by Annie Bryant
I didn’t answer.
“Here, use this.” Ricardo tossed me the flashlight.
It helped. I felt so much better just holding the light in my lap. “I’m just writing a few notes to myself about…tonight.”
“Are you a writer? Is that why you carry a notebook?”
“No, not a writer.” I paused. Should I go on? “I do draw, though. I’m the staff cartoonist for our school newspaper.”
“You are? What a great job! Do you draw funny cartoons or political cartoons?”
How to answer this one? “I, uh, I’ve tried a little of both. But mostly I just focus on things that are important to me. I like to draw birds the most.”
“Isabel, you’re so sharp. I’ll bet you’ve come up with some pretty hot cartoons.”
Me? Sharp? I smiled, thankful that he could not see me. “Actually, I like to think that my cartoons are positive and help people see human silliness…and stuff.”
“So is that what you want to do when you grow up?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to be an artist when I’m older. But I know it’s hard to make a living on art.”
“You could become a sketch artist in a courtroom.” I’d never thought about that. “Or a fashion designer. You need to know how to draw to do that, right?”
“Yep. My friend Katani wants to be a fashion designer. And the CEO of her own company. I like computer animation a lot. I think that would be lots of fun. But right now, I’m concentrating on line drawing. Single-panel cartoons with one-sentence captions that get right to the point.”
I spent a few minutes arranging the flashlight on my lap so that I could hold the pad steady with one hand and write with the other. I was trying to draw an armadillo. I looked at the sand in front of me, wondering how I should start, when I noticed something that looked out of place in the sand, a faint criss-cross pattern. It didn’t move, so I figured there was nothing alive under there.
I touched it. Definitely harmless. I brushed off the dirt and lifted up something stiff. “Hey, look,” I said. “Somebody’s wallet.”
“Is there money in it?”
“I don’t think so. It looks like a bag.” I aimed the flashlight. The bag was made of leather or string, a crudely worked piece that was stiff as a board. I dangled it by a string at one end.
Ricardo’s eyes were big as quarters. He took it from me and examined it. I directed the light low, so it didn’t get in his eyes.
I watched him as he held the bag in front of his eyes. He ran his finger over the woven strips, tried to bend it into a bag shape. He poked a finger through a hole at the bottom. I heard his breath quicken.
I saw the look on his face change with excitement. As I watched him, he mumbled, “Wow wow wow.” I noticed something else: a big, black shadow on the wall behind him. My heart nearly stopped as my hand automatically drew the flashlight up the wall. This thing went way up, and as it did, strange lines protruded from the sides.
“Ricardo—”
“Put the light on this, Izzy. I think we’ve stumbled onto something big.”
“No,” I said calmly. “Something bigger.” I aimed the flashlight up. The giant, black rectangle was crowned with a lopsided circle. More crazy lines, like skinny lightning bolts, protruded from the circle.
Both of us gasped simultaneously. Before us was a painting on the cave wall: enormous, eerie, and incredible. I swept the walls to either side of the image and saw smaller figures that looked like people and animals.
We faced each other, and screamed at the same time: “Oh my gosh!” and “¡Dios mío!” Our voices echoed off the walls.
“Gimme that,” he said, taking the light from me. He swung it wildly, yelling delightedly as he continued to spotlight more figures.
I dropped to the floor and ran my fingers through the sand. I dug up other items: sticks, rocks, and several funny things that I didn’t recognize at first: short stubs of wood with bristly fibers tied in a bunch at one end. Brushes! I scrambled my hands in the sand wildly, then stopped abruptly. If this was what I thought it was, then it was best to step…back…quickly.
I stood, and tiptoed gingerly away. This was a sacred space. I could feel it. We should not disturb an inch of it.
Ricardo whooped, creating an echo in the chamber that sounded perfectly musical. “Isabel! Do you realize what this is?”
“Don’t touch anything! Stop!” He almost fell over from my urgent command. “I think this bag belonged to somebody. From a long time ago.”
“I’ve seen pictures of stuff like this at museums. These could be thousands of years old!” he exclaimed.
