Jasper and Callie trudged up the beach toward the jungle. Dense and lush, the wall of vegetation towered over the woman in the sun hat waiting for them at its edge. The hot breeze tugged at the thin folds of her wrap and teased the brim of her hat.
“I watched this survival documentary once,” Jasper said, “that was basically about how everything in the jungle wants to kill you.”
“You really know how to instill confidence in a girl. Are those drinks?”
Jasper squinted in the woman’s direction. She held a glass in each hand. “I think so.”
“Thank, God,” Callie said. “I’m so thirsty, I was about to drink my own pee.”
“That was in the documentary, too.” He paused, then added. “I don’t recommend it.”
She flashed him a look of total disgust. “You tried it?”
“The documentary made it seem like this really amazing life skill.”
“Sorry, but the ability to drink your own pee isn’t a life skill.”
“I mixed it with Mountain Dew.”
“You need to get out more.”
The woman held out the drinks as they drew near, deep red slushy concoctions in tall glasses beaded with condensation. A small paper umbrella poked out of the top of each glass. “Compliments of Mr. Fisk.”
The wide brim of her hat cast a shadow across her face, but Jasper had no trouble recognizing it. He’d never been great at remembering faces (also names, dates, lock combinations, internet passwords, directions, or where he’d put nearly every single pen he’d ever owned), but he remembered hers.
Where were the others? Edgar, the old man who reminded him of his grandfather, only without the dress (the subject of Jasper’s grandfather had been a hot-button issue in his family for as long as he could remember); and Alice, with her pale skin, blue eyes, shaved head, and fangs (a completely inaccurate, yet perfectly fitting detail that his mind insisted on adding).
Lulu’s hair, blond when he’d first seen her, was now chestnut brown. Fine strands poked out from under her hat. She hadn’t lost her French accent, though. Mr. Fisk had come out sounding like Mr. Feesk.
They took their drinks. The glass cooled Jasper’s palm and sent an icy shiver up his arm.
Callie finished hers in three large gulps, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Who is Mr. Fisk?”
“He owns the island.”
“This is an island?” Jasper asked.
“Yes. A big one.”
Lulu pointed to the camera slung around Jasper’s neck. “I’ll take that.”
Jasper hesitated, then pulled it over his head, flipped it around, and snapped his picture.
“You never took yours?” Callie asked.
“I was waiting for the right moment.”
“You mean you chickened out.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the display. Alice stared back at him, her eyes blue and cold, her mouth a cruel slash.
“Oh,” Callie said.
“Shit,” added Jasper. He’d hoped for a less terrifying image, a freight train, maybe, bearing down on him, or a rampaging pack of wild dogs. Anything but those eyes, those blue daggers. There was hate in those eyes, and her smile hinted at the pleasure she would take in ending his life.
“Excuse me for a second,” Jasper said, handing Lulu the camera. He stretched out on the ground, interlaced his fingers over his chest, and started humming.
“What’s he doing?” Lulu asked.
“He’s humming. He does that when he’s nervous.”
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...”
Callie crouched next to him. “Jasper?”
“Hmmmmmyeah?”
“You okay?”
“Just give me a minute. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
“What’s that saying of yours?”
He stopped humming and considered the question. “‘Don’t blame me. I was born this way?’”
“No. The one from the movie with the alien.”
“Stay frosty.”
“Yeah.” She squeezed his shoulder. “That.”
“I made that up to try and make you feel better. I don’t actually tell myself that.”
“Oh, um, thanks. I guess.” She stood and spoke to Lulu. “He just needs a minute.”
“No time. Follow me, please,” she said in a cheery voice, as though she’d just been asked for directions to the nearest luau.
“Get up, Jasper,” Callie said. “That’s not a good look for you.”
“How do you think she’s going to do it?” he asked Callie, not budging, his eyes focused on the trees high above him, but seeing only Alice’s face staring back at him.
“No clue, but keep lying there and you’ll probably find out in a hurry. I don’t think that bitch likes to be kept waiting. Also there’s a bug the size of a twinkie crawling up your leg.”
Jasper launched himself into the air, legs flailing. “Where is it?” He landed on his feet and turned in a tight circle, scanning the ground. “Where’d it go?”
“I lied. Sorry.” She slapped him on the back. “But look who isn’t moping in the dirt anymore.”
She grabbed his arm and set off after Lulu. The jungle closed over their heads, the soaring green canopy like the ceiling of some grand, natural cathedral, the air wet and thick with the smells of damp earth and rotting vegetation. Steam curled in bright shafts of sunlight, and from deep within the jungle’s heart, a bird warbled. It was a happy warble, almost whimsical in its warbleyness, the sort of warble that said: I don’t have anywhere I need to be, and I don’t have anything I need to do. I’m just going to sit on this branch and sing. I love being a bird. This going to be a great…
The warble ended abruptly as something large and snarly crashed through the branches and bit the bird’s head off.
“What was that?” Jasper asked.
“Lunch,” Lulu said.
“Hey,” Callie interrupted, “I have a question. Actually, I have a bazillion questions, but I’ll cut to the chase. Who was the guy I just spent the last THREE YEARS of my life falling in love with?”
“How should I know?”
Lulu held out her hand. A silver-plumed cockatoo landed on her finger. She kissed its beak. “You dated him,” squawked the bird. “She didn’t.”
“Yeah, well the woman who brought us here seemed to get a kick out of hinting that the guy I almost married, the guy I thought I knew everything about, was actually one of you, and that the only reason he was with me was to shatter my heart and turn me into an emotional basket case so that I’d move back home with my mother and cook breakfast in a shitty little kitchen for the rest of my life. Was that the big plan?”
