Darkest Fear (2 page)

• • •

An hour later my dad was home, the car was loaded, and I climbed in the backseat of his black Escalade next to the laundry basket filled with food. The whole car smelled so good that my mouth tingled with anticipation. But even this, even making my picnic, felt like a bribe. Like, if we do all these nice things for you, then you should do what we want. It made me beyond furious. Ironically,
besides this one huge thing, they were fine—didn't hassle me about homework or grades, liked all my friends, let me borrow the car, didn't micromanage my life.  We could be happy. I tried to be a good daughter, in every way except the one they wanted. Our house could just be calm and happy. Instead of a minefield.

Sudden anger ignited in me, and I wanted to refuse to go, refuse all the fabulous food my mom had made. Stay home alone with my cake. It would devastate her. Both of them. But then I had already devastated them lots of times.

I was quiet on the way to Everglades National Park. My parents tried to chat, tried to be cheerful, but I could swear that my mom seemed disappointed every time she looked at me—my thick dark hair pulled back into a plain ponytail, my ratty Piggly Wiggly T-shirt, my faded cutoff sweatpants that were the most comfortable shorts I owned.

When I was in ninth grade, she had quit telling me how pretty I could be if only I made an effort. Now it was more like subtext every morning when she saw how I had dressed for school that day.

Sometimes I saw cute clothes at the mall or somewhere and was almost drawn to them, but I always stopped myself. I wasn't trying to make myself as unattractive as possible—that was sort of a by-product. But not caring about how I looked was another way to not be her.

The Everglades are in a park, but they're more like a state all by themselves. We'd been coming here to picnic all year round for as long as I could remember. Years ago we came with family friends,
but now it was almost always just the three of us. For a while I had lobbied for someplace air-conditioned, but though I could choose the menu, I could not, apparently, choose the venue.

“Has Jennifer found a dress for the prom?” my mom asked, searching for a relatively safe topic.

I shook my head. “We're going to the mall tomorrow to look again, and then to a movie.”

“I saw my friend Marielena the other day,” Mami said casually. “She said Aldo was doing well . . .”

The hints about finding a nice boy—almost always some son of one of their friends—were so mild compared to the other stuff that it was easy to let them slide. I kept my voice deliberately casual as well. “Oh, good.” I looked out the window as we drove through the familiar park gates. My stomach was starting to knot up. I just wanted to get through this. Later I could go home and lock myself in my room as usual.

Mami was silent, and I saw her and Papi exchange a quick glance.

“Gosh, I'm hungry,” I said, sounding artificial even to myself. “It all smells good.”

Mami forced a smile. “I hope so. I just can't believe my baby is eighteen. You were the most perfect baby . . .”

Only to become a Heartbreaking Disappointment when I turned thirteen.

“Okay,” Papi said, parking the Escalade. “I guess you women want me to carry the basket, eh?”

“Yes,” my mother said, and they smiled at each other, genuine
smiles. Jennifer thought their relationship was so romantic—they were still really nice to each other and truly liked to be together. Her parents hardly talked—her dad practically lived in the little workshop behind their garage, and didn't even come in for meals for days sometimes. The main things her parents still agreed on were that Jennifer had to follow her older sister, Helen, to Columbia; both girls had to spend part of every summer with their family in Israel; and they had already started saving money for their daughters' weddings, so Helen and Jennifer had better come through and the guys must be Jewish.

Helen might be able to accommodate that, but Jennifer was gay, as she'd announced at her bat mitzvah. Mrs. Hirsch had actually fainted, right in front of everyone. I'd never seen anyone faint before.

So on Jennifer's thirteenth birthday, she'd had her bat mitzvah and made her mother faint in public. On my thirteenth birthday, I'd found out that I was a freak, a monster, an abomination. Of course, I hadn't told Jennifer the truth—I'd mumbled something about how my parents wanted me to be less American and more Brazilian, and that they wanted me to promise to follow their weird Brazilian religion. In that context, I was using “Brazilian” as a euphemism, but Jennifer didn't know that. Anyway, it had been a rough year for everyone. And Jennifer and I had started calling each other HD.

