until we’re so exhausted that she falls asleep
in a hammock out in the garden, while I play
with Snoopy as if I’m still an innocent
little kid who doesn’t need to make
any huge, world-changing
decisions.
Stalling for Time
LUZA
I only pretend
to be peacefully sleeping
while my brother’s mind
rushes off in search
of trouble,
his specialty.
I wish that we could splash truth
all over our lives, like paint or glue
spilled from a broken bottle
while making a mosaic.
All we would have to do is clean up
and start over again, but instead,
here we are, facing a dilemma every bit
as challenging as negotiations
between enemy nations.
Sneaking Away
EDVER
I can’t wait for Luza to wake up, so I go off alone
with Snoopy huddled under my sweaty shirt.
I keep expecting someone to stop me,
but Dad and Abuelo are both busy sorting papers
and using the microscope to identify an enormous
metallic green, robot-armored jewel beetle.
They’re so absorbed in their work
that they don’t even look up once,
no matter how many times I try
to make myself visible
by hovering near windows.
If only I could click a dot on a screen,
end this part of my life
and start over.
Adrenalin must be filling my brain with light,
because everything looks both bright
and blurry at the same time, like trees
seen through a kaleidoscope
of broken colors.
Snoopy scratches my chest
with his sharp little claws, so I pull him out,
set him on my shoulder, and ask myself
where I’m supposed to find the courage
to confront the world’s MOST WANTED
wildlife smuggler.
Then I recognize the truth.
I can’t do this alone.
I need help
from my sister
and her weird ideas, all that magic realism,
her own special, strange style of art
with illusions clever enough to fool
a trickster.
So I turn back and run until I reach Luza
and shake her awake—even though
now I can tell that she was faking—and then
quickly, I explain my hastily imagined plan,
maybe a bit too loudly.
I hope Dad and Abuelo didn’t
hear me.
The Challenge
LUZA
Ilusión can mean illusion or dream,
the wild fantasy of someday reaching
a goal, but where do I start?
My brother’s odd scheme
actually makes sense.
Paper, por supuesto, of course,
sí, sí, yes, yes, I have plenty of sheets
that I made myself, as soft and flexible
as cloth, crafted by soaking newspapers,
then rinsing them in our old Russian
washing machine, filtering roughness
through a screen, hanging the paper
up to dry, and finally, dying each sheet
with a color found only in nature,
so that whenever I want to make
a collage, I have plenty of dazzling,
softly glowing choices.
Yellow from saffron, pink from lichens,
the surprising green of red onion skins,
and a blue so deep that it looks like night,
a color yielded by boiling indigo leaves
until the sky-hued dye is almost black.
Saffron and indigo sheets are all we need.
Yellow wings, cave-dark body, antennae,
and head, an illusion of both sorts,
the dream
and this trick,
almost magic,
yet at the same time
so convincing
that my NEW PAPILIO
looks completely
real.
Kill Jar
EDVER
Inside a glass bottle,
the paper butterfly looks amazing.
Those wings actually flutter!
If my sister’s masterpiece
weren’t so perfect, I’d call it gross,
cool, awesome, all the words I used for death
way back at the beginning of summer
when I still thought killing was something
that only happened on a screen, where it was
temporary and harmless, just one more
scientific skill.
Now, inside that kill jar, stinky mothballs
really seem to be doing their deadly job,
filling the air with poison, so the striped
paper wings
look like they’re suffering
slowly.
Danger
LUZA
We have a fake butterfly,
but we need a good story,
the right words to trick
a trickster.
Above us, branches, leaves, and sky
seem to cheer our daring scheme.
I have handcuffs I crafted from scraps
of stiff plastic trash, hard water bottles
left on the trail by tourists.
I also have a glass jar containing
my homemade magic, the spirit
of a butterfly, captured
on paper.
Preparation
EDVER
All I have is Snoopy and courage.
If this were a game, there would be
so many possibilities—weapons, elixirs,
precious gems to trade, cave-dwelling
secrets
to discover. . . .
But it’s not a game, and if we die
there won’t be any way to start over.
