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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
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  63. Author’s Note

Clark started to fidget within a few minutes, but I was committed to the movie—mostly because Mr. Incredible reminded me so much of myself—and I handed Clark my cell phone, which historically would buy me an hour.

He took it with glee, and as always, I reminded him, “Whatever you do, don’t erase my Tetris score.”

He giggled and put the corner of the phone in his mouth.

Elastigirl had just donned her outfit for the first time when I heard a voice come from my phone.

“. . . interested in our new Xfinity promotion . . . Forty-four ninety-nine a month for both internet and TV . . .”

Clark had opened my voicemail app.

“I don’t think they have Comcast in France,” I said with a laugh, then turned my attention back to the superheroes on screen. Who was the black guy in the blue suit? Where did he come from? Was that Samuel L. Jackson’s voice?

“Thomas!”

I whipped my head around and glared at the phone in Clark’s lap.

It was a voice I hadn’t heard in over a year.

It was Gina.

She was in trouble.

2

2

tibióno village, bolivia
august 5, 6:33 a.m.

Even in the dry season, every tree, vine, and leaf was dripping with condensation. A light mist danced in the small pockets of rising sun that filtered through the thick canopy overhead. A low din of hoots, hollers, calls, and screeches filled Gina Brady’s ears as her feet pounded the soft earth.

Gina had been running this trail each morning for the past two years. The trail was an old friend. Ever reliable. Gina knew that six minutes into her run she would pass a line of leaf-cutter ants carrying their prized cargo to their nest; at eight minutes she would hear shouts from the howler monkeys swinging high overhead; and at roughly sixteen minutes she would pass a mottled knot of lianas—woody, climbing vines abundant in the rainforest—that resembled a clenched fist.

The Fist, as Gina had come to think of it, came into view, and Gina checked the watch on her wrist: a little over seventeen minutes. Slower than usual. She thought about picking up the pace but decided against it. In Seattle, at the park across the street from the health clinic where she briefly worked, Gina could knock out four miles in twenty-five minutes. But in the jungle, even with her encyclopedic knowledge of every centimeter of the trail, she would rarely finish the loop in less than half an hour. But whereas the only threat at the park in Seattle was stepping in a pile of dog crap, in the jungle there were a thousand different things that could kill you.