Feel Me Fall Read online

  “The usual.” Viv’s way of rebelling against her Tiger Mom was playing video games and a “study date” with me was the perfect alibi. She went by the handle “LUV2KILL” and loved trash-talking her online foes using a combo of swear words and everyday items, such as fuck-truck, dishwater-dick and nerd-turd. She was so addicted to video games she had callouses on her thumbs.

  I once asked her how she felt about playing games when all the women in them were big-breasted and wore tight outfits. I kinda thought it was sexist, but she didn’t mind. She told me playing games was about escape. She’d never be big-breasted and would never save the world, so it was cool to pretend.

  She lugged her console under her arm. Like she’d done a million times before, she walked into my room and set up her game. Although my mom’s two-bedroom apartment was a far cry from Viv’s house with a pool, she never acted as if she was slumming.

  My room was small—cozy as Viv would say; a bed, desk and beanbag. But what stood out was the collage of maps that acted as wallpaper. Floor to ceiling was covered with antique maps, nautical maps, Parisian subway maps, even fantasy maps from Game of Thrones. There were maps of the United States during the Colonial Era, maps of Los Angeles from the Thomas Guide days. It was a strange hobby, collecting them, but they reminded me there was more to life than this room. And some day, I hoped, I’d map out a place of my own.

  Viv played a first-person shooter while I watched. I liked our time together like this—sitting on the carpet, sometimes playing, but without the pressure to talk. There was something trance-like to the game that emptied my head.

  I thought of telling her about Derek and prom, but I didn’t want the story to take on a life of its own.

  After a few kills, Viv asked, “Why don’t you like Nico?”

  “What?” I said, surprised. “I like Nico.”

  “You never want to hang out with us.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Her eyes were focused on the screen. “Name me one time in the last month.”

  I couldn’t. “I’ve been busy.” Which was true: I’d been working, studying, and seeing Johannes.

  “You think he smokes too much pot.”

  “I don’t judge him. As long as you’re not hurting anybody, I say live and let live.”

  She paused her game, and turned to me. She never paused a game. “I think I’m in love with him.”

  Hearing that made my stomach quiver. “I know.”

  “I’ve been holding out on him.”

  “Viv, it’s not my business what you and Nico do. When it’s right for you, it’ll be right.”

  “But you’ve done it before. You didn’t like it.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You never talk about it. I thought it was a bad experience.”

  No, it wasn’t a bad experience. It was a drunken one. Worse—and I hate even thinking it—it was with Nico. I’d do anything to take it back. True, it was with Nico before Viv started to date him. But it was after I knew she had a crush on him. I’d always thought he was cute. There was something about his head of hair, perfectly coiffed into a mess that made me want to reach out and grab it. And that look behind his glasses that seemed to know what you were thinking. But when I talked to him I clammed up and had nothing interesting to say. I hated feeling boring in his presence, but I didn’t want to say anything that would actually confirm it.

  It’s weird how one night can change everything. I was at a party at some random parent-less home. Nico was there. Viv wasn’t. We played quarters and Flip Cup. As the night wore on, the room swayed and we ended up making out in a closet. From there, things quickly spun out of control.

  There’s nothing I can say that will make this story seem okay. I had sex with the guy my best friend liked and when it was done, I pulled up my pants and walked home. I walked several blocks, stumbling in the dark, taking side streets, the occasional headlights passing over me, and I felt like a criminal leaving the scene of a crime. Somewhere along the way I stopped and puked up a trifecta of wine coolers, a shot of Wild Turkey, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Classy. Very classy.

  The experience wasn’t good. It happened too fast. It was clumsy and sad. In the moment, I think I was trying to live up to an ideal: I was fun! Adventurous!

  I was none of those things.

  I promised I would never speak of it again. Not to Nico. Not to Viv. Not even to myself. I would pretend it never happened. I am only thankful that no one saw us, so the story never spread.

