Kalahari (19 page)

“Yes,” he said. His eyes turned to the ground. “I’d been in Pittsburgh for less than a month. I didn’t know anybody. No one to call, no relatives.” He lifted his eyes. “You don’t want to go through that. Let me help you.”

“I—I can’t. It’s better if you go.” I was already too close to him. My eyes searched for him too often, too instinctively. I blushed too deeply when his voice turned soft and his skin brushed mine. I reminded myself that he would leave sooner or later, and when he finally did, I didn’t want to be the girl left behind.

“Why?” Sam asked. The pain in his eyes made me look away. “Is it because you think I’m some charity case delinquent?”

“I don’t think that!”

“Because it’s true. I’m only here because my history teacher convinced the Song Foundation to grant me a scholarship. I could never afford a trip like this.”

I blinked, absorbing this, then let out a small, soft laugh, which elicited a look of surprise and puzzlement from Sam. I explained, “The whole reason we agreed to take you guys on is because the Song Foundation promised to give us money. What do you think I live on? Every bite I eat is paid for out of someone else’s pocket. Our whole operation is run on grant money and donations from zoological societies. If you’re a charity case, then so am I.”

He frowned, taking this in, then a slow smile made his eyes brighten. “So. One charity case to another: Will you let me stay and help you?”

Our eyes held, and I forgot about silver lions and black helicopters, and hunger and time and my aching heart, and whether we’d reach Ghansi or if we’d even live through tomorrow.

My eyes fixed on his, and it was like looking into the starry night and realizing for the first time just how deep and wide and impossible space is. His eyes went on forever, tempting me, drawing me toward him. I felt the pull of an urge so primal, so natural, that I didn’t need to think. I only needed to act, to give in to that intoxicating impulse.

I leaned toward Sam, he met me halfway, and we melted into a kiss that made my thoughts shrink together into a nucleus of vibrating sensation before they burst outward like a thousand stars. As soon as I felt his lips, I realized I’d wanted it for a while, maybe since the day I first saw him. My skin glowing with heat and longing, I surrendered.

I reached up and grabbed his shirt, pulling him closer. His hand slipped around my neck, his fingers threading through my hair. His lips tasted of baobab fruit, sweet and tangy like an orange. I could feel his heartbeat against the palms of my hands, its pace as frantic as my own.

He drew me in to him, his other hand pressing against the small of my back, and my lips parted against his. He felt like fire and the cool Kalahari breeze, making my heart pound and my thoughts whirl like leaves in the wind.

The kiss felt like a moment, but it must have lasted much longer, because when we finally broke apart, breathing hard, our foreheads touching, the sun was already below the horizon and the sky blazed from scarlet to purple.

I looked back toward the fire, wondering if the others were missing us, but he caught my chin with his fingers and turned me back to him.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Please.”

I studied his face, the freckles on his nose and cheeks, the cleft in his chin, the faint crease between his eyebrows. His sandy hair had fallen across his forehead, and I couldn’t resist sweeping it back. My fingers lingered on his face, trailing downward to his jaw, which was rough with stubble after days out here without shaving. “Okay.”

The crease vanished when he smiled. He reached up and pulled me into his chest. “Tell me a story.”

“A story? What kind?”

“Something about you. Something not in the book.”

We were talking in a hush, even though we far enough away from the others that they would have heard us only if we yelled. Sam’s face was inches from mine, so close that I could see the dark flecks in his green eyes.

“Okay. Um. One time, in Australia, I stole a baby kangaroo.”

“What? No!”

I laughed. “Yeah. It was just so cute! I was only, gosh, six, I think? Anyway, these roos were pretty tame, you know. Used to people being around. It was great, except for when they kicked you.”

“Did they ever kick you?”

“Several times. They kick like mules, but it’s the funniest thing to see as long as you’re not the one they’re kicking. But that’s not the story.”

“So you stole the baby.”

“The joey. Yeah.” I giggled, thinking of our Joey by the fire. “Baby kangaroos are called—”

“Yeah, Sarah. I know.”

“Okay. So it was only nine months old, but it was almost too heavy for me to carry. It had gotten tangled up in an old rabbit fence, and it couldn’t hop. So I thought, in my six-year-old brain, that I could help it get better. I stole it when the other kangaroos were sleeping and took it back to our camp to put Band-Aids on its injured leg. Then I knew I couldn’t hide it in the tent or my parents would find it. So I . . .” I paused and ran a hand over my hair, laughing in embarrassment. “Um, I hid it in the toilet.”