“Viv, grab the blanket,
querida
,” said my dad, pulling the basket out. “Aracita, can you bring the cooler?”

“Of course,” my mother said, taking the small cooler from the back of the car.

My dad, Victor, was fifty-one but looked at least ten years younger, as if he were a well-preserved movie star instead of a regional manager for a huge office-supply chain. Without being prejudiced, I could say that he was the handsomest dad out of all my friends' dads. He had thick black hair, just starting to be tinged with a few silver threads, green eyes with long lashes, and a strong, straight nose. When I was little I'd thought he was the most handsome man ever. I mean, objectively, he still was, but now I knew that nothing was that simple.

Mami led the way, I followed, and Papi lugged the basket behind me. We trudged along the hiking path for a good fifteen minutes, trying to avoid the occasional buzzing clouds of gnats and no-seeums. It was almost six in the evening but still eighty-eight degrees and sweltering, becoming only more sweltering as we got farther into the pine trees. My skin was sticky and damp, sweat ran down my temples, and all I wanted to do was take a cool shower. I mean, what was wrong with a nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday? It was air-conditioned. Was it that they wouldn't be able to harangue me if we were surrounded by other people? Even better.

Five minutes more on this trail and we would run into a cypress swamp; if we turned east for a mile, we would come to one of the mangrove stands.

We ignored the clearing with the picnic benches and went instead to a small glade, only about fifteen feet across. It was our
special and secret picnic spot, remarkable because it was flat and root-free, shaded by pines and a few knobby cypresses. All around it trees grew so thickly that the light was dim even at midday. I spread the blanket and hoped to get through most of dinner before everything started.

Fiendishly, they waited till I had my fork poised over a slab of my rich, moist coconut cake, its scent swirling up to my face. I'd been thinking about it all day, fantasizing about just planting my face in it and scarfing it up. Now I was much too full, of course, but by the gods I was going to get this down somehow.

“Dearest,” said Mami, looking strained, “eighteen years ago today, you came into our lives.”

I tried to smile through a mouthful of cake.

The most perfect baby.

“The most perfect baby,” my mom said.

Every time she said this, I wondered if she was comparing the perfect baby me to the current me, which seemed by any standard to be considerably less perfect.

Mami hesitated, then went on. “When you were thirteen, we shared with you the wonder, the beautiful mystery of our kind.”

My throat closed up, the coconut cake turning to a lump of florist's foam in my mouth.

Papi looked serious. He put down his fork and rubbed the back of my neck, which he always did when he wanted to talk seriously to me. “
Querida
, now you are eighteen. You know we've tried so hard to show you the joy in being who you are. What you are.”

The cake moved very slowly down my esophagus, as if I'd swallowed a whole hard-boiled egg. I breathed through my nose, hoping I wouldn't gag.

“I don't want any part of this,” I mumbled, my mouth bone-dry. How many times had I said that? Like a million? “This isn't me.”

Sounding near tears, my mom said, “Of course it's you, Viviana. Of course—”

Papi went on quickly, “But now you are eighteen, and when a haguari child turns eighteen, she or he is given the family book.”

My brain rang with the most awful word I knew: “haguari.” My parents pronounced it “ha-HWA-ree,” but I'd heard friends of theirs say the
g
: “ha-GWA-ree.” It meant “jaguar people.” A bit hysterically, I wished that it meant people who totally, totally loved their British sports cars.

“The family book?” I asked faintly. It was the first I'd heard of it. Could they read the dismay on my face? Of course they could.

As we'd sat there, the sun had gradually sunk below the line of trees, and our little glade was now even more private, deeply in shadow. I wanted to jump up and run into the pine-scented darkness and just keep running. I wanted to leave them forever, and knowing this made me want to die. Do you know how hard it is to feel that the people you love the most can't help destroying you?

“Yes,” said Mami. “It has the history of our people and the history of our family. When you marry, you will continue the book for your children.” She spoke firmly, as if there were no question I would marry and have children—children like me. Like them. Oh,
gods. If only I could hold on until I could go to Seattle. It couldn't come soon enough.

