EDVER
Our shared maze of disappointment
brings us closer again.
We agree that we need to go out
and resolver
by inventing adventures.
So we follow the waterfall trail,
comforted
by the reaching arms of trees.
Then the strangest thing happens,
the worst sort of weirdness, an event
so unbelievable that it has to be real,
because everyone knows that true life
is always more bizarre than fairy tales.
The first sign of an intruder in our forest
is a cleverly disguised campsite,
almost completely hidden by tree ferns.
The camouflaged campsite is eerie.
Butterfly nets, kill jars, a stranger.
The stranger—yes, that exact same man
from Mom’s photos, the creep with a face
that looked too big in his bad selfies.
Now his features have shrunk down
to their normal size, but what’s he doing here
in our world of ferns, palms, ceibas, and wild figs,
armed with all that suspicious insect-collecting
equipment?
Snoopy perches on my shoulder, pulling
at my ears, cheerfully unaware that I’m boiling
with fury.
Niños, the creep says, calling out to me and Luza.
Trabajo, he invites, offering work as he tries
to hand us nets, along with jars that stink
like mothballs.
My sister glances at me, looking so worried
that I’m afraid she’ll say something, but instead
she turns and races away, so I pull Snoopy off
my shoulders, hug him in my arms,
and run, stumbling as I go,
without answering
any of the creep’s
surprised
shouts.
What a disaster.
This is our fault!
We brought him here
by trying to lure Mom.
But what if she’s with him?
Isn’t that a possibility?
She’s probably back there
in the tent, asleep or too lazy
to come out and greet us. . . .
Suspicious
LUZA
We go back the next day,
just to make sure Mamá isn’t here,
ready to visit.
But she’s nowhere to be found,
even though we try all sorts of fancy tricks,
taking turns distracting the insect collector
long enough for each of us to peer
into that tent, searching for a woman’s
clothes, shoes, footprints. . . .
The collector doesn’t tell us his name,
but when he repeats his offer to pay
for specimens, we agree, just to see
if playing along with him will lead
to more information.
Quest
EDVER
Nothing makes sense.
How did a guy who knows Mom
end up on territory patrolled by Dad?
Why would he dare to come here
and kill creatures that are protected
by the ex-husband of the scientist
he’s dating?
Or have we missed something?
What else could there be?
Maybe it’s all really simple.
Just friends,
not a couple!
Someone Dad knows,
a collector who has permission?
No, I don’t even begin to believe
any of my made-up stories.
None of it rings true.
I need facts if I’m ever going to be
a real scientist.
Worse Than We Imagined
LUZA
As soon as we have a chance to go back
to Yavi’s computer, the ugliness
becomes ominous.
My brother searches and searches
until he discovers the most evil level
of greed.
El novio de Mamá has his own
rare insect auction site.
We find his photo, next to an ad
offering the “world’s most unique
Caribbean island Papilio,
details on request,
$100,000 starting bid.”
Disgusting
EDVER
All the other auction prices
are just as grotesque.
Hercules beetles, the strongest animals
stinky goo, a praying mantis that mimics
a purple orchid, another one that looks
like soft green moss, and a Queen Alexandra’s birdwing,
the world’s largest birdwing butterfly,
all the way from Papua New Guinea,
wingspan one foot wide,
males blue and green
with gold abdomens,
females a little smaller,
chocolate brown and cream
with furry red tufts
on the thorax.
I wish I couldn’t read.
It would be heaven to remain unaware
of this catastrophe that I created
by teaching my clueless sister
how to type lies on a keyboard.
It’s easy to see that Mom’s creepy friend
is a criminal, because his spectacular photo
of a tiger swallowtail butterfly
is the Traveler, a Jamaican Papilio
that sometimes wanders
onto Cuban territory, blown
off course by wind.
I recognize all the details of the species
from Abuelo’s lessons in his museum room.
The Traveler is one of the highest-flying insects
on Earth, almost as strong as a bird, but definitely
not new
to science.