I lost my balance. I felt faint.
“Maybe not that old,” I said. “Look at what else there is. I think these things fell out of the pouch.” I pointed to items in the sand. We dropped to our knees and hunched over as far as we could to examine them without touching them.
He pointed at one of the rocks with a jagged edge. “That’s a tool, for sure. I’d stake my life on it. What are those?” He pointed at the wooden stubs.
“I think they might be paintbrushes.”
He shined the light on one. A dark red color was definitely visible on the fibers. “You’re right! This has to be what they used,” he said. “There’s a bunch of red figures over at that end.” We both looked at the stash as if we’d found a pot of gold.
“We can’t touch anything,” I reminded him. “But help me out. Shine the light on some of these pictures so I can draw them.”
“Pictographs. They’re called pictographs. I read all about them in my history class at school.” I looked into Ricardo’s eyes. He was as excited as I was.
We got to work immediately. My hands trembled. I started to laugh.
“I’m so nervous, I can barely hold the pen!”
“Take your time. We’re not going anywhere. Isabel, you’re going to be famous.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m only a school newspaper cartoonist, remember?”
“You’ve made a major discovery here. I’m sure of it.”
“You mean we made a discovery.”
“No,” he said. “You saw the pouch. You saw the pictures.”
“And you brought me in here.”
I tried to draw as fast as I could. Ricardo said he counted twenty-six images, but wasn’t sure he caught them all. As I sketched on the little pad of paper, we discussed what we thought the pictographs represented. Some of the pictures were obvious: the sun, a deer, a rabbit with really long ears, and other stuff. He said dogs, I said coyotes. The human figures stumped us, though. They were definitely weird.
“I think they’re shamans,” he said. “I remember pictures like this from my history book. The squiggly lines coming out of their heads means they’re in a trance. This place is called Los Mitotes.”
Los mitotes. The dances. Did ancient shamans have wild dances in this cave thousands of years ago? A little shiver went down my spine as I flashed the light on the drawings again. Right then, it seemed like anything was possible.
CHAPTER 10
Swing Yer Partner
The excitement over our discovery was making me shake inside. I don’t know how long it took me to sketch the drawings, but I felt Ricardo and I did a good job documenting the find without disturbing it. Although I had Elena Maria’s camera with me, I took only three photographs. I remembered from our class trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts that using the flash might harm the ancient artwork, but I had no choice. We needed something better than my drawings to explain this. I split the wall art into two photos, and took a close-up shot of the items in the sand. Here I was, shooting prehistoric pictures drawn by ancient people. Again, my fingers began to tingle.
Eventually, though, I was tired and thirsty. A strange energy buzzed through me. Ricardo and I worked well together. He had some decent guesses when I couldn’t figure out an image. When we were done, we squeezed slowly back through the tiny crevice and plopped ourselves in the exact same spots as bef
ore, near the entrance to the cave. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Here,” I said, dumping the stuff out of my purse and shoving it at him. Sorry, Katani, I apologized silently.
Without a second thought he pushed the purse in on the sides to square it up, then extended his arm outside as far as he could, soaking his sleeve beyond his shoulder. “Brrr! Cold!”
But he continued to hold out his arm until the purse filled with rainwater. I watched in amazement. “Drink, drink fast,” he said when he retracted it. “It’s not water-tight.” Ricardo was turning out to be the kind of person that you would want with you during a disaster.
I rapidly gulped a couple of swigs and passed it back to him. He filled it again and drank, then filled it and passed it to me. We went through several rounds before he complained about his wet sleeve again.
“Thank you. That really was a great idea,” I admitted.
With my belly full of water, I started to relax. We tried to estimate about how long we’d been trapped in the cave. It was hopeless. It could have been four hours or six, or more. The rain fell steadily, but the thunder and lightning eventually faded. I soon forgot about the pictographs and my family and fell asleep.
I felt my ankle shake. Ricardo was nudging me. I rose and pushed the hair out of my face.
Ricardo shone the flashlight at something outside. “Come look at this.”
