Battle of the Ampere

  “The medicine they put on it will help,” she said. “Your face keeps twitching. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I have Tourette’s syndrome,” I said. “It makes me blink and gulp—stuff like that. Especially when I’m under stress.”

  “Tourette’s,” she said. “I’ve heard of that. Is it contagious?”

  “No. It’s genetic,” I said. “You won’t catch it.”

  She nodded. “Before I came to Peru, there were two of you that the Elgen couldn’t find—you and a girl. Did they ever find her?”

  “Taylor,” I said.

  “Then you know her?”

  I nodded. “I know her.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then said, “You like her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I can tell by the way you said her name.”

  I didn’t realize I was that obvious. “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s out in the jungle with the rest of the Electroclan.”

  “What’s an Electroclan?”

  “That’s what we call ourselves. They’re my friends. Some of them used to be with Hatch. You might know them. Ian, Abigail, and McKenna. Zeus.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Zeus? You’re with Zeus?”

  “You know Zeus?”

  “I know them all,” she said. “I knew Zeus the best, since Ian, Abigail, and McKenna were locked up for insubordination. I’m glad Dr. Hatch finally let them out.”

  “He didn’t. We rescued them.”

  “And Zeus?”

  “He came with us.”

  “That surprises me,” she said. “But he always was a wild card.”

  “He still is.”

  “So how did you meet up with them?” she asked.

  “It started when Hatch kidnapped my mother and Taylor. I went after them.”

  “Have you ever met Dr. Hatch? I mean, face-to-face?”

  I nodded. “The last time I saw him he tried to feed me to his rats.”

  She grimaced. “Hatch made me watch someone be fed to the rats. That’s what he does to the guards who disobey him. How did you escape?”

  “I absorbed the rats’ electricity. It made me too electric for them to touch.”

  “You can absorb electricity?”

  “That’s how I stopped Nichelle.”

  She looked surprised. “You stopped Nichelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one’s ever stopped Nichelle.” Suddenly, Tessa looked up. “Ni yau shemma?”

  I turned. The young woman who’d been in my hut when I woke up was standing in the doorway looking at us.

  “Hung fa. Ta bi laile. Tade jyau hai hwaide. Wo syu bang ta.”

  “Hau, hau,” Tessa said. She looked at me. “I guess you have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “She said your foot is still hurt. She needs to work on it some more.”

  I lifted myself up. “Yeah, it’s still a little sore. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Same here,” she said. “Though kind of surreal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re kind of a legend. Like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.”

  I looked at her quizzically.

  “It’s just that everyone at the academy has talked about you for years. But I never thought I’d ever really meet you. Especially not in the middle of the Amazon jungle.”

  “I never thought I’d be in the Amazon jungle,” I replied.

  I followed the young woman back to my hut. When I got there, there were two stone bowls on the ground next to my bed. One had a thick, green substance in it. The other one also held liquid, but it was dark and watery with purple flowers floating in it. There was also a pile of fresh leaves next to the bowls.

  “Dzwo,” she said, pointing to the mat.

  I guessed she was telling me to sit, so I sat down. She knelt down, untied the jute twine, and peeled back the leaves around my ankle.

  “Fang sya,” she said.

  “What?”

  She pushed back on my chest.

  “You want me to lie down?” I asked. I partially lay back. “Like this?”

  She laughed and pushed me again. “Fang sya.”

  I lay back. She set the leaves aside, then began peeling the hard clay from my foot. When it was all off, she washed my foot with warm, sweet-smelling liquid, then began rubbing some kind of salve on it. She kneaded my foot for nearly an hour. The massage felt really good, and the concoction she was rubbing into my ankle made my skin tingle. I started to sit up to look, but she gently put her hand on my chest to stop me. “Ching bu.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just looking.” I lay back and closed my eyes. After my ankle was fully coated she wrapped it in fragrant leaves, then gently tied it with the same cord as before. Then she came around and began running her fingers through my hair. “This is, like, better than a day spa,” I said, even though I’d never actually been to one and she couldn’t understand me anyway.

  She didn’t speak any more but continued to massage my scalp and gently tug on my hair. I had no idea what this had to do with healing my foot, but it felt really good.

  After a few minutes she began to sing.

  Hen ke aide,

  bu syi huan wo,

  tai ke shi,

  yin wo ai ni.

  Hen ke aide,

  Wai gwo haidz

  Ho ni li wo,

  hwei ni syang wo,

  Wo syi wang, hwei

  yin, wo ain ni,

  jye nyu haidz

  hwei syang ni.

  She sang the words over and over. I had no idea what she was singing, but it was pretty and soothing, and she seemed sad singing it. At one point she got particularly emotional. I partially opened one eye and saw that she was crying. She was still singing when I fell asleep.

  *

  I had another dream. I was alone in the jungle when a tiny Peruvian man with a wooden leg came to me. “We must hurry to someplace safe,” he said. “He is coming.”

  “Who’s coming?” I asked.

  “El Chullanchaqui.”

