Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Read online

  The photo albums on the coffee table. Before I came along, he and Mom traveled everywhere. Europe. South America. They took a zillion pictures, half of them starring their thumbs in addition to the scenery. They’d insisted on printing them out. Weird, but okay. That way, they could look at them whenever they wanted.

  Mom left before I turned two. Just disappeared. But Dad still kept the photos out like that. Pored over them every night after I went to bed, when he thought I wouldn’t know. I sat on the stairs and watched him do that more than once.

  I leafed through them myself. Not the first time I’d done it. I mean, they had all these adventures I would never have. Not with Dad in such a bad way. If he died, I had nowhere to go. No relatives. No chance in hell of finding my mom, and no way I would go live with her even if she begged me to. I was sixteen. I’d end up in foster care and I’d rot there until I turned eighteen. No healthy family would ever take me in.

  Dad had put all of his affairs in order. We’d never been rolling in the dough, so most all our money had been spent on treatment. The one time Dad second-guessed doing that, I’d insisted. He could hardly argue. After he passed—well, I didn’t want to think about what would happen.

  I opened the album to the pages with the pics taken from the train ride between Aguas Caliente and Ollantaytambo. Rainforest all around. The roiling waters of the Urubamba River. The high peaks of the Andes, wisps of cloud at their crowns. A pic from somewhere else—Cusco. Mom and Dad, really young, with a local shaman in his ceremonial wear. A light gray hat with long earflaps that had blue and pink and green pom-poms hanging from them. A sort of poncho, the same color, with the red lines woven into it near the trim.

  My parents met on that trip. They’d spent three months in Peru. Hiked the Inca Trail. Three days. Four nights. Up and down mountains and through the famous Sun Gate before heading to the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu.

  Upstairs, the floorboards creaked. Even with my headphones on, I heard it. Call it an adaptive instinct. Dad was on his way down.

  He’d lost the blazer and dress shirt and pulled on a Texans football jersey. His bare toes grabbed onto the edges of the stairs. He white-knuckled the stair rail.

  He stopped half-way and sat down. “We should talk.”

  “We are talking.”

  “About what to do.”

  I looked at him. Didn’t want to say anything obvious.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “There’s nothing left for us here.”

  I averted my gaze. It landed on the ruined wood of the china hutch. It’d gotten soaked. Water balloon fight.

  “There’ll be a lot of bad memories, Leah. Soon.”

  I set the album on the table. Rested my elbows on my knees. “I’ll take care of you.”

  He nodded once, slowly. “I know you want to.”

  “I will.”

  “So what’s the difference whether you take care of me here or someplace else?”

  As long as he got that I wouldn’t leave him. I could breathe. I drew air into my lungs. It felt like the first time today. “Where would we go?”

  He pointed at the album. “What were you looking at?”

  “Peru.”

  “Then we should go to Peru.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I mean, what—you just pick somewhere out of thin air?”

  “Not out of air,” he said. “I have reasons. Your looking at those pictures today was the coincidence.”

  “What reasons?”

  “The doctor said I hopefully have a month.”

  I closed my eyes. Snapped them open again. Tried to act as normal as I could.

  “It’s not okay, Leah. I know. But that’s the time I have left, and I don’t want to wait for the inevitable. I want to do something. I can’t do it by myself. I need your help. Not just taking care of me.”

  “Like what?”

  “What do you know about what’s going on in Peru?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t thought about it much.”

  In fact, I hadn’t considered it at all. There was plenty going on here. I had my hands so full I needed more hands.

  “Find out what you can.” He pushed to his feet, holding tight to the rail, and made his way one careful step at a time to the bottom of the staircase and then into the kitchen for dinner.

  After soup, Dad went back to bed. I followed him upstairs and stepped into my own room. I left the door cracked. Otherwise, if Dad called for me and he couldn’t raise his voice loud enough, I might not hear him.

