And then she sort of looks me over, and her cheeks turn this sweet shade of pink. The pink is starting to travel down her neck in splotches, toward the crew neck of the big bulky sweater she’s wearing.
Am I making that happen?
“Go!” she says. “We kinda need to hurry.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “Just give me a minute.”
I should probably ask her to come inside, but I feel strange about it. I guess I’m wondering if anyone will see her come in, and what they will think about me inviting a girl into the house when Sally and Amanda aren’t home. I really don’t want to mess this up. So I turn around and walk away, leaving her in the doorway. Probably not the best decision.
“I’ll just let myself in!” she calls out.
I pretend I don’t hear her and head down to the basement.
I open a dresser drawer and pick out a pair of the jeans I was given. They’re Levis, and they fit pretty well. I pull off my undershirt and go into the bathroom. Brush my teeth. Wash my armpits. Splash some water on my hair and start to run my fingers through it. I sometimes forget that I don’t have long hair anymore. They shaved it off, back in the hellhole.
I go back to the bedroom and stare into the closet. I wish whoever gave me all these clothes had a son who wore T-shirts. I guess he was into shirts with collars, because all I have are polo shirts, which look really strange on me, and flannel button-downs. I’m not feeling sorry for myself or anything. I am grateful—incredibly grateful—to be looking into this closet. Because the alternative is to be standing in a bathroom with sixty guys and no walls, wearing a blue jumpsuit.
Flannel button-down, it is.
I grab my phone and text Sally.
going out with gretchen. back soon.
Then I head upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
She’s sitting on the sofa, her knees tucked up to her chest and that huge sweater covering her legs. At the sight of me, she uncurls herself and hops off the couch.
“Ready for your surprise?”
I don’t reply. I have no idea what to say. Up until this point in my life, I haven’t been a big fan of surprises. So, no, I’m not exactly ready for a surprise, but I am absolutely ready to go wherever Gretchen takes me.
* * *
“Don’t freak out when I tell you this.” She’s climbing into the driver’s seat of her car. “But I haven’t been behind the wheel in six months.”
I shrug and buckle my seat belt. “I’ve never been behind the wheel at all,” I say. “So I guess you’re still more qualified to drive this thing than I am.”
“The last time I drove was right after I got assaulted,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I was in shock, but I managed to get home.”
“Were you beat-up bad?”
“Yeah.” She chews the edge of her thumb for a second, and then she reaches down to start the car. “I tried to convince myself that it was nothing, even though I could barely see, because of the … the blood.” She goes back to chewing her thumb, and the car idles.
I don’t let myself see that image—Gretchen with blood running into her eyes. Instead, knowing she’s a little nervous about the whole driving thing, I try to make small talk. “How’d you learn to drive?”
“With my dad at first, but it almost killed him.” She laughs and starts to drive.
“Should I be afraid?” I pretend to shudder in fear.
“Probably,” she says, deadpan. “The first time I drove with him, I thought a green light meant you could go out into the intersection and turn left. I didn’t really grasp the whole ‘yield’ thing. My dad decided my boyfriend should take over the driving lessons—you know, to avoid a heart attack.”
Boyfriend.
Ugh. I feel like I just got punched in the gut.
“It was funny. I mean, the day Adam turned eighteen, Dad handed him the car keys and wished him luck.”
Adam.
And another punch, this time right under the ribs.
“He’s only, like, eighteen months older than me, but he always drove me everywhere, so I didn’t really need a license until he was getting ready to leave for college.”
College.
And another, right up under the jaw.
“So he’s away?” I force myself to ask. That last hit felt so real, I’m rubbing my face, wincing.
“Yeah, but not far. We saw each other last night, actually. He came into town and we went to dinner.”
Not only does Gretchen have a boyfriend—she has a college boyfriend who drives for her and takes her out to dinner. Awesome.
I glance at the side of the road because I’m pretty sure my face looks like I’m in actual physical pain, and I definitely don’t want Gretchen to see that. Then it hits me like another punch in the gut: we are moving too fast. Traveling too far. We aren’t on neighborhood streets anymore. Instead we are on a four-lane highway, flying by fancy office buildings and huge stores. I feel the sweat begin to pool under my arms. Because I haven’t told Gretchen about my twenty-mile radius.
Yeah, that’s right. I’m not allowed to go more than twenty miles from Sally and Amanda’s house. If I do, it’s back to detention.
Mierda. Right about now this is all starting to feel like a huge mistake.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
“I, um … I was just—I mean, I was just wondering where we’re going, I guess.” My voice shakes a little. I hope she doesn’t notice.
“It’s a surprise.”
She pulls the car onto the highway and starts hauling ass. This is getting dire.
I have to do something.
“We need to stop!” I yell. I sound scared, or maybe scary.
Gretchen looks over at me, confused. “What’s wrong?” she says, biting her lower lip.
My mind searches like mad for something to say that’s not going to freak her out. I do not want to be the one to give her another panic attack. Oh Christ, what have I gotten us into? I should have told her. I should have explained. But she had so much to deal with already. I didn’t want for her to worry. I don’t want to scare her. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?
