by Amanda Heger
“What is wrong with my jokes?”
“Nothing. They’re perfect.”
He pressed one finger to her forearm. The light pressure made her sun-seared skin go white. “Sunburn,” he said.
“No clue.”
“Quemada.”
“I guess I shouldn’t plan on going home with a great tan.”
“I do not think so.” She smiled, and he gave her a new word. “Freckles.”
Day Six
The first time Annie went skinny dipping she was seventeen, full of teenage bravado and Natty Lite. The second time, she was with Mike one late night at the pool attached to her apartment complex. She didn’t know if today counted or not, but in the interest of making her life seem more exciting than it really was, she decided yes. Definitely yes.
She also decided that later, when she told the story of her not-so-sexy skinny dipping trip in a foreign country, she would leave out the part about scrubbing her clothes with pruney fingers in the brown river and scanning the water for the telltale ripples of a snake in their midst.
She laid her now cleanish shirt on a sunny boulder and squirted a handful of shampoo into her palm. Beside her, Marisol leaned against the chain of rocks separating their side of the river from the men. Annie tried to work the lather through the tangles and crusted mud in her hair, but she stumbled on a submerged rock and floundered forward, catching her balance a second before she belly-flopped into the river.
“Shhh. Come here.” Marisol’s voice was low. She jerked her head toward the rocks.
“What are you doing?” Annie trudged through the water and squatted next to her friend.
Marisol shushed her again as she peered around the edge of the rock wall and pointed. “I want to know what I am working with.”
Phillip stood on the other side of boulders. His back faced the girls, and he held a florescent blue bar of soap in one hand. He kept lifting his arms, sniffing his pits, then scrubbing them with the soap. He fit the pattern of all-American boy perfectly. Blond hair and tanned skin, perpetually bulging biceps. It was all there. Except the sniffing his pits part. If Marisol could look past that, he’d make the perfect summer fling.
Just like Mike. For a beat, Annie’s heart threatened to crumple, thinking of her ex and whatever summer fling he might be having. But as quickly as the feeling came, it was gone, replaced by images of Mike and Phillip competing against each other Barnyard Boyfriend style. Obviously there would be an armpit sniffing competition. Perhaps a fake bedhead styling event. Maybe I’m getting over this breakup after all. Or I’m totally losing it.
Annie wagged a finger at her friend. “What if you see your brother instead? Or Juan?”
Marisol’s dark hair dripped down her back, and suds clung to the crook of her ear. “I have seen them all before. You cannot go on these trips without seeing someone naked. Besides,” she grinned, “don’t you want to see my brother naked?”
Annie tried to deny it, but the words caught in her throat. Heat inched up her neck and settled into the tips of her ears.
Marisol shook her head. “You think I do not see the way you turn to a ball of kitten fur when my brother looks at you?”
“Kitten fur?”
“Yes, all soft and a little bit strange.”
“Kitten fur isn’t strange. What are you talking about?”
Marisol ignored her. “And you think I do not see the way he stares at you all the time when you are not looking? If you are not looking at him, he is looking at you, amiga.”
“It’s just flirting, Mari,” Annie said, as a streak of shampoo slid down her forehead.
Marisol waggled her eyebrows. “Think of me like the Cupid of Nicaragua.”
“What? No.”
“Why no? You like him. He has been waiting for years for you to like him. I saw you in the boat yesterday.” Marisol crossed her arms against her chest.
Annie flushed at the memory of his warm fingers wound between hers. “What’s the point? I’ll be gone in a few weeks anyway.” As she said the words, the weight of their truth pressed harder against her chest. “Besides, it’s like my IQ drops ten points every time he looks at me.”
“I do not understand.”
Annie sighed and ducked to rinse the shampoo from her hair. “I keep saying stupid stuff. Doing stupid stuff. And our lives are so different. He’s out here in the middle of the jungle saving people while I’m going to sorority formals. It makes me feel so…” she swallowed hard, searching for the right word. “So insignificant, you know?”