  “Who is that?”

  “No time to explain,” he said, running off into the jungle. In spite of his size and wooden leg, he moved quickly as I ran after him, deeper and deeper into the trees. The farther into the jungle we went, the darker it got, until it was nearly dark as night. Finally we stopped in a place that was too thick to hike through. The branches of the trees around me were snakes, snapping at me.

  I looked at the man fearfully. “I thought you said you were taking me someplace safe.”

  “There is no safe place anymore.”

  “Who is El Chullanchaqui?”

  He looked at me and smiled. “Me.” Then he disappeared.

  I woke, gasping. It was dark around me, and the hut was slightly illuminated by the glow of my skin. The girl was gone. I took a deep breath and rubbed my forehead. I’ve got to stop dreaming, I thought.

  *

  It was about a half hour later that the young woman returned. I could see her silhouette in the entranceway. She wore flowers in her black hair and dozens of red and purple beads, which shone against her bare shoulders and neck. She looked pretty.

  “Hen keaidi, ni laile.” She reached her hand out to me.

  I took a step toward her and realized that my foot felt completely better. I touched it, then looked at her and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Bu yung, sye.” She took my hand and led me out to the center of the village, where there was a large fire blazing. The natives looked at us as we arrived, their faces lit by the flickering flames. They were sitting around the fire on mats woven from palm leaves. There were many more women than men, and I guessed that the warriors were out patrolling the jungle.

  I sat down on a mat next to the young woman, who looked very happy, her face blanketed with a contented smile.

  “It’s a pretty night,” I said.

  She didn’t speak.

&nb
sp; “I can’t believe that you fixed my foot. Doctors in America can’t fix a foot that fast.”

  She looked over at me, her eyes gazing deeply into mine.

  “Hey, glow boy. She doesn’t speak English.”

  I turned around to see Tessa walking up to us. At her approach the young woman frowned, then quietly stood and walked away. In the shadow outside of the fire, I could see Tessa’s faint glow, which was comforting to me. My own glow increased as she got nearer. She sat down next to me.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “It’s a funeral dinner. That’s why the women are wearing those red and purple beads.”

  “A funeral dinner? Who died?”

  Tessa gave me a funny smile. “We did.”

  I stared at her. “They’re going to kill us?”

  She laughed. “No, glowworm. When someone leaves that they won’t see again, they consider them dead.”

  “That’s . . . creepy.”

  “It’s their custom. I mean, it’s not like Americans don’t have weird customs—like, carving faces into pumpkins and putting candles in them. Or hanging lights on Christmas trees. How weird is that?”

  “I never thought about it that way.”

  “That’s because it’s what you’re raised with. Same with them. Unfortunately, their customs won’t be around much longer.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The Amacarra are going extinct,” she said. “There used to be thousands of them. Now this is all that’s left. There are more old people than young. Soon they will be down to less than a dozen people.”

  “Why are they going extinct?”

  “Same reason the American Indians did,” she said. “Disease. The shrinking forest. The modern world.”

  The young woman returned and handed me a stone bowl filled with a yellow substance, mashed like potatoes.

  “Wo gei ni chr, ke aide.”

  I didn’t know what she said but thanked her. She left us again.

  Tessa asked, “Do you like Meihwa?”

  I looked down at my bowl. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

  Tessa burst out laughing. “No, Meihwa is the girl who’s been taking care of you.”

  I looked up at her. “Oh, sorry. She seems nice. She mostly just looks at me and laughs.”

  Tessa grinned. “Of course. She’s only twelve. And she thinks you’re cute.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she calls you henkeai.”

  I looked at her blankly. “Yeah, I’ve heard that. What does it mean?”

  “It means she thinks you’re cute.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “She’s cute too.”

  Tessa smiled. “If we were sticking around, the chief would probably marry her to you.”

  “She’s only twelve.”

  “The Amacarra marry young.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not sticking around,” I said.

  “Good thing,” Tessa repeated.

  I changed the subject. “So what’s in the bowl?”

  “Mashed bananas,” she said.

  “Bananas,” I said. “Then it’s good for our electricity.”

  “Yes. But I don’t think the Amacarra know that. It’s just what they eat.”

  I picked out a piece of something white and fibrous from the fruit. “This isn’t banana.”

  She took the piece from me and put it in her mouth. “It’s piranha.”

  “Piranha?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  She looked at me with a wry smile. “Chicken, of course. Just be glad it’s not the yasyegump.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Squashed termite larvae.”

  “They eat that?”

  “Sometimes,” Tessa said. “It takes some getting used to.”

  “I don’t think I’d ever get used to it.”

  “You’d be surprised at what you can get used to,” Tessa said.

  “Do they eat much piranha?”

  “Yes. Maybe because it’s so easy to catch. The river is full of them.”

  “What do they use for bait?”

  “The Amacarra use spears to fish, so there’s no bait. But I’ve seen the Peruvian jungle men fish, and they use just about anything. I once saw a man cut a callous from his foot, put it on a hook, and fish with it.”