  After that, I ignored Nico and he slowly got the hint. A few weeks later when Viv told me she and Nico were dating, I didn’t have the heart to tell her what had happened. I buried the lie. Days became weeks and weeks became months, and I was happy. Happy my lie was something in the past. Happy I had not ruined the one relationship that meant the most to me. I could actually believe nothing had happened. That night was like a movie I’d watched long ago and I was already starting to forget the plot.

  “Earth to Emily…. “ Viv’s voice jolted me from my thoughts.

  “What were we talking about?”

  “Sex. Doing the nasty. You know, regular stuff.”

  What I didn’t expect was for Viv to fall in love. Not just love. All-encompassing lurve.

  I said, “Every first time is bad. It’s way more anticlimactic than you think.”

  “Do you wish you’d waited?”

  Yes, yes, yes.

  “I wish a lot of things, Viv.”

  “Like what?”

  Changing the subject, I grabbed a controller. “Like I could kick your ass.” I joined the game, and we shot at each other.

  Viv would never know the truth. Not if I could help it.

  Never, ever.

  “You ever think,” said Nico, “this is kind of like Jesus’ forty days in the desert?”

  We inched along. Ryan led while Viv and Nico brought up the rear.

  When nobody said anything, Nico asked, “No one? C’mon, don’t you see it?”

  Unless the topic was food, water or rescue, none of us cared. We were sore, tired, covered in mud, our skin chafing and itchy along with a hundred other aliments. And moody. Definitely moody. Conversation had dwindled to nothing.

  “Seriously,” Nico said, “Jesus went into the desert. This isn’t a desert, but as far as being remote, it’s pretty close. Jesus fasted. So are we.”

  Derek said, “What’s your point?”

  “I’m trying to give us a different perspective. We can look at this like ‘boo hoo poor us.’ Or we can see it for what it is.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A spiritual struggle.”

  “Nico,” Viv said, “you’re stoned.”

  “Quit being a haze, Viv. Just let me talk.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Talk. Annoy everyone.” She ran forward and walked next to me. “I hate when he gets like this.” I reached out and held her hand.

  “Like I was saying,” Nico said. “This, right now, is what we’re gonna look back on as the greatest adventure we ever had. This is what everything else in your life is going to compare to. This is what you’re gonna tell your grandkids about. Changes your perspective, doesn’t it? It’s all a test. A test of our souls. And we gotta ask ourselves—are we passing?”

  Derek said, “This experience is gonna be my college entrance essay, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m talking about what’s happening here.” Nico indicated his heart. “What are we gonna take from this? How is this gonna shape who we become?” We ignored him and after a few more steps his tone changed, like telling a ghost story. “Out in the desert, Jesus met the Devil.”

  “Who’s the Devil here?” asked Derek.

  “I don’t think we’ve met him yet.”

  Viv joked to me, “I think I’m dating him.”

  “I heard that.”

  I was tired of his prattle. Every ounce spent listening was energy I didn’t have. “Are you saying,” I asked, “that you want to spend forty d
ays out here?”

  Trapped in his own logic, Nico paused. “Hell no.”

  “Then who cares?” I said.

  On a tree nearby, I saw a green iguana. It was perched less than two yards away, just lying there like a small ancient dragon, and I didn’t care. Above me a sloth huddled in the branches. Two days ago I would’ve excitedly pointed at it and said, “Look! Look! How cute is that sloth? Doesn’t he look like he’s smiling?” Today I didn’t care. Same with the monkeys that scampered on the tops of tree branches, seeming to follow us.

  Nico said, “Em, what do you think?”

  “I think we’re walking in a living zoo. And I hate it.”

  “Or,” he said, “maybe we’re the zoo, and they’re looking at us. Ever think of that?” True enough, the monkeys did seem curious about us.

  Ryan stopped and turned. “Can you just go back to singing marching chants? That’d be a whole lot better for morale.”

