I stalked around the bedroom, low lights on so I wouldn’t fully wake up. I had welted bites up and down my arms and face. I knew I would have trouble falling asleep without finding it. I scanned the walls—nothing. Grudgingly, I went back to bed and pulled the sheets over me.

**

In South America the bugs were so bad that I discarded my organic values for the highest level of deet I could find; it melted the edges of my watchband.

Every night in the hostel I went through my ritual. I rubbed my herbal “Bugz B Gone” lotion on every inch of skin. Then, I would spray on a layer of deet. I would put on my pajamas. Then, coat them in a layer of deet. Lastly, I would grab my sheets and deet them too.

My roommates watched, fascinated. A Swedish girl sat on her bunk sweating sadly. She had resorted to wearing thick impenetrable rain gear in the 100 degree, 100 percent humidity weather. She was the only one who understood.

In my deet cocoon, I slept. Inevitably waking in the morning with bites from some suicidal insect. Most usually, on my exposed lips (deet in one’s mouth seemed extreme). The injustice was great. Scabby and red, I loathed everyone’s smooth unbitten skin. Shark bait, or chum, became their term of endearment for me. It was like a game, How many lethal chemicals could I slather on and still get bit? Everyone else gently misted in citronella and lime juice frolicked about. I stormed around in my deet cloud, a siren’s call for all mosquitoes across the Amazon.

**

As a child, mosquitoes were one of the first things to come between God and me.

Bees made honey, spiders ate bugs, and snakes were in Eden (In the beginning God made Adam, Eve, and that one snake.) Mosquitoes were absolutely useless. My parents attempted to placate me by explaining ecosystems—mosquitoes were special and necessary so that they could be eaten by frogs. Didn’t frogs also eat flies? And if that’s the case, why didn’t God make frog food that didn’t inconveniently prey on humans? My skin is more blessed than frogs.

**

An hour later when I woke to the mosquito repeatedly hurling its insectly body against my face in excitement, I lost it. Turning the lights on full blast, I wheeled around and spotted it resting on the wall. I grabbed a magazine and swatted the mosquito beyond the point of death. Blood, my blood, exploded out of its body.

I stared as it dripped slowly down the white walls.