Jungle Crossing

by Sydney Salter

  PLAYA DEL CARMEN, HOTEL MAYA

  Hi Guys! Mexico is so green and sunny.

  Well, I'm off to the beach (with my sunscreen, of course).

  Love, Kat

  P.S. Remember to think of me at exactly 4 PM.

  P.P.S. Remember to tell me EVERYTHING!

  ***

  Rain. Big, fat drops of pouring rain. But that wasn't the worst of it. Dad was sick—nasty, disgusting sick. When he wasn't rushing to the bathroom, he lay there moaning. If only Mom had paid more attention to my list. Reason number 16: Montezuma's revenge.

  I stretched across my bed, writing a postcard to Fiona. The picture of Playa del Carmen's white, white sand and blue, blue water looked nothing like the rainy gray day outside.

  "What are you writing about?" Barb asked. "Dad barfing?"

  "No, of course not." I lifted my pen and tapped my mouth. "I just don't want them to forget about me." Maybe they'd add one of my postcards to the mini-camp scrapbook. Fiona had kept a scrapbook of every mini-camp since the first one back in fourth grade. I hadn't been invited until last year, when Grace Williams went on vacation during mini-camp. She was shut out from the group all year, so she finally gave up and made new friends. But she wasn't popular anymore, not even close. I had to make sure Fiona remembered me!

  Barb bounced onto the bed in her swimsuit. "Let's go swimming."

  "It's raining," I said.

  "So? You get wet when you swim."

  Dad rushed into the bathroom again. Listening to that all day was going to make me sick.

  "Okay." Risking a flash flood (number 20) was better than contracting Dad's disease. "We're going to the pool!" I yelled.

  Mom poked her head through the door joining our rooms.

  "You go and have fun," she said. "I'd better stay here with your dad."

  I don't think she even knew it was raining.

  That night, we walked through the fancy hotel garden—full of jungle plants, waterfalls, and squawking parrots—to eat dinner at the Mexican buffet place. Colorful red and green tablecloths and real flowers decorated all the little tables. Guys wearing crisp white uniforms rushed about picking up dirty dishes, bringing people clean plates, and sweeping crumbs off the shiny marble floor. A cute mariachi band walked around playing music, like at my favorite Mexican place back home. I headed right for the sizzling fajita bar—hot and, most important, fresh. But then I made a mini dish of nachos too. I loved having so many choices—and the dessert bar looked amazing. Three different kinds of chocolate cake! If only Dad had listened to us and waited to eat at the hotel, he could be enjoying all of this too.

  Right after we sat down, Mom announced, "We've signed you up for a tour." She took a bite of enchilada (how did I miss those?). "Dad called Paul. He did his archaeological research in this area."

  I dunked a tortilla chip into green salsa. "Like, duh. Dad can't stop talking about it." I've seen way too many photos of Dad's Big Adventure with Paul over the past couple of weeks—grinning from the tops of pyramids, digging into the dirt, hacking away at the jungle, drinking beer on the beach. "Preparation for our big adventure," Dad had called it. I was just traumatized by their shaggy and embarrassing facial hair.

  Mom closed her eyes for a moment. "Anyway, Paul recommended the Ek Family Tours. It's an adventure tour for teens, but they also expose you to Mayan culture."

  "Adventure? Wandering around the jungle, catching diseases ... and Mayan culture? Would that include eating at disgusting roadside stands? No thanks. And who is this Ick family? I'm not doing anything with the 'Ick' family." I set my fajita back onto my plate. "I mean, do you even know who these people are? They could kidnap us and sell us into some kind of child slavery." Reason number 9. "I'm staying right here. At the resort. Where it's safe and clean." I watched one of the workers mop up spilled soda. "You can't make me go back out there. I'm sticking with the chlorinated pool and the free drinks."

  "And ice cream," Barb added.

  Mom rolled her eyes. "Paul stayed with the Eks while doing his doctoral research, and they've remained close. Paul told me the tours help the local people to preserve their heritage." Mom motioned to a waitress. "You'll get to see several Mayan ruins."

  "Forget ice cream. We can find treasure!" Barb clapped her hands and began mumbling about gold and jewels and priceless statues while Mom ordered another margarita.

  "Oh," Mom said. "I almost forgot the best part. Señor Ek invited you to his granddaughter's birthday party—apparently it's quite a big deal."

