The Crossroads

by Alexandra Diaz

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jaime ate his lunch quickly and joined a game of capture the flag. Some of the kids in his class were inspired by the sign language lesson and tried to sign messages to their teammates. Except none of them knew more than one or two words and the alphabet, so they were prone to making up hand movements that made sense to no one but the signer. Still, it added extra fun to the game. The bell rang before anyone captured the flag (two T-shirts that should have been in the lost and found).

  Back in the classroom, Jaime stashed his lunch bag in his cubby and reached into his desk for his sketchbook. He had the best idea for the next image of Seme and it couldn’t wait for the bus. Besides, today’s after-lunch “special” class was art. The district hadn’t found a replacement while the art teacher was on early maternity leave, so Meesus allowed them to paint or draw while she reviewed quizzes and papers.

  It was one of the best parts of school. Or would be if he could find his sketchbook. He checked his desk, sure he had placed it in there before lunch, and didn’t see it. He must have put it in his backpack. Only he didn’t.

  He definitely had it while Sean had been in the class. Did he put it in his cubby? No, he would have seen it there when he stashed his Ninja Turtles bag, but it was worth checking again.

  Diego leaned against the cubbies with his arms crossed menacingly over his chest. “I think I saw your sketchbook in the bathroom. Do you pee sitting down so you can draw on the pot?”

  But Jaime only heard two words—“sketchbook” and “bathroom.”

  He raced to the door, ignoring Meesus’s reminder to please sign out, and in half a second got to the bathroom, the one he’d hid in that first day.

  Torn-up paper shreds littered the bathroom floor like some gruesome art installation. He stepped closer, gulping and gasping for air. No, it couldn’t be. Not his work, not Seme, not his family. Images of cacti, four stalk eyes, and hands catching a ball of tortilla masa—the portrait he’d made of Abuela—all torn into nothingness.

  There would be no way to tape them back together. Impossible to know which piece belonged to which drawing, impossible to reconstruct any of the drawings. Even if they had been dry. Which they weren’t. Each piece lay drenched in ammonia-smelling yellow liquid.

  He gagged, unable to breathe. His hand reached over to a stall to brace himself. Except there lay the cover of his sketchbook, draped over one of the doors. It hung empty and gutted, with only the spiral ring holding it together. On the back cover facing him was a black marker drawing of a horrible stick figure peeing and the words “Diary of a Pee-Pee Kid.”

  He didn’t understand. The words, yes, but why? How? What had he done to have anyone hate him so much?

  “Now that’s what I call art.”

  Jaime turned to see Diego had followed him into the bathroom and held his hands in front of his face in a box like a photographer judging a shot.

  “What the hell, man?” Jaime said in Spanish, except he used one of Tomás’s more colorful words. He turned and shoved Diego in the chest. “Why did you ruin my sketchbook? My sketchbook!”

  Diego crossed his arms and smiled. “I don’t understand Spanish. And you can’t say anything to anyone about it or I’ll have you deported.”

  Jaime balled his fist and threw his whole weight into a punch at Diego’s face. Except Jaime had never been good at fighting, and Diego turned his head so Jaime connected with the side of his hard skull instead of the eye he’d been aiming for. They both cried out, but Jaime must have been hurt more because Diego immediately swung his own fist. Jaime screamed again. Pain like he’d never felt split open his head and his vision blurred to darkness.

  Slowly, light started to take over the darkness and shapes regained a more realistic form—urinals, washbasins, random bits of paper. He blinked a couple of times and found himself in the heap of wet, shredded art.

  A gasp came from the door. From his spot on the floor, Jaime caught sight of a round face and round body. A scent of sweet chocolate mixed with the sharp ammonia: his old bathroom buddy he called Choco-chico. Diego dashed for the door but before he could make his escape, Choco-chico screamed so loudly that the whole school must have heard.

  “Mis-ter Tru-ji-llo!”

  Seconds later, Choco-chico’s fourth grade teacher entered the bathroom. “What’s going on here?” The teacher took in Jaime, Diego, and the giant mess before turning to Choco-chico. “Nate, go get Mrs. Threadworth.”

