, we get quadruple-squeezed, okay?”
Shorter nods even more sharply.
“Hey,” Taller says, “I’m not saying this isn’t a bit of a slipshod operation. Yeah, people have gotten in over their heads. But this is just what you gotta do when this kind of opportunity comes along. We never planned to stumble into a gold mine, and sure, there’s some scrambling going on now. But there’s a heck of a lot of money at stake, so it’s do what you gotta do, you know?”
Roo pokes me, hard. But I can’t take my eyes off this scene.
“Sometime in the next four days,” Taller says in his mean, friendly way, “you gotta. Or we’re going to be dealing with a crowd of extremely angry extremely rich people. A royal PR disaster. It’s all on you, buddy. We’re just asking you for one right now. Just so that all the right people are happy at the big bash. Besides”—Taller pauses, seeming to relish the drama—“you know what’ll happen if you don’t find it.”
Shorter stops nodding and just freezes. Roo keeps poking me. I keep ignoring her.
“Well. There you have it,” Taller says, reaching up to put the trap back in the tree. “Before Saturday. It has to be. We can’t shut down. Do you realize how much we stand to lose each week we’re closed?”
But it’s not really a question.
“Millions of dollars. Millions of dollars,” Taller tells Shorter. “Mix your current failure with no progress at all on the synthesis or cloning, and we’re getting close to being up a creek.”
“It’ll be months if not years on the synthesis and cloning,” Shorter murmurs. “Lab wizardry like that requires patience. Time and patience.” He has a wonderful, calm voice.
“Thanks, genius,” Taller says nastily. He’s the worst kind of person. “Soon you’re going to be informing me that it’s impossible to locate any eggs, and even more impossible to locate any females, and totally impossible to mate them in captivity.”
Poke, poke, poke from Roo.
“We’ve gotta keep our eyes on the prize, buddy,” Taller announces. “For now just find us another to tide us over. And keep imagining the day when you and I and a number of others will be rich as God.”
I watch a shiver run down Shorter’s spine.
“That could very well have been the last one,” Shorter says quietly, intensely. “You know that as well as I do.”
Such a wonderful voice.
A wonder
ful, familiar voice.
Dad?
Of course—Dad!
I look over at Roo—so that’s what she was poking me about—and we grin at each other.
“We have our eyes all over them,” Taller says in his awful way. “You know that as well as I do.”
Dad’s head droops forward.
“You gotta put in dawn-to-dusk days,” Taller tells Dad.
“Before dawn tomorrow,” Dad murmurs. “At the east trail, as usual.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Taller says. But he smiles meanly when he calls Dad boss.
“Pip-pip-pip!” Roo chirps beside me.
What the heck? Roo!
Both men spin around to stare at the layers of underbrush where we’re hiding. I freeze, clinging to our leaf, willing myself not to tremble. I hold my breath and beside me I can feel Roo doing the same. Yes, it’s Dad for sure, Dad! But I’ve never seen him looking the way he does now, which is scary—his voice may sound more normal than it did when we saw him at La Lava, but his eyes look frightened. Dad is frightened. It seems impossible, but I can see that it’s true.
I’m so worried about Dad that for half a second I forget to be worried about what will happen if Taller pushes through the vines and lifts up the big leaf and sees us there. But thankfully he turns back around.
“Unusual birdcall, eh?” Taller says.
Dad is still staring right at our leaf. I have to work really hard to stop my hand from waving at him. Roo squeezes my wrist and I squeeze hers. This doesn’t seem like the best time to have a little reunion with Dad.
“Think that was one of ’em, Dr. Wade?” Taller jokes as he strolls around to the other side of the volcanic rock. “Mr. Bird Guy,” he sneers, “Mr. Bird Guy!”
Dad turns away, tiredly following Taller, and I finally feel like I can breathe. I’m just releasing my held breath when suddenly there’s a hand cupping my mouth. Beside me Roo starts to squirm—so whoever it is has grabbed both of us.
Panicking, I twist around to get a look. Our captor is wearing a mask, which seems to be made from a green T-shirt with eyeholes cut in it. He’s also wearing a green T-shirt on his body, and a pair of jeans. He’s strong, and drags/pulls both of us through the underbrush, still cupping our mouths so we can’t make any noise. I’m sure Roo’s slobbering all over his palm to annoy him, and extra sure she’s trying to bite him, but he’s really tough, and after a while both of us stop squirming. Strangely, the second we stop squirming he lets go of our mouths and grabs our wrists, still pulling us through the jungle.
“Wha—” Roo starts.
“SHHH!” he says sharply. Since we don’t want him to grab our mouths again, we stay quiet.
The incredible thing is that he leads us right back to the gap in the trees where we entered the grove, and I almost want to be like, Thanks! because I seriously don’t think Roo—and definitely not I—could have refound this spot.
He lets go of us so we can wiggle through the mossy gap, first Roo and then me, and as soon as I’m through Roo takes off running and I follow her while the guy in the mask works on squeezing his way between the trees. He’s bigger than we are, and I really do think he might get stuck, not that I’m going to hang around to find out. We’re free!
Until we get twenty feet down the path, to the super-steep part, where Roo has to stop running because her legs are shaking, and I hear the masked man rushing up behind me, and I know he’s going to grab us again or maybe he’ll just push us off the cliff (we should have listened to Kyle!) or who knows what. I’m ready to slap his hands away from me and try to bite him or whatever (though I’ve never bitten or fought anyone—that’s Roo’s thing). But he doesn’t touch me.
Instead, he says, very calmly, “Focus, Ruby. Pretend you’re just walking across your bedroom. Go as fast as possible.”
