Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green (34 page)

For a moment no one speaks. I have absolutely no idea how to respond to Ken/Neth.

It’s Roo, of course, who breaks the silence.

“Whatever, Mr. Candy,” she says, using his last name like it’s an insult.

And then, almost as though nodding along with Roo, the volcano lets out a gentle grumble, like the sound of a giant whispering good night.

And I’m lucky enough to catch the sunbeam-bright glance that passes between Señor V and Señora V, the glance and the smile and the nod. I know it as though they’ve spoken it aloud:
The volcano bird has returned, and all is well in the realm of the volcano goddess
.

Roo skips down the hallway ahead of everyone else. She runs out the massive golden doors of the lobby, up to the white limo parked on the white pavement right in front of the golden entryway. She tugs hard on the door of the limo, which opens easily, springing her backward. Then she dives onto a row of velvety green seats. I follow her. Kyle’s behind me, and then Señor V and Señora V, and finally Mom and Dad, hand in hand. We get ourselves all settled in, and I couldn’t be happier to be here with these people.

I look back to check on Vivi, who’s standing in the golden entryway with Ken/Neth.

“The
Washington Post
,” she’s threatening him. “The
L.A. Times
. The
New York Post
. The AP.
Everyone
. And of course CNN, CBS—believe me, I don’t have a single qualm about ruining your life. So you better
not cause these good people any more trouble. I’ll keep your name out of it if you
stay
out of it starting right this second, okay?” Then her voice deepens, and I start to get this feeling like she’s doing a monologue from one of her movies, but from a movie that has yet to be made. “I will not stop until you and your people are out of here for good. Thanks to my active friend Volcán Pájaro de Lava, it may not be too hard to keep you cowards away. You tell that disingenuous little boss of yours, and whatever bosses there are above her, and whatever bosses there are above those bosses, that my eyes will be on you, on
all
of you, wherever you may be across the globe, and if you ever kill, or attempt to kill, one of these birds ever again, I will bring the wrath of the just world down upon your heads!”

Ken/Neth mutters something I can’t hear, his shoulders hunched. Whatever it is that he says, it satisfies Vivi, who nods briskly and makes a twisted, bitter face before spitting on the golden threshold of La Lava. Then she strolls over to the limo, leaving Ken/Neth alone there in the huge doorway.

And when Ken/Neth lifts his arm to wave, it strikes me that he wishes he were here in the limo with us.

I’m still looking at Ken/Neth as Vivi hops into the driver’s seat. She slides open the window dividing the back from the front.

“Dang,” she says, twisting the key in the lock and fiddling with various controls, “how does this thing
work
?”

She twists the key even harder and suddenly the limo springs to life.

“BINGO!” Vivi says, clutching the wheel.

I take one last look at Ken/Neth, who’s standing there even now with his arm up in a wave.

As Vivi steers the limo down the pale silky pavement that leads out of La Lava, I glance at Kyle—we’re sitting next to each other, his knee
touching my knee, a point of warmth—wondering if he’s wondering about me the way I’m wondering about him. His eyes meet mine. We give each other a small nod. I don’t know how to describe the feeling that shoots through me when I nod at Kyle and he nods at me.

But Vivi interrupts that moment when she lets out a loud cowboystyle “Yippee!” We’re passing through the enormous metal gate that used to guard La Lava. There’s no guard standing watch anymore and the doors seem to be malfunctioning—they’re stuck halfway open after the chaotic evacuation. La Lava is no longer separated from the rest of the world.

Roo echoes Vivi’s happy shriek, and Señora V does too. An odd thing to hear emerging from behind an old lady’s black lace veil, but that’s just the kind of old lady Señora V is.

Outside La Lava, the darkness seems almost friendly as we glide through it. Vivi rolls the windows down, and it’s only now, as the dangerous odor of the volcano gives way to the warm fragrance of flowers, that I realize how strongly the air smelled of sulfur all evening.

“Hey, you know what, Vivi?” Roo says. “You’re
fantastalicious
!”

“Well,” Vivi says, “I don’t know about that, but I haven’t had this much fun since Madonna and I went skinny-dipping in Cinque Terre. It’s delicious to drive a limo, that’s for sure! I can’t believe I’ve never tried it before.”

