I looked up into her blue eyes—they were so intense, even across the glass divider.
“How do you know about him?” I asked her.
Her eyes got wide and then they wrinkled a little at the edges, because she was smiling.
“You do speak perfect American English,” she said. And then: “I already learned about your case, Phoenix. The nonprofit I volunteer with, they explained before they sent me to you.”
I had no clue who’d sent her to me, but somehow those eyes told me it was okay to do what I was about to do. So I did it. I cried like a goddamned baby. I cried and cried, and I told her our sad, sad story. The guys in the little booths next to us leaned back to look over at me, maybe to make sure that I was okay, or maybe to see who the major asshat was, talking to the white lady with frizzy hair and crying his eyes out.
Anyway, when the guard showed up to tell her to leave, Sally went straight out to hire a lawyer, just because she wanted to do me and Ari a favor. I mean, that stuff really happens. Who knew?
Three weeks later I was leaving that hellhole with Sally, Amanda, and Ms. Pérez, who looks like a normal lady lawyer but apparently is a miracle worker. Because here’s the thing: I came to Georgia on a plane packed full of guys just like me—two hundred of us, caught at the border, running away from the hell that’s breaking loose in El Salvador. I am the only one of those two hundred guys who walked out of detention. The rest of them are still in there, or maybe they’ve already been sent back.
I can’t even think about what’s gonna happen to some of those guys when they get off that plane. I’m not trying to be overly dramatic or anything, but a bunch of gangueros back in El Salvador want people like us dead. And they’re not afraid to kill. Believe me. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Those guys kill people for the stupidest reasons—like walking across an invisible line into their territory or trying to hook up with one of their girlfriends. The lucky ones are the ones sitting in detention—the ones who got away before getting a bullet through the skull.
No. They aren’t lucky. There’s nothing lucky about being in that place. I’m the one with the crazy good luck. Sally and Amanda and my kick-ass lawyer have bought me a little time. So here I am, eating fresh grouper in the middle of Georgia, a thousand worlds away from my pinche hometown, and a thousand miles away from my stupid-ass little brother.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go down.
CHAPTER THREE
GRETCHEN
“WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?”
“About what?” Bree asks. “The fact that you’ve temporarily lost your mind?”
“You’re so sympathetic,” I say, turning the page in my enormous calculus book.
I don’t go to school anymore. Well, technically, I’m homeschooled. So Bree drops by every afternoon to remind me that I’m a mess. Or maybe to keep me updated on what’s happening out there in the real world. It depends on her mood, I guess. She’s got plenty of time on her hands, since she already got into her dream school, early admission. (Wellesley, of course—because it has graduated more successful female politicians than any other university in the country.) I, on the other hand, haven’t even thought about college, which is stressing my mother out.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the rug in my room, a neat stack of grid paper on the floor in front of me. Bree walks over to my makeup table and starts fiddling with a tube of mascara.
“This mascara is dried out,” Bree says. “Want me to toss it?”
I shrug. We both know it’s been six months since I’ve worn it. She drops the tube of mascara into the wastebasket.
“Seriously, Bree,” I say, nervously tapping my thumb against the tip of my pencil. “I see him sometimes.”
Bree has moved on to the lipsticks, also untouched for months, but still neatly arranged inside a clear plastic container. She picks one up, uncaps it, and twists the base. “See who?” she asks absently. She’s running the lipstick along the top of her hand to check out the color.
Sushi Kiss. That’s what the color is called. I picked it out with Adam last spring to go with the cobalt-blue dress I wore to his graduation party. After I tried the lipstick on at the MAC counter, I kissed him right on the lips. I told him I wanted to see how it looked on him, since the color was bound to end up on his perfect pout sooner or later.
It did, many times. Until it didn’t.
I don’t wear lipstick anymore, either. I also don’t kiss Adam, even though we’re still “together,” whatever that means. Adam gets it. He understands that, these days, I can’t even think about another body against mine. So he’s away at college, waiting patiently.
