Human Sacrifice

I avoid Mother the next day, telling her I have a headache and hiding in my room. I find a file called Home Videos on Mother’s laptop and watch them one after another. The clips show the Girl, cheerful and smiling, at dance recitals and riding horses and playing Frisbee with Stephen. Physically, she looks like the Girl in the Mirror, but obviously this brain-damage thing has stripped that girl—me—of any lust for life.

By late afternoon I’m done with all the videos and starting to feel like a caged animal. When I hear the rumble of the school bus pulling away, I leap up and practically pounce on Little Man as he saunters up the steps.

“Hey,” I say. “Wanna hang?”

He laughs. “Let me have something to eat. Then we can talk.”

I watch him wolf down some cookies. Then he claps his hands together.

“I’ve got it! We’re going to be anthropologists, and we’re doing research on”—he does a drum roll on the table—“African Pygmies! We’ve been living among them for weeks, learning their customs. And now one of them, a kid we bribed with candy, has confessed that the chief is planning to kill us in an ancient ritual to appease the gods of the jungle.”

He looks eagerly at me.

“Cool,” I say. I know I am way too old to get into these games, that any self-respecting teenager would have too much pride. But what else do I have going on in my life?

“And then, then”—his eyes widen—“they are going to cook us over a fire and eat us.”

The kid is totally twisted. Gotta love him. I raise my hand for a high five, and his face breaks out in a grin.

“All right then, Doctor,” he says. “Let’s get our gear and head into the jungle. We’ve got to escape before they tie us up.”

I hear footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement, so we race up the stairs and close the door to Stephen’s room. “Oh no, the Pygmies!” Stephen whispers, and we both giggle. We throw some essential equipment in a backpack—flashlight, rope, walkie-talkies, granola bars—then sneak back downstairs and out the door.

Stephen glances around the front yard, then peers into the trees. “Well, Dr. Smith,” he says in a deep voice, “it appears we have managed to outwit the Pygmies for now. I don’t need to tell you, however, that they are excellent at tracking their prey through the jungle. We must take every precaution, or we will surely end up the main course at their next smorgasbord.”

It takes all my willpower to keep a straight face. “Absolutely, Doctor…Doctor…Doctor Pickle.” He rolls his eyes but doesn’t correct me.

I follow Dr. Pickle as he steals toward the fire pit, glances around to be sure we are safe, then sprints toward the garage. We stand with our backs flat against the wall, our breathing heavy, and listen.

Stephen’s eyes are large when he turns to me and grabs me by the shoulder. “We must find our way to the abandoned schoolhouse, the one the missionaries built. The Pygmies are afraid to enter it.” He peeks around the corner of the garage, then quickly pulls himself back.

“Who’s there?” I whisper.

He leans in closer and mouths, “The chief.”

I pull myself flatter against the garage, and we look at each other, holding our breath. “Follow me,” he mouths. We move ever so slowly, our backs sliding against the siding, to the back of the garage where it meets the trees.

“On the count of three,” he whispers, “make a run for it.” He takes a deep breath and starts the count, and on three we sprint as fast as our legs can go, crashing into the woods and bounding over rotten logs, until we are so deep into the bush we can barely make out the walls of the garage.

“That was kind of loud,” I say, my heart pounding. “Do you think he heard us?”

“Perhaps.” We peer through the trees in every direction, and I almost expect to see a short person in a loincloth, carrying a spear, moving through the trees toward us.

Stephen—Dr. Pickle—lets his backpack slide down to the forest floor, opens the zipper and pulls out a notebook. The pages are empty, but he scrutinizes them as though he needs to understand every detail.

“I think we can make it there by tonight.” He runs his finger along what I guess is an invisible map. “Are you up for it?”

I nod. “Absolutely.” He stuffs the notebook back into the bag and leads our trek out of the woods.

“By the way,” I ask, “what happened to the missionaries?”

He shakes his head solemnly. “They got made into shish kebobs.”

We walk, squirrels scurrying in the branches above us, until we reach a green shed on the edge of the trees that I hadn’t noticed before. “The schoolhouse!” Dr. Pickle says. “Hallelujah.”

We bolt quickly to the shed, and Stephen tugs on the door until it pops open. “This should do for the night.”

We step inside and are hit with a musty smell like rotten vegetables. There isn’t much room between a couple of old lawn mowers and some clay pots, so I perch on top of a mower and Stephen flips over a pot to sit on. We stare at each other, listening for Pygmy chants outside.

The words slip out before I have a chance to think about the repercussions. “Tell me about myself.”

Stephen looks startled. “Uh, okay. What do you want to know?”

I want to know everything, every mundane detail of the Girl’s life: what kind of movies she liked, what her first word was as a baby, if she was disgusted by fart jokes. At the same time, I am also terrified to learn these details. If I know these things and still catch myself screwing up, it means Jessie is lost forever.

“You know. What made her laugh? Could she be funny, or was she too prissy to let loose? Did people like her? That kind of stuff.”

Stephen pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You mean you.”

I nod. “Sure, me. Whatever.”

I don’t think he’s going to let it go, but he leans back against the wall and chews on his lip. “Hmmm, where to begin? Do I tell you how much of a royal pain in the butt you were?”

“Ha-ha.” I know he’s only being Stephen, trying to lighten the mood, but I need this from him. He’s the one person I think will shoot straight with me, won’t try to soften things or make me out to be an angel.

“Okay, seriously. Let’s see. You were sort of funny. You could get hyper and be a total goof with me or your friends. But you were also serious sometimes, like you were thinking about stuff.”

“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”

He shrugs. “How would I know? You never told me.”

“My bad,” I say.

“You liked taking pictures.”

I guessed that from all the photo albums in the Girl’s room. But I need something, well, less obvious. “Yeah, but what cracked me up? Did I like jokes?”

He scratches his fingernail along the pot he’s perched on. “Well, there was a joke about a cowboy you used to tell. Something about falling off his horse into a cow pie. I can’t remember exactly. But mostly you laughed at, well, things that happened, not jokes so much. Like when Dad danced around the kitchen with Mom’s bra on his head.”

Picturing it makes me smile. “This is fun. Tell me everything.”

Stephen peers out the streaky window. “Everything?” he says.

“All the juicy details,” I say. “Like, was there blood on the ground where Ramses charged me? How mangled was I, exactly?”

He whips his head around to face me. His cheeks are flushed, and something—fear?—flashes in his eyes. “You said we didn’t need to talk about it. Remember, at the hospital? You said you were fine now.” His voice trembles. I can only imagine what the little guy has gone through, almost losing his big sister and probably getting minimal attention from his parents for so long. It’s got to be painful to think about, and now I’m asking him to relive the horror of the day it all began? It’s too much to ask.

“You’re right,” I say. “What does it matter? Look at me, I’m better than ever.” I’m mad at myself for being selfish and would do anything to bring us back under the magic spell of our game. “And anyway, I think those Pygmies are hot on our trail!”

I jump up from the lawn mower, grab his arm and pull him up to face those cannibals once and for all.