“His name is Needles,” Tyrell puts in.
“Why?” I dangle my fingers over the paint tray.
Like an avenging angel, the little beast bursts up out of the water and clamps his mouth down on my pinkie. Shocked, I shake him off, sending him flopping back into the water with a splash.
“Cut it out!” Grace yanks one of the celery stalks from Tyrell and whacks me across the face with it. “Pick on somebody your own size!”
“He tried to bite my finger off!”
She examines my hand. “You’ll live. It didn’t even break the skin.”
“I think I better show this to Laurel,” I tell her. “I got bitten by a wild animal.”
“No!” she blurts. “You can’t tell the pathfinders we’re hiding him!”
“I don’t know,” I persist. “This place is supposed to be about mind and body wellness. Last time I checked, the finger is a part of the body.”
“Please don’t!” She’s begging now. “They’ll make me turn him loose, and there’s no way Needles is strong enough to survive on his own!”
I can’t resist pulling her chain. “It’s out of my hands. Nimbus makes the rules around here, not me. If you don’t have rules, you’ve got chaos.”
She looks like she’s about to cry, which justifies my opinion of her. Anyone who can get this worked up over a slimy little finger chomper is three-quarters gaga. On the other hand, I already know she’s gaga, since she loves the Oasis.
I sigh. Making a crazy person cry—that’s not being very whole.
Tyrell speaks up before I get the chance to. “Don’t worry, Grace. He’s not going to turn us in. He’s just messing with you. Right, Jett?”
“Right,” I confirm. “Who hates rules more than me? Nimbus says no pets? I say we adopt a hundred lizards. And a Shetland pony. And a couple of giraffes.”
“No giraffes,” Tyrell deadpans. “The shed isn’t tall enough.”
I regard Tyrell with newfound respect. Maybe I underestimated him.
“So what’s the next step in Lizard 101?” I ask.
“We’ve been trying to figure out what he eats,” comes a new voice from behind us.
I wheel in time to see that tall girl with the glasses—Brooklynne—slipping in through the door of the shed.
I shoot Grace a resentful look. “She’s in on it too? You trust her and not me?”
Brooklynne laughs. “Last time anybody trusted you, you bought a hovercraft.”
My eyes click into super focus—a trait I inherited from Vlad. When he concentrates, his gaze is like the targeting system on an F-16. “How did you hear about the hovercraft?” I demand. “Only Nimbus, Ivory, and Matt know about that.”
“Word gets around,” Brooklynne explains evasively.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My eyes narrow. “Has Matt been complaining about me?”
Tyrell grins. “Everyone’s been complaining about you.”
I shrug modestly. “Fair enough.”
“Guys, we’ve got more important things to do,” Grace insists. “Needles must be starving.”
Tyrell reaches one of the celery stalks into the paint tray, dipping it into the water directly in front of Needles. The lizard ignores it, even when Tyrell bumps it up against the reptile’s leathery snout.
Next, Grace scoops a little mashed turnip onto a Popsicle stick and offers it. The needlelike teeth nibble at it for about half a second. Then the blob of food sinks to the bottom of the paint tray, ignored.
Brooklynne goes last. She’s brought a Dixie cup filled with brown rice. Using a pair of wooden chopsticks, she plucks a few grains and holds them just above the surface of the water. Needles seems to find this the least appetizing of all. He actually turns his snout away. I’m pretty sure he’d be making a face if he had one.
“You guys are such idiots,” I tell them. “If you want to know what lizards eat, google it.”
The look they give me plainly says that I’m the idiot, not them. There is no Google here, no Yahoo, no Fuego Search. We are 100 percent unplugged. “We’re doomed,” I groan. “We’ve got no way of even finding out what kind of lizard he is. For all we know, he eats nothing but cherries jubilee!”
The others stare at me hopelessly. They may not like me much, but they see that I’m right.
At that moment, a small moth flaps its way over the paint tray. Needles rises up out of the water and snaps his jaws at it, missing by at least three inches. The moth does a U-turn and disappears out the door.
