Blue Autumn Cruise

by Lisa Williams Kline

  “Sometimes he looks more blue than this. Maybe they change colors for some reason,” I said. “Tomorrow I can go back to the teen club and look up blue iguanas to see if I can find a picture of a young one.”

  “So what if he is a blue iguana? Do you think he would be worth a lot of money?” Lauren asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep with that lizard in our room tonight,” Stephanie said. “I’ll keep dreaming that it’s going to walk across my face or something.”

  “You can’t be scared of this little thing,” I said.

  “You could get in trouble for hiding it, Diana. I think we should tell Daddy and Lynn about it.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was find and feed him,” I told her. Stephanie was always such a scaredy-cat. She was always worried about doing something wrong.

  “If Manuel and his friend brought the iguana on the ship, maybe they’re smuggling it,” Lauren said. “Maybe that’s what they were talking about when Manuel said what they were doing is illegal. Maybe it’s a crime to smuggle an endangered animal.”

  “And maybe you’re smuggling by hiding it,” Stephanie said.

  “Tomorrow I’ll find out what kind of crime it is to smuggle an iguana, and if anyone would ever even do that. Meanwhile, all I’m doing is taking care of an animal I found.” I stared Stephanie down. “You aren’t going to tell on me, are you?”

  Stephanie stood by the bed and looked down at her feet. “I think we should tell Daddy and Lynn. But I won’t tell them. I’ll let you do it.”

  “And what if they ask you about it?”

  “I can’t lie about it, Diana. I’m sorry.” She looked at me wide-eyed, but with her jaw set.

  “I think we should try to find out if this is what Manuel and the other guy are looking for. If we could somehow videotape them in their cabin, we might be able to tape a conversation just like we did in the cafeteria. We might find out a lot,” said Lauren.

  “Well, we can’t find out about that until tomorrow when Josh asks,” I said. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

  “I don’t think we should wait for Josh to ask,” Lauren said. “I think we should just do it.”

  I put Iggy back in his box, and Lauren went over and turned out the light.

  “You better not let him out during the night,” Stephanie said as she climbed under her covers.

  The next morning Iggy was the first thing I thought about when I woke up. I sat up and opened his box, then put him out on the bedspread to walk around. He was still mostly gray today. I was starting to feel bad about keeping him in a box, and now that Lauren and Stephanie knew about him, I didn’t have to keep him cooped up anymore. I could let him walk all over the room. I didn’t want him to fall off my bunk, though!

  Maybe I could keep him in the shower.

  I created mountain ranges with my covers and let him crawl over them. He found a perch on one of my legs, and I scratched him under the chin. He held his head up at just the right angle. When I held my finger in front of him, he would grasp it and hold on, and I could pick him up and let him hang from his front legs. Then I fed him the last of the kale and beans, which he took right out of my hand and chewed slowly, staring at me with his golden eyes. I would have to go back to the buffet today to get him more food.

  When Lauren and Stephanie woke up, they wanted to come to the teen club with me to do more research on blue iguanas. We quickly got dressed and ready to go.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Should I leave him in the shower and shut the shower door? That would leave him a few feet to walk around in, and I could put his plate of food there too.”

  “But then we’ll have to take a shower in there!” Stephanie squealed.

  For once, Lauren and I agreed and out voted Stephanie. And we decided to leave the Do Not Disturb sign on our door so Manuel wouldn’t come in and see him.

  On the computer at the teen club, before even getting breakfast, we quickly found out about blue iguanas. The only place in the world they inhabited was Grand Cayman. They were the rarest iguanas in the world, magnificent dragon-like, dusky-blue creatures that could grow to over five feet long and live to be eighty years old. But hatchlings were small, like Iggy, only eight to ten inches long, and the biggest threats to them were snakes. It was illegal to keep blue iguanas as pets. Fights between male iguanas over females and territory could be extremely violent.