“Wait.” Sam held up a hand, palm out. “You hid the baby kangaroo in the
toilet
.”

“That’s what I did. It was this little portable toilet covered by this tarp hung on a branch. It was the perfect size for the little roo—and I made sure it was clean. At least, a six-year-old’s idea of clean. It never occurred to me that my parents would actually
use
the toilet. So I went to bed and I remember crying myself to sleep because I felt so guilty about hiding it from my parents, but I couldn’t tell them, and I was like this little pressure cooker of conflict and guilt and excitement at having a kangaroo in my toilet.”

“So what happened?” He was watching my lips more and more as we spoke, and I found myself losing my train of thought. I looked away.

“Well, my mom went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw it. She screamed—oh, man, I’ll never forget it—and I woke up and I knew right away that she’d seen it. I think she secretly thought it was funny, but she was pretty harsh when she told me we had to give it back to its mother. She said, ‘Nature has a way of taking care of itself, if we only step aside.’ She let me watch the roos from a distance, as the mother took care of the joey and eventually it healed and hopped like the rest of them. Still, as punishment I had to do fifty push-ups.”

“Push-ups!”

“My parents had weird disciplinary ideas.”

“Push-ups. I like it.”

“I like
you
.” He looked startled. I stopped, wincing. “Oh my gosh. Sorry. Was I not supposed to say that? I mean, there aren’t many guys out here, so I’m not really—”

Sam touched his finger to my lips. “Sarah,” he said with a smile, “I like you too.”

This time, it was Sam who kissed me.

We never made it back to the fire. We lay side by side for hours, as the night deepened and the temperature fell. When I began to shiver, Sam held me closer, tighter, and we kept each other warm.

“Do you ever wish you could pull a moment out of time?” asked Sam. “So that you could live it again whenever you wanted?”

I nodded.

The Kalahari night sky is the most beautiful in the world. There are no artificial lights to dim the stars, no clouds or tall trees to block them, and the universe is displayed the way it was meant to be seen: unfathomably beautiful, taking my breath away. Stars upon stars upon stars, as numerous as the sand, some bright and twinkling, some dim and steady. Across the center of the sky stretched the Milky Way, a thick dusty band of stars and supernovas and galaxies and worlds we’d never touch, swirling in shades of blue, purple, and pink. It made everything else shrink away, seeming small and ephemeral in comparison. We didn’t talk much after that, just shared the night in comfortable silence, our breaths frosting the air.

W
hen I woke, I was lying on my side, my head resting on Sam’s shoulder and his face so close to mine that I could see his eyelashes fluttering as he dreamed.

It was barely dawn; the sun had not yet appeared but a pastel glow spread across the eastern sky. The sparrows and larks were already tuning their songs in preparation for morning. I yawned sleepily, feeling a dopey grin spread across my face.

I rolled onto my back, careful not to wake Sam. His hand, which had been resting on my shoulder, slipped to the ground. I was freezing cold. It had been stupid to stay out here all night, but I had fallen asleep without realizing it. I sat up slowly. Sam made a soft, sleepy sound but did not wake.

The others were sleeping close to the embers of last night’s fire. Kase and Miranda were pressed against each other, and Avani and Joey were buried in nests of grass. The embers appeared to be dead, but I knew if we stirred them they’d come back to life quickly enough.

Suddenly I realized we’d failed to post guards through the night. Had it been that easy to distract me from the most important job of keeping everyone alive? Trembling with cold and self-directed anger, I gently shook Sam awake.

“Come on,” I said, “come down to the fire. You’re freezing.”

“Coming,” he murmured, without opening his eyes.

I stared at his face for a moment, then brushed the hair from his forehead, leaned over, and kissed him once, briefly, on the lips.

At that, his eyes fluttered open and he smiled drowsily, his hand lifting to stroke my hair.

“Look at you. You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice husky with sleep.

I smiled and batted his hand aside. “Get up. I’m going to start the fire. You need warmth. Your lips are kinda blue.”

“But not from the cold.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll meet you down by the fire.”

First I hunted for some firewood, keeping an eye on the tracks around us to see what sort of animals had come spying on us in the night. A genet, a jackal, a pair of warthogs, several kudu. Nothing too serious. I carried my armload of wood back to the fire as the others began to wake. It took a few minutes to get the wood to catch—there was very little warmth left in the ashes—but once it did, it blazed up merrily.

