by Wiltz, Jenni
Emma glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was there. “Do you want to go hang out behind the tennis courts?”
“Why, what happened? Is your dad okay?”
“I need to talk to you about something.”
When Elvira nodded, Emma led her around the tennis courts to the practice field. The damp grass squished when Emma stepped on it. “Don’t they know we’re in the middle of a goddamn drought?”
“Now I know there’s something wrong. You never swear.”
“I swear in my head all the time. I just never let it out.”
“That’s not healthy. You’re gonna have a heart attack.”
They sat together on a damp set of bleachers. “So what did you want to talk to me about?” Elvira asked, leaning back.
“Remember when I asked you about the Espinosas?”
“Yeah.” A cold wind gusted and Elvira snapped an elastic from her wrist, twirling it around her hair.
“How can I get a message to Hector Espinosa?”
Elvira let go of her ponytail. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t know what else to do.” Emma took a deep breath. “The men who attacked my dad said they’d be back. A car with two Norteños passed our house last night and he freaked out.”
“This whole town is full of Norteños. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know,” Emma said softly. “But what if he’s right? The police can’t do anything unless I have evidence. So I need Hector to give me some evidence. What about Letizia? Can she take him a message?”
“Holy shit, Emma, no, you can’t do that.” She reached out and gripped Emma’s arm with more strength than she’d ever used to swing a badminton racket. “All those pinche cholos out there? That’s his army. He tells one of them to go kill your whole family, they have to do it. You don’t want to fuck with that.”
Emma looked out at the far end of the field. The wind lashed her hair against her face, and she wished it was thick like Elvira’s. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Just leave it alone. It’s not your job.”
She turned her head and looked into Elvira’s glitter-rimmed eyes. “No, it’s not. But that’s what you do when you love someone, isn’t it? At least that’s what you said about the gang members.”
“That’s different!”
“Why? I love my family more than they love their stupid gang.” In her head, Kobilinski’s retort played on eternal repeat: Every hefe in East Malo Verde has a gun, a gun I can’t trace because it’s been stolen so many times even the gang members have lost count. “You didn’t see him. You didn’t hear how scared he was. I tried to get the police to help, but they can’t do anything.”
“Maybe you just have to let it go.”
“I can’t.” She blinked and the tears in her eyes made the horizon float and bob like a buoy adrift at sea. The world was full of water. She was drowning. They all were. “I need a gun.”
“What? That’s crazy. You’re crazy.”
“They broke his glasses. They kicked him in the stomach and the legs and the side of the head. They wrapped their hands around his throat and tried to choke him to death. They ground his face against the shards of his lenses. How much do you have to hate someone to do that to them?”
She looked down at her socks, splashed with muddy droplets of water. There was no shape or pattern to the drops, no curve or function she could graph to make sense of it all. “Am I supposed to let them do it again if they come to our house?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Elvira looked at the ground. Smudged half-moons decorated the tops of her eyelids, where her thick eyeliner had rubbed off.
“What if it had been real, what my dad saw? My mom could have been outside getting the mail. My sister could have been getting dropped off at that very minute. We have a rosebush in the corner, by the front window.” Something inside her clawed at her throat to get out. She coughed and pushed it back down. “My dad takes care of those roses.”
“Chica—”
“Can your cousin get me a gun?”
“No. Tell me you aren’t serious.”
Emma put her face in her hands. There were too many words in the pit between her heart and her stomach. Everything she couldn’t say at home had gotten stuck inside, and now her entire life was jumbled up, a grab-bag of Scrabble letters that were tangled and impossible to sort out. “I don’t know.”
“I know.” Elvira put an arm around her shoulders.
Emma rested her head on Elvira’s shoulder, grateful to have a place to put it. It was too heavy to hold up on its own. There were too many thoughts and too many people inside—Gatsby, Hamlet, Juliet, George, Lennie, Oedipus, Gus, Call, Clara, Mom, Dad, Mattie, Dan.
She imagined her Lonesome Dove paper, held sideways until all the letters fell off the page. The letters rearranged themselves in a landscape of mesas and ridges that Gus and Call rode through on horses made entirely of i’s. A gun was just an L, clutched sideways.
“I need a gun,” she whispered.
