Hello There, Do You Still Know Me?

by Arnold, Laurie B. ;

  “Speaking of magic, this blueberry pie is almost as magical as your fanny pack.” Rosalie Claire may have spoiled Leroy with meaty bones, but she spoiled me with her pie. It tasted exactly like my mom’s. Kind of like summer sunshine sprinkled with sugar. That’s because when my mom was a kid, they’d both learned from the pie master herself, Rosalie Claire’s Grandma Daisy.

  Grandma Daisy had lived next door to my mom when she was growing up in Truth or Consequences. She would go over there as much as she could. My grandmother hated that. Partly, I think, it was because Grandma Daisy was African-American, just like Rosalie Claire, and Florida was as white as vanilla pudding. I think my grandmother was prejudiced, although she’d never admit it. And the other part? My mom liked hanging out with Grandma Daisy a whole lot more than she did with her own mother.

  By the time we finished our pie, the sky had turned into an orange sherbet sunset.

  “How is it possible that my stomach’s growling like a garbage disposal? We still get dinner, right?” Violet asked.

  “Of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a backwards dinner,” Rosalie Claire said.

  After we’d eaten plates of rice, black beans, and fresh snapper caught that day in the sea, we headed to the yellow bungalow. Violet and I shared the double bed in the guest room and Noah flopped down on a futon on the floor.

  “Could you stay here the whole year instead of going back to New Mexico?” Noah asked as he pulled up his covers. “You’d be able to surf every day after school.”

  The thought made my heart feel as warm as the noonday sun.

  “Admit it, Madison. It would be awesome. Then I could visit you during every single school vacation.” Violet yawned, tired from all the time she’d spent in the ocean.

  I agreed it would be super awesome. From the second I arrived at La Posada Encantada, I’d felt as light as air. I couldn’t remember feeling that way since before my mom died.

  Leroy sailed onto the bed, sandwiched between Violet and me, and promptly fell asleep. The three of us yawned in unison, listening to the crashing waves on the shore, the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the ceiling fan, and the rat-a-tat-tat of Leroy’s snores keeping the beat like a snare drum. Finally, we nodded off, first Violet, then Noah, then me.

  I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, or even if I’d dreamed, when a wild racket jolted me awake.

  Someone was yelling my name.

  I crept out of bed and peered through the window into the moonlit night.

  Outside in the stone courtyard stood my grandmother, Florida Brown. She lugged a suitcase large enough to fit half the contents of a department store.

  Before I could answer, she collapsed onto the ground in a dead faint.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Florida Comes to Stay

  By the time Rosalie Claire and I got my grandmother into the bed in Room Four, she’d come to and didn’t remember fainting.

  “My goodness, let’s not make a fuss. It’s only a tiny touch of exhaustion, probably because getting here was an utter nightmare. I made a teensy mistake and accidentally told the taxi driver to take me to the wrong town three hours in the opposite direction.” Florida yawned and her eyelids grew heavy. “Oh my, this bed feels divine.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Rosalie Claire’s eyebrows knit together with worry.

  “Did you faint because of your headaches?” I asked.

  “I’m perfectly fine.” Florida’s voice sounded thin and tired. “I just wanted to see you, Madison.” She clutched my hand and drifted to sleep.

  I went back to my room and slipped quietly into bed so I wouldn’t wake Violet. It was a surprise and a comfort to know my grandmother had missed me. I tried falling back asleep, but Leroy’s snores, the crashing of the waves, and my worries about Florida kept me up until the sky turned light on the horizon.

  I didn’t wake up until ten o’clock, after dreaming about Florida fainting in every imaginable place. She’d fallen off building rooftops, from craggy cliffs, and even into a giant bathtub full of green Jell-O.

  Violet, Noah, Rosalie Claire, and I went to Thomas’s Café for a late breakfast of icy watermelon juice and gallo pinto, a combination of rice, black beans, onions, peppers, and salsa with tortillas. We were eating on the patio beneath the shade of the feathery palm trees when Florida sashayed in, movie star-style. She was back to her old glamorous self. Every dyed red hair had been teased and sprayed into place. Her ruby lipstick was drawn on in a perfect pout. The second she spotted us she lit up. I almost kicked myself for losing sleep worrying about her half the night. She looked as if she felt better than ever.

