by Bill Nye
“It’s amazing!” I said.
“The Amazon has many wonders.”
Once we’d packed our hammocks, we didn’t stretch or linger. We just started marching. Since we’d put enough distance between ourselves and the boat, Alicia and Pepedro were finally swinging their machetes. The bugs were still nipping, but at least I wasn’t getting slapped in the face and chest with leaves and branches. Packing high-tops instead of hiking boots was probably one of the worst decisions I’d ever made. But I couldn’t admit it. I kept telling Matt and Ava that my sneakers were great, and that they probably should’ve followed my lead. Every so often, our guides would grab fruit from a tree and order us to do the same. Their version of a fast-food breakfast, basically.
Late that night, we stopped again in a clearing that looked like the first one. Matt wondered aloud if it was the first one, but Alicia and Pepedro assured us that we were not lost. “How do you know?” Ava asked.
“Are you tracking the changes in the foliage?” Matt asked.
Ava held up her index finger. “Or tiny variations in air pressure?”
Pepedro laughed. “No, she’s following these,” he said, pointing to the trunk.
Two diagonal, parallel marks had been slashed into the bark with a machete. Alicia traced them with her fingers. “Our parents made them.”
Stringing up our own hammocks was way harder than I’d expected. And I don’t know if it was intentional or accidental, but Matt, Ava, and I ended up on one side of the tree and Pepedro and Alicia on the other. My sister and I were close enough to reach each other, and Matt was just below us. For a while, after settling into our woven beds, we were quiet. The Brazilians were breathing heavily. I figured my siblings were asleep, too, and I was getting ready to pop in my earplugs.
Then Matt spoke, his voice just louder than a whisper. “Do you think he’s okay?”
“You mean alive?” Ava asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Matt replied. “I’m sure he’s fine. I mean, he’s been through much worse, right?” He paused. Was he waiting for us to reassure him? He was the older one. That was supposed to be his job. “I just . . . I don’t know.”
The jungle was unusually quiet, as if it were waiting for us to finish.
“He’s fine,” Ava insisted. “We’re going to find him and he’s going to be fine.”
That night I enjoyed a deep, heavy slumber filled with unusual dreams. The giant river otters were playing the monkeys in a soccer match, using their wide tails to kick, and heading in several goals with surprising accuracy. They might have had a dance contest, too, and I think there was a princess involved. I can’t remember the entire dream, but I do know that I woke up as thirsty as a dog after a long walk. At first, I hardly moved. I turned my head slightly, looking left, then checked my right side, and the space above me. No snakes. Already the day was off to a better start.
When I removed my earplugs, I heard Matt snoring and the howler monkeys roaring. None of them were close enough to pee on our heads, though. I wanted a shower, but not that kind. Ava was sleeping with her mouth open slightly, making little purring noises, and a monkey with a glorious gray moustache was perched in a neighboring tree, staring at me. I yawned. Then I carefully climbed down. Pepedro and Alicia had already packed their hammocks. Their backpacks were gone, too, and I didn’t hear or see either of them. They hadn’t left us before. We’d barely ever been out of their sight. Immediately I started to panic. My heartbeat quickened. My breathing shortened.
At the edge of the clearing, I stood and listened to the strange music of the rainforest: the swaying leaves above, the light rain, the distant roars, the songs of birds and insects. Then, in the middle of that mad concert, I heard voices. Rough, deep voices that sounded nothing like our friends.
11
LASER ASSASSIN
Someone laughed. My fear turned to hope. Was it Hank? Had they found him? I checked on my siblings. Matt was still snoring. Ava was out, too. And I had an awesome idea. I’d hurry into the jungle, grab Hank, and bring him back here while they were still sound asleep. They’d be totally surprised.
The laughter stopped. But it hadn’t come from far away. I crept through the jungle, staying low. The voices weren’t getting any clearer, but I still heard them ahead of me. Through the trees I heard the quiet roar of moving water. Not a river, though. The sound was more like a waterfall. That would have been just like Hank, to find some hidden paradise in the middle of the terrifying jungle. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d built himself a little vacation hut on the edge of the waterfall. He was probably sitting there making coffee.
