The Understory (34 page)

Angela sighed, and mid-breath, she said, “I was up early making some last minute arrangements for some other travelers, and as I was surfing around a few websites, I saw . . . Apparently, there’s been a surge in Yellow Fever cases, and a couple of months ago, they started requiring proof of—”

“Okay,” Story said. “Money’s no object, Angela. We have to get someone over here to give us whatever stupid shots we need,” she said, sounding a little crazed as her voice drifted off, “or maybe they could meet us at the airport.”

Angela let out a sorry, but shocked, laugh. “Story. The shots are given over a three-day period. You can’t just—”

“
Can’t
is no longer part of my vocabulary!” Story exploded. Hans, aware that something was terribly wrong, tried to approach Story, but she swatted him away with her flashlight.

“I know you’re on some sort of deadline, but you’ll have to reschedule. You can still get there in a few days—”

“You don’t understand! It has to be today!” Story hit herself in the forehead with her phone for a second, and then began to retreat to familiar territory. Her voice softened. “Oh my God. It’s true.”

“Story?” Angela matched Story’s now quiet voice.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

“No one should ever count on me.” By now, the shadows inside the house appeared on the front steps in the form of two real people Story had grown to love. Their small yellowed lights glowed strong, and the beauty of the two of them standing side by side was too much to bear. She averted her gaze and conjured up the scene she’d carried inside her since accepting her calling.
Happy Birthday, Cooper. You did it. You found the treasure.

Story figured this would be the time when most people would cry. She waited for tears, or even one tear, to emerge, but no tears came.
Of course
.

“Story?” Cooper called from the dark morning air. He wore a light blue button-down shirt, dressy compared to his usual T-shirts. “Where are the camera guys?” he said, patting his chest. “Mom said this would look good on film. What’dya think?”

Forcing a smile, Story thought about the local Brazilians she’d hired to be fake cameramen, and all of the other details she’d arranged to maintain her fake documentary. “You look great, Coop. Happy birthday.”

He didn’t answer, but shook his head. “Nope. Not yet.” And Story knew, for Cooper, only one thing would make his birthday official.

By now, Hans had approached Story’s side, and the two of them looked at Claire, deflated, standing on her porch. “What’s wrong?” was what she asked, but it was a rhetorical question. It didn’t matter that Story had been weaving a lie, and it didn’t matter that her fake cameramen would wait all afternoon at the Manaus airport, thinking they’d gotten the time wrong. All that mattered to Claire was that her son was about to be heartbroken. She instinctively put her arm around Cooper.

Story could not utter a sound. Breathing was enough of a difficulty, so Hans spoke for her. “There’s been some sort of . . . complication,” he said.

Before anyone could explain, Cooper took one last look at Story, then turned around and walked through the entryway and up the stairs. Claire followed close behind.

Why is he not yelling? Or running?
With her feet planted firmly on the sidewalk, Story was stuck, frozen with shame. She knew she needed to talk to him, apologize, something, but at that moment, Story felt an overwhelming need to be near the treasure box. She knew it was just a box made of wood—four sides, a top and bottom—but she let her mind drift to a place of hope.
When I hold it near me, this mess will be erased
, she thought.
When I hold it near me, Cooper’s dream will survive.

With Hans trailing behind her, she went to her trunk and lifted it into her arms.

“Story . . .” Hans said, but she walked into the Paynes’ house alone, carrying the box that was never supposed to be there. Not knowing what to do next, she stopped right inside the door, with just enough time for reality to set in. There would be no rainforest, so there would be no treasure, and there would be no magic. And contrary to what Cooper thought, he would, indeed, turn nine. Without the treasure box. Without magic. Without his father.

Story heard Claire, upstairs, banging on Cooper’s door, and she knew she should go upstairs and talk to him, but even though it didn’t matter anymore, Story was not ready for him to see the treasure box—she would put it in the coat closet until she could take her time, and explain in her own way. But suddenly, Cooper came bounding down the stairs, flashlight in one hand. In the other was something she couldn’t make out. Not wanting him to see the box yet, she scooted through the kitchen, box in tow, and raced down the hallway and into David Payne’s office. It was dark, so she put the box down on top of something and slipped out before Cooper could see her.

“Cooper! Stop a minute,” Claire said, following Cooper, who had gotten something out of a kitchen drawer and was headed back toward the front door.

“Leave me alone, please.” His voice oozed with conviction, and he moved like a boy on a mission—a young man on a mission.

“Stop a minute, Coop. What are you doing?!” Claire yelled ahead, trying to catch up with him. Story followed Claire. At least they hadn’t turned on her yet.

As the three of them watched Cooper run out the front door, toward a sky still filled with a few twinkling stars, Hans touched Claire’s arm. “Let him go, Claire,” he said. “Give him a minute.”

Story remembered what Cooper said to Sonny the bird.
If it doesn’t happen, I’m gonna do it.

Fearing he had a giant butcher knife to his throat, Story tried to get past Hans, who was holding the women back. “Let him get some air, ladies,” Hans said.

