Mrs. Mint breathed easier as the bus turned west away from the lagoon and then headed up a road pinned in by scrub pines and oak trees so virulent that they had to be pruned so they didn’t overrun the roadway. A few kids scanned the forest for deer and tortoise, but most of them kept their eyes inside the bus on more captivating sights, such as video games and cell phones. After a few minutes, they came across the only building for seemingly miles: the Enchanted Forest Education and Management Center. Its large screen porch served as a haven from the mosquitoes when the hordes were particularly unbearable.
The kids jumped out of their seats. The teacher figured their enthusiasm came more for finally getting off that cramped bus and pumping their legs rather than for observing some woodland creatures and exotic plants. Mrs. Mint held back the entire class with one raised hand. She headed for the exit first so she could herd them into an orderly line with the help of her assistant. Mrs. Sara Fogel, a blond education student, had the body of a preteen and an even less mature understanding of teaching. She better grow up quick, Mrs. Mint thought, because she could use an extra set of eyes watching these 29 kids traverse a forest full of creepy crawly things, and not all of them friendly.
When Mrs. Mint landed on the parking lot, she thanked goodness that her boots had thick soles. By the looks of the sizzling pavement, if she had stepped on it barefoot it would have been like tossing a chicken breast onto a frying pan. In no more than twenty seconds, the sweat had already started dripping from her hair line down her cheeks and they had another two hours of roasting there. At least it wouldn’t feel so blistering hot underneath the canopy of trees.
As the kids started filtering off the bus and into a line, Mrs. Mint kept watch on Fogel, and made sure that she kept Mariella away from the Buckley twins. Luckily, the blond troublemakers were among the first off the bus. Kyle leapt off the top step and did a 180 as if he were skateboarding. Cole mimicked the jump, but he came down on the side of his foot and landed on his bottom. His brother led the chorus of laughter.
“This is a nature park, not a skate park,” Mrs. Mint said as the boy rubbed his sore keister. He got up with the assistance of his embarrassment rather than his teacher’s hand.
Mariella stepped off the bus gingerly along with the stragglers who would rather sit in air conditioned living rooms all their lives. The quiet girl didn’t seem reluctant, though. She gazed at the southern magnolias, cabbage palms and the live oaks elegantly draped in Spanish moss like queens in furry coats. Mariella appeared awestruck.
Mrs. Mint felt a wave of relief. The teacher had worried that this trip would trigger Mariella’s nightmares of the terrifying evening she had spent in a mangrove forest after her parents died. Instead, it might have unlocked the magnificent curiosity of a child.
After the park rangers nearly sapped the imagination out of all of them with their dull lecture, Mrs. Mint led her students on a hike along the trail with Fogel bringing up the rear. The teachers made sure the students stayed between the wooden markers of the trail as they strolled along the walls of slash pines. Live oak trees bent over the top of the trail, making the kids arch their necks back as they gazed up at the birds chirping on the branches above. The humming of the insects, and the singing of the birds, melded into a natural symphony that was rudely interrupted by little feet stomping on leaves and twigs.
“Whoa, cool,” remarked Cole Buckley from near the front of the line.
The brothers stopped, along with all the kids behind them. They stared at the banana spider dangling in its yellowish web between the spiky leaves of neighboring slash pines. Also known as a golden silk spider, the arachnid had yellow and red legs with tufts of prickly black hairs extended almost the width of an adult’s hand. The spider’s head resembled a polar bear with six black eyes. Of course, those were spots on its back and not its real eyes.
Having taken this tour dozens of times, Mrs. Mint knew that the banana spider looked fearsome but it only truly threatened insects. Its bite was milder than a bee’s sting, but try telling that to a hysterical child who’d seen too many horror movies. The spider wouldn’t inject its venom into someone unless they got violent with it. She doubted that the Buckley twins were that stupid as she patiently watched them from the head of the halted line.
