Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green Read Free

leaving my stomach behind with each jolt.
    “Woo
-hoo
!” Roo goes every time the plane jerks downward.
    Even though Mom has to grab Ken/Neth’s arm (ugh) because she’s so terrified, the little plane lands without anyone dying.
    “Hey,” Roo whispers to me as the plane brakes, her breath smelling like orange Tic Tacs, “do you think Dad is coming up with something special for when he sees us?”
    Suddenly there’s a huge hard lump in my throat. I can hardly wait to see him. I can’t believe it’s been seven whole months.
    “Something special?” I say. “What kind of thing?”
    “Well”—Roo pauses, thinking—“like, a song he made up just for us. Or a cake with our names on it.”
    Sometimes I feel so much older than Roo.
    “I have no idea,” I snap at her. “He’s probably doing actual
work
right now.”
    I don’t want Roo to know that my heart’s swelling with excitement. It scares me to be this excited about seeing Dad. It makes me feel superstitious, like things might go extra wrong the more excited I am. I know if Dad were here, he’d tell me to take a deep breath. Slow and steady wins the race, Madpie. Slow and steady.
    But slow and steady is really hard to do, because we’re finally here, we’re finally going to find out what’s up with Dad. Roo and I have been begging Mom to take us to Dad in the jungle since March.
    “I don’t care if he’s in the middle of the middle of the middle of the jungle!” Roo said back then, digging her fork into her mashed potatoes but not eating any. “I don’t even care if he’s in the middle of the middle of the middle of the
volcano
. I. Just. Want. To. See. Dad.”
    “I can’t pull you out of school right now,” Mom informed her. “You’re learning about the solar system.”
    “Solar system schmolar system,” Roo said.
    “It’s a work trip,” Mom said quietly. “It’s not like Dad’s on vacation. He’s very busy. He wouldn’t be able to hang out with you. Besides, it’s dangerous for kids.”
    I looked across the table at Roo to see if she realized that Mom wanted to visit Dad just as much as we did. But she was too young to notice.
    “
What’s
dangerous for kids?” Roo demanded.
    “Roo,” Mom said, looking suddenly exhausted, “please.”
    A few times, when Roo was out of earshot or over at a friend’s house, Mom said to me, “Mad, what do you think? You think we should go and …?” She always trailed off, not quite wanting to say
figure out what the heck is going on with Dad
.
    “Yes, yes, yes,” I told her, and once we even sat down and got online to look for plane tickets, but right then Ken/Neth called to ask if he could drop by with some ratatouille he’d just made. He’d accidentally doubled the recipe.
    Things kept on happening. The lady with the beautiful voice would call again from La Lava to assure Mom that Dad was doing groundbreaking work in the inner jungle and his one regret was thathe couldn’t be in touch with us personally, but he knew we—more than any other people in the entire world—understood how much this work meant to him. Mom would hang up and say, “We’ve been overreacting, girls. Everything is fine.”
    Or Ken/Neth would stop by with a chocolate cake and three tickets for Cirque du Soleil. “It’s the least we can do,” he said, “given all that Dr. Wade is doing for us. You’re very generous, ladies, to lend us your dad and”—with a wink at Mom—“husband for all this time.” I don’t know why I didn’t say, Hel-
lo
, we didn’t lend him to you; it’s not like we had any choice, and besides, we had no idea it would take “all this time.”
    And then there was the night Mom opened the monthly bank statement and gave this enormous gasp, and I was like, “What’s
wrong
?” After not being able to talk for a few seconds she said, “Well, Mad, La Lava is being exceedingly generous, that’s all.”
    So weeks went by, and then months, and we never bought plane tickets.