“Madre de Dios, Emma, do you hear yourself?”
“They’re coming back. What would you do?”
“I can’t do this. You know I can’t.”
Emma grabbed Elvira’s arm, a forked bolt of fear stabbing her heart. “What if they come this weekend? What if I don’t show up on Monday and you’re the only one who knows why?”
Elvira sobbed. “Fuck, don’t talk like that!”
Although it felt like lightning had struck her heart, it was her brain that raced, lit up by the blue-white pulse of power. “It’ll work,” she said quickly. “Listen, there aren’t any metal detectors and no one’s going to watch us in the locker room. I’ll even meet you here before first period. You don’t have to do anything except show up.”
“What if you get caught?”
“I’ll say I found it in a garbage can.”
“They’ll know it’s not true.”
“I’ve never done anything bad before. They’ll believe me.”
“No.” Elvira swallowed heavily and stood up. “I can’t.”
“He coughs up blood! He was laid off a year and half ago and my mom cancelled our insurance and he can’t go to the hospital, and I think something’s really wrong. I can’t fix that, but maybe I can keep something worse from happening, too.”
Elvira sank back down to the bleacher. “You’re talking about a gun, Emma. You could die. You could hurt someone.”
She sank to the footboard, putting her eyes even with Elvira’s. She opened her mouth to beg, and then caught sight of a gold chain beneath the neck of Elvira’s T-shirt. She’d seen that necklace before; it was a medallion with a Catholic saint on it. “Listen to me,” she said, reaching for Elvira’s hands. “When Joan of Arc was fifteen, she led an army. She was defending a king, a man she didn’t even know. How much harder do you think she’d have fought if it were for her dad?”
Elvira’s eyes flooded with tears and she crossed herself. She pulled her golden medallion to her mouth and kissed it. “This is crazy. You know this is crazy.”
“You’re the only one who can help me.” She looked up at Elvira from beneath wet star-tipped lashes. “Will you?”
• • •
After French class, she went to her locker to get everything she needed for the weekend. She felt like she was walking through a dream where the air was made of cotton. The harder you tried to scream, the more it filled your lungs. Instead of fighting it, you had to let it consume you. She slid her fingers down the fuzzy edge of her grocery bag book cover.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said.
Emma jumped. “Goddamn it.”
“Gotcha.” Dan leaned his head against the locker bay. “Missed you in chem.”
“I talked to the
detective again.”
“Did something happen?”
“Dad thinks the gang is coming back. I took him outside for a minute last night, but when a low-rider passed by with two gangbangers in it, he panicked.”
“Jesus.” He swept his hair back from his brow. “What did the police say? You reported it, right?”
“I tried. Since nothing actually happened, they can’t do anything.” She paused. “We’re one family. We’re easy to ignore.”
He reached out and touched her arm, thumb stroking the tender skin of her inner elbow. “Who could ignore you?”
Goosebumps broke out across her shoulder blades. How did he always know what to say? “Dan, what if my dad’s right?”
“Random gangsters aren’t going to come into an unfamiliar neighborhood and start shooting.”
“Of course not. They’ll scout it out first, just like they did last night.”
“Okay, it’s scary when you say it like that.” He stood up straight. “The cops seriously can’t do anything?”
“Can’t, won’t, I don’t know.” She pulled her chemistry book and her pre-calculus book into her backpack. “I think it’s time for Plan B.”
“From outer space?”
“That’s Plan 9.”
“Then what’s Plan B?”
“What’s the waiting period for getting a gun?”
The smile fell from his face. “I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“Not for me,” she lied. “My parents could get one. For the house. Or for when they go out.”
“And carry it with them all the time? That’s no way to live.”
“What about constantly fearing a drive-by? Or never knowing who’s waiting to jump you when you leave the grocery store? How’s that for a way to live?”
“Emma.” His green eyes stared steadily into hers. “What did you see last night?”
She closed her eyes and tried to replay the scene in her mind. “I saw an old car. With two Mexican guys in it. The guy in the passenger seat pointed straight at us.”
“Why would he do that? Was anyone behind you?”
“No. We were in front of the house. Dad got scared, and he pushed me into the wall to protect me, in case they started shooting.”
