I stopped in the big, empty antechamber. “Now, wait. So a guy fell off your bike—it wasn’t you who held a gun to his head and made him ride it, right? And the doctor having a reaction isn’t your fault either. People have reactions. I’m allergic to bees but you don’t see me blaming my mom for it, do you? And that last guy, he was responsible for his accident, too. If he wasn’t wandering around the desert, he wouldn’t have had heat stroke. It doesn’t make sense for you to feel responsible. They were just accidents.”
“I don’t feel responsible,” he said, walking past me to the room we were working in. “But the rest of the dig isn’t so reasonable. Last night I found a viper in my bedroll.”
“A viper?” I asked his back.
He answered me without turning around. “A horned viper. They’re poisonous. Someone put it there, someone who doesn’t want me on the dig any longer.”
I stood staring at the doorway to Room G, my jaw hanging around my ankles.
LIP GLOSS PROVEN TO CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE IN GIRLS WHOSE NAMES START WITH THE LETTER “C”!
Dear Mom,
So, here I am, in sandy, dirty, hot, hot, hot Egypt. If you got a letter from someone named Dagmar saying I am in trouble, ignore it. You know me, I never get into trouble…
Oh, man, that was so lame. Mom was going to see through that in less time than it takes to roll your eyes.
Dear Mom,
I’m here in Egypt, having a wonderful time. I’m sharing my room with a girl who’s a hundred times prettier, more popular, and less hefty than me, and I’ve made friends with everyone on the dig…
Except Cy, whose lips go all thin and annoyed whenever he sees me, or Dagmar, who lectured me last night about not having the proper attitude when I mocked her curse theory, or even Seth, who has managed to work next to me on the lintel for three whole days without saying anything but “Uh-huh” and “Hmmm” to my lively and entertaining chat.
Dear Mom,
Today the hunkiest hottiepants I’ve ever laid eyes on was so annoyed with having to listen to me talk to him, he brought in a radio and played loud Middle Eastern music all day. Can I come home now?
I sighed and ripped up the sheets of notepaper my mom had insisted on including so I could write to her every week. What was the use in telling her how horrible my life had become? I couldn’t go home, or I’d blow my chances at writing a salable story, and if I did that, I’d be back to what I was before I came to Egypt—a nothing in a family full of somethings.
Besides, there was Seth. He was perfect story material, what with everyone thinking he’s the evil god Set come to life, and sticking snakes in his bed, and all the accidents, and stuff.
“It’s just too bad he refuses to talk about it,” I said aloud as I stuck my notepad and pencil into my backpack. I’d been spending my lunchtimes—those days I managed to ignore my body’s cry for food and water and actually maintain the fast, which so far was only one day—working up some good ideas for stories.
“It’s too bad who refuses to talk?” Izumi asked as she wandered into our room. “Aren’t you dressed yet?”
I chewed off a tendril of dried skin from my lower lip. After almost a week in Egypt, I was beginning to see the attraction of having protection on my skin. Maybe Chloe, Queen of the Lip Gloss people was onto something. She never seemed to have wind- and sunburned lips. “Seth, and I was thinking of not going to the party. I don’t have anything to wear.”
Izumi checked herself in front of the mirror she had propped up against a partially closed shutter. “You have your skirt. It’s pretty. And you must come. Kay will be disappointed if you do not.”
“It’s her birthday, not mine,” I pointed out, oddly reluctant to go to the dig-wide celebration of Kay’s fiftieth birthday. There was going to be cake and dancing and party games, or at least so Izumi told me, but the one person I really wanted to talk to didn’t want to talk to me. “No one will notice if I’m not there.”
“Kay will.”
“Yeah, but if you tell her I’m not feeling well—”
Izumi shook her head. “That would be lying. Unless you really aren’t feeling well? You didn’t eat as much as normal at dinner, and you missed lunch today.” She turned fully to face me, her eyes narrowed as she brushed out her long, glossy black hair. “That is not like you. Are you feeling sick?”