  "Apparently the girl doesn't have any real friends." I scoffed. What kind of loser invites strangers to her birthday party? Who would I invite to my next party if I was kicked out of Fiona's Five? "Mom, this whole thing sounds disastrous." I didn't want any part of this deal. We'd end up like those stupid tourists they're always showing on cable news—held for ransom, or worse! I had to get us out of this; Mom had obviously lost it.

  "Wait, Mom. You said a teen tour. Hello? Barb isn't a teenager."

  Barb smirked at me. "So? You've only been a teenager for three days."

  "Four. Today's almost over." I turned thirteen the week after school got out (and had a slumber party that even Fiona called "oh-so funtastic").

  "Girls," Mom warned. "Señor Ek personally made an exception for Barb, since Paul is almost like family to him—and us. I trust Paul completely."

  "Yippee," Barb said.

  "Great. I'll be the only one with a dorky kid tagging along. But maybe they'll kidnap her instead of me."

  Barb's eyes welled up with tears, and Mom shot me a sharp look.

  "I hope your dad will feel better in a couple of days," Mom said. "Then we can go sightseeing as a family."

  "Maybe we should go home." I could get there just in time for mini-camp. I smiled. Maybe I could avoid Grace Williams's fate after all.

  "We're not going home," Mom said. "Dad will recover, and everything will be back on schedule."

  "You could just send me home," I said, ignoring Mom's sad eyes.

  ***

  PLAYA dEL CARMEN, HOTEL MAYA

  Hi! I'm going on this special teen tour. Sounds pretty cool.

  Nice to ditch the parentals and meet some cute guys.

  How did you guys rate Zach B? Did the french fry incident lower his score?

  Love, Kat

  P.S. 4 PM

  P.P.S. Remember EVERYTHING!!!

  The next morning, we waited with some other people in the airy hotel lobby for the "Ick" Family Tour. We heard the bus rattling around the circular driveway before we saw it. It was an old school bus painted with huge murals of parrots, Mayan ruins, warriors with feather headdresses, and a big jaguar on the front. The door opened and a twentysomething guy with long black hair and dark skin jumped out. He looked kind of like the suave assassin in that Spanish movie Mrs. Ruiz showed us the last week of school. Hair: 8.5. Face: 8.7. Smile: 9. Possibility of being dangerous kidnapping stranger: 9.9. Remember it's the cute ones that really fool you. He read names off a list.

  "Katherine and Barbara Crosby?" he said with a thick accent. "Señor Paul's amigas." Charming accent: 8. "Welcome, welcome, bienvenidas!"

  "Thanks, I guess," I said. The guy was a little too enthusiastic.

  "I saved a seat up front for you." He swung his hair over his shoulder. Okay, maybe his shiny black hair was a 10, but he still looked kind of dangerous.

  "Oh, goodie!" Barb said.

  A thousand butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I climbed aboard this strange bus with a possible criminal. We should just fly home. I could go to mini-camp, and Dad could recover in the safety of his own home. After everyone got on the bus, I looked behind me. Three girls about my age sat on separate seats—one had long blond hair with electric blue highlights. Behind me, a boy who looked a grade or two ahead of me sat with his younger brother, who was hunched over a video game. A pair of pale blond girls sat together near the front.

  In the last seat sat a true Bronze Sun Goddess. She had a dark tan, and
her hair was done in gobs of tiny braids with silver beads on the ends. They brushed against her bare shoulders when she moved her head. Sure, she looked good now, but in twenty years she'd be covered with skin cancer lesions and wrinkles. Right? Two guys sat backwards in the seat in front of the Sun Goddess—speaking French. Even from behind I could tell the guys were perfect 10s. In looks anyway.

  The bus started with a bang and chugged out of the driveway. Of course there weren't any seat belts.

  "Okay, everyone," the tour guide said. "Buenos días. Me llamo Alfredo. We going to have real good time today. Today we kayak in beautiful Caribbean and snorkel. See many fish."

  Yeah, but how many sharks, jellyfish, and barracuda? I thought of all the dangerous creatures on my list. Swimming with all the germs in the hotel pool was bad enough, but at least they didn't have big teeth or deadly stingers.

  A couple of the girls in the back started giggling and imitating Alfredo's accent.

  "Let's go. ¡Vámonos!" Alfredo said.

