Do Not Become Alarmed(17)

Isabel didn’t answer.

Penny said, “We’re Americans.” That seemed important to say.

“How long you stand here?” the woman asked in English.

“We just got here,” Penny said. “We walked from the river.”

“Why?”

“We were looking for a road.”

“Is no road,” the woman said.

“We heard an engine,” Penny said, looking pointedly at the Jeep.

“Where are your parents?”

“At the big beach, down the river,” Penny said. “We came from the ship, a big cruise ship, but then we had a car accident. We were swimming. Mi hermano es diabético.” She’d been taught that sentence before they left, for emergencies.

Sebastian leaned into her. “Can I have a Coke?” he asked, louder than before.

The woman in the tank top frowned, then reached into the Jeep, brought out a bottle, and twisted off the top. Sebastian ran forward to grab it, then ran back to Penny’s side and drank.

She wished her mother were here. If Sebastian was low, the Coke would be good, but if he was high, it could make him feel worse.

“Will you give us a ride?” Penny asked.

They were not supposed to get in cars with strangers, but there were five of them. And they were asking for a ride. That seemed to make it safer. And the driver was a woman. You were supposed to ask a woman for help, if you got in trouble. Preferably a mother, but this was who they had. And maybe she was a mother. Although Penny doubted it.

“Okay,” the woman said, waving toward the Jeep.

Penny and Sebastian got in front together. The Jeep had an open top. Isabel looked toward the river and seemed like she might run, then got in the back seat with Marcus and June. The two men with the shovels crouched in the cargo area behind them. The woman reversed the Jeep.

Penny pulled the seatbelt over Sebastian’s bare chest and buckled it over herself, too. “Are you okay?” she asked him.

“I’m a little sleepy.”

“You should stay awake.”

“Okay.”

His blond hair was limp and damp on his forehead. Penny pushed it off his face.

“I have to poop,” June said, in the back seat.

“Hold it,” her brother said.

Penny looked back and saw June with her hands clamped on the crotch of her blue swimsuit, Marcus looking anxious beside her. When she looked out the windshield again, they didn’t seem to be going in the right direction. “We’re going back to that beach, right?” Penny asked.

The woman nodded.

“I don’t think this is the right way.”

“We call them,” the woman said.

“But their cell phones don’t work here.”

“We call the ship.”

“But they aren’t at the ship.”

The Jeep was driving down a paved road among trees, just like the one where the tire had blown up. That seemed like a long time ago now. Would her mother have gone back to the ship?

“I really have to poop,” June said.

“Keep holding it,” her brother said.

“I am!”

The Jeep stopped at a place where another road crossed, and the two men hopped out of the back, leaving the shovels. The woman waved to them. Then the Jeep was climbing a mountain, and a few houses appeared on the side of the road. The road wound and twisted and then a man on a tall white horse was riding toward them. The Jeep slowed. Penny thought she might be imagining the horse, it was so white and bright. But then June whispered, “He’s beautiful,” and Penny knew that the others could see it, too.

The Jeep stopped, and the man on the horse looked down at them. He had dark, frowning eyebrows, and he spoke with the woman in Spanish. It was all too fast to understand. Penny looked to Isabel in the back seat for a translation, but Isabel ducked her chin toward her yellow bikini as if trying not to be seen.

The horse snorted. It had soft nostrils, gray and pink. The man on the horse smiled. His teeth were white and straight. “Welcome,” he said.

“We need insulin,” Penny told him. She felt blinded by embarrassment and confusion, the heat rising to her face. “Insulina. My brother is diabético. Also we need a bathroom.”

“I have to poop!” June said.

“Pues, vámonos,” the man said, turning the horse with the reins, and the Jeep started up the mountain again.





8.



NORA’S HEAD THROBBED. All of her high school Spanish had vanished. She stammered and spoke English too loudly, as if that might make people understand and comply. What the fuck had she been thinking? She’d walked into the rain forest with Pedro in an erotic trance, and not like the mother of two children who needed to keep her act together.

Camila’s policeman brought a boat, an inflatable with an outboard, and put it in the water. It took forever. The outboard took them upriver, and they found the inner tubes on the other bank. And the small footprints headed into the trees.

The inner tubes had been hung deliberately, and the policeman said the footprints didn’t look like they were running, and there was no sign of blood, so it looked like they could rule out a crocodile.

Nora felt her lungs being squeezed; she could barely get a breath in and out.