  “He hit me first,” Diego said but the teacher ignored him to reach out a hand to help Jaime up instead.

  “Are you okay? What is this stuff on the floor?”

  My life. Except Jaime couldn’t say that. Just thinking it made him want to cry, and he’d rather be deported than let Diego see him cry. He accepted the teacher’s hand and slowly stood up. His head throbbed. Meester Trujillo held him steady as he blinked a few times and then cautiously touched his face. He could almost feel his nose swelling by the second and his eyes found it hard to focus. Gently he wiped his upper lip and discovered blood.

  “Leave it.” The teacher demanded. Jaime thought he was telling him not to touch his nose. But then he saw Diego reaching up to remove the sketchbook cover from its display on the bathroom stall.

  The teacher gave Diego a look that said he better not move, before turning to examine Jaime’s nose.

  “I don’t think it’s broken, but you should go to the nurse,” the teacher said in accented Spanish.

  Choco-chico returned to the bathroom with Meesus.

  “My students? Fighting? This is unacceptable.” Her nostrils flared and her lips were so tight it seemed a miracle she could talk. Jaime had never seen his teacher so angry.

  “It’s not my fault. I was just defending myself,” Diego insisted while rubbing his skull with an exaggerated moan. “He hit me first on the side of my head.”

  Meesus turned to Jaime with her hands on her hips. “Is that true?”

  Jaime’s right hand traced over his left fist. He’d forgotten about that. “Yes, I hit him.”

  “Principal’s office. Both of you. Now.” Meesus pointed to the door.

  “But my head really hurts,” Diego whined. “I need to get some ice.”

  Meesus looked like she would agree to a detour when her shoe stepped on a wet paper strip and she skidded. Meester Trujillo caught her before she hit the floor. She regained her footing as her eyes focused on the paper mess and the draped sketchbook cover.

  “It’snotmine,” Diego said in one syllable. Meesus placed each foot carefully on the sections of clean tile and removed the cover from the bathroom stall. On the inside cover, Sean had written in his best penmanship, “The Adventures of Seme, by Jaime Rivera and Sean Gallagher.”

  Meesus bent down to peer at the shreds on the floor. Her nose scrunched.

  “Is that—did you urinate on this?” Her eyes bugged out of her head.

  Diego retreated against the wall. “I thought—it was just a joke.”

  Meesus contorted her face into an ugly mess. She breathed deeply, once, twice, three times.

  “Mr. Trujillo, can you please look in on my class while I sort this out?” she said in her calmest voice before turning to her two students. “Come. We’ll get you two some ice and then I’m leaving you with the principal.”

  The nurse gave them plastic bags of ice (though Diego placed his much lower than the place Jaime had hit him) and then Meesus talked to the principal by herself while the boys waited in chairs outside the office.

  Jaime kept himself in blank zombie mode, refusing to think about anything. Any other emotion would have him crying and he refused to let Diego see him like that.

  “I’ve called your parents,” the principal’s receptionist said. “They need to come in to take you home.”

  For one tiny moment Jaime thought the receptionist had called Mamá and Papá in Guatemala and that they really would take him home. Home to their kitchen and bedroom house where he could sleep outside in a hammock
under the mango tree to the sound of crickets.

  Then he remembered the emergency contact number the school had was for Tomás; he’d seen his older brother fill it out when they registered.

  “Where is he? Where’s my son?” A man burst into the office about twenty minutes later. Jaime was sure he was going to scream at the school staff for unjust treatment, but instead he grabbed Diego by the arm and practically lifted him off the ground. When he spoke, he scolded Diego in Spanish.

  “I get a call from work to say that mi hijo desgraciado has destroyed a book, peed on it, and then broke the kid’s nose?”

  “His nose isn’t broken—” Diego said in Spanish. So much for not speaking it.

  “Cállate, desgraciado. Broken nose, bloody nose, same difference. I can’t take this. You’re staying at your mother’s house from now on.”

