Nothing.
I walk to school, where the other kids waiting to take the test mill around the locked front doors, jumpy but trying not to show it. So it’s not just me, then.
We walk as a jittery herd to the university and sit in tidy rows while the proctor takes roll. This is it. Everything depends on this.
After every rule the proctor reads from the test book, he glares at us over the rim of his bifocals. We fill in our names. My pencil keeps slipping out of my fingers like I never learned how to write.
We wait.
A muscle in my neck twitches. I roll my head from side to side, and every joint in my spine pops.
“You may begin.”
We flip over our booklets. The clock on the wall counts down the seconds, each tick echoing against the glass. The hours are a blur. Sweaty hands, too many questions, too many other hunched backs over scribbling pencils.
I’m almost finished when the proctor says, “Put down your pencils and close your examination books.” He moves through the aisles, collecting them one by one.
It’s the hardest test I’ve ever taken. But then, I’ve never cared how I did on a test before. Maybe it’s the caring that makes it so hard.
I’m tired. My eyes are bleary.
I run all the way back to the prison. If I show up sweaty from running back, maybe Papá will think I was just out playing fútbol with the guys, and leave it at that.
• • •
Before I go up to the cell, I make a call at the kiosk. I punch in the numbers and wait while the phone rings and rings and then clicks over to voice mail.
“Reynaldo, it’s me. Francisco.”
I hate leaving messages. I never know what to say.
“Listen, I know you’re mad at me, but it’s not what you think. I just can’t do anything that would hurt Pilar or Papá right now. They’ve been through enough, you know?”
I pause. What—am I expecting him to answer?
“Look, that test I had to take—it’s because I’m trying to get into university next year. It’s going to be really tough to go to school and pay rent on my own. How about this—I get out of the prison and you get out of . . . whatever you’ve gotten into. And we get a place together. We won’t be able to live like kings. But it could be good. Think about it, okay?”
I do the laundry so Papá can sleep. I play futbolito with José and the guys in the courtyard for an hour or so. When we’re done, we sit in a clump on the pavement. Our sweat dries on our skin as the guys laugh and jeer and trade jokes at one another’s expense. It’s almost like before, in my old neighborhood, hanging with my ex-friends.
I walk to the cancha to pick up some groceries. Everywhere I go, I’m on edge, flinching every time I think I see Soledad out of the corner of my eye.
By the time I get back to our cell, it’s like sparks from a burned-out light socket in my fingertips. I grab my notebook and a pen and lean into the wall so Pilar and Papá can’t see what I’m writing.
If you try to touch a wildcat,
run your fingers along
the strong line of her jaw
she’ll take your hand in her teeth;
you’ll never see it again.
If you try to keep pace with a wildcat
she’ll stretch her legs
and with a flick of her tail
devour the earth in bounds
and agile leaps;
you’ll never see her again.
But if you stand tall
and still
don’t seek her eyes
don’t ask
what she can’t give,
if you stay still as a tree
driving roots down
into the ground
where only rock and castaway dust
can be found,
she just might twine around your legs
climb into your arms
drape herself there,
and your limbs will grow strong enough
to hold her up.
November 15
“Hey, Francisco—wait up.”
My feet stutter to a stop, and the rush of students moves through the hallway around me like leaves blowing around a trash can. But I don’t turn. It actually hurts, to hear her say my name.
Soledad comes alongside me, and she stops, too. Two trash cans. The leaves spin in little cyclones. The crowd is jeering, snickering.
But I hardly hear them because just then, her hand closes over my wrist and my whole arm goes numb. She looks at me, full in the face, and I couldn’t move now even if I wanted to.
“Has your Papá taught you what an ayllu is?”
What? Nothing from her all week, and this is what she wants to tell me? “Maybe? I don’t know. He probably did and I wasn’t listening. Why?”
Soledad starts walking, and she pulls me along with her. “It’s how everybody is taken care of without needing money. If you live by the lake, you give others in your ayllu some of your fish. If you live in the jungle, you share your fruit. If you live on the Altiplano, you share your wool, and everybody helps everybody else till and sow and harvest the crops. It’s the only way our people have survived all these centuries in such a harsh climate.”
“Okay. What does that that have to do with—”
But she just keeps going. “There’s no ayllu in the prison. That place runs on despair and bribes and fear.” She pulls me into a corner away from the rush of students, and we lean against the bricks, facing each other. She doesn’t take her hand away.
“Every weekend I go to the hills to make an offering to Pachamama.”
“Soledad—”
She waves my question away. “You think it’s ridiculous. I knew you would. That’s why I didn’t tell you where I was going. I didn’t want you to think I was ridiculous.”
Okay. I’m listening.
“I thought if the spirits knew how much I wanted a life out of the prison, how much I wanted an ayllu to belong to, they would help me find it.”
The hall is emptying, the students funneling into classrooms, and the sound of the doors closing behind them one by one echoes through the halls. It goes quiet. Everybody’s cramming for the end-of-year exams.
