Escape Under the Forever Sky (12 page)

It's funny how things change. Up until three days ago, spending a night in the forest seemed like nirvana. After Dahnie explained that nighttime was when all the action happened in the parks, I had begged Mom to let me stay out with him. This was before the Market Incident, so I actually thought there was a chance she'd say yes.

“How was the game drive?” she'd asked. She was sitting at her desk in the study.

“Amazing! Mom, you'll never believe it—we saw a whole pride of lions! Six of them—one male, two females, and three cubs. It was incredible!”

“Really?” Mom looked up from her work.

“Yeah, really. They were just lolling around, snoozing in the grass. Well, the cubs were playing, but the grown-ups were napping. Dahnie told me lions mostly sleep all day and if you want to see them in action, you have to come at night.” I was winding up for my pitch.

“Is that so?”

I nodded. “That's what he told me. Dahnie sleeps out in the parks all the time. He says he just climbs a tree and he's perfectly safe.”

“Well, I'm sure there are plenty of interesting things to see during the day too.”
Ooh—ball one
. She went back to her paperwork.

I tried again. “Oh, of course there's stuff to see during the day. But the really interesting stuff happens at night. A lot of the wildlife here is nocturnal you know. Most of it is, actually.”

“Uh-huh.”

Was she even listening to me?

“Mom?”

“Yes, Luce?”

“Can I stay out with Dahnie in the park one night?”
Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes
.

“Sure.”

I couldn't believe it! “Really?”

Mom tossed her pen down on the desk with a big exhale. “Don't be ridiculous, Lucy. It's much too dangerous. Not to mention how it would look if you went camping overnight with an adult male park ranger.”

“But, Mom,” I pleaded, “we wouldn't have to be alone. We'll bring some marines. Nothing could possibly happen to me with Dahnie and two armed marines!”

“Oh, really? Remember what happened to the French ambassador's wife in Botswana? And she was with a whole touring party!”

I did remember. The French ambassador's wife had been flattened. By a hippo. Ugh.

“I'm sorry, Lucy,” she said. “I know how much you want to do this, but I just can't—”

“You never let me do anything!” I screamed. I ran up to my room and slammed the door.

Five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. “Lucy,” Mom said, “may I come in?”

I ignored her.

“Lucy?”

“Whatever,” I said at last.

Mom came over and sat down on the bed next to me. I had my arms crossed in front of my chest and refused to look at her.

“I know it's hard for you here,” she began. “I know there are a lot of things you want to do that you can't do, and there are a lot of things you don't want to do that you have to do.” She put her hand on my knee, and I jerked it away. “And it doesn't help that I'm working all the time and that Daddy isn't with us.”

You can say that again
. I stared out the window so she wouldn't see the angry tears in my eyes.

“It won't always be this way,” she said.

“Sure,” I whispered.

She was quiet for a minute. “You know, Lucy, this job is very important to me.”

Yeah, more important than I am
. I was just amazed by the incredible hypocrisy of my mother, who devotes her entire life to “saving the world” but couldn't care less about her own child.

“It was a big opportunity, and it's turned out to be even more difficult than I'd expected. Every negotiation is a battle; no one is willing to compromise. . . .”

I can't believe her. Does she really expect my sympathy?

“Come on, Lucy, is it really so terrible living here in this beautiful house and going on game drives every week?”

Every other week, but who's counting? And what am I supposed to do during the other 332 hours?
I gave her a disgusted look. She just didn't get it. The game drives were the only good thing in my life, and they were just a few short hours a couple of times a month. I hated being
cooped up in the house all the time, reading about the world instead of living in it.

After waiting a while for me to say something, Mom finally gave up and left.

I was furious. How could she say she knows how bad things are and not do anything about it?
“A big opportunity,” “so difficult,” “very important.”
When was she going to think about someone other than herself? I decided I couldn't—and wouldn't—take it any more. I called Dad at the office, and his secretary, Margaret, put me through right away, like always.

“Lulu!” I could picture him at his desk with that picture of me from first grade next to his computer, where he's always kept it. It was late afternoon in Jakarta, so his hair would be sticking out everywhere from running his hands through it all day, and his tie would be off. A half-eaten sandwich from lunch was probably still on his desk. My dad is kind of a slob. It was so good to hear his voice that I started crying.

“Sweetheart, what's the matter?”

“It's Mom,” I sobbed.

“Mom?” he sounded alarmed. “Is everything all right?”

“No, it's nothing like that. It's . . . it's . . .”

Finally, I got the words out. “I hate it here! All I do is sit around the house and go to a stupid school and stupid dinners with stupid boring people. And Mom knows! She knows it's awful, and she knows I hate it, and she doesn't care. All she cares about is her job.” I took a deep breath. “I want to come live with you.”

“Oh, Lulu, I'm sorry.”

“She's not!” I shot back.

“First of all, your mother is not ‘she.' And second of all, Mom loves you and cares about you very much.”

“Well, she's got a great way of showing it.”

“Let me ask you something, Lucy. Why are you so angry with your mother?”

“I just told you,” I said. “I have no life, and it's her fault!”

