Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green (16 page)

“It’s just been said, it’s an old … superstition,” Kyle says darkly, “that people who get the flowers are somehow …”

“Unsanitary?” I offer.

“Chosen …,” he murmurs, and then pauses. “The more flowers, the higher the level of insight. Or, magic. But let’s not make too much of it.” Why doesn’t he
look
at me? “It’ll work best if she’s not self-conscious about it.”

“Um, okay,” I say. And I realize that if it were anyone else saying this stuff to me, I’d probably think they were wacko. But there’s something about Kyle that makes me believe every word he says.

“You can help too,” Kyle adds. “Not as much as your sister, but you can definitely help.”

I have to wonder if it will always be this way, Roo being the amazing one and me sucking.

“So,” I say, pretending I’m not annoyed, “I guess we’ll head up once Mom and Ken go to La Lava?”

“Of course,” Kyle says, as though I’m being silly to even ask. As though it’s a given that Roo and I will charge into the jungle with him and make sure our crazy father doesn’t kill an extinct bird. Our father, who we don’t know anymore. Our father, who doesn’t care about us anymore. Our father, who won’t listen to a word we say. Our father, who pays more attention to Patricia Chevalier than to his own wife.

Now that we’ve been in the jungle and talking to the witch and seeing a whole other world, it feels strange to be around Mom and Ken/Neth. Since Weird Life has become normal, Normal Life seems weird. It’s odd to be having cornflakes for breakfast at the Selva Café, talking to Mom and Ken/Neth about boring things—like how Mom simply
loves
Relaxation and Rejuvenation, and how La Lava is just the most
uplifting
place, and how transformative her “flow” yoga class was yesterday, and what are we learning in our Spanish lessons, and do we think we’ll go to the pool—when what we’re really going to do today is try to prevent Dad from murdering the last of the Lava-Throated Volcano trogons. The Villaloboses never said we shouldn’t talk to Mom about all this, but it’s pretty obvious. Every day she seems more blissed-out from yoga, if that’s even possible. Mom is just
not
the kind of person who describes things as
“uplifting” and “inspirational,” but now those seem to be her two favorite words, and she says them all the time in her new, smooth voice.

“Hello, what planet are
you
on?” Roo says to Mom after one particularly silly comment about how inspiring she finds the fragrance of the hand soap in the bathrooms at La Lava. “Are you dehydrated or something?”

The weather is gray and heavy and different from before. It’s nothing like the other mornings here, which have been as bright and vivid as a commercial. The air smells more like rotten eggs than flowers—“The smell of the volcano,” Ken/Neth informs us over his coffee mug. Roo and I are sitting across from Mom and Ken/Neth, facing the volcano, in the perfect position to notice that it’s spewing extra stuff.

“The volcano is spewing extra stuff,” I tell Mom and Ken/Neth.

“Really?” Mom says, twisting to look. “Gosh, you’re right. Look at that, Ken.”

Ken/Neth twists too. A steady wisp of white smoke rising from the volcano stands out against the grayish sky, and then there are all these extra puffs of steam or smoke or something.

“Cute,” he says as a puff puffs out. “The volcano is saying good morning to us.”

I stare disapprovingly at him. For one thing, why does he keep forgetting that we’re not two years old? Plus I think it’s bad luck to make jokes about semiactive volcanoes. Maybe I used to be less serious, back before The Weirdness, but not anymore. “Hey, don’t tempt fate,” I scold Ken/Neth, borrowing one of Dad’s phrases.

“Gosh,” Mom says breathlessly, “
nature
. Isn’t it so inspiring?”

Somehow I manage to stop myself from saying something nasty to her.

“Listen, girls, I understand your concern,” Ken/Neth says with
a grin, “but as I told you, La Lava has brought in the greatest volcano experts in the world, and they all agree that this volcano will not blow for at least another century and a half. Now, that may not be so long in volcano years, but it’s plenty of time for us. I promise you we’ll all be long gone by the time anything dangerous happens around here. Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Do you think all those movie stars would come to La Lava if they weren’t positive it was safe?”

I have to admit, I do find it pretty comforting that Vivi thinks it’s safe to stay at La Lava when she could vacation anywhere she wanted on the entire planet. That makes me feel better for a few seconds, until the witch’s words pop into my head:
ONCE THE LAST BIRD DIES, THE VOLCANO WILL BLOW
.

