by J; P Voelkel
“Pyramid of Peril? It’s a piece of junk.”
The smile faded on his mother’s face.
“It smells bad,” Max explained. “And the rules are missing. Where did it come from?”
“Zia found it,” said his mother. “In a yard sale, I think.”
Max wrinkled his nose. “That explains the musty smell.”
“There’s gratitude for you,” said his father.
“It’s just that my friends get the new limited edition Hellhounds 3-D, and I get garbage from a yard sale,” protested Max.
“I’m not interested in what your friends get or don’t get,” said his father. “You all spend far too much time playing silly games and sending cretinous messages to each other on Face Space—”
“It’s not called—”
“I don’t care what it’s called. It’s a waste of time.”
Max’s mother rubbed her temples as if she had a headache. “You know, Frank, perhaps we should order this”—she paused, wincing in distaste at the title—“Hellhounds game”—she pronounced it in the Italian way, ’Ell ’Oundz, which made it sound a bit more sophisticated—“to keep him busy while we’re away.”
“Shopping is not the answer, Carla,” said his father. “He needs to learn to make his own entertainment.”
“I just thought, with this trip and everything …,” said his mother defensively.
“What trip?” said Max. “Do you mean Italy?”
“No, bambino,” his mother said with a sigh. “We need to talk to you. Something’s come up … a dig. … It’s very important. … The permits just came through today. …”
“A dig?” echoed Max dully. “When do you go?”
“We leave in a few hours’ time,” said his father, trying to hide his excitement.
“Tonight?” wailed Max. “For how long?”
“We’re … um … we’re not sure,” said his father.
“But what about the end-of-year concert? My drum solo?”
His mother put an arm around him. “I’m sorry, bambino. We’ll ask one of the other parents to record it, and we’ll watch it when we get back. …”
Max shook off her arm.
“You’re the worst parents in the world!” he said. “You’ve missed every single performance of the school band! You promised you’d come to the end-of-year concert. I’ve been rehearsing for weeks. …”
“Calm down, Max,” said his father. “It’s out of our control. We didn’t plan for this to happen. We said we’re sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry.
“Can’t you wait a couple of weeks?” Max pleaded. “Then you could come to my concert and I could come on your dig.”
“Not possible,” said his father. “These permits are like gold dust. They could be revoked at any moment, and we won’t get another chance.”
“So where is this dig?” asked Max sulkily.
“San Xavier,” said his father.
“San Xavier?” Max sounded outraged. “But that’s where you grew up! You said you’d take me there one day.”
“Not this time,” said his father firmly. “This trip is work. Hard work.”
“But …”
“The answer’s no, Max.”
“Well, just hurry back,” said Max sadly, “so we can go to Italy.”
Neither parent replied.
His father looked at his watch.
His mother adjusted the gold hoops in her ears.
Why wouldn’t they look at him?
“We are still going to Italy, aren’t we?” he asked anxiously.
There was another moment’s silence, and then his father said, “It looks like we’ll have to take a rain check, Max.” He seemed oblivious to his son’s disappointment. “Let’s face it,” he continued in a cheery tone, “you’re getting a bit old for family vacations. You teenagers want to be with friends your own age, not boring old folks like us. Am I right?”
Max said nothing.
His mother read his thoughts. “I was looking forward to Italy, too, bambino,” she said. “I promise we wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t very important.”
Some people think their kids are important, thought Max.
He tried to look as if he didn’t care. He opened the fridge, took out the milk, and gulped it down straight from the carton.
“Massimo!” roared his mother. “Use a glass!”
Massimo was the name on Max’s birth certificate.
And there were more.
Massimo Francis Sylvanus Murphy.
Luckily, he’d always been called Max for short, and no one, except his family in Italy and his mother when she was angry, ever called him Massimo.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—“Massimo! Use a napkin!”—and replaced the milk. Then he slammed the fridge door hard enough to make the cans and bottles rattle inside, and gave it a little kick.
His father raised an eyebrow. “Very mature,” he said.
“What do you expect?” asked Max.
“I expect you to think about someone besides yourself for once,” replied his father. “We’ve already explained that we didn’t plan on this, but there’s no alternative. I’ve drawn up a full list of activities to make sure you spend your time productively when school ends.”
He took a piece of paper out of one of his many pockets, unfolded it, and handed it to Max.
“‘Weeding the yard, painting the fence, washing the windows …,’” read Max, with mounting outrage. “When do I get to have any fun?”
“I’ve also included sports activities,” said his father, “like running five miles a day, and tennis lessons twice a week.”
“What about the things I like to do?” protested Max.
“I don’t want you frittering away the summer playing video games. It’s not healthy, Max. When I was your age, I was outdoors all the time, climbing trees, exploring ruins, swimming in water holes. …”
“But we live in the middle of Boston,” Max protested. “You grew up in the jungle.”
“That’s right. No shopping malls, no movie theaters, but my brother and I had a fine old time, let me tell you.”