Bree holds out her hand to show me the coral stripe she marked across her skin.
“Oh God,” she says. “This color looks truly horrendous on me.”
“It’s not bad,” I tell her. “You can have it, if you want.”
“Thanks but no thanks” she says, glancing at the label. “These lips were not made for sushi kisses.”
Bree points to her own face, which is so dark that she and I have trouble getting good photos together. Cameras can never decide whether to overexpose my pasty-white face or to underexpose her brown one. Especially at night.
“You should give it to your mom.” She hands me the tube. “So who is it that you keep seeing?”
“That boy,” I tell her, turning the lipstick over in my hand. “I saw him on the playground yesterday, in the Place Without a Soul. I’m not even sure he was real.”
“You think maybe you were, like, imagining him?”
“He was right there,” I say, looking up at her. “I scooped up the kids and ran into the house, and then all I saw when I looked out the window was a stupid dog. How messed up is that?”
“Honey,” she says, with a voice that makes me look right at her, “you saw someone who looked like that boy and it made you feel anxious. It’s perfectly normal. No big deal.”
“I’m such a mess,” I hear myself whisper. “Maybe my mom’s right. Maybe I need to try acupuncture or something.”
My mom thinks psychology is “horseshit.” She doesn’t get how talking about problems can fix them. She does, however, fully believe in the powers of: acupuncture, herbal remedies, Reiki energy therapies, and guided meditation (to name a few). It probably seems a little inconsistent that my parents will send me to a shrink who puts me on meds, but they won’t take me to a run-of-the-mill psychologist. Dad’s the one who believes in the effectiveness of medical science, but he’s not really all that into talking about problems either.
Since I gave up on Dr. Cohen and her drugs, Mom has put me through at least five forms of “alternative treatment.” The only one I even remotely enjoyed was the month I spent in art therapy. Dad took me twice a week to a little yellow bungalow a couple of miles away from our house, where I sat around a metal folding table with five or six kids. They were all younger than I was, which made me feel silly—like Will Ferrell in the movie Elf. Honestly, even the molded plastic chairs were not easy for me to squeeze into, and when I pulled up to the table, my knees had nowhere to go.
Janet, the woman who ran the group therapy sessions, was sort of amazing. She had this calm way of talking to us, getting us to pull up our memories and make art from them. There was a girl in there who always carried a ratty pink stuffed bear, even though she was probably eight or nine. That little girl never used color, even when Janet was instructing us to. It was incredible, though—what she could do with a charcoal pencil.
When I turned eighteen, Janet invited me to join a group for adults. She said it was mostly refugees and also a couple of war veterans. I didn’t ever tell Mom and Dad about that group. It seemed so wrong to even think about comparing my issues to all that they’ve been through. So I stopped doing much of anything, except for the occasional visualization exercise.
“You’re making too big a deal out of this,” Bree says. “There’s a simple solution. That neighborhood is pretty small, so you’ll have a chance
to prove to yourself—and to him—that you’re not an idiot or a total freak. The next time you see him, just go up to him and start a conversation.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I could totally do that.”
Assuming he is not a figment of my imagination, all I’d have to do is find him and be friendly with him. I wouldn’t want the poor guy to think that—just because he looks like he might be from Mexico or Central America or wherever—I’m afraid he’s dangerous. Of course I wouldn’t be that way. I’m so not that kind of person.
“So it’s all good,” Bree says. “Oh, and you’re also going to a basketball game with me Friday night.”
“A what?”
“Basketball. You know, people running around trying to throw a ball into a little net stuck to the top of a long pole?”
For a moment I wonder whether someone has finally convinced her to play basketball. People are always coming up to us in public and asking whether we play together on a team, which is hilarious. I mean, as if all tall people in the universe have basketball hardwired into their genes or something.
“I know what basketball is—I mean, basically. But why in God’s name would we go to a basketball game?”