“Leave it all to me. A girl has got the needs, no?”
Annie smiled despite herself. “Well, yes.”
Marisol tugged her arm, pulling her to the edge of the rocks. “Here comes Juan. Un hombre grande, if you know what I mean.”
Annie stared for a moment, trying to string the Spanish together. But when Marisol ducked her chin and held her index fingers two feet apart, it all came together. She threw her hands over her mouth, droplets of river water hitting her lips. “He’s old.”
“Shhh!” Marisol shoved her forward. “Here.”
She braced herself for the train wreck, but Juan was nowhere in sight. Felipe stood underwater to his hips, and the perfection of his brown skin drove all thoughts of Juan and sorority formals straight from her mind. His shoulders rippled as he rubbed shampoo through his dark hair and lathered up his face to shave, and her eyes followed the trail of white suds down his sinewy back to the curve of his ass, barely submerged in the river. I’m a total creeper. But she didn’t look away, thinking about tracing that line of soap with her fingertips.
“Did you see Juan yet?”
Annie took a deep breath and turned, praying her expression didn’t give away the extent of her dirty thoughts. Marisol held her hands an unfathomable distance apart.
She shuddered. “God, no.”
• • •
Felipe lay on his hammock with a book in his hand. The coarse fabric scratched the backs of his legs, and his brain refused to comprehend the words in front of him. His gaze strayed across the cramped church, following the line of wet clothes dripping onto the dirt floor. At the end, Annie sat on a purple mat, scribbling in her journal.
“You did not bring a hammock,” he said. “Why?”
“Momentary insanity, I guess. I didn’t think I would be able to sleep in one.” She kept writing, her hand moving faster with every passing second.
“Do you want to sleep in my hammock?” he asked.
She jerked her head up, eyebrows raised to her hairline. “What?”
“Not with me, I mean.” He fumbled for words. “I can sleep on your purple thing.”
“Really?”
“Sí.”
“But the yoga mat is kind of horrible.” She scrunched her nose. “That wouldn’t be fair.”
“I will live.”
“How about we switch back and forth? Then I won’t feel as bad.”
Near the center of the room, Marisol stood and pulled a sandwich bag of cards from a backpack. “UNO!” She threw the cards at him, knocking the book from his hands.
“No, gracias.” Felipe tossed them back.
His sister rolled her eyes. “Annie? You still love UNO, si?”
Annie looked up from her journal. “Sure.”
“So you will play, yes?”
Her gaze flicked to Felipe, and her wide, round eyes locked on his. “Maybe another time.”
“Annie Sue, it will be like the olden times.”
Felipe corrected her. “Old days.”
“Maybe tomorrow, Mari.” Annie returned to writing.
Marisol put a hand on her hip. “You cannot even spare a few minutes for your oldest, dearest friends? Even though ’Lipe brought this UNO game along just for you?”
“Mari—” His face warmed.
“Look what I found.” Marisol lowered her voice in a horrid impression of her brother. “Remember how Annie was so good at UNO?”
“You brought it?”
Annie’s eyes shifted from the journal to Felipe.
“Si.”
“I will deal.” Marisol smirked and skipped outside, leaving him alone with Annie.
She uncrossed her legs and stood, tucking the journal into the front pocket of her pack. “Remember how you always tried to cheat?”
“I did not.” He had. Every game.
“Doesn’t matter. You never won.” Her lips broke into a small smile. “Except once. But your mom told me and Marisol to let you win.”
“That did not happen.” Felipe stood and brushed a wet curl from her face, letting his finger trace the outline of her cheekbone. The distance between their lips was so tiny, and his desperation to kiss her grew stronger every time her warm breath hit his skin.
“It did,” she insisted. “She said it was…” Her face fell.
“Said it was what?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.” Her lips lifted, but the smile was stiff and forced.
At once it hit him. He remembered that game—literally the only time he ever won. It happened on the tenth anniversary of his biological mother’s death. He knew Melinda had arranged that win. She always took extra care with him on those days. The birthdays and anniversaries. Marisol’s grief passed quietly, noticeable only to a select few. But those days always ripped him wide open, putting his pain on full display.