  Nico stopped and considered, and then let out a long howl: “Ow-woooooohhh.” He repeated it. “Ow-wooooooohh.” The monkeys skittered away and the sounds of the jungle went quiet, which was the freakiest thing of all. After a second, the soundscape returned.

  “Damn, it’s like I have magical powers.”

  Ryan said, “The hell are you doing?”

  “Haven’t you wanted to do that ever since you got here?” He let out a yodel version of the Tarzan yell, banging on his chest. When he finished, he went right into imitating a chimpanzee, scratching himself under his armpits: “who-who-who-ha-ha-ha.”

  I wondered if Nico was losing it.

  I’d never seen Ryan move so fast on his crutch and prosthetic leg. He pushed Nico to the ground. “What if they hear you?” He gestured to the monkeys, now gone. “We’re surrounded by things we can’t even see, you get that? You have any idea what else is out there? I’m not gonna be somebody’s prey.”

  Nico looked up from the ground and laughed. He even made a snow angel, legs and arms windshield-wiping back and forth in the mud.

  Ryan said, “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s hilarious! I can communicate with animals! Who knew?”

  Ryan took the end of his “crutch” and jabbed it into Nico’s stomach. “Don’t laugh at me.”

  But Nico wouldn’t or couldn’t stop. He tried and then burst out, convulsing at a joke only he thought was funny. “I can’t help it.” Nico cackled. “By the power of Grayskull, I command the apes to carry us piggy-back to the nearest tribe!”

  Ryan jabbed Nico in the stomach. “Don’t laugh at me!”

  “You’re failing the test,” Nico laugh-yelled—

  Something that started as a joke escalated into something dangerous. We were under tremendous pressure from all that had happened and it would find release one way or another. “Don’t laugh at me!” The hits grew harder and harder, and Nico’s laughs morphed into howls of pain.

  “Stop it!” Viv screamed. She ran towards Ryan. “You’re hurting him!”

  Ryan stopped, taken aback by his own loss of control. For all Ryan’s tough exterior, he wouldn’t be mocked. Not for being weak. Not for having lost his legs. Not, I thought most of all, for being scared. He walked away with a look of disgust, but whether it was directed at himself or Nico I didn’t know.

  Viv comforted Nico on the ground. “Are you okay?”

  Nico lay curled on the jungle floor, his hands over his stomach, rocking gently. He looked at us accusingly and whispered, “The spiritual test? You failed…you all failed….”

  Chapter 9

  Viv walked with Nico. His good humor had literally been beaten out of him. As he ate another bit of bud, Viv placed her hand over his in a gesture of “please don’t.” He shook her hand off. Ahead of them, Ryan trudged through the jungle. He muttered under his breath, trying to rally himself: “You can do it. You can do it.”

  He stopped and cupped his hands to his mouth, screaming: “Hello? Can anyone hear us?” He was met with silence.

  Molly asked, “What about predators now, Ryan?”

  He ignored her and said, “Everyone, scream ‘hello’ as loud as you can.”

  We joined into a loud chorus of “HELLO?” Our voices echoed until we were out of breath.

  Again, nothing.

  Then a voice in the distance. A shrill “Hola!” from within the jungle.

  “Did you hear that?” Ryan said.

  I couldn’t believe it. Someone else was out there. All of us perked up at the possibility of another survivor or maybe, just maybe, a villager.

  Ryan motioned for us to scream again, and we did. “Hello?”

  A second later, the voice replied, “Hola!” It was no auditory hallucination!

  Ryan cracked the first smile since the crash. He directed us, “One more time.” When the voice replied back, Ryan shut his eyes, concentrating on the voice’s location. “There,” he said, and took off towards it. We followed, the fastest we’d traveled, damn the branches scratching us.

  Ryan kept yelling “Hello,” zeroing in on the voice, awaiting the reply. We were breathless.

  We were getting closer.

  Almost there.

  Ryan called out, “Hello?”

  Then we experienced the strangest thing: the voice seemed to have moved. Teleported. We were right upon it. I could swear it. But it was no longer here.