“I’m going to see if there are any more fruits around the baobab,” I said. “Keep the fire going.”

I hiked the short distance to the lone tree and found the baboons had taken off during the night. The ground around the trunk yielded no fallen fruits, and the few I could see on the branches were out of my reach. I studied the trunk and decided it was worth a try.

I was an excellent tree climber. My dad used to say that I learned to climb before I could walk. The baobab was tricky, since there were no low branches and the trunk was too fat to shimmy up, like I would a palm tree. Instead, I had to use the vertical grooves in the bark, wedging my feet between them and slowly making my way up.

When I reached the first branch—which was thicker than I was—I lifted myself over it and crouched there, balancing where the baboons had been the day before. From there, it was easy to navigate through the thick branches, picking the last of the fruits that the baboons had missed. I stepped from branch to branch with sure-footed ease, not minding the height or the twigs scratching my face, arms, and legs. The outermost limbs were heavy with sparrow weaver nests—bunchy, twiggy fabrications bedecked with loose feathers.

I dropped the fruits I gathered to the ground and looked around one last time, spotting a single pod still hanging at the end of the highest branch. It would be harder to reach, but it was the biggest one I’d seen so far.

I decided to go for it. I climbed up and outward, shaking off a few ants that had ventured onto my arms. I sat on the branch bearing the fruit and scooted out, my legs dangling thirty feet above the ground.

The end of the branch was too narrow to support my weight, so I leaned out as far as I could and stretched out my hand, biting my lip in concentration. The branch creaked threateningly, but I ignored it. The fruit was almost within reach—
Got it!

The branch cracked beneath me with a loud
pop
. My stomach turned inside out as I began to drop, and instinctively I reached out for the branches beneath me. I landed on one, and it knocked the wind from my lungs with a gasp. I clung to it rigidly as a shower of branches rained around me to the ground below. After a minute, when all was still again, I shakily pulled myself upright and leaned against the trunk. The close call left me trembling but relieved, and I laughed.

I cautiously began to climb down the tree, searching for secure hand and footholds. There was a dark hollow above one of the branches, and I reached for it to lower myself down. To my shock, my fingers touched not wood—but soft fur. I yanked my hand back and grabbed the branch below the hole to steady myself, as two round eyes peered out of the darkness while the creature to which they belonged remained obscured in shadow. I recognized them right away: There was no mistaking the huge, luminous eyes of a nocturnal bush baby. I’d woken him up, and he squeaked at me indignantly.

Smiling, I said, “Hey, little guy. Sorry to wake you.”

In response he burst from his hole and perched on my hand, which I thought was odd—they’re notoriously shy creatures.

And then I saw the reason for his abnormal behavior.

I froze.

The bush baby’s enormous eyes grew wider and wider as his cat-like ears swiveled rapidly. His fur, impossibly soft, impossibly silver, caught all the pastel lights of the morning and reflected them onto the branches around us, but most brilliant were those perfectly circular eyes, which held my own image in them with startling clarity, like small twin mirrors.

Suddenly I came to my senses and shook my arm as hard as I could. The bush baby leaped to the branch above and disappeared into the upper canopy of the tree. My heart had resumed beating, but at a galloping pace. I began whimpering, louder and louder, as I rubbed my hand desperately against my shirt.

No
,
I thought.
No, please. Oh, God. No no no no . . .

I abandoned caution and shimmied down the trunk so quickly that it left my fingers and knees scraped and bleeding. I bent over and furiously scrubbed my hands with sand, my entire body shaking.

It touched me only for a moment. Maybe I’m not infected.

I lifted my hands and stared at them, remembering what Dr. Monaghan had said about Metalcium.
It starts with itching.

I focused on my hands, trying to determine whether they were itching or not, even though it was likely too soon to tell.

“Sarah!”

I jumped at the shout. It was Sam, running toward me from the camp.

“There you are,” he said. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

“I fell out of the tree.” I stood up, my hands clenched at my sides, and put on a false smile. “Not hurt, just a little winded.”

He looked up at the high branches, then at me, his eyes wide. “Are you sure?”

“I’m
fine
. Can you carry the fruit back to the others? I want to look around a bit more, see if there’s anything else that’s useful.”

He nodded, but still watched me mistrustfully. “You’re
sure
you’re okay? You’re pale.”

