“How did she take your dad?” I ask. I try to imagine a snake or a wolverine carrying a grown man through the woods, but I just can’t.
Brandon leans forward and starts to gnaw on another nail, only to realize he’s bitten every single one down to a nub. He shoves his hand back into his pocket. “Dad always has to leave for work at the oil field piping plant about an hour after dinner because he works the night shift. He hadn’t left yet, so I went to check on him in the living room, and I found him sitting in his recliner with a huge red welt on his neck. His eyes were frozen open, and he wasn’t moving.”
Brandon shakes his head as if he’s trying to fling the memory out of his ears. “There was … a spider. And Dad was wrapped in spider silk. Before I could try to get him out of it, something—a wolverine—slammed into me and scratched my arms. It grabbed the cocoon with its teeth and dragged my dad out of the house.”
Brandon bites his lip so hard small droplets of blood form at the edge of his mouth.
Talib reaches out and puts his hand on Brandon’s shoulder. “We’ll get him back. Don’t worry.”
Maria Carmen takes our paper from Talib. “The eclipse is tomorrow. We have to get to the quarry, get Brandon’s dad, and figure out how to get rid of the tule vieja.”
“I don’t suppose we can convince Miss Humala and her mother to move out of town,” Talib mutters. “I hear Miami’s nice. Or Madagascar.”
“My abuela can help us,” I tell them. “She knows all about the tule vieja. Maybe she has some ideas on how to get rid of her.”
Miss Humala clears her throat above us, and we stare at one another, unsure of how much she heard.
Waving her hand at our paper, Miss Humala says, “It looks like you all have your work cut out for you.”
CHAPTER 21
“RUN THIS BRILLIANT PLAN OF YOURS by me again,” Maria Carmen demands as we head through town toward Abuela’s house.
We pass light poles covered with flyers for missing cats and dogs. The window of the pharmacy has a new poster offering a reward for the return of Tommy, the Raglands’ prized Arabian stallion.
The tule vieja has been busy.
“It’s simple. We go to my house and get some of my dad’s gear. Heavy-duty flashlights. A collapsible baton. Some rope. Who knows what we’ll need.”
“Any chance your dad has a grenade launcher? Or a tank?” Talib asks.
I chuckle and ignore him. “Get our supplies. Ask my abuela how to get rid of the tule vieja. Go to the quarry. Get Brandon’s dad.”
I hear Brandon draw in a quick breath behind me. His steps quicken as he catches up to us.
Talib turns and looks at Brandon. “Any chance you have a missile launcher? You and your dad seem to have … stuff.”
Brandon lowers his head. “No, I’m not allowed to touch that stuff without him. I wouldn’t know what to do, anyway.”
“Thank God,” Maria Carmen mutters, scowling at Brandon.
We turn on my street and pass Mrs. Reynolds, Abuela’s neighbor, standing on her front porch.
“Trixie? Here, Trixie girl. Where are you?” she calls to the black-and-white tuxedo cat that I know lives under her porch.
“RIP, Trixie,” I mumble under my breath.
Heading through the front door of Abuela’s house, I call out, “Buela! I’m home!”
Usually she answers right away, telling me she’s in the kitchen cooking picadillo or ropa vieja, or in the dining room sewing up the latest tear in the hem of Mom’s scrubs. But she doesn’t answer.
“Buela?” I call out again.
When we walk into the kitchen, something isn’t right. A bowl of uncooked rice is splattered across the floor, a confetti of white against the brown tile. The refrigerator door hangs open, and a carton of milk slowly drips onto the floor from punctures in the plastic.
But that doesn’t scare me as much as the smear of blood on the wall by the stove, three red streaks slashing across the yellow wallpaper.
“Señora Lopez?” Maria Carmen calls behind me, her voice quivering.
Talib sucks in a sharp breath when he sees the state of the kitchen. Brandon leans against the doorframe and mumbles, “No, not again,” over and over.
I push past them and race up the stairs, my heart pounding in my ears, deafening me to Maria Carmen’s pleas to be careful.
I take the stairs two at a time and find my worst fears confirmed.
Abuela is gone.