The wind shifted. No, not coffee. Something even better. The lip-smacking, stomach-soothing smell of roasted meat was drifting toward me through the thick, wet air. They said Hank had switched back to being a carnivore. The only thing better than waking Matt to the sight of our mentor would be dangling a freshly charred drumstick above his nose while he was sleeping. And maybe convincing another monkey to relieve itself on the tree.
I started to run, ignoring the leaves slapping my face, yanking away the vines that hooked onto my arms. The roar of the water was growing louder and louder, and the voices were changing, too. Someone laughed again, but it definitely wasn’t Hank’s laugh. I reached forward, hoping to sweep away the branches in front of me, but my hands grabbed empty space. My right heel slid down a muddy bank. I dropped, sliding into a river spilling over a wide rock ledge. The swirling current pushed me off my feet and swept me forward.
The water was rushing over the top of a small waterfall. I tried to grab something to stop myself. But I was rolling, tumbling along the bottom. My right side bumped into a huge rock, and the water carried me up and over and then down. The drop was quick; I didn’t even think to breathe. The water drove me down into a churning pool of cool green. My left side slammed down into a rock at the bottom. The water kept pounding me from above, pinning me, and I desperately needed to breathe. Then my mind cleared. I rolled, set my feet on the rock, and pushed off at an angle.
The pool wasn’t too deep. I burst to the surface sooner than I’d expected and gasped for air. The water was swirling all around me. Head down, I swam hard for the closest bank. My hands grabbed two tufts of overgrown grass and weeds, and I kicked forward to get myself up out of the water.
Two rough hands clamped around my skinny wrists and yanked me up onto the riverbank. I flopped down and lay there for a second with my eyes closed. The hands that had grabbed me were not the hands of a scientist. The foul stench of a flaming cigar hung in the air, mingling with the roasting meat. A man shouted in Portuguese. His voice was gravelly.
I rolled over, opened my eyes, and held up my hands. My whole body ached. He pressed his boot against my ribs and pushed. “Please,” I muttered.
The man was burly and bearded and his face was scattered with red marks and welts. The muscles in his jaw suggested he chewed rocks instead of gum. A small fire burned behind him. Another man, short and thin and brown-skinned, stood by the flames, where a pig roasted on a handmade wooden spit. The bearded man kept shouting at me in Portuguese. He held his boot above my stomach like he was going to stomp on me.
I tucked in my elbows to protect my ribs, covered my stomach with my forearms, and yelled back, “No hablo Español!”
The bearded man was suddenly silent.
The waterfall roared behind me.
The smaller, thinner man stepped forward. “American?” he asked. I nodded. “Why did you just tell us you don’t speak Spanish? We are in Brazil. They speak Spanish over there—” he paused, thinking for a moment, then pointed back over his left shoulder “—in Argentina and Chile.”
Right. Of course. I was kind of glad Matt and Ava hadn’t heard that. But I was being threatened by strange men in the middle of the rainforest. How was I supposed to get my languages straight?
I coughed. There was a faint taste of bile in the back of my mouth. “Please, I’m sorry. No offense.”
&nb
sp; The thin man tilted his head and squinted. “How did you get up here? What are you doing in the middle of the jungle?” He caught me staring at the mud-encrusted, wide-toed, rib-crushing brown boot of his partner. “He will not hurt you, okay?” I nodded. Then, slowly, I crawled to a sitting position. The thin man crouched before me. “I ask you again, how did you get here?”
I had to think quickly. That doesn’t always work out for me. “I was in a plane with my parents,” I started. The bearded man moved away, walking over to the fire. Their bags were open. Some of their gear was spread out on a small mat. A partially folded map was sticking out the top of one of their backpacks. “We were on vacation,” I continued. “In the middle of the night, our plane was struck by lightning. All the plane’s navigation systems were fried. We were about to crash when my mother reached over and pulled the ejection lever on my seat.” I stopped and lifted my hands to cover my face. Then I performed a few fake sobs, wiped my nose, and continued. “I flew into the air like a rocket. It was so cold,” I said, hugging myself as if I were frigid. “I was in shock, and I thought I was doomed, but then my parachute opened. I still wasn’t safe, though.”
