Kalahari (15 page)

Silently, I stood up and went to Kase and Miranda. Miranda’s face was smeared with tears; she looked five years younger. His hand was on her shoulder. She reached up and squeezed it. Looking at them, so close, so unflinching in their commitment to each other, I felt a part of myself I didn’t even know existed curl up with envy.

“Here,” I said, holding out the ring. “I’ll find something else.”

She looked at me suspiciously, then her hand reached out. The tip of her finger touched the diamond, but then withdrew.

“No,” she said. “Use it. It’s not a real diamond, anyway. It’s just cubic zirconia. Fake.”

I closed my hand around the ring. “Thanks.”

“Are we going to die out here?” Miranda asked suddenly, her voice cased in steel. “Tell me straight. Don’t dish me false hope.”

Lists and numbers swirled in my head like debris whipped up by a hurricane: the distance to Ghansi, the dangers between us and safety, our dwindling strength as our bodies succumbed to lack of water and food, the cold nights, the relentless sun in the day, Abramo and his men . . . In the center of it all, where I wanted to find a seed of hope, I found only a pulsing knot of suppressed panic and uncertainty.

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry, I . . . I don’t know.”

T
he ring wasn’t as good as a knife, but I was able to gouge a notch about the size of a fingertip in one of the sticks. I laid it over a bundle of dry, fine grass and held it down with one knee. I held the other stick, its tip sharpened with the ring, between my palms. The pointy end went into the notch, along with a few grains of Kalahari sand. I rubbed my hands quickly back and forth, my tongue sticking out slightly the way it always does when I’m concentrating. It took several minutes, but eventually the sticks began to smoke, and a tiny red ember tumbled into the grass. Immediately I set the sticks aside and lifted the bundle of grass, blowing gently on the ember. It seemed to die for a moment, but I kept breathing on it, slow and steady, and then all at once a flame flared up. I dropped the burning grass and began feeding it with smaller sticks.

“Well. That was cool,” said Sam.

Joey looked equally impressed. “I gotta try it.”

I handed him the sticks.

He spent the next hour trying to start a fire, before at last giving up. His hands were raw and blistered, and he scowled when I asked what went wrong. By then, it was dark enough that we couldn’t see anything outside the fire’s glow, and Kase and Miranda rejoined us, but Miranda wouldn’t look at anyone.

Sam was gazing at Miranda thoughtfully. After a minute, he stared into the fire and said, “My mom’s in prison.”

She didn’t look up, but I saw her eyebrows rise.

“Been in and out for ten years for drugs,” Sam said. He prodded the fire with a stick. Embers stirred and broke apart, sending up a shower of sparks that reflected in his eyes. “Me and my brother grew up in foster homes since I was five. Never stayed in one town more than a year.” He settled back and kept staring at the flames. “When Adam turned eighteen he became my legal guardian, and we lived in Pittsburgh for a while. Till he joined the military, anyway.” His face was set in hard lines; the firelight made him look older, sharper. “He was killed by a sniper in Baghdad last year.”

“Sorry, bro,” said Joey, looking as serious as I’d ever seen him. His knees were drawn up and his hands dangled between them, his fingers absently working a piece of grass. “My grandma died when I was seven. She raised me, practically, while my parents worked. You never really get over it, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, and his eyes flickered to me.

I looked at the fire, my chest aching.
Mom. Theo. Maybe Dad too.
The others could talk about their loved ones, but not me—it was too soon. It was too close, their faces still too fresh in my mind.

“My dad made me come on this trip,” said Joey. He stuck the grass between his teeth, then flopped onto his back, his arms stretched wide. “He’s on the board of directors for the Song Foundation—you know, the group who thought it would be a
great
idea to send five random kids into the middle of nowhere. He said it would ‘straighten me out.’” Joey laughed, not his usual light, joking laughter but something deep and slightly bitter. “Isn’t that ironic, though? Like, I might
die
. Bet he’d feel guilty then. I coulda been surfing in SoCal with my gang, picking up babes.” He rolled onto his side, head resting on his elbow, and he grinned suggestively at Avani. “How about it, Canada? I kinda dig the whole nerd thing. Nerd is the new hot.”

“Dream on,” said Avani, rolling her eyes.

“Why are
you
here?” he asked. “Is this, like, the land of your people?”

“My dad’s parents are from Kenya,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “And my mom is from Delhi.”

“Where’s that?” asked Joey. “Arkansas?”

“
India
, you moron.”

