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and beady. He was a very ugly boy.
Let me talk to her, I said.
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twelve
Michelle
IT WILL NOT, Michelle thinks, be as exhilarating, as
mystical, going down these steps as it had been
going up.
If only there were another hundred steps rising
above this one.
She d climb them happily.
She d climb them forever.
How wonderful it would be to look down, then.
All her life, she thinks, this is what she s been
waiting for:
An adventure in the sky. A chance to see it all
from a new perspective. To breathe it. To sing it. In
Mr. Friedler s English class, when they d read The
Odyssey, she d loved it at first. The stories, the
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adventures, the long winding route from Troy to
home. Then, halfway through, she realized that if
she had been an ancient Greek, the odyssey she
would have had would have been no odyssey at all.
If she had been a character in that epic, she d have
been sitting in her house in Ithaca, weaving some
thing and unraveling it for ten long years. She would
have been plagued by boredom. She would have
simply had the task of killing time for the span of an
entire life.
And it didn t help to tell herself, well, thousands
of years had passed since then. That things were dif
ferent now. That now, women could join the army.
Girls could grow up to be astronauts. Because no
woman Michelle Tompkins had ever met had ever
done these things. Every woman she knew spent her
days, basically, at home, or in an office weaving
and unraveling, weaving and unraveling while men
joined the army or became astronauts.
Even her mother, who d been adventurous once,
had given up her adventuring when she d had
Michelle. What choice had she had?
But now, here, Michelle is at the top of the world,
looking down. She wants to go higher and higher.
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She wants to stay here. Maybe not forever, but
longer.
But she can t. She has to follow Ander down the
pyramid now.
You know, Ander says, turning to her, at the
center of this pyramid there is a passageway that
leads to the altar on which the hearts of the sacrificed,
still beating, were placed in offer to Quetzalcoatl.
Would you like to see that?
Yes! Michelle says. Definitely.
It is a narrow passage, and very hot, but if you
are brave, we can go.
I m brave, she says.
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thirteen
Anne
MICHELLE, I SAID when I got close enough that she
could hear me. I gestured behind me, at the three
guys, with my thumb. We
Anne, Michelle said. You should ve come. You
wouldn t believe it. It s I can t even tell you. There
are no words. It s
Great, I said, but, Michelle
Here, she said, holding out a green feather to
me. It fell out of the sky, right into Ander s hand.
It s mine, but I want you to have it.
I took the feather.
It was beautiful iridescent, emerald, like a little
jewel. I held it up to the sun for a moment, and then
I stuffed it into my back pocket.
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Look, Michelle I said.
Ander came up behind her then. He nodded at
me politely. In the sunlight, his blue eyes seemed to
pulse with light. I looked away from him, then back
at Michelle.
I said, Can I talk to you alone? Over here?
I gestured a few feet away from Ander, who took
a step backward and held his hands up, waving them
a little in front of him. Oh, yes, of course, he said.
I will be over there
He pointed to a long white wall crawling with
vines and moss and carved with skulls.
He bowed a little before leaving us alone.
I m done with him, I told Michelle when we were
out of his earshot, taking a deep breath, nodding my
head in his direction. I want us to get away from
Ander.
What? Michelle asked, narrowing her eyes at
me. She looked suddenly very serious, and very sur
prised. What? She shook her head.
We re not going anywhere else with that weirdo.
He s a pervert. He s
You re nuts, Michelle said, backing away from
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me, shaking her head. And we have no choice any
way, Anne. He brought us here. We can t just walk
back to the hotel.
We re going with these guys, I said. I know
them. They re from Illinois, and they ve got a Jeep.
No, Michelle said. She crossed her arms stub
bornly. No. You can go back with someone else if
you want, but I m going into the pyramid, into the
middle of it, with Ander.
No, you re not! I was practically shouting now.
My fists were clenched. This has gone too far,
Michelle. These guys know Ander, I said, and
looked in their direction. They were standing in a
line, looking at us. They say he goes around hitting
on young girls. He s looking for jailbait pussy, I
said, making quotation marks in the air. I knew
there was something wrong with him. This is stupid,
and dangerous, and now we re getting out of here.
Michelle didn t say anything after that. She just
looked at me. I couldn t hold her eyes, and looked
down at the grass between us.
How do they know him? she asked after a long
silence.
From the hotel, I said.
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These guys are staying at our hotel? Michelle
asked.
Yeah, I said. They know Terri.
Michelle snorted a little at that. It made my heart
beat faster with anger. I felt like telling her that Terri
was a hundred times saner than she was. That Terri
was my best friend. But I said nothing. The impor
tant thing now was to get out of there, back to the
Hotel del Sol, where, if I wanted to have a con
frontation with Michelle, I could.
Have they talked to Ander?
Yeah, I said. Sure. That s how they know
about him.
This was the first time I was actually lying.
Before, I d been exaggerating, but I d believed what
I said. I knew I was right about Ander. I hadn t been
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