A Fierce and Subtle Poison - Samantha Mabry Page 0,62
little girl with green skin and green hair. Your eyes are the same, though. Their color. Lucas may be right. Maybe you are real, but you’re still terrifying.”
Rico looked up. His mouth was closed but moving; he was chewing on his thoughts, trying to separate them out.
“I’ll help you because of Celia, alright? I’m not doing this for her.” Rico tipped his head in Isabel’s direction. “You really think you’re the ones who can make things right?”
Isabel nodded. “I do.”
I nodded, too, accepting this strange alliance once again.
“If that’s the case,” Rico said, handing me his keys, “Vayan con Dios, you two. And try not to fuck up my scooter.”
Twenty
THERE WAS A wall of traffic in front of us, cars and more cars in an unbroken, unmoving chain. Sweat trailed down the sides of my face, and the fumes were making me dizzy. At least I hoped it was the fumes that were making me dizzy and not the girl huddled up behind me who’d remained quiet, her blanket of leaves barely keeping her alive and barely protecting me.
I snapped my head to the right, then the left to try and relieve the stress in my neck. This wasn’t my first go-round on Rico’s scooter. I’d ridden it through the bumpy, narrow streets of Old San Juan countless times, dodging cats and tourists and nearly wiping out on slick spots left by leaky jalopies. Weaving through bumper-to-bumper traffic couldn’t be too different from that, right? At least the highway was somewhat evenly paved, unlike the roads in the old town. At least it wasn’t raining.
The guy next to us in a rusted-out Nissan Stanza looked from Isabel, wrapped in her blanket in eighty-five-degree weather, to me, now wearing Rico’s baseball cap and denim jacket in a pathetic attempt at a disguise. His left eye twitched slightly.
“Hold on!” I yelled, revving the engine.
The scooter shot through the narrow gap between the two cars in front of us. I felt Isabel clutch at my belt loops and pull herself closer to me as drivers started honking their horns. All around us the quick beats of salsa music, the running commentary from that day’s baseball game, and exhaust fumes poured from cars. We sped past a series of strange, blurry scenes: children having tantrums while tethered to their seats, a woman simultaneously eating an orange while applying mascara, a couple ferociously making out in the backseat of a taxi while the driver in the front seat spied on them in his rearview mirror, his teeth clamped together in a gross grin.
If I kept my eyes on the road ahead, I did fine. There were a few close calls when I had to swerve around cars that merged without regard for who or what they might be merging into.
After nearly fifteen minutes of mild terror, and by some miracle without running into any cops, we made it out of San Juan and were on the narrow highway heading west to Rincón.
Puerto Rico is shaped like a finger on a left hand, held to the side, and cut off at the knuckle joint. San Juan is on the northern edge, near what would be the nail bed. Rincón is on the shorter western edge, where the digit would’ve been severed. To get to Rincón, you have to trace the outer northern coastline until it dips south. There were other smaller roads that crosshatched the island, but they led to forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, and other out-of-the-way places people rarely went, probably for good reason.
Despite its lurking mystery, the countryside was stunning. Outside of the city, Puerto Rico was practically prehistoric. Everything was green and wide and very tall. On the side of the road, multicolored birds perched on fallen trees, and if I listened hard enough I could hear the tiny tree frogs croaking out a sound that was impossibly loud for creatures their size. Aside from the paved road and the occasional food stand or road sign, everything appeared untouched by human hands. I’d been out this way several times, but never in the open air like this—with the hot wind tearing at the folds of my clothes, the smell of the sea in my nose, and my heart beating wildly against my ribs.
I pulled over to a gas station and fruit stand just outside of a small town called Arecibo. I was anxious about stopping but also thankful for the short break. It gave me time to stretch my legs, and even with