I turn back to stare at Kyle. His hair is sticking up all crazy from being under the T-shirt mask, which he’s now crumpling into a ball and trying to shove into his pocket.
Roo looks back at him and gives a huge grin.
“Oh,” she says to Kyle, “you’re not evil.”
“Keep moving,” Kyle says without cracking a smile.
Kyle doesn’t speak again—except to occasionally command “Faster! Faster!”—until we’ve turned off Invisible Path onto Normal Path.
“You swore on your father’s life you wouldn’t go down that path,” he says. I have this strange sensation like I can actually feel his fury making the air around me heavier.
“I swore I’d never go down it,” Roo replies. “I never swore I wouldn’t go up it!”
“Faster,” he says, ignoring her obnoxiousness. He’s not breathing hard, even though we’ve been running practically the whole way. We barely even slowed down to cross the sky-blue stream. I’m out of breath from the pace, and from being terrified, and from worrying about everything, but mainly I’m just grateful for each footstep separating us from that grove, from that man who was talking at Dad in that awful way and saying those things that made just enough sense to fill me with a deep uneasiness.
“Man, I was really, really scared back there,” Roo gasps happily.
“Yeah,” I whisper, almost nauseous with the memory of Dad’s frightened face.
“This is exciting,” Roo breathes.
“More scary than exciting,” I tell her.
“More exciting than scary,” she corrects me.
I glance back at Kyle, who’s glaring at Roo.
“Roo—” I beg.
But she just grins and changes the subject. “Hey, does anyone know why Dad was wearing that flashing green light around his ankle?”
“It’s going to rain soon,” Kyle says, ignoring the question.
“What flashing green light?” I say.
“That thing,” Roo says impatiently, “around his ankle. It blinked green every other second.”
What’s wrong with me? Do I not have eyes? Why is Roo always seeing things I don’t?
“Oh” is all I say.
“Kyle,” Roo says, “dígame.”
Dígame. Dígame. What does that mean again? I know I learned it in Spanish at school.
“I don’t know,” Kyle says quietly. But the way he says “I don’t know” makes me pretty sure he does know.
“Tell me what’s up with that green light!” Roo insists. “¡Dígame!”
Oh yeah. Dígame. Tell me. How does Roo know a million times more Spanish than I do?
Kyle doesn’t say anything.
“Fine, then,” Roo says, “don’t tell me. I don’t need you to tell me. I already know.”
Kyle still doesn’t say anything.
“I bet you anything it’s a tracking device, like they use on birds and other animals!” Roo announces. “Someone is keeping track of Dad.”
Right then there’s the enormous whooshing sound that I now recognize as the start of La Lluvia, La huge, crazy, gigantic Lluvia, which is about to make all these trees sway like flowers.
I think Kyle yells “RUN,” or maybe it’s Roo, or maybe it’s even me, but it’s impossible to hear anything, and we all start running like crazy.
CHAPTER 9
The second we slide into the concrete courtyard of the Selva Lodge on our muddy sneakers in rain that’s like taking thirty showers all at once, the door to the kitchen of the Selva Café pops open, as though someone has been waiting for us.
And who should be standing there but the witch. In her black lace veil. Gesturing us inside. I’d really rather just go back to our room and rest and try to not freak out and try to figure out exactly what we saw up there and what it means and what we can do about it. But Roo grabs my hand and pulls me toward the kitchen.
“¡Abuela!” Kyle calls out across the courtyard, jogging over to the doorway and disappearing inside.
Abuela … abuela … I know I know that word! I search my memory, and, wait a sec—doesn’t that mean “grandmother”?
“The witch is Kyle’s grandmother?”
I don’t realize I said that aloud until Roo corrects me: “The fairy godmother is Kyle’s grandmother, duh. You didn’t know that?”
Of course! It makes sense.… Kyle comes here every summer.… He’s related to the spooky old lady and the sweet old man! But somehow I had totally missed that fact until now.
“Why do you think his name is Kyle Nelson Villalobos?” Roo asks.
I just look at her. The fact is, I didn’t know his name was Kyle Nelson Villalobos, and I wonder how Roo did. I guess she just knows that the same way she knew Dad was wearing a tracking device. Man, there’s simply no competing with Roo.
“Come on,” she says, tugging me with her across the courtyard and into the kitchen.
It’s a big white kitchen with oversized appliances and a gray linoleum floor. But somehow it still feels kind of cozy. There are bright striped dishrags hanging on a bar above the enormous stove, and red plastic chairs at the metal table in the middle of the room, and one of those neat spiral stairways in the far corner—I wonder where it leads. Spiral staircases always seem to me like they must lead somewhere special.
Kyle is already seated in one of the red plastic chairs. The witch is pouring a thick red liquid into the glass in front of him. The word poison jumps into my mind.
“Uh, hi,” I say, staying near the doorway as Roo hops over to the table, pulls out a chair, and plops herself down.
“Un licuado de papaya y hibisco,” the witch says.
“A papaya and hibiscus smoothie!” Roo exclaims as the witch pours another glass. “¡Dámelo!”
“Oh,” I say awkwardly, wondering how Roo always makes herself at home wherever she goes, never the least bit anxious or untrusting. “I didn’t notice that one on the menu.”
“Abuela is testing it out on us,” Kyle explains. “And it’s great.”
“It tastes funny!” Roo says around the straw in her mouth.
It tastes funny. Oh my god.
“It tastes funny,” Roo says again, “but I like it.”
Beneath the black lace, the witch’s smile grows. She turns toward me, and I can’t help it, I get nervous.
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