When Soledad begins to speak again, her voice is so soft I have to duck my head to hear her. “What I didn’t realize is that you and me and Pilar were becoming our own little ayllu.”
Soledad takes a step toward Profesor Perez’s classroom, and her hand falls away from my arm. She pauses by the window.
“When I realized that, it scared me. Not because you don’t have the right to care about me. I’m glad you worry. I’m glad you’re here for me. And”—she looks at the ground and the sunlight drags shadows from her eyelashes down her cheeks—“it has meant everything to have you and Pilar—to have somebody to take care of, too. I finally found what I’ve wanted all along, just in time to lose it.”
I reach out a hand—I don’t know, to cup the curve of her elbow or to trace the line of her jaw—but I stop myself and let it fall back to my side again.
“See, if I need you, then what happens to me when you’re gone?”
She doesn’t give me a chance to answer. She opens the door to Profesor Perez’s class and slips through. And even if she had given me the space for my words, what could I have said—that I’m not going anywhere? That I’d never leave her?
I can’t make those kinds of promises right now.
We walk together to get Pilar. Soledad doesn’t say any more—she doesn’t have to. Just having her here with me again is like an electric current under my skin.
When Pilar sees us, she runs over with a squeal and throws her arms around Soledad’s neck. As we walk together toward the plaza, Pilar links her arm through Soledad’s so one hand is free, her fingers curled around some small thi
ng in her palm.
“What’s that?” Soledad asks.
“A snail shell.” Pilar opens her hand so we can see the brown whorls. “The snail is long gone. Maybe eaten by a bird or something. Maybe it grew its own wings so it didn’t need a house on the ground anymore.”
“It’s really pretty, Pilar,” Soledad says, meeting my eyes over my sister’s head. “You find treasure everywhere you go, don’t you?”
Pilar smiles and tucks the snail shell into her shirt pocket. She swings the hand of the wild girl beside her back and forth and back and forth.
Maybe I can’t shield Pilar from this life we’ve been dragged into. But maybe I don’t have to—at least not alone. I’m still not sure how Soledad came to be part of us, or even what changed and brought her back again, but however it came to be, we need her.
I need her.
I stir the rice while Pilar lies on the mattress, kicking her heels in the air and combing her doll’s hair.
Papá is sitting up. The bruises on his face are yellowing, and he only grunts in pain a little when he moves now.
“So,” he says. “The last day of school is in a couple of days.”
Pilar rolls over, her arms stretched out to Papá, pleading. “Mariela asked if I can come over next week. She has a new puppy. Please, Papá, can I go?”
Papá’s lips twitch at the corners. “I tell you what. You do your very best on your exams, and you can go see your friend as often as your brother will take you in the weeks before you leave for your grandparents’ home.”
It’s my turn, now, to get the full force of my sister’s pleading. “Please, Francisco? Please?”
“We’ll go on Monday. Get her address tomorrow at school, okay?”
There’s more to say, like how when summer break starts, we’ll be here every morning and every night with Papá when he’s not in the wood shop. Like how once there’s no more studying to do, when there’s nothing to do but wait, I’ll do all the laundry and all the cooking during the day so we can spend as much time as possible with him.
Like how I’m going to find some way to get a job during the day so before we leave I can pay the rent for a few months and get Papá a bed off the floor and a little table and chair so he doesn’t have to eat on the ground like an animal.
But all that can wait. Right now, Soledad has come back to us. Pilar’s happy, and Papá is almost smiling. Everything else can wait.
A bang wakes me in the middle of the night, and I shoot straight up, my pulse racing. That was just my dream, right? But my ears are ringing. My skin is alive, lightning dancing from one hair to the next.
Not just a dream, then. What was it?
A crash?
A gunshot?
A scream?
November 16
Soledad said she would wait for us in the morning. But when Pilar and I go past her father’s cell on the way out of the prison, the lock is missing from the door, and Soledad’s gone. Her father is gone. And I feel it then, high in the back of my throat. Panic.
“Where is she?” Pilar asks. “I thought— Why would she leave without telling us?”
“I don’t know.”
She isn’t at school either. I run through the halls, duck into every room and stairwell and broom closet even though I know I’m going to be late and the director is yelling at me to get to class. I finally do, moving from room to room through the long morning like I’m supposed to.
“Francisco, are you okay?” Profesor Perez asks, calling me back from the rush of students pouring into the hallway.
“Have you seen Soledad?”
“No.” He seems confused by the question.
I try to go, but he grips my shoulder. “Francisco, you’ll be here tomorrow, to turn in your work and sit your end-of-year exams?”
“I’ll be here.” I shake off his hand and run.
When I finally get out of there and pick up Pilar, she cinches her sweater around her waist and runs with me. Both our backpacks bang against my shoulders, out of time with my thumping feet. We search the cancha, the biblioteca, the plaza, but we don’t find Soledad anywhere. I can’t think. It’s hiccups in my breath. It’s pinpricks in my eyes.