  The laundry I’d meant to do this afternoon stared back at me from its overflowing basket beneath the window. The blinds were open. This morning the sun had filtered in through the sides of them. It had been irrepressible. Like a good omen.

  Screw omens.

  I yanked the blinds closed. Grabbed my tablet and eased onto my neatly made bed. Denim duvet. Pink, frilly pillows with black skulls and crossbones embroidered on them. I pulled my phone from my pocket and threw it on the night table next to the soda can emptied via last night’s thirstiness and my English book and my Geometry book and the homework assignments due in two days. No idea how I could possibly focus on any of it.

  Screw homework.

  I hit up the Google Gods for answers to his question about Peru. I didn’t think he’d meant the presidential election or the people held up at gunpoint near the Lima airport. Or that the Urubamba had flooded and washed out a bridge on the road between Cusco and Ollantaytambo and the flooding killed thirty-four people before the waters receded. I read it all anyway. In case it was important.

  My phone chimed. Incoming text from the BFF. She’d mentioned my name to Vince real casual-like, and Vince acted like he knew who I was. A positive sign.

  I texted back. ! and Thx.

  The last time I’d seen Vince, he’d had on a cologne I didn’t recognize. Oh. My. God. It made me swoon just remembering the smell of it. And he knew how to wear it, too. Not like a sledgehammer, like most guys.

  And she said How did it go today with your dad?

  And I couldn’t answer that right now.

  He’d told me without saying it one hundred percent out loud that he wanted to die in a foreign country. Because the doctor told me I hopefully have a month meant Very Bad Things. Soon.

  I didn’t want to go. If we didn’t go, nothing bad would happen. Magical thinking of the worst kind.

  I couldn’t imagine the world without him. I couldn’t imagine my world without him. Panic started to sting. Like fire ants had set up shop in my belly. I felt like I could boot any second. Like I could vomit gallons of poison.

  I willed the urge into submission. If I threw up, Dad would hear. He would worry. He would try to get out of bed.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Got back to work.

  The Peru search informed me that there was this thing called The Organization for the Preservation of the Amazon Rainforest & Indigenous Culture with a staff of twenty-five and that five of them had been found shot to death. The report said they’d been on an activist mission with some shamans in the rainforest. The shamans were dead too. All but one of them.

  They were presumed killed by a group of local fighters on the payroll of an unnamed group that had been conducting mining operations in the area. The article didn’t say what for. Just assumed that the shooters tried to clear out the activists—and the objections to the land deal—in one fell swoop.

  My phone chimed again. BFF Amber. ???

  I sighed. Texted back. Bad news.

  She wrote ☹.

  I pushed the phone away. Set the computer on the floor. Kicked off my boots so hard my big toe poked a hole through the end of my sock, and curled up under the covers. Sleep swallowed me up.

  In the morning, I found Dad downstairs, drinking out of the world’s biggest mug and making a packing list. Or a bucket list. Same difference.

  I poured myself a cup of sugar and added a little coffee to it.

  “Did y
ou see?” he asked.

  “About the shamans?”

  He nodded.

  I slid into the chair opposite him and leaned on the table. “You said you wanted to do something. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to find that missing shaman,” he said.

  “Why? I mean, if it’s because he’s missing, then I get why.”

  “It’s more than that, Leah. The shaman who’s missing? He’s the one in the picture. From the album.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way,” he said.

  “He’s your friend and you’re worried about him.”

  “Yes.”

  He’d bought plane tickets already. He didn’t tell me how much they cost, but I looked it up online. Twelve hundred dollars and change apiece. Mortgage money? Electric bill? Grocery bill? Not anymore.

  While I packed, Dad wrote a letter to the school to let them know I would be absent for a couple of weeks. Translation, given his disease schedule: potentially forever. He said I had the rest of the day to spend with my friends.

  I objected. He insisted.

  I went to the coffee place around the corner, where the owner didn’t care that I had a sick family member because she did, too. I ordered a mocha with an extra shot and extra whipped cream. Took my tablet and did some more research about that indigenous organization.

