Origin Read Free Page B

nose, right between my eyes. Of everyone in Little Cam, my mother is the only one who never smiles when she says that.

    Later, after my lessons and MRI—which showed nothing new—I am sitting in the menagerie, brushing Alai, when the alarms go off. Alai is a two-hundred-pound jaguar that Uncle Paolo gave me for my ninth birthday, when Alai was just a cub. He hates everyone in Little Cam except me, Uncle Antonio, and the cook, Jacques, who brings Alai cookies every morning. Alai is mad about cookies.
    The alarms blare in two short bursts. Behind me, the monkeys start screaming in response. They like to think they run the menagerie, but I won’t have any of it.
    “Oh, shut up, you dummies,” I say, rising from the ground and turning to shake Alai’s brush at them. The Grouch, a huge orange howler monkey, stares straight at me and lets out an obnoxious roar. The howlers used to scare me when I was little, but now I just roll my eyes at them.
    “Come on, Alai!” I say, heading for the door. The menagerie is a long, low cement building with dirt floors and wide picture windows in every cage. Most of the animals are there for experimentation—which means we have several immortal residents—but Alai is not allowed to be used for any tests. He is completely mine.
    After pulling the heavy metal door shut behind me, I start running. Alai lopes at my heels, his huge paws all but silent on the path. I have to circle most of Little Cam before I finally reach the gate. My heart is racing, not because of the run, but from excitement. Two alarms means the supply truck is here.
    We only get a delivery every few months, so it’s always a special occasion when one arrives. Uncle Timothy, a huge, muscular man with skin as dark as obsidian, is in charge ofmaking the trek through the jungle to the Little Mississip, the nearest river to Little Cam. I don’t know what comes after the Little Mississip, but it must be a long journey since every supply run takes him nearly two months. Once I asked Uncle Paolo to show me a map of Uncle Timothy’s route, but he told me to never ask him or anyone else that question again.
    The gate is the only entrance or exit from our compound, and now it is swinging open on mechanical tracks to admit the trucks. There are three of them, huge, growling, angry things with canvas tops and wheels drenched with mud. Belching and rattling, they pull into the wide dirt drive in front of the dining hall and shudder to a stop. Uncle Timothy jumps out of the lead truck, his bald head glistening with sweat. He has a handkerchief tied around his mouth and nose, and as I come running up, he pulls it down and smiles. He has the whitest teeth of anyone I know.
    “Hey, little miss! Come give your Uncle T a hug, yeah?” He spreads his arms, but I wrinkle my nose and dodge aside. He smells like the Grouch.
    “You’re disgusting! What did you bring? Where did you go?” I race around to the back of his truck and climb onto the high bumper so I can peer inside. “Did you trade with some natives?” Ever since I first heard of the jungle dwellers whom Uncle Timothy calls the “natives,” I’ve been fascinated by the possibility of seeing one. I’ve not had the chance yet, since he usually goes to their villages whenever he needs to trade for fresh fruit. Often the scientists go with him to ask the natives how they use certain plants for medicine.
    “Get down from there, Pia!” calls my mother. She and a crowd of people are gathering around the trucks, and everyonelooks excited, since delivery days are our only contact with the outside world.
    I eye the boxes and crates eagerly, wondering what they hold. I start to reach for something with the word
Skittles
across it, with a picture of a rainbow and what look like pieces of candy, when suddenly someone pops up from behind the crate. Startled, I jump backward and land on the ground beside Alai.
    It’s a woman. She’s squinting and yawning as if she just woke up, and