“I’m feeling sick,” I say. “I think we need to pull over.”
“This will help.” She mashes a button to roll down my window. “I used to get carsick when I was a kid, but it’s better now.”
A cold wind hits my face and I realize two things: this girl is not going to stop, and there is not a chance in hell I’m letting her go any farther. Without thinking, I hoist my left leg up onto the dashboard. I pull up my jeans, and shove down my sock.
“You have to stop,” I say.
And then it all sort of happens in slow motion: she turns her head to look at my leg, and she sees the stupid pinche black box attached to my ankle, the one that I can’t take off, the one that my parole officer monitors every pinche second of every pinche day, and then she looks up at my face, her eyes wide, like she’s just seen a dead body or something. Her jaw drops and she lifts her foot off the gas, so the car starts to slow down.
“What are you doing?” she asks. “What is that?”
“I can’t leave Atlanta,” I say.
“Oh dear God,” she says. “Oh God. Please, God, tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
The car is moving even slower.
“It’s an ankle monitor,” I say, hoping, praying, she’s not gonna freak out.
“An ankle monitor,” she says quietly. “Oh my God, you’re wearing an ankle monitor.”
She’s gonna freak out.
And then her hands are flying from the steering wheel, her arms flailing wildly. “How could you? How could you do this to me? I trusted you! Oh God, what did you do?”
She starts sucking in deep breaths. The car is slowing down, and a horn honks really loud behind us. Cars are swerving around us now, and Gretchen’s chest is heaving and she’s pulling in air, but I can tell she thinks she’s not getting any. My
heart is pounding, and it hits me that if I don’t do something, we might both die right here on the highway, somewhere on the outskirts of Atlanta.
I’m not ready to die. Madre de Dios. I am not ready. Not yet.
So I reach over and grab the steering wheel and tell her to let go, and by some miracle, she does. Slowly, I ease the car to the edge of the road. Gretchen sucks in deep breaths and I keep steering the car—driving for the first time in my pendejo life!
Finally the car stops.
Gretchen, that crazy girl, throws her door open, cars speeding past us at, like, a hundred kilometers an hour. I’m afraid one of them is going to slam into the door and send us spinning out onto the freeway, or even worse, she will jump into oncoming traffic, just to get away from me.
What did you do?
I hear her voice, asking me. Accusing me. Afraid of me.
I reach across her body and yank the door shut. Then I push down the lock.
“What is going on?” She’s screaming again. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t open the door,” I say, trying with everything I have to sound calm. “You might get hurt.”
She reaches for her phone, which I’ve been holding in my lap. “I’m calling my dad,” she says. “Get out. I’m calling my dad.”
She’s about to have a full-on panic attack. I can see it coming. She’s trying to take the phone, but I put my hand over hers, touching her as gently as I can.
“Please, let me explain,” I say. “You don’t need to call your dad.”
“Get out!” she cries.
“No.” I grip her hand harder. “I’m not getting out until you let me explain.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“I’m not a criminal,” I say. But even as I’m saying it, I’m not sure it’s true. Still, I have to say something to calm her down, and even if I am a criminal—or if I was a criminal—this stupid thing around my ankle has nothing to do with that.
“If you don’t get out, I am going to call the cops.” Gretchen grabs her phone with her free hand and shakes it at me.
I let go of her and ease slowly out, trying not to startle her with any fast motions. “I’m going to stand right here, outside the car, and I’m going to explain, okay?”
Gretchen pushes a button, and I hear the click of doors locking—all of them at once.
“All I did was show up at the border without permission,” I say through the window.
“What? What are you talking about?” Her face crumples.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my borrowed jeans. I’m not sure I can talk about this, but I’m going to try.
“I came up through Mexico, with my little brother, and when we got to the border, they put me in detention. It’s like prison, you know?”
“But what did you do?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything. I brought my brother to the border and told the guard we needed asylum, so they put me in detention. But then Amanda hired a lawyer and she got me out. But I have to wear this stupid thing.”
Gretchen leans over to look at me. Her breathing is slowing down. “You’re not making any sense,” she says, her voice rising.
I shrug. Because, cabrón, she doesn’t have to tell me that none of it makes any sense.
“Why should I trust you?”
She’s got me on that one. I don’t know why she should trust me.
“Hold on,” I say. I pull out my phone and call Sally.
Sally picks up. Finally something is going right.
“Phoenix!” she says cheerfully. “How’s it going with Gretchen?”
“Not so good,” I say, talking fast. “She was trying to take me out of town, and I didn’t know what to do. I showed her the ankle monitor.”
“Let me talk to her.”
I push my hand through the crack in the window and press the phone toward Gretchen.
And, Gracias a Dios y a la Virgencita, she accepts it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GRETCHEN
OKAY, SO—ALL THINGS considered—I’d say I’m handling this situation fairly well. When I decided to do this nice thing for Phoenix last night, because of how great he’s been all week with the kids, I made myself believe it was simple: a little drive to the country. You can handle that, Gretchen.
I hadn’t factored in the homing device.