“No?”
The bearded man removed a small canvas bag from inside his backpack. A logo with the letters SA was sewn into the backpack straps. I’d seen that logo before. But where? The man was watching the trees on the opposite bank as he pulled out what looked like a gun. Ava. Matt. Alicia and Pepedro. Please be safe, I thought. Please don’t be hiding out there trying to rescue me.
I closed my eyes. This story had to work. I had to focus. “No, not yet,” I continued. “The parachute had opened too low. It wasn’t slowing down. I crashed through the trees. Something must have hit me in the head, because I was knocked out. When I awoke, my parents were gone, and I couldn’t find any trace of the plane.”
While his partner scanned the opposite bank with the gun resting on his knee, the thin man watched me through narrowed eyes. The squinting, the creases in the forehead—they reminded me of these faces Hank made whenever I tried to convince him that I wasn’t sending prank e-mails from his address. The man’s right eyebrow rose higher than its neighbor. He started nodding. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I know your story well. After you lost your parents, you wandered for many days, but then you found your way to a hidden city in the middle of the jungle, built by humans and maintained over the centuries by intelligent monkeys, yes?”
“Well, except for the—”
“This is the plot of Monkey Boy! You think I’m stupid?”
Okay. So in my rush to come up with a story, I’d totally summarized the beginning of that movie I’d watched on the plane. “The monkeys weren’t that intelligent.”
“The movie was not, either,” said the man. “It is a complete rip-off of The Jungle Book, the story about the boy Mowgli.”
“Yes, but I liked the part—”
“Quiet! We are not going to debate the plots of bad movies. You will tell me how you got here, and who you are with, or my friend Roger will kick you in the ribs.”
“His name is Roger?”
The skinny man muttered to his bearded partner, who pulled his foot back like he was going to blast a soccer ball into a distant goal. “Okay, okay!” I yelled. “I’ll tell you!” Roger stopped and set his boot on the ground.
“Who is here with you? And do not tell me about monkeys.”
I coughed. My arm ached from slamming into the rock. I’d probably get battered if I told him I was wandering through the rainforest with two teenage geniuses, a young sports agent, and a boy with a million dollar foot. “My parents,” I said. “We weren’t in a plane crash. We’re exploring. My dad, he’s a scientist, and my mom, she’s Japanese, but she doesn’t know karate or anything.”
Without thinking, I’d described Hank and Min. But why? I’d always pictured my parents as fabulously good-looking business tycoons who dressed in designer clothes and had perfect hair all the time, even when they were driving around in their matching Teslas.
The thin man stomped. His wide brow creased. “Do you think I am some kind of racist? Why would I assume she knows karate?”
“No, I just—”
“Alex, shh!” Roger pointed into the jungle near the top of the waterfall. He whispered.
“Your names are Alex and Roger?”
“Quiet! Something moved,” Alex said. He grabbed my T-shirt at the chest and pulled me close. His breath smelled like a mix of salt and feet. “Who are you with?”
“Watch out, Mom!” I shouted. “He’s got a gun!”
Alex grabbed the back of my neck and shoved me down into the thick grass. If I hadn’t turned my head at the last second, my nose would have shattered. Then Alex let go. He backed away.
“Roger!” he whispered.
The bearded man grunted. Alex pointed to his partner’s chest. A small red laser dot was moving around just below his chin. They both stared into the forest on the opposite side of the river, searching for the source. Roger dropped his gun, held up his hands, and shouted in Portuguese. The whole scene was weirdly familiar. Not the waterfall or the campfire, exactly, but the lasers. Then I remembered. Sniper Assassin. Matt wasn’t sleeping. He was using his laser pointer to trick Roger into thinking someone had a rifle aimed at his chest just like the hero in the movies.
Now Roger looked over at Alex. Still holding his arms high, he pointed. A red dot was dancing around on Alex’s forehead. Ava’s laser pointer, most likely.
Alex draped his arm across my chest and held me up like a human shield. Then he grabbed the gun off the ground and pressed it into my neck. The blood rushed from my head. My jaw tingled. I couldn’t feel my hands or legs, but everything was suddenly cold, and then the jungle around me, the rushing green water, the slowly roasting pig, the two frightening men—all of it disappeared.
