Down in the living room, my parents were sitting on the couch, the flames in the potbellied stove banked low. I lifted the dream camera and took their photo. The flash startled them.
“Shana!” Mom said, hand to her heart. “You scared me half to death.”
Into my father’s hands, I placed the new camera, the next best thing to lifelong sight.
“Dad,” I said. “We’re taking you on a photo safari to Machu Picchu.”
Part Two
But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Chapter Six
If anyone had told me that my parents were capable of mobilizing for an international trip in two weeks, I would have bet an entire year of rat removal with me doing the rat-removing honors that they weren’t. How many of our travel plans had been canceled due to last-second emergencies and panic attacks over the impending cost? But there was Mom, hauling home three sets of rain gear she’d found on the extra-reduced clearance rack, placed there for good reason. Honestly, compared to the puce-colored rain jacket and matching pants, the Paradise Pest Control uniform was haute couture.
“Ta-da!” Mom cried, holding up the rain gear like hard-won trophies. “Try them on! Come on!”
“Mom,” I complained, frowning at myself in the mirror, “we’re going to look like our own paramilitary troop.”
“Shana’s got a point, hon. This gives new meaning to ‘dressed to kill,’” Dad agreed.
“Double O Seven would rather be shot than be seen in this,” I retorted.
But as Mom pointed out sharply over our snickers, “Who are we going to know on the Inca Trail anyway?”
My parents decided that it was only fair to take my brothers on trips, too. So the plan was for me to fly home on my own from Peru while they met Ash in Belize for some scuba diving. Then, Max would pick up the third leg of the trip, intercepting our parents in Guatemala to climb a couple of Mayan pyramids. My lucky brothers, their adventures didn’t involve military-grade outerwear.
So five thousand miles and seventeen hours after our travel day started in Seattle, Mom, Dad, and I set foot onto the Southern Hemisphere, backpacks stuffed with trekking pants, flip-flops for sketchy showers, and our questionable rain gear. After a five-hour overnighter in Lima, Peru, we’d catch a dawn flight to Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas and gateway to the Inca Trail.
As exhausted as we were when we stumbled into the airport hotel in Lima, Dad still insisted that we check our room for bedbugs.
“Dad,” I groaned, “for real? Do we have to do this tonight?”
“Well,” said Dad, as he paused while inserting the key card into the hotel room door, “did I ever show you the pictures of that lady whose face ballooned with a hundred bites, not to mention her torso—”
“Fine.” With a resigned sigh, I took my assigned role in the drama that repeats itself in every single hotel, motel, and friends’ home where we rest our heads for a night. I flung our backpacks one after another into the bathtub. (For the record, bedbugs cannot climb porcelain.)
When I came out of the bathroom, Dad was approaching the side-by-side queen beds as though he were a medical examiner, sleeves rolled up and headlamp on his forehead. He wrested one of the headboards off the wall, leaned into the space between, then took a deep whiff.
“You know, some people might think we’re a little strange,” I said.
“Don’t smell blood here,” Dad said, and rehooked the headboard onto the wall.
“That’s reassuring, Mr. Cullen,” Mom said. “I’ll be sure to let the Volturi know.”
She yanked the sheets off the corner of one mattress and motioned me to do the same on the opposite end. I was about to protest—I’m the official lampshade inspector, since bedbugs adore snuggling into those seams—until I realized that Dad probably couldn’t make out the telltale sign of bedbug droppings: tiny speckles that could double as black pepper.
“I wish Auggie was here,” I said before I tucked the sheets back under the mattress.
“That makes two of us,” Dad said, sighing.
Bless Margie, my aunt who worked as Dad’s office manager. Dad is famously picky about dog care for Auggie, barely trusting anyone with her. So Aunt Margie had come prepared yesterday with freshly roasted chicken. One bite of that succulent bird and Auggie had practically leaped into Aunt Margie’s car.
Morning came much too soon for another bleary-eyed flight, and I was grateful that Reb’s grandma Stesha was awaiting us in Cusco.