  The bus wound through the streets of Playa del Carmen, hitting pothole after pothole. I saw some cool-looking souvenir shops, and tourists wearing hideous floral shirts, and even though some of the old brick buildings might be fun to sketch, everything looked like it could use a good coat of paint. As the driveways to the resorts disappeared, all we saw was jungle, with an occasional dirt path leading off into who knows where. I rested my head against the window, watching the road ahead of us. Nothing but gray pavement winding through a tunnel of green, except for a kid standing alone on the side of the road. Not a taco stand in sight. What could someone be doing in the middle of nowhere?

  As we approached, the bus slowed. Great, Alfredo's thinking about picking up a hitchhiker! Doesn't he know it could be a trick? Bandits could be hiding in the bushes, waiting to attack. I sat up, peering through the dusty bus windshield, looking for movement in the jungle. The bus actually swerved to the side, pulling up next to the kid/hitchhiker/possible bandit. The door swung open, and the kid—who seemed about my age, but was really short, like me—climbed aboard, frowning and looking kind of scary. I attempted to imitate Fiona's don't-mess-with-me glare, like I did while walking past suspicious guys on the plane. I kept my eyes on his hands until he caught me looking and sneered at me. And then I glanced away, cheeks burning. It only got worse when Alfredo announced, "My cousin Nando, everybody." Alfredo clapped his hand on Nando's shoulder. "Give a big bienvenido!"

  Mangled Spanish greetings echoed throughout the bus.

  Nando scowled and avoided Alfredo's eyes as he slumped into the seat across from Barb and me. This guy was Alfredo's cousin? Pretending to fix my hair, I snuck a glance. No way. His body was only a 3. Plus, he had an angry look on his face, like one of those carvings in Barb's Lost Treasures of the Maya book. Personality: 0.2. Points just for breathing. Inside joke. Alfredo said something to him in Spanish, except it didn't sound like anything Mrs. Ruiz had taught us in fifth period. And I'd gotten an A in the class. I listened hard for familiar words. Nothing. Were they talking in some code? Were we really about to be kidnapped? Nando looked out the window while Alfredo eased the bus back onto the road.

  Barb leaned over to me. "Do you think he's a real Mayan?"

  "Why would I care?" I could hear the girls behind me talking and getting to know one another. I wished I'd had the guts to sit with them, but that girl with the blue hair looked "oh-so fashion daring," as Fiona would say, and the others were probably in high school. Still ... Nando kept looking at me, making me nervous.

  "Let's go sit back there," I said.

  "No, we have to sit here. Alfredo said."

  I shoved Barb. "Well, I'm old enough not to have to sit by the teacher, like some total freak. I'm moving."

  Just then Alfredo called over his shoulder, "So you know Señor Paul?" I watched him flash a bright smile in the wide rearview mirror, but I still didn't trust him, not one little bit.

  Barb leaned forward in her seat and launched into a fifteen-minute explanation about the books Paul gave her about Mexico, about how his family always comes to our house for Thanksgiving and then for Fourth of July, and he has a girl about her age, but she doesn't even like treasure hunting. Blah. Blah. Blah. Alfredo talked about how Paul always visited his house after the New Year, and how his little sister loved to explore old ruins and wanted to be an archaeologist someday.

  "Me too!" Barb practically shouted.

  I considered jumping over the back of my seat, but the bus bounced so much that I'd end up falling into the aisle and looking like roadkill.

  "Why do you keep looking at me?" Nando asked.

  "I'm not." I scrunched low in my seat, pulling my knees to my chest, hoping that Nando with his combined score of 3.2 wouldn't try to talk to me again. I'm so not trying to look at him, but I can't look out the window the entire time. A few minutes later I risked glancing to the back of the bus and noticed that three of the girls had scrunched together. I could hear them talking in fake Spanish accents and bursting into giggles. It reminded me of the time Fiona's Five went to the mall and we spoke in English accents all afternoon. To the loo! Inside joke. If I concentrated really hard, maybe I could transport myself back home, where mini-camp was barely starting. Fiona's mom had probably bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

  The bus clunked along a sandy road to an empty beach where palm trees grew at angles out of the sand and hammocks swung between them in the breeze. Barb's coconut sunscreen smelled good here.

  "Okay, everyone," Alfredo said. "First relax, then kayak, then lunch. Okay?"

