Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green (32 page)

Then there’s the other part of me. The part that wants to run down the hallway to that sliding marble wall and figure out how to open it and get everyone out of there before the volcano erupts.

But it’s so
peaceful
here, under this golden bed, and the marble feels so cool against my cheek, and I can pretend I’m safe, pretend I’m still little, playing hide-and-seek with Roo under Mom and Dad’s bed.

And
right
then—like it’s reading my mind—the volcano roars its loudest roar yet. I can feel it trembling against my stomach as I scoot myself out from under the bed.

I creep to the doorway and peek out. Most of the golden doors lining the hallway are thrown open, and beyond them I glimpse beds with messed-up comforters and closet doors flung open and trash cans overturned and vases of flowers knocked over and the general chaos left by people packing in a panic.

I take a breath and, quietly, step out into the hallway. The whole place seems deserted, though it’s still bright with lights. I try to be completely silent as I move down the hallway. Tiptoeing past the open archways, I glance at the stage and see an abandoned tuba, the musicians’ chairs cockeyed, and the dining area with desserts
half-eaten, champagne half-drunk, napkins scattered on the floor. In the distance, sparkling red flames shoot out of the top of the volcano, accompanied by swift bursts of smoke spiraling upward. And above all that, the night sky looks weird, orange, threatening.

At the end of the hallway, I run my hands over the marble wall. But it feels so solid, so cool and smooth and blank, that it’s hard to believe it’s a sliding door, even though I know it is. So: My little sister and my mom and my dad and the guy I love—too freaked out to pretend this isn’t true—and his grandparents are there on the other side of this unmoving
wall
.

I press and push against the marble, trying to find, I don’t know, a weak spot or something.

The hallways have been dead silent this whole time, so at first I think I’m imagining things when I notice a distant sound, the
tap-tap-tap-tap
of footsteps approaching. They’re coming from the stairs we took when we were “escorted” out of the dining area. My heart speeds up and I flatten myself against the side of the hallway, remembering the chameleon Kyle showed me today and trying to pretend that even though I’m a human being in a green dress I can blend into a white marble wall.

The footsteps are crossing the lobby now. There’s the harsh buzzing sound of static, like on a radio. “I SAID, GET THEM!” a woman’s screeching voice blares out of the static. “
BRING THEM WITH YOU!
” Then her voice goes fuzzy again.

A man’s voice replies to the static: “Lab A, right?” he says. “Pen 98?” And now he’s approaching the mouth of this hallway, and I spot his bright orange tie as he speaks into the walkie-talkie.

I send the thought out as though it might actually serve as a shield:
Don’t come down here, don’t come down here, don’t come down here
.

Then: a small miracle. Ken/Neth doesn’t turn into this hallway,
or even glance down it. He just dashes past, out of my sight. I’ve never seen him move so fast.

As his footsteps fade, I sink down to the floor and rest my head against the marble wall and let out a few of the tears that have built up behind my eyes.

And it’s then, with my ear pressed against the marble, that I hear Roo.

I can’t hear her words, but I can hear her voice, talking fast, its pitch moving up and down. I can tell that she’s scared, that she’s determined, that she’s trying to figure out how to get them out of there. Then Dad’s low, solemn voice. And Kyle, making some sort of suggestion. Roo again, insisting on something. Mom speaking with urgency. Dad replying. A rush of high-pitched words from Señora V, maybe some kind of chant or prayer. And back to Roo. I can even sense Señor V’s gentle silence.

My whole life. My whole life is in that room. I can feel the two halves of my heart, twisting around in the left side of my chest—an actual physical pain.

I want to yell out to them but I know my voice would echo down these empty marble halls, and Ken/Neth would be back here in a second to toss me into the room along with them. Which at first doesn’t sound that bad, but then it does—when it occurs to me that we’d all die, that there’d be no way for me to even try to save them.

Not that I’m doing much saving anyway.

Still, I stand up and stroke the wall. Jeez, is there even a
line
in the marble? Something, anything?

“Roo!” I whisper into the marble. “Roo! Kyle! Mom!
Dad!
”

But of course they can’t hear me. They carry on with their own conversation and I can tell that Roo’s getting angry. I recognize
that
pitch of her voice, right before meltdown.

