Chapter Text
Dear Farah,
I still can’t stop thinking about
I can’t sleep when
I can’t talk to
Never mind. I’ll try tomorrow.
Dear Farah,
Nico told me Beatriz left today. I haven’t seen her since the party. I finished setting up the cameras without her, so she didn’t need to come.
I hope she has a great time with her great dad who actually loves her and cares about her and wants her to spend real actual time with her instead of
Maybe I should stop writing for a while.
Sometimes I think about where I’d be if you hadn’t fixed the soul-swapping machine. Or even before that, if I hadn’t gone looking for answers. It’s not hard. I’d be just where I’d been for the past sixteen years: inside, bored out of my mind, waiting for something, anything, to happen. I used to wish that tsunami would come, did you know that? I thought it would at least be something new. I thought, if the mansion was flooded, then you’d have to let me go outside. See a new street. Sleep in a new bed, even. The luxury.
Do you remember when I tried sleeping on the couch and Dad found me? Do you remember, he thought I was sick and insisted on sitting with me the rest of the night? It was the first time he’d been in the same room as me for more than ten minutes since my mom died. You got mad at me later for fooling the thermometer, but I would have faked the plague for that. I would have faked anything, for ten more minutes of his time.
He said once that I reminded him of Mom. On my thirteenth birthday. I don’t know who was more surprised that he’d walked in on the birthday cake, us or him - I don’t think he even knew it was my birthday. His whole face lit up when he walked in, and even then, even after so many years, I thought it might be for me - but then he adjusted to the glare and whatever happiness he’d had was gone.
“You look so much like her,” he said, instead of answering whether he wanted cake. “You have her smile. She used to…”
And then he left. Because he always left. He couldn’t even make it through a full sentence to me. That’s the day I decided I had to know what happened. I had to know what had wrecked him so badly that he still saw her everywhere, instead of seeing me.
I know he’s dead, and I should be sad, and I am sad, he’s my dad, but - but I just feel so angry with him, all the time. This isn’t fair. If he just hated me, it would be easier, but then to find out everything he did to protect me - burying that map, building a death maze, actually dying - all of that, all that crazy conspiracy bullshit, when he could have just talked to me - what kind of dad would rather build a death maze than have one conversation with his daughter –
He didn’t have to die –
But he did die. That’s the worst part. He was always going to die. And for all he ignored me, for all he barely cared I existed, he was always going to die for me.
He didn’t care enough to give me the truth, but he cared enough to die.
What am I supposed to do with that?
Farah, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I don’t think I can pretend I’m okay when
I don’t know how to
Sometimes I wish you’d just left me in the corgi. There are worse things in the world than eating rats.
Dear Farah
Dear Dad
Dear Farah
Dear Farah,
Tonight after I hadn’t come out of my room in three days, Frank barged in with a chess set and wouldn’t leave until I made one move. And then he made a move so egregiously bad that I had to make another move, just to show him how bad it was. And then he made an even worse choice, so obviously I couldn’t let that stand, either. Long story short, I guess he tricked me into playing a whole game. While we were playing, somehow some salsa showed up on the bed, so I guess I got tricked into that, too.
And then I guess after that it didn’t seem too bad to come out of the room and eat the rest of dinner with the guys. I used to hate that they didn’t say much, but it was kind of nice today. I didn’t even feel like going back to bed after. Mostly, at least.
So I took a shower, carefully avoiding the stairs down to the lab, and then I came back to the kitchen to find the guys all kind of standing around nudging each other and muttering uneasily. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Do you want brownies?” said Nico. “I think she wants brownies. Arno, can you make brownies?”
“We’re out of brownie mix,” said Arno.
Frank stepped in front of both of them and said, “The internet’s back.”
He told me that the cameras Beatriz had finished setting up without me caught one of the poachers, so whatever department was blocking the cable repairs was happy they finally came out and fixed things. The guys almost have your VPNs up and running. They said we should be able to video chat you as soon as tomorrow morning.
It feels unreal that this might actually all be over.
Until tomorrow, I guess,
Lydia
Dear Farah,
Thank you.
Love,
Lydia
Dear Farah,
I guess I don’t have to keep writing these anymore if I can actually text you. That’s probably good. I think if you read these, you would probably explode. Or make something else explode. Or both.
But I thought I’d do one more, for old time’s sake. It’s been a while, after all - nearly a month - and a lot has changed. Plus, soon there will be even less point, because you’ll be here in person! I can’t believe you’re actually coming –
But we’ll get there.
Anyway, after I talked to you, I went and cried, finally, and then I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on grieving, less because they were helpful than because I actually could, and then I wrote a few more letters that no one will ever, ever see, and then things started feeling a little more bearable. But it still felt like there were more things that I had to do.