Using its photo must just be a way to tempt
inexperienced new collectors, the ones
with plenty of money but not enough
knowledge to realize that the smuggler
hasn’t caught his valuable prize yet.
That’s why he’s here.
To catch our fake insect
and sell it for a fortune.
I don’t know how Mom
fits into his plan,
but I’m pretty sure
she wouldn’t
go along with it
if she knew.
Too bad she’s so emotionally clueless
that he fooled her.
Now I Know
LUZA
So this is how it feels
to be the sorry one.
Has Mamá been wandering around
all these years
swayed by powerful waves
of regret?
Abuelo and Dad would hate me if they knew
how recklessly Edver and I tried to cheat reality
by telling a lie that turned us
into tricked fools
not tricksters.
Horrified
EDVER
The creep has altered his labels
to look old, with dates that make the Traveler
seem to have been collected before 1873,
when 175 countries approved a treaty
called CITES, the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna.
Anything collected before CITES existed
can be sold as an antique, a curiosity,
not a crime.
Mom always says that if CITES had been passed
a couple of centuries earlier, there might still be
Tasmanian tigers, Barbary lions, Steller’s sea cows,
Carolina parakeets, dodo
birds, great auks,
and passenger pigeons.
I don’t know which part of the mess we created
is scarier: the way Luza and I posted a few words
for just a couple of minutes and ended up
inviting a monster into our forest, or the way
Mom has somehow managed to get fooled
into accepting a criminal as her boyfriend.
Maybe no one else on Earth knows exactly
how slimy this auction guy is—probably
my sister and I are the only witnesses
to a crime in progress. . . .
Could we catch him and turn him over
to the authorities, becoming
wildlife protection superheroes,
instead of troublemakers?
Our pictures might be on TV!
Snoopy would wave from my shoulder,
and all those kids at school who call me a nerd
would suddenly realize that being smart
can’t hurt.
Bizarre
LUZA
During the hours we spend debating
possible strategies, strange things happen,
just like every year at this time,
when big black-and-orange land crabs
march through the village, clacking
noisy claws as they migrate
from our mountains down to the coast
where they’ll deposit eggs
in rocky tide pools.
Nothing can stop the crabs.
They never turn back, not even when women
grab them and pile them—stomping and snapping—
into buckets, planning delicious meals
even though the crabs keep climbing out
and walking away.
Tourists come to watch.
Grinning foreigners rush around,
handing out gifts—pencils for some children,
baseballs for others, T-shirts for most,
but not all.
The result is a near riot
by mothers who want
all the gifts for every child,
so that pretty soon
blue-uniformed police
and green-clad soldiers
have to break up the scuffles,
and everyone goes home miserable,
furious with their neighbors
and disgusted by the strangers,
who don’t seem capable
of understanding
poverty.
When the ugly uproar is finally over,
Edver and I return to Yavi’s computer,
relieved that he doesn’t seem to mind
sharing, and his sweet old bisabuela
barely notices us, because she’s so busy
boiling
land crabs.
Searching for Secrets
EDVER
Buried deep in the belly of the computer’s
information junkyard, I find scraps to help
solve our mystery—the smuggler’s nickname,
his real name, and worst of all,
his prison record.
He’s called the Human Vacuum Cleaner.
Once, he was arrested with half a million
rare butterflies, dead and dusty,
spread all over his otherwise
ordinary house in California.
He has a shop in Japan, too, where he sells
live rhinoceros beetles in vending machines.
They’re prized by people who keep
the giant insects as pets, setting up matches
to watch them sword fight with their sharp horns.
But Mom’s disgusting boyfriend
doesn’t just sell bugs—he’s been caught smuggling
parrots, macaws, cockatoos, aquarium fish,
ghost orchids,
paintings, and statues.
He’s not even a scientist,
just a businessman,
making money
any way he can.
I bet he hires children to help him
wherever he goes.
It’s easy to imagine him camped out
in other jungles, waiting for poor kids
to come along—hungry ones who need
a few coins for buying dinner
more than they need to know
whether the animals they kill
might be the last living
individuals
on Earth.
