He was lost—good and lost. And that meant one thing: Dead. Fini. The big bite. Adios Park.
Windy was lost, all right, in a gauntlet of steamy muck and creepy-crawly, itchy things. A harsh and sweaty gauntlet—that's what it was. Slippery, too. Not friendly, not one little bit.
Lost, then dead—a one-two punch that went hand-in-hand in the rain forest. And it wanted you dead pronto; it wanted you for a light snack before you became some rotting stump in the soil.
The fourteen-year-old turned a slow three-sixty and whispered to the greenery all around him, "You're the real deal ... Oh, yeah, I'll be worm food, I'll be in the fertilizer business, I'll be..."
He ran out of cool lingo for dying, but continued to spin, seeing nothing but pressing foliage. Everything looked the same—the ground, the canopy above. He could be upside-down and not know it—except, then, all the blood would go to his head, and that wasn't good for the health.
"This isn't a jungle, it's a labyrinth ... for loons! Death Trap Borneo, the prequel, the psycho version."
Bugs all around him. He swatted at something sucking at his eyelid. Now blood dripped into his eye, and it stung. He took out his handkerchief again and rubbed at the bite, already swelling up like a pea.
"What kind of colloquium is this?" He waited, but the forest didn't answer. "Why are we here? —To study leadership strategies? Meet Tarzan? Fight the crocs? What's going on? I don't understand!"
On a shelf in the open-walled veranda of the visitor's lodge, a discolored leaflet said: 'Cuckoo Camp—Personal Growthing Adventure to the End.'
'Growthing'? That had to be the lamest slogan in the whole world. And to what 'end'? Who's 'end'?
His welcome drink in the lodge was a warm glass of mango juice, but his thirst forced him to down the sweet drink quickly...
Problem was, then he had to see a man about a horse, and quick — So he had left the visitor's lodge for the outhouse. But one smell of the stench from the outhouse shack was enough to send him deeper into the trees. No big deal, he peed all the time in the woods back home.
But that was Connecticut.
He dropped his voice to a whisper, "You're Asia, you're Borneo, you're the home of cannibals, headhunters, wicked, flesh-eating bacteria that eats American boys in a single, clammy afternoon."
He hunched there, wary, waiting for the jungle to respond to his words. When it didn't, confidence returned. He wiped the sweat off his brow. Then he smelled his armpit, sneered and swaggered forward.
And tripped.
A vine, or root, or some devious growth snaked across the ground. Windy fell in slow motion, as if gravity didn't apply in a rain forest.
He sighed, flat on the jungle floor. He wasn't Tarzan, he was just a teen—albeit a gifted one with potential, potential for great things—that's what the organizers had told his parents; that's why he was here.
So why wasn't the colloquium in some Manhattan high-rise? One with soft drinks and tortilla chips, maybe pizza? Why did they fly him 10,000 miles to some jungle he's never heard of?
Perhaps he would just stay on the ground like that, no hurry to get up. He could catch a few z's. His energy had evaporated like steam. He was a bone-less chicken, one without the strength to rise.
Tangled vines, shooting up into the canopy, everywhere. What if he tried to swing on a vine like Tarzan? Would it snap, because he was a fat boy?
Probably.
Would he be embarrassed? Would the wildlife laugh at him?
Probably.
Would he have to kill himself, and then decompose—just to save face, because this was the Orient, and that's what people did?
Naturally. Face was a big deal in the inscrutable Orient.
"At least I'll be an inscrutable corpse. That's better than nothing. It'll consume me, have a small belch, no one'll know the difference."
Windy giggled. He was hysterical. The jungle had pushed him over the edge. Giggles turned into wild cackling now, because that's what insane people do before they flat-line...
Still on the ground, he opened one eye, the one that was farther off the floor, the one that had no bug bites on it yet ... and saw something small, spinning and tumbling his way—a micro-acrobat, cart wheeling closer—wormish, gummy, wiggling antennae ...
Windy let out a ghost-like wail, leaping up. "No parasites today, thank you!"
He ran, splashing through a slimy puddle like some stampeding mammal. It was exhausting. He couldn't stop the panting, yet he couldn't stifle the feeling he had been wronged.
"This is supposed to be fun!"
It was definitely not. Bringing home that point, a branch smacked him rudely in the face. Windy stood there, rubbing at the sting, appalled at the inhospitality, at the gall.
His name was Windell Ambrose Irvington the Second, but there was no way around Windy—he wore the nickname like a scarlet letter.
"The fat kid farted again!" The other four teens had laughed during the ride over, because he'd accidentally made wind when this ENORMOUS bug flew into the minivan.
Windy suffered from a difficult stomach, and when things surprised him, that was just the way his system reacted. It had been a big insect, though, with red eyes that buzzed, and flapped, and kicked around like some berserk jungle buzz saw. No doubt about that.
Overhead he heard a long hiss like a tire deflating. He scoured the green canopy above. Then he saw eyes, big and bad eyes, predatory eyes ...
Windell Abrose Irvington the Second passed wind and ran again.
Another wet branch smacked him in the face. His eyes stung but he didn't stop. The creatures were already feeding on him; he could feel them in his hair, in his underpants. Blood was dripping down one leg, he was certain; something was snacking on him down there—something he had no desire to see.
He heard a loud CRAAACK, and then a tremendous ROAR—the footsteps of some jungle monster looking for its next meal in the loon labyrinth.
Windy ran faster than he had in his fourteen years of executive-grooming youth, propelled by the trumpet-like bars of stomach gas.
"I'm special, that's why I'm here!" he cried, loping along, farting like a squeeze bottle of mustard, "I'm too young to be food! I have companies to manage, people to fire!"
Fate answered him as he was about to throw aside another big mop of leaves...
Nini Read, the Canadian girl, was kneeling in a clearing, head hunched, writing in a small notebook on her legs. Nini had rampaging red hair, a freckly face, and stunning, emerald-green eyes that reminded Windy of some snooty house cat.
Watching her through the leaves, he held his breath, afraid his panting would give him away. 'Breathe normal, be brave—you're the croc-fighting Tarzan, the original Johnny Weismuller Tarzan, because he had a really cool yell—even if he was in black and white ... You're Tar-codile!'
Tarcodile smelled its armpit again and sneered, empowered, as if the odor were a tonic. Then it strutted forward like the brave conqueror it was and sneered at Nini Read.
Stupid girls always ruined a good adventure.
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