So we need the best story we can invent,
something believable and astonishing
at the same time, both ordinary
and thrilling, a temptation,
a magnet, a lure. . . .
As soon as we find the creep’s campsite—
peaceful, surrounded by tree ferns, magnolias,
and towering palms, Luza begins telling him
her newly invented tale, twisting her voice
into torches
of fascination, each strand
as bright as a leaping flame
in a prehistoric fire,
with a whole village
gathered around,
listening.
But it’s just him, one ugly-minded smuggler,
a man so mean and greedy, he’d probably sell
his own relatives, if someone wealthy
wanted to collect them.
Only the comforting silence
of curling fern leaves
keeps me calm enough
to resist
screaming.
Confrontation
LUZA
The Human Vacuum Cleaner’s interest grows
as he hears my claim that my brother’s little pet
is new to science,
a natural hybrid
between coastal jutías
and the mountain form,
a cuddly creature, just as friendly
and intelligent as a dog,
but small and cute,
the perfect gift for any rich foreign child
who deserves
a rare treasure.
Yes, I’ve captured his attention, and now
all I have to do is hold my fake butterfly
close
enough to be noticed, but not so near
that he’ll see glued strips of soft paper
instead of a valuable, endangered
tiger swallowtail.
So while my brother uses Snoopy
as a hook to reel in the smuggler,
I flit around his cluttered campsite,
my fake kill jar visible,
the makeshift handcuffs
safely hidden.
Five American dollars.
That’s what the monster-man offers me
for this jar and its enticing contents,
five dollars for a butterfly
he plans to auction for more than
one hundred thousand dollars.
Claro que sí, I answer, yes, of course,
still keeping the prize out of range,
away from his hands,
letting him spin around,
trying to follow me as I perform a silly,
childish dance, pretending to celebrate
the fortune I’ve just been offered,
because five American dólares
in our remote forest
is like a thousand dollars anywhere else
on Earth—no wonder so many poor people
sell wildlife!
The Human Vacuum Cleaner’s ugly eyes
watch me intently, as if he plans to grab the jar
and race away with my NEW PAPILIO,
instead of paying me the amount he just
promised.
He must think I’m stupid!
Is this how he fooled Mamá
into liking, or loving, or worse—
could they already
be married?
Is he my brother’s new
stepfather?
Battle
EDVER
How quickly a victory turns toward failure.
The smuggler grabs Snoopy with one hand,
pushes me down with the other, and rushes
toward my sister, who still holds the jar
just out of reach.
Snoopy squeals, scratching
the guy’s neck so hard that I see
streaks of blood, hear a curse
followed by a moan, proof
that my brave pet’s claws
really hurt.
My sister darts and dodges,
her soccer skills incredibly useful
for avoiding those grasping fingers.
The only thing I know how to do is skate,
so I get up and slide around on the soggy slope,
kicking up a slimy wet mess so I can thrash
the creep’s face with blinding mud.
When he trips and falls to his knees,
I rescue Snoopy while Luza clamps
those flimsy-looking plastic handcuffs
onto the Human Vacuum Cleaner’s wrists
and yanks them tight, catching him off guard
as he tries to scrub
rough soil
from his eyes
with trapped fists.
We won!
Now what?
Somehow, we have to stop him from running,
but it’s already too late, he’s up and sprinting,
bound hands not enough to keep him still.
If only we’d thought of extra cuffs
for his feet.
Battlefield
LUZA
I’ve seen enough fights at school to know
that winning one round isn’t enough
to end the pummeling, especially
when your enemy gets away.
So I run after him, shrieking to startle
all the hidden forest creatures, hoping a flock
of noisy parrots might rise from the trees,
so alarmed that their racket of squawks
will make this horrible man hesitate
just long enough
to be caught.
But then what?
Once again, we didn’t think ahead.
We’re no wiser than we were when I sent
those two words, NEW PAPILIO, hurtling
across a vast, eerie, man-made universe—
the Internet.
Whirl!