The volcano offers up this terrifically loud groan, a groan so loud I can feel it in my skull. It strikes me that any of these rumbles could be the final one.

And the reality slams me, along with the despair: The people I love are hopelessly trapped in a prison cell at the base of an erupting volcano.

I stand there with that fact for a second, and then my brain goes: Wait. Revision. At the base of an almost-erupting volcano.

And wait a sec. The words push their way into my brain:
ONCE THE LAST BIRD DIES, THE VOLCANO WILL BLOW
.

I have to admit: I’d totally forgotten about Miss Perfect. Like, until this very second, I haven’t given her a thought. I’ve only been thinking about getting the humans out of here.

But: If the prophecy is true, all I need to do is make sure Miss Perfect doesn’t die!

Which is a big
if
.

Not to mention I have no idea where Miss Perfect is right now. Or if she’s even still alive.

But then I get it: Lab A. Pen 98.

Lab A, Pen 98!

When I stand in the lobby and strain my ears
hard
, I can hear the faraway sound of footsteps. I run after that sound faster than I thought I could run, down another long, white hallway, down a flight of stairs, and then another hallway, another flight of stairs, following the footsteps. From the outside you could never imagine how many hallways and staircases and doorways there are in this building. I mean, it doesn’t look
that
huge, but here we go, another stairway, another hallway.

Finally, around one bend, I catch a glimpse of Ken/Neth, the
black back of his tuxedo jacket. That’s when I take a second-long break to slip out of my shoes so I can follow him silently. I pick them up and pull in my breath and pretend I’m not scared.

On the next staircase, Ken/Neth’s footsteps pause, and, rounding the corner above him, I pause too, sucking my stomach in and pressing myself into the curve of the wall. It’s like I can feel his eyes searching, can practically hear his nose sniffing for me. But then his footsteps continue onward.

It starts to feel like we’re
miles
underground. There’s this low grumbling as we descend, the murmur of the volcano, and it feels hotter here, as though with each step we’re getting closer to the molten center where lava is brewing. I feel more and more claustrophobic, my heart freaking out, positive that on the next staircase Ken/Neth is going to turn at the wrong moment. Sometimes I think my body might just spin itself around and run up, up, up.

And then Ken/Neth stops.

Peeking out from behind the corner, I see that he’s come to a dead end. I watch him stand there in front of the blank white marble wall. No stairways or hallways or doorways leading off in any direction. And I think,
Oh my gosh, is he
lost?

Then I feel stupid when the marble wall slides to the side. Duh. Of course. Another one of these.

As Ken/Neth steps in, I race barefoot down the hallway after him, overwhelmed by a strange double feeling—total desperation to get in there before the wall slides shut plus total terror at the fact that I’m about to follow an evil man into a sealed room.
Sealed like a coffin
—that’s the phrase that jumps into my mind.

The wall is already three-quarters closed when I reach it, and as I squeeze through some kind of instinct kicks in, some kind of animal urgency, the blazing desire to avoid being sealed in, and without
planning to, without even thinking about it, I twist around and stick my shoes into the crack between the sliding wall and the solid wall right after I pass between them. I only manage to get one shoe partway into the gap before the wall crumples its thin sole, but still the shoe is there, keeping the sliding wall not even a millimeter away from the other wall. I barely have time to think
That’s so the kind of thing Roo would do
before my instinct, or my fear, sends me down onto my stomach. I abandon my other shoe there and crawl forward into the room, hoping against hope that Ken/Neth doesn’t know I’m in here with him, that I didn’t make too much noise, that only I heard the soft crunch of the shoe crumpling.

As I creep forward I look around in wonder. This isn’t like any other part of La Lava. Yes, it’s a huge white marble room, but it’s filled with scientific equipment. It reminds me of the lab Dad used to take us to at his university. Microscopes and test tubes and sinks and long tables and high stools and whiteboards on the walls and hooks holding those white doctors’ robes.

And cages. Rows and rows of empty cages. As though awaiting the day when there will be thousands of Lava-Throated Volcano trogons in this laboratory.