  As we got off the bus, the other girls ignored me. Next to tall-for-her-age Barb, I'm sure I looked like another fourth-grader. I don't know why Mom won't take me to get tested for hormone deficiency or delayed puberty. I'm like the only one without breasts—here, at home, everywhere. Maybe being devoured by a shark (reason number 18) would be better than returning home a total loser. I scanned the horizon for fins and saw Barb splashing in the water with the blue-haired girl. I should have warned her about jellyfish.

  Two of the girls stood next to each other making little motions with their hands.

  "Jessie! You cheer?" the taller one asked.

  "Yeah. I'm missing a ton of practice this week," Jessie said.

  "Me too."

  "We could totally practice together, C.C." Jessie made a big C motion with her arms, then switched to the other side. "C, C," she said.

  "You're so funny." C.C. giggled.

  Okay. Whatever.

  The Bronze Sun Goddess shared a hammock with the two guys. She looked like she was my age, but just barely, and she could be a swimsuit model. The guys both had the right amount of muscles when they took off their shirts. The quiet girls walked along the beach picking up shells, and the two brothers threw pebbles into the water close to Barb and the blue-haired girl.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of the warm salt air and listened to the waves roll onto the beach. Despite reasons number 1, 9, 18 through 21, 23, and 28, this really looked like a postcard of paradise.

  Too soon, Alfredo gathered us together on the beach. "Okay," he said. "Who does sea kayak before?"

  The brothers raised their hands.

  "Try speaking a little English, why don't you," the blue-blonde said in a low voice, and the cheerleaders giggled.

  Nando squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and muttered something.

  Alfredo showed us how to paddle and pointed to a small red buoy out in the sea that marked the coral reef. While the guides dragged long, flat plastic sea kayaks onto the sand, we picked out snorkeling equipment. I stared into the water-filled barrels, the perfect breeding ground for thousands of germs. Everyone else grabbed a mask and snorkel and headed over to the kayaks as I peered at a chunk of something floating in the water—probably a huge germ colony complete with condos and multiplexes. The water even smelled bad. Not cleaning-solution bad, but horrible-vomiting-disease-like-Dad-had bad. I looked over at everyone climbing into the kayaks. Mo
st of them held two people, but a few were singles. Nando shook his head at me, walked over, plucked a snorkel and mask out of the water, and handed it to me. The rubber felt slimy with bacteria.

  "You ride with me." Alfredo motioned to Barb. "See the most fish."

  Barb hopped up and down in her flippers like a little frog. "I'm so excited!"

  Lucky I didn't have to ride with him! His accent did make him sound kind of dumb, but then again, with the hair and the smile, he was still at least an 8.5. The Sun Goddess and the Hunky Blond paddled off in a double kayak. I stood by a bright yellow one, struggling to slip the flippers onto my feet. The blue-blonde glanced around. I smiled at her, kind of like an invitation to join me, but she ignored me and climbed into the last double kayak, waiting for the other perfect 10.

  "Everybody in," Alfredo said. "Let's go."

  Alfredo swiftly turned his kayak and headed toward the buoy. As I sat down in my single kayak, the seat burned the backs of my legs and I could practically feel the skin cancer growing on my shoulders. I shoved off with the paddle, but the kayak stuck on the sand. As I climbed back out, my flipper got tangled in the paddle's safety rope, so I hopped on one foot, trying to get free as my kayak slipped into the water—with my leg in it. The blue-blonde laughed and pointed, so of course everyone had to turn and look. And that's when I fell. Face-down, gagging on salt water, possibly drowning, with my foot hanging in the boat and my butt flying in the air. What an embarrassing way to die.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I lifted my head out of the water right as a small wave hit me. I choked and coughed as the salt water burned my throat. Nando paddled back and helped me into the boat—actually touching my arm.

  "You use fins for snorkeling, not paddling," he said, not in a nice tour guide way.

  I grabbed the paddle from his hand. "I know that."

  He raised one eyebrow as if he wasn't quite sure. "¿Estás lista? That means are you ready?"

  "I know that too," I mumbled.

  Nando shook his head as I shoved my paddle against the sand as hard as I could. But the kayak wouldn't budge. So he reached over and pushed me hard with his hand. As soon as I'd drifted a bit from the shore, I dipped my paddle into the water. My arms burned as I paddled as fast as I could, but my kayak kept turning in the wrong direction. I almost did a 360.