* * *
At the beginning of Dad’s first deployment, Mom accidentally left me at the grocery store. I wandered the canned-soup aisle at the PX until I heard her frantically screaming for me. She scooped me up in her arms, repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Being alone now is nothing like that. For one thing, there’s a lot more thinking that I’m going to throw up. I swallow hard as we go through the rest of the house. The only thing I fix is a picture of Dad that was knocked over in the living room. Maria Carmen sweeps up the broken glass as I set the frame back on the bookshelf.
“Why are you putting paper towels over the milk puddles?” I hear Brandon exclaim to Talib. “Shouldn’t we be out looking?”
He’s right. What else can we do? I don’t know where to go. I don’t know who can help.
Talib pokes his head out from the kitchen. “Nestor, do you have a mop to clean up the blo—” He snaps his mouth shut as Maria Carmen gives him a hard stare. “To, uh, to clean up in here?” he stammers.
I point to the closet, and Talib grabs the mop.
Maria Carmen puts her hand on my shoulder. “Where’s your mom?”
“Nursing conference in Dallas. I … I don’t know what I’m going to tell her. How am I going to tell her?” I sink down onto the couch and put my head in my hands. I groan. “And there’s no way I can tell my dad. What would I even say? ‘Sorry I let your mom get dragged off by a witch’?”
Brandon comes in from the kitchen and sits next to me on the couch. Talib follows him.
“Should we go to the police?” Talib asks.
Brandon shakes his head. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“The sheriff is a terrible cop. My dad told me to never go to him if I got in trouble. Last year he shot off his own toe with his gun, and I heard he once tasered an eighty-year-old lady in the middle of the grocery store because he thought she was stealing cantaloupes.”
Maria Carmen, Talib, and I stare at Brandon. This is the most he’s said since we left the school. I start to laugh. Tears fill my eyes, and my stomach aches. I can’t stop laughing, and the sound erupts from my throat, out of my control. I double over as the laughter turns to sobs.
Maria Carmen puts her hand on my back. “I think we should go to my house. Nestor, you can spend the night if you need to. You, too, Brandon,” she says, looking him in the eyes for the first time. “We’re not going to figure anything out here. Let’s get your dad’s supplies, and we’ll figure out the rest at my house. It’ll be okay.”
I sigh and trudge upstairs, Talib following me. Grabbing a bag from my bedroom, I stuff into it two shirts, a pair of jeans, Dad’s animal encyclopedia, and a box of tissues.
I grow more and more frustrated as I try and fail to stuff a soccer ball inside. Talib puts his hand over mine.
“Nestor, I’ve got this,” he says gently. He takes the bag from me, removes all the excess junk, and starts packing.
He even remembers to include underwear.
CHAPTER 22
WE ALL MARCH DOWN THE STREET toward Maria Carmen’s house, heads lowered, feet shuffling on the sidewalk. We pass house after house, lights off, all quiet. The people sleeping and snoring inside have no idea what’s really prowling the woods, threatening to snatch them from their beds if they get in her way. My hands keep twitching, and I have to take deep breaths to try to calm down.
We’re halfway to Maria Carmen’s house when we hear a shout.
“Please don’t do this! Please!” a woma
n’s voice screams into the night.
We turn a corner. A glow of light comes from the edge of the woods, behind a house.
“What do you think that is?” Talib asks.
I shrug. I’ve got too many thoughts swirling in my head to worry about two people having an argument. In the middle of the night. At the edge of the woods.
“Just let them go! You have to let them go!” we hear the woman cry.
Maria Carmen grabs my arm. “Nestor, I think we need to see what’s going on.”
I shuffle behind her as we walk closer to the house. We hide behind a hedge running along the side of the house and look into the backyard. A woman crouches on her knees in front of a small fire, while another woman stands over her, pacing back and forth.
“Is that Miss Humala?” I ask, squinting.
Miss Humala trembles on the ground, wiping tears from her cheeks. The woman above her has her back to us, her wild hair glowing like a halo in the firelight.
“Please.” Miss Humala shudders. “Mother, just leave.”