“Do you, like, sit down and memorize dictionaries every day?”

“No,” she said. “Only on weekends.”

Joey stared at her, looking perplexed, then suddenly his face split into a grin. “Wait a minute. . . . You made a joke!”

Avani’s lips curled into a small smile.

Sam caught my eye, then traced a heart in the sand between us. My throat tightened and I blinked at it, then looked at him in alarm.

He pointed at the heart, then made an exaggerated glance from Joey to Avani, and then wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I smiled at the thought of mortal enemies falling for each other and shook my head at him. He shrugged and smudged out the heart. I watched his finger, my pulse settling like a leaf that had been caught up in a dust devil.

Of course he didn’t mean that for me. He doesn’t even know me. No one does.

That last thought struck me unexpectedly, like an arrow, leaving me slightly breathless.

No one does.

No one except Dad, now that both Mom and Theo were gone.

I’d never really thought about it before, but now that I had, it invaded my mind: I was alone. I’d never been on my own like this before. Sure, Sam and the others were here, but in a few days they’d leave Africa and I’d probably never see any of them again. I’d just become part of a story they’d tell their friends.

What if Dad was really gone? What would I do? Where would I go? Who would even want me?

I’d end up like Sam, I guessed. I had another year until I was eighteen. Maybe I could go to college early. I could just stay in Botswana, find work as a tour guide or something in Maun or the Okavango.

Why am I even thinking about this?
I had to believe he was alive. Had to, or there was no way I could continue.

“What about you?” asked Sam.

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. “What about me?”

“What happened to your mom?” He asked the question gently, without meeting my eyes.

My thumb immediately went to my bee tattoo, rubbing it absently. “She died.”

His gaze lifted to mine. They all waited quietly, and it was the silence that probed deepest, like a knife wheedling open a clamshell, more effective than any spoken questions could have been. And suddenly, I wanted them to know. I hadn’t told anyone this story, hadn’t spoken of it in months. Now something inside me seemed to release, and the story poured out of me.

“It happened four months ago,” I began. “She left on a short trip to study the local beehives. Bees were her special area of interest. She was the only person I knew who was actually fond of the ‘killer bees’ that infest this area in the warmer weather. Then last summer she noticed a big drop in the native population of hives. So she set off to gather some data in hopes of finding out what was going on. She was afraid that the same mass disappearance of bees that was plaguing developed countries like the States was now happening here. We knew that the hives she’d previously documented were spread across a wide area, so we didn’t really worry when she didn’t return for four days.” My voice turned husky as I recalled the memories, pulling them from the deep corner of my mind where I’d tried to hide them. Now I realized that effort had been as pathetic and effective as trying to hide the sun behind your hand. “We figured she’d stumbled on some clue. My mom was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and if there was an emergency, she had the satellite radio. When she didn’t call after a few days, Dad guessed she left the spare batteries behind—something she was notorious for doing. My mom was brilliant but also very scatterbrained about practical things like batteries when she was focused on one of her projects.”

Looking back, I wondered how much fault in her death lay with my and my dad’s casual dismissal of her extended absence. If we’d gone looking for her sooner, would we have saved her? But then again, maybe we wouldn’t have found her at all. Because maybe she hadn’t run out of batteries but was actually at the Corpus compound. I recalled the bees we had found in the freezer.
Suddenly it didn’t seem possible that it was a coincidence.

“When Dr. Monaghan said her name to me, I realized she must have been there. I think that in searching for the bees, she came across the Corpus compound. Remember the hive we found in the freezer? There has to be a connection. Maybe she was studying a swarm that led her to the lab. She would have been furious by the cruel treatment of the animals there, and I know without a doubt that she would have done everything in her power to expose the project. We’d assumed she’d died in a car crash, after being attacked by a bee swarm—when we found her, she’d been stung hundreds of times. Now . . . I’m not so sure.”

I had a lot of unanswered questions about my mom’s final days. I’d unfolded the memory countless times, taking it out like an old photograph, reliving the details, asking the same questions, getting no answers or comfort in reply. Then I’d try to push it all aside, pretend somehow it had all happened to someone else, some other Sarah. I tried to sever the past from the present, but it always seemed to come drifting back.

For a moment, I shut my eyes, trying to quell the rising storm of pain and regret that rioted within me. When I opened them again, I drew a shuddering breath. “There was nothing to indicate where she’d been or what had happened. Only that she was covered with beestings, and she’d written some words on her arm.
The bees are a fail
.” I slid back my sleeve, exposing the honeybee tattooed there. “That was it. Just another field note. They decided she’d been attacked by the very bees she’d set out to save. Ironic, isn’t it?”