  A few years ago, because of destruction of their habitat and being preyed upon by feral cats and dogs, there were so few blue iguanas living in the wild that they were considered extinct. An organization called BIRP, or the Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, was started on Grand Cayman in 1990. Scientists began breeding the iguanas in captivity and then releasing them into the wild to try to restore the blue iguana population. The program had been a tremendous success, and by 2010 there were six hundred fifty blue iguanas. The goal of the program was to increase the size of the blue iguana population to one thousand, and to set aside enough habitat on Grand Cayman for them to live comfortably in the wild.

  “Iggy is one of the rarest iguanas in the world!” I said to Stephanie and Lauren. “Isn’t that cool?”

  “And that’s amazing that he could live to be eighty years old,” Lauren said, leaning over the console to see my computer screen. “He could live to be older than Grammy! Hey, how about if we make a video about Iggy’s life on the cruise ship? We can show him hanging around in our room, and you going to the buffet to get him food.”

  “But it’s illegal to keep an iguana like this as a pet,” Stephanie said. “What we’re doing is wrong. It’s a wild animal. A very rare wild animal.”

  What Stephanie was saying made sense, but I didn’t want to hear it. “But he’s like my little dragon!” I said. “I found him!”

  “If some expert were telling you this stuff, you’d listen to them, Diana,” Stephanie said. “You’re not listening because it’s me saying this to you.”

  I thought about what Stephanie had just said. It was true that on the website it did say that it was illegal to keep a blue iguana as a pet. And his color hadn’t been bright since I’d had him. I wondered if they turned gray when they were scared or unhappy. With the wild horses last spring, Stephanie and I had encountered a situation where the animals needed to survive without human interference. A volunteer who had many years’ experience working with the wild horses had convinced me not to try to feed them. Maybe this little iguana was the same.

  I took a deep breath. Much as I hated to admit it, Stephanie was probably right. “Okay,” I said. “Until after Grammy’s birthday celebration. Then I’ll tell Mom and Norm about it.”

  “So that’s our deal? You’ll tell them after Grammy’s birthday?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Look at this,” said Lauren, who had been reading the website while Stephanie and I had been talking. “It says on here that the blue iguanas need sunlight to live. They have to physically sit in the sun every day. How are we going to do that? We need to somehow take him out on deck.”

  “I knew about that,” I said “I read something about it before. We have to figure out how to do that.” Maybe the iguana would turn blue with a little sun. I couldn’t help but think that somehow I wasn’t taking the right care of Iggy, and that’s why he wasn’t bright blue.

  “Well, that’s impossible. People will see him,” Stephanie said.

  “Maybe we can somehow hide him,” I said. I didn’t know how, but I’d figure it out.

  12

  STEPHANIE

  We left the teen club and went to the buffet. We decided we’d get breakfast, and then Diana would go back and get food for Iggy.

  While we were finishing our breakfast, Evan and Guy came over with their trays and sat at our table. I was dying to tell the boys about Iggy, but I knew it was important to keep it a secret.

  “Morning!” said Guy, putting his tray next to mi
ne. I tried to catch his eye, to see if he acted any different since last night, and he did glance at me more often. While Guy had a normal amount of food on his tray, Evan had waffles, an omelette, cantaloupe, two kinds of sausage, a blueberry muffin, grits, and cereal.

  “Look at all that food!” I teased Evan. “You’re a pig!”

  “One of the greatest things about being on a cruise,” Evan said.

  “How do you stay so skinny?” Lauren asked him.

  “I guess I just use up a lot of energy,” Evan said, pouring syrup on his waffles.

  I noticed Guy hadn’t started eating yet. Instead, he had his insulin pump and meter in his lap. He inserted a test strip into his meter, and then pricked his index finger and squeezed a tiny drop of blood from his finger onto the test strip. A number appeared on the meter.

  “Is that your blood glucose level?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He typed the number showing on the meter into the pump.

  “You’re telling the pump what your blood glucose level is?”

