“Hey, you okay?” Esha asks.
I nod, but the truth of how I feel is anything but okay—Mom, drugs, death. In an upwelling of emotions the words come spilling out. I blurt out to Esha how I was at the party when the girl in the newspaper overdosed. I was at the hospital when they brought her in. I tell Esha about Mari and someone slipping her liquid gold, about the guys who could’ve slipped it to her.
As I tell her these things, my thoughts orbit around one person: Rudy. Again I wonder if he’s the guy who slipped liquid gold to Mari. If so, did he slip it to Eslee too? And if not, did he sell it to her or whoever did? Then, something else occurs to me. Esha knows Rudy. Maybe she has an idea where he is.
I don’t want to alarm her and let on to my suspicion that Rudy, the middleman for her chiles, might be a drug dealer. I can see she’s upset—about Eslee’s death, the party, the drugs, the meeting she has to run, or who knows what. I don’t want to add to her burden, so I thank her for listening and tell her I feel better. “But there is one more thing, a coincidence,” I say, keeping my tone light. “My half sister goes out with Rudy, the guy who works for Ernie and brings your chiles to the Farmers’ Market. He was at the party, too. And then he kind of disappeared.”
“Kind of?”
“Well, he hasn’t called her in a few days, and she’s worried about him. I know it’s a weird question, but since you know the guy, I thought maybe you’d have some idea where he might be. I mean, who his friends are or something.”
“Why would I know that?” she says, the sympathy in her voice replaced by something defensive.
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling stupid now. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
With Rudy on my mind, though, my thoughts go to Holly’s visit to his trailer, to the envelope with the papers from her. I’m deciding if I should change direction and ask Esha about Holly when Jonah pokes his head into the lab.
“There you are,” he says to Esha. “People are waiting upstairs for the meeting. You called it for seven forty-five. It’s already eight o’clock.”
“Crap. Sorry,” she says, whirling around to the door. “I’ll be right there.”
I follow Jonah and Esha upstairs to the conference room where about twenty people are gathered. Dr. Richmond, I notice, isn’t there.
Esha calls the meeting to a start. “Unfortunately, I have bad news,” she says and glances around tiredly at the expectant faces. “The Oppenheim Foundation pulled out their funding for the final stages of field-testing on Sonya’s GMO chile project. But I assure you,” she quickly adds, “she’s doing everything she can to secure more funding.”
A stunned silence follows her proclamation. Glances are exchanged, papers rustle, bodies shift in chairs, then the questions begin.
“Does this mean there will be layoffs?” asks a woman with glasses and short dark hair who works in research and development.
“Does this have anything to do with UpsideDown!?” Henry, the skinny IT guy, asks.
A half dozen more questions follow, but there’s something careful about the way the questions are asked, something cautious about the wording, as if what’s being asked isn’t what’s meant. I get that there’s something deeper that isn’t being said.
When the meeting ends and people clear out, I lag behind. I’m still thinking about Rudy, and with Esha’s talk of the chiles I get an idea. Maybe Ernie, the farmer he works for, has seen him. I wait for her to look up and notice me, but the tiny WiFi universe of her phone holds her attention. She’s on a manic typing mission and doesn’t look up. A lot of sighs and mad punching at the keyboard and it doesn’t seem like she’s going to notice me anytime soon, so I clear my throat and speak up. “I’d love to see the GMO chiles,” I say. “Do you think I could go up to the farm where they’re grown and visit the project?”
“Sonya goes up about once a week,” Esha replies, attention still on her screen. “Let me check with her. It would be good for you to go.”
“Hey, Esh,” IT Henry says, coming into the room with a cup of coffee. “Thought you could use this.”
“You’re a god,” she tells him, putting aside her phone.
With her back turned, I glance at her phone to see what’s keeping her captive. The screen is open to a text of two words.
