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Maybe a little.”
    “It’s strange, isn’t it? These new scientists who come here, they have whole other lives outside Little Cam. Do you ever think about it? About where they must come from? Who they were before they came to the jungle?”
    He gives me a guarded look. “Why? Do you?”
    “It’sa natural question. And I’m a scientist. It’s my
job
to ask questions. Uncle Antonio.” I sit beside him and chew my lip a moment, then ask in a hush, “Do you ever…you know…wonder what it would be like? Out there?”
    Uncle Antonio stares at his hands. “Out where?”
    “You know what I mean. Outside…the fence.”
    When he finally meets my eyes, his lips are a thin, taut line. “No. I don’t.”
    Without another word, he stands up and leaves.
    I stare at the door as it swings shut. I don’t believe him.
    Not for a minute.
    When I go to my laboratory for my weekly checkup that afternoon, I pass Harriet Fields in the hall. She says hi and gives a little waist-level wave, and I give her a little jerk of my chin in response. I feel her eyes on my back as I pass her.
    I call it
my
laboratory because it’s the one entirely devoted to me. It’s like a second bedroom, and I’m quite proud of it. I keep a row of potted orchids along the window sills, and there are pictures of me all over the walls. They’re kind of boring, having been made to chart things like the development of my facial bones, but still.
    Uncle Paolo is waiting for me as usual. He sits by my metal examination table, thumbing through a stack of past checkup reports.
    “Morning,” I say to him, and I pause by a glass cage in the corner. The fat, sleepy rat inside wiggles his nose at me. “Morning, Roosevelt.”
    Uncle Paolo smiles. “Morning, Pia,” he says as I takemy place on the exam table. “Find anything good in the delivery?”
    “Skittles.” I swing my legs back and forth under the table and watch him make some notes on a clipboard.
    “Ah, yes.” He pulls out a stethoscope and takes my heartbeat. “I haven’t had Skittles in years. I’ll have to get some.”
    “Too late. I got dibs already. They’re for the party.”
    “The party,” he repeats. “Still planning for your fairy-tale ball, eh? Open.”
    I open my mouth, and he swabs the inside of my check with a cotton wad. “It’s not a fairy-tale ball. It’s a real party, like the ones they have in cities.”
    “And what would you know of cities?”
    “I read about them in the dictionary. ‘An urban area where a large number of people live and work,’” I quote.
    He only grunts as he deposits the saliva sample on a microscope slide.
    Then, just to see what his reaction will be, I add, “I know that Manaus is a city.”
    Uncle Paolo drops the cotton swab. “
Damn.
Open again, I’ll have to get another.”
    I wonder if that
damn
was for the lost saliva sample or my lucky guess. “So it
is
a city!”
    “Pia.” He sets the second sample on a small metal tray and starts pulling off his squeaky latex gloves. “Never bring up Manaus again.”
    “Why?”
    His hands pause with one glove half off, and he draws in a sharp breath before continuing. “I have told you many times, Pia. It’sdangerous out there. Those people wouldn’t understand you. You would frighten them with what you have, and they would soon grow jealous. You cannot die, but that does not mean they can’t hurt you.”
    “Those people,” I repeat softly.
    “Yes. The ones out
there
. They don’t see things as we do here, Pia. They would put you in a box and never let you out, don’t you see?”
    I nod my head, thinking of the sparrow and the electrified cage, imagining myself in the place of the bird. I shiver.
    “Do not bring up Manaus again.” He speaks in the tone he usually reserves for testing days, but then his face softens. He covers my hand with his own. “You’re safe here. For now, this is where you belong. One day, Pia, you’ll see the world. Don’t doubt that. But until the world