I pressed a hand to my forehead, then yanked it away as if it had burned me. “A little shaken, that’s all.”

He bent to pick up the fruit I’d dropped, wincing a little and putting a hand on his injury, and kept glancing back at me. To avoid his eyes, I walked into the bush, pretending to look around for any edible plants. In truth, I could scarcely see where I was going. I felt like a time bomb, ticking down to an explosion. I needed to be alone to think.

I found a secluded spot out of Sam’s sight and sat down, leaning against an acacia. Holding my hands out in front of me, I studied them intently, turning them over, flexing my fingers. My stomach was twisting inside me, threatening to spill the fruit and water I’d had the night before.

I couldn’t be sure I was infected. Dr. Monaghan hadn’t told us the specifics of how Metalcium spread. Sure, he said it was by touch—but maybe he meant you had to be bitten, or had to touch the infected animal for a long time. Like poison ivy. If you just barely brushed against poison ivy, you’d probably be fine. It had to rub your skin to infect you.

I imagined the silver bush baby running through the grass, its silver tail raised like a banner, as it spread Metalcium like wildfire through the bush. Suppose a jackal snapped it up? And what if a leopard caught the jackal? This was a poison that could contaminate the entire food chain as it spread, touch by touch, outward across Botswana. What could contain it? How would we prepare? If what Dr. Monaghan had said was true, then infected creatures would have up to a few days showing no signs but itching. In that time, Metalcium could quietly expand across the borders, leave on planes with tourists. Like the bubonic plague all over again—only worse. I imagined floods of silver rats infecting entire cities, people by the hundreds turning into silver madmen.

This had to change nothing about our original plan. I would get them to Ghansi, and then I’d go back. I’d just have to do it as fast as possible, and without any of them touching me.

Slowly, I stood up, holding my hands away from my body as if they were already covered in a sheen of parasitic metal. I realized tears had spilled down my cheeks. I wiped them on my shoulders and began to walk.

I had sworn to get the others safely to Ghansi, and I would not break that promise. Maybe they’d never have to know about the silver bush baby. And even if I was infected, Dr. Monaghan had said you could go for days before it showed. They’d never find out, because they’d be home by then. Except for Sam, if he still insisted on coming back with me.

Oh, Sam.
A wave of sorrow swept over me. I should have been spending the morning basking in the kiss we’d shared, in the night we’d spent in each other’s arms. Instead, that memory seemed as distant and untouchable as the stars under which it had happened. There was no way I could touch him now and possibly not ever again. That had been our first and last kiss.

I circled the camp, staying out of sight, my eyes sweeping back and forth across the sand. I named every set of prints I saw in an attempt to pull my mind out of the chaotic panic into which it had descended. It helped, a little. Solid, tangible things had a way of stilling my thoughts, like a steady hand catching a rocking swing. I had to anchor myself in the present moment, to let the future and all its potential horrors slip away.

I don’t want to die.

The thought surged through me, weakening my knees. I collapsed and huddled in the sand, my throat burning with tears I fought to hold back. Since Mom’s death, I hadn’t much cared what happened to me. The world had been covered in a gray veneer, tasteless and uninteresting. She had been the sun that lit the savanna, and when she died, I’d been left in darkness, not caring whether I stumbled forever through the night or fell over a cliff and was lost.

Now I looked back and realized how idiotic, how
selfish
that apathy had been. I’d cloaked myself in the shadow of her death and never once considered that I could be happy again. The world hadn’t gotten darker—only my vision had. Now I saw that my sadness wasn’t entirely to be blamed on my loss; I’d stolen my own happiness by refusing to search for it. In the moment it took to register that she was gone, I’d forgotten everything she had ever taught me.

And Sam—sweet, smiling Sam with his dogged optimism—had known it. Somehow he’d reached me through my fog and begun to draw me out, and last night for the first time I’d felt the light again. Realized that the sun
could
rise on a world without my mom. Recognized that I might even be happy again. I’d caught the spark of wonder from Sam’s eyes and with it, I had begun to see the beauty that I had shut out.

But none of that mattered anymore. That stupid, impossible little animal with its mirrored eyes had shattered my future and my brief happiness with its gentle whispering touch.

I was wasting precious minutes out here, drowning in melancholy, when we needed to reach Ghansi faster than ever. Only time would tell if I was truly infected. Maybe I didn’t have tomorrow, but I had today, and I’d be damned if I didn’t make that count.