She sat down on the dusty, worn boards in the doorway, fingering the wide cracks, smoothed over by time. She thought she heard a quiet ‘kyow,’ the tell-tale sound of a quetzal in the neighborhood, and picked up her binoculars, scanning the canopy for signs of the bird, its red breast, and long, flicking green tail, then the undergrowth for signs of her wayward parents. She saw movement, but that was the cow.
They said they were trying to make her a baby brother or sister to keep her company, but they’d been saying that for a long time and it hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t see what the big deal was. Why did they need to be alone to do that? It’s not like she hadn’t watched them before when they thought she was sleeping. She’d teased them that they made some pretty funny sounds, compared to the monkeys she’d observed.
She eyed the bottle of clear guaro they kept up on the high shelf. Grown-up drinks, grown-up sex, grown-up stuff was just silly stuff they didn’t want to share. She pulled a chair over to the single wall-mounted cabinet and captured the nearly full bottle. She’d show them. She sloshed it into her small, plastic cup and gave it a taste.
Ugh. Terrible stuff. But it was warm going down and that was nice. Interesting sensation, actually. She coughed a little and took a more cautious sip and then another. It was a little sweet. It was sharp. Not so different from spicy food and she liked that fine.
She decided she was mature enough to get it down and turned on the radio. Mom liked to dance to mariachi music when she drank this stuff. By the time her parents got back, arms around each other, smiling, she was smiling too and humming along.
Humming. Droning. Vibrating.
It wants something.
Voices battered against her ears, yanking her back to see Ajaya, Bergen, Walsh and Gibbs crowded around her.
She asked them, “Do you see the symbols too? Do you hear the bees? Can you feel them moving? What do they want?”
“She’s delusional,” Ajaya murmured. “The stress—”
“She saved the lives of two men in the goddamn Amazon when she had malaria—this isn’t stress,” Bergen bellowed.
“We all know her record, Berg,” Walsh said, gruff as usual.
“She hasn’t been sleeping well for a long time.” That was Gibbs.
“None of us have—shut up!” Bergen lashed out.
“It’s not me. It’s something in the ship. I’m fighting….”
“Fighting what, Jane?”
She let out a strangled laugh. “Bees? I don’t know. I’m….”
No. She would not say that.
What if she gave them what they wanted? Could she appease them? She gazed into the consternated faces of her colleagues, unsure.
This is completely insane. Am I dreaming?
There were no options. She closed her eyes and she was back there again, inhabiting her own child-mind with adult eyes.
Her parents’ faces fell, simultaneously.
Her mother gathered her up. “Janey—what’s going on?”
She snorted with laughter that turned into whooping belly laughs. She bounced around within Mama’s grasp and captured her hands. She felt dizzy like she’d been spinning too long and happy, happy, happy. Couldn’t they tell? “I’m dancing. Let’s dance.”
“Kevin, turn off the radio.”
Uh-oh. Serious voices. She went still, staring. “Why are you mad at Daddy?”
“I’m not. Jane, did you drink this?” Mama was pointing at her cup and the bottle of guaro nearby. Daddy seemed sick. He picked up the bottle and sat down heavily in a chair.
“Ha-ha—you’re just mad ’cause I tried your grown-up stuff! I like it. It’s good. Next time we go to town, I want to buy some juice. I bet it’d be good to mix it up together!”
Her mother looked stricken. “Jane, this isn’t good for children. You’re going to feel sick soon.”
But she didn’t. She just kept feeling good until she felt warm and sleepy, curled up on Daddy’s lap. They kept telling her it was bad, but she didn’t believe them. She dozed off and woke later when she heard them talking, but she stayed quiet, listening drowsily.
“Dump it out, Hailey,” Daddy said softly.
“Kev, it’s ok,” Mama soothed.
“She likes it,” he choked out.
“She’s nine. She likes every new experience. She’ll forget about it.”
“What if she doesn’t? What if—?” He squeezed her tighter.
Mama’s voice went very soft, barely above a whisper, but urgent, “She’s not going to be like your mom, Kev. We won’t let it happen.”
“No. Pour it out. Not…no.”
There was a sound of liquid splashing in the dust, just outside the door. Then Mama spoke again, “You know, I’ve been thinking. We should move on, find a place where there’s a school, kids her age to play with. Those Swedes last week were talking about snorkeling in the coral reefs in Australia. We have some money saved. We were both lifeguards—we could do that. It’s a tropical paradise, they said. Cost of living’s not bad, they said.”
“Jane wouldn’t learn another language there.”
“Not from the locals. Tourists love to talk to her, though.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah. They do.”
She felt warm and safe in his embrace. She didn’t want it to ever end.
She’d never remembered this part of it before, and none of it with such detail. It was a gift. But she wanted to squeeze him back, tell him things she hadn’t known how to say as a child, warn him that Australia was not the right choice.
She wanted to change it. She ached to save him.
Her parents had gotten quiet, then, and she dozed off.
The memory faded away.
But she was still there.
What had that accomplished? There was no tranquility in this silence. Only pain and heartbreaking loneliness.
Into the roaring stillness of the tiny one-room shack, Jane cried, “Is this what you want? Are you trying to hurt me?”
“No,” a low-pitched voice buzzed softly.
It didn’t come from the room around her. It came from inside her head.
She jumped with dismay. Her mother and father were gone. She could never have them back again like that. The thought made her chest ache.
She stood in the middle of the room, in the orange EMU, the umbilicus trailing out the solitary door into the rain forest. She could hear the raucous chatter of howler monkeys reaching a climax outside. Something they didn’t like was encroaching on their territory.
Jane felt the same way.
She cast around. It was the same faded turquoise walls made of thick planks, the same rough wooden table, the same mismatched, rickety chairs, sagging, straw bed and trundle. Even Rainbow Bright smiled back at her from the small plastic cup.
Tears stung her eyes. She refused to shed them, blinking them back. “Show yourself.”
“I regret that I cannot, Dr. Jane Holloway.”
She quailed. It knows my name?
The voice was rich and resonant—it conveyed the impression of male gender, though she knew it could be a mistake to make such assumptions. It created a vibrating sensation in her head when it spoke and that seemed odd.
Because she liked it, too.
“Why?” There was anguish in her voice. Damn it. She steeled herself and drew an angry breath. Stay dispassionate, Jane.
“It is a simple matter. My form would be incongruous in your perceived environment.”
What? What’s that supposed to mean?
She stood straight as an arrow and demanded, “What do you want from me?”
“We both want something. You want something from me.”