“So couldn’t they have been pointing at what looked like a man pushing a girl into a wall? Maybe they were really trying to help.”
“No, it couldn’t have been that. I saw their faces. They were laughing.”
“To a lot of people, domestic violence is funny. Especially when it’s happening to someone who looks like they have everything.”
“Everything?” Emma said, stepping backward. “But they don’t know anything about us! We don’t even have enough money for real cheese.”
“Then how’s your family going to get enough money to buy a gun?”
“I don’t know! I just want everything to go back to how it was!” She zipped up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “I have to go. I’ll see you next week, unless we all get shot and killed this weekend.”
“Emma,” he said, reaching for her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” She brushed past him and ran down the hallway toward the front gate.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Saturday, April 12
Clouds swam in the blue ocean sky, framed by the family room’s grid of windows. Emma sat in Great-Grandma Jennings’s rocking chair, Dan’s notebook open on her lap. I’m sorry, she wrote. I got angry because I couldn’t make you understand. I want to make you understand. Then she crossed it all out. Mrs. Evans always told them to vary their sentence structure when writing. There had to be a better way to start an apology than with three “I” sentences in a row.
She got up and opened the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. Two dirty lawn chairs sat beneath the bottlebrush, shaded from the sun. Every side of the backyard was protected by a six-foot fence, with absolutely no street view. Maybe, she thought, there are two apologies I can make today.
She hosed the chairs off and wiped them down with old towels from the garage. Then she went upstairs and knocked softly on her parents’ bedroom door.
“Come in,” her dad said. He lay on the bed, dressed in a robe and sweats. “Did you come to read to me some more? I never found out what happened to George and Lennie.”
“Mom and Mattie are at the grocery store, so I thought I’d sit outside and do some writing. Do you want to sit with me?”
“Outside?”
“In the backyard. I hosed off the lawn chairs and everything.”
“I don’t know.” His eyes drifted down to the bedspread. “I’m tired, Em.”
“I could make you a snack and some iced tea. The roses smell so good right now.”
“I don’t think—”
“Please, Dad.”
He sighed. “You’re doing homework?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“All right, then.” He nodded and she hurried to help him sit up before he changed his mind. He flattened his palms against the edge of the bed and leaned forward like a ski jumper. His back bent, as if it hurt too much to straighten it.
By the time he shuffled downstairs, she’d already put a few crackers and carrot sticks on a plate. “Ready?”
“I need a break,” he wheezed, reaching for the kitchen island. He held on with his fingertips, like a kid in the deep end of the swimming pool. A minute later, he nodded. “Okay, I’m ready now.”
She opened the sliding glass door and he stepped onto the redwood decking, squinting as the sun fell full upon him. His good eye narrowed and he raised his right hand to shield it. “It’s warm out.”
“I told you. Isn’t it nice?”
He pointed at her maroon notebook. “What’s that?”
“A present.”
“From who?”
“My best friend,” she said softly.
He shuffled to the closest lawn chair, reaching out with his fingertips like he had for the kitchen island. Before he could grasp it, a neighbor behind them opened a sliding glass door. “Hola, cabrón, qué tal? Cuándo es la fiesta?”
Her dad scanned the small backyard, panic widening his eyes. “What was that?”
“Dad, it’s just the neighbor. He’s on the phone.”
“Estaré allí a las nueves.”
Her dad clapped his palms over his ears. “They said they’d come back. Em. We need to go inside now.”
“Dad, it’s okay. It’s just Mr. Trujillo.” She pointed at his rosebushes. “Look at Ingrid Bergman. Want to cut some blossoms for the dining room table?”
“We have to go, Em.”
“You aren’t even looking. Can’t you even try?”
“Don’t talk!” He pointed at the fence. “Now they know we’re home.” He hobbled to the sliding glass door, stepping inside and waiting for her to follow. Emma watched him in shock. This person wasn’t her dad anymore. He was a wide-eyed, shaking, white-haired ghost she didn’t even recognize.
“Fine,” she said. “You want to go inside? We’ll go inside.” She picked up the plate of snacks and went back into the house, throwing all of it straight into the garbage can.
• • •
On Monday morning, Emma went straight to the locker room. Elvira was there, wearing a black tracksuit with white stripes down the sides. