The sound of a car engine rumbled in the distance. Jack turned. Headlights careened around a bend in the road. They seemed to fly on their own through the darkness. Jack waved his arms.
The vehicle whooshed past him, blowing his hair back. The brakes squealed, and red taillights traveled back toward Jack.
It wasn’t a car. It was a pickup truck. The bed was packed with men crouching next to one another. Their grave faces turned to Jack.
“Hello,” Jack said. Nobody answered him. “Oh, sorry. I meant, Hola, nochas dias.”
One of the men reached over, grabbed his arm, and hauled him over the side of the truck. There was barely enough room for Jack to squat down.
He fell back as the truck sped off. As he righted himself, his hand touched something hard and cold. The man next to him gripped a long, glinting machete. Jack squinted and looked around. There were eight men on the truck. They all had machetes.
Why had he been worried about dangerous wildlife? He might have had a chance against a snake. Now he was trapped on a speeding vehicle with a gang of killers.
“Please don’t murder me,” Jack cried. “I’m only eleven!”
Some of the men stared at him. One shook his head.
Jack looked over the rim of the pickup. What were his chances if he threw himself over the side? Not very good. The driver was a madman.
The men had turned away. What were they waiting for? Were they playing some kind of diabolical cat-and-mouse game?
“Get a grip,” Jack muttered to himself. Maybe the machetes were for something else. Like chopping wood. Aunt Julia had used an ax to chop wood; it hadn’t made her an ax murderer. But then, she hadn’t ridden around the neighborhood clutching an ax in the back of a pickup truck either.
The vehicle flew up and down hills and screeched around turns. Jack gripped the side of the truck. He was surprised the men weren’t wearing helmets.
The pickup slammed on its brakes. They had arrived at the T-shaped intersection that led to Lee Beach.
The men weren’t going to murder him. Not this time, anyway.
Jack jumped out of the truck. “Muchos grande gracias.”
The truck sped off down the dirt road.
Bright floodlights lit the Deep Water Inn’s courtyard. A few tourists sat in the restaurant, while a middle-aged waitress leaned against the counter and sang along to country music.
There they were. Jack’s parents. Did they seem distraught that their only child was missing in a foreign country? Were they on the phone with the US Embassy, demanding immediate action? Were they organizing a search party and handing out flashlights?
No. They were sitting at a table littered with beer bottles and empty peanut shells. His dad pantomimed a story, and his mom giggled.
Jack strode up to their table.
His mom looked up and burst into laughter. “Well, look at you, rascal. You must have had a good time.”
“Well done, Son,” his dad said.
A good time? Well done? “I’m eleven.” Jack said. “We are in a foreign country. I have been missing for hours. In the dark.”
“Missing?” his dad said. “We didn’t know you were missing. We just thought you weren’t … here.”
“All parents know that if a child has not been seen for seven hours, they are officially missing,” Jack said. “I am broke. I was nearly arrested. I was practically attacked by a rabid dog. I was surrounded by bats. I had to walk down a road crawling with tarantulas. I was probably seconds away from being bitten by a poisonous snake, though I didn’t technically see one. And after all that, I could have been murdered by a gang of madmen with machetes.”
“Goodness, Jack,” his mom said, “how could we have imagined all that was going on?” His mom glanced at his dad. “And here we were without a care in the world …”
Jack clenched his hands. “My blood sugar is low. I need banana sodas. Immediately.”
His mom glanced at his dad. Jack’s dad fumbled in his wallet and handed over two hundred bacsiras.
Jack grabbed the money and said, “I’m not cut out for the undiscovered Caribbean. Please enroll me in school tomorrow so I have somewhere safe to go during the day.”
He spun on his heel, ordered two banana sodas, and stalked up the stairs.
Back in the room, Jack downed one of the sodas and stood under a cold shower until his skin went numb.