It’s over
***
What’s over? I wonder as I head down to the lab. A relationship? Is that why she seems so exhausted and distracted? Not just because of funding. Because she’s trying to dump some guy? I open the lab door and tell myself to get a grip. Reading other people’s texts? What’s next? Joining the NSA? I turn on my computer and access the central server where SCPG does most of its big sequence analysis and continue my bioinformatics studies, but I find myself thinking about Eslee and the funding cut and Esha. I’m lost in these thoughts when a blast of music startles me.
“Esh took the rest of the morning off,” Jonah tells me making the quintessential mwa-ha-ha villain laugh. “The music shall be mine!”
“Nice try,” I say, going over to the mp3 player. “But it’s my turn.” I plug in my own device and change the tunes.
“Okay, but how about we don’t slit our wrists today?” he says, teasing me about my playlist from last time when I accidentally put on my songs for mellow (i.e. depressed) moods with Radiohead leading the misery-fest.
“Fine,” I say, and put on the best, hypnotic-groove reggae I can find. “Does this work?”
His answer is to bob his head to the beat.
We settle into our own musical universes, but I stay by Jonah’s desk, wondering about his opinion of the meeting and that feeling I got that people weren’t saying what was on their minds. “Bummer about the funding,” I say at a song break, hoping to lure him into telling me what was really going on.
“Yeah. Huge bummer.” He turns on his computer and waits for it to boot up. “Hang on, is this The Abyssinians?” he asks as the new song starts. “I love those blokes. Roots-reggae classic.”
“Yeah, me too, but about that funding…” I say, coaxing him back onto the topic I want to talk about.
“Yeah. About that.” He sighs and stares at the computer screen. “Sonya won’t be able to come through another funding disaster after the Brugmansia catastrophe and the…”
“And the what?” I say when he leaves the thought unfinished.
“And the nothing,” he says. “She’ll have to find alternative income to keep SCPG running.”
“Good thing about Esha’s chiles then, right?”
Jonah looks away from the screen and folds his arms. “Esh needs to look good too. It was her idea.”
“What was her idea?” I ask, surprised at how serious he’s become.
“Sequencing Brugmansia.”
“Did she come up with that when she was in South America?” I ask, remembering what Virg told me, that Brugmansia comes from a rare Peruvian plant.
“That’s right. After her PhD and before she came here she studied ethnobotany in Peru. She spent three months in the Amazon with the Quechua people. One of the plants they use is Brugmansia, only they don’t call it that. They call it Toé.”
“What do they use it for?”
“I’m not an expert, but Esha was really into it. She said it had a variety of medicinal and ceremonial uses and that healers use it for visions.”
“So, Esha learned about its compounds, had some new idea of how it could be used as an anti-seizure medicine, then she started to work here and brought the idea to Dr. Richmond?” I say, the story of Esha and her ties to Brugmansia taking shape.
“Something like that.”
In the phrase “something like that” I get that there’s something more he doesn’t want to tell me, but now I’m curious about Dr. Richmond. “Was Dr. Richmond pissed when it didn’t work out?”
“She doesn’t blame Esha, but I think Esha feels responsib
le. She’d pushed the project pretty hard.” He jerks his hands from the keyboard and swivels in his chair to look at me. “She won’t admit it, but I’m guessing that’s why she’s putting in so much effort for the board dinner. She wants to impress the hell out of them. You have that on your calendar, right?”
“Yep,” I say, but I’m not thinking about the dinner. I’m thinking about what it would be like to be in Esha’s shoes. Adventures in the Amazon. Developing new medicines and cures and seeds. The innovation, the creativity, the freedom to dig into the unknown and see what you discover. Like being an artist with a blank canvas, only the canvas is the world.
The song changes to Peter Tosh. Jonah focuses back on his work, and I get that our conversation is over. I’m about to go back to my desk, but I think again about Esha and the text and the worry I read on her face. “It’s none of my business,” I say, “but Esha seemed kind of bummed out earlier. Do you think she broke up with her boyfriend or something?”
Jonah laughs. “No boyfriend.”
“Why is that funny?”
“It’s just kind of a joke between us. Esh doesn’t always pick the best blokes.”