“That was not as difficult as I thought it would be.” Marisol’s voice drew them apart, but Felipe didn’t look at his sister. His gaze stayed steady on Annie’s face, flickering between her strawberry red lips and the freckles on her nose.
“Go away, Mari,” he said.
“So I guess this means you aren’t going to play UNO?”
“Oh we are. Felipe actually thinks he can win.” She followed Marisol into the night, and he stared, wondering how this American had gotten so deep under his skin.
Outside, the sun was setting into a wash of pinks, blues, and yellows. At the edge of a small bonfire, Juan turned a stick full of impaled fish, and Marisol plopped down next to Phillip, who shuffled and reshuffled the tattered deck of cards. Behind them, the night moved in, bringing in its thousands of white flickering stars.
Annie picked a spot across from Marisol, and Felipe slid in next to her, ignoring the looks Juan gave him as he passed out their dinner.
“I’ve gotten better with age, you know.” Annie picked up her cards.
Felipe grinned but kept back the words he wanted to say. He feared his agreement would lead to her laughter, which would lead to his inability to do anything but kiss her. In front of everyone.
Juan threw down a blue three. “We are going to play or flirt?” He dropped a lump of fish in his mouth and stared at the rest of them, eyes gleaming.
“UNO is Juan’s other obsession,” Felipe said.
“Otra obsession? I do not have obsessions.” His protests were undermined by the way he picked up the front half of his fish and moved its mouth to the words.
“Sí,” Marisol chimed in. “You are obsessed with washing the truck. You are obsessed with winning at UNO. You are obsessed with your mustache. You are obsessed with playing with your food.” She ticked each one off on her fingers.
“If you had a mustache as beautiful as mine, you would have an obsession too.”
Day Seven
After the last boat ride, Annie convinced herself that Dramamine was more of an option than a necessity. Not to mention that after a night of tossing and turning in Felipe’s hammock, the effort of digging through her backpack for the tiny bottle of pills had seemed too great. But this time the river was swollen with rain, and it pushed and pulled the boat against its waves. Twenty minutes into the ride, her eyelids begged for sleep, but nausea kept her wide awake.
The boat slowed as its bottom hit earth, and she pried her head from her knees. Ahead, a slender stretch of sand narrowed to a rocky path. It gave way to a cliff face, charcoal gray jutting against the deep greens and browns.
They came to a stop, and Annie stood on wobbly legs. The movement sent her insides twisting, and she slid into something like a sitting position on the shore. The others unloaded the boat around her, bag after bag of supplies whizzing by her head. Behind the opaque curtain of nausea, Annie knew it was rude and selfish to sit watching while everyone else worked. But sickness and frustration tethered her to the sand.
The commotion around her came to a halt, and she lifted her head. Felipe squatted next to her. “Are you ready, Americana?” he asked.
She nodded and used his elbow for leverage as she stood.
“You can carry this up the hill, yes?” He held out her backpack and dropped a duffle of medical supplies at her feet. Damp sand kicked up around the bag, pelting her bare legs.
“That hill?” She nodded at the cliff in front of her. She started to ask more questions, like how, exactly, he planned to scale this steep bluff. But her breakfast came out.
Felipe jumped back, but he couldn’t escape the vomit geyser. Half-digested rice and beans clung to his shoes and his scrub pants, and she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the face. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. Acid burned her throat, but the blazing heat of her humiliation was far more painful.
“Are you okay?” He didn’t even look at the vomit covering his pants, but Annie couldn’t stop staring at it. She stepped away, terrified she would retch all over him again. Between the puking and the way she’d shoved her foot in her mouth the night before—great job bringing up his dead mom, Annie—she couldn’t win. Like a kid taking the same math test again and again but failing for a new reason each time.
Felipe stripped off his shirt and walked into the river. Almost everyone else turned away, giving her the privacy to gag and heave without being examined in the process. She wondered if they would also give her the privacy to quietly drown herself in the river.
