Chapter Ten

My hand trembles as I hold the paintbrush. I set it back down and try to shake out the nerves. I open the door between the rooms so I get some of the daylight and open the window, too. Someone outside is blasting Eminem.

Knowing that I’m doing this—that I’m really going to try to paint this entire big piece myself—has made me more anxious about screwing it up. And there’s no time for that. I worked out a schedule when I got here to the studio, and we have only around one week to spend on each piece in order to finish in time for the show. That doesn’t include time for screwups. (Unless, of course, my mom takes over and paints much faster than I do, but I can’t count on that.)

I decide to start with one of the flowers, which I can tell from the images in the catalogue should be a bright pink to deep red sunset color. I mouth words along with the music as I mix the paint on my palette, trying to make a good match. Every time I add a little more red, it looks like it needs a little more pink, and vice versa. Finally, I’m reasonably sure it’s okay and that I’m stalling because I’m nervous. I load up the brush and hold it over the area.

“You only get one shot . . .”

I put brush to paper, and immediately a big area floods with color, like last time. Swearing under my breath, I quickly blot up as much as I can.

Don’t get frustrated. You can fix this. I shut the window in the outer room and the door between the two rooms so that it’s quiet, no distractions. I brush the stained area with clean water and blot more—rubbing harder now—managing to remove enough of the color to try to keep going. It’s too wet in that spot to paint right now, though, so I decide to move on to the girl in the white dress. I can do this. I know I can.

After adding water to her pre-mixed skin color, I stroke the soft brush tenderly over her face, with just the right amount of pressure and paint.

That smell is back, the burning one.

I reload the brush and carefully draw it down her arm.

Leaves rustle. The air is damp and hot, like an exhaled breath. The jungle pulses around me.

We’re hiding behind a thicket of bushes with white flowers. I’m squatting, hunched, ready. Shoulder to shoulder with the girl in red on one side, the girl in blue on the other. Peering through the leaves and petals at a clearing. The flowers’ perfume doesn’t cover the smell of burning flesh. Three girls, trussed and roasted on a spit to the point of unrecognizable black shrivel. A massive vine surrounds the fire pit, undulating up and down like a sea serpent. Its thinner offshoots writhe in the air. An ugly orchid with an eyeball at its center tends the fire.

“Zoe,” someone is saying. “Are you listening?”

I turn to the voice. The girl in red is looking at me.

Zoe?

I stare into her wide dark brown eyes, my head suddenly empty. Completely empty. Like I’ve been wiped clean as this white dress I’m wearing.

A cold, primal fear latches on to every cell.

I look around. Where am I? Who am I?

“Zoe?” another girl says. The one in blue. “Are you okay?” She rests a warm hand on my arm.

All of a sudden, it comes back.

She means me. Zoe.

Fear rushes out as memory rushes in. I’m Zoe. Right. And her name . . . her name is Azul, the one in the blue. The first one, in red, with a curtain of blond bangs, is Scarlet. Behind us, sitting with legs outstretched, is Lila, the one in purple who I carried piggyback. We’re in Wolfwood. Yes. Thank god. I know who I am, where I am. It’s okay. A shudder of relief passes through me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I felt faint. The smell . . .” The strength of it does feel poisonous, concentrated in the wet air.

“We should’ve gotten here quicker,” Scarlet says. “Now we’ve lost all of them.” She means the girls on the spit, clones, burned beyond the point of recovery. The Others—that’s what we call them. They can recover from almost all injuries, but not something like this. Not when they’re just charred husks.

“It wasn’t my fault my leg was slashed,” Lila says, defensive.

Azul and Scarlet’s younger sister. The three look alike except Lila is reddish blond and the other two are more golden. Lila’s rubbing her leg where the bandage is. Her eyes—a slightly greenish shade of brown—are clouded with remorse, and I reach to hand her a couple of berries from my pocket. We don’t eat to survive here, but Lila still craves sweet stuff, so when I see the rare nonpoisonous berry, I collect them for her.

“She’s not blaming you,” Azul tells Lila gently.

“No, our route was wrong,” Scarlet says. “Again.” She draws in the dirt with a stick. “I don’t understand. That area with the low trees was right over there.” She points at a spot on the crude map she’s drawn. “And we came through the area of other flowers here. But it looks like we’ve ended up back over there, even though we didn’t loop around.”

The landscape in Wolfwood is a live animal, always moving and shifting. Maps are mostly useless. But Scarlet always resists this. She takes on the role of leader and needs to feel like she can plan a route.