  Diego hung his head. Diego’s dad dropped his arm and began pacing around the office. After the second lap, he seemed to notice Jaime’s presence.

  “Is this your fault?” he said first in English and then repeated himself in Spanish. “¿Es por tu culpa?”

  “No, I didn’t punch myself in the nose,” Jaime admitted.

  The dad’s cheeks reddened a bit and he seemed about to answer back when the receptionist stood up from behind her computer.

  “Sir, you have to calm down,” she said in English.

  Diego’s dad paced a few more laps before collapsing on the remaining empty chair. He jiggled his keys and fidgeted. Diego fidgeted too and kept sending sideways looks at his dad.

  The principal finally called them in. Jaime had seen the man around school before—he had a shaved head to hide the fact that he was bald and skin that was neither white nor brown—but Jaime never knew he was the boss because he often fixed things himself. Jaime once saw him with a mop bucket to clean up spilled milk in the cafeteria because it was quicker for him to do it than find a custodian in the middle of lunch.

  The principal watched the three of them enter the office and called out to the receptionist. “Do we have a guardian for Jaime?”

  The receptionist shook her head. “I left a message, but no one’s called back.”

  The principal nodded and then shut the door to his office.

  “Jaime, where do you live?” The principal sat on his chair and asked in Spanish.

  Jaime glanced at Diego and his dad. The last thing he wanted was for them to know the answer. Diego’s threat of getting him deported rang in his ears.

  “On a cattle ranch. Far away.” Jaime kept his answer vague. “Phone reception isn’t good and my brother works all the time with the foreman gone.”

  The principal accepted that without question. Everyone knew phone reception in rural Nuevo México was a novelty.

  “Your foreman is gone?” Diego’s father demanded. “Are you talking about Vicente Delgado?”

  “No.” Jaime’s voice came out as a squeak. Why had he mentioned a foreman? He’d forgotten one of the basic survival rules—never say more than you have to. All he wanted was to justify why Tomás might not have gotten the message. “No, no, different foreman, different person,” he tried again.

  Either Diego’s dad excelled at lie detection or selective hearing, because he continued in Spanish. “Vicente Delgado once saved my life. I skidded off the road in a bad snowstorm. Would have frozen to death if  Vicente hadn’t ridden up. Said he and the horse were both feeling restless and needed to get out. He rode me fifteen miles to my house, and then turned right back around to go home. In the snow.”

  And then Diego’s father rose, walked the two steps to Jaime’s chair, and reached out his hand. Surprised, Jaime accepted it. “I heard what happened and I’m sorry the old man’s been detained. If there’s anything I can do, you let me know.”

  The man still scared Jaime, but he had said something that might help Don Vicente. . . .

  An awkward silence hung in the office until the principal cleared his throat.

  “Pues.” He pressed some buttons on his computer before saying, “I’ll continue this talk in Spanish and record it so there are no complaints.” His Spanish pronunciation was good but he spoke slowly as if he had to confirm each word.

  “I heard Mr. Trujillo and Mrs. Threadworth’s reports, and I saw the mess in the bathroom. Jaime, Diego, what happened?”

  Jaime shifted in his seat and glanced at Diego. Neither boy said anything.

  “Bueno. I will have to draw my own conclusions. You are both responsible and will have consequences. Diego, you’re suspended for the rest of the week.”

  “Suspended?” Diego’s dad blurt out. “What’re we going to do with him for the rest of the week? His mother and I work.”

  The principal gave him a stern look for interrupting. “Also, Diego, I want three letters of apology, explaining why what you did was wrong, one hundred words each. One to Jaime for destroying his book and hitting him.”

  “No puedo escribir en español,” Diego whispered without looking up.

  “Then you can write them in English,” the principal replied, but kept speaking in Spanish. “The second letter goes to Mrs. Threadworth, apologizing for causing her to almost fall and hurt herself. And the last letter is for the custodian who has to clean up your mess. All three letters in my hand on Monday before you can enter the school. Understand?”