Whole species have been destroyed
by the Human Vacuum Cleaner’s
greediness.
Strange World
LUZA
I’ve never lived away from our forest,
so it’s hard for me to understand any place
where such a monster of slaughter can serve
only twenty-one months in prison.
His specialty is finishing off the last living members
of rare species, in order to make the price
of dead specimens
skyrocket.
He even keeps greenhouses
for rearing endangered plants and animals,
just so he can sell them to collectors
at some horrible moment in the future
when all the wild ones
are gone.
Now that we know who he is
and what he does, my brother and I
are more confused than ever.
If we tell Papi and Abuelo, they might be able
to catch him, but will they ever trust us again?
Shouldn’t we try to keep our mistake secret
and solve this problem on our own,
inventing some way to pretend
that it’s not all
our fault?
If only I could time travel
back to one minute before I learned how
to spread a single, tiny, dangerous lie!
Those two words, NEW PAPILIO,
flew so far across the infinite Internet
that they will never completely
disappear.
I can’t resolve or invent the past.
I need a way to change the future.
Storm!
EDVER
While we’re wrapped up in our struggle
to make a decision, rain and thunder
finally arrive, ending the drought
that seemed endless.
Maybe the Human Vacuum Cleaner
will get flooded out, pick up his tent,
and abandon his dream of selling
each example of a new Papilio
for one hundred thousand dollars
or more.
But no.
He’s still there, we check quickly,
hiding carefully before sneaking
back to our house
to make plans.
The question we keep asking each other
is why hasn’t our dad found the smuggler
and arrested him?
He barely seems to patrol these days.
All he does is sit around with Abuelo,
both of them nodding and murmuring
as they sort messy papers
in the museum room,
as if they’re wrapped up
in their own
secret plan.
I’ve just started getting to know my father,
and now I already miss him, as if summer
has ended, and I’m on my way home.
But I’m not.
There’s still time
for surprises.
After the Rain
LUZA
Tree frogs, birdsongs,
sighing mud,
and thousands
of butterflies
puddling.
Iguanas sunbathe on our roof.
A majá snake coils itself around a branch.
Chickens chuckle, and a blue Cinderella lizard
lifts its delicately
clinging feet
one by one.
My long-lost brother has turned out to be
such a mixture of trouble and friendship!
What should we scheme together?
How should we act?
I can’t bear the thought of revealing
our shared disaster
to Papi and Abuelo . . .
but we can’t ignore the smuggler, either,
because together, Edver and I hold the fate
of so many fragile, fluttering lives
in our guilty hands.
Keys
EDVER
The downpour gives way to heat.
In the village, there are rumors
of public parks with suddenly legal
Internet access
all over the island,
a change that could bring
normal communication, maybe even
modern video games, but I don’t have my phone
and even if I did, I’m not sure those dragon flames
would mean as much to me anymore,
now that I’m stranded in the middle
of a real-life catastrophe.
I need weapons, and a plan—maybe steal
Dad’s fake rifle, and hope to scare the
Human Vacuum Cleaner
into surrendering?
Or catch a poisonous scorpion
and sneak it into the creepy dude’s tent?
Or convince him that blue-clad police
and green-uniformed soldiers
are already on their way to arrest him?
Mom taught me to make decisions
by following a series of choices
patterned after the scientific keys
found in every field guide
for identifying animals.
Six legs or eight?
Three body parts or two?
Often winged, never winged?
May have chewing mouthparts,
or always found with piercing mouths?
In this case, the only two answers
are insects or spiders, but other keys
are a lot more complicated, with pairs
of choices
that go on and on
until you can finally
reach the end,
and identify
any mysterious
specimen.
Emotional choices aren’t as easy,
but the basic method still works.
Right or wrong?
Fair or unjust?
Resulting in peace of mind
or guilt?
All you have to do is write your own
scientific key for sorting out the general
confusion.
But Luza and I don’t do it the easy way.
Instead, we keep debating possibilities