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Sarita awoke with a start.  She tried to sit up but a wave of nausea hit her hard. She lied down, groaning as she rubbed a tender spot on the back of her head.  Was that dried blood she felt?

She turned onto her side, her body shaking.

A deep cool breath calmed her.  When the dry heaves subsided, Sarita willed her eyes open.

Unable to see too far, Sarita concentrated on the sounds coming from the darkness that surrounded her.  She didn’t hear much beyond the soft drizzle of rain outside and what she figured for a tree scraping against a window.

As her thoughts begin to clear, the panic set in: This wasn’t her bedroom.  Nor was it her living room.  Or even her father’s bedroom.  Where was she?  And how long she had been unconscious?

Her heart raced as she fumbled with the blanket on top of her, trying to get up.

“Whoa! Not too fast, missy,” said a voice in the darkness.  The stranger was speaking English.  Was it possible she had been taken over the border while she slept?

A hand collided with her arm, pulling her back down into what the bed.

The panic in her mind spiked.  She screamed and fought against the other person.

“Shh! Calm down!”  He said, “I’m not the one trying to kill you!”

Sarita continued to scream and kick, feverishly biting down on the hand that held her.

“Ack! Are you part werewolf or something?  Geezus!”

The stranger shook her off.

As she hit the ground, Sarita scurried away until her back hit a wall.  In a gasping, weak voice, she said, “Get away from me! Don’t you touch me!”

“No one’s trying to hurt you here,” said a different voice from a far corner.

Sarita took a deep breath.  She screamed, “Help! Someone help me!  ¡Ayúdame!”

“Oh my gosh, would you shut her up?!” said another voice.

“What’s all that racket?” said another.

She was surrounded!  Were these people kidnappers?

Sarita let out a long, shrill cry.

“Are you kidding me?” said another voice from directly behind her.

“Someone cut on a light already!  She’s probably more scared of that!”

Sarita blinked hard as blinding light spilled into the room.  She stood, back against the wall, but was caught off guard by a fresh wave of nausea.

She crumpled to the ground and moaned.

Above her, one, then two, then five and then seven faces appeared.

Weakly, she tried to fend off the hands that steadied her and pulled her to her feet.

“Por favor.  Let me go…” She tried to steady herself as the room began to spin.  Sarita grabbed her stomach to keep from being sick again.

They led her back to the bed.

“You have a concussion,” said one of the seven faces. She recognized his voice as the very first one she had heard.  He had long jet-black hair and a scar on his face that stretched from the tip of his right eye to the under his jaw line.

Sarita peered at him, still frightened, but realized that he wasn’t trying to harm her. 

“I’m Spider,” the dark-haired man said.  “And no one here is going to hurt you.  In fact, we saved you.”

“We could have left you in the mangroves, wrapped up in that rug.  Actually, I voted we leave you and take the rug,” said a woman sarcastically, “but the rest of them felt sorry for you.”

Sarita slowly trained her eyes on the woman. 

“What are you staring at? I’m not the one who was rolled up and left to die in the middle of the nowhere,” the woman said.  She crossed her arms against her ample chest and glared at Sarita.  “Well, best let me see about that head of yours.”

Sarita flinched away from the large woman.

“Sweets is our doctor,” said Spider.  “Her bedside manner is crap, but she knows her stuff. She put my arm back into place several times.”

“Sure did.” Sweets said, shaking her finger at him, “And I can pop it back out of place, you just keep that in mind!”

Sarita cringed.

“Good job, Sweets,” said Spider moving away from Sarita and sitting down at a makeshift table.  “Nowyou’re traumatizing her.”

Sweets grunted, said something about needing ice, and stomped out of what Sarita saw was a rather small cabin.

She noticed that besides the six people staring at her, the building only contained a few cots, a stove with a coffee pot on it, and the makeshift table where Spider sat.  The bed beneath her was only boxes, or trunks, piled with all the blankets and pillows these people owned.

It was nothing like what she was used to back home.

Home!

“Ay dios mio,” Sarita said.

She remembered what had happened to land her here.

Sarita said, “We were arguing. I… I told her she would never have Papa’s money.  I turned away and then I woke up here.  She hit me!”

She gently touched the wound on her head, checking her fingers for the dried blood.

One of the young men asked, “Do you mean the blonde woman driving that big blue SUV?”

“¡Sí! My stepmother!  You saw her?  Did you call the police?”

“We, uh, don’t welcome cops around here,” said Spider.

Sarita made a face.  Someone dumped a body and they just watched?

She said, “Are you criminals?”

“No!  Not really. We’re just kind of, sort of… in the country illegally?”

“Good going, Spider!  Tell her everything, why don’t you?”

The others began to complain and curse under their breath.

Spider said, “She’s not going to tell anyone.  We rescued her remember?”

He turned back to Sarita.  There was pleading in his eyes.

“You won’t tell, will you?”

Sarita shook her head.

“Oh, good.”  Spider smiled.  “But, no, we’re not big criminals.  We actually trapeze artists.  From Canada.  Or were, until we overstayed our visas.” 

“Our manager was supposed to renew them,” a girl a few years older than Sarita said.  “Good for nothing, Carlito!”

The others mumbled in agreement.

“Anyway, I’m Spider. The angry lady you met earlier is Sweets.  This is Wild Child.”

The girl with curly strawberry blonde hair curtsied.

“Stretch.”

The tall, lanky gentleman lounging uncomfortably atop a cot at the far end of the cabin gave a wave.