“We’ll find her, Francisco.” Pilar says. Her hand is sweaty and gripping mine. I don’t know who is taking care of whom anymore.
• • •
We search for hours. The last place I think to look is the last place I ever would have wanted to find her. At the end of the alley under the stone arch leading to Reynaldo’s broken city, I finally see her. My heart stops. She’s huddled in a corner. She looks so small.
I drop Pilar’s hand and sprint over.
The right side of her face is purple. One eye is swollen shut, and blood is smeared above her ear. I think I see a tremor ripple through her. And then I break all the rules. I lift her up and hold her head against me as gently as I can. I wish I could cover every inch of her.
Over her head, I watch Reynaldo approach, his hands raised, his movements deliberate. “Francisco, I swear, she came to us like that.”
“This happened to you in the prison?” I whisper. “Or on the street? Who did this to you?”
She groans in response.
Reynaldo moves closer. Who is it this time I’m looking at? My friend? Or that other guy?
I tilt Soledad’s face up so I can see her eyes. The pupils are dilated; her eyes are glassy, barely blinking.
“Come back with us,” I whisper. “Don’t stay here tonight. You know this isn’t a good place.”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes don’t focus on me, or anything.
“Come back with us. You can sleep between Pilar and me tonight. We’ll keep you safe.”
“No.” It’s barely more than a whisper.
“I can’t leave you here, but I have to get Pilar back. Soledad, please.”
“I’ll never go back there.”
My eyes find Reynaldo.
I hear the tremble in my voice. “One night. Can you keep her safe for one—”
“Francisco,” he says, and there they are, the eyes of my friend—not the dealer, not the tough. “No one will touch her.”
My face is hot, but my fingers are like icicles hanging from my arms. Pilar and I have to go now. We have to hurry if we’re going to make it back to Papá before the gate closes.
“Can you trust me, Francisco?”
Trust?
I trust my father to find a way through his grief. I trust Pilar to bend and shift without breaking. I’m not sure if I trust Reynaldo anymore, but I don’t have a choice.
Pilar and I weren’t supposed to leave Cochabamba for a few more weeks. We were going to wait until the very last day before my eighteenth birthday. But that’s all changed now. It’s time to obey my father’s wishes. Every last one of them.
“Tomorrow,” I whisper into Soledad’s hair. “I have to take my exams in the morning. And then I’ll come get you, and we’ll leave together, the three of us.” She closes her eyes, but she doesn’t push me away. The fingers of one hand curl into the collar at my neck and pull my skin closer to her skin.
That’s answer enough for me.
Pilar and I run back to the prison. The light is changing, and I know we’re cutting it close—too close. We cross back under the prison walls and slip through the gate just as the guard is closing it. Every light in San Sebastián is on, and the guards are inside, dashing around, turning out every cell and speaking in sharp bursts over their radios.
Something is wrong.
Papá’s face is an ashy gray. Behind him, the prison is in uproar; my father’s still form is framed by a halo of chaos. The news is on everyone’s lips: Red Tito is dead. His body was found early that morning, gouges like claw marks carved into his chest, a pair of puncture wounds like bite marks in his neck.
• • �
��
All night, the men stand in rows in the courtyard while the guards count and re-count and pull one prisoner after another into a back room for interrogations. Floodlights illuminate the whole place, and the moths swarm to them, fracturing the light as it falls.
I know Papá hasn’t eaten, so I make dinner and carry a plate down to him. The potatoes are okay, but the rice is somehow crunchy and soggy at the same time. It’s the best I can do.
I stuff our backpacks full of everything I can think of: Pilar’s doll, her Sunday clothes, the map Papá made for our bus trip to the Altiplano. I run my fingers along the lining of my coat to check that the money for the bus ticket is still stitched in place.
I leave Pilar’s collection of discarded things on the shelf for Papá so the place won’t look so empty once we’re gone. I can’t think about what it’s going to be like here for him after we leave.
Hours pass, and finally the guards go back outside and the prisoners shuffle to their cells. My father’s face is overlapping shadows. He doesn’t even try to smile, just locks the door, then lies down on the mattress and rolls over to face the wall.
I fill in the last row of boxes on the application to San Simón with the return address from my grandparents’ letter.
It’s done. I only hope it’s enough.
November 17
In the morning, I help Pilar lift her backpack onto her shoulders; it’s way heavier than normal. Papá walks down the stairs with us and across the courtyard, but the guards are here, on this side of the gate, and they won’t let us pass.
“The prison is on lockdown—nobody goes in or out today.”
Papá nods, like he expected this. “My children just need to go to school. It’s their last day. They have end-of-year exams to take.”
“No. Nobody leaves today.”
I can feel my pulse begin to pick up. Pilar sidles behind me.
Papá cocks his head to the side. “I know you’d rather the children weren’t here at all. It would be easier for you if you didn’t have to answer for their safety. Especially now, with such violence inside these walls.”
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