Delgado is smart. He’s crazy, and the meanest person I have ever known, but he’s smart.
So he made us take off El Turbino’s tattoo—the hard way.
You putos are straight chavalas. That’s what El Turbino said. That’s what he was spitting out, his saliva landing in little droplets on my forearm while I rubbed a rag across his arm, scrubbing away dirt and blood, just like Delgado had told me to do.
Before I’d even laid eyes on El Turbino, Delgado and his boys had beat the shit out of him. Now they wanted me to clean him up so they could see his tattoo better, every numeral inked into El Turbino’s skin. But the smell of the rag Delgado had handed to me—it was so strong. I couldn’t figure it all out.
* * *
“Is he okay?” I whisper, still looking at the floor of Ms. Pérez’s office, still unable to focus on anything but the hole opening in my gut. “I mean, did you see photos?”
She bites her lower lip. “I wish I hadn’t.”
I can’t believe he is alive. How is that even possible?
“Please, Ms. Pérez. What is going on?” Amanda asks.
“Rogelio Cruz Benítez, who also went by El Turbino, was a member of a rival gang. He was tortured by the specific clique that Phoenix was part of, after crossing into their territory.”
Territory. Like my colonia is such an awesome place that we don’t want to share it with anyone. How could I have been so damn stupid?
“In official testimony, he named Phoenix as one of his torturers,” Ms. Pérez says.
“Our Phoenix?” Sally calls out. “No, that’s not possible, Ms. Pérez.”
“That’s his testimony.” Ms. Pérez sighs and props her elbows on the desk. It makes me feel like crap, seeing her do that. She looks exhausted, and disappointed.
In me. She’s disappointed in me.
“This man was in a rival gang,” Amanda says. “Right? I mean, how do they know he didn’t just make it up—fabricate the entire story?”
“It has been confirmed by a member of Phoenix’s gang, a witness by the name of Fredi Palacios Pérez.”
Slayer. If he gave testimony, it means he got out. How can it be that Slayer had the courage to leave, and I didn’t?
“Mr. Palacios Pérez testified in exchange for clemency on a drug-related charge, so perhaps his testimony could be called into question.” She pauses and looks right at me. “But Cruz Benítez—he suffered severe burns over more than half of his body. Some were third-degree,” Ms. Pérez says. “That’s impossible to make up.”
What I didn’t know—because I was thirteen, and stupid and drunk—was this: the rag I used to clean El Turbino’s tattoo had been soaked in gasoline. Slayer was the guy who lit the match.
“Well, he made a mistake,” Amanda says, her eyes narrowing. “Phoenix wasn’t there.”
They’re waiting for me to say something. Oh Christ. What do I say?
“I was there.” I whisper it—quietly, but loud enough that they can hear it clearly. I want them to hear it. I need for them to know the truth about me.
“But, Phoenix,” Sally says, “being there doesn’t mean you participated.”
I look right over at Sally, that sweet woman who welcomed me into her home, who fed me fresh fish in the middle of Georgia, who took me to a basketball game, who made me build a garden and helped me pick out all the plants, who swore like a sailor when she thought people were treating me bad. I look up at Sally, I look her right in the eye, and I say it.
“I did.”
And, oh Christ, I wish I didn’t keep looking at her, because her face just crumples up like a paper bag. And Amanda, sitting next to her, falls right forward in her seat, her hands rising to cover her face.
“I’m sorry,” I say, so quiet this time that maybe they don’t even hear me.
Ms. Pérez sighs. “I assume you know, Phoenix, that this is terrible for your case. There are thousands of young men seeking asylum from El Salvador right now—thousands. Only a handful will be granted it, and I can assure you that the ones who engaged in gang-related torture will not be among them.”
“So it’s over, then.” That’s Amanda, talking through her hands, where her face is buried.