“Well, we have our answer,” Grace says in a shaky voice.
I shrug. “So he eats bugs. So what?”
“He’s a carnivore,” Brooklynne concludes in that flat, informative tone of hers.
That’s when it hits me. The dining hall is fully stocked with every fruit, vegetable, grain, starch, and protein in the food pyramid. There’s only one missing piece: meat. There’s nothing in that entire kitchen that you could feed a carnivorous lizard.
I put it into words. “I guess I’m not the only creature who’s going to starve in this place.”
9
Tyrell Karrigan
It’s an insect the size of a small jeep.
They call them palmetto bugs down here, but back home in Pennsylvania they’re just plain roaches. There’s nothing “just plain” about this guy, though. If there’s a Guinness Book of Roach Records, he belongs on the cover.
I nudge Jett, who’s half asleep on the pool recliner beside me.
“Leave me alone,” he mumbles. “I’m in a better place—like there could be a worse one.”
“You’ve got to see this,” I insist.
He opens one eye and follows my pointing finger to the giant bug, which is marching across the pool deck like it owns the place.
“Wow,” he muses. “Where I come from, anything that big would get its own exhibit in the San Diego Zoo.”
“Or,” I counter, “it could feed a small lizard for a week and a half.”
Isn’t it just our luck that Needles turns out to be a carnivore? He only eats meat—the one thing you can’t get here at the Oasis. That leaves just bugs. They’re meat, in a gross kind of way.
Jett spills out the contents of his water cup and gets up beside me. We stalk the palmetto bug for a few steps. Jett drops to his knees and places the cup gently over it. We exchange a fist bump. Needles isn’t going to starve anytime soon. After this meal, he might even have a weight problem.
We’ve barely finished congratulating ourselves on our hunting skills when the cup begins to move. It scrapes along the apron of the pool as the big bug struggles for freedom. We follow in amazement, unsure of what to do but unwilling to lose our prey.
And then a pair of bare feet steps protectively around the fugitive cup. We look up to see Grace standing over us. “What are you doing?”
“Needles’s dinner is in that cup!” I exclaim.
“And breakfast. And lunch,” Jett adds. “And maybe the catering for his bar mitzvah.”
“We don’t kill at the Oasis,” she lectures. “That’s how Magnus first came to vegetarianism—with the belief that all life is precious.”
“Yeah, but what about Needles’s life?” I argue. “He can only eat things that used to be alive.”
“There are plenty of dead insects around,” she reasons. “They only live a few days. But we’re not killing anything.”
“Fair enough.” Jett reaches out a foot and stomps the paper cup flat. “Oops.” With his toe, he flips the cup away, revealing the crushed palmetto bug underneath. “Well, what do you know? Dead insect.” He scoops up the carcass with the flattened cup. “Needles, this is your lucky day.”
Grace has a few thousand things to say about that. She calls Jett every insult in the book and even a few that I haven’t heard before. But I think Jett did the right thing. What are we supposed to do? Scour the whole property for fruit flies that died of old age and ants that got stepped on by mistake? It was the right thing for us and defini
tely the right thing for Needles. It just didn’t turn out so great for the palmetto bug.
Jett weathers the storm without flinching. I guess he’s pretty used to getting yelled at. “If you’re done,” he says finally, “I’ve got a starving lizard to feed.”
“I’ll go with you,” I decide.
“Wait up,” Grace orders, running for her towel.
“I thought you didn’t believe in bug killing,” Jett reminds her.
“Well, it’s dead now,” she shoots back. “Your violence might as well serve some purpose.”
They argue all the way to the shed.
Needles may be a cute little guy, but I have to say that watching him dismantle that giant insect is the most nauseating experience I’ve ever had. Even Jett has to turn away.
Only Grace has the stomach to watch the whole disgusting thing. “It’s the miracle of nature!” she proclaims with love in her voice.
His feast complete, the lizard splashes back into the paint tray and resumes his usual position, standing stock-still with only his eyes and nostrils out of the water.