The fog of sleep would not lift. I blinked. I knew where I was, but something had changed. The rain sounded a little lighter, but it wasn’t over. Outside it was still pitch-black.
“Hurry up!” he whispered.
I weighed two hundred pounds with sleep, but I crawled over to him anyway. I squinted in the light and saw two ugly forms. A couple of armadillos rooted at the base of a shrub, shielded from the rain by the foliage.
“Mission accomplished,” Ricardo said.
“Assignment complete,” I agreed.
We high-fived and watched them some more.
“They’re so ugly, but cute!” I breathed. “Almost like baby dinosaurs.” I couldn’t wait to tell Avery. She would want to hear every little detail. Animals were one of her main passions in life.
“Yeah, everybody thinks they’re so cute. But look at those freaky things.”
One of the animals stopped, alerted by our voices. Compared to its torso, the head was small. It had adorable ears. But the body was something else. It looked positively prehistoric. Its skin looked hard, like that of a crocodile or an elephant—or even a rhinoceros—and its middle was segmented in bands. Its long, thin tail also had defined segments, which I found particularly gross. It reminded me of a tlacuache, or possum.
“Ew, it’s got a tlacuache tail,” I sneered. “Once when I was a little girl I saw a long, skinny, naked possum tail hanging out of a trash can. Ewwww!”
“Aw, tlacuaches are cute,” Ricardo said.
“Not to me.”
“Shhh!”
The ’dillos made gentle snorting sounds as they rooted for something to eat. One came closer to us. Sparse, wiry hairs stuck out of its skin. They glittered in the light. Armadillos were pretty cool. But I needed to rest. Too much had happened.
I went back to the wall and curled up. Ricardo observed a little longer, then turned out the flashlight. The rain was softer now. I heard the animals snuffling.
“Rico?”
A pause, and then: “What?”
“Is tlacuache a Spanish word? Or is it na…na—”
“Nahuatl, Isabel. Na-wah-tuuuulllllll.” He fell asleep even faster than me.
Rescue Squad
The sound of birds singing a pretty song woke me. The instant I scrambled, Ricardo was up.
“They’re here,” he said.
“Who?”
“Can’t you hear them?” He reached for a shoe that had somehow fallen off during the night.
I grabbed my stuff and followed him out. The sun peeked through the puffy clouds and everything smelled clean and new. It felt glorious. We had survived.
Ricardo reached the ledge where he’d tied Rasquatch to the tree. He waited for me to catch up. “Well, here goes,” he said, and ran down the path to the base of the hill.
He waved his arms at a faraway bouncing pickup truck. It sped in our direction.
As it got closer we whooped and hollered, thrilled to be rescued. The truck didn’t slow down until it was practically on top of us. Uncle Hector rushed out of the cab. We clammed up quickly. He looked very sad. Or was he really angry?
“Children,” he said calmly. “What happened?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dad. Really I am.”
“Whaaat happened, Ricardo?” he demanded.
Neither of us knew where to start.
Enrique slowly emerged from the pickup, looking at us as if he was seeing ghosts. Uncle Hector nodded to him, indicating that all was okay.
“Enrique found the horse this morning. Saddled with your bolsa, son. Rasquatch was grazing out in the open, by the patio.” He made a sound like he was fighting back tears. “We didn’t know what to think!”
Enrique stood by my uncle. The two looked very relieved. Uncle Hector continued. “We checked your room, Ricardo. You weren’t there. The two of us just got in the truck and started looking for you.”
We both stared down at our shoes.
“Isabel, I had no idea you’d be out here, too. Are you okay, mamacita?”
“Yes, Tío. It was the most amazing thing. We—”
Ricardo kicked me. We walked to the truck. Ricardo and I climbed into the rear of the cab, and we drove away. Nobody spoke until Ricardo asked, “When did you start looking for us, Dad?”
“Not even a half hour ago. As soon as Enrique found the horse. How long have you been out here?”
Ricardo squinched his eyes, not eager to reveal the truth. “Since last night.”