The wild-haired woman snarls and spits. “I can’t leave yet. I’m not finished.”
“But you’ve done enough! Haven’t you gotten what you wanted?”
The woman’s head snaps to the sky, her hair flying in all directions. Her body shakes, and a yell bursts from her throat that echoes through the night. Her body grows impossibly long.
“What’s going on?” Talib whispers next to me.
The woman morphs into an enormous brown snake, wrapping herself tightly around Miss Humala. Her scales glisten in the firelight, and she flicks her black tongue against Miss Humala’s ear.
“I’m not done yet. And you will not stop me, dear daughter.”
Hot liquid rises in my throat.
Brandon shakes his head. “This town is going crazy.”
“You’ve been such a disappointment. I had great plans for us,” the snake continues. Miss Humala doesn’t try to squirm against the snake’s tight coils. Her chin drops to her chest, and tears fall on the snake’s scales. “I will never understand why you keep fighting who you really are. Why you keep running away. But know that I’m doing this, with or without you.”
“Fine. Just finish it and be gone,” Miss Humala mumbles.
The snake loosens her grip around Miss Humala’s torso. “Very well,” she says as she uncoils from Miss Humala’s body.
Talib lets out a long sigh next to me. I still can’t breathe. Maria Carmen grabs my hand, and we crouch down farther behind the bush.
The snake lifts her head and snaps it to either side as fur sprouts from her scales. Claws burst from her body, and the tule vieja shakes as she turns into a wolverine.
Maria Carmen squeezes my hand even harder, my knuckles cracking.
“Nestor, I think I just peed my pants a little,” Talib whispers.
The wolverine scratches her long claws on the ground. “Stay out of my way. And don’t let those ridiculous children get in my way, either,” she sneers. Snapping at Miss Humala one last time, she trots off into the woods, enveloped by the dark night.
Miss Humala lowers her hands to the ground as soft sobs shake her shoulders.
“Should we…?” Maria Carmen asks.
I shake my head. We can’t let Miss Humala know what we’re up to. I don’t want to give her any information to tell her mother. I don’t want to wait in the dark, wondering if Abuela is okay. I don’t want to be lost, not knowing what to do without Dad.
We retreat from behind the bush and run the rest of the way to Maria Carmen’s house, our lungs and legs aching with fear.
* * *
Maria Carmen’s mother purses her lips as Maria Carmen stands in the middle of the living room, asking if we can stay over. I’ve never seen an eyebrow arch so high. It looks like it might disappear into her hair.
“Mami, please. We have a big trivia tournament coming up. We need an all-night study session,” Maria Carmen begs. “I know it’s a school night, but we promise we won’t be too tired tomorrow.”
Ms. Cordova draws in a long breath, and it sucks all the air from the room. She pinches her eyebrows together. “Fine. You all have sleeping bags?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Talib says, holding up a sleeping bag I recognize from the boxes in my closet.
Before Ms. Cordova can interrogate us more, Maria Carmen herds us upstairs to her room. Talib, Brandon, and I stand in the center of the room, staring at shelves crammed with books and pictures. Her walls are covered with pictures of her and her brother, posters of her favorite skateboarder, and drawings of Texas wildflowers. On the nightstand next to her bed is a framed picture of Maria Carmen, her mother, and her brother in a cap and gown.
“You guys can put the bags there,” Maria Carmen says, pointing to her closet.
We don’t move. I don’t think any of us has ever been in a girl’s room before.
Maria Carmen snaps her fingers at us, and we bump into one another, throwing our bags down and sitting on the floor. I look at a large fish tank on top of Maria Carmen’s bookshelf. Instead of a fish, there’s a long salamander-looking creature inside, with short brown stalks growing out of its head like a crown.
“Is that an axolotl?” I ask.
Maria Carmen nods. “That’s Chispa.”
“He’s pretty cool,” Brandon offers sheepishly. He still seems nervous around Maria Carmen.
“Well, you can’t hunt him,” she snaps, and Brandon pulls his jacket tight around his chest.
I look at the axolotl swimming slowly in his tank. “Pero ella nunca me da de comer. Me voy a morir. En serio, hermano, ayúdame,” the axolotl moans.