  Its mission statement? Restoring permaculture, reforestation, hosting a traditional healing center, and keeping a living library of indigenous plants.

  The coffee shop door opened. The bell above it rang.

  Amber walked in. She ordered at the counter and then came over. She had on a white button-down shirt with a white bowtie, black pinstriped trousers, and black and white oxfords. A dandy dandy.

  “Your dad called and told me you’d be here.”

  “He would totally do that.”

  “He said y’all are leaving. Why didn’t you let me know yourself? Are you depressed about it?”

  “Of course I’m depressed.” I sipped my mocha. “You would be, too.”

  “I have news that’ll cheer you up. Well, kind of.”

  “Go on.”

  She straightened her bowtie, which wasn’t the least bit crooked. “Vince wants to hang out.”

  The plane tickets were for tomorrow afternoon. Which meant I had no time to meet Vince unless it happened today. Like right now.

  “That is so wrong,” I said. “I look awful.” Jeans. T-shirt. I mean, it was black and therefore unsurprising to anyone who knew me and inoffensive to my self-image. But I had on no makeup.

  “Well, your hair has a certain je ne sais quoi.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s called barely brushed.”

  “But you always look like that,” Amber said. “Lately, anyway.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “Stop jumping to conclusions, Leah. It’s not going to happen today. I just wanted you to have something to look forward to. You know, for whenever you get back.”

  “Oh.” Relief. And disappointment. But I got to spend the rest of the day with Amber, which made up for it a little. Okay, a lot.

  Amber understood everything. About Vince. About my hair. About my dad being sick. Her mom was sick, too. We freaks with sick families? We stuck together.

  Airport security was a bitch even more than usual. TSA officials with low pay grades, bad attitudes, and the new and improved automatic rifles since the last attempted terror attack. A handful of sick people singled out for special searches, my father included. He came out of the room where they took him unsteady on his feet.

  He waved off the whole thing while I gritted my teeth, unwilling even to call them assholes until we got more than fifty yards down the concourse. The newest sound equipment picks up every damned thing. I fiddled with my backpack instead.

  Then a couple of hours to Miami, a layover, an overnight flight to Lima, extra scrutiny through customs, and a connecting hop to Cusco. We didn’t descend into Cusco so much as the ground seemed to rise toward us all of a sudden. The clouds parted and then there were mountains.

  The altitude started to work on me as we waited for our bags at the carousel. Over eleven thousand feet, Dad had said. A low-grade headache bloomed behind my eyes. And Dad? He looked a lot worse than I felt.

  The flights had taken a toll on him. Pale skin. Shaky hands. He wanted to stand with me. I propped him against the wall and managed the suitcases by myself.

  Outside, puddles dotted the concrete. Recent rains. But the sun shone. The air smelled crisp. And also tinged with diesel fuel. Taxi drivers hustled us. When no, gracias fended off one of them, five more stepped in to take his place.

  Dad scanned the parking lot. Raised his hand and shouted. “Juancho!”

  A wiry man with a shaved head and a red thermal jacket waved in answer. He stood by a van with an older guy in a blue shirt. He signaled us to come over.

  Dad hugged him close like he was an old friend. Then he cocked his head toward me. “This is my daughter, Leah.”

  It felt weird meeting one of Dad’s friends I hadn’t known about. Like my father had this whole other life he’d never mentioned.

  “Juan,” the friend said in a rich tenor, and extended his hand. We shook while the other man—the driver—loaded our bags into the van. His hand felt rough and steady at the same time. Like you could count on him.

  “Any word?” Dad asked.

  Juan shook his head. Not just to say no. I could tell. Juan was also telegraphing that he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Which made the drive through Cusco’s brick-and-earth streets extra uncomfortable. The van had no A/C, so we drove with the windows cracked. I couldn’t smell anything except car exhaust. There were no traffic lanes. Drivers honked their horns for no apparent reason. Crowds filled the sidewalks.