“Man,” Roo sighs, “it’s
awesome
not to be stuck in that room anymore.” She barely pauses before perkily asking, “So, where does everyone think Miss Perfect and Mr. Beautiful are now?”

I’m proud that she’s adopted my nickname for the male bird. I
knew
she’d like it.

“I bet they’re already way past the sky-blue waterfall!” Roo says, answering her own question.

Across from me, Dad has his arm around Mom and is gazing at
her with this amazed look on his face, and Mom is gazing right back at him in the exact same way. Her face looks sharp and smart and full of thoughts—just the way it always used to, back before yogafication.

“Via,” Dad says, and it feels nice to my ears to hear Dad call Mom the nickname he’s always called her.

“Jimbo,” she says, and there’s that sound of tears in her throat, and I’m starting to blush a little now that Kyle is seeing my parents get all gushy and nicknamey with each other.

“I wasn’t sure we’d make it, Via,” Dad says quietly. “I can’t believe we’re all here. Ever since January—”

Then he stops, I guess because it’s too hard to go on.

But Roo jumps across the limo into his lap and says, “You have to tell us everything! Tell us everything that happened. Because we were
confused
.”

Dad looks exhausted. He sighs and slowly shakes his head as he hugs Roo.

“The early weeks here, back when I was under the impression that all La Lava wanted me to do was track and catalog the native bird species,” he says tiredly, “those weeks were phenomenal. The best bird-watching I’ve ever done.”

He pauses and looks around the limo at us.

“My wife and daughters,” he continues, “can probably imagine how thrilling, how unspeakably thrilling, it was for me to spot a Lava Throat, to realize it was a Lazarus species. Easily one of the greatest moments of my life. After a couple of days, I managed to capture a bird for research purposes. I was just going to hang on to it long enough to measure it, put a tracking device on its ankle, make a few notes about its appearance, take some photos.”

Dad pauses again, this time for long enough that I keep wanting to say,
Um, hello, Dad? Keep talking, please
.

“It was devastating,” Dad says, his voice husky. “They tore the bird away from me. They threatened me, and then they killed it right before my eyes. I think they wanted to prove to me how ruthless they could be. Watching that Lazarus bird die …” He trails off.

Mom strokes his hand.

“And then,” Dad says, his voice rising with rage, “to learn
why
they’d killed the bird, the most idiotic, superficial reason in the world.”

“How did they even know they could make a skin treatment from the bird?” Mom asks. “It’s not as though that’s obvious.”

Then suddenly Dad starts telling us
everything
, talking as fast as possible, like he can’t wait until he’s done speaking. What he found out was that La Lava itself had stumbled onto the miracle treatment—one of their hired scientists happened upon a dead LTVT deep in the jungle last fall. Everyone at La Lava had heard the local legends about the volcano bird’s ability to restore youth, so going on a hunch, La Lava’s biochemists created several treatments from different parts of the bird. It was just a lark, an experiment, but they decided to charge their wealthiest client—a rock star—an arm and a leg for this extra-special onetime treatment. They started with the bird’s ground-up bones—and they were more shocked than the rock star when it worked, truly worked, unlike every other youth serum ever created. He looked fifteen years younger, his skin fresh and taut. Only the bird-bone substance had this effect; the substances made from other parts of the bird’s body were useless. The rock star started spreading the word among his friends like gospel, and the reservations were rolling in like never before. Reservations from the wealthiest, most noteworthy people in the world, movie stars and rock stars and billionaires, and the management of La Lava realized it stood to make an astronomical amount of money if it could just get its hands on one LTVT every couple of months—many treatments’ worth of the substance could be
produced with a single skeleton. But of course the illicit source of the miracle substance had to be kept dead secret. That was when they sent their business consultant Ken Candy to get in touch with the Bird Guy. They needed Dad to capture LTVTs while simultaneously working to locate the elusive females and nests in the hope that they might breed the birds in captivity. As long as their attempts at synthesis and cloning were fruitless, they were forced to rely on the Bird Guy for their supply. But they quickly learned they couldn’t buy Dad’s compliance with money—they could only buy it with threats to
us
, to Mom and Roo and me. Dad could only hope they were bluffing about their plans to harm us. He could only hope they were lying about our house in Denver being under surveillance. Unsure whether their threats were idle or not, he had to give in to La Lava’s demands.

