Origin (11 page)

I tap the side of the terrarium. Instead of scattering, the ants pile on one another, trying to bite through the glass to get at my finger.

“Let’s hope we never have to use it,” I say. “Why don’t you get rid of them
before
they break out and eat everyone?”

Uncle Will retrieves Babó and returns the beetle to its cage. “There’s still so much to learn from them,” he says, a little sheepish. “It’s worth the risk.”

As he tidies the mess Babó made on the counter, I absently touch a petri dish of water, watching the ripples undulate on the surface. My mind is filled with the memory of last night, particularly with how uncannily blue Eio’s eyes were when I shone my flashlight in his face. Suddenly I’m struck with a thought.

“Uncle Will?”

“Hmm?”

“When was the first time you left Little Cam?”

His forehead crinkles as he brushes flakes of Styrofoam into a wastebasket. “I guess when I was nine. I went out with Dr. Sato for an hour or two to collect spiders.”

“Nine!
That
young?” I sit up straight in indignation.

“Things…” He stops, his mouth contorting into a wince. “Things were different then.”

I do my best to quell my irritation at the unfairness of it. I have a different reason for asking the question. “You mean, before the Accident?”

“Yes.”

“So have you ever seen any of the people who live in the jungle?”

“Natives?” He shrugs. “A few times. Why?”

“What are they like?”

“They keep to themselves, unless we’re trading.” He frowns. “Wait. I don’t know if Paolo wants me to tell you all this.”

“Forget Uncle Paolo,” I say. “Tell me more.”

He shakes his head guardedly. “I think I better not.”

“Uncle
Will
—”

“Pia, please.” His eyes scrunch pleadingly. “Let’s just get on with the lesson, okay?”

I watch him silently as he sorts several plastic boxes of specimens, wondering if he ever dared sneak out like I did. Would he even tell me if he had? No. He’s too timid, too lost in his world of titan beetles and army ants. I can’t imagine him cheating at checkers, much less sneaking out of Little Cam and into Ai’oa.

Maybe Uncle Will won’t answer all my questions…but I’m fairly certain now that Eio’s not my brother.

To my surprise, I realize I’m smiling.

After my time with Uncle Will is up, I go out and discover that the rain is coming down in sheets, battering the gardens and making the fishpond overflow. A goldfish has been swept out onto the path, where it flops feebly in an inch of water. I
dart through the rain and scoop it up, then toss it back into the pond.

Clarence and Mick are in the courtyard, wearing yellow ponchos and picking up the remnants of last night’s party. Bits of uneaten fruit, napkins, and dropped silverware litter the ground, mixed with leaves and branches blown down by the storm. I bow my head against the rain and hurry past them, glad the task didn’t fall to me. By the time I reach my house, I’m completely soaked.

After I change and dry my hair, I shut the door and spread out on the floor in front of the glass wall facing the jungle. My head is propped on Alai’s side, and his purring vibrates through me. The few patches of sky I can see are colored charcoal with clouds, and the rain shakes the leaves of the trees as roughly as any wind. Though my wall is partially sheltered by the overhang of the roof, wet trails of water still streak the glass. Through them the world outside seems like the other end of a kaleidoscope, multiplied and magnified in an explosion of green and black and brown.

A quiet knock at my door reminds me that I didn’t put my dirty laundry out for Aunt Nénine this morning. I open the door and find her standing with a huge, dripping umbrella in one hand.

“Sorry, Aunt Nénine,” I mutter, racing around my room to pick up everything in need of washing. When I pull my party dress from under the bed, I gape at the mess it’s in. Mud, leaves, and two or three tears are plain evidence of my night out. It hadn’t seemed that bad last night, but then, I was too overwhelmed by what I’d done to really notice.

It’s too late; Aunt Nénine has seen it.

“Pia! What have you done to your beautiful dress?” she gasps, taking it from me and inspecting it with dismay. She slips her finger through a tear and shakes her head. “I can mend it, but it will take several washes to clean.”

“I…” My mind is utterly blank.

“Did you not think, Pia, before running off to the menagerie in this? See what that jaguar’s claws have done?” She clicks her tongue disapprovingly.