I once read that, for every human on Earth, there are over two hundred million insects. So you’d think it would be pretty easy to find dead bugs to feed to Needles.
Nope. Turns out we’ve got the healthiest bugs on the whole planet right here, thanks to Magnus and his philosophy about the sanctity of all life, even the gross kind. There are no bug zappers, no roach motels, not even a fly swatter on the whole property. If a mosquito wants your blood, you’re his for the taking. Trust me, I speak from experience. I’m allergic to mosquito antibodies, so when I get a bite, it swells to the size of a major league pitcher’s mound.
I step in through the screen door onto the wood floor of the welcome center. In addition to the place where you have to surrender all electronics, this is also where you go to pick up your snail mail. Here at the Oasis, that’s the only way to keep in touch with the outside world.
The mail desk is usually manned by one of the buddies, or sometimes Janelle, when it’s too rainy for water sports. But this afternoon, I’m surprised to see Magnus himself standing there, his smile almost as bright as his highlighter-yellow warm-up suit.
“Be whole, Tyrell!” he greets me.
“Be whole,” I mumble. Unlike Grace, I’m never totally relaxed chitchatting with the Oasis bigwigs, Magnus and Ivory. They look at you too hard, like they can read your mind. Nowadays, my mind can’t withstand inspection. It knows too much about a certain lizard hidden away in the corner of the property.
Magnus pulls a stack of mail from a cubbyhole and drops it in my arms. It’s mostly magazines for Mom and Dad—Nutrition Weekly, Eat Yourself Slim, and Dieter’s Digest. There’s also a letter for Sarah from Landon Almighty. I feel like flushing it down the nearest toilet—except that hearing from Landon is the only thing that makes Sarah semi-human. How unfair is that? I can’t take revenge on her for being mean because that will only make her meaner.
Magnus holds one more envelope. “It’s for Jett,” he explains. “If you wouldn’t mind passing it along. I’ve noticed you two are becoming good friends.”
“Really?”
He smiles that all-knowing smile of his. “Perhaps you can help him see the positive transformation the Oasis has to offer him.”
“Uh—right.” I feel my face twisting into what’s probably a goofy grin. Me? Good friends with Vladimir Baranov’s son? I mean, sure, I get along with him better than, let’s say, Grace or Brooklynne do. He only spends time with those two because of Needles. But still, I find myself standing a little taller now.
The Oasis founder hands me an airmail letter. The return address is Orthodontists Without Borders, so it must be from Jett’s mother. There’s a colorful stamp in the corner with butterflies on it. The cancellation reads: BURKINA FASO.
“Thanks—uh—a lot.” I can’t bring myself to call him Magnus. I’ve got so much Jett on the brain that it might come out “Nimbus.” How would I ever explain that?
I exit the welcome center and head straight across the property for cottage 29, walking so fast I’m almost running. Jett and I get along well, but we don’t really hang out together like friends. Delivering this letter is a reason to knock on his door. It could even be an excuse to hang out.
It takes a long time for him to answer. But when he finally opens the door and sees me there, a look of concern appears on his face. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay with the lizard?”
“No, no—Needles is fine.” I hold out the envelope from Burkina Faso. “I was just at the welcome center. This came in the mail for you. I think it’s from your mom.”
He unfolds the letter and begins to read, leaving me standing awkwardly on the welcome mat.
“Is your mom all right?”
“Fine,” he replies absently, without looking up. “The usual stuff. Palate expanders in Pakistan. Braces in Bolivia. Retainers in Rwanda.”
“She sure travels a lot,” I comment. You think of Jett’s dad as the famous one, but his mother is just as accomplished in her own way. She’s a major globetrotter.
“You’ve got a lot of mail,” he points out, indicating the stack in my arms.
I shrug. “My parents’ diet magazines. And a love letter from my sister’s boyfriend.”
Jett seems interested. “Love letter?”
I nod. “They come every day, sometimes two or three together. It’s the only thing that keeps Sarah off my back.”
“What does the guy write?” he asks.