“They
were
spying on us,” Mom murmurs.

“I know,” Dad says, shutting his eyes and rubbing his temples. “The girls told me.”

“And there was Ken,” Mom adds. “There was always Ken.”

Dad just nods wearily at that.

“So …,” Roo says, hesitating a bit, “how many birds did you, you know …?” I can tell she’s trying to avoid using a word like
sacrifice
. She doesn’t want to make Dad feel worse than he already does.

“I captured the bare minimum of LTVTs necessary, three total in six months,” Dad says, his voice pained. “It was pure torture—with each bird I captured, I knew I might be capturing the last one on the face of the earth. I let the birds go as often as possible, knowing that the longer I waited, the more likely the bird would have the chance to reproduce. I only brought them in when La Lava was at the edge of desperation and full of threats.”

“Oh, Jimbo,” Mom says.

But Dad just keeps going, eager to get to the end of his story. In
early July, he tells us, La Lava ran out of bird bone, and their attempts to produce the stuff artificially were going nowhere, and they were frantic to get more before the gala—it would be disastrous for them to have furious clients making a public fuss at the investors’ event. They were dying to get the treatments up and running again, get over that hump, keep the ball rolling, bird or bust. They just
had
to make it through the gala with happy investors and happy clients. This was particularly important to them, Dad explained, because Vivi was there, a superstar who could be the new face of La Lava.

“Ha!” Vivi scoffs from the front of the limo.

They were willing to do anything at all, take any risk, to make sure they got a bird before the gala. Suddenly, though, Dad stopped spotting any LTVTs at all, and he started panicking and hating himself for being confident he’d find a bird whenever he needed one, and then we showed up, and he could no longer even hope we were safe. La Lava proved to him again and again how vulnerable we were, how easily they could harm us if they chose to—during a facial (those hands on my throat, Dad looking in at the window!), during yoga (I
knew
they were doing something to Mom!), during dinner at the Selva Café (when the electricity went out and Roo swore she saw Dad watching!).

It all clicks together and this very shaky feeling trembles through me. We were in even more danger than I ever realized.

Right then Kyle grabs my hand (man, I’d recognize his hand
anywhere
, the super-clamminess of his palm), and even though we’re learning all these freaky things about what went down, even though I shouldn’t have anything on my mind except how lucky we are, still I can’t help thinking,
Jeez, this whole me-and-Kyle-holding-hands thing is seriously becoming a pattern
. The world’s most awesome pattern.
His hand squeezes, saying hi to mine, and my heart does a few cancan kicks.

“I never,” Dad says, pausing. “I never had any intention of cutting it so close. Can you believe that capturing a Lava-Throated Volcano trogon and turning it over to its murderers would fill me with joy? But I
was
overjoyed, to see you out there in the audience tonight, safe and well”—of course!
That’s
why Dad looked so oddly happy and peaceful and calm up onstage!—“even though I was almost certain the bird I handed over to them today was the last male of the species.”

“But Mad
saved
him! And he’s
alive
!” Roo says, louder with each word. “And Miss Perfect is
alive
too! And they’re back at their
nest
and the volcano
isn’t
gonna
blow
!”

“And you kids,” Dad says, his eyes widening with awe, “you found a female! With a
nest
! That’s impossible, you know.
How
did you do it?”

Roo and Kyle and I look at each other, and then we look at Señora V, who smiles her veiled smile. How
did
we do it? There was Roo and Kyle being brave about the jungle, and there was me and Roo peeing, and there was me falling down the hillside, and there was Kyle and Roo recognizing the eggs, and there was Roo and Miss Perfect adoring each other right away. And there was Señora V with her magical drinks and green jungle uniforms and black-lace grins, and there was Señor V glowing knowingly beside her.

“Hey, wait a sec!” Roo yelps at Señora V. “You can take your veil off now! The birds are fine!”