Jasper leaned closer and whispered: “You realize you’re talking to a bird?”
“I know that,” Callie snapped. “I’m just going with the flow, here.”
“Yeah. She knows that. Stop interrupting,” said the bird.
“Sorry,” Jasper said, “I, um, don’t meet a lot of animals who can talk.”
The bird beat its wings and ruffled its feathers. “Who you calling an animal, shithead?”
“He’s very sensitive,” said Lulu. “He’s only been in this body for three days.”
“Three long days. Reincarnation is a bitch. I’d kill for a beer and a meatball sub.”
“I’ve reassured him that the memories of his past life will fade over time.”
“Yeah. Great. One day, I’ll wake up and forget that I used to be Brad Pitt and had this totally awesome life.”
“Brad Pitt the actor?” Jasper asked.
“Movie star, asshole.”
“You’re dead?”
“Yeah. Thanks for rubbing it in. Wait. Wasn’t it all over the news? Please tell me it was all over the news.”
“We’ve been busy,” Callie said.
The bird flapped its wings noncommittally, which Jasper assumed was its version of a shrug. “Could be worse, I guess,” the bird continued. “I met a guy the other week. Used to run triathlons. One day he gets hit by a truck and wakes up as a sloth. You know what a good day for a sloth is? Travelling maybe ten feet. That’s it. Talk about karma.”
Callie addressed Lulu. “Can I please get an answer to my question?”
“That’s a question for Alice. She likes to get her hands dirty.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m an artist.” She pointed to a shaft of sunlight slanting across the path. “The sun gives us many things: life, death, warmth, and if you possess the right amount of talent…”
She dipped the forefinger of her right hand into the beam, scattering a cloud of sun worshipping insects. (The insects would later take this as a sign from their creator to abandon the light and embrace the shadow. Subsequent generations would tell tales to their pasty-faced children huddling in the Blessed Dark of the days when their ancestors danced in the forbidden light.)
Lulu stirred the light for a moment, and then slowly extracted her finger from the shaft, teasing from its center a golden strand the width of a straw. “The Sisterhood of the Loom takes what is raw and gives it shape and form. Without us, there is no Thread, nothing for Alice to measure, nothing for her to manipulate and pollute with her ugly little fingers. Our interest lies in the radiant beauty that is pure, untouched Thread. What happens after it leaves the loom is not our concern. So if this man betrayed you, blame Alice. The Sisterhood had nothing to do with it.”
“Hey, lady,” said Brad Pitt, who had left her finger and now sat perched on her shoulder, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“Fine,” Callie said, “I’ll ask Alice. She can find us on the beach. I’m not going a step farther until I get some answers.”
She spun back toward the beach and stomped down the path. Five steps later, she yelped and froze as a tiger leaped from behind a clump of ferns and landed softly on the path.
“Oh, shit,” said Brad Pitt and flew off.
The tiger didn’t move. Its yellow eyes, unblinking and rimmed with black fur like heavy mascara, bore into hers. C’mon. Try to pass. I can wait all day, the eyes said.
Its fangs, and the blood-flecked white fur around them, said something else.
Callie took a cautious step backward just as Jasper jumped in front of her, waving his arms and barking. He added a tiny growl before each bark for emphasis.
The tiger cocked its head to the left, then to the right, as though trying to decide which way its mouth would best fit around Jasper’s head.
Jasper stopped barking.
“Was that in the documentary, too?” Callie whispered.
“No,” Jasper whispered back. “I saw it in a movie. It’s supposed to work on bears.”
“You know cats hate dogs, right?”
“Yeah. Probably wasn’t a good move.”
“I thought it was very brave,” Lulu said as she brushed past them. She whispered in the tiger’s ear. The tiger snorted, dropped to its belly in the middle of the path, and looked sullenly past its front paws at Jasper. It was the look a kid might give a chocolate bar after being told it would ruin his supper.
“You speak tiger?” Jasper asked.
“Leopard, actually, but they’re very similar.”
“Ah,” Jasper said, nodding as though that made perfect sense.
“I told him he has to wait until after the trial to see whether or not you’re available for consumption.” She addressed Callie. “But I still wouldn’t try to get past him.” She patted the tiger’s head. “Shall we continue?”
Callie eyed the tiger blocking the path. Its tongue slopped out of its mouth and licked its bloodstained muzzle.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Callie muttered.
“Good.”
Lulu slipped between them and continued down the path, pushing deeper into the jungle.
Jasper moved to follow, but Callie grabbed his arm. “That wasn’t brave, that was stupid.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek, but he jerked his head back.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction. Last time you did that you puked on me.”
He offered her his cheek. She patted it and started after Lulu.
“Nice one, dude,” said a voice above his head.
Jasper looked up and saw Brad Pitt perched on a low-hanging branch.
“I mean, I’m going to have to eat bugs for the rest of my life, but I honestly think that was more humiliating. Hey, where did that tiger…”
The cat exploded from the undergrowth, an orange and black flash scrambling up the tree, jaws open, mouth gaping.
“Motherfu—” cried Brad Pitt as the tiger’s jaws closed around him, his wings beating in a useless flurry.
Jasper averted his eyes, but he couldn’t shut out the sound of bones snapping, nor could he shut out the sudden mental image of the tiger’s jaws clamping down on his neck while Alice looked on, her face close to his, drinking in his suffering and ensuring that she was the last thing he would ever see.