The teacher quickly realized that she had underestimated the boys. Cole tossed a twig at the web. It ripped through a few strands and made the spider’s handiwork sag. The banana spider scrambled away from the orb at the center of its web and up to a more stable spot. As the arachnid flicked its front four legs, Mrs. Mint thought of how terrified she would feel if a giant one-thousand times her size started hurling logs at her.
“Cole and Kyle, cut that out,” Mrs. Mint said without taking a single step towards them. Those kids only listened when someone physically stopped them. That usually comes from a lax disciplinary environment at home. If they didn’t start respecting her voice, they would keep causing their teachers headaches all through high school, when they would be too big to manhandle—assuming they didn’t get expelled before then.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Kyle said. He pointed at his brother. “He was the one who did this.” Kyle hurled a stick at the banana spider. It sheared off the bottom supports of its web, leaving the yellow web-work dangling in the breeze like a shirt on a clothesline. The determined spider held on, but if they kept this up, it would jump off soon. And it might choose one of their heads for a landing pad.
“What if it bites you?” one of the boys in class asked.
“The stupid bug can’t bite us after we step on it,” Cole said.
“Yeah. Our house has no bugs ‘cause we kill ‘em all,” Kyle said. “Even the love bugs. We pluck off their legs and crush their heads like ‘pop!’” He squeezed his fingers together.
Instead of a nature appreciation trip, the Buckley twins fancied this as a trail of destruction. It’s a good thing they didn’t bring their BB guns along, or the bobcats and deer would be in trouble, Mrs. Mint thought.
Just as she concocted the perfect punishment she would threaten them with, Mrs. Mint saw Mariella slink through the crowd watching the Buckley Show and insert herself between the twins. Instead of admonishing them, which would have proven difficult without speaking, she cast a sympathetic gaze up at the banana spider. It thrust its golden and white abdomen up and down in what Mrs. Mint interpreted as more apprehension than appreciation. Its puny brain couldn’t tell friend from foe. The teacher understood why Mariella had stepped up. The girl indentified with being picked on and, especially, with being hunted by those larger than her.
Mrs. Mint assumed that the Buckley twins would have learned their lesson after their previous attacks on Mariella had resulted in an aching head and a dead dog, whether the latter incident had been her fault or not. Once again, she underestimated them.
“You think he’s cute, don’t you?” Cole asked Mariella as he pointed at the spider. “Why don’t you give him a kiss?”
“Yeah, get a little closer,” Kyle said. He shoved Mariella into the slash pine that supported the bulk of the web. This time the web couldn’t withstand any more. The silk latticework came undone and the spider leapt off—right onto Mariella’s arm. The girl didn’t notice it until she regained her footing. She must have felt those hairy legs grasping her flesh. Mariella stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the spider with a leg span wider than her slender arm. If the girl had any wind in her pipes, she would have screamed. Her face cringed in terror. Her gaping jaw dropped to her neck as someone screaming would do. Mrs. Mint didn’t need to hear a word from the girl’s lips. She galloped over the bed of leaves toward Mariella. Fogel got there first. The assistant swiped at the spider, but its dozens of eyes saw her coming and it hopped off.
“Get it!” Cole ordered his brother.
Kyle stomped at it. He squished nothing but leaves. The banana spider darted into the bushes.
Mrs. Mint shot the Buckley twins a bitter glare as she strode by them. Their punis
hment would wait. Damage control with Mariella must come first, she thought. Detective Sneed might need her as a witness for the trial, so she couldn’t let her brain turn into jelly under the bombardment of this almost daily trauma.
“Are you okay, Mariella? It didn’t bite you, did it?” Mrs. Mint knelt down and reached for the arm that the spider had crawled on. She didn’t see any marks.
Mariella whipped her arm away and skirted around her teacher. Mrs. Mint’s head spun for a few seconds as if she had been plummeting off a cliff, and then suddenly stopped in midair. She wondered why she had let those boys attack Mariella once again. This girl depended on her for protection, and she kept letting her down, first with the Buckley twins’ brutal torment, and then when the Lagoon Watcher came for the girl’s blood. Time and time again, she had proven useless when this vulnerable child needed her. That spider hadn’t hurt her, but if it had…
“Hey, where are you going?” Fogel hollered.