“From now on, maybe we shouldn’t waste time making maps,” Lila says.

“We can’t just run randomly,” Scarlet insists. “The only way we’re getting out of here is by using our brains and figuring out which areas we haven’t covered yet. There has to be a way out somewhere. And we haven’t seen it yet.”

“Well, what we’ve been doing isn’t working. What do you suggest?” Lila asks, raising her eyebrows. Scarlet doesn’t answer.

I look around, then point up at a nearby palm tree that’s miles taller than any others. “I’ll climb up and get a good view,” I say. “At least figure out where to head from here.” Some of the trees and plants and flowers here are monstrous, some aren’t. The palm tree isn’t.

I hand over my weapon—a blade of sharpened hard wood. Scarlet and Azul make stirrups with their hands and hoist me up as far as they can. I use all my strength to grasp the trunk with my arms and legs. “Okay, I’m good,” I say, and I begin the climb, hauling with my arms, digging my feet in, scooching my thighs. My legs start trembling almost immediately. Why did I say I’d do this? I made the offer without really thinking about it, like I saw the tree and knew what had to happen next. Although, it is true that I have the sharpest senses of all of us.

To distract from my quivering muscles, I try to review what I know, let more facts fill my head—still a little disturbed by that strange, blank moment, when I didn’t even remember who I was.

My name is Zoe. We are in Wolfwood. Trapped in Wolfwood. The earliest moment I can picture is when I first saw the sisters. They were sleeping in the middle of a circle of palm trees, about to be attacked. Between them, written in the dirt, it said: KILL THE WOLF.

We’ve been together ever since, though we’re not sure how long it’s been. The sun here never moves—it’s fixed high overhead—so there is no measurable time or passing of days. We’ve been here long enough that it’s taken its toll, though, that’s for sure. No way to count how many attacks we’ve survived at this point. I can picture them in vivid, static images: Azul’s leg torn off by a massive orchid; a woody vine hanging Scarlet from her neck; a branch like a sword, stabbed clear through Lila’s eye and out the back of her head. An endless series of gore and pain. So much pain.

Finally, I break through the tree line and the landscape sprawls in front of me. It’s greengreengreen, with open patches and denser patches and bursts of other colors dotted around.

My eyes key in on different details. A round turquoise water hole surrounded by spike-leafed mangroves. An area of chartreuse ferns, taller than we are, with a group of Others wandering between them, collecting bloody body parts that they’ll reattach with torn strips of their red, purple, and blue dresses.

No white dresses, since I don’t have any clones. When I get injured, I take a long time to heal, not like the sisters, who recover impossibly quickly from what should be fatal injuries, another clone joining the army of Others as it happens. We don’t know why I’m different. Luckily, I don’t get injured often, and never bad enough that I’m close to death. I’ve got a lightning-fast instinct for anticipating attacks, and I can usually sense when a tree or flower or vine is a monster and when it’s harmless. Sometimes it’s obvious—they have vicious mouths or searching, cyclops eyeballs—but not always. Some monsters are good at hiding their nature until it’s too late. Like they’re holding their breath.

My legs are trembling so violently now I can’t climb any higher. I try not to think about how far up I am and how bad it would be if I fell, try to concentrate on the landscape. I spot a swampy, grassy area with a wooden walkway that we built to get across. Next to that, a section of bone-white flowers that burned us by spitting acid. Scenes of what’s already happened here flash in my mind. Everywhere I look, it’s just areas we’ve already been through. Nothing to show which way we should go next.

Will I even know what I’m looking for when I see it?

Then, in the distance, in the area with several water holes, something catches my eye.

I focus in on it more closely. It’s a structure, not something natural. It doesn’t look new—vines have grown around it. A roof of thatched palm leaves almost makes it invisible. Definitely something that was constructed. A shelter.

And we didn’t build it ourselves.

A vision hits me: sharp face, long blond hair, bright blue eyes.

Him.

Beep, beep, beep . . . beep, beep, beep . . .

The noise pulls me out, my brain struggling to make sense of what it is and where I am. Alarm. Studio. Right.

It’s like coming out of a dream. For the briefest second, images and sensations linger: a map in the dirt, the smell of burned flesh, a green landscape. But they slip away almost immediately, water through my fingers. Gone, like the first time. And again, I stare in amazement at what I’ve done. I’ve completed two of the vignettes in the painting. One with the girls strategizing while watching the clones burn on the spit, and one where the girl in white climbs to the top of a tree to scout out the area. The landscape is a lush tangle of greens and pinks and yellows and oranges. The caption written under this vignette is: SHE SPOTS THE SHELTER. I painted the words in thin black letters that look eerily like my mother’s handwriting.