  “Well isn’t this the most adorable place! I already feel like a new person. Must be the salty sea breeze. It will be just the thing to keep my complexion moisturized.”

  She slipped into the wicker chair beside me.

  “Oh, that coffee smells heavenly! Honey, could you pour Florida a nice full cup?”

  For the record, I wasn’t allowed to call my grandmother anything other than Florida because the word “grandma” made her feel old.

  As I was about to pour her coffee, Thomas swooped in with a fresh pot, his eyes twinkling as he bowed.

  “Our V.I.P. guest deserves only the best. Fresh coffee hot off the press for our visiting royalty. And Madam, you certainly don’t look old enough to be anyone’s grandmother.”

  “Well, aren’t you the most divinely observant man?” Florida gushed.

  Thomas winked at Rosalie Claire before returning to the kitchen. I’m pretty sure she’d given him the heads up that he’d have an easier time with Florida if he buttered her up with compliments.

  Florida sipped her coffee, chattering about her favorite beauty products, the nosy new neighbors who’d bought Rosalie Claire’s old house next door, and how her best friend Patsy had gotten fat.

  Nobody could get a word in up, down, or sideways.

  Finally, Rosalie Claire cupped her hand on top of Florida’s. “It’s wonderful you’ve come all this way to see Madison. How long will you be staying?”

  “Oh, not long.” Her mouth pressed into a hard red line. “Actually, I have no idea.” Then she stared off at the Pacific Ocean.

  “Is something else going on, Florida?” Rosalie Claire looked at her with those warm brown sugar eyes that made even the most hardcore liar want to take the witness stand and tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  My grandmother twisted her napkin.

  “Is Jack OK?” Rosalie Claire wondered.

  “Jack? Oh, he’s fine.” The flatness in her voice made it sound as if she didn’t mean it.

  “Is something wrong with Grandpa Jack?” My grandfather lived a couple of hours away from Truth or Consequences, although he was never far from his phone. He kept me sane whenever Florida went off the edge. If something was wrong with him, I wouldn’t know what to do.

  “No, he’s fine.” She exhaled a sad sigh. “The day after you left for summer vacation, he moved back in with me as an experiment. But after two-and-a-half months I deserve an angel’s halo for putting up with Mr. Can’t-Do-Anything-Right. I’m sure he’s thrilled that I’m gone.”

  Florida drained her coffee, stuffed her balled-up napkin in the empty cup, and forced a smile.

  “We’re all going to have ourselves a barrel of fun, aren’t we, honey? In fact, this place is so charming, maybe I’ll stay with you and your adorable little friends for the rest of your vacation!”

  Violet rolled her eyes and kicked my shin under the table.

  Noah shot me a look, waiting to see what I’d do.

  And me? I sat there, in a state of shock. My grandmother had just crashed my summer vacation. I felt like jumping onto my surfboard and riding it far away across the sea.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Call the Doctor!

  We abandoned our surfing plan because Florida insisted that we show her the sights of Jacó. I could tell my friends were super disappointed, but they didn’t say a word
, they were just quieter than usual. We’d only made it four blocks when my grandmother got all wobbly in the knees and turned as pale as eggshells.

  “On second thought, maybe I need to sit down for a minute.” She sank to the curb and rubbed her forehead.

  “Did you ever go to the doctor?” I asked.

  “This’ll go away. It always does,” she said, waving away my question. “Honey, I need some Tylenol.”

  “I’ll go find some,” Violet said, and Noah volunteered to go with her. We weren’t far from the Best Western. I gave them the 3,000 colones I found in my pocket, and they took off down the wide palm tree-lined driveway toward the resort’s gift shop.

  Florida and I waited under the hot midday sun. Even though I felt like yelling at her for not going to the doctor, I couldn’t. Number one? I never yell. And number two? One look at her and I knew she felt as sick as a dog.

  Violet and Noah returned with the Tylenol and a bottle of water. I offered her two pills. She insisted on three.