Mom and Ken/Neth leave straight from breakfast for La Lava, and Roo and I head back to our room to get our things together. The first thing Roo does is to put the golden feather in the envelope with The Very Strange and Incredibly Creepy Letter, along with a tiny handful of her wilting yellow toe-flowers. The sight of this little collection sends a chill through me. It looks like craziness. It looks like witchcraft. And I can’t stop myself from yanking the envelope away from her.

“Hey!” she shrieks. “That’s mine, give it back!”

I watch as the rage passes through Roo and stiffens her spine. Her anger is so familiar that it makes me smile. Good old angry Roo, back in business. She lunges at me, locking her teeth on my wrist. I scream and throw the envelope. Roo howls amid the whirlwind of falling letter and flowers and feather.

“If you hadn’t bitten me, I wouldn’t have dropped it,” I say.

“If you hadn’t taken it, I wouldn’t have bitten you,” she says,
scowling at me before spinning away and moving slowly around the room with her envelope, picking up the pieces and placing them inside. She looks so dejected that I hate myself for upsetting her.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just … all this kind of creeps me out.”

“It’s okay,” she says softly, even though it’s not okay.

I feel bad, but still I can’t handle watching Roo cling to her small pile of hope, so I head out to the parking lot to check if Mom and Ken/Neth have really left for the day.

And who should I see there but Kyle, crouching on the gravel. He doesn’t notice me. I get closer and closer. He keeps not noticing me. I feel funny, like my feet are too big and I’m breathing too loud. It doesn’t seem right to just say
Hey
or
Hi
or
What’s up?
to someone who’s crouched down this way in the middle of a parking lot.

But before I get the chance to say anything, Kyle whispers, “Come here.”

So he
did
know I was nearby! I crouch beside him.

And what’s there is really, really disgusting.

It’s a beautiful little blue frog with black spots. But the right side of the frog has been totally crushed and clear pus is oozing from it. There’s a pattern of smeared tire tracks leading away from the frog. Its left side is twitching and wriggling in the most awful, pathetic way.

But you know the craziest thing?

Kyle is crying.

I don’t want to embarrass him, so I pretend I don’t notice. Instead, I say, “It’s a beautiful little frog.”

“It
was
,” he corrects me. “Stupid golf cart.”

“Golf cart?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says.

I get an automatic stomachache.

“Ken/Neth?” I whisper.

Kyle doesn’t need to respond.

We crouch there for a long time and then we keep crouching. The left side only twitches sometimes now. It’s too sad. Suddenly I have this weird urge to stroke the gross little oozing frog as it dies. I’ve never seen anything die except wasps and houseflies and spiders, that kind of thing. I reach out to stroke the frog, but Kyle slaps my hand, hard. His skin leaves a burn on my skin. Jeez! My second slap of the day.

“Why are you so
mean
?” I yelp, rubbing my hand.

“Its skin is super poisonous,” Kyle says.

So, I have to forgive him, but my face is hot with awkwardness as I stand there and watch the frog die.

“It’s too bad,” Kyle says quietly.

“I know,” I say. I feel terrible.

“I don’t mean the frog,” Kyle says. “I mean, that’s too bad too, but what I meant was your dad.”

My blood starts to buzz. “What about my dad?” I say.

“Too bad he hasn’t stood up to La Lava. I always assumed the Bird Guy was brave.”

I get hot all over, like my stomach and my brain are boiling, and my heart is boiling too, and I stand up, and my eyes get really huge and my voice gets really low, and I say to him in a loud, slow, mean way, “
MY DAD
IS
BRAVE.
” Then I stomp once on his fingers, which are resting on the gravel, but I don’t know if Kyle does anything when I stomp on him, because through my blurry eyes I can’t see anything except my stomping foot.

Right after that the area around my heart starts to hurt, like I’ve pulled a muscle or something, and I’m crying when I go, and I’m
crying as I stumble across the concrete courtyard. Because you know what? I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know if Dad is brave, or if he’s evil.

“Do you really think Dad is trying to kill the bird?” I ask Roo as we zip up our backpacks. I have this shaky, nervous feeling and my fingers are trembling.

Roo heaves a long, tired sigh, the sigh of a much older person, as she shoves the envelope containing the flowers and the feather and The Very Strange and Incredibly Creepy Letter into the front pocket of her backpack.