He sat at the rickety table sipping the second banana soda and thinking about what had happened. Yes, it was true that he was the one that decided going to town was a good idea. So that was his fault. But why hadn’t his parents looked for him? They should have known that he wasn’t the type of person to wander around in the dark in a foreign country, being a rascal and having a good time.
Jack had told himself his parents wouldn’t even notice he was missing. But he had not really believed it.
Jack’s dreams were filled with flying bats, swinging machetes, and a police interrogation about why he wouldn’t pay his bill.
He woke briefly as his parents talked next to his bed. He kept his eyes shut.
“He seems tightly wound,” his mom whispered. “Do you suppose all those things actually happened to him?”
“No way to be sure. But I fear Julia wasn’t a good influence,” his dad said. “He sounds more like her every day. Talking about his blood sugar of all things.”
“Do you suppose he’ll grow out of it?” his mom asked.
“Well,” his dad said, “let’s just hope he grows. I believe he’s the shortest person we know.”
The next morning, Jack crept out of the room under cover of his father’s snores.
Two hundred yards offshore, gentle waves crested and broke over the reef. Orange buoys bobbed on the other side of the waves. Jack squinted but did not see any whale sharks. The bull sharks sat ominously still. They were scattered across the shallows, biding their time until an unsuspecting bather made the last mistake of a tragically short life.
The sky brightened, and tourists emerged from their cabins and hotel rooms. Jack imagined Seldie got up early too. She probably wondered about his trip to town. She would be shocked when she heard everything that had happened.
Her house was quiet. Jack crept up the stairs and knocked softly on the door.
“Hallooo?” Seldie’s voice called.
“Um,” he said, “good morning, Miss Seldie. Are you still asleep?”
“No, baby, I don’t talk in my sleep. Not that I know of, anyway. Just let me put my teeth in.”
Jack settled himself on a stool.
Seldie opened the door. “Child,” she said, “how did you make out yesterday?”
Jack had meant to chat about the weather and then casually ease into the nightmare trip to Manda, but the whole story poured out of him. The internet, the money, the rabid dog, the vampire bats, the tarantula, the snake, and the men with machetes.
He had thought Seldie would be more horrified than she looked. When Jack finished, she eyed him thoughtfully. “You poor soul. You got a lot weighin’ on your mind.”
Jack nodded. “Almost dying gives a person a lot to think about.”
“Well, baby,” she said, “if nothing else, I imagine it gave you an appetite.”
Seldie was right. He was starving. She was a very wise person.
In Seldie’s kitchen, Jack helped her warm up leftover rice, beans, and plantains. They sat on the porch and ate in companionable silence.
Jack spent the next few hours on the porch with Seldie. He liked it there. She made him feel calm. She was sort of like Aunt Julia, only not as worried. Seldie told him a lot of relaxing things: she had never heard of a person being arrested over four bacsiras and there wasn’t any rabies on the island and the bats ate mosquitoes and tarantulas weren’t dangerous and snakes tried to avoid people and the men with machetes were just coming home from work. Jack began to feel like maybe he had not been as close to death as he’d originally thought.
He told Seldie that he wanted to enroll in school as fast as possible, and she thought that was a great idea.
A shriek pierced the quiet afternoon.
“Our son!” his mom cried. “Have you seen our son? He’s gone missing again!”
Jack peeked over the porch railing. His mom collared a tourist and started shouting at him. His dad paced the road, running a hand through his hair.
Jack sighed and put his head down on his forearm.
“Your ma and pa?” Seldie asked.
Jack mumbled into his arm. “Yup.”
Seldie patted Jack’s shoulder. “You better call to them before they hurt somebody.”
“We’ve only been here for two days!” his mom said. “How can he be missing again?”
“How should I know? You’re his mum!” his dad said.
“Hey,” Jack called from the porch, “what are you doing?”
His parents looked up to the porch.
“Jack,” his mom said, “you’re not missing!”
“Of course I’m not missing. Why would I be?”
“Why, you explained the whole thing last night,” his dad said. “You’re eleven and we’re in a foreign country. We woke up this morning, and you weren’t there. Then we came back around noon, and you still weren’t there. So we thought, uh-oh, here we go again.”