“No, I’m OK. It’s just…” I stopped, unable to admit to her the truth: that I had figured Seth didn’t want anything to do with me because I had broken my Ramadan promise, but even after I made sure he knew I fasted today rather than eat lunch with everyone else, he disappeared after dinner. His motorcycle was gone, so I assume he’d gone off on it like he’d done almost every night, rather than risk running into me on the roof again. “I just don’t have anything nice to wear. You’re all dressed up, and Kay made a big deal out of saying she was going to dress up nice and stuff, and all I have is my Godet skirt and top.”
“You can wear something of mine,” Izumi answered as she twisted her hair up into a fancy chignon. She looked gorgeous, very adult and elegant with her hair up, and her long white-and- gold gauze dress that would have made me look like a round Christmas ornament, but which made her look like an Asian angel.
“What, a sock? Cause that’s about all you have that would fit me, and probably even that wouldn’t fit because I have fat ankles.”
She laughed “Jan, you’re not fat, you’re just . . .” Her smile faded a bit as she looked at me standing in the middle of the room with my arms crossed over my chest. “Robust. Do you know what you remind me of?”
“The blob?”
“No, silly girl. A Rubens painting. Rubens was—”
I waved her explanation away. “I know all about him. Instead of Trivial Pursuit, my family plays name the artist. Peter Paul Rubens was a seventeenth-century Flemish painter who brought a new appreciation of Italian Renaissance art with his lush portraits of large, fleshy people, particularly women. Thanks, but I think I’d rather be a Picasso, all sharp plains and no flab.”
She shook her head. “No one thinks you’re flab.”
“Flabby.”
“No one thinks you’re flabby. You are the only one who sees a problem with how you look.”
I couldn’t help it—I had to roll my eyes at that. “Oh, right, so the fact that most guys stare at my chest and nothing else, or that I look like a light-skinned sea lion whenever I wear a swimsuit, that’s not a problem.”
“Jan—”
I smiled and gave her a friendly squeeze to shut her up. “I appreciate the pep talk, Izumi, I really do, but it’s not necessary. You’re going to be late if you hang around here any longer.”
“Sayed is waiting to take us to the dig,” she said stubbornly. “I won’t go until you are ready.”
I tried to reason with her, but her mind was made up, so in the end I pulled on the Godet skirt and ballet top and my non-tie-dyed tights. When I complained about having short, curly hair that made me look like one of those Cabbage Patch dolls Denise had when she was a kid eons ago, Izumi pulled out a couple of fancy jeweled combs, and pulled my hair back off my face. There wasn’t enough of it to put up, but I did have to admit that having it pulled back made me look like I had cheekbones.
Fifteen minutes later Izumi, Sayed, Gemal, and I pulled up at the dig site. We’d been squished into Sayed’s tiny car, which even I had to admit was infinitely better than walking the four miles to the dig. For one thing, the temperatures at night were starting to drop dramatically, which meant it was getting cold out late at night.
“I never thought it could be cold in the desert,” I said as I rubbed my arms through the big woolen shawl Izumi had lent me. The mess tent had been converted to party central, with all the tables moved out of the way, a boom box playing old seventies dance music, and strings of colored lights hanging from the ceiling. People were wandering around outside with cups of punch and plates of cake, or were inside the tent, dancing.
“Luxor of
ten has temperatures that are fifty degrees higher in the day than the evening temperatures,” Sayed said. “Would you be offended if I asked to dance with you?”
“Offended?” I blinked at him, I couldn’t help it, I was that brain-dead. No one had ever asked me to dance! I was always the one at school dances that hung out with my equally nondancing girlfriends. “Why would I be offended?”
He made an eloquent gesture with his hands. “You are not a member of my family…”
“Oh, gotcha.” He was talking about the fact that guys in Egypt weren’t suppose to touch women who weren’t in their family. “You know, the dig team is kind of like a big family, so that means for the next few weeks, we are related.”
“Yes,” he answered with a smile, “that is true! Does not Kay always say the conservators are a family?”
