my breath caught in my throat. I jumped up from the sofa and felt the pounding of my heart.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“I suspect it’s malaria. She has most of the symptoms. Rosalie Claire told me that you and your grandma were in the Amazon jungle last summer.”
I nodded.
“Sometimes malaria doesn’t show up for a while,” Dr. Morán told us. “All it takes is one bite from an infected mosquito.”
On Stranded in the Amazon, zillions of bugs had chomped on us like we were a five-star gourmet buffet. When we got back to Truth or Consequences, we’d both taken medicine so we wouldn’t get the disease, and that’s what I told Dr. Morán.
“If you forget to take all the pills, the symptoms can show up months later,” he told me.
I took all my medicine. Had Florida stopped taking hers?
“Will she be OK?” My voice was barely a whisper, probably because I was afraid of his answer.
“The pills I gave her should kill the parasites. I would expect her to improve a little each day.”
By early the next morning, Florida was worse. We awoke to her shouts bouncing through the lobby, across the courtyard, and through our open bedroom window in the yellow bungalow.
The three of us scooted in our pajamas toward her room, with Leroy trotting at our heels. The newlywed lovebirds, the Lady in White, and the two surfer guys had already gathered in the breezeway, watching Rosalie Claire as she tried the locked door.
“Florida, please let me in!” She jammed the master key into the lock, but she didn’t even have time to turn it.
The door burst wide open. My grandmother charged out like a thundering bull chased by its worst nightmare.
“I’m under attack! Giant tarantulas! Move it, people!”
What was going on?
We scurried out of her way so we wouldn’t get bowled over. Leroy barked from all the excitement.
Florida took one look at Leroy and her eyes nearly popped from her head.
“Ack! A man-eating T-Rex!” She made a beeline for the lobby.
Leroy took after her, playing a rowdy chasing game.
Rosalie Claire bolted after them both.
“Dude, that lady has some gnarly imagination! Totally radical!” Riptide high-fived Wingnut like this was some kind of circus show.
“That lady is my grandmother and she’s super sick.”
“Oh, man. Sorry to hear that, dude.” At least he sounded as if he meant it.
By the time my friends and I got to the lobby, Rosalie Claire had corralled Florida. They sat on the sofa, Rosalie Claire’s arm draped around my grandmother’s shoulders. Leroy had stopped impersonating a T-Rex and was stretched out peacefully on the white tile floor.
When she saw me, Florida’s eyes opened wide. “Angela, honey. What are you doing here?”
Whoa. How weird was that? Now I knew something was super-wrong with her. Angela was my mom and if she’d still been alive she would have been thirty-four years old. I was twelve.
“She must be hallucinating,” Rosalie Claire whispered. “I’m wondering if those pills didn’t agree with her.”
Noah asked to see them. They were teeny-tiny, half-blue, and half-red. He got on the lobby computer and did a Google search. Apparently those pills could be bad news.
“It says here the medicine can also cause bizarre behavior, confusion, hallucinations, and mood changes. Particularly if someone is mentally unstable to begin with.”
Unstable? That’s practically my grandmother’s middle name.
Just then, Florida began scratching her skin as if fire ants were gobbling her alive. Seconds later she erupted from head to toe in an explosion of itchy red spots.
“Oh, and hives. That’s another side effect,” Noah added.
Florida sprung to her feet and raced half-crazy around the lobby. When she passed a mirror hanging on the wall, she stopped and stared. Then the screeching started. “It’s a red-speckled monster! Everybody run! Alien invasion!”
Violet and I exchanged looks as Florida raced in circles around the room. We wanted to laugh but stopped ourselves. It might have been funny if my grandmother hadn’t been so sick.
Rosalie Claire unzipped her fanny pack. This time she found cotton balls and a bottle of pink calamine lotion. “Madison, you put this on your grandmother’s spots while I call Dr. Morán. This may be more serious than we thought.”
She guided Florida back to the sofa. As I dabbed her skin with the cool pink liquid, she squirmed from the itchiness. Her breathing turned soft and shallow. My grandmother was gasping for air.
“Dr. Morán wants to run some tests,” Rosalie Claire said when she got off the phone. “He cancelled his next appointment. He’s rushing right over.”
The doctor must have thought it was serious too. Could my grandmother die?
When Dr. Morán came out of Room Four, we were all waiting. Violet, Noah, Rosalie Claire, and me. He said he’d taken blood from Florida’s arm and made her pee in a cup. He was going to have it all tested to double-check that she had malaria. He was especially worried because the whites of her eyes had turned a sickly scrambled egg yellow.
“The results should be in by early evening,” he said. “The hallucinations could mean she had a bad reaction to the medication. You’ll need to watch her closely for the next few days until it’s out of her system. Unfortunately, the color of her eyes would suggest that she’s getting sicker.” Then he hurried back to the clinic.
Rosalie Claire decided it was best to move Florida into my bedroom in the bungalow so she could keep an eye on her. My friends and I hauled our stuff to Room Four, where we’d sleep until my grandmother got better.
Violet, Noah, and I went back to the bungalow while Rosalie Claire got some work done around the inn. That way we could listen for my grandmother, in case she needed something. We found a deck of cards in the living room and played Crazy Eights on top of the old leather trunk that doubled as a coffee table. Ever since Rosalie Claire told me the trunk had once belonged to her Grandma Daisy, something about it gave me the shivers. It was as if it connected me to the past and Grandma Daisy, who was magical just like Rosalie Claire.
Leroy stood guard at the bedroom door. Florida slept the rest of the afternoon, waking only once in a panic to report that twelve microscopic blue men were camping out in her jar of wrinkle