“Richard,” his mom said, “I think I know where we went off the rails. Yesterday, Jack was gone for seven hours. Today it’s only been five.”
“Brilliant, luv. That’s bound to be it,” his dad said.
“But, Jack, where’s the cutoff?” his mom asked. “The hour when we decide it looks bad?”
Jack put his head back down on his forearm. How could he answer a question like that? Parents should just know.
“Lord help us,” Seldie muttered. She called down to Jack’s parents. “The boy’s fine.”
“Jack, we can stay right here and make sure you don’t go missing again,” his mom said. “We’re absolutely committed to the idea.”
Jack picked his head up. “No, don’t stand there in the middle of the road. I’m coming.”
“Well, all right,” his dad said, “but no more stories about being missing when you’re just down the road. Your mum and I were off our heads with worry! It’s a miracle we were able to concentrate long enough to buy that boat from Jed.”
Jack couldn’t even guess what Seldie thought about his parents.
Seldie said, “So they bought a boat. From Jed. Those poor souls.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“I’m guessing your parents are the dreamin’ type. We get a lot of them down here.”
Jack didn’t answer. There wasn’t much to say. That’s what his parents were. The dreamin’ type.
He got up and said, “Thanks for breakfast, Ms. Seldie. It’s the most fun I’ve had since I got here.”
“Come see me any day, baby. In the meantime, try to relax a little bit.”
Down on the road, Jack’s mom grabbed his arm and pulled him along the sandy lane. “What a brilliant day we had,” she said. She waved to an older island woman. “Evening, Miss Deborah. Jack, we tested the snorkel gear. Wait until you have a go. It’s glorious.”
“Stupendous!” his dad said.
“And we started the boat,” his mom said, “and drove it around in circles. A slight mishap on the first go, but the chap was fine. Just a few scratches.”
“He was a good sport, wasn’t he, luv?” his dad said.
“You hit somebody?” Jack cried.
They passed Jed’s Dive Shop. His dad called out, “All right, Jed?”
Jed waved his beer bottle in their direction. “Another day, nobody lost.”
“This island is heaven,” his mom said.
Freshly showered and covered in insect repellent, Jack sat at a table in the restaurant. He watched his parents come out of the room. His dad’s thick, dark hair was wet and brushed back off his forehead. His mom was tan and wore a simple white dress. The two of them had gained the weight back they’d lost in the Amazon. If somebody just looked at them and didn’t actually talk to them, they would seem completely normal.
Jack was determined to get into a school. A school would be filled with teachers and reliable schedules. It might even have the internet, so he could e-mail Zack every day. It would be a relief to have tests and quizzes to worry about again.
Jack’s mom kissed the top of his head. “Hello, luv.”
His dad sat down. “Jack. Glad to see you’re not missing.”
“So, what about school?” Jack asked. “Did you figure it out yet?”
“Why are you so set on school?” his mom said. “We’re finally all together. We’ve found our paradise. We’ll figure out the homeschooling thingy as soon as we get the business sorted out.”
“This is more than a thingy,” Jack said. “My education is at stake. Be realistic. You would both be horrible at homeschooling. I doubt you’d even check my homework.”
His dad laughed. “We’d never give you homework.”
Jack crossed his arms. “That is exactly the attitude I’m talking about. I need to be in a structured and safe environment during the day. Everything here is dangerous. The land is dangerous, as I found out yesterday. The sea is dangerous. There are bull sharks right in front of the hotel. And did you know there are whale sharks in the area? That’s right. I heard two people talk about it on the bus yesterday. Sharks the size of whales.”
“Now, Son,” his dad said, “you’re a bit … what is the word?”
“Hysterical?” his mom said.
“That’s the one,” his dad said, nodding.
“Honestly,” his mom said, “even if we were keen on the idea of sending you to school, we couldn’t just now. We don’t have the money for tuition.”