“Exactamundo!”
I followed him in to the mess tent and we danced for a while to the awful disco music, but even though I was really happy that for once I wasn’t standing with the group of girls who weren’t dancing, I wasn’t wild with happiness. Why? Because a certain dig hottie wasn’t there.
Cy was there, all over the place, dancing with all the girls (except me), including his mom. A short, baldish guy with a goatee and gold wire-framed glasses turned out to Reshel (Ray) Tousson, the head of the entire dig. He’d been in Cairo doing some official work for the antiquities council, but had arrived this morning to spend some time at the dig, and to celebrate Kay’s birthday.
In fact, everyone was at the party—everyone but Seth.
“Have you seen Seth?” I asked Ammon, one of the young boys who sifted dirt for shards of pottery. He was stuffing an entire piece of cake into his mouth just like my little brother Toby used to do, but at my question his eyes bugged out in a way that Toby never could manage.
“Aram,” he whispered, bits of cake spewing out of his mouth as he backed away from me. “Masha'allah.”
Aram, I understood (it meant evil). But masha’allah…I thought that meant “whatever Allah wills,” which was used as a term of admiration. At least that’s what Izumi told me. But why would Ammon say masha'allah along with evil? It was a puzzle…and I knew just who to ask about it. The only problem is, no one seemed to know where he was.
“They ought to call him the Invisible Man instead of an ancient god,” I muttered to myself as I left the tent, wrapping the shawl tightly around me against the cool night air. I hurried through the collection of tents, peering into as many as I could to see if Seth was hiding away anywhere, but didn’t see anyone until I came to the small latrine tent that I tried to avoid as much as possible. Pit toilets are definitely not high on my list of things I want to experience again.
“Oh, hi, Michael. Hey, have you seen Seth tonight?”
“He’s over beyond the Muslim camp.”
I looked out into the dark, just like I’d be able to see past all the tents and trailers to the section where the Muslim workers lived. “He is? Why? Everyone is here at the party.”
Michael shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him that.”
“Thanks, I will. Night!”
I doubled back to the supply tent that I knew held flashlights, and snagged one so I wouldn’t fall off the edge of the plateau in the dark. Slowly I picked my way around boulders and outcroppings of the cliff until I reached the far edge where a cluster of small black tents clung to the ground at the lip of the wadi valley. Chickens made soft, sleepy bruck-bruck noises as I carefully avoided stepping on them while tippy-toeing around the tents of the diggers, occasionally startling a mangy-looking dog, or sleek, well-fed cat. A small black and white goat bleated at me when I flashed the light on him. I was just about to yell out Seth’s name when a tiny flash of light winked in the distance. The moon was out, almost full now, making it fairly easy with the light from the flashlight to find my way around the far curve of the plateau to where a dark figure stood with a tall silver-and-white object.
“Cool, you have a telescope!” Seth flinched as the beam of light from the flashlight hit him full on. Since the moonlight let me see enough of Seth so I wouldn’t step on him, I turned it off. “Sorry, didn’t mean to blind you. What are you looking at? The moon?”
“No. Constellations.” His face was in shadow but his voice was deep and smooth, kind of like velvet brushing against my skin. I shivered, but it wasn’t because of the cold.
“Oh. You know, I don’t think I realized how much better you can see the stars when you get away from cities.” I looked at the small, cold, bluish bits of light twinkling in the sky. “It really is neat. What exactly are you looking at?”
“Draco.”
“The dragon? My brother Alec used to belong to an astronomy club, and I’d go along with him sometimes when I was a little kid.”
Seth turned toward me, the moonlight softly caressing the black leather of his jacket. “Here Draco is seen as a crocodile. It represents the god Set.”
“A crocodile, huh? I suppose that’s like a dragon. What’s that one?” I pointed at a bright blob of stars.
“The Triangulum. It is the symbol of Horus, supposedly set in the sky after Set murdered his twin.”
“Ooookay,” I drawled. “What about that one?”
