It’s okay.
A hummingbird hovers over a trumpet-shaped blue flower. Its wings are lavender. A bright yellow bee at least two inches long draws nectar from a bloom more orange than the sun. Its buzz vibrates in my ears. Multicolored parrots wing overhead, then disappear into the foliage. The heavy bass of frogs underscores melodic birds’ songs. Each sound pours into my body until I’m overflowing. I spy a motionless, jet-black toad squatting less than six feet to my right. He’s the size of a basketball, covered with emerald spots. I slowly back away.
It’s...okay.
The canopy is so thick that the light is shadowy, hiding danger in pools of gray. There’s deadfall everywhere, and trees that sway hundreds of feet above crackle like they might split and fall at any moment. I’ve been swallowed by the rain forest. I’m trapped in its swamp-like belly. I hear panting—it’s me. My head jerks left and right, like it did in the old days. Pigeon. I don’t care. I’m desperate to see every threat, figure out how close it is, muscles coiled to run.
It’s not okay. I’m not okay.
How will I get out of this place?
What if I can’t find my dad?
What if no one else survived?
Am I going to die here?
The air, hot and humid, thick with the stink of rot, makes me choke. A droning in my ears signals that the mosquitos have found me. The anti-malaria pills my mom prescribed are somewhere in the wreckage of the plane. I’m going to get malaria...maybe dengue...high fevers...pain...vomiting...death. Hundreds of mosquitos coat my slick skin, drawn to the heat that goes hand in hand with dread. An impulse to scream and never stop is overwhelming.
My chest tightens. NO. I grew out of panic attacks when I was ten. But this is how they always started. “Stop it,” I hiss. But my skin shrinks like a torture chamber whose walls slowly close in, crushing its occupant. My bones strain under the relentless pressure. Not now! My body doesn’t listen, beginning to slide down the terrifying slope. The panic attack surges forward, tackles me. My heart struggles under the painful crush of collapsing bones. Sweat soaks through damp clothes. Invisible hands wrap around my neck, tighten. A wave of dizziness hits. My vision narrows until I’m looking through a dark tunnel.
If I pass out something with claws or fangs will find me...hurt me...kill me...
I.
Can’t.
Let.
This.
Happen.
Stars rain down like silver confetti.
WWCD?
WWCD?
WWCD?
I push back against the panic attack like it’s an invisible adversary. My ribs expand at a snail’s pace, giving my heart space to squeeze out a few beats. WWCD? Taking deeper breaths, I force my bones to broaden, allow my organs room to function. Next, I focus on reining in the runaway horse that is my pulse. Light-headedness dissipates. The hands around my neck loosen. Gradually, my vision clears.
I’m crouched, arms wrapped around my knees, head buried. It’s hard to know how much time has passed. When I was a kid the attacks lasted fifteen minutes at most, but always seemed like an eternity. They left me wrung dry of energy and emotion, with the sense that the next one was right around the corner, that I’d never be free. It’s how I feel now—doomed. My mom’s strident voice breaks through my dismay: Concentrate.
Slowly, the gears in my brain start turning and I uncramp, stand up. If anyone else survived, what’s the chance that they’ll find me? They could pass ten feet away and I might not see or hear them over the living beat of the rain forest. “Help,” I shout, but the word gets stuck in my parched throat. I try again. “Help! Is anyone here? HELP—HELP—HELP!” I’m screaming and the monkeys add their shrieks, the sounds shredding the air. My ears strain for a human voice. No one yells back. “HELP—HELP—HELP!”
I shout until my voice is a hoarse croak. When I finally stop screaming, it takes a while for the monkeys to quiet. The sounds of the Amazon flow around me, cramming every empty space with the noise of leaves rustling, animals shuffling, leaping, running, birds calling and the snap of branches under the feet of predators I don’t even want to imagine. If I don’t start moving, find help? I’ll be alone tonight. It will be dark. My only hope is that luck will lead me to other survivors. I’ve never been lucky.