I clean my brush, go into the other room, and sink onto the couch. It’s time to head home—that’s what the alarm meant—but I need a minute.

The more I think about it, the harder my blood pounds in my veins. It’s not normal. Not at all. Weird is a total understatement. It’s downright scary, like I don’t have control over my own mind. Moments after my brush strokes the paper, I’m swallowed up by my imagination. It happened even quicker today.

I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

I stare out the window as a cloud drifts across the sky. What happens to me is strange, yes. Unbelievably strange. But it’s not a problem, is it? It’s not a reason to not do the painting. It’s the reason I can do the painting. Because I’m entering this weird state, where I’m not nervous or overthinking the physical act. I’m so involved in the story I’m actually imagining I’m there. So if that’s what it takes . . . I guess I should just accept it. And maybe it won’t keep happening.

Somehow, though, I know that it will.

My anxiety about the experience doesn’t go away during my sewing shift at Trinity’s. I mess up an almost-finished clutch bag and have to hope she won’t notice. Later, I can’t sleep, can’t get comfortable. I keep turning over and over, wishing I could get online to see if this happens to artists or just talk to my mother about it . . . talk to anyone about it. Maybe Jaden’s father, Marcus? He’s a psychiatrist and professor—maybe what’s happening is a well-known psychological thing? But no, he’d think I was so weird, too weird to babysit his son. After getting myself more and more worked up, it finally occurs to me I could call Grace. She’s not into art, but she’s writing a fantasy novel and has always been open to sort of strange things, like really believes the stuff the five-dollar palm reader tells her. (She’s going to meet her life partner on a Greyhound bus, apparently, even though I say she’s way too glam for that.) Losing yourself in a dream state while awake seems like it could be a thing she’d know about, or at least could talk about without thinking I’ve lost it. Not that I can tell her I was painting Wolfwood . . .

I carefully get up from my mattress and find my phone in the dark, thinking I’m going to sneak outside, but as I turn the doorknob, my mother mumbles, “Indigo?”

“Sorry,” I say, cursing our lack of privacy. “I told Grace I’d call. Going to sit outside.”

“’K, love you, have fun,” she mutters, clearly half asleep.

Settled on the stoop, I hesitate a minute before calling, wondering if I’m being foolish, if Grace is going to get suspicious about what’s going on. I’ll have to be careful about how I phrase it. Although, it’s not like she could ever guess what’s actually happening.

“Booboooo!” she says when she picks up, using her pet name for me. “You’re alive!” We haven’t been in touch at all this summer and only rarely during the school year.

“You’re the one who disappeared to La-La Land,” I joke. “How is it? Hanging out at the Peach Pit?”

She laughs. Before now, our main reference for LA was the reruns of 90210 we used to watch together.

We’ve been friends since we met in first grade at the Earth School. We were inseparable there and in middle school, but we’ve grown apart since I lived with her family. At the time, my mom told them I needed somewhere to stay because our building was being renovated and I’d fallen down the stairs, not that we were homeless and I’d been beat up at the shelter. Lying about my whole life was kind of like building a wall around myself. I couldn’t talk to Grace about anything real, not even how worried I was about my mother or how terrified I was in public bathrooms. Then we got assigned to different high schools, and now . . . well, we see each other maybe once every couple of months, that’s it.

“LA’s wild,” she says. “Totally different world.”

She tells me about it: palm trees and cacti, too much time in the car, mind-blowing tacos, cute barista at the coffee shop near their rental house in a neighborhood called Silver Lake. She asks what she’s missed here in the city, and I tell her a bit about the Fud, Josh . . .

Finally, in a completely casual tone, I say, “Hey, so . . . question: When you’re writing, do you ever sort of lose track of where you are? Almost like you’re inside your imagination instead of in the real world?”

She hesitates. “Uh . . . no. Why?”

“Just, you know, curious. I’ve been doing this project, and I’m having these sort of dreams about the story—”

“Wait, you’re writing?”

“No, god no.” I laugh. My dislike of any sort of writing-based task is well established. “Fashion stuff.”

“Okay,” she says, chuckling. “Sorry, keep going.”

“Well, there’s a story that I’m telling with the drawings, and sometimes it’s like I’m dreaming about it, but I’m awake at the same time. Like my imagination takes over.” Casual, casual. Nothing weird here!