Silvery light glinted on Seth’s glossy ponytail. “Ursa Minor. It represents the jackal of Set.”
“Criminy dutch, is everything in the sky about Set?”
His shoulders moved in a half-hearted shrug.
We stood there for a few minutes not saying anything, the distant sounds of KC and the Sunshine Band drifting out on the evening breeze. Seth didn’t look at me; he just stood staring out into the distance, his hands fisted.
I pursed my lips, then realized he wouldn’t see it. “So! I haven’t had much of a chance to talk with you lately—”
“Jan, go back to the party.” His voice was soft and flat, like he was tired.
“What?”
He turned toward me, the planes of his face shadowed by the moonlight. “Leave!”
My stomach wadded up into a little ball while tears burned my eyes. “Fine! I will! You great big snotball!”
I turned and stormed off…about three steps; then realized I needed the flashlight to see where I was going. I marched back and grabbed it, figuring as long as I was there, I might as well get a few things off my chest. “I have tried to be nice to you despite the fact that you’ve been as mean to me as possible. Well, I’m sorry you don’t like me, and I’m sorry you have to work with me, but jeezumcrow, you don’t have to be such a dirtwad! I thought you were supposed to be nice to females? I thought you were supposed to treat everyone with respect? I thought you…were…different…oh, poop! ”
I mopped up the tears streaming down my cheeks and started back toward the main camp.
“Jan, stop.”
I shrugged off the hand that had grabbed my arm, walking toward the distant lights and sounds of the main camp. “No, thank you. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t want me here. Despite what my mom says, it doesn’t take a two-by-four to make me see the obvious.”
“I don’t want you here because I don’t want you to get hurt!” he yelled.
I stopped. “What?”
He turned to me, his eyes grim. “I don’t want you to be hurt. Don’t you understand? Everyone I like gets hurt. It’s what the diggers say—I’m cursed. I don’t want you to get hurt, so I’ve avoided you.”
He liked me? Liked me? Really liked me? A warm feeling of happiness grew in my belly as I stood there in the cool evening air watching Seth pace back and forth in front of me. He liked me! He actually said the words! I was liked! By the nummiest guy in the whole camp!
“At first I thought it was ridiculous. How could I be the reincarnation of a god? I don’t feel godlike. But then the accidents started happening. Do you want to know how it started?” He didn’t wait for me to nod before he continued, his voice as jerky as the sharp, quick movements of his hands. “My parents decided they had
enough money only to send one of us to the States, and that since Cy was the one who is meant to be the Egyptologist, he would get to go. I was so angry, I went to Cairo for a few days to cool down. I didn’t tell anyone where I was, I just left. I had to leave, or I knew I’d do something bad. When I got back, Cy was just being brought home from the hospital. He’d had a severe case of food poisoning. My mother said he almost died. That’s when the talk started—people said it was me, that I had somehow done it, that just like Set and Osiris, I wanted what my brother had, and I’d do anything to get it.”
I sucked in my breath, nibbling on my lower lip, watching as Seth ran a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t your fault, Seth. I get mad at my family all the time, but it doesn’t mean I’m responsible when bad stuff happens.”
He whirled around to face me. “This is different. You’re part of your family—I’m not. When my father looks at me, he sees an American who doesn’t respect our culture. All my mother sees is someone who makes my father unhappy. Cy doesn’t. From the time when we were small, Cy has always been the one people liked. I tried to make them like me, but he was always smarter, funnier, better. When I went to Cairo, part of me wished he was dead so I could have all the things he has. Even so, it wasn’t until the accidents started happening that I knew what the workers were whispering behind my back was true. I am Set.”
“Well, for someone who’s a couple of thousand years old, you look pretty good,” I couldn’t help but joke.
He glared at me, a dark, velvety brown-eyed glare. “I should have expected that attitude from you. Americans don’t take anything seriously.”
“You’re half American, bud, so I would go easy on the bashing.” I lifted my chin so he could see I was glaring right back at him.