  The buildings on both sides of the street looked to be shops. All Mom and Pops, no chains. Tile roofs. Rigged electrical lines. We passed a string of stores with mattresses propped outside and a small truck with so many of them stacked on the roof, no way could the two guys trying to tie down the load ever manage it.

  I’d never seen anything like that. Any of it. I fought fatigue and overwhelm. Just wanted to close my eyes. But I had to take it all in. Because of Dad. And watch out. For Dad.

  Our hotel crouched in the middle of the mattress shennanigans. Yellow façade. Tile-floored lobby with very high ceilings, comfy seating, all of it occupied by a motley crew of backpackers from everywhere, as in the accents ran Scottish to German to New York to local. Behind them, the hotel restaurant was setting up for lunch.

  Juan checked us in. Then with a see-you-later, he vanished into the street.

  Dad set his hands on his hips and his mouth thin-set and stared after the guy. Watched him fade into the crowd on the walk. Maybe willing him to come back. Understanding that he wouldn’t. At least, that was what I got from the exchange. I figured we were on our own.

  Until we got to our room on the third floor—oh my God, the climbing. Two lousy flights of stairs. My lungs heaved and my heart did this staccato thing. The altitude.

  I gulped air to calm it down and stepped on an envelope that had been slid under the door.

  Before I had a chance to remove my foot, Dad had already bent to pick it up. No writing on the outside. No marks to indicate who had done the sliding.

  A raucous laugh pierced the air. I thought what?—then realized the room had a huge window overlooking the lobby and that housekeeping had left it open. Dad remedied that in three long motions. One long step. A reach with each hand. It seemed like too much for him to be able to do in his condition. Hurculean, in fact.

  “I just want some privacy,” he said.

  “Are you okay?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. Having a little fun. Only the fun didn’t extend to any other part of him. He looked like he might implode, actually.

  The room had two beds with gray and scarlet wool blankets, a space heater, and a TV. I picked the
bed farthest from the window and dropped my stuff at its foot while Dad opened the envelope.

  The note inside said only Meet you there.

  “Where’s there?” I asked.

  “Aguas Caliente,” he said.

  He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and put it down on the night table. Then he sat down on his bed. He didn’t move for a minute. In fact, he laid down. Which meant he wouldn’t be getting back up for a few hours. I wanted to ask him if he needed anything, but his breathing had slowed and the nap had already begun.

  With the window closed, stuffiness started to set in. I didn’t feel right opening it again, though. And I didn’t want to stay in here and try to figure out the hotel WiFi. Or sit there helpless to do anything for him. Because I was in fact helpless. And I refused to fucking cry again.

  I took the Visa out of Dad’s wallet and the room key and made my way down to the restaurant, which had a handful of tables with windows that looked out on the street and a dark fireplace. Bossa nova on the sound system. Waiters clustered behind the bar. I was the first, and at the moment, only customer.

  I ordered fizzy water—agua con gas, I was informed—and a dish with beef and onions and chiles and tomatoes and French fries and rice. I could hardly taste it. I ordered a guide book, too, which one of the waiters borrowed from the front desk. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read.

  Dad came downstairs well before I expected him. He sat down at the table. Or used the chair and table to hold himself upright. He ordered a cup of coca tea.

  “No lunch?” I asked.

  “No time. The taxi I called will be here in ten minutes. You finish, though.”

  I forced down the rest of my food.

  Dad had brought his and my backpacks with him. He drank fast, paid the bill, and stepped outside. Even if Dad pretended to be casually leaning against the wall and we both knew better.

  We loaded backpacks in the taxi’s trunk. The driver bottomed out the car and almost ran over a wild dog with bad street crossing skills on the way out of Cusco.

  The drive took two and a half hours. Down in altitude, but we had to go up to get down. Winding, climbing roads. Alternating drizzle and sunshine. Landslides, with fallen rocks neatly swept onto one half of the road and boulders left where they fell. Not picked up. Not carted away. Not like at home.