“¿Todo bien?” Marisol pulled Annie’s hair from her face and rubbed a tiny hand across her back.
Annie nodded and took a water bottle from her friend’s outstretched hand. With the taste of vomit sufficiently deadened, she dug in her pack for her toothbrush. Around her, the others shuffled their feet as Felipe returned to the group in fresh clothes, but she still couldn’t look at him. It was too horrifying, and her stomach still churned. After a quick brushing, she reached for the duffle of medical supplies, but both Felipe and Phillip grabbed it at the same time.
“I’ll get it.”
“No es necesario.”
She reached between the men and took the bag, hiking it over her shoulder alongside her own pack. It weighed nothing, and she realized Felipe must have given her the bag full of gauze and Band-Aids. “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”
Juan took them up a winding, narrow path hidden in the cliff’s face by spindly branches and lush leaves growing between the cracks. Annie’s shoulders ached with the weight of her backpack, the straps rubbing and chafing her sweat-laden skin. As they ascended, she fought the urge to look down, certain the sight of the water rushing below would fling her straight into another puking catastrophe. She focused on Juan’s steady steps ahead of her. His right arm moved rhythmically as he chopped brush with a machete, leaving a trail of severed branches behind him.
They reached the top, and Annie took two solid strides onto the flat field and peered over the edge. From there, the river was a trickling creek. Their boat, left tied to an adolescent tree, was a child’s bath toy. For all the tall, jagged rocks and thick leaves on the river, the field in front of them was open and barren. Waist-high grasses slapped against their legs. Only a single twisted and gnarled tree grew out of the earth. Its branches were gray and bare, long dead and full of decay. Blackened tree stumps dotted the landscape, partially hidden lumps in the swaying grass. As they walked, the stumps grew closer and closer together, and Annie weaved in and out of the remains.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Logging,” Felipe said.
Her stomach still sloshe
d as though she were in the boat, and the effort to speak exhausted her energy stores. But she swallowed back her nausea and pressed on. “I’m sorry about earlier. The puking thing.”
“It is fine. I am a doctor. Getting vomited on is only another Tuesday.” He plucked a stray bit of grass from her shirt. “You will see.”
The field gave way to hard-beaten earth and to a trio of small, giggly girls who blocked their path. Their dresses were made of thin fabrics; faded patterns of apples, cherries, and unicorns left the impression of a fruit here or a mythical creature there. The girls fell silent and looked right past Juan and his giant knife to Annie. Their wide, caramel eyes blinked again and again.
“Hola.” Felipe waved to them.
“Hola,” the tallest girl replied, never letting her stare fall from Annie’s face.
Annie cleared her throat and squatted. “Hola. Me llamo Annie.”
The two smaller girls ducked behind their leader as Annie held out her hand. A sluggish moment of silence passed, and the child sized her up, pursing her pint-sized lips and backing away.
“¡Su pelo!” the girl screeched, turning to her minions. “¡Es rojo como una bruja! ¡Una bruja!”
The other two shrieked, and all three darted off. Their bare feet pounded the ground, dust flying behind them. The tall one limped to the right as she ran, falling behind her friends.
“What did she say about my hair?” Annie asked. Juan shrugged, and no one spoke up. “¿Bruja?” She mimicked the little girl’s scream.
“She is surprised you have red hair. She has probably never seen it before.” Marisol took her elbow, pushing them forward.
Ahead, a cluster of houses sprung up out of the dirt. Thatched roofs topped walls made of thin, warped logs, giving each of the homes an unsteady appearance. Between them, a handful of people stared in their direction. Cows meandered through the open space.
Annie patted her messy topknot and followed the rest of her group into a single-room hut. Strips of sunshine poked through the gaps in the walls, making it difficult for her eyes to adjust. There were no windows, and the stagnant air trapped the sweat against her skin. In one corner, two flat wooden benches formed an L. In another, a lumpy pile of blankets created a nest. No indoor plumbing. No electricity.