  My dinner was looking less appetizing by the second. “We’re eating foot-fungus-fed piranha.”

  “I told you, the Amacarra use spears. Go on, don’t be a chicken. It’s good. Besides, eating piranha is a lot better than the other way around.”

  Just then an older woman with gray hair walked up to us. I could tell that Tessa liked her by the way her face lit up when she saw her. The woman held out a bowl of food to Tessa. Tessa took the bowl then said, “Sye sye, muchin.”

  The woman smiled. “Buyung kechi,” she said. She touched Tessa on the cheek, then walked away.

  “How did you learn the language?”

  “I only know a little. If you hang out long enough, you start picking up things. Like this is how they eat.” She held up her hand with three fingers together. “You hold your fingers like this and scoop it up.” She lifted a lump of the stuff to her mouth and ate it.

  I imitated her, dipping my fingers into the pasty goo, then put it into my mouth. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I would never think of eating fruit and fish together, but, in a jungle sort of way, it worked.

  We ate a moment in silence, then I asked Tessa, “So what are you going to do after we get back to America?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll just try to live a normal life. Whatever that is.”

  “You could, like, work for an electric company. Or with scientists.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I could if I wanted the Elgen to find me.”

  “Sorry, bad idea,” I said. “Do you think Hatch will ever stop looking for you?”

  She frowned. “No. Hatch never gives up. And he never forgets. It’s something he’s proud of.” She slowly exhaled. “What about you? What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll go home with my mom. Finish high school.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said. “Home.” She looked at me then asked, “Do you think Hatch will leave you alone?”

  “No.” After a moment I asked, “How did Hatch get you?”

  “I was nine. They kidnapped me from my room.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  She looked down. “It was pretty traumatic. But the Elgen psychologists, they”—she paused—“help you forget.”

  “So you don’t remember your family?”

  Her expression fell. “I remember some. I had a little brother. And my mother was just about to have another baby. He’d almost be six by now.”

  “You could find them.”

  “No. I can’t go back,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not my world anymore.”

  “It could be.”

  Her expression grew more sorrowful. “No. I’ve seen too much.” She slowly shook her head. “I’ve done too much. I don’t belong anymore. They wouldn’t want me.”

  “Of course they would. I bet they think about you all the time.”

  Her eyes looked pained. “No, it just wouldn’t work anymore.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Because it’s true. When the Elgen take you, they do things to you. They change you. You’re not the same person you were. They convince you that your family doesn’t really want you anymore. They make you angry at them. They get you to denounce them.”

  Hearing this made me heartsick. “Did you denounce your family?”

  She didn’t answer, but I could guess the answer from the pain in her eyes.

  “You know that Hatch and the Elgen are liars, right?”

  “Logically, I do. But this stuff is programmed into you as a kid. It takes root and grows into who y
ou are. Pretty soon, you can’t pull it out anymore because it’s all that’s left of you. Even if you know it’s not true, it’s all you know.” Her voice fell. “It still feels true. And deep down inside, you’re afraid that they’re right. . . .”

  “They’re not right,” I said. “The Elgen can twist the truth all they want, but they can’t change it. A million lies can’t make a single truth.”

  “But they can bury it so deep you’ll never find it,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Just then an Amacarra tribesman ran into camp. He was speaking excitedly and his hands flew wildly around him, as if he were swatting at a swarm of bees. Everyone around us stilled and the chief’s expression grew solemn. Then he stood and walked over to us. “The army is near. It is time for you to go to the river. Ma shang.”

  “Now?” I asked Tessa.

  “Ma shang means ‘immediately,’ ” Tessa said, setting her bowl down on the ground.

  The chief shouted something and a woman ran away from the fire, then returned carrying two woven blankets. “You must wear these,” he said. “To hide your glow.”

  We put them around us, like cloaks, so that only our faces showed. A half dozen warriors surrounded us.

  “Come,” the chief said. “We must hurry.”

  I looked across the fire. Meihwa was looking at me. A tear, glistening from the light of the fire, ran down her cheek. I waved at her, but she just turned away.

  *

  The expedition was composed of Tessa and me, the chief, six warriors, and the old woman who had served Tessa food.

  The Amacarra village wasn’t far from the river, less than a half hour by foot, and we hurried through the jungle as fast as we could run, over fallen trees and around quicksand, with hardly a wasted step. Everyone moved quickly, even the elderly woman, who I had trouble keeping up with. Every now and then the chief would turn back and say to me, “Kwai, kwai ba!” Which I took to mean, “Run faster!”

  We moved without speaking, and a few times we heard the echo of gunfire in the distance, which only increased our pace. I wondered if the army had reached the Amacarra village and if they would harm the villagers.

  At the river we walked down a small incline to a dugout canoe. Two caimans were on the shore next to the canoe but turned and splashed into the water at our approach, their thick tails making final flicks at us before disappearing in the dark brown water. Two of the warriors got into the canoe, while the others began cutting large fronds from the trees that overhung the bank, piling them next to the canoe.