  “We should just go back to the inn. Can you walk OK?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” Florida snapped. “Do I look like I can walk?” She moaned and dropped her head into her hands.

  See what I mean about those headaches making her crabby? Whenever she was nasty like that I wanted to hide, but I knew she needed help.

  It was Noah who came to the rescue. “I’ve been running cross-country all year. I’m on it.” He took off like a shot back to La Posada Encantada.

  He was super fast because not more than fifteen minutes later, he and Thomas pulled up in the red pick-up. They helped my grandmother into the front seat. Noah hopped in the back of the truck with Violet and me.

  “She’ll be OK,” he said.

  I hoped Noah could predict the future.

  Back at the inn, we led Florida into the lobby. Sofia was behind the desk, so Rosalie Claire devoted her full attention to my grandmother. Her eyebrows scrunched up with worry. “Florida, you’re still ill, aren’t you?”

  “I wish you would all stop your fussing. It’s just a case of the come-and-go flu. I’ve had it on and off for months. I’ll be better soon.” She slumped onto the sofa. “My goodness, could somebody turn down the air conditioning? What are you people doing? Trying to turn this place into the North Pole?”

  The North Pole? Even with the fans spinning full blast, it had to be at least eighty degrees in the lobby.

  Rosalie Claire felt my grandmother’s forehead and took her pulse. She told her she suspected this was no flu.

  While Violet, Noah, and Leroy hung out by the swimming pool, Rosalie Claire and I led Florida back to Room Four. She fell into bed and I covered her with blankets.

  Rosalie Claire unzipped her fanny pack, but all she found was a cool wet washcloth and her cell phone that she always kept in there. “How odd,” she said under her breath. She shrugged and spread the cold cloth on Florida’s forehead.

  Whenever someone was sick, Rosalie Claire’s fanny pack usually delivered vials of tinctures and small pouches of healing herbs. Was a wet washcloth all Florida needed to get better?

  My grandmother pulled the covers over her head and groaned.

  “I’m calling the doctor,” Rosalie Claire whispered to me.

  An hour later, when Dr. Morán knocked on Florida’s door, I let him in. His bushy dark beard and chubby cheeks made him look like a short, round Santa whose hair hadn’t yet turned white. He carried a beat-up black leather bag stuffed with supplies. I hoped something in there would contain a cure.

  I went back to the lobby and hung out with my friends and Leroy while Rosalie Claire stayed with Florida and the doctor. It seemed as if he was in there forever. When we finally heard the click-click-click of his leather shoes on the tile floor, my breath caught in my throat. I jumped up from the sofa and felt the pounding of my heart.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

  “I suspect it’s malaria. She has most of the symptoms. Rosalie Claire told me that you and your grandma were in the Amazon jungle last summer.”

  I nodded.

  “Sometimes malaria doesn’t show up for a while,” Dr. Morán told us. “All it takes is one bite from an infected mosquito.”

  On Stranded in the Amazon, zillions of bugs had chomped on us like we were a five-star gourmet buffet. When we got back to Truth or Consequences, we’d both taken medicine so we wouldn’t get the disease, and that’s what I told Dr. Morán.

  “If you forget to take all the pills, the symptoms can show up months later,” he told me.

  I took all my medicine. Had Florida stopped taking hers?

  “Will she be OK?” My voice was barely a whisper, probably because I was afraid of his answer.

  “The pills I gave her should kill the parasites. I would expect her to improve a little each day.”

  By early the next morning, Florida was worse. We awoke to her shouts bouncing through the lobby, across the courtyard, and through our open bedroom window in the yellow bungalow.

  The three of us scooted in our pajamas toward her room, with Leroy trotting at our heels. The newlywed lovebirds, the Lady in White, and the two surfer guys had already gathered in the breezeway, watching Rosalie Claire as she tried the locked door.

  “Florida, please let me in!” She jammed the master key into the lock, but she didn’t even have time to turn it.

  The door burst wide open. My grandmother charged out like a thundering bull chased by its worst nightmare.

  “I’m under attack! Giant tarantulas! Move it, people!”

  What was going on?

  We scurried out of her way so we wouldn’t get bowled over. Leroy barked from all the excitement.