“How should I know? She doesn’t show it to me. Love stuff, I guess.”
He plucks Sarah’s letter from the pile and holds it up to the light. “We should read it. It could be very instructive.”
“Are you crazy? It’ll be destructive when Sarah sees I’ve opened her letter! She’ll cut my head off and use it as a soccer ball!”
“She’ll never know,” Jett explains reasonably. “We’ll steam open the envelope and glue it shut again.”
I feel myself turning pale. “Where are we going to get steam at the Oasis?”
He beams. “Are you kidding? We’ve got the greatest natural source of steam right here!”
The next thing you know, we’re standing at the edge of the Bath, holding Sarah’s letter over the rising vapors. As the envelope slowly steams, Jett works at it with a butter knife from the dining hall. The adhesive melts away and he gently opens the flap with such a light touch that I suspect this is not his first rodeo.
Once the letter’s out, we sneak back to cottage 29 and spread the page on the kitchen table between us to see what we’ve got.
“Wait a minute!” I exclaim. “Is this in code?”
It says Dear Sarah at the top and there are a handful of real words sprinkled here and there. But the rest of it is made up of clusters of numbers and letters that don’t seem to mean anything.
Jett, of course, understands perfectly. “Fuego put out a guide for this last year,” he explains. “Like here: ILY 4EAE—that means ‘I love you forever and ever.’ And here: DORBS GF—‘adorable girlfriend.’ And it says CRZ because it makes him crazy that they can’t be together. He signs off with a dinosaur hug—DHU.”
I’m stunned. “Is Sarah going to be able to understand this?”
“Of course. These two probably spend all day texting each other. They can’t do that while she’s here, so he writes his letters in the same way. She’ll understand perfectly—except maybe this.”
Before my horrified eyes, he takes a pen and writes YBHYG in the margin.
“What did you do that for?” I wail. “She’s going to kill me!”
“Relax,” he soothes. “She won’t know. It looks no different than what Landon wrote.”
My racing heart slows a little. Jett’s right. It would be hard to match the handwriting, but the capital letters look just like the others, and black ink is black ink.
I’m interested in spite of myself. “Does it mean anything?”
“Defin
itely,” he assures me. “It means ‘your brother hates your guts.’”
I’m speechless for a moment. Then: “Give me that pen.”
At the bottom, next to Landon’s signature, I add BHOF. “Bonehead Hall of Fame,” I explain.
“Now you’re getting it,” Jett approves. “One more.” In the body of the letter, in a spot where Landon left a lot of space, he inserts QJ5@Z2.
“What does that stand for?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he says proudly. “And while she’s trying to figure it out, she won’t have time to bother you.”
He refolds the paper, slides it back into the envelope, and moistens the flap. It seals perfectly. “I expect a full report,” he says when he hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “I think.”
My sister spends the rest of the day with that letter, a perplexed frown on her face. She’s definitely not happy, but she isn’t mean to me, not even once.
Jett Baranov might be an even bigger genius than his dad.
Meanwhile, the quest to find food for Needles in the dining hall grinds to a halt. Even the high-protein meat substitutes like seitan, tofu, lentils, and chia seeds get no love from the lizard. He looks at us sort of reproachfully, as if to say, “You can do better than that.”
I’m in the shed with Jett, Grace, and Brooklynne. The four of us have emerged as Team Lizard.
“I don’t understand why he won’t eat the soy burger,” Grace complains. “The vegetarian patties at the Oasis are world-renowned.”
Brooklynne sighs. “He’s a carnivore. He knows what’s meat and what isn’t.”
“If I had my phone,” says Jett, “I’d call that barbecue place in Hedge Apple and order up something that would knock his little socks off.”
A gloomy silence settles in the shed.
Brooklynne is the first to speak up. “You know,” she begins slowly, “Hedge Apple is only a couple of miles upriver.”
“What difference does that make?” I ask. “With no phone or internet, the next town might as well be on the moon.”
“Well . . .” She seems to be dragging the words out of herself. “. . . the Oasis has a boat—”
Unplugged Page 7