I look up. Sean’s feet are bare, tanned from countless days surfing Rincon. “Goodbye,” I whisper. I breathe in his essence, then start walking.
13
There’s no right direction. My voice is so hoarse from screaming that now my shouts are mere croaks. It’s slow going. The forest grows in layers, one upon the next, sometimes so thick that I can’t see my hands or feet, a maze with no clues or markers. Thorns tear at my shorts and leave bloody scratches on bare skin. Ants teem over my boots, racing up my legs, bites burning as I frantically brush them off. As I travel, there’s this weird sense of being both in my body and outside it, watching the struggle, frustrated at the uncoordinated girl’s slow pace.
“WWCD?” My dad wouldn’t give up.
Sweat from the heat and humidity, the effort required to force my way forward, slicks my body. I’m parched. I’ve seen my dad find water in tree trunks or vines, but I don’t have a machete. When I trip over a root and fall hard on all fours, I stay down, catching my breath. My fingertip touches something soft. It’s a worn hiking boot peeking out from beneath a bush—Sean’s. The other one is a few feet away. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m going in the right direction. Or maybe it’s just dumb chance. I tie the laces together and hang the boots around my neck.
My ears strain for the sound of voices. But all I hear is the chattering of monkeys, the incessant whine of insects and countless birdcalls. Night is coming. For a girl who hasn’t slept without a nightlight since that fateful camping trip in Yosemite, the idea makes me shiver. A scream scrapes together deep in my chest. But just before my mouth opens, a monkey lets out a bloodcurdling screech, probably signaling a predator. I swallow my cries like broken glass and keep walking. Am I going the wrong way? How much time is left before dark?
Each time I stop to rest, I count to sixty, then push on despite the ache in my legs. When hanging vines stop me, I gingerly pull them open, afraid of what I can’t see on the other side. A thorny bush covered in yellow flowers the shape of upside-down bells blocks my path. The blooms smell like nutmeg and their spikes scrape against tender shins already bleeding from countless scratches.
The curve of a knotted branch stops me. Shit. I might recognize it. Have I been walking in circles? Every freaking thing looks the same here. I’m never going to find anyone! Huffing fills my ears. It’s me. Think. If it’s the same tree, I veered right last time. I go left, squeezing through a thick stand of bamboo. A massive fallen tree bars my way. I consider going back. No. If I divert then I’ll definitely be walking in circles. But. The last time I climbed a tree I was seven, unafraid.
Trix whispers, Danny, it’s okay to be you.
“No, it’s not,” I mutter. Ochre-colored bark, the texture of a pineapple, tears at the skin inside my thighs as I straddle it, inching my way up until I can find an open spot on the far side to slide off. Even now, only six feet above the forest’s floor, vertigo makes me queasy. Something prickly climbs onto my fingers. I blur my eyes. I do not want to see what it is. I just want it to move on, disappear. But instead it slowly picks its way along the back of my hand with multiple legs. Don’t look. But I do. It’s. A. Tarantula. IT’S A FREAKING TARANTULA! I’m straddling a tree, my head hanging over a spider whose segmented body, without the brown-and-orange-striped bristle-covered legs, is bigger than my hand.
Burning bile climbs up my throat. If I vomit it will bite me. I swallow hard. A bead of sweat drips off my forehead, lands on the spider’s body. It skitters an inch left so that only one articulated leg is on my pinkie. I yank my hand away like it’s on fire, scramble backward and lose my balance. I
land on my side in a thick pile of sour-smelling leaves, then leap to my feet, shake out my sweatshirt, shorts and hair as imagined spiders, stinging insects and scorpions scuttle along my body.
My skin shrinks...pulse doubles...triples...bones splinter...breath strangles...a bird whistles. The song is so harsh that it slices into my freaked-out brain. I hear it again—it’s not a bird’s call, it’s...metallic. Someone is sending a signal for me to follow! It has to be my dad!
I’m off, forcing my way through the rain forest, ears straining. Branches lash my skin, leaving angry welts. After leaping over a jagged stump, I bash through brush whose black thorns stab. My heart crashes into my sternum again and again, like a fist pounding on a locked door. The sound of metal under distress gets louder. I duck beneath a tangle of vines...and see my dad.
