First World Problems

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 

I waited until I was satisfied both girls had settled into their hammocks for good before changing clothes. I might be sharing a room with them, but we weren’t sisters and we certainly weren’t friends. For now, I was guarding everything, even the sight of my (damn near perfect) boobs. I peeled my shirt, which felt layered in grime, off my body, and then my bra. I shuddered when I realized I couldn’t wash my bra tonight and would have to wear it again, just as dirty and almost certainly stiff from dried sweat, tomorrow.

I wrapped my hands around the edge of the hammock and tugged down, testing its weight again. Then I settled my bottom in the largest part of it. The hooks creaked against the thick beam above, and I tried to keep my breaths even. I let my flats drop to the floor with a light slap.

“Sofia?”

I jumped at Lena’s soft voice. “Yeah?” I waited for her to say something comforting, something encouraging. Something that made me feel like I’d be able to get through all this. Maybe even that she and Arielle hadn’t been talking about me.

“Bring your shoes in with you. Sometimes the littlest snakes are the most poisonous. They’ll sneak into your shoes and you’ll regret not keeping them under your pillow.”

That was it. I never thought I’d be sleeping in a hammock, let alone living in a house like this. I never, ever in a million years thought I would need to worry about waking up to tiny poisonous snakes in my shoes. Tears started streaming out of my eyes, and for the first time, lying in the dark under this foamy net, I didn’t try to stop them. Still, I clenched my jaw and fought hard against the lump in my throat. Silent tears were one thing, but everyone knowing I was crying? I might as well have made myself into a dartboard right then.

I lay there, trying to figure out which sounds drifting in through our open windows were crickets, which were birds, and which were frogs. They all combined, weaving in and out in a high-pitched chorus of chirps. Again, I breathed. I tried to remember the symphony Mom would take us to before the crash, when I was a snotty preteen who couldn’t be bothered to show her just how much I appreciated being treated like a grownup for a few hours, how much I had loved the time with her. She had told me that some people tried to match the pitch levels of instruments to voices of different creatures. An orchestra, she said, was like a chorus of nature. I tried to picture which animals would make which sounds. Crickets playing violas, birds drawing winged bows over violins.

It was stupid and childish, but in this moment, in a worn-out hammock in a room with girls who hated me, crying over what really amounted to being far from home and missing my mom, I felt pretty stupid and childish, too.

(

I had known Guyana was on the equator before I left, but somehow that had sounded exotic and fabulous. In the back of my mind, I had pictured relaxing by bright waters and drinking out of coconut cups with umbrellas stuck in them.

So it was only now that I realized there was pretty much nothing more annoying than a summer sunrise in the goddamn rainforest. In the morning, birds were the prominent chirpers, instead of the buzzing bugs of last night. Their low, sporadic lilt was the first thing that woke me. I was actually glad for that because the blinding sun was the second thing.

I clutched the edges of my hammock tight around me while I carefully stuck one leg out, then the other, praying they would hit the floor before the damn thing flipped.

Thankfully, they did. I’d always been grateful that Mom had passed down the gene that gave me legs for days, and they served me well this morning. I’d never thought I would love the feel of cheap, foam flip-flops easing under my feet, but I let out a breath of relief when my feet stayed off the bare floor, and there were no snakes or spiders waiting to gnaw my toes off when I did.