“It will be good for you. It’s very high school, you know?”
“A boys’ game?” I ask.
She shrugs, and a strange grin spreads across her face. This is a very un-Bree grin.
“Oh good lord. Please tell me this is not what I imagine.”
“Ty,” she says. “That’s his name. Isn’t that a cute name?”
“Ty Pennington? You mean the kid we’ve gone to school with since, like, birth? He bit me in preschool—many times. I think I know who he is.”
“Awww.” She grins even wider, which is freaking me out. “That’s so adorable.”
“No, I mean like rabies-shot bites,” I tell her—pointing to the spot on my forearm where Ty Pennington generally aimed. “He broke the skin once. I bled.”
“Ooooh, maybe he’s a vampire.” She arches her eyebrows. “That’s kinda sexy.”
“Blood-sucking is so not sexy.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m kinda over vampires. They’re a bunch of misogynists.”
Misogyny has been Bree’s favorite word since the seventh grade. Which makes me wonder why she’s acting all giddy over a boy.
“Anyway,” she says, “he plays basketball, which means I watch basketball. Because Ty Pennington looks crazy hot in that uniform.”
“So you want to go to a basketball game to objectify Ty Pennington?”
“If by objectify you mean check him out in public without seeming creepy, then yes.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’d love to contribute to your objectification of men, but I can’t. This is me we are talking about. I can’t even go to the grocery store without having a panic attack.”
Her face softens and then goes all serious. “Gretch, it’s been a long time. You have to get back out there. You need to try.”
I look down at the neat stack of grid paper next to my calculus book, at all the solved equations that stack represents. I’ve become a little obsessed with math. I won’t deny it. I work the most complicated calculus problems I can find, writing out the answers neatly, each number and letter filling a small block on my favorite grid paper. And when I’m finished, I go over my answers again, because I love the feel of my finger running along the clean sheet. When I’m doing this insanely hard math, I’m not thinking. I mean, I am thinking, but only about how to form a solution. And the solution, it always comes to me. It takes shape in my mind, and all I have to do is put it down on paper.
On those blue lines, everything makes sense. Why can’t the rest of it be so simple?
I need to grow a spine. I need to stop with the crazy talk. I need to be normal again.
“I’ll think about it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
PHOENIX
WHO KNEW MY MAD SKILLS would be so handy here in Ivywood Estates?
I’m standing outside, in an empty lot, with a group of ten clueless American girls and their dads, trying to teach them how to hammer a nail into a two-by-four. What’s weird about this, besides the strange green dresses all the girls are wearing, is that it makes me feel like I’m back in El Salvador.
I stand beside one of the girls and fold the hammer into her hand. I think they’re called Girl Scouts or something. That’s what Amanda told me. This one’s about my brother’s age. She’s wearing turquoise nail polish that sparkles. When my hand touches hers, she looks up at me, all goofy.
“Thanks,” she says. “You’re such a good teacher.”
I give her an innocent grin and move on to the next clueless kid with a nail in her hand.
I’m showing this cipote how to hold a hammer, but I’m having trouble focusing on it, because cold wind is cutting right through my sweat shirt (well, technically, it’s the sweat shirt some nice stranger donated to me). I’d give just about anything to feel the sun on my face right now. Honest to Christ. Sally keeps saying that spring is the most beautiful season in Atlanta, and I keep thinking she’s got a pretty messed up concept of beauty. The sky is always steely gray here, the sun never comes out, and almost all of the trees are missing their leaves. And then, there’s the wind.
I mean, damn.
I guess it doesn’t feel all that much like being back in El Salvador, except for the fact that I’m out here helping a bunch of very enthusiastic volunteers on a construction project that they have no idea how to do.
