I don’t even notice when Gretchen walks in. I probably look stupid, sitting there in my undershirt, surrounded by stacks of paper. But I don’t even care, because I’m so damn happy to see her leaning up against the doorframe, in faded cut-off shorts and a light-blue tank top, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.
I push a stack of papers out of the way and slide off the bed.
“Whatcha doin’?” she asks.
“Kissing you,” I say, walking over to her.
And then I do. I take her hand and pull her into me and I kiss her softly.
After a while she steps back. “I have a surprise for you.”
“I’m not really into surprises.”
“You’ll like this one,” she tells me. “I promise.” She starts to head up the stairs and then turns back to tell me, “It’s in the garden.”
We walk out of the house, holding hands. I don’t know if it happened overnight, or if I just didn’t notice before, but the trees aren’t bare anymore; they have little flowers starting to come out all along their branches. Some are white and fluffy, others have tight, purplish-pink buds, and there are even a few enormous trees with big light-pink flowers growing from the tip of each branch. They remind me of trees in a comic book, or one of those rhyming books for little kids. I’m so busy staring at all the trees and breathing in the sweet air that I barely even notice the big-ass SUV that’s slowing down beside us.
Gretchen hops back a little and her body stiffens. It’s almost like someone has jumped out of a closet to scare her, the way she’s freezing up.
“What’s up?” I ask.
Eyes wide, she looks over at the SUV. Then she shakes her head twice and smiles. “Nothing,” she says. “The noise just startled me.”
The driver is leaning into her passenger-side window, watching us. It’s that nosy lady. The one Sally called a “feckin’ wanker” the other day. I look away, fast.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Gretchen whispers through closed teeth.
I barely nod. I’m inspecting the sidewalk instead.
Gretchen leans in and kisses me, right on the lips. Then she turns to wave a little too vigorously at the lady driving the SUV. The woman waves back, halfheartedly, with a strange look on her face. I think maybe it’s disgust. But truth be told, I don’t give a shit what that woman thinks. I’m too happy.
Jesus, I didn’t even know I could be happy like this.
We turn a corner, and the garden comes into view. There are, like, twenty kids standing around, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee from paper cups.
“Who are all those people?”
“Bree’s friends,” she says. “And Ty’s. He helped us get the word out.”
“How did you convince them all to come hang out with a ‘dangerous criminal’?”
“Krispy Kreme doughnuts”—she points toward a stack of green and white boxes on the ground—“and coffee.”
I stop and pull her into a hug. “Thanks,” I whisper into her ear.
* * *
Four hours later Ty and I are crouched down next to the hose, taking turns drinking from it. I’m feeling pretty damn good about the progress all these American high school kids have made. They work way faster than most of the missionaries. And they’re better at following directions than the dads of all those girls in green dresses. We’ve planted all but three flats of vegetables, and I’m starting to tug the hose toward the newly planted herb garden when my phone rings. I look down at the screen. I recognize the 210 area code—Texas.
I drop the hose and gesture toward the phone. “I have to take this.”
Ty nods and grabs the end of the hose.
“Bueno?”
“Good afternoon, Phoenix. This is Jill de Leon from the CARA Project in San Antonio. I’m representing your brother, Ari?”
“Yes, ma’am. I remember.”
“I’m so sorry to bother you with this on a Sunday afternoon, but, as you know, Ari’s hearing in Texas juvenile court will be this Wednesday.”
“I’ve been reading through the papers I got in the mail,” I tell her. “If that’s why you’re calling.”
I’m watching Bree and Ty leaning against each other, holding on to that water hose.
“Thank you, Phoenix,” she says. “That’s great. But I’m not calling about that. I’m calling about your brother.…”
The water moves in a long arc toward the bed of herbs, catching the sunlight.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“I’m sorry, but—”
Ty slowly moves the hose up and down, transforming that arc of water into a long S. Bree’s hand enters the stream, sending drops of water across her arm, across the front of Ty’s shirt.
“Your brother still isn’t speaking with us—with anyone.”
“Oh,” I say.
Ty turns the hose toward Bree. She squeals and tries to run away, but the water follows her, soaking her through. She’s running straight toward Gretchen, who looks up from the tomato cages she’s tying together with thick brown twine.
“I am very concerned.…” The lawyer’s voice is all serious, which is making my heart beat fast. “Without his testimony, it will be difficult to demonstrate abandonment.”
“Oh,” I say again. What is she trying to tell me?
“To make a strong case, we will also need for him to explain to the juvenile court judge why he can’t return.”
“To El Salvador?”
Ty has turned the hose toward Gretchen. A stream of water hits her face, runs down her chest. She throws her hands out, trying to block the flow, but it doesn’t help, so she starts running, straight toward Ty.
“Yes,” Ms. de Leon says. “We’re beginning to feel a bit desperate here,” she tells me. “Do you understand, Phoenix?”
Yes, I understand. I understand desperate.
I’m backing up, slowly moving away from the scene, almost unaware I’m doing it.
“Can you try again—to speak with your brother? Can you explain the gravity of this situation to him?”