EDVER
With Snoopy clinging to my hair
and Luza swooping ahead of me,
I feel like a useless little kid,
only one year younger
than my sister, but a lot less
athletic, so I go back to trying
my usual skills, sliding and thinking
at the same time, picturing a game
with all these players—towering tree ferns
a great background for any display
of dragon flames . . .
only I don’t really know how to breathe fire,
and Snoopy is practically pulling my ears off,
with Luza falling behind as the smuggler
rushes ahead, straight into a storm of shouts,
cries, whoops, and pounding hooves,
all the noises I’ve heard so often
as two armies of electronic knights
gallop straight toward each other
right before clashing.
This time, instead of swords and lances,
the only weapons are looped ropes,
twirling lassos aimed by Dad, Abuelo,
and a bunch of other old folks.
My brain feels like it’s oozing
in slow motion, while my body rolls—
dreamlike—the pain of crashing
softened by mud, Snoopy kept safe
by his own acrobatics,
and Luza far ahead now,
almost as distant
as those nooses
that tighten around
the shoulders and hips
of the Human Vacuum Cleaner,
a real-life evil villain
defeated by two kids,
one jutía, and a cheering crowd
of white-haired wizards
on horseback.
Los abuelos must have learned
how to swing rodeo ropes
way back in the middle
of the twentieth century
when they were young
and this mountain
by ranches with cowboys.
Well, cowgirls, too, I guess,
because some of those old ladies
sure look
like experts.
Triumph!
LUZA
Instead of a criminal, the poacher
now looks more like a caterpillar, wrapped up
in so many layers of lassos that he seems
to be snugly tucked into a cocoon
of tangled ropes.
Oímos, Abuelo says.
We heard.
Increíble, Papi adds.
Incredible.
I can’t tell what they heard,
or whether our father means
that we’re unbelievable in a foolish way
or an amazing one . . .
but who cares,
because Edver, Snoopy, and I are all safe,
and one of the world’s worst poachers
is on his way to prison.
Summer’s End
EDVER
Explaining everything to Dad
is punishment enough to last
a lifetime.
Confessions aren’t easy.
I’d give anything to avoid describing
the way I guided my sister’s disastrous
message, the first words she ever wrote
on any computer.
But what follows is so weird
that even an island without Internet
begins to seem normal.
Mom shows up.
Mom and a man she introduces
as a United States Fish and Wildlife agent,
operating undercover
to help her catch
a notorio
us smuggler.
The wildlife cop is a muscular guy
with blue eyes that are directed too often
at my mother, and too nervously
toward my father.
Poor Dad.
He looks furious and sorrowful
at the same time.
Poor Mom.
She’s so shocked when she finds out
that we already took care of the bad guy,
and all she can do is apologize for being late.
She makes excuses—the car they rented in Havana
broke down, they had to hitchhike
just like everyone else, their rides
were slow and clunky. . . .
Poor Luza.
She looks stunned.
Abuelo is the only one who seems ready
to hug his daughter, welcome her back,
and treat her like part of this crazy, mixed-up,
two-country, disaster-attracting family.
Reappearance
LUZA
I can’t believe Mamá is here now,
even though for so long I hoped
she would arrive.
She looks just like her photos,
but her expression is so gentle,
as if she’s suddenly
human.
Hugs, embraces, apologies, explanations,
and yet there’s this distance, the effect of so many
unchangeable years apart.
How can ninety simple miles
of ordinary, rolling blue ocean
keep so many families divided
until now?
Each thought is a wave that sweeps over me,
tasting as salty
as tears.
Dizzy
EDVER
Earth rotates on its axis,
orbits around the sun,
and glides along with
the whole solar system
zooming through
our galaxy.
All those light-years
might as well be a fantasy,
because reality and myths
feel the same now.
Mom claims she knew nothing
about the Human Vacuum Cleaner
until she was already dating him,
and noticed how unnaturally fascinated
he became when he saw Luza’s note
about a new species of Papilio.
So she rushed some quick research,
just like I did, by matching his photo
to insect auction sites, and figuring out
all his dangerous lies.
Then she helped international authorities
set up a sting, only they didn’t arrive