  “Yep. Then I enter the carbs in the meal that I’m about to eat. Let’s see … I have scrambled eggs, which are excellent if you’re counting carbs, because they’re almost nothing, but I’ll count them as one; bacon, which is about one carb; cantaloupe, which is about three; a Danish, which is about thirty carbs; and a glass of milk, which is about twelve. See, it tests your math skills. That adds up to forty-seven, so I input that into the pump, and then it translates that to insulin units and pumps it into me.”

  “That’s pretty cool,” I said.

  “Much cooler than having to stick myself to inject the insulin. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “How do you know how many carbs each food has? Do you memorize it?”

  “I used a booklet at first, but yeah, now I kind of know the foods I eat most often by heart. If I have to look something up I can use my phone and go online.”

  “And you have to watch what you eat, right?” I said to Guy.

  “Well, yeah, but I can bolus if I want to splurge on something like waffles.”

  “Cool,” said Lauren. Then, suddenly, she said, “Guess what?”

  Diana and I quickly looked at her. What was she doing? Was she going to tell about Iggy?

  “What?” Evan said, taking a bite of his waffle.

  “We found a wild iguana,” Lauren whispered. “We’re keeping it in our room.”

  I let my mouth drop open, and I stared at Diana, who glared at Lauren.

  “Lauren!” Diana said with fury in her voice.

  “Whoa, really?” Evan said. “You’re kidding. Where’d you find it? Did you bring it from Grand Cayman? I heard they had a park there where they’re breeding them and releasing them into the wild.”

  “I want to see it!” Guy said excitedly, tossing his hair back.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Lauren?” Diana said.

  Lauren shrugged. “They already know about the thing that Manuel and his American friend lost. I just thought I’d bring them up to speed.”

  “But I thought it was obvious that we were going to keep it a secret!” Diana said.

  “I thought that just meant the ‘rents,” Lauren said. “I didn’t know you didn’t want to tell the guys either.”

  “Well, we know now,” Guy said. “So can we come see it after breakfast?”

  “Sure,” said Lauren.

  Diana stood up and threw her fork down on her plate, narrowing her eyes at Lauren. “I cannot believe you told them about it! What’s the matter with you?” She marched away from the table.

  Oh no! I couldn’t figure out why Lauren decided to tell the boys, either. We hadn’t talked about it at all. And I didn’t know if Daddy and Lynn would think it was okay for the guys to come to our room. I was staring at Lauren with my mouth open when the captain made an announcement. “Attention please. Today we will spend the day at sea. The weather is a balmy eighty degrees with scattered clouds. We will be heading northwest at eighteen knots with a light wind. Please enjoy all of our shipboard amenities.” The captain went on to describe a cooking class, an art show, and a yoga class that would be taking place today on the ship.

  I noticed Diana over by the buffet getting food for Iggy, and I went over to talk to her.

  “I’m sorry that Lauren told,” I said. “I have no idea why she did it!”

  “What is wrong with her? Every five minutes she does something to make me mad!” Diana said. “I’m going back to the room. And don’t bring the guys to see Iggy. He’s a wild animal, and he might freak out with all of us in there.”

  A minute later she left with a plate of veggies and fruits.

  I headed back to the table and slid into my seat. “She’s really mad, Lauren. She doesn’t want us to bring the boys back to the room.”

  Lauren tossed her head. “Well, there’s nothing I can do now. They already know. We might as well show it to them.”

  “We won’t tell anyone,” Guy said reassuringly. “We promise.”

  “It’s just the principle of the thing,” I said. I didn’t want to leave the group, but I felt like I needed to try to talk to Diana. “I think I’ll go now too.”

  “Where are you going?” Guy said as soon as I stood up. He was looking at me in a way that made me feel confused and flustered.

  “Back to the room.”

  “Can we come see the iguana?” he asked.

  “Let me go talk to Diana first. She’s pretty upset.”

  When I got back, Diana had Iggy in the middle of the room, letting him eat from the plate of greens she’d brought him.

  “He’s supposed to be a secret!” she exclaimed the minute I walked in. “Maybe those guys will tell their parents, and pretty soon all kinds of people are going to know about him.”