I shook my head. “I've told you every way I know how,” I said tightly. “I understand what you are, but I don't want to be like that. I want to be regular. You can yell at me every day for the rest of my life, but it won't change my mind. I want to be like me.” My face was hard. “I don't want to be like you—I mean . . . the other part. The . . . people part of you is fine. But I'm rejecting the other part.”

“How can you say that?” my mother cried, as if this were a brand-new argument, as if I hadn't already said those exact same words a hundred times. “You haven't even tried—” She stopped abruptly as my dad put a hand on her knee.

“Whatever you decide, our book is in—” Papi began firmly, but his words were drowned out by a sudden, startlingly loud growl that made us all jump. An animal growl, coming from . . . behind the trees? In the darkness there? Instantly my parents were on their feet, and my mother grabbed my arm and hauled me to mine.

“What's that?” I asked, peering tensely through trees. A wild dog? Something big. Maybe even a Florida panther? They weren't supposed to be in this area. My blood had turned icy with the sound, and the little hairs on my arms were standing up. There was another growl from the woods, sounding like the snarl of a circus cat when the trainer pokes it with a stick.

And then . . .

“Oh, my gods,” I muttered, appalled, wanting to look away. My father had started to change, right there in front of me. It was
amazingly fast, like a sped-up film. I'd seen it happen only once before, on my thirteenth birthday, and it had been horrifying. Since then I'd seen him in his other form just a couple of times, and never on purpose.

His other form. His jaguar form.

He was already on all fours, his clothes slipping off, one shirtsleeve ripping. His face had broadened, his jaw jutting forward, and thick dark fur was covering his tan skin. Bones shifted and moved; muscles swelled; limbs elongated; his spine bent and lengthened. It was repulsive, disgusting. Grotesque.

From deep in his throat an answering snarl—raw, angry, full of menace—made me suck in my breath. His teeth were long and knifelike and—

“Vivi!” My mother's voice was harsh, her grip on my arm painful. “Go! Run!” She pushed me away, toward the edge of the clearing.

I stared at her. “What?”

“Run! Get out of here!” Now her face too was broadening, starting to transform, her shoulders hunching, her spine curving down sharply. I didn't want to see this. What was happening?

“Run!” she said again, but it came out as a half roar. I burst into tears, turned, and ran.

• • •

I'd been coming to this park my whole life, had spent countless sweaty hours on the hiking trails, canoeing through the swamps, watching baby alligators from viewing decks above the waterlogged, sun-soaked fields of sedge grass.

Now I ran blindly, my panicked brain barely registering that I had left the trail and was crashing through the woods. Broken twigs jabbed my feet, scratched my arms and face, and still I plunged forward. What was happening, what was going on, should I call for help—?

Another furious, high-pitched roar wove its way through the trees to my ears, making my heart pump harder and my stomach twist in fear. Was it coming after me? I refused to look behind me. Didn't want to know.

And then, with no warning, it began to happen, the way I'd always feared it would: The world shifted in my eyes, details becoming more precise, some colors fading, some enhanced. My running feet sounded like bricks crushing the leaves on the forest floor, the snap of twigs like rifle shots echoing in my ears.

My running became awkward, unbalanced as my legs got tangled in my shorts. I fell, my hands outstretched, and then I was racked with sudden pain that made me crumple up and cry out. My joints were bending unnaturally, dislocating, the bones lengthening horribly. My face was splitting, my jaw unhinging; my skull was in a vise. Every muscle screamed, its fibers being split and stretched. My clothes, annoyingly in the way, fell off or ripped.

Curl up pant pant pain

Curl up small

Muscles hurt close eyes smell dirt smell pine smell me animal me my fur

Pain breathe in slow shallow

Smell dirt smell fear

Open my eyes the pain is fading

Sun down dark but shapes outlines see quite well see everything

Trees and leaves I see lines depth land picked out so sharp

Strong scents fill my nose my mouth pine cypress stagnant water thick and green