I awoke on my back, staring up at the overhanging trees. A light rain was falling on my face. I heard voices, people crashing through the jungle. Slowly, I rolled onto my side. Alex was gone. Roger, too. And they hadn’t even paused long enough to grab their packs. I grabbed the laminated map, folded and stuffed it into my pocket, then jumped into the river.
My feet sank into the grassy, weed-covered bottom. The current swept me away, but the water was barely three feet deep and no wider than a public pool. Compared to the Amazon River, it felt like a stream. I ran across, pulling with my arms, and didn’t waste time looking for any creatures. This wasn’t caiman country. Or at least I hoped not. And I didn’t think piranhas would be in this little river, either. But I was pretty sure there were snakes. Still, I wasn’t staying on the same side of the river as the angry dudes with the gun.
Downstream, a tree leaned over the water. The bank had been washed away, exposing roots as thick as Matt’s arms. I let the river carry me closer, then dove for one of the roots. The river swept my legs out from under me, but I managed to get one knee up onto the bank. Then I pulled myself out of the water, rolled into the brush, and scrambled through the jungle like a hunted pig, only without the snorting. Or the short, bristly hairs. The ground sloped up. That had to mean I was going the right way, back toward the top of the waterfall.
Once the ground leveled out again, I stopped and breathed. But I didn’t have long to rest. Something large was crashing through the jungle, heading straight for me. A jaguar, maybe. Or one of the giant wild boars. I grabbed the nearest weapon without looking and got ready to defend myself. The beast was nearly on top of me when I blindly lashed out.
“Oww! That was my eye!”
The beast was my brother. He was blinking.
“Sorry? I thought you were a jaguar.”
“Then why’d you slap me with a leaf?”
I looked down at the weapon in my hand. Had I really grabbed a leaf? Yes, and a wet one, too. “Sorry, I—”
He grabbed my shirt at the shoulder. “Shh! Let’s go. Follow me.”
Matt found his way back to our campsite, where Alicia, Pepedro,
and Ava were hurriedly packing all our gear.
“Jack! That trick of yours was brilliant!”
“Trick?”
“Pretending to faint,” Alicia said. “Ava said it’s one of your gifts.”
My sister was staring into her pack, hiding her smile.
“Yes, well, you know . . .”
Ava tossed me my backpack and my unrolled hammock.
“What did you think of the laser pointers?” Matt asked.
“Genius,” I said. “I told you those movies were good.”
Matt bowed. “Definitely better than they looked.”
“Who were those guys?” Ava asked.
Pepedro held his hand out flat and lowered it toward the forest floor. “We should keep our voices low, okay? They will start to look for us soon. As for who they are, we don’t know,” he said. “I smelled their fire this morning. We thought it might be Hank, so Alicia and I went to go see.”
“Are they hunters?” Ava asked.
“No one hunts here.”
I pulled the map out of my pocket and threw it to Alicia. “I grabbed this.”
Alicia unfolded the laminated map and spread it out on the ground. The whole thing was as wide as one of my forearms and shaded green, with winding rivers marked in blue. There were red markings all over the map, too. Someone had been circling areas with a Sharpie. Certain regions were shaded with parallel lines, others marked with an X. The logo in the lower left corner matched the one I’d seen on Roger’s canvas bag. “Do you know what that stands for?” I asked.
“Yes, and we should have known,” she said. “They are scouts for a logging company. The SA stands for ‘Super Andar.’”
“Where have I seen it before?”
“A billboard in the city, maybe?” Pepedro suggested.
“Andar means floor, right?” Ava asked.
“Yes,” Alicia said. “Super Floor is a very big lumber company. Of course they would never admit to destroying the rainforest. Instead, these companies hire scouts to go into the jungle to inspect the trees, and if the forest looks promising, if the trees are tall and straight”—she nodded to a towering, powerful kapok steps from where we’d slept the previous night—“like this one here, they send crews to cut them down and fly in helicopters to pluck the trees from the jungle like a child picking flowers from a garden.”