“Ghost, Speed, and Tom.”

Sarita eyed Tom.  “No fancy name for you?”

“He cleaned up after our shows.  Didn’t need a stage name,” said Spider, laughing.

“Thanks a lot, man” Tom said.  He rolled his eyes.

“Let me see if I understand,” Sarita said.  “The six—no, the seven of you… You all rescued me?  And you live here, in the middle of the woods?  Ha!  Like the seven dwarfs.”

“Sure, except that two of us are female,” said Wild Child.

Ghost added, “And none of us are dwarfs.”

Sarita looked around at them, these strangers who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by aiding her.

Her eyes welled with tears.  “Thank you so much for helping me.  I could have died out there.  I don’t even know how to repay you!”

Tom said, “You don’t have to do anything.  We were happy to help!”

“But, you could tell us why your stepmom was trying to kill you,” Wild Child said as she inspected the bump on the back of Sarita’s head.

“Are you worth a ton of money?”  Ghost said, excited, “Maybe we can get a reward for finding her!”

Spider shoved Ghost.  “Knock it off, Ghost.  Don’t be rude.”

“Ghost is right,” Sarita said.  “I am worth a lot of money.  Papa, he died a few months ago.  Everything he owned, he left to me.  I might be one of the wealthiest seventeen-year-olds in the country.”

It was Ghost’s turn to shove Spider.  “See,” he said, “I told you! It’s like we won the lotto!”

Ghost stood from the dining room chair and proceeded to dance.

“Your stepmom tried to off you for cash?”  Speed shook his bald head as he chewed feverishly on a toothpick.  “Cruel.”

Sarita nodded and sighed.  “I knew she was manipulative.  I didn’t think she was evil.”

Wild Child nervously twisted her curls between her fingers.  “You want us to drop you off somewhere?  So you can call the police?”

From the corner of the room, for the first time, Stretch spoke up.  He leaned back so that his long legs hanging well over the edge of his cot and said, “Her stepmom sounds like one heinous piece of work.  I don’t think the police are good enough to teach her a lesson.  Maybe…”

Stretch looked thoughtful as he scanned the room.  Then he grinned, exposing teeth and gums.

He said, “Maybe we should have a little fun.”

“No, don’t even think about it,” said Spider sternly.

Wild Child’s dark eyes glinted with mischief.  “Aw, come on, Spider,” she said.  “Even you’ve been wanting to do something—anything—beyond hiding in this hut.”

“And running from the Federales ,” Tom said.

“And working for scraps,” Ghost said.

Speed huffed and added, “Doesn’t hurt that that stepmom of hers deserves it.”

“I’m not making this kind of call.  Leave it to the girl.  If she wants to, fine. Otherwise, drop it,” Spider said firmly.  He stood and moved to the stove for a cup of coffee.

“I’m in!” Tom said.

“Me, too!” echoed the others as they looked at Sarita beseechingly.

Sarita stared, confused. “What’s happening?”

“They want to help you. You know, get back at your stepmother.” Spider shrugged his shoulders and sipped his drink. “They’re all crazy. I’m the only sane one.”

“You mean the boring one,” Tom chirped.

Their eagerness gave Sarita cause to worry.  She knew her stepmother had done something horrible, but did she deserve whatever these crazy Canadian trapeze artists would rain down upon her?

Sarita asked, “You don’t mean to kill her, correct?”

The troupe seemed to yell in unison, saying, “Of course not!”

Sarita’s interest peaked.  “What do you have in mind then?”

“Hmm.  I’m sure we could come up with something,” Speed said.  “You know, make her suffer a little bit before you turn her in.”

“While I’d love to see her suffer, I don’t know how we can get away with that.  What are we going to do?”  Sarita laughed dismissively.  “Haunt her?”

Stretch jumped out of his cot.  He pointed to Sarita as he said, “Exactly!  Yes!  Far as she knows, you’re dead.  Right?  What happens when she sees you, flying through the air?”

He gestured at the ceiling, as though painting a picture.

Stretch continued.  “We could dress you and make you up pale and ghostly.  You could start shrieking accusations!  With our help, you could send her on the mother of all guilt trips!”

“You know what?”  Sarita sat up farther in the bed.  “I like that idea.”

“What idea?” asked Sweets, who chose that moment to walk back into the cabin, her arms full of ice bags and some cloth shreds for Sarita’s head.

The trapeze artists fell silent as Sweets stared down each of them.

Sweets demanded, “Out with it already!”

Sarita swung her legs over the bed.  She said, “They’re going to help me haunt my stepmother.”

Spider said, “Since she thinks her stepdaughter is dead.”

Sweets dropped the bag of ice and the cloth onto a nearby cot.  She narrowed her eyes at Sarita.

“Stepmother?”  Sweets said, “That the lady what almost killed you?”

Sarita hesitated.  She looked to the others for strength.  Wild Child bright-eyed; Spider anticipating; Stretch grinning; even Tom looked expectant.

Sarita straightened up.  She said, “Yes, Sweets.  My stepmother tried to kill me.”

Sweets nodded and was silent for what felt like an eternity.  Then she straightened up, shoved her hands onto her hips, and declared, “Count me in.  We can’t let her get away with this.”

Sarita felt the room breathe a sigh of relief.

As Sweets began to bandage her head and prepare an ice pack, Sarita said, “We’re going to do it then?  Really?”

“You betcha, Snow White.”  Spider winked then said, “All right, troupe!  Let’s get this plan started!”