“Oh…of course. The menagerie!” I sag with relief and play it as repentance. “I’m sorry, Aunt Nénine. I guess I didn’t think.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she sighs as she shuffles out, my laundry in a sack over her arm.

Once she’s gone and I can relax again, I unfold a section of my map and pore over the Pacific Ocean. My mind devours the names of the islands strewn like Skittles across the blue, but after a while, my thoughts begin to wander.

I retrieve my passionflower from the drawer in my nightstand, where it’s been floating in a shallow dish of water, and set it beside me on the carpet, studying its intricate structure. Few flowers are as complex as the passionflower, and even fewer are more beautiful. I think of the time I held elysia in my hands and decide that it and this blossom are the two most beautiful I’ve ever seen.
The life flower and the passionflower
.

Of course, I can’t look at the flower without thinking of Eio. Of his jade jaguar necklace against his bare chest. Of his jungle-blue eyes.

I wonder again who his father is. I’ve ruled out Uncle Will.
It might not even be an actual scientist; it could be Clarence or Jacques for all I know. I decide I’ll ask Eio next time I see him for a description of his Papi.

The next time I see him.

“When did I decide I was even
going
to see him again, Alai?” The moment I swore I would? Why had I done that? I can’t go back out there. Last night was dangerous enough.…

What are you so afraid of?

Uncle Paolo. Mother. Even Uncle Antonio.

What can they do to you? You, the girl who cannot bleed
.

What
would
they do? Take away what freedom I have? The thought troubles me. I’ve never really looked that closely at the question before. Just what
do
I have that they could even withhold?

It’s not like they’d lock me up or something.

Would they?
I shiver.

As long as I don’t go back into the jungle, I can still think that the possibility is always there. Like hiding the map under my carpet. Even if I left it there, never took it out again, I would still know it was there if I really needed it.

And you are content with that? Content to die of thirst when a glass of water sits within your grasp?

I don’t know!
I don’t know. I turn and bury my face in Alai’s spots. I’ve never been so confused in my life. It was simpler before. Study your biology, Pia. Eat your dinner, Pia. Go to sleep, Pia. Let Uncle Paolo check your pulse and your saliva and your eyes and ears and nose, Pia.

Run, Pia
.

I don’t understand this urge I have to run away. It doesn’t make sense. Over the past few weeks, it has been getting
stronger. Maybe if I hadn’t found that hole in the fence, the feeling would have passed. Maybe it’s just a phase.

Maybe it’s not
.

A new feeling takes hold of me now: guilt. If I’m so committed to my purpose here in Little Cam, then why did I enjoy my brief freedom so much?
You’re not here to run around the rainforest
, I tell myself,
filling your head with wild jungle boys
. Uncle Paolo is right. I’m not ready yet. I’m too undisciplined, too easily distracted. I need to get myself under control.

I want the freedom of the jungle. I want to create someone who is like me. My dreams are tangled around each other like plants vying for the best spot in the sun. They strangle each other in their attempt to get the better of my reason. I
know
which one I truly want—I’ve wanted it all my life. But I’m being overtaken by a new desire, a raging, unpredictable dream that could destroy everything I’ve worked for.

What do I see in that boy, anyway?
I remember the deep loneliness I felt last night at my party and the urge to have someone who understands what it’s like to be eternal. Eio isn’t that person. Can’t ever be that person. He’s just like the rest of them: brief, evanescent. A fire that burns brightly, yes, but a fire that will one day go out.

I remember Clarence talking about his wife, about how she died in a car accident. I remember the pain in his eyes and the tremble in his hands when he spoke of her. I realize I’m terrified—
terrified
—of losing someone that way. I imagine Uncle Antonio or Mother suddenly
gone
, taken from me by a force I will never understand.
Death
.

I shudder.

I may as well shackle my wrist to a bolt of lightning as
attach myself to a mortal. The muscles in my shoulders tense, and I hunch over, face in my hands, staring but not seeing.

But oh…the moment I looked into his blue, blue eyes…it wasn’t like shackling lightning
.

It was like eating it. A bolt of electricity to my stomach.