“No,” she says, but it’s not a confident no.

We’ve gotten so used to the tiny neon lizards hanging out on the other side of our door that we don’t even react when they scatter as we open it.

“Man,” Roo says, leading the way across the courtyard, “why does Mom have to be all bizarro now?”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” I say, relieved not to be alone in noticing Mom’s freaky new yoga personality.

“Sheesh!” Roo says. “It practically seems like she’s under some kind of magic spell!”

Magic spell
. I wish she wouldn’t use that term. I don’t believe in magic spells, but for some reason it sends a shiver through me. Dad killing birds, Mom falling into yoga—it’s all upside down. I reach for Roo’s hand and give it a squeeze. At least
she
hasn’t changed one bit.

Kyle is waiting for us by the back gate, leaning against the concrete wall of the Selva Lodge, binoculars around his neck. I immediately start blushing, but I guess he’s decided to pretend I didn’t stomp on his fingers less than ten minutes ago. He just gives us a
quick nod and opens the gate. We head up Normal Path in silence, and I’m struck all over again by how dark and rich-looking the mud is, and how many different sounds are made by the birds and monkeys and whatever else.

When we reach Invisible Path, Kyle turns off Normal Path without saying a word and leads us right down the secret trail. I guess that since we’ve already gone all the way into danger, he’s not going to try to keep us away from it anymore.

As we wade deeper into the layers, it strikes me how impossible it’ll be to find Dad. There’s a lot of jungle out here.

“Um, so,” I say. The first words any of us has said since we entered the jungle. I’m behind Roo who’s behind Kyle. “How exactly are we going to find Dad?”

“You just have to listen to the jungle,” Kyle says casually.

Oh. Okay. Well then.

“Also,” Roo adds, “he said the east trail.”

Kyle looks back, surprised. And I’m impressed that Roo remembers that little detail about the east trail. I’d pretty much forgotten it, but she’s totally right.

“What? When?” he demands.

“Yesterday,” Roo replies. “At that place. When we saw him. He said it to that scientist guy. The east trail. As usual. Before dawn.”

Kyle glares at her. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Gee whiz, mister,” Roo shoots back. “Relax. I
did
just tell you. Besides, I thought you were spying on them the whole time we were.”

Kyle turns sharply off Invisible Path, leading us straight into the jungle, no trail at all.

“Um, hello, where are we going?” I ask, staying on Invisible Path.

But Kyle has become Mr. I-Don’t-Answer-Questions.

“Um, hello, to the east trail, probably,” Roo mocks me as she barges behind Kyle into the thick layers of leaves, her mean tone payback for my grabbing her envelope this morning.

I sigh, groan, and plunge after them. This—the pure, pathless jungle into which I’m now being forced to follow Kyle and my little sister—is way, way,
way
worse than Invisible Path. You can’t take a single step without all these vines reaching out to grab your ankles and all these branches whacking your face and the disturbing feeling that all sorts of poisonous critters are crawling down your neck or up your leg.

And then suddenly some huge gray insect thing is flying into my face and I’m blinking and swatting at it with my hands and shrieking.

“Relax!” Roo mutters back at me. “It’s just a bug.”

“
JUST a bug!
” I half scream. Excuse me, I don’t think there’s anything “just” about it when it’s as big as a hand. But at least I seem to have scared it away, whatever it was.

I trudge on behind Kyle and Roo as they sneak between vines and branches. They seem to be having an easier time of it than I am, but even so it’s Roo who, after about twenty minutes of this, says, “Jeez, if only I could break that darn code! Then we wouldn’t have to fight the jungle just to try to figure out what’s really going on with Dad!”

When Kyle stops in his tracks, Roo almost crashes into him, and I almost crash into Roo.

“Code,” he says, spinning around to face her. “What code?”

“Well, Dad sent us this letter and—”

“WHY DID YOU NOT MENTION THIS BEFORE?” Kyle thunders, for once not being respectfully quiet in the jungle.

Roo’s already pulling The Very Strange and Incredibly Creepy
Letter out of her backpack. She hands it to Kyle, who examines it for a minute, his eyes widening.

“Oh man,” he says with a low whistle. “This is going to take a while.”

He pushes past us, rushing back the way we came, back toward Invisible Path and Normal Path and the Selva Lodge.