Mrs. Mint swiveled her head just in time to spot Mariella slicing through a thicket of ferns across the wooden marker of the trail. She saw only the shiny crown of her black hair as the girl treaded briskly through the forest.
“Oh my,” said Mrs. Mint, who restrained herself from using a more harsh word that came to mind. “Keep the kids here and call the park rangers,” she told Fogel as she hustled after the girl. “I’ll get her right back.”
The teaching assistant agreed and drew out her cell phone. Yet, the Buckley twins offered up another plan.
“Aw, let her go,” Cole said.
“Yeah, she’s only looking for her spider boyfriend,” Kyle said. “Let the lovers be together.”
As much as those brats deserved a smack on their fannies, the teacher didn’t have time for that. She hurtled over the ferns and raced after Mariella. The sharp pines scraped across her arms and face so hard that they nearly drew blood. She caught fleeting glimpses of the girl up ahead. Even without a good view, she could easily follow the sound of her plowing through flexible branches and rustling across fans of leaves. The teacher ducked under a branch covered in spiny plants. When she caught sight of the girl again, she realized that the child’s short legs had actually been forging more distance between them. While Mariella’s motor showed no signs of slowing, the teacher already felt heavy lead sacks dragging in her lungs. She could barely last five minutes on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym, much less run a marathon through the thick woods in the sweltering heat. The pain that nagged at her knees and ankles when she had chased Mariella the day before returned. This time her inflamed joints had uneven ground tormenting them. Her knees throbbed with each step. Her ankle tendons tightened every time she took an unbalanced gait across a rock or branch. Refusing to let it stop her, the teacher’s mind drifted into thoughts of her strolling into the cool administrative office, and scheduling a nice long emergency vacation.
She didn’t know whether it came from her persistent effort or the girl tiring a bit, but Mrs. Mint at least maintained her distance behind Mariella as they traversed into the scrub palms. This endangered habitat had sandy soil that made her feet slide as she shuffled her boots around sand pine scrubs, and dodged study myrtle oaks. She cursed under her breath as she saw that Mariella’s nimble feet didn’t encounter any such problems.
Mrs. Mint cursed again when she pictured the Enchanted Forest map in her mind and realized where they were headed. Waiting for them as they raced north was the Addison/Ellis Canal. It had been built in 1912 to drain the St. Johns River floodplain so farmers and ranchers could set up shop. It sent all that water east, right into the Indian River Lagoon.
She remembered what had happened to the Buckley twins’ dog along the canal behind their house. She had heard about the cop and the DCF agent who were murdered by the serial killer along the canal behind Officer Williams’ home. And those were canals in civilized areas where whatever madness lurked in the waters had a good reason for acting discretely.
The Lagoon Watcher has been put away. Nothing should happen now.
Those thoughts didn’t comfort her much and the tingle at the base of her spine alerted her that approaching the canal would lead her straight into danger. The familiar rotten egg stench that festered even stronger than the smell of the woodlands reinforced the feeling tenfold. The problem was the stubborn kid headed towards the canal. Did the girl insist on dying alone in the wilderness? Mrs. Mint could turn around and simply leave her. No, she absolutely could not. Mrs. Mint had always considered herself an excellent teacher, and leaving Mariella behind would shatter that increasingly fragile self image. She couldn’t very well explain to her principal, and especially to Officer Williams, why she had given up and abandoned Mariella in the forest on the banks of a toxic canal.
“Get away from there,” she huffed as she treaded down the long slope towards the orange-brown water. Mariella solemnly observed the canal with her toes just inches away from it.
The canal didn’t look unusual, but it sure stank nearly as bad as the lagoon. Luckily, it didn’t run very deep. Mariella couldn’t drown unless she squatted down, but the canal went deep enough to conceal all kinds of predators, from gators ,to the occasional massive python that had been imported from South America and released by naïve pet owners into Florida’s ecosystem. Any one of those wouldn’t mind a little girl, or a grown woman, for a meal that would fill their reptilian bellies for a month.