This whole thing was Amanda’s idea. She was worried I might get depressed or something if I didn’t get out and “have a purpose.” She wanted me to “breathe fresh air.” She knew about my work with the church groups in El Salvador, so she convinced me to launch her lifelong dream of building a community garden in Ivywood Estates. I’m pretty sure this is Amanda’s way of being a rebel. As far as I can tell, she and Sally aren’t really a typical couple for the neighborhood. Most people around here seem happy to go out in their huge cars and buy their vegetables at Whole Foods—they don’t want to get their hands dirty.
Whole Foods. That’s the crazy-ass grocery store where people pay eleven dollars for a piña that’s already cut up. Eleven dollars! The first time Sally took me there, I wandered around, my jaw hanging open. Where do these bayuncadas get all of their money? And why en el nombre de Jesús would they spend it on a cut-up pineapple, when there is a perfectly good whole pineapple sitting right next to it for one-third the price?
Completely nuts.
So, anyway, Amanda was worried I might get depressed while waiting around for my court date. Depressed? I wanted to remind her that: one—my brother and I are alive. Two—I am not in the hellhole that some people refer to as a “detention facility.” Three—my brother is safe in Texas, in a heavily guarded shelter for kids that’s a long way from the guys who want to hurt him. So there’s not really a whole lot to be depressed about, is there?
I mean, bored, yes. Insanely bored. But I’m not depressed. That’s for sure.
I’m thinking about all of this, minding my own business, when a dad shows up next to me, wearing an enormous tool belt that looks like it just walked out of Home Depot. They have those stores in San Salvador, too. Sister Mary Margaret used to send us there to get supplies.
This guy’s tool belt is in pristine condition, so I know what’s coming.
“What are we working on over here, young man?”
“Uh, well, I just thought we could make some smaller raised boxes here, just at the entrance to the garden, you know?”
“Sounds like a fine idea to me.” He squints at me with a challenge in his eyes. I know exactly what’s about to happen. I have no idea why guys like this one feel the need to prove that their cojones are bigger than mine, but they do.
“Your measurements are completely off,” he says, whipping out a brand-new measuring tape. Give him a tool belt and a plank of wood, and he thinks he’s just captured his inner tough guy.
“I think they’re fine,” I say.
Over the years, I’ve worked with dozens of bayuncos just like him. Those American church groups loved to build—libraries, water cisterns, community buildings, soccer goals. You name it, they built it. Or at least they tried. The problem was, even though they pretended to know what they were doing, they didn’t. I mean, not at all. I didn’t blame them. They were, like, accountants and salesmen and stuff, so they probably never needed to build anything, not until they decided to spend a week as missionaries.
Yeah, they were usually only around for a week at a time, which wasn’t exactly long enough to build a whole library. But I appreciated all of those missionaries, for real. I learned how to speak almost perfect English, hanging around them all the time. When I was a little kid, there used to be enough of them to keep a bilingual school running in my neighborhood. Once the neighborhood started going to shit, they decided to shut down the school, but Sister Mary Margaret helped me get a scholarship for the International School over in San Salvador. So, I’m pretty much bilingual. And, just for the record, I never touched a single one of those American high-school girls. I’m not a complete idiot. My ass would have been back on the street in two seconds flat if I’d tried to have a thing with an American. They were off-limits—which was fine by me. I didn’t even think of them as girls. They were missionaries, and I was their guide.
Mr. Tool Belt pulls out a brand-new level and waves it in my face. Who needs a level to build a wooden box?
“Step aside, son.” The brand-new measuring tape goes back into the tool belt. “Why don’t you just work on the edging over there and let me figure out these dimensions for you?”
“Sure,” I say. “Let me know if you need some help.”
It might seem like a wussy thing to do, walking away like that. Maybe it makes me look bien güevon. But I’m not afraid of this guy. And I’m definitely not lazy. It’s just that if I make any trouble, this whole thing with Amanda and Sally could go to shit and I could end up back in detention. So I turn and wander off. Not too far, though. I have to keep an eye on the damage Mr. Tough Guy is going to do.
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