Uncle Hector slammed on the brakes. He shifted his body to face us. “Last night?” My uncle’s jaw dropped. “What? Where? How?”
“We left on Rasquatch after dinner. We were looking for armadillos, but the horse got spooked by the thunder. We hid in a cave to stay dry.”
Enrique gasped. Uncle Hector’s eyebrows shot up.
“A cave?”
We nodded.
He slowly turned around and looked out the wind-shield. “Son, you’re going to have to explain every single detail when we get home…to me. I don’t intend to tell your mothers about this. Those sweet ladies have enough to worry about today.”
Ricardo and I looked at each other. No one even knew we were gone. Nobody missed us.
We pulled into the carport. Uncle Hector looked at me strangely as he reminded me about rehearsal for the big quinceañera waltz later that morning. I apologized to my uncle for making him worry and hurried away. I wanted to be a hundred miles away from Ricardo’s discussion with his father.
I heard Freckles the rooster crow as if he were welcoming me home. I reached the patio and smacked right into Elena Maria. “Enrique just told me about the horse and Ricardo. Fidencia and I checked your room to see if you knew what happened to him this morning, and you were gone! Your bed wasn’t even slept in! Isabel, what is going on here?” My sister was clearly bewildered. All that time in the cave I was afraid that everyone was sick with worry about me—and nobody even noticed I was gone!
“Never mind! I’ll fill you in later. I need some sleep.” I started to my room.
“Isabel.” Elena Maria stepped in front of me and blocked my way. “You don’t get it. Uncle Hector and Enrique and Fidencia and I just had the scare of a lifetime, and you’re walking away? With no explanation? Why are you acting this way?” She shook my arm.
“What way?”
“Like this! Like an attention hog. Like a princess. You just have to have the spotlight, don’t you?”
“Me? I’m not acting like a princess…oh, never mind.” Couldn’t she see that she was the one acting like a princess? I squeezed past her.
“Isabel!” she cr
ied. “Even if you don’t care about what’s going on with me, maybe at least you’ll care about what’s going on with Dad!”
I stopped and turned around. “What?”
She looked close to tears. “He called late last night. His flight was cancelled because of the storm, and he’s stuck in Tulsa. He’s trying to figure out whether he can get here in time.”
Dad wasn’t going to be there for the quince? I almost felt like crying too. “I’m sure he’ll make it, Elena Maria,” I managed to choke out.
“What if he doesn’t?” she replied sadly.
“Elena Maria, Papa will be here. I know he will.” She nodded, and for a moment I thought she was going to hug me. But she didn’t. She just shrugged and walked away.
I turned and ran into the house, wanting to be anywhere but near my sister. I didn’t want to cry and get her more upset. My father not coming—how could that be?
Fidencia intercepted me in the kitchen. “Praise heaven and earth that my little one is alive and safe!” she cried in Spanish, taking my face in her hands. She fed me breakfast and I scarfed it up, even though I was sad. I started with fluffy scrambled eggs with Mexican sausage and sides of refried beans and French-fried potato cubes. The salsa I dumped on my eggs was astonishingly delicious, with hot-off-the-skillet flour tortillas drenched in butter. At least I’m welcome in the kitchen, I thought.
I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when I finally flopped onto my bed. I couldn’t believe I was so unimportant to my sister’s quinceañera that nobody even missed me at the barbecue. And Dad maybe not coming—that was the worst news I’d heard this whole trip. I pulled the covers over my head to block out the sunlight, and drifted off to sleep with visions of cave dwellers drifting through my brain.
Cave Morning
Aunt Inez and Uncle Hector’s house had the perfect layout for a party, with a beautiful patio and a giant family room that was as big as a ballroom. That’s where everyone assembled late in the morning to learn the traditional couples’ waltz that the honor court always performs at a quinceañera. Tony and Fonzie introduced more relatives from my mother’s side of the family to fill out Elena Maria’s honor court: Samuel and Gilberto, and Sonia, Alisa, and Delia. Irma stood off to the side with Elena Maria. She seemed to be consoling her. Ricardo stationed himself by the CD player, sorting a stack of CDs.