Cougar kneels beside a mangled metal bin. He finds a seam and pries it open with a machete, reaches inside and pulls out a black case. It’s Cass’s video camera. My body trembles as I step into a clearing of broken branches, matted brush. “Dad.” My voice is a whisper. “Dad,” I say again, this time louder. He doesn’t turn. “Cougar!” I croak. He whirls, eyes wide. Run over. Hug me too hard. Never let me go. But my dad doesn’t move. I deflate a little. Maybe he’s in shock.
Cougar says, “Jesus, Danny, I thought you were gone. Your mom would’ve killed me!”
I take ten steps forward and then he’s gripping my shoulders. His fingers dig in, hurt, but I don’t mind. It makes me feel more alive. “I’m not dead.”
Cougar’s eyes narrow, scanning me head to toe. “Where’s the blood coming from?”
“It’s not. I’m not. I’m not hurt. Is anyone else? Are they all?”
“Mack, Jupiter, Cass and Gus are alive, just bumped up a bit. But we couldn’t find you or Sean.”
“I heard you signaling.”
“What?”
“The machete on metal.”
Cougar nods. “Where’s Sean?”
“We were both... We landed in a tree. My seat belt... It saved me. Sean. He was thrown. He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
I meet my dad’s intense gaze. “Positive.”
A muscle in Cougar’s jaw clenches. It reminds me of episode twenty-seven, filmed in Costa Rica. His celebrity guest, a famous pop singer named Mia, was bitten by a poisonous snake. He held her in his arms until she was evacuated. Despite her pain, I remember being jealous of their time together. During the reunion show at the end of season six, we learned that Mia was okay. She said my dad visited her in the hospital every day.
Cougar says, “Sean had a fiancée. They were getting married in May. Dammit.” He runs a hand over his face. “He was smart, strong and a gifted athlete. He could’ve been a big help in this situation, done some of the heavy lifting if things go sideways.”
“I’m really sorry.” I think I’m apologizing for being the one who survived.
14
I slap at a particularly thirsty mosquito, then another one. Whirling in circles, waving my arms, I try to bat them away.
“Danny,” my dad says, “I need you to be a propeller, not an anchor.”
My stomach clenches. An anchor is what he accused Samantha of being that night in the woods when they fought. “I won’t be an anchor.”
“Good.”
There’s a bruise on his cheekbone, a small rip in the lower left side of his button-down shirt, dirt on olive green hiking shorts. No blood. “Are you okay?”
He nods. “The others are salvaging useful stuff. Food, water, long-sleeved shirts and pants, anything waterproof and first-aid supplies. They’re spread in an arc around the main debris. You think you could look around the nose?” He points. “It’s about one hundred feet that way.”
Alone? Nope. I’m definitely not going anywhere alone. “Sure.”
“Good girl.” He holds up the machete. “We’re damn lucky that Mack had this, a fire-steel, two rain ponchos and some hard-core bug repellent in his flight gear. All my survival stuff went early with the rest of the crew. I’ll get to work on a quick shelter, and if there’s time tonight, a fire.”
“When will the rescue plane get here?”
My dad kicks at a yellow plastic box the size of a bread loaf. “This is the emergency locator transmitter. It tells people where we went down.”
“So rescuers are on their way?”
He picks up the box, toggling a black switch. “This thing is dead.”
“How can it be dead? Doesn’t Mack have to check it every flight?”
Cougar frowns. “Not every flight, but obviously more than he did.”
“Meaning?” Gus asks.
I jump, so focused on Cougar that I didn’t hear Gus walk up on my blind side, and say, “No one will know where our plane went down.” I notice a smudge of dirt on Gus’s cheek but his hair, pulled into a ponytail, looks strangely perfect given that he was just in a plane crash.
Gus shakes his head. “No emergency locator? That’s not what my team signed up for.”
His team?
