Before I could answer, the bear gave a roar so loud it rattled the bark beneath us.
“Oh, hell no,” uttered Cody.
And with that, he abandoned his post on the ground and scrambled for the tree, hauling himself up beside me like a man possessed. His boots slipped, his shirt snagged, he swore the whole way up—but in record time he was wedged onto the branch, clinging on for dear life.
The bear didn’t follow. It stayed right where it was, sitting back on its haunches as if amused by the whole spectacle. Its black eyes glinted. It scratched an itch behind its ear with claws like talons. It was like a patient customer at a restaurant, happy to wait for his meal because he knew when it arrived, it would be an absolute feast.
“Wonderful,” I muttered. “Now I’m brunch and you’re lunch. In a tree. I wonder who’ll be afternoon tea.”
At that moment, the brush behind us rustled.
Branches snapped.
And then a quavering, exhausted voice called out, “Sugar-pie! Where are you? It’s time the curtain fell on this box office flop.”
Cody and I looked down, and there, staggering into the clearing, came Aunt Bea.
Or what was left of her.
Her zebra-print gown was torn up one side, her black-and-white turban was barely clinging to life with twigs sticking out like cocktail skewers, and she’d lost the heel of one thigh-high boot, forcing her to limp like a bride-to-be at the end of a hen’s night she’d forever regret.
She staggered into the clearing, breathing hard, hair sticking out in frayed strands from under the turban tornado. She paused, swaying in her boots as she pressed the back of one hand dramatically to her brow and declared to the forest, “I can’t take another step. I’ve sweated out the last of my gin reserves. I’m afraid it’s goodbye, cruel world.”
“Pssst! Bea!” Cody and I hissed from above.
“Hark, do I hear angels?” Bea craned her neck. She blinked, squinting into the branches. “I do! My darling cherubs, have you come to rescue me… or did you swingtoolow and crash your heavenly chariot into that tree?”
“Bea, it’s us,” I said urgently. “Brooks and Cody.”
Her face lit up, her eyes spinning with pure exhausted delight. “Oh, praise the Lord! Brooks! Cody! You’re alive! Both of you! What a relief. This jungle is a deathtrap. I was with Mitch and Gage, but they stopped to check the map and I stopped to reapply lipstick. When I looked up, they were gone. Since then, I’ve been lashed by ferns…
“Bea!”
“Fallen into a creek…”
“Bea!”
“And had an extremely unpleasant encounter with a raccoon that may take years of therapy. Oh, and don’t even ask about my nails. I look like I’ve tried to scratch my way out of a Columbian prison.”
“Bea! Stop taking!” Cody shouted, even more frantically now. “Behind you!”
Finally, she turned. “Oh look. A bear. That’s some hallucination. It looks soreal.”
“That’s because itisreal,” I said.
To confirm my warning, the bear let out a long, deep growl.
Bea gasped. “Oh heavens! I wasn’t trained for this. Unless a bear is wearing a leather harness, I have no idea what to do! Should I try to dazzle it?”
“To what?” I asked.
“Dazzle it,” Cody said. “Like a herd of zebras.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked both Cody and Bea.
“If I run back and forth,” Bea explained. “The stripes on my dress will dazzle the beast, giving us time to escape.”
“I think that only works if there’s alotof you,” Cody pointed out. “The dazzle effect only works if there’s a bunch of you running back and forth. One zebra on its own isn’t a dazzle… it’s dinner.”