I shrug and go back to my desk, but I can’t concentrate. My thoughts won’t settle. I can’t sit still. I waste time Googling Brugmansia to learn about the plant Esha was studying. I’m just looking at the image of a white bell-shaped flower when my phone rings. I pick up and instantly panic. Alma.
“Is Mari okay?” I blurt, nervousness bubbling in my stomach. It’s too much to hope that the news about Mari will be good, too much disappointment if it’s not.
“The sexual assault nurse said there were no signs of trauma,” Alma says. “She’ll come home on Wednesday. The day after tomorrow.”
I sigh and sink back down into my chair— the first good news I’ve had all morning.
Sixteen
At five o’clock, Clem’s standing on a small patch of grass under a shade tree, waiting for me, as promised. I see him before he sees me, standing with his hands jammed in his pockets, looking sullen and far off in thought. I should ask him if he’s okay, but with the good news of Mari and the bad news of Eslee, I tell him all that first.
“If that asshole Thomas had anything to do with giving liquid gold to those girls, I’m going to kick his ass,” he says when I’m done talking.
“Leave that part to me,” I say. “I doubt ass-kicking is one of your specialties.”
“And it’s one of yours?”
I shrug. “Kind of.”
“You’re kidding?” he says and laughs.
“Nope.” Before I can think it through, I pull him toward me, place my hand on his back and hip-throw him to the ground. Even though I land him softly on the grass, I can’t believe what I just did, and from the shocked expression on his face, neither can he.
He stands up slowly and brushes grass off his back and out of his hair. I wait for him to tell me I’m a freak and he’ll never speak to me again. I wouldn’t blame him. What kind of person uses judo and hip-throws a guy she likes to the ground? Instead of chewing me out, though, he starts to laugh, hysterical out-of-control snorts that rise from his belly and burst through his nose. I’ve never heard him laugh like this. I’ve never actually heard anyone laugh like this. Now I’m thinking maybe I shook something lose in his brain.
“Did I hurt you?” I ask nervously. “Do we need to go to the doctor?”
“I’m fine,” he says when he catches his breath and can talk again. “Just surprised. I’m six feet. I’ve never had a girl manhandle me like that.” He looks at me and shakes his head appreciatively. “I might not be able to walk for a month, but Faith Flores, you are a piece of work.”
I take this as a compliment as I turn and get into his car.
***
We drive past the Masonic Temple, a huge pink castle of a building, out of place in this land of browns and beiges, then the mandatory Starbucks, and soon we turn into a neighborhood. He drives up a hill to a small mud-colored house with a one-car garage and a graveled front yard bordered by rows of purple bee-covered flowers.
Now that we’re here, adrenaline fuels my central nervous system with anger-sparked jitters. If Pretty Boy laid one finger on Mari, a hip-throw will look like child’s play.
Clem, having just experienced my moves, reads my thoughts or maybe my face because he nudges me as I ring the bell, and mutters, “Easy, Killer.”
The house erupts with ear-piercing barking, and a nasally, not quite human voice, shouts: “Door-bell! Door-bell!” A second later, a freckled, sunburned girl with coltish legs and a parrot the size of a terrier perched on her shoulder comes to the door followed by two barking mops. One of the mops runs headfirst into the screen door; the other squats and pees.
“He-llo!” the bird caws.
“Uh, hi?” I say, not sure if I’m greeting the bird or the girl.
“He-llo!” the bird says again. “He-llo!”
“Mawmaw, that’s enough,” the girl scolds, then turns to the dog that just peed and exclaims, “Oh Diva, not again…THOMAS! Diva peed.” She turns and disappears, but leaves the door open. I glance at Clem as we continue to stand there, waiting to see if, say, a monkey’s coming next. A moment later the girl returns, birdless and dogless, though the barking continues from the back of the house.
“Hi,” I say, having lost my earlier anger-fueled momentum to the menagerie. “I’m a friend of Thomas. Is he here?”
“Yeah,” she says, blowing a wad of pink bubblegum in my face.