But after I talked to Sally, I let Phoenix back in the car, which is making me feel seriously proud, and almost normal. Maybe a little self-absorbed—since, the other night, I didn’t even think to ask Phoenix why he was living with Sally and Amanda and trying to get permission to stay—but otherwise fairly normal.
We are sitting in the parking lot of a QuikTrip, and I’m sipping an enormous mango iced tea. We’re killing time, waiting for his parole officer to call him back, to see if he can come with me to get pupusas.
I hadn’t factored in his parole officer, either.
Oh my God, Phoenix has a parole officer. Just thinking about that sends my heart racing, but then I force myself to remember what Sally told me. Honestly, how do you have a parole officer when all you did was bring your little brother to the US—because it’s not safe where you live? Sally said that Phoenix and his brother fled El Salvador because their neighborhood was dangerous, and because there were people there who wanted them dead—that if they stayed, they almost certainly would have been killed.
And how does that even happen, anyway? How do a twelve-year-old and an eighteen-year-old who aren’t criminals (she promised me, again and again, that they aren’t criminals) end up with death threats?
So now, here we are in the parking lot, waiting for permission to go to Dahlonega, which is a little mountain town where there are supposed to be to-die-for pupusas. I’m feeling bad because I assumed Phoenix did something really terrible, and I think he’s feeling bad because he completely freaked me out with the ankle monitor.
“Want some Skittles?” he asks, pushing the red package toward me.
“Sure,” I tell him.
I’ve never really understood Skittles. I mean, if you’re going to eat sweets, why choose sweets that don’t contain any chocolate? But I guess I want him to know I will take whatever he offers me, maybe because I feel sorry for him.
God, I feel sorry for him.
“Do you get to talk to your brother?” I ask.
“Not really,” he says, putting the bag of Skittles on the dash. “Amanda and Sally bought him a phone card, but it’s really expensive to call from over there, and I guess he doesn’t get access to the phone.”
Over there. Sally told me his brother is in Texas, in a special detention facility for children who were caught at the border without their parents. But she also told me that Phoenix and his brother weren’t really caught. They swam across the river and walked right up to a border patrol officer to ask for protection.
“That’s not exactly true,” Phoenix says quietly.
“What?” I ask, lost in my thoughts.
“About Ari, my brother. I haven’t talked to him because, uh, he doesn’t talk.”
“Oh,” I say. “You mean he has, like, a mental disability?”
“No.” He shrugs. “It’s not like that.” Then he looks right at me, his eyes filling up with pain, or maybe regret. “The psychologist over there, she says it’s temporary. It’s just from the, uh … from the trauma.”
“Trauma?” My heart starts to thump in my chest—again. But this time, it’s not because I’m afraid. Or, I’m not afraid for myself, at least. I think maybe I don’t want to know these things about Phoenix. But also, I do. I want so much to know him.
“It was really hard,” he says, “coming through Mexico. A bunch of bad stuff happened to us. But, I mean, we made it.” He shifts in his seat and puts his feet against the dashboard. “We were so relieved when we finally got to the US side of the border. But then they took us and put us in this room—like a holding cell. Everyone calls it the heladera—the freezer. It was so cold, and my l
ittle brother, he was, like, shivering.” Phoenix folds his arms across his chest, as if it is cold now, as if this car is a freezer. “We were still really wet from the river. His lips were, like, turning blue, and I was holding him, you know, trying to warm him up a little.”
He hugs himself tighter and looks over at me. “You don’t need to hear all this shit.”
“I do, Phoenix.” I touch one of his arms and gently unfold it. “Tell me.”
It feels good, holding on to his arm, like if I can just keep holding on, this might all make more sense.
“We were there for a really long time, like hours and hours. Then the guard came back. He told me I had to leave, but my brother was staying there.” He folds his free hand behind his head and looks up, at the roof of the car. “Ari didn’t understand what was going on. They pulled him off me—not rough or anything—and then they put me in handcuffs.”
“Your brother saw this?”
He’s leaning back, looking up at the roof, or maybe through it. Maybe he’s imagining the wide-open sky.
“Yeah, and I kept telling him everything would be okay and we would talk soon. I tried to explain that he didn’t need to worry—that they were going to protect him and…”
The car is completely silent—because Phoenix stopped talking, and because I can’t speak. What can I possibly say?
Phoenix turns toward me. “His eyes, Gretchen—the way he looked at me.”
I study Phoenix, feeling his hurt in my own body—real physical pain, stabbing into my gut.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. That’s all I can come up with.
“Ari didn’t say anything when they took me out of there. He curled up, like into a little ball, and he watched while they pulled me out of that heladera. But he didn’t really have to say anything, because—I guess I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I don’t know how to explain it. I think I knew he was kind of, like, dying inside. You know? Does that make sense?”
No. Not a single word of it.
“I can’t believe they separated you,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” He looks away, toward the highway.
“How could they do that?”
“At least he’s safe,” he says. “But he still won’t talk to anyone. Not even me.” He grabs the bag of Skittles from the dash and pours some into his hand. “Or, maybe, especially not me. I think he hates me for bringing him here.”
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