I double over, laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Maria Carmen asks.
“Your axolotl says you never feed him and he’s gonna die. He’s begging me for food.”
Maria Carmen marches over to the tank. “You little twerp. I feed you all the time. Don’t tell lies just so you can get fat on extra food.”
The axolotl flicks his tail and swims lazily under a rock.
Talib looks at me and gestures toward Brandon. “Nestor, you just gonna do your thing like that? Everybody here know about you?”
“He was having a conference with a bunch of animals in his backyard last week. Secret’s out,” Brandon says.
I shrug. I’m way past the point of caring what my friends think of my ability. Finding Abuela and getting rid of the tule vieja are more important. So far, they haven’t run screaming for the hills when I chat up the local wildlife, so maybe it’ll be okay.
Sliding my backpack over, I pull out my sketchbook. I flip to the page where I wrote notes about the tule vieja based on what Val and Abuela told me. “All right. Let’s figure out how to get rid of this witch.”
* * *
We go around and around for hours. We have to stop briefly and pretend to ask one another animal-trivia questions when Ms. Cordova brings up soda and popcorn sprinkled with chili powder. Brandon eats the entire bowl. I wonder how he’s been feeding himself since his dad was taken.
“So we know the tule vieja can turn into a spider, a snake, and a wolverine. Maybe we need to think about what the weakness is of each of those animals,” Maria Carmen suggests.
Talib drums his fingers on his chin. “Let’s see. A spider,” he says, a grin growing on his face. “Maybe a shoe?”
Brandon smirks. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”
I shake my head. “Unless the tule vieja suddenly changes into a wolverine and eats the shoe. And your foot.”
Maria Carmen points to her laptop screen. “Check this out. What kind of spider has the strongest web? One that would be able to hold a person?”
Talib tilts his head, thinking. “I should know this one.”
I give him a moment and then lean over and whisper, “Darwin’s bark spider.”
He snaps his fingers together. “Darwin’s bark spider! See, told you I knew it.”
Maria Carmen shakes her head. “Anyway, the
Darwin’s bark spider is native to Madagascar. And there was a solar eclipse in Madagascar eight years ago.”
“So this tule vieja traveled all the way to Madagascar and chomped on a spider during a solar eclipse?” Talib asks.
“Sounds like it,” Brandon replies, rubbing the back of his neck.
I write down spider, Madagascar, and eight years ago in my sketchbook.
“What about wolverines?” I ask. “Any eclipses lately where they’re from?”
Maria Carmen taps on her laptop and narrows her eyes at the screen.
Brandon clears his throat. “They’re from up north. They like to bury themselves in the snow.”
Talib pats Brandon on the back. “Twenty points for the new guy.”
Pointing to her laptop screen, Maria Carmen says, “There was a solar eclipse in Canada three years ago.”
I add the information to the list in my sketchbook and ask, “What about the snake?”
“It looks like a boa constrictor,” Brandon says. “Those are from Central and South America.”
I look at him and smile. I’m impressed.
Maria Carmen stops typing on her keyboard. “And there was a solar eclipse in Panama nineteen years ago.”
“My abuela said that the tule vieja story comes from Panama. Maybe that’s the first animal she figured out she could turn into.”
Maria Carmen takes my sketchbook and scans the page about the tule vieja. “It’s good to know this information about her, but I think our priority should be getting Brandon’s dad and your abuela back.” Maria Carmen turns to Brandon. “We know your dad was wrapped up in spider silk.”
Brandon nods, and Maria Carmen reaches into the drawer of her nightstand. She pulls out a pocketknife with her brother’s initials, CMC, engraved on the side. “So I think we’re definitely going to need this to cut him out.”
Brandon reaches into his jacket and pulls out his own pocketknife. Maria Carmen gives him a tight smile.
I take my sketchbook back from Maria Carmen and flip to a blank page. I scrawl Brilliant Plan to Defeat the Tule Vieja across the top. “First, we have to figure out where in the quarry the tule vieja is keeping Brandon’s dad and my abuela,” I say.
The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez Page 12