“Can I talk to him?”
“Wait a sec. THOMAS!” she shouts over her shoulder.
A second later Pretty Boy shows up. He’s nothing like I remember. At the party he was decked out in low rider shorts, not quite butt crack material, but almost, a fitted tee to show off his pecs, and slicked-back hair. Now he’s dressed in pale green scrubs, and his hair is combed flat and professional.
“Can I help you?” he says, picking fur off his shirt. Even his voice sounds more serious. No trace of the velvety smooth talker who offered Mari a beer.
“I met you at a party Saturday night,” I begin, bracing for what’s certain to be a fight.
He gives me a blank look. “Sorry…I don’t remember. I was…” He looks over his shoulder and lowers his voice. “Kind of wasted.”
“No shit. You offered my fourteen-year-old sister a beer, and then you were with her when I found her passed out in the rain? Ring any bells?”
The mountain of Pretty Boy steps out of the house. “Trina!” he calls, “I’ll be outside. I have to talk to these people. And clean Mawmaw’s cage while I’m out here!”
“’Kay!” comes the girl’s voice from the back of the house. “But I’m not cleaning up after Diva! She just took a dookie in the living room.”
With Pretty Boy’s bulk lurking on his home turf, albeit the kind of nice suburban home turf where people don’t jump each other in broad daylight, I pop my knuckles and prepare for him to kick the proverbial shit out of us.
“Holy crap,” he says instead. “Is she okay?”
“Someone slipped her liquid gold,” I say, watching closely for his reaction. “She ended up in the hospital, and it looks like the same person who slipped her the drug came to see her yesterday morning to make sure she didn’t talk.” I can’t prove the connection, but he doesn’t need to know that.
He looks taken aback, seriously hurt, like he’s the damsel in distress and we’re the aggressors, but then his pained expression changes to an incredulous, dropped-jaw stare. “Wait a minute, you don’t think I did that to her?”
“No,” Clem says, with exaggerated cheer. “We tracked you down because we’re Scouts and we thought you might be worried.”
“You were with her when she was passed out,” I say, as a metallic green insect lands on my arm, its tiny claws gripping my skin. Thomas rea
ches over and delicately picks off the bug, releasing it onto one of the purple flowers. “Before that, you were offering her a drink,” I go on, trying not to falter in my conviction: Just because he’s not a bug smoosher doesn’t mean he’s the Dalai Lama. “So don’t bullshit me. I want to know what happened. If you did anything to my sister, you’re never going to be able to—”
Clem kicks me, and I refrain from enunciating the rest of my thought, which has to do with his future inability to procreate.
“Look,” Pretty Boy says, “whatever happened to her, I didn’t do it. I’m sorry for hitting on your sister and saying she wasn’t hot. I was a dick.”
“You don’t see me arguing.” I jam my hands in my pockets and lean against the porch rail.
Pretty Boy’s steely gray eyes slide over me. “The other night at the party I saw her again a little while after you told me how old she was, and, man, was she out of it. Majorly shit-faced. But you weren’t there, were you?” He glares at me, trying to shift the guilt from his to mine. “You didn’t see how gone she was. You left her alone.”
“I’m not the one on trial,” I snap.
He runs a hand through his hair and puffs out his cheeks. “I saw her staggering around. I looked for you, but I didn’t see you, so I followed her outside to make sure she was okay. I found her passed out. That’s when you came out.”
“I remember.” I cross my arms and challenge him with my eyes. “It looked like you were running away.”
“Yeah, well looks can be deceiving.”
A phone rings inside the house, and the parrot shouts: “Tele-phone! Tele-phone!”
“So why didn’t you stay and see how she was?” Clem asks, ignoring the screaming bird. “Why’d you take off?”
He answers Clem, but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Because I knew how it looked, and I didn’t want to be in the exact position I’m in now.”
I consider this possibility, but remind myself of the guy that came to see Mari in the hospital. “If you have nothing to hide, why’d you come to the hospital yesterday to see her?”
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