Ms. Pérez nods. “We will go into that courtroom and do our best, Phoenix, but it’s almost certain at this point that you won’t be granted asylum.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
“But what about the appeal?” Amanda asks. “You told us that he probably won’t win his merits hearing anyway, but that we can appeal. That maybe we can seek a change of venue and have a better chance of winning. Isn’t that right?”
Ms. Pérez leans back in her chair and shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I think that, in light of this new evidence, it would likely be wasting our time, and a great deal of your money, to appeal.”
“Even if we could get his case moved to a different court? To another state?”
“Yes, I’m afraid even in Illinois or California—even the most sympathetic courts—are not going to like this evidence.”
“I see,” Amanda says. Her eyes are getting all watery, and she looks like she’s gonna cry.
“Phoenix, you need to understand”—Ms. Pérez looks over at me sitting there like an idiot, unable to speak—“that you will be given an order of deportation today. You should prepare yourself for that.”
How does a person prepare to die? I mean, what, exactly, are the steps? Maybe I should start going to church with Sally and Amanda.
“Bloody hell!” Sally calls out, rising to her feet. “No! Absolutely not. He is not going to prepare himself!” Her hands are flailing wildly. “He was thirteen! He was just a baby. He left that gang!” She slams her palms down on Ms. Pérez’s desk. “He left because he didn’t want to be part of all of that. And then he risked everything to make sure his brother didn’t have to join! He wanted to do the right thing! He tried so hard to do the right thing!”
She turns her entire body toward me. For such a small lady, she looks huge. It’s like she’s swelling up, filling up with I don’t know what. And I don’t know why she cares so much. Why does she care?
“Phoenix Flores Flores, you are not a torturer.” She says each word slowly, carefully, looking right at me.
But I can’t hold her gaze. I look down at my shoes—not my shoes, the shoes someone donated to me, some nice churchy person who thought I was worthy of his charity.
What would he think now? A torturer, walking in his shoes.
I shrug. Sally catches my shoulder in her hand and begins to shake me.
“Look at me, Phoenix!” Her voice is rising. “You are not a bloody torturer!”
Maybe she’s right.
“I didn’t know they were going to burn it off,” I say quietly. “The tattoo—I didn’t know I was—”
“Speak up,” Amanda says, an edge in her voice. “We can’t hear you.”
But what I hear her saying is: Torturer. I invited a torturer to live in my home, to sleep in my own son’s bed.
Sally takes my chin in her hand and makes me look directly at her. “If you don’t tell Ms. Pérez, she can’t help you, Phoenix. You have to keep talking. You have to explain.” She squeezes my chin between her fingers. “I know you can do this.”
Her face is going blurry.
“Phoenix!” she calls out.
I pull back and look down at the carpet, stripes swimming, floor falling out from underneath me, black smoke filling up my head.
I can’t form another word. The smoke is rising and the flames are spreading and the smell of gasoline mixed with burning flesh is searing my nostrils. I sit, not saying a word, using every bit of will I have to keep this shit from coming down on me, but it keeps coming. It always does.
I stand up and bolt out of the office. I’m rushing down the hall, looking for somewhere to hide, but I can’t see anything. Only black smoke, filling my senses.
I grab the handle of a door and throw it open. I think maybe it’s
a supply closet. I slam the door behind me, and that’s when I buckle.
I don’t even know it’s happening until my knees hit the floor. And then all I can hear is the roaring in my ears. The horrible, brutal images keep on coming, one after the other.
Shivering, I fall to the ground and wrap my arms around my knees.
The smell. Oh Christ, the smell. It has been five years, but if I live ten thousand lives, I will never forget the smell.
After Slayer lit the match, they doused him in more gasoline.
I screamed, tore at their arms, tried to stop them. “Por favor! Por favor, Blackie! Ja, Ja, Basta!” Delgado turned to look at me, hate burning in his eyes. And that’s when I knew it.
Oh, sweet Jesus, I so knew it.