“So you say. But why aren't you mad at me?”

I hadn't thought of that before. Why wasn't I mad at him? After all, they made all their decisions together. “Because you're nice. Because you care.”

“Mom cares, too, Lucy. Look, when we decided Mom would take this ambassadorship, we both thought it would be a great chance for you to
experience a new culture. It's true, we didn't anticipate how much Mom would be working, but you're old enough to appreciate that this job is a very big deal for her. It's a huge honor and a big step up in her career. I don't think your life is so terrible that you can't make the best of it.”

I was stunned. I had expected him to take my side, and instead he'd made me feel like a selfish brat. Indignant rage had felt so much better.

“Lucy?”

“Fine,” I said grimly. “I'll make the best of it.”

But I didn't try to make the best of it, did I? Just as Mom never tried to see things from my point of view, I never tried to see them from hers. And where had it gotten me? Up a tree. Literally.

M
Y REAR END
was sore from sitting on a branch for so long, and my back was killing me where a knot in the trunk had dug into my skin. These new afflictions, along with all my other aches and pains, meant that just two hours into my escape, my already-minuscule odds of survival were sinking even lower. I hadn't heard Markos, Dawit, Helena, or the dogs for more than half an hour, but I was terrified that the minute I climbed out of the tree, they'd show up. I also knew I had to get moving. The question was, Where? How was I going to find other people?

Water
.

Teddy had once explained that because there's
almost no plumbing outside the major cities, villages have to be near a natural water source. So if I could find water, maybe I would find people.

I tried to remember what Dahnie had said about finding signs that water was near.
Follow animal tracks
. Well, so far I hadn't seen any animal tracks . . . but I had seen animals, hadn't I? The colobus monkeys had all leaped away in the same direction. Maybe they were on their way to find water.

I felt a flicker of hope that was almost big enough to call excitement.
Maybe I can actually do this
.

I scrambled down the tree as fast as I could. It was easy until I reached that horizontal branch. There was no way to jump back onto the rock without breaking my neck, so I hung from the branch and dropped to the ground about six feet below.

Damn it!
I landed right on the sharp end of a broken tree branch. I could tell from the pain that it was bad. Fighting back tears, I sat down to inspect my foot. Sure enough, there was a big gash in the arch, near the ball of my foot. Blood flowed pretty freely—it wasn't gushing, but it was more than just a bad scrape. Feeling utterly hopeless, I sat there slumped over with
my face in my hands.
I can't do this. I'm an idiot. Can't, can't, can't do it
.

Except I had to. There was no turning back now. Furiously, I pulled off my T-shirt and tore a hole in it with my teeth. Then I ripped the bottom four inches off in one long strip. Ignoring how filthy it was, I wrapped the cloth tightly around my foot and knotted it, hoping the pressure would stop the bleeding. I put my shirt back on—luckily there was still enough left to cover me.

Standing was okay, but walking hurt like crazy. I spotted a long, strong branch on the ground and pulled off the little twiggy parts so I could use it as a walking stick. Then I checked my compass and began limping northeast.

And here's the crazy thing: The forest was beautiful. More than beautiful—it was peaceful and quiet, as if nothing had disturbed it in a million years. There must have been animals around, but they were all hidden in the brush. If it weren't for the chorus of birds squawking and chirping, I would swear I had the whole place to myself. The trees made a lush canopy overhead, protecting my skin from the sun and my
body from the worst of the heat. I thought I could smell fruit trees, and my mouth started to water like Pavlov's dog.

I was starving, but there was no time for a mango hunt. Instead, I let myself eat a small piece of the
injera
while I walked. I felt like Gretel, desperately trying to escape the clutches of the evil witch and find her way home. What would she have done without Hansel? Nobody can survive alone. Come to think of it, Jane Goodall had brought her mother with her to Africa; Biruté Galdikas had brought her husband to Borneo. And Dian Fossey went alone and got kidnapped.
Gee, there's a lesson in there somewhere
.

I knew I had better find water soon because I was so thirsty I was sure I was about to start hallucinating. And even though I had just eaten, my stomach was killing me. I paused for what Americans call a bathroom break and the Ethiopians call a bush stop.

It seemed the parasites had finally made themselves at home. Between the heat and my new digestion problems, dehydration was probably minutes away—if I wasn't dehydrated already.

The monkeys were nowhere to be found, but I had
noticed that a lot of the birds seemed to be flying in the same direction that I was walking. I crossed my fingers and continued northeast.

I kept my head down as I walked, looking for tracks, even as I kept my ears open, listening for Markos and the others. The ground was uneven, with lots of hidden rocks and scrubby brush. If I got hungry enough, would I be willing to turn over one of those rocks and eat whatever happened to be crawling underneath?

I turned a corner around a pretty sizable boulder and spotted what could have been animal tracks in the earth: oval-shaped indentations that could have been made by the hooves of some deerlike creature. I kept walking, and there were more. Now I was pretty sure they must be tracks. I picked up my pace even though my foot was killing me. Just the possibility of a drink—not to mention being able to wash my cut—made the pain bearable.