The teacher quickly realized that she had underestimated the boys. Cole tossed a twig at the web. It ripped through a few strands and made the spider’s handiwork sag. The banana spider scrambled away from the orb at the center of its web and up to a more stable spot. As the arachnid flicked its front four legs, Mrs. Mint thought of how terrified she would feel if a giant one-thousand times her size started hurling logs at her.
“Cole and Kyle, cut that out,” Mrs. Mint said without taking a single step towards them. Those kids only listened when someone physically stopped them. That usually comes from a lax disciplinary environment at home. If they didn’t start respecting her voice, they would keep causing their teachers headaches all through high school, when they would be too big to manhandle-assuming they didn’t get expelled before then.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Kyle said. He pointed at his brother. “He was the one who did this.” Kyle hurled a stick at the banana spider. It sheared off the bottom supports of its web, leaving the yellow web-work dangling in the breeze like a shirt on a clothesline. The determined spider held on, but if they kept this up, it would jump off soon. And it might choose one of their heads for a landing pad.
“What if it bites you?” one of the boys in class asked.
“The stupid bug can’t bite us after we step on it,” Cole said.
“Yeah. Our house has no bugs ‘cause we kill ‘em all,” Kyle said. “Even the love bugs. We pluck off their legs and crush their heads like ‘pop!’” He squeezed his fingers together.
Instead of a nature appreciation trip, the Buckley twins fancied this as a trail of destruction. It’s a good thing they didn’t bring their BB guns along, or the bobcats and deer would be in trouble, Mrs. Mint thought.
Just as she concocted the perfect punishment she would threaten them with, Mrs. Mint saw Mariella slink through the crowd watching the Buckley Show and insert herself between the twins. Instead of admonishing them, which would have proven difficult without speaking, she cast a sympathetic gaze up at the banana spider. It thrust its golden and white abdomen up and down in what Mrs. Mint interpreted as more apprehension than appreciation. Its puny brain couldn’t tell friend from foe. The teacher understood why Mariella had stepped up. The girl indentified with being picked on and, especially, with being hunted by those larger than her.
Mrs. Mint assumed that the Buckley twins would have learned their lesson after their previous attacks on Mariella had resulted in an aching head and a dead dog, whether the latter incident had been her fault or not. Once again, she underestimated them.
“You think he’s cute, don’t you?” Cole asked Mariella as he pointed at the spider. “Why don’t you give him a kiss?”
“Yeah, get a little closer,” Kyle said. He shoved Mariella into the slash pine that supported the bulk of the web. This time the web couldn’t withstand any more. The silk latticework came undone and the spider leapt off-right onto Mariella’s arm. The girl didn’t notice it until she regained her footing. She must have felt those hairy legs grasping her flesh. Mariella stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the spider with a leg span wider than her slender arm. If the girl had any wind in her pipes, she would have screamed. Her face cringed in terror. Her gaping jaw dropped to her neck as someone screaming would do. Mrs. Mint didn’t need to hear a word from the girl’s lips. She galloped over the bed of leaves toward Mariella. Fogel got there first. The assistant swiped at the spider, but its dozens of eyes saw her coming and it hopped off.
“Get it!” Cole ordered his brother.
Kyle stomped at it. He squished nothing but leaves. The banana spider darted into the bushes.
Mrs. Mint shot the Buckley twins a bitter glare as she strode by them. Their punishment would wait. Damage control with Mariella must come first, she thought. Detective Sneed might need her as a witness for the trial, so she couldn’t let her brain turn into jelly under the bombardment of this almost daily trauma.
“Are you okay, Mariella? It didn’t bite you, did it?” Mrs. Mint knelt down and reached for the arm that the spider had crawled on. She didn’t see any marks.
Mariella whipped her arm away and skirted around her teacher. Mrs. Mint’s head spun for a few seconds as if she had been plummeting off a cliff, and then suddenly stopped in midair. She wondered why she had let those boys attack Mariella once again. This girl depended on her for protection, and she kept letting her down, first with the Buckley twins’ brutal torment, and then when the Lagoon Watcher came for the girl’s blood. Time and time again, she had proven useless when this vulnerable child needed her. That spider hadn’t hurt her, but if it had…
“Hey, where are you going?” Fogel hollered.
Mrs. Mint swiveled her head just in time to spot Mariella slicing through a thicket of ferns across the wooden marker of the trail. She saw only the shiny crown of her black hair as the girl treaded briskly through the forest.
“Oh my,” said Mrs. Mint, who restrained herself from using a more harsh word that came to mind. “Keep the kids here and call the park rangers,” she told Fogel as she hustled after the girl. “I’ll get her right back.”
The teaching assistant agreed and drew out her cell phone. Yet, the Buckley twins offered up another plan.
“Aw, let her go,” Cole said.
“Yeah, she’s only looking for her spider boyfriend,” Kyle said. “Let the lovers be together.”
As much as those brats deserved a smack on their fannies, the teacher didn’t have time for that. She hurtled over the ferns and raced after Mariella. The sharp pines scraped across her arms and face so hard that they nearly drew blood. She caught fleeting glimpses of the girl up ahead. Even without a good view, she could easily follow the sound of her plowing through flexible branches and rustling across fans of leaves. The teacher ducked under a branch covered in spiny plants. When she caught sight of the girl again, she realized that the child’s short legs had actually been forging more distance between them. While Mariella’s motor showed no signs of slowing, the teacher already felt heavy lead sacks dragging in her lungs. She could barely last five minutes on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym, much less run a marathon through the thick woods in the sweltering heat. The pain that nagged at her knees and ankles when she had chased Mariella the day before returned. This time her inflamed joints had uneven ground tormenting them. Her knees throbbed with each step. Her ankle tendons tightened every time she took an unbalanced gait across a rock or branch. Refusing to let it stop her, the teacher’s mind drifted into thoughts of her strolling into the cool administrative office, and scheduling a nice long emergency vacation.
She didn’t know whether it came from her persistent effort or the girl tiring a bit, but Mrs. Mint at least maintained her distance behind Mariella as they traversed into the scrub palms. This endangered habitat had sandy soil that made her feet slide as she shuffled her boots around sand pine scrubs, and dodged study myrtle oaks. She cursed under her breath as she saw that Mariella’s nimble feet didn’t encounter any such problems.
Mrs. Mint cursed again when she pictured the Enchanted Forest map in her mind and realized where they were headed. Waiting for them as they raced north was the Addison/Ellis Canal. It had been built in 1912 to drain the St. Johns River floodplain so farmers and ranchers could set up shop. It sent all that water east, right into the Indian River Lagoon.
She remembered what had happened to the Buckley twins’ dog along the canal behind their house. She had heard about the cop and the DCF agent who were murdered by the serial killer along the canal behind Officer Williams’ home. And those were canals in civilized areas where whatever madness lurked in the waters had a good reason for acting discretely.