Notes from My Captivity(2)

He laughs evilly. Dan pauses for breath. Mom shakes a dollop of butter onto my sad pancake, sloppy as an unmade bed. Her eyes are troubled. I’ve been begging to go for months, have finally gotten permission, inoculations, a ticket, everything, and now it’s all going to hell.

It’s rare that Dan and I find ourselves on the same side. Sure, he usually wants to be on my side. He’s still trying to fill that void where my father used to be. It’s weird to be allies with him. But I find myself drifting over next to him as though our argument will be more powerful if we are standing closer together.

“Adrienne wants to be a reporter,” Dan says. “She needs to see the world.” A wave of guilt rushes through me at his words. I wish I believed in his Russian family. But it’s like belief in anything. I need proof, and wouldn’t he have found it by now if it existed? Besides, Sydney did an amazing job of discrediting him with her article.

“I wouldn’t bring her if I didn’t think it was safe,” he adds.

I join in the argument. “I’ll be going with a whole crew.” Two people at least. “And a guide.”

“Dan, she’s a seventeen-year-old girl!” Mom protests.

“Eighteen in three months,” I say.

Jason’s already halfway through his pancake. “I’m nineteen. And I’m a guy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask. “Like, a girl can’t make it in the woods? Besides, why do you want to go? You’re not interested in Russia. You’ve never been out in the woods, and you’re not a reporter.”

“You’re not a reporter,” Jason sneers. “Editor in chief of the Rosedale High student paper means absolutely nothing.”

“My article on fracking ran in the Denver Times, douchebag,” I shoot back.

“Jason,” Dan said severely, “stop making fun of your sister. At least she has goals. She didn’t flunk out of community college for missing half her classes.”

Jason winces. I stifle a snicker.

“Whatever,” he says. “Siberia sucks, anyway.”

“It’s freezing there,” Mom says. She stares down at the new pancake, wanting to guard it till it grows up perfect.

Dan’s getting annoyed now. It’s two hours before we leave for the plane, and I can see the exasperation on his face. “We’ve been over this again and again. Siberia warms up in June.” His hands rise in the air. Is he trying to communicate heat rising off the earth? Who knows.

“Unless there’s a freak snowstorm,” Jason pipes in. “You’ve mentioned that possibility, Dad.”

“God, Jason.” I’m exasperated now. “Don’t you have anything better to do than ruin my trip? Go fail at something.”

Mom’s pancake is now burning, and she hasn’t noticed. Dan reaches over and moves her pan off the burner.

“Are you packed, Adrienne?” he asks pointedly. “You need to double-check your supplies.”

Mom gives him a look. She has a pretty mild appearance. Hair down to her shoulders, a heart-shaped face. But her eyebrows are monsters. They can take an argument and bend it like a pretzel. And now her eyebrows are slowly contorting.

“The dream,” she says again, as though those two words are all she needs to keep me in Boulder all summer.

I let out my breath. “You can die anywhere. At any time. Out of the blue. Just minding your own business.”

Mom gives me a look. I see the grief that never goes away. I shouldn’t have said this.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugs. We’re great communicators.

I quickly change the subject. “Imagine how this will look on my college applications. And you know I have to get a scholarship to go to Emerson. You know we can’t afford it.”

I realize that in trying to divert Mom’s attention, I’ve accidentally slammed Dan and his habit of draining our money away on his fruitless wild-goose chases.

“You know what I mean,” I add lamely.

“The university is providing a Thuraya satellite phone,” Dan says, ignoring my remark. “That’s the best there is. We’ll be in constant contact with the outside world.” He seems weary, dejected. His hands aren’t waving anymore. They’re hiding in his pockets. Maybe I’ve made him sad with the budget talk.

“Bears.” My mother quickly moves on to other arguments. “Wolves.”

“Osinovs,” Jason pipes up.

“The guide will have a gun, and we’ll all carry bear spray,” Dan insists. One hand struggles free of his pocket, points a finger for emphasis. “This is not some crazy stunt.”

“And this family?” she asks. “This group of hermits or lunatics or whatever they are supposed to be? What if Adrienne runs into them?”

“Based on all my research,” Dan retorts, using the kind of professorial sentence structure that usually annoys me but now might bolster my case, “the Osinovs were a harmless yet eccentric couple when they disappeared thirty years ago. I don’t believe these crazy tales of their being dangerous.” He doesn’t mention his source, Yuri Androv, and his tale of being captured and menaced by the legendary family before he managed to escape.

“Your source says the family kidnapped him,” Mom reminds Dan.