Forest World

Family Disaster
EDVER
Miami, Florida, USA
I thought I was prepared for any emergency. Fires, floods, hurricanes, rogue gunmen, bombs, and worse-we’ve covered them all, in scary student emergency training drills.
We’ve shut down the school, painted our faces with fake blood, and practiced carrying one another to an imaginary helicopter, moaning and screaming with almost-real fear as we pretended to survive crazy catastrophes.
Nowhere in all that madness did I ever imagine being sent away by Mom, to meet my long-lost dad in the remote forest where I was born on an island no one in Miami ever mentions without sighs, smiles, curses, or tears… but travel laws have suddenly changed, the Cold War is over, and now it’s a lot easier for divided half-island, half-mainland Cuban American families to be reunited.
Mom is so weirdly thrilled, it seems suspicious.
From the moment she announced that she was sending me away to meet Dad, I could tell how relieved she felt to be getting a relaxing break from her wild child, the troublemaker-me.
If she would listen, I would argue that it’s not my fault a racing bicycle got in my way while I was playing a game on my phone and skateboarding at the same time. That’s what games are for entertainment, right? Escape, so that all those minutes spent gliding home from school aren’t so shameful. As long as I stare into a private screen, no one who sees me knows
I’m alone.
Tap, zap, swipe, the phone makes me look as busy as someone with plenty of friends, a kid who’s good at sports instead of science.