A Fierce and Subtle Poison - Samantha Mabry Page 0,72

tried not to think about missing a turn and wrapping us around the trunk of a tree. I imagined someone years from now finding our sun-bleached skeletons alongside the rusted and mangled carcass of a scooter. The stories people would tell about us would pale in comparison to the truth. What a sad thing it would be to simply disappear in this forest.

The mud road beneath the scooter’s tires eventually changed to a gravelly slush, and then, once we finally turned onto the main highway, to slick asphalt.

The rain still poured down from the gunmetal clouds that swirled and cracked, and there was paltry traction between Rico’s balding tires and the wet road. We drove with the current, with the rain rushing along with us back to its source: that sea into which I’d always wanted to disappear. But not today.

I gripped the handlebars, bracing for the hissing winds that seemed bent on sending us spiraling into the sky. My ears were ringing, probably because I was clamping my jaw shut with such force that I was surprised my teeth didn’t shatter. More than once I had to remind myself to exhale after anxiously holding my breath until my vision had started to blur.

But neither the unrelenting weather nor the awful conditions of the road distracted me from the fact that Isabel, without the protection of her leaves, was fading fast. Her body felt like a wet sack flung against my back.

All I could do was keep driving. The landscape tore by, dark and frenzied.

A few miles down the road we sped past a reflective sign announcing we’d arrived in Isabela, a town originally named for the queen of Spain, now known for its beaches and cockfights. As we passed the dark town, only a few lights twinkled from buildings far off in the distance. Like San Juan, Isabela was another sea-facing city where people were used to sealing themselves into their homes to wait patiently for the world to find its balance again. They knew the score. Storms come; storms go.

For a long time the road was empty, except for our little scooter, the rain coming down in sheets, the angry wind, and the spinning gray clouds. Eventually, we passed another sign, this one for the town of Aguadilla, and I felt Isabel shift behind me. She tugged on my jacket with her thin fingers, trying to pull us closer. I leaned back, burning and shivering as her wet lips grazed my ear. She swallowed and took a couple of breaths in preparation to speak.

“Turn . . . here.” There was an extended pause between the two words. “To the right.”

I did as she asked, maneuvering the scooter onto a barely visible road that led into a thicket of trees.

I let out the throttle and shot forward. With the thin stretch of road in front of us bubbling like furiously boiling water, there was no way I could’ve seen the spikes.

Twenty-four

THE TIRES BLEW out in two loud, successive pops, causing the scooter to shake violently as if suddenly possessed. Despite my best efforts to keep a hold of the handlebars, I flew into the air and landed face-first in the mud. I heard a sharp crack as my right wrist twisted under my body at an unnatural angle. I cried out, my mouth filling with brackish water, as I started to float and move along with the current. With my good hand, I made a fist and slammed it through the water and into the mud to keep from being washed away.

I crawled to my knees and took several gasping breaths as I tested the mobility of each of the fingers of my right hand. Thin ribbons of pain shot all the way up into my jaw.

Despite that, I managed to stand, disoriented, in a wide-leg stance. In the middle of the road a few yards back, the scooter was on its side, crushed. Though its front and back tires were pulverized down to the rims, the motor was still despondently firing. What a champ.

A few feet beyond the scooter, a piece of metal stuck up from the ground, then another right next to it, then another.

I looked down the road in the opposite direction but couldn’t see anything aside from rain and trees.

“Isabel!”

A thin, pale hand shot up from the other side of the road. Cradling my lame arm, I trudged forward. Isabel was crouching in the underbrush near the trunk of a massive tree. As I approached,