It was all clarity, pure and clean and cool. It was like a stream of fresh water coursing through my soul. I was gonna run and never, ever, in ten thousand lifetimes, never come back.
Here’s the thing: I almost never did. For five years I managed never to step foot in that place, never again to answer to Delgado, to do terrible, heinous, unthinkable things just because that lunatic told me to do them. Not until six months ago, when I showed up to drag Ari out of there. Because Delgado was after my brother. He said it was time to have a Flores kid back at work with them. And no matter how much Ari kicked and screamed and punched, nothing was going to stop Delgado from getting his way.
Except for me. I was going to stop Delgado if it was the last thing I ever did. So I went in for Ari, and I took him away. But not before Delgado marked me one last time. This time it wasn’t with ink. This time, he lunged at me, with a knife. For the first and last time in my entire life, I went completely badass. I grabbed the hand that held a knife to my throat and I swung my leg around to kick him. The force sent Delgado flying across that room, and I went in for Ari.
When I left that place for the second time, I wasn’t running. I backed out while everyone watched. Blood poured from my neck, and my shaking hand held a gun for the first time in my life (and, Christ, I hope the last).
I pointed that gun at Delgado’s heart, shielding Ari’s scrawny little body with my own. When we got to the doorway, Delgado green-lighted us.
“Están muertos,” he said, still hunched on the floor. “Luz verde.”
He had ordered us dead. And soon, everyone who had ever pledged loyalty to that gang would know, and they would follow Delgado’s orders, because Mara siempre.
The gang is forever.
When Ari and I rounded the corner, I threw the gun into the lake and we ran all the way to the Guatemala border.
I tried to protect my little brother, but I failed.
Oh Christ, how I failed.
Because if I had done things right, Ari would be in school right now, living his life, doing all the innocent things that twelve-year-olds do. Instead he is in Texas, where at least Delgado can’t get to him. And here I am, still living, I guess. Curled up on the floor, in the supply closet of some fancy American lawyer’s office, the stench of burning flesh still in my nostrils.
* * *
That’s how they find me—Amanda and Sally.
Sally leads me into the bathroom. There’s a man in a suit standing at the urinal, and she tells him to leave. He looks her up and down once—this tiny woman with a giant presence—and he walks right out, zipping up his pants as he goes.
She holds me up while I splash water onto my face. Then she takes me by the arm, and we walk together toward the courthouse.
“You can do this,” she tells me. “You’re ready.”
But I’m not. I’m not ready.
* * *
Three hours later—and I’m sitting on a hard wood bench at the front of the courtroom, shivering my ass off. I’m still not ready for what that judge has to say. It doesn’t matter that she’s using a bunch of legal language I’ve never heard before and that I barely understand. Because I understand.
She’s sending me back to El Salvador.
Luz verde. Green light.
I’m as good as dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GRETCHEN
“SO, THAT’S IT, THEN?”
“Yeah,” I tell my dad. “It’s over.”
Dad and I are sitting at the kitchen table, talking about my night with Adam. I have my compass in one hand, and I’m smoothing a map with the other—an actual map.
“And you’re okay with it?”
“I was the one who did it, Dad.”
I can’t remember the last time I looked at a map—like, a real paper one with lots of folds and complicated keys. Maybe never. It took forever to find this stupid thing. Anyway, I have a plan, and it requires a map.
“And Adam, how did he take it?”
“Honestly, I think he was relieved.”
Dad nods slowly and looks back at his work. That’s one thing about my dad. He knows when to stop prying. We work together in silence for a few minutes, until I start wrestling with the folds of the map again.