Mrs. Mint got within arm’s reach of the girl, and planted her feet. She gasped for air as her heart worked on overdrive pumping blood through her dehydrated body. The teacher waited for Mariella to turn around and gratefully acknowledge her for coming all this way through the forest so she could save her life. The girl didn’t do a thing. She faced the lagoon, as someone contemplating suicide might stare into the abyss over the edge of a cliff.
“Mariella, please step away from there. Let’s get you back to the…”
Every inch of her body froze. The tan and brown scales lapped out of the water with a lethal grace; a python that thick would measure longer than a car. She had heard about them eating deer and boar—animals not much lighter than her. Any person it coiled its muscular body around wouldn’t have more than the slimmest odds of escape.
“Listen to me carefully. There’s a big snake in that water. Step away slowly.”
Mrs. Mint followed her own advice but the girl didn’t move. She couldn’t tell whether Mariella favored dying, or enjoyed playing the victim. The teacher didn’t much care at this point. If she approached the water to save the reluctant child, the snake might go for the larger meal instead. Too many students and future students needed her. Sacrificing her life for a girl who didn’t even care about her own safety would deprive all those young minds of learning. If she walked away and let nature take its course, she could claim that she hadn’t found Mariella until it was too late.
Knowing she’d rather not stomach the sight of this outcome, the teacher turned her back on Mariella. She climbed up the embankment of the canal. A broiling swoon quickly overcame her head. She stumbled to her knees on the sandy dirt. The chirping of the insects and birds seemed to die down. Bright spots flickered across her vision. She roasted under the heat, but it no longer came from the blazing sun. Something inside her mind burned. It melded into a molten ball of guilt and regret from what she had done.
Mariella was a vulnerable child with special needs. How could she judge her as harshly—more harshly if she was honest with herself—than the other kids? If the Buckley twins had been provoking a black widow instead of a banana spider, she would have physically stopped them. So why wouldn’t she help Mariella? The teacher searched within herself, but she couldn’t find an answer that she accepted. The girl’s brown, Latina skin and immigrant status came to mind, but Mrs. Mint couldn’t accept herself as being racist. Maybe it came from the sudden change in the girl after she lost her parents. Mrs. Mint had never seen a child shift into such a dramatically different personality and, instead of gradually returning
to normal, actively embrace her antisocial identity. It wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t right.
Against her better judgment, but with little choice from the knife of guilt digging into her brain, Mrs. Mint turned around and gazed at Mariella. The girl remained on the edge of the canal. Apparently, the prospect of being left alone in the woods with a massive python didn’t bother her. Approaching the girl with that huge snake lurking in the water sure as hell bothered Mrs. Mint, though.
The python lashed its head out of the canal and looped around Mariella’s feet. The snake tripped her up. The girl got sucked waist deep into the canal with her arms flailing. Mrs. Mint yowled in terror, even as the girl couldn’t while the python’s tail lashed across the water in front of her.
Ignoring her cowardly better judgment in favor of her instincts, Mrs. Mint dashed towards the canal. The adrenalin of the moment couldn’t mask the wrenching pain of her overworked knees and ankles. They didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the devastation she would feel if this child died right in front of her because she had hesitated. She saw Mariella sinking deeper into the murky water. The teacher stretched out her hand. This time Mariella didn’t ignore her. She grasped her palm desperately. The girl stared at her teacher with brown eyes that spoke of the agony of balancing atop the sharp, steel gate between life and death. Mariella reached out, and hooked Mrs. Mint’s shirt. She pulled the teacher close and wrapped her arm around her back in a tight embrace. The girl hadn’t hugged her since she had lost her parents. Mrs. Mint hadn’t seen her hug anyone besides Officer Williams. Stooping down on one knee, the teacher wrapped her arm around the girl and hugged her back while at the same time lifting her out of the water.
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