My back presses against the wall of the shed. Feeling a little dizzy, I watch as Gretchen and Bree tackle Ty, wrestling him to the ground. Gretchen wrenches the hose from his hand. Bree is holding him down while Gretchen steps back and drenches him.
“Phoenix? Are you there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, my voice wobbly. “I’m here.”
“Will you try?”
Will I try? I am trying. I left, didn’t I? I dragged him all the way through Mexico. I hauled him onto the tops of moving trains. I snuck him out of a work camp. I led him through a desert. I got him across the border. I took him to that guard. I told them all that I know. I wrote it all down for them, for chrissake. Or, almost all of it.
“I don’t know what else I can do.”
I’m giving up.
Gretchen looks toward me. She’s laughing, her face all radiant, her shirt clinging to her body, slick with water. She takes one look at the giving-up me, watching the coming-alive her.
I hate myself for giving up.
The hose drops. Her smile drops. Her hand flies back, gesturing for Bree and Ty to stop whatever they’re doing. My body is curling into a tight ball, and Gretchen is heading toward me, fast.
She knows what’s about to happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
GRETCHEN
THIS IS THE KIND of night when a girl needs her best friend, preferably without a plus one. I try not to let on how disappointed I am when I walk through the kitchen door at Bree’s to see her and Ty wrapped around each other on the family room sofa, watching basketball.
Basketball. Good Lord.
Clearly, Bree’s in love. And that’s fine. It’s good, even. She and Ty are sweet together, and with the exception of the occasional absurd comment (usually prefaced by “Dude!”), Ty’s personality has grown on me. But I need Bree—my Bree, the one I don’t have to share.
Bree jumps up from the sofa and rushes over to me, across the
marble floor of her parents’ rarely used designer kitchen.
“Oh my God, Gretch! Is he okay?” She throws her arms around me.
I have no idea how to answer that.
Two hours ago, when I left Phoenix in the basement of Amanda and Sally’s, at least he was talking again. He had unwound himself from the ball he collapsed into by the shed, the one he stayed in—not saying a word—for far too long. It was strange to see him like that. I’ve known for a while that Phoenix has been through far more than I can imagine, but he’s always been so solid, so reliable. I never thought I’d be the one telling him to breathe deeply, asking him to lean against me.
I tried getting him to use some of the many techniques I’ve learned over the past few months—measured breathing, visualizing light. He didn’t even respond to my voice, until I told him to close his eyes and imagine a safe place. That’s when he finally spoke. He turned his head to face me and he whispered, “I’m already here.”
Why hadn’t I ever thought of that? I remembered all the random places I’ve tried to imagine myself into—beaches and mountains and fields of tulips. All along, I should have been looking for somewhere closer to home. Somewhere real.
I took his hand and made him stand up. By then we were alone in the garden. The two of us went over to the fig tree and stretched out under it, holding hands, feeling the sun on our faces, the ground cool and damp below us. We looked up at the leaves, just starting to unfold, and he told me about his brother. He said it was all for nothing. That’s what he kept telling me again and again.
And I felt so selfish, because I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t for nothing, that he was here—in the most random of places—for a reason. But Phoenix didn’t come here for me. He came for his brother, and it was killing him to think that, after everything they had been through, together and apart, this was the end. All because Ari wouldn’t speak—or couldn’t.
Listening to Phoenix, I got an idea—a good one. All I needed to do was convince my parents to let me do it.
When I showed up at home this afternoon, they didn’t even let me past the kitchen table. At first I thought maybe they had heard about Phoenix, and how he’d broken down at the garden. But the concern on both of their faces wasn’t about Phoenix. It was about that boy. They had talked with Karen, the friendly “major crimes” prosecutor.
“The prosecutor called with good news.”
That’s what my mom said when I sat down beside her. And the whole time, while my dad was telling me about their conversation with Karen, I kept wondering: Which part of this is “good news”? And then, after I had listened intently to it all, I told them, “Thank you for letting me know.” I also told them that I needed to go to Texas, to help Phoenix and his brother, Ari.
Here’s how that conversation went:
Dad: “Are you sure you’re ready? That’s a big step, sweetheart.”
Mom: “She’s ready, Dan.”
And so, with my mother’s pronouncement, it was decided. I am better. I am ready.
I think they’re right. Honestly, I do, and I want so much to be able to help—finally to do something useful for Phoenix and his brother. I just wish I could feel like my parents were right. Instead I feel jittery and off-kilter. I need Bree. Maybe it’s selfish that I’m even thinking about what I need, considering all I know about Phoenix and Ari. But I need her.
* * *
Bree’s still holding tight to me, and I’m saying nothing, because I don’t even know where to start.
“Food,” she says. “What you need is a big plate of Thai.”
Okay. Maybe I need food, too. I haven’t eaten since that half doughnut and three cups of coffee in the garden this morning. Maybe if I eat, my stomach will stop doing somersaults.
Bree releases me from her grip and opens the stainless-steel refrigerator. Inside, white takeout boxes neatly line the clean, glass shelves. You can tell a lot about a family by looking into their refrigerator. Bree’s fridge says: upper-middle class, too busy to cook, lovers of all foods Asian.