We’ve basically arrived at the point in my homeschooling career where I’m on my own. We sit at the table every morning for a couple of hours together, just out of habit. But I don’t really need my dad anymore. And when it comes to subjects like calculus and physics, he has absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Mom and Dad are both baffled by my ability to solve complicated equations. Neither one of them is any good at math. Mom asked me once how I do it. We were at the thrift store and I was calculating discounts on a big stack of clothes we had found. She asked me how I manage to do this in my head, without a calculator or even a pencil and paper. I thought for a minute and then I told her. The solutions form in my mind—I can see them. It’s that simple. She looked at me like I was an alien from outer space, and then we went back to searching through the racks at the thrift store.
“What’s the map for?” Dad asks. “History project?”
“I finished that project,” I say. “I’m actually working on something else.”
I measure a distance of twenty miles with the key, and then I expand the compass to that width and place it on the table. I find the point on the map where Amanda and Sally’s house would be and mark it with a red dot.
Dad stands up and looks over my shoulder. He watches as I stick the compass needle into the red dot and direct the pencil tip northeast—toward Snellville. I feel relief to see that its radius stretches across Stone Mountain Park. There are nice hiking trails there—if you know where to go to avoid the crowds.
I came up with the idea while driving home from Dahlonega, after Phoenix told me about his “American Dream.” I decided to give Phoenix a map of all the places he can hike and spend time in nature, within his twenty-mile radius. I want to go with him, to take him places. I want for him to see things, experience things, with me. I hope he wants that too.
I was planning to go over to Amanda and Sally’s this morning, to tell Phoenix about Adam, but he said he had somewhere to be all morning, that maybe we could hang out later. But now it’s afternoon, and he still hasn’t texted me back. I’m trying not to worry.
The pencil tip lands on Snellville. I start to trace the circle north and west. As the pencil moves west, I realize he won’t make it to Kennesaw Mountain—that’s way outside the twenty-mile radius. The protractor’s arc cuts out Sweetwater Creek, too.
I sigh—that’s such a beautiful park. Phoenix would love it.
“What’s that sigh about?” my dad asks.
“The map is for Phoenix,” I say. “I thought it might be nice for him to see all the things he can do near Sally and Amanda’s house.”
My dad knows about the parole, and about the ankle monitor. I told both of my parents as soon as we got back from Dahlonega. At first they seemed really nervous, but Mom called Amanda and they talked for a while. Then Mom chatted with Dad for a few minutes in their bedroom, the door closed. When they came back out, they told me how proud they were of me, how well they thought I’d handled the whole thing. Then they asked to meet Ph
oenix, so he came over for brunch with Sally and Amanda. He was so nervous the whole time, and really polite. When my parents insisted he call them by their first names, he looked at them like they had grown two heads. But then he nodded and said he would. He did his best, but every time he said Dan or Lisa it sounded wrong, like he was forcing out the words.
My dad sits down beside me. “You want to take him to these places?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Some of them—he doesn’t really have any friends, you know? And he can’t drive. I’m going to ask Aunt Lauren if maybe the kids and I can take him to see some of these things.”
Dad reaches out across the map and takes my hand. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. A couple of weeks ago, you weren’t even driving yourself to Ivywood Estates, and now this. It’s great, honey.”
He squeezes my hand gently.
“And now you’re gonna say, ‘But—’”
“You know me too well.” He gives me the Dad look—the one that goes right through my eyes and into my gut. “Lauren called me, about Phoenix.”
“What?” I say. “Why?”
“There was some notice posted on the neighborhood chat, online. Something about him being dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“The post said he has a record of involvement in gang activity.”
“What?” I stand up and clutch the edge of the table. “You know that’s not true, right?”
“I know that Phoenix is a good kid, and that Amanda and Sally trust him implicitly. That’s all that matters to me, Gretchen, but your aunt—”
“Whatever, Dad,” I tell him. “I’ll explain it to her, okay?”
Dad nods and looks back at his computer screen, but I know he wants to say more. It’s the squint of his left eye, the way the skin wrinkles around it. A dead giveaway every time.
“What?” I ask him. “I know there’s something else you’re dying to say to me.”
“Karen called,” he tells me. “The prosecutor?”
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