Claire and Story sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, and neither could look at the other. Hans stared at them both, and smiled, until, suddenly, he turned his head and looked out the front door. “Um,” he said, with growing nervousness, “he doesn’t need any more air.” And then Hans tore outside.

Claire and Story followed Hans, and the three of them stood on the sidewalk, watching Cooper’s satisfied eyes widen as flames rose higher and higher. On the cement below was a book, aflame. Smoke billowed up from the ground, but in the patches of clear air, a few words on the cover were still visible:
Once
,
Moonflower
, and
Baxter
held strong for a few seconds, then disappeared with the smoke, drifting away into the black horizon.

No one knew what to say, so Hans whispered, “At least he didn’t do it upstairs.”

Story couldn’t stand it any longer, so she walked closer to Cooper and his fire. “I’m so sorry, Cooper.”

But he put out his hand, keeping her back. “Let it burn. It’s a kids’ book anyway.”

Feeling like a fraction of a person, Story looked at Cooper, who looked older—like he’d skipped nine, and moved on to ten or eleven.

Satisfied that the book was thoroughly burned, Cooper said, “I need to talk to someone,” and walked back in the house as the Phoenix sun began to wake up.

T
here are some journeys in life that seem longer than others, regardless of distance. For Story Easton, her longest journey began at a cracked piece of cement in front of Cooper Payne’s house, and ended when she arrived in David Payne’s office.

On his way to ask Sonny the bird why the world was a magic-less piece of shit, Cooper saw something that made him stop, and crouch down. Something that actually made him smile.

By the time Story, Hans, and Claire came through the doorway, Cooper already had his hands on it. And within seconds of touching it, the office light came on and the electrical hum of the house returned. With the renewed light, the three of them found themselves entranced by the wonder in progress. The treasure box looked even more ornate and beautiful than it had before, but when Story glanced at the wall behind the treasure box, she knew she was witnessing something beyond her control.

Claire’s jaw dropped when she saw it. “Oh my God, Coop,” she said in a soft, astonished voice, looking at what used to be a blank wall, but had been turned into a floor-to-ceiling, three-dimensional rainforest. “This must have taken . . .” But her voice trailed off in amazement as she took it all in.

While his mother had packed the night before, Cooper had built his very own rainforest out of paper. He’d rummaged through the closet in his dad’s office, piling its contents in the center of the office floor. One of the boxes had contained art supplies, so Cooper pulled out a multi-colored package of construction paper and created a floor-to-ceiling snapshot of the rainforest, 3-D style, so if he closed his eyes, he could reach out and feel the trunk of a kapok tree, the current of a forest stream, the fur of a giant sloth—things he wanted Sonny to see.

And so the night before the big trip, Cooper set out to rebuild the empty space. He first looked down at the hardwood, wondering if he should begin there, where the forest floor would grow, but then he looked up toward the textured ceiling, where the canopy would try to break free.
Where do I begin?
he wanted to ask his dad, but with Sonny silent, he remembered what his dad would say—
begin at the beginning—
his way of reminding Cooper to trust his instinct. Cooper decided the rainforest had no real beginning or end, but was more of a circle, each layer regenerating and flowing into the next, just as Mrs. Stewart had explained at school.

Cooper began with the most important layer of the rainforest, the understory, where nearly all forest life existed. He cut out tree branches from brown paper, then several leaves from a big piece of green construction paper, placing small, rolled-up pieces of tape to the backs of all of them, and stuck them on the wall. He then drew and cut out several animals—a sloth, a snake, a capybara, a jaguar, and several rainbow-colored birds—and placed them in cozy homes all over the forest-covered wall. Some were close together, some farther apart, but he knew they all depended on each other.

When he realized what was missing, Cooper fashioned a giant kapok tree by rolling gray paper into a big tube, and once it was fixed to the wall, he added droopy fern-like branches that projected from the wall, ready to tap a passerby on the shoulder. Cooper looked down at the base of the kapok tree, imagining a magic treasure box obscured by buttress roots and leaves, but as he stared at the exposed hardwood floor, it was a glaring reminder of what he needed to find. And he knew he had only twenty-four hours. Taking in the rainforest view in front of him, he vowed not to turn nine without finding it. He vowed to do his very best. He vowed to be a rainforest superhero.

Suddenly, mid-masterpiece, the room turned black. Cooper sat for a moment to formulate a plan, but not once did it occur to him to leave his forest unfinished, so in the dark, he felt his away around his dad’s desk until he found it—a long, heavy, and silver grown-up flashlight.

Finally, with his father’s light propped up on a nearby chair, Cooper finished a meandering river and a forest floor tangled with vines, so he could move on to the canopy. He then created the heavenly emergents, the few trees tall and robust enough to break through the canopy’s threshold and reach for the sun. Armed with his flashlight in one hand, he stepped onto the desk chair and reached for the ceiling. He wasn’t tall enough to reach it, but he was old enough to know how it felt to try, and he used his last few minutes to cut a circle out of yellow paper. He placed it on the wall, as high as he could reach, using extra tape to ensure it would hold strong if it should try to shine.

And as his eyelids grew droopy, Cooper turned off the flashlight and real nighttime fell upon a paper forest and a talking bird.