to dance to mariachi music when she drank this stuff. By the time her parents got back, arms around each other, smiling, she was smiling too and humming along.
Humming. Droning. Vibrating.
It wants something.
Voices battered against her ears, yanking her back to see Ajaya, Bergen, Walsh and Gibbs crowded around her.
She asked them, “Do you see the symbols too? Do you hear the bees? Can you feel them moving? What do they want?”
“She’s delusional,” Ajaya murmured. “The stress—”
“She saved the lives of two men in the goddamn Amazon when she had malaria—this isn’t stress,” Bergen bellowed.
“We all know her record, Berg,” Walsh said, gruff as usual .
“She hasn’t been sleeping well for a long time.” That was Gibbs.
“None of us have—shut up!” Bergen lashed out.
“It’s not me. It’s something in the ship. I’m fighting ….”
“Fighting what, Jane?”
She let out a strangled laugh. “Bees? I don’t know. I’m….”
No. She would not say that.
What if she gave them what they wanted? Could she appease them? She gazed into the consternated faces of her colleagues, unsure.
This is completely insane. Am I dreaming?
There were no options. She closed her eyes and she was back there again, inhabiting her own child-mind with adult eyes.
Her parents’ faces fell, simultaneously.
Her mother gathered her up. “Janey—what’s going on?”
She snorted with laughter that turned into whooping belly laughs. She bounced around within Mama’s grasp and captured her hands. She felt dizzy like she’d been spinning too long and happy, happy, happy. Couldn’t they tell? “I’m dancing. Let’s dance.”
“Kevin, turn off the radio.”
Uh-oh. Serious voices. She went still, staring. “Why are you mad at Daddy?”
“I’m not. Jane, did you drink this?” Mama was pointing at her cup and the bottle of guaro nearby. Daddy seemed sick. He picked up the bottle and sat down heavily in a chair.
“Ha-ha—you’re just mad ‘cause I tried your grown-up stuff! I like it. It’s good. Next time we go to town, I want to buy some juice. I bet it’d be good to mix it up together!”
Her mother looked stricken. “Jane, this isn’t good for children. You’re going to feel sick soon.”
But she didn’t. She just kept feeling good until she felt warm and sleepy, curled up on Daddy’s lap. They kept telling her it was bad, but she didn’t believe them. She dozed off and woke later when she heard them talking, but she stayed quiet, listening drowsily.
“Dump it out, Hailey,” Daddy said softly.
“Kev, it’s ok,” Mama soothed.
“She likes it,” he choked out.
“She’s nine. She likes every new experience. She’ll forget about it.”
“What if she doesn’t? What if—?” He squeezed her tighter.
Mama’s voice went very soft, barely above a whisper, but urgent, “She’s not going to be like your mom, Kev. We won’t let it happen.”
“No. Pour it out. Not…no.”
There was a sound of liquid splashing in the dust, just outside the door. Then Mama spoke again, “You know, I’ve been thinking. We should move on, find a place where there’s a school, kids her age to play with. Those Swedes last week were talking about sno rkeling in the coral reefs in Australia. We have some money saved. We were both lifeguards—we could do that. It’s a tropical paradise, they said. Cost of living’s not bad, they said.”
“Jane wouldn’t learn another language there.”
“Not from the locals. Tourists love to talk to her, though.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah. They do.”
She felt warm and safe in his embrace. She didn’t want it to ever end.
She’d never remembered this part of it before, and none of it with such detail. It was a gift. But she wanted to squeeze him back, tell him things she hadn’t known how to say as a child, warn him that Australia was not the right choice.
She wanted to change it. She ached to save him.
Her parents had