The crackling of the fire rose to fill the silence. We all watched the sparks spiral upward in a funnel of smoke, rising as if they aspired to join the ranks of stars above. Purged of my story, I sank into physical and mental lassitude, wearied in every sense.

Miranda, looking lost in her own thoughts, idly reached up to scratch her nose. Instantly everyone locked horrified eyes on her.

“What?” she said, sounding confused. Then her eyes widened and she stared at her fingers. “No! No, it’s not like that! I just—I’ve been thinking so hard about
not
scratching that it made me itch all over! I didn’t touch anything infected, I swear!”

“I believe you, babe,” said Kase, but I noticed he’d scooted slightly away.

“We’re all paranoid,” said Sam. “If any of us were infected, we’d have noticed by now, surely.”

“Yeah, totally,” said Miranda, attempting to be light, but her shaking tone gave her away.

The fire was getting low. I reached behind me for the supply of sticks, and my hand closed around something long and slender—and definitely not made of wood. It was cold and smooth and it writhed in my grip.

I yelled and let go, jumping to my feet. A sleek black snake slithered through my legs and around the fire. One by one, the others screamed and scrambled up. Avani tripped and fell on her back, her eyes wide as the snake streaked toward her.

“Mamba!” I said. “Don’t—”

Suddenly Joey was there. He snatched the backpack full of cans and swung it at the snake, diverting its attention away from Avani. The snake whirled and hissed angrily, then slithered toward him. It reared, its mouth gaping open to reveal its fangs. The snake glittered like obsidian in the firelight, eyes cool and lidless, fixed on Joey. It rose higher, its head level with Joey’s waist, as high as I’d ever seen a mamba go. When its head drew back, I thought with dread,
This is it.

The snake struck like a flash of lightning, faster than the human eye could track—and sunk its fangs into the backpack Joey held in front of him. Then, so quickly it was but a blur, the mamba sank to the ground and sped into the grass, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

No one moved or spoke. I let out a long, shaky breath. Then Joey slowly dropped the bag, his face flushed. It clanked by his shoes. He was smiling inanely.

“That,” he said, “is the coolest thing I have ever done.”

“You idiot!” Avani yelled, rising to her feet. “You stupid, brainless
boy
! That was a
black mamba
, the deadliest snake in Africa! If it had bitten you, you’d be dead before morning! What
were you thinking?”

Joey looked at her the way the rest of us had looked at the snake: healthy fear mingled with shock. “But I . . .
saved
you.”

“I didn’t
ask
you to save me!” she replied. “I didn’t
ask
you to do anything! I didn’t
ask
to be out here, starving and thirsty, chased by some crazy hit man! You want to share life stories? You want my sob story? Well, I don’t have one, sorry! I have a mom and a dad and a baby brother and I may never see any of them again! I just want to go
home
.”

She sobbed into her hands, tears winding down her arms and dripping onto her knees. We all stared uncomfortably at our shoes, the ground, anything except Avani.

I felt someone should say something, so I said gingerly, “You probably shouldn’t cry. You need to conserve your water.”

Avani lifted her head and stared at me as if I’d cursed at her, while Miranda said, “What is
wrong
with you?”

“Huh? I didn’t mean—”

“Can you possibly be more insensitive?”

“I—I’m sorry.”

Their lives were so different than mine. So far, everything I had said to them had seemed wrong or silly or odd. I was the one who’d dragged them out here. I was the one who’d nearly gotten them killed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and was surprised to hear myself say it aloud. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . I don’t know.”

They stared at me, all except Avani, and my face began to burn.

“I’m going to get some grass, for us to sleep on,” I said, rising to my feet and leaving the fire, ignoring Sam’s call for me to wait. I didn’t want his help. I didn’t want him to see me cry.

****

We saw no sign of Abramo that night, to my surprise. I thought that surely he’d be after us while the trail was still warm, but maybe finding more goons would take longer than I’d thought. I had the last watch of the night, and at dawn I woke everyone and built up the fire. It was still dark enough that the smoke wouldn’t give us away. I’d dug up
bi
roots from around the camp, and I offered them to the others.

“It’s all we have,” I said. “You don’t want to dehydrate out here.”

I showed them how to scrape the white tuber with their nails to gather a handful of shavings.