  “What happened?” Viv asked.

  As we stood, Molly came up from the rear—we’d hadn’t noticed that she had lagged so far behind.

  Ryan said to us: “You heard it, right? We all heard it.” Seeing us nod, he said, “Where’d he go?”

  I screamed, my voice hoarse: “Hello? Can you hear us?”

  The voice came back, I couldn’t tell its gender: “Hola!”

  “That way,” said Derek, and we headed off for it once more, this time in a totally different direction.

  Like playing “Marco Polo,” we shouted, then waited for a reply, moving towards the person. I yelled, “Are you all right?” But the only response I got was “Hola!” I shouted, “What’s your name?” The answer was “Hola!”

  We zigzagged past trees and scrub and overgrowth. All the while, I was growing irritated at this faceless person. “Why don’t you walk towards us?” No response. Was a villager playing a joke on us?

  Finally, the voice was close. Just another few yards.

  We turned past a tree and into a small clearing and stood dumbfounded.

  There was nothing. Only green, green and more goddamn green. We looked at each other, confused. Derek saw it first. A bird. No regular bird, a macaw. A big blue parrot nearly three feet long with a splash of yellow near its head, maybe someone’s escaped pet. A sound came from its beak: “Hola!”

  “A bird. A damn bird.”

  Our hearts sank.

  Ryan picked up a stick and threw it at the macaw, sending it flying away, a great burst of color in the sky.

  The lushness of the rainforest seemed to swallow us. We didn’t belong. We weren’t welcome, and I wondered what had ever made me want to come on this trip in the first place.

  I had signed up for extra shifts at work—late nights and weekends. There was a trip offered at school, and I intended to go. How many times in my life would I get the chance to visit a real rainforest and see the “lungs of the earth” before they were lost to industrialization? To see dappled sunlight on emerald leaves, crashing waterfalls and the magnificent unknown? I thought of how romantic it would be to sneak time with Johannes. We could cuddle under a constellation of stars while listening to rainfall on a tin roof.

  All I needed was money, permission from my mother, and a passport. I saw my mom in the morning as she straightened her hair in the bathroom.

  “Mom, can you sign this?”

  I placed the permission form on the sink, along with a pen.

  “What’s this?”

  “The school trip I told you about.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “It’s due today.”

/>   She picked up the form and held the pen over the dotted line. The tip of the pen even left an indentation, and then she stopped. “Wait a second. I thought you said you were visiting the south.”

  “I am.”

  “I thought you meant ‘the south.’ As in the United States. Not South America.”

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  I’d brought up the trip a few days earlier while she was under the influence, knowing she would say yes. I saw that the plan had backfired. I should’ve given her the permission slip when she was out of it. “You weren’t paying attention.”

  “I don’t know…that’s so far away.”

  “It’s a plane ride.”

  “Can you even drink the water?”

  I wanted to face-palm myself. “Mom, it’s a school-sanctioned event. It’ll look great on my transcript. And you don’t have to pay a cent.” I saw her waver. “Please. It’s a great opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  “Emily, there’ll be other trips.”

  “Not like this one.”

  She finished curling her hair and set it down. “Careful. It’s hot.” She turned to me and tried to primp my hair. “I don’t like the idea of you being….”

  “What?” I moved back a step.

  “There.” She handed the form back to me. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you go to South America.”

  “Mom, it’s not, like, Iraq.” She didn’t budge. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s Paraguay.”

  “You make it sound like a Third World country.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Compared to America, it is.”

  “Mom, they have running water, electricity, government— ”

  “Emily. The answer is no.”

  I saw the look she got when stubbornness overtook rational thought. “Mom— ”

  “And that, too. Because I’m your mother. At least for another year. Then you can do whatever you want.”

  I could’ve argued. I could’ve stomped and moaned. I could’ve said so many mean things.

  But I didn’t.

  I took the permission slip and drove to school. I burned with anger. Then I did something that would change my life forever: I forged my mother’s name and handed it in.