I’m there on my stomach wondering how I’m going to find Pen 98. I stare up at the cages but I don’t see any numbers. And also, strangely, I don’t hear footsteps anymore.

Staying low, I scan the room, looking for Ken/Neth’s legs, when suddenly the silence is cracked by an impossible-to-describe sound. High-pitched, horrible, it makes your brain hurt and your eyes ache, forces your blood to run the wrong way in your veins, fills you with sickness.

Yet I move straight toward that sound, crawling beneath tables and between stools toward the fourth row of cages, because now I
can see Ken/Neth’s legs, sprinting away from the scream, galloping off toward the far corner of the lab. And I know that only Miss Perfect is wild enough to make a sound like that.

But as I approach the cage, as I stand up and see that its door is flung wide open, I realize it’s not Miss Perfect who’s making the sound.

It’s a spectacular bird, the bird standing there at the front of the cage, screaming. I recognize it from Kyle’s Polaroid—but that photograph was just a pale imitation of the creature before me now. And I understand in a flash of certainty that this is Dad’s bird—the LTVT Dad surrendered to La Lava so they wouldn’t harm us.

The bird’s throat gleams like liquid gold, his body is such a pure true blue that it hurts my eyes, and his glittering wings are spread out across the door of the cage to protect Miss Perfect, who’s lying limp and shrunken against the back of it.

So
this
is where they brought Miss Perfect when they shot her down at the gala.

And
this
must be her mate.

As if in response to the bird’s scream, the volcano growls. A rumble from the core of the world joining a cry from what is probably the last living male of the species.

For a second I’m frozen, not sure what to do, stuck between the rumble and the scream. But then I think about what Roo would do if she were here, how happy she’d be to see Miss Perfect with her mate, how brave she’d feel.

“Mr. Beautiful,” I murmur at the screaming bird. A name I know Roo would approve of. “Mr. Beautiful, Mr. Beautiful, Mr. Beautiful,” I keep murmuring as I reach toward the cage. He claws my temple first, then slashes my cheek. I can feel hot, thick blood running down the sides of my face.

But I continue, reaching past him, through the small hole between his wing and his body, and he’s so shocked I’m not running away that it takes him a second to gather himself enough to scratch at my eyebrow, a motion clearly intended for my eye. Somehow, though, I’m floating above pain right now, my mind focused on my hand moving into the cage, my fingers opening to gently seize Miss Perfect, expecting a protest from her and surprised when she comes easily.

As I pull her out of the cage past Mr. Beautiful, he lunges for my throat, but a millisecond before slicing me, he flaps his wings awkwardly and draws back.

Because Miss Perfect is nuzzling woozily into me, twisting her body to show me the place where the tranquilizer dart is still attached to her stomach. For the first time in my life the sight of a needle doesn’t make me shiver. I just yank it out of her and toss it back into the cage. She shuts her eyes, and lies there weakly, and smiles up at me.

And then the craziest thing yet—Mr. Beautiful pushes off the cage, flaps his wings, and lands on my head. I barely notice his talons piercing my scalp.

Mr. Beautiful and I gaze down at Miss Perfect, watching in amazement as she begins to fill out before our eyes, her blood pumping strongly again, her feathers starting to shimmer, her muscles regaining their tension.

The miraculous silence is broken by footsteps behind me, and suddenly I’m back to where I was—how did I go even a minute without being terrified of Ken/Neth? I glance over my shoulder and see him there with a pair of enormous needles in his hands. A beak-shaped gash at his temple sends blood rolling down his cheek to his neck. He seems to grow taller and larger by the second, his
face blank like the face of someone who’s never smiled in his entire life.

As I start running, Mr. Beautiful lets out another earth-shattering scream, and Miss Perfect, now revived enough to stand up in my hand, joins him in the scream, a scream that rises from the depths of their bones. I know this scream is for Ken/Neth’s benefit, but still I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hear again. I run between the rows of cages, their scream all around me and inside me, carrying me forward faster than I’ve ever been carried.

But the scream can’t get me through the marble wall—I stop there, hoist Miss Perfect up onto my head to join Mr. Beautiful, and frantically try to wedge my fingers into the minuscule sliver created by my jammed shoe.