  “Can’t you just give him fifty lashes and be done with it?” Diego’s father said in a tone that made Jaime think was more serious than kidding.

  The principal lifted his thin eyebrows. “He destroyed property, vandalized school grounds, and gave someone a bloody nose. This punishment seems reasonable to me. If Diego tells me a different version of the events, then I’ll consider altering the punishment.”

  Jaime waited for Diego to say that it was self-defense, that Jaime was asking for it, but he kept his mouth shut.

  The principal moved on to Jaime, still speaking in Spanish. “You hit him first when you saw he destroyed your art book, yes?”

  Jaime nodded.

  “We don’t hit in this school.”

  Jaime shifted the melted ice bag on his face and nodded again.

  “Fighting never makes things better. You’re suspended for a day and will give me a letter for Diego on Wednesday. Explain why you hit him and why that was bad. ¿Sí?”

  “Sí,” Jaime said, but more to indicate that he understood, not that he was in agreement. The letter would not be easy. How could he explain that he hit Diego because he wanted to cause him as much pain as he’d caused Jaime?

  “Diego and Mr. Ramirez, you two are dismissed. I’ll see you and your letters on Monday.”

  They left, but not before his dad gave Diego a strong shove out the office door, which the principal didn’t see due to his attention on his computer screen.

  “Your family only speaks Spanish?” He looked over the computer at Jaime.

  “I live with my brother and he speaks perfect English.”

  “That is easier. I’m not good at writing in Spanish.” The principal’s fingers flew over the keyboard and in a matter of seconds, the printer hummed. He pulled the paper out, folded it into an envelope, and signed his name across the seal. “Give this to your brother and have him write his name and return it to my receptionist when he picks you up.”

  “I take the bus,” Jaime said.

  The principal shook his head and pointed to the clock on the wall: 3:27. “Buses left. Your brother has to pick you up. You can wait in the chair outside my door.”

  Any other day, Jaime would have spent the time waiting for Tomás with his nose buried deep in his sketchbook. Except his nose still hurt and his heart still ached.

  Someone, maybe Meesus, had delivered his bag that no longer held a sketchbook to the office. He left his homework folder zipped away. Meesus didn’t like when he doodled on his homework assignments, even on the blank back side.

  He noticed the receptionist print something, review the document, then put it in the blue recycling bin
next to her. She turned to her computer to make corrections before printing again.

  “I have paper?” he pointed to the recycling bin as he asked.

  She waved her hand as if to say “have at it.”

  He picked through and found several pieces with printing on only one side. Still not knowing the English word for “grapadora,” he helped himself to the stapler without asking to make the sheets into a book. But the sheets remained blank; he didn’t know what to draw, or if he’d ever be able to draw again.

  “I left another message for your brother,” the secretary said in English after a while. “It’s four-thirty and I lock up at five. Can you check that I have the right number?”

  The mantra he had created to remember Tomás’s number while traveling through México rang in his ears. He compared the number the secretary had with the one he knew by heart. Both were the same.

  “When you call, phone go ring, ring?” Jaime asked.

  “No, went straight to voicemail.”

  “Reception very bad. He no get message.” What had Tomás said his plans were for the day? Interviewing people to cover for Don Vicente, that’s right. Which meant they could be anywhere on the ranch, especially if they were looking at the herd.

  Jaime supposed he could walk home. It’d take all night and the desert would turn cold as soon as the sun went down. But he’d been through worse.

  No, better wait. Tomás would notice if Jaime didn’t come home soon. Jaime just didn’t know if that would happen before or after the school locked him in for the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Jaime, ¿qué haces aquí?” a voice asked.

  Jaime looked up from the pages he had stapled together. Every time he had tried to draw something, the memory of his massacred sketchbook on the bathroom floor came back to haunt him.

  “Do you need a ride home?” Meez Macálista pulled out her phone from her jeans pocket. “It’s almost five. Is your brother coming?”

  His brain clicked back to reality. “I don’t know. He might not know he needs to pick me up.”