I thought I left my wild self in the jungle or at least appeased her appetite for a time. But it seems that feeding her only made her hungrier.
Makes
me
hungrier
, I remind myself. The last thing I need is to develop some kind of psychological disorder like schizophrenia.
There is only me, one Pia. Wild Pia and Timid Pia are the same
. But that doesn’t make me feel any less torn. If anything, it confuses me more.

Uncle Paolo tells me that as complicated as DNA or the ecosystem or even a single cell can be, in the end, science makes everything simple. A formula can make sense of the most complicated numbers. There is no
maybe
in science, except in a hypothesis. And you don’t treat hypotheses as truth, you treat them as springboards that launch you into careful analysis, experimentation, and documentation. Only then can you find truth, and once that’s done, then everything is simple again.

Uncle Paolo says that in the end, everything comes down to science. There is nothing that the scientific method cannot solve. We are limited only by the questions we haven’t yet thought to ask. And he has never been wrong before, so there must be truth in what he says. After all, he helped create
me
. If there’s anyone I can trust, it’s Uncle Paolo.

If I go back to the jungle, I’ll be encouraging everything in me that’s most unscientific. Instead of moving toward my goal, I’ll be regressing. I know I’m close to the end. I
must
be. I’ve been training my entire life. Can I really afford to be distracted now?

I run my fingers over my arms, imagining Eio—
no, not Eio
—someone else, another boy, a boy with unbreakable skin like mine. An immortal boy.
Mr. Perfect
.

My mind is made up. I’ll tell Uncle Paolo everything: about Eio and his Ai’oa, about the hole in the fence, even about Wild Pia. Then he will draw some charts, maybe some equations, pull out a psychology book, and explain it all scientifically. Everything will be simple again.

Everything will be just as it was.

L
eaving Alai to sleep, I pick up the dish with the passionflower floating in it and go outside without once glancing at the hole in the fence. A row of heliconias grows outside the kitchen, and I toss the flower behind them, where it will decay and turn into earth.

Then, strong with purpose, I walk through Little Cam looking for Uncle Paolo. He’s always very busy, and no one ever knows where he’ll be at any given time, so I have to search for a while. At last I find him in my lab, wearing his long white coat and latex gloves. Mother is with him, and in her hands is Roosevelt, the immortal rat.

“Pia!” Uncle Paolo seems surprised—and not happy—to see me. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

His greeting makes me pause a moment and glance from him to Mother to Roosevelt with uncertainty. “I want to ask you something.”

“Can it wait? We’re in the middle of an experiment.”

“With Roosevelt?”

His left eyebrow arches sharply. “Obviously.”

“Can I help?” After all, pretty much any experiment run on Roosevelt will eventually be run on me. We have a shared destiny, Roosevelt the rat and I.

“I don’t think that’s a good…” But he stops and seems to reconsider before saying slowly, “On the other hand, maybe you should. After all, it will be you heading up these tests one day. It’s time you got more involved in the actual process. Books and theory can only take you so far. Get a coat and some gloves.”

My confession momentarily forgotten, I set down the dish and practically skip to the small metal cabinet that stores a row of crisp white lab coats. I slip one on, pleased that the arms aren’t too long, and pull on a pair of squeaky latex gloves.

“What’s the experiment?” I ask as I join Uncle Paolo and Mother, who hasn’t stopped frowning at me since I entered the room. I ignore it.

“Care to explain, Sylvia?” Uncle Paolo extends a hand.

Mother sniffs and says, “We’re going to give Roosevelt a taste of elysia.”

A chill runs through me, even though the room has to be over 25 degrees Celsius. As usual, my mind automatically runs the calculations:
25 degrees Celsius times 1.8 plus 32 makes it 77 degrees Fahrenheit
. I shake my head, brushing aside the numbers. I want to be completely alert for this.

“Is that…hasn’t it been done before?” Surely someone’s tested it. But when I stop and think, I can’t recall ever reading of such an experiment in any of the notes on Roosevelt’s medical history. Or in the notes on mine, for that matter.

“It hasn’t,” Uncle Paolo confirms. “And the test is long past due. We’ve tried every kind of disease and dozens of poisons, including curare and the secretion of poison dart frogs. But never elysia.”