So the next day, I went down to the lab. All year, I’ve been piling up all my dad’s junk - everything I can’t strip for parts that I couldn’t quite bear to throw out. I don’t know if it was conscious or unconscious, but I guess the whole time, I was saving it for something like this. I called the guys down, and they helped me cart it all out and over to the clearing where they’d done the Carnival party what felt like a lifetime ago. Some of the streamers were still up. Nico surreptitiously took down a few forgotten balloons. We piled everything on the platform they’d built in the middle. There was more of it than I thought, a whole bonfire’s worth. I guess it’s fitting. There was more to my dad than I thought, too.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arno asked.
I was, like, ninety percent sure. Maybe eighty-five. I wasn’t entirely confident the pit we’d dug around the platform was good enough to stop the fire from leaping over and racing through the jungle. But I couldn’t let him go without some kind of funeral.
I stepped up, lit the match, and dropped it in.
Things were better after that. Not better in that everything was fine again, but just more… stable, somehow. Like part of me had been floating in Puget Sound all this time, and had just now come to shore. It’s still a pretty crappy shore, with a lot of washed-up wreckage I’ve been ignoring for maybe, like, my whole life, but I’m not drowning anymore. That’s somewhere to start.
The next week, when I was feeling like enough of myself to start bothering the guys about going outside, we went down to the store and ran into Nina. She scolded me for disappearing for about five seconds and then launched into everything new she’d just learned about sea turtles. So that was alright. A few days later, she showed up outside after school, without my even inviting her. Of course I let her in right away. She’s teaching me how to play Uno with the actual correct rules. She’s very good at it.
It took me a few visits to work up to it, but I finally managed to ask her if she’d heard anything from Beatriz.
“Why?” said Nina, dabbing a spot of orange nail polish on Arno’s thumb.
“Why not?” I said.
Nina shrugged, changing the orange dot (I think it was the sun?) into more of a blob. “She thinks you’re mad at her because you didn’t say goodbye. She said she didn’t care, but she was sad about it. I was sad, too. I miss her. Do you think they have sea turtles in Mexico?”
I should have expected that, but it still hurt. “Maybe not in Guadalajara,” I said. “She’ll have to take a trip.”
“Then she should come back and see us!” said Nina. “She promised she would.”
I didn’t know if I was allowed to write her a letter - or text, I guess, since I can do that now - so instead I said, “If she comes back, tell her to come see me, too. I - I want to apologize. I should have said goodbye.”
Nina nodded, which meant there was about a seventy percent chance she would forget. I wished things had turned out differently. Sometimes, late at night, I still caught myself watching out the window for fire beetles. But Mexico is huge, and I didn’t think I would ever see her again.
(Sorry, I know all the suspense is super unnecessary since I just called you and screamed about it for probably like four hours, but I’m a teenager, okay? I can’t help it.)
A couple days later, I couldn’t sleep. I’d been feeling restless all day, and though I’d kept the guys up later than usual already, I couldn’t stop tossing and turning. Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I did something I haven’t done for ages: I slid open the window and escaped out into the jungle.
Without really planning it, I ended up where I should have known I would: the clearing where it all began, where the jaguar had been spotted and the internet had first gone down. My lightning rod tower was still there, though disconnected from power and starting to rust. The cameras still looked brand-new. I checked the mounting, which was holding strong, since Beatriz had designed it. I hadn’t tried to watch any of the footage. If anyone had actually seen a jaguar, I thought they would have told me about it by now.
The thick night air settled me, somehow. I’d forgotten how alive the jungle was even at night, with a full symphony of owls, crickets, beetles, lizards, and whatever else crept unseen through the underbrush. I clicked off my flashlight and stood for a minute, letting it all wash over me.
A twig snapped behind me.
I whirled around with the flashlight, praying the jaguar hadn’t shown up after all, but the beam fell upon a familiar face. “Ow,” said Beatriz, holding up her hands. “It’s just me.”
I lowered the flashlight. Somehow my heart was beating faster than when I’d thought I was about to get eaten by a giant cat. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
Beatriz gestured at the cameras. “I heard you put them up without me. Had to make sure you didn’t mess it up.”
“And?”
“Bad, obviously. I had to fix all of them. Do you even know how screwdrivers work?”
“No,” I said. “That’s what you were for.”
The past tense slipped out automatically, tripping us both up. I couldn’t tell how mad she was at me; I could barely see her face. It felt like no time had passed and like I was several years older. She’d hugged me.
I said, “I’m sorry. I should have said goodbye.”