Cougar nods. “Definitely not, but the reality is that we’re on our own. The good news is that I’m here. Also, no one is badly hurt. We can move fast, find our way out of the rain forest before it takes its toll.”
No one is badly hurt? What about Sean? I dig my nails into my palm to distract my brain with pain instead of anxiety.
Gus asks Cougar, “Do you know where we are?”
“More or less.”
I ask, “Do you have a compass?”
“Nope. Interesting fact? Due to magnetic anomalies, a compass differs from true north depending on where you are on the planet.” Cougar taps his temple. “I depend on myself to find the way.”
Gus looks up at the dense canopy. “Even if there are search planes they won’t be able to see us or the plane’s wreckage.”
Cougar nods. “That’s the truth. Plus, Mack was skirting storm cells from the get-go, for hours. Rescuers won’t have a clue where to start looking.”
Gus says, “The rain forest can’t be that big.”
“The Amazon basin is 2.7 million square miles, of which 2.1 million square miles are covered by rain forest. It covers nine nations and stretches across 60 percent of Peru,” I say. Gus and Cougar stare at me, mouths slightly open, like I’m some kind of alien. “Um. There was time on my flight to LA to do some research.”
“You didn’t want to watch a movie?” Cougar jokes.
My mouth is too dry to attempt a smile. “Dad, do you think we’re still in Peru?”
Cougar’s eyes squint for a split second. “Well. There’s a chance, given how long we were flying, that Mack might’ve skirted into Brazil.”
“Is that a big problem?” Gus asks.
Cougar shrugs. “It’d make finding us harder, but we’re going to rescue ourselves anyway.”
Gus asks, “What about locals?”
Cougar crushes a horsefly, leaving a green-yellow-red smear of goo on his arm. “Indigenous people live in the rain forest, but they’re only 5 percent of Peru’s population, and about the same for Brazil. Regardless, we won’t see them unless they want us to.”
“How about a fire?” Gus asks. “Signal where we are?”
Cougar points up at leaves hundreds of feet above our heads woven so tightly together that only narrow beams of light find their way through. “That’d have to be some big fire.”
“So what are we going to do?” My voice is pinched, way too high.
“Our best bet is to find a waterway before this place eats us alive. We’ll travel downhill and look for small channels. The trick is to find the ones that flow into a river that eventually becomes a major waterway,” Cougar says like it’s obvious. “Then we’ll make a raft out of bamboo. Float to safety.”
“Safety?” I ask.
“We’ll
be visible to search planes, ecotourism operations, and there are also random encampments along the banks where biologists study the diversity of this amazing forest.” He jerks his head at me, then winks at Gus. “Chip off the old block.”
I want to find a place to hide.
“Danny, what’s with the hiking boots?”
“Boots?”
Cougar points. I look down at the boots hanging from my neck. I forgot. “They’re Sean’s. I found them while I was looking for you.” Why weren’t you out looking for me? My dad’s forehead creases. Of course he looked for me. “I thought his family might want something that was his?” Gus gives me a funny look. It’s probably a stupid idea.
Cougar points to Gus’s feet. He’s wearing one flip-flop. “They’re all yours.”
Gus pulls on the boots, double knotting the laces. “They fit. I’ll try to find some socks in the wreckage. Thanks, Danny. I’ll make sure I send Sean’s family a thank-you after this.”
I don’t think a note, even from a movie star, is going to help. Gus reaches for my hand, gives it a squeeze. I can hardly feel the pressure. It’s like Gus Price, here, in the Amazon, talking to me, is part of a bizarre dream. What’s next, flying zebras? I force down the totally inappropriate giggle burbling up my throat.
“Want me to go with you?” Gus asks. “Help you search?”
Cougar shakes his head. “Gus, I need you to help me build a shelter.”
“I can do that. If you want?” I’ve watched my dad’s show for years. Haven’t missed a single episode. Watched repeats. It was a way to know him. Theoretically, I understand what a clove hitch is, and I’ve seen him braid palm fronds to make a roof.
The Speed of Falling Objects Page 7