“If you had such a fine old time, how come you and Uncle Ted don’t speak to each other anymore?”
“Massimo! Don’t be cheeky!”
“As a matter of a fact,” said his father, “we’ll be staying with my brother for a couple of nights when we get to San Xavier.”
“Really? So you’re friends again?”
His father ignored the question. “I’ve made a chart for you to keep track of your progress, so you can monitor your achievements.”
“I can’t believe this! It’s going to be the worst summer ever.”
“Nonsense, Max! It can do a fourteen-year-old boy a world of good to be thrown back on his inner resources once in a while—”
“But Dad, it takes a lot of inner resources to play Hellhounds 3-D—”
“Enough!” said his father. “Haven’t you got homework to do?”
Max stomped up to his room and slammed the door. Then he grabbed his iPod, turned his current favorites—the Plague Rats—up to full volume, and threw himself on the bed, fuming with rage.
After a while, his mother came in with pizza. She tried to talk to him, but her voice could not compete with the throbbing bass in his ears. Max lay there, nodding along to his music and staring at her blankly.
There were tears in her eyes as she left the room.
Serves her right, he thought. She wanted to go to Italy as much as I did. She should stand up to Dad and tell him that his own family’s more important than the stupid Maya.
Max opened the pizza box. Pepperoni Supreme with extra cheese—his favorite. As he gobbled it down, he thought about Italy. Dinners under the orange trees with everyone crammed around one long table … playing pickup soccer games in the piazza … wandering around Venice with his cousins … eating gelato at night in Saint Mark’s Square … feeling part of one big happy family
.
He sighed.
Boston was dead in the summer. All his friends would be at camp or away on vacation. To be stuck here with Zia was the pits.
The next minute, his father was pulling off Max’s headphones.
“I said the taxi’s here,” he yelled. “Time to go!”
Max’s mother ran in, looking frazzled. “I’ll call or e-mail as soon as I can,” she said, “but it’s like the Stone Age in San Xavier, so don’t worry if you don’t hear from us right away.” She felt his forehead. “Are you all right, bambino? You look pale.”
“Of course he looks pale,” snapped his father. “He spends his whole life in his room! There’s nothing wrong with him that a bit of healthy exercise won’t cure. I’m sorry you’re not happy, Max, but we can’t always get what we want.”
You always get what you want, thought Max.
“Remember to wear a hat in the sun—with your fair skin, you have to be careful,” said his mother, bending to kiss him.
For once, he didn’t duck away.
“You be careful, too, Mom,” he said.
A tear rolled down her face.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” said his father. “Don’t do this, Max.”
“What am I doing? You’re the one who’s walking out on his only child.”
“You’re fourteen,” said his father, “hardly a child. There were ancient Maya kings younger than you.”
Outside, the taxi was revving its motor.
“Remember to floss twice a day, bambino. …”
“Come on, Carla,” said his father. “Zia will look after him. We need to go.”
As her husband chivvied her out the door, Max’s mother turned back. “Look up at the moon rabbit, Max, and I’ll be looking at it, too. I love you. …”
And then they were gone.
The moon rabbit?
It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. …
And then it came to him.
It was an evening long ago. He was sitting on the window seat over there, and his mother was pointing up at the night sky. “We see the man in the moon,” she was saying, “but ancient Maya children saw a leaping rabbit, the pet of the moon goddess.”
After that, little Max had waved to the moon rabbit every night.
Big Max cringed at the memory and went back to thinking about the injustice of the day’s events. He was still slightly in shock. This was definitely the worst thing his parents had ever done. And he couldn’t believe he’d let them leave without buying him Hellhounds 3-D. If only he hadn’t wasted so much time being angry. Kicking the fridge was definitely not cool.
His mother said he got his temper from the hotheaded Irish Murphys. His father said it was her Italian blood that made Max so temperamental.
Either way, he reflected, everything was his parents’ fault.
Everything.
He fixed himself a big bowl of ice cream with fudge sauce and took it into the sitting room to find something unsuitable to watch on TV.
There was still no sign of Zia. Yet, as he rooted under the sofa cushions for the remote, he felt he was being watched.
He looked around the room. His mother’s prized collection of ancient Maya sculptures looked back at him. Usually these little pottery figures blended into the wallpaper, but tonight they seemed to be perched on the edges of their shelves, following his every move with their hollow clay eyes.
He slumped down so they couldn’t see him anymore. He was still slumped on the sofa watching rock videos when Zia marched in at midnight and switched off the TV.
When he didn’t move right away, she reached behind him, pulled out the cushion he’d been leaning on, and started beating it furiously. Max got the impression she’d like to beat him as well, so he meekly went upstairs.
He could still hear her beating up cushions when he got into bed and switched out the light. It’s going to be a long summer, he thought.
Next morning, Friday, Max awoke to the smell of bacon frying. Instead of the usual cold cereal, he found a cooked breakfast waiting for him in the kitchen. When he came home from school, a cheeseburger and a piece of homemade blueberry pie were set out on a tray. He was about to take it upstairs, when he heard a familiar snuffle from the sitting room.