She tilted her head up to the sky, and I thought she might say something, or maybe yell at me, but instead she just sighed. She walked off to my favorite tree, the one with the bend low to the ground where you could nestle for a while. Because she hadn’t explicitly told me to go away yet, I followed her. We sat on the same branch, legs kicking just above the ground. The last time I’d seen her, we’d sat shoulder to shoulder. Tonight, even an eight inch gap felt like intruding.
“How is Mexico?” I asked.
“Good,” she said.
“And your dad?”
“He’s good.”
I was reminded of the first conversations we’d ever had. At least she wasn’t outright yelling.
“You know, you don’t owe me anything,” she said, turning abruptly sideways. “You didn’t have to say anything. Whatever you thought was happening, it never mattered. You don’t live here, either. You’re just here till your rich dad calls you back to your perfect American life in your giant mansion with your rhino and your bodyguard –”
I said, “My dad’s dead.”
It rang out through the forest, like I’d screamed it, instead of just saying it. Maybe I had. Beatriz had cut off. Even the crickets seemed to have stopped.
I said, “It’s my fault.”
I said, “I went looking for answers, and I got myself kidnapped, and he died trying to save me.”
I said, “But if he’d just talked to me, he wouldn’t be dead. If he’d ever stopped looking back at things he couldn’t change, he might have been able to change the future. I loved him, and I miss him, but I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to be so focused on the past that I miss what’s happening now. I want the people I love to know that I love them before it’s too late.”
I reached up and wiped my eyes. Once I’d started talking, I hadn’t been able to stop. If Dad’s funeral had saved me from drowning, this was like coughing up the water left inside.
“I didn’t realize,” I said, “for a long time, how much stuff I had to deal with, about my dad. I’m sorry, because I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. You’re right. You don’t owe me anything. But whatever happened - it still mattered. At least to me.”
The water all seemed to be gone, or at least, I didn’t have words left for it. The crickets had started back up again. Beatriz was so quiet I started to worry she’d just left. I was about to give up, apologize again, and leave myself.
Then she grabbed my hand.
“Look!” she hissed, pointing into the clearing.
I obediently turned my head. Her grip was so tight, I could feel her nails cutting into my wrist. It was pitch dark in front of us; I had no idea what she’d been pointing at.
And then the moon slid out from behind a cloud, and light reflected from a pair of golden eyes. I gasped as the sleek form of a jaguar slunk out from behind a bush. “Is that –”
“Shhh!” said Beatriz, squeezing my hand even more tightly. I clutched hers back. The jaguar stalked across the clearing, its huge paws noiseless on the underbrush. Muscles rippled across its back. Its tail twitched as its head swung back and forth, stalking some unseen prey.
I’d never seen a jaguar in real life before - Dad stayed away from big cats - and definitely not this close. I’d never imagined anything so powerful could move so gracefully. It was the most beautiful animal I’d ever seen, and it could rip my throat out in an instant. Not to be melodramatic, but what better metaphor is there for life?
The jaguar padded past us without stopping, vanishing back into the jungle. Beatriz and I let out a long breath at the same time. “That –” I said. “That was –”
Beatriz leaned over and kissed me.
I thought seeing the jaguar was the best thing that could possibly happen to me, but with that kiss, it was like a whole new universe of best things unfolded. She was wearing Nina’s green apple chapstick but underneath she smelled like she always did, like rain in the jungle, like mystery and promise. If the jaguar had been right in front of us, I don’t think either of us would have noticed. Farah, I don’t know what your first kiss was like, but I hope it was half as good as this.
Beatriz pulled back first. We’d slid together, hips touching and arms all tangled up, and she leaned into me, head not quite resting on my shoulder. “You’re right,” she said, which were not words I ever thought I’d hear from her mouth. “It mattered to me, too."
There wasn’t much more that needed to be said after that. We stayed out for a few more minutes or hours, not talking or kissing, just enjoying the company. I know she’s not back for long, and she knows I’m going back to Seattle soon, but that’s not the point. Like I told her, things don’t have to last forever to matter. Sometimes that makes them even more special.
So I guess, in the end, exile wasn’t too bad. I learned how to make friendship bracelets and tamales and how not to make ceviche (sorry, Arno). I had my first gender crisis and my first kiss. I grew an inch. I won about fifty thousand games of chess.
And I grieved. Or started to, at least. The super accurate YouTube videos I’ve been watching tell me it’s a process with lots of ups and downs. But you have to start somewhere, and I guess I’m starting in Belize.
I still miss you like crazy. I can’t wait till you come visit and I can show you the store and the cameras and whatever video got captured of the jaguar. But I’ll be okay without you, too. Like Dirk always says, I feel like I’m finally taking control of my life.
I love you so much, Farah. See you soon.
Lydia