  Florida took one look at Leroy and her eyes nearly popped from her head.

  “Ack! A man-eating T-Rex!” She made a beeline for the lobby.

  Leroy took after her, playing a rowdy chasing game.

  Rosalie Claire bolted after them both.

  “Dude, that lady has some gnarly imagination! Totally radical!” Riptide high-fived Wingnut like this was some kind of circus show.

  “That lady is my grandmother and she’s super sick.”

  “Oh, man. Sorry to hear that, dude.” At least he sounded as if he meant it.

  By the time my friends and I got to the lobby, Rosalie Claire had corralled Florida. They sat on the sofa, Rosalie Claire’s arm draped around my grandmother’s shoulders. Leroy had stopped impersonating a T-Rex and was stretched out peacefully on the white tile floor.

  When she saw me, Florida’s eyes opened wide. “Angela, honey. What are you doing here?”

  Whoa. How weird was that? Now I knew something was super-wrong with her. Angela was my mom and if she’d still been alive she would have been thirty-four years old. I was twelve.

  “She must be hallucinating,” Rosalie Claire whispered. “I’m wondering if those pills didn’t agree with her.”

  Noah asked to see them. They were teeny-tiny, half-blue, and half-red. He got on the lobby computer and did a Google search. Apparently those pills could be bad news.

  “It says here the medicine can also cause bizarre behavior, confusion, hallucinations, and mood changes. Particularly if someone is mentally unstable to begin with.”

  Unstable? That’s practically my grandmother’s middle name.

  Just then, Florida began scratching her skin as if fire ants were gobbling her alive. Seconds later she erupted from head to toe in an explosion of itchy red spots.

  “Oh, and hives. That’s another side effect,” Noah added.

  Florida sprung to her feet and raced half-crazy around the lobby. When she passed a mirror hanging on the wall, she stopped and stared. Then the screeching started. “It’s a red-speckled monster! Everybody run! Alien invasion!”

  Violet and I exchanged looks as Florida raced in circles around the room. We wanted to laugh but stopped ourselves. It might have been funny if my grandmother hadn’t been so sick.

  Rosalie Claire unzipp
ed her fanny pack. This time she found cotton balls and a bottle of pink calamine lotion. “Madison, you put this on your grandmother’s spots while I call Dr. Morán. This may be more serious than we thought.”

  She guided Florida back to the sofa. As I dabbed her skin with the cool pink liquid, she squirmed from the itchiness. Her breathing turned soft and shallow. My grandmother was gasping for air.

  “Dr. Morán wants to run some tests,” Rosalie Claire said when she got off the phone. “He cancelled his next appointment. He’s rushing right over.”

  The doctor must have thought it was serious too. Could my grandmother die?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Magic Fanny Pack

  When Dr. Morán came out of Room Four, we were all waiting. Violet, Noah, Rosalie Claire, and me. He said he’d taken blood from Florida’s arm and made her pee in a cup. He was going to have it all tested to double-check that she had malaria. He was especially worried because the whites of her eyes had turned a sickly scrambled egg yellow.

  “The results should be in by early evening,” he said. “The hallucinations could mean she had a bad reaction to the medication. You’ll need to watch her closely for the next few days until it’s out of her system. Unfortunately, the color of her eyes would suggest that she’s getting sicker.” Then he hurried back to the clinic.

  Rosalie Claire decided it was best to move Florida into my bedroom in the bungalow so she could keep an eye on her. My friends and I hauled our stuff to Room Four, where we’d sleep until my grandmother got better.

  Violet, Noah, and I went back to the bungalow while Rosalie Claire got some work done around the inn. That way we could listen for my grandmother, in case she needed something. We found a deck of cards in the living room and played Crazy Eights on top of the old leather trunk that doubled as a coffee table. Ever since Rosalie Claire told me the trunk had once belonged to her Grandma Daisy, something about it gave me the shivers. It was as if it connected me to the past and Grandma Daisy, who was magical just like Rosalie Claire.

  Leroy stood guard at the bedroom door. Florida slept the rest of the afternoon, waking only once in a panic to report that twelve microscopic blue men were camping out in her jar of wrinkle cream.