“Sounds like you need more sleep, as usual. What’s this for? Portfolio for college?!” She’s clearly excited by the possibility.

“Maybe . . . Just messing around for now. And yeah, you’re right about sleep. I’m sure that’s it.”

“I mean, damn, I just realized how late it is there. You working tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold up!” she calls to someone else. Then to me, “Hey, I’m so sorry, Booboo—I got people waiting for me here. So . . .”

“Of course,” I say, a sudden hollow of loneliness opening up inside me. It’s always like this when I see or talk to her now. So good to hear her voice, and then the emptiness of missing her. “Thanks for talking.”

“Any time, girl. Get some sleep. Promise?”

“Promise.”

I can hear people in the background calling her, but she doesn’t hang up quite yet. “Is there something else you wanted to talk about?” she says. “How’s Zoe? She . . . okay?”

I hesitate. “Great,” I say. “She’s great.”

Since her first morning in Tulum, Zoe has cocooned herself in her new reality: Colin and Zoe, expats in love, completely free, no other attachments or obligations. Colin, the talented one. Beautiful. Perfect. Zoe, the lucky one. The one anybody would envy.

It all seems like plain fact.

Then, in mid-April, Colin receives an airmail letter, handed to him by Itzel at lunch. (It hasn’t even occurred to Zoe they could get mail at Don Eduardo’s, mostly because there’s no one who would write her.) Not a big deal, but a reminder: there are other people in Colin’s life, a world outside of Tulum. Zoe is dying to know who it’s from, but his closed-off expression tells her not to ask. He thanks Itzel and shoves it in his pocket, stands up from the table, and tells Zoe and the Lopez sisters that he’ll see them later.

After he’s gone, Zoe explains that he has plans to talk to someone about doing a mural on the side of a small building—another expat involved with the new construction. (There’s buzz around town that Tulum’s becoming more of a tourist destination.) Hearing about the mural, Lila’s eyes light up. But Scarlet crosses her arms. It’s so arrogant, she says. Like a dog wanting to piss on a territory. Does Colin think he’s Diego Rivera? Mexican art—Mayan art—is the art that belongs here. Not Colin’s. It’s like artistic colonization. Bad enough that expats are building here, trying to capitalize on the beauty of someone else’s land.

Zoe is taken aback. She hasn’t thought about it like this, not at all, and her first instinct is to be defensive. After a moment, though, she has the uncomfortable realization that Scarlet may be right. (She also has the uncomfortable realization that Scarlet doesn’t like Colin nearly as much as Zoe assumed she did—as much as she assumes everyone does.)

That afternoon, in the cabana, Zoe tries to discuss it with Colin without sounding like she’s criticizing him. But his face gets more and more stony as she talks.

When she’s finished, he gives a small, hard smile. He says, Thank you so much for enlightening me. I didn’t know you were an art expert. And a cultural expert. Thank goodness you’re here to set me straight.

The coldness of his tone makes Zoe shiver. She tries to explain, tries to backtrack.

But he just gets angrier, reminding her that she didn’t even graduate from high school. He asks what she knows about the history of colonization in Mexico, what she knows about the history of art, aside from what he’s taught her. Then he abruptly gets up and walks out, toward the water, throwing off his shirt and diving into crashing waves.

Zoe doesn’t understand what just happened. They’ve never fought like this before. She’s never heard that tone of voice or seen that look in his eyes. After his swim, he disappears and isn’t at Don Eduardo’s for dinner. Later he returns from town drunk with a couple of French guys he and Zoe don’t even like. Zoe goes to bed alone while he’s out on the beach drinking more. She can’t sleep, sweaty and uncomfortable in her hammock, wondering why he got so upset. Hating herself for opening her mouth. Starting to panic that she’s ruined everything.

Finally she drifts off, only to be woken hours later by the swing and dip of Colin getting into her hammock with her, curling his body around hers. I’m sorry, he whispers, breath heavy with beer and regret. I’m so sorry. I was such a jerk. Don’t leave me, he says.

It takes a minute for Zoe to process what he’s saying. Leave him?! Of course she won’t leave him. Of course! She’s always had to suppress worries that he’ll leave her. There’s nothing in the world that would make Zoe leave him.

She breathes into the comforting warmth of his body and pushes away thoughts that the fight or any of today’s surprises changes anything. Life here is exactly what she thought it was. It was just a bad day. Tomorrow will be perfect.