  I sat down beside her. “Lauren was wrong to tell the guys about it, I agree with you. She should not have done that. But I think we need to go ahead and tell Daddy and Lynn about this. We could get in serious trouble by keeping this iguana. We might be committing a crime! We should turn it in.”

  “I promised I’d tell them after Grammy’s birthday tonight. So that’s when I’ll tell them,” Diana said.

  “We might as well let the boys see him,” I said. “They know about him already.”

  By the time the boys got there, I had just barely persuaded her. Everyone came crowding into the small room, and Diana glanced up at them.

  “He’s very cool,” said Evan as he watched the iguana crawl up to the top of Diana’s knee.

  “He’s like my own little dragon,” said Diana, more to Iggy than anyone else. She gave him some watercress, and we all watched him eat. Diana gradually warmed up with all the attention, though she wouldn’t talk to Lauren, who looked at me and shrugged when she realized Diana was still mad.

  After he ate, we sat around and let him perch on our shoulders and walk around on our arms and legs. Lauren took videos. Diana showed the boys how the iguana loved getting its chin scratched.

  “We have to take the iguana out in the sun today,” Diana said. “We read online that iguana hatchlings have to have vitamin D.”

  “Hatchlings?”

  “That’s what they call baby iguanas. But we have to somehow keep him hidden while we do that.”

  “I’m in!” Guy said. “We can sit near the pool and position our stuff around it so nobody can see it. This is going to be cool. The day of the iguana. The iguana caper. The Iwannaguana caper.”

  Evan laughed, repeating, “The Iwannaiguana caper!”

  Evan and Guy stood up.

  “We’ll meet you guys out by the pool,” Lauren said. “Find some chairs in the sun, and save us some.”

  “Okay! See you in a little while.” Evan and Guy ducked through the door.

  As soon as they left, I tried to talk to Diana and Lauren.

  “I really think we need to tell Daddy and Lynn about it,” I said. “Maybe people are looking for it.”

  “Do you think he’s really valuable
?” Lauren said, videotaping as Iggy climbed over Diana’s knee.

  I was also starting to get worried about Grammy’s birthday celebration tonight. I wanted it to be good. We needed to take some time to write her a poem or a song, not just spend all our time playing with the iguana.

  Diana and Lauren were touching the lizard and holding him, and he seemed to like to sit on their shoulders and crawl on them. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I didn’t know how his skin would feel, and I was afraid he might bite me.

  “Let’s just wait and see,” Lauren said. “It’s so cool to have him here to play with, isn’t it?”

  “You’re such a worrywart, Stephanie,” Diana said. “Chill.”

  Twenty minutes later, after we were all in our bathing suits ready to go to the pool, Diana slipped Iggy into her beach bag.

  Having Iggy out by the pool was easier than we thought. We put five chairs together over in one sunny corner and piled all of our beach bags in the center of them. Then we sat on the lounge chairs and Diana opened her beach bag and let Iggy crawl out. The moment he crawled out into the sun, he blinked and settled in for some sunbathing.

  “Wow, his skin looks darker when he’s out in the sun,” Diana said.

  There were some potted hibiscus plants beside the pool, and Diana went over, picked a few of the crepey red flowers, and brought them back to where we were sitting.

  “So this is what my mom did once when she was in Saint Thomas. She said iguanas love hibiscus flowers.” She held out a flower to Iggy, and he eagerly ate some of it. He was having trouble eating the big petals on the flower, so Diana took it back and tore it into smaller pieces. “Check it out! He does like it!”

  We spent awhile sitting in the sun with Iggy. He was skittish and liked to be able to run into Diana’s beach bag. He sat at the edge of it in the sunshine, and whenever someone walked by and cast a shadow, he ran back inside.

  We hadn’t been at the pool long when Luke came out with a couple of friends and threw his towel on a lounge chair near us. One of his friends yelled, “Geronimo!” and jumped into the pool, and the others followed him, sending up walls of water and splashing us.