“Massaman? Panang?” She crouches to look at the bottom shelf. “Or sushi. We’ve got veggie sushi. No fish.”
She pushes a few trays aside. “Oh, Pho! That’s exactly what you need, Gretch. Vietnamese comfort food.”
“Massaman for me,” Ty calls out. I cringe, waiting for Bree to unleash a torrent of fury, to explain in no uncertain terms that she does not exist to serve him. But she doesn’t say a word. Instead she pulls out several containers and starts to arrange food on plates. She takes a big glass bowl from the cabinet for me. I pull up a stool and watch in silence as she pours broth into it, heats it, and then adds noodles, greens, thin slices of meat. She pushes the bowl toward me and I slump over it, taking in the smell—cilantro, curry leaves, warm chicken broth. Sooo good.
Bree was right. This is exactly what I need. How does she always know?
“So tell me—everything.”
I don’t even know where to start.
“My parents talked to the prosecutor. She found other witnesses.” I tell Bree, between slurps of rice noodles.
“So they know who killed him?” She’s sitting across from me, popping rolls of sushi into her mouth.
“He was in a gang—well, I knew that already. The tattoos and all…” Ty turns around on the couch, suddenly interested. “And the man in the car, the one who shot him, he was in a different gang, but he wanted to get out. His girlfriend was in the car too. She was pregnant, and they were planning to get married.”
“I’m not following,” Bree says.
Ty mutes the TV. “I know about this,” he says, sounding anxious. I didn’t know Ty could be anxious.
Bree looks at him, skeptical. “You know about gangs? Really, Ty.”
“I saw it on a documentary.” He shrugs.
Then Ty comes into the kitchen and pulls up a stool next to Bree. “They call it ‘calming’ or something—when somebody wants to get out of a gang. He has to do some crazy shit—like a last chance to prove his loyalty, and then they’ll let him go.”
“Seriously?” Bree asks, looking at me.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s like that. The boy who robbed me, he was at a gas station.…”
Buying Doritos. That’s what the prosecutor told my parents. He was getting a bag of Doritos, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“There were a bunch of other guys in the car, with the man who wanted to get out of the gang, and his girlfriend was with them too. Or fiancée, I guess.” I watch Ty dig into his massaman curry, already warmed and waiting for him. He mutters a thanks to Bree, and then I continue. “While they were filling up, a couple of those guys went inside and saw him buying Doritos. I guess they knew he was in another gang by his shirt or something.”
“And so they chased him down and made the guy kill him, just like that?” Ty asks, having already shoved half a plateful of curry into his mouth.
“Yeah, I guess that boy got a head start, but he left his wallet at the gas station, or something.” I stop talking and breathe in deeply, trying to let the broth and the curry and the smell of the spices bring me back here—take me away from that empty street. But the soup is getting cold, and the smell isn’t as strong as it was. “The prosecutor thinks he jumped me because he needed money—he was cutting through back streets to the bus station. She thinks he was trying to get away.”
“And that man just shot him for no reason?” Bree asks. “That’s messed up.”
“The boy who attacked me, he didn’t even have a gun, or a knife, or anything,” I whisper. “He was seventeen.”
“Younger than we are.” Bree sighs. “God, that’s insane.”
Ty has just shoved another enormous mouthful of massaman curry into his mouth, but it doesn’t stop him from talking. “On that show I watched, they said that if you were, like, a ‘bad’ gang member”—he stops to swallow and then takes a deep gulp of water—“if you weren’t really active in the gang, they made you do even worse stuf
f to get out,” Ty says. “I bet that man who wanted to get married was like that—like, not a ‘good’ gang member.”
“That’s what my parents said too,” I tell them, wondering why Ty was paying so much attention to this documentary. “That he never really did much for them while he was part of the gang, and so they made him do this random thing, just to make him need their protection or feel more connected to them or something.”
“What happened to the man?” Bree asks. “Did they catch him?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s in jail for life. And the girlfriend, the one who was in the car, she’s testifying against the other people in the car—the ones who made him do it, in some big Federal trial.”
That part was the “good news.” They don’t need me to testify, because the girl with the red-dyed hair saw it all too, and she came forward.
“Like I said: that’s just messed up,” Bree says, carrying Ty’s plate to the microwave to dish out and warm up a second plate of curry. “That anyone could be stupid enough to join one of those gangs—to do all of that crazy stuff, just to be part of a group.”
Ty has been quiet for a while, listening. When he finally speaks, he seems upset. “You don’t know anything about it,” Ty says to Bree. “I mean, who knows what makes them join those gangs, what kinds of pressure they might be under or, I don’t know—”
“I’m with Bree,” I say. “I don’t care how hard your life is. There’s absolutely no excuse to do all those terrible things, just to be part of some group.”
Bree stands up and walks around behind me. She wraps her arms around me and rests her chin on my shoulder. “Well, anyway, now you know,” she says, her voice gentle again.
Yes, now I know. For better or worse, I know. And now Phoenix needs me, so it’s time to move on.
When Ty has cleaned his second plate of curry, he gets up and puts it into the dishwasher. Then he wanders back to the basketball game, leaving Bree and me as alone as we’ll be in this new plus-one life of hers.
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