“Zia!” he called. “Zia! I’m home!”
She didn’t hear him. She was kneeling down with her back to him. She’d arranged some of his mother’s Maya figurines like an audience in front of her. On the floor between Zia and the figurines, there was something on the carpet. Pebbles, maybe, and bits of yellow corn. She looked like a little girl playing with dolls. Was she trying to feed the statues? Had she lost her mind?
“Zia!” he shouted. “What are you doing?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice, but she didn’t turn around. With trembling hands, she gathered up the bits on the carpet and stuffed them into her apron pocket. Then she pulled out a duster from her other pocket and started wiping the figurines. “I clean!” she said, nodding at him. “You eat!”
She was the weirdest housekeeper in Boston, all right.
For the rest of the weekend, Max lay around playing video games, chatting with his friends online, practicing for his upcoming drum solo, and gelling his hair into spikes.
A vague sense of unease was growing at the back of his mind.
He knew his mother had said not to worry if he didn’t hear from them, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong.
The days went by.
On the Friday morning a week and a day since his parents had left, he came down to a breakfast of cold cereal and an e-ticket to San Xavier with his name on it. The flight was departing in a few hours’ time.
“Zia!” he yelled.
She walked calmly into the kitchen with an armful of laundry.
He waved the piece of paper at her.
“What’s this, Zia? Where did it come from?”
“They tell me to buy it,” she said. “They say you must go there.”
“They? Who’s they? My parents? They want me to go to San Xavier? But why? What else did they say?”
“They say you are special,” said Zia with a shrug, as if this was the most baffling statement she had ever heard.
She’d even packed a backpack for him.
“But what about the last week of school? The concert? My drum solo?”
“Go!” she said. “You must not keep them waiting.”
Chapter Two
THE CURSE OF THE MAYA
Torrential rain beat against the windows of the small plane as it rolled to a stop. Max wiped away the condensation and peered out. Water was streaming in waves over the runway. It wasn’t exactly dry land, but he was glad to be on it. It had been a bumpy ride.
“Welcome to San Xavier City,” said the pilot glumly. “The local temperature is ninety-five degrees and the forecast is for rain.”
At least English was the official language here, thanks to some British pirates who’d settled this coast three hundred years ago and eventually laid claim to the whole country. Before them, the Spanish had ruled San Xavier. And before them, it had been home to the ancient Maya, whose kingdoms had stretched across Central America from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
Max had learned all this—plus more than he wanted to know about the ancient Maya enthusiasm for human sacrifice—from the in-flight magazine.
He’d only picked it up because his iPod had run out of juice. But what an eye-opening read it had been.
He’d leafed through the magazine eagerly, looking for photos of luxury hotels on palm-fringed beaches. But all he’d found were blurry old snapshots of ruined temples and gloomy caves, plus the occasional artist’s gory impression of a sacrifice or a bloodletting in progress.
Even the article on flora and fauna was unnerving.
It seemed that all the biggest, nastiest, ugliest insects in the world had chosen to live in San Xavier. Max was particularly daunted by the picture of a hairy brown spider a
s big as a dinner plate. And how could such a small country be home to so many species of poisonous snakes?
The San Xavier tourist board certainly had its work cut out.
But here he was.
And even San Xavier had to be better than a summer in Boston, washing windows.
Max’s only luggage was the backpack Zia had packed for him. He pulled it down from the overhead bin and shuffled along the narrow aisle toward the door. Most of the other passengers stayed in their seats, glumly watching as the ground crew pushed a set of rusty steps across the tarmac through the blowing rain.
No one else seemed keen to disembark, and Max was first in line when the steward swung open the door. It was like standing behind a waterfall. The roar of the rain was deafening, and the wet wind blew in a thick, musty smell of earth and decaying plants.
Max hesitated, savoring his final moment of being dry before ducking into the torrent. By the time he reached the little terminal building, he was literally soaked to the skin. He couldn’t have been wetter if he’d been sitting in a bathtub.
As the official at the immigration desk studied his passport, a puddle formed around Max’s feet. Eventually, the official put down the passport, leaned back in his chair, and stared at Max.
As Max looked back at him, he realized that the man seemed familiar. Where had he seen that high forehead, those heavy-lidded eyes, that huge nose before? Then it hit him. This guy was the embodiment of one of his mother’s Maya figurines. Max glanced around the terminal. And there they all were. Behind desks, in lines, slumped in chairs, leaning against walls. Wherever he looked, faces from ancient history stared back.
And they didn’t look entirely friendly.
The official’s voice, when it finally came, made Max jump.
“Massimo Francis Sylvanus Murphy?”
“Yes?” said Max, cringing to hear his full name spoken out loud.
“What brings you to San Xavier?”
“I’m here to meet my parents.”
“Ah, the famous Frank and Carla Murphy.”
“You know them?”
“I know of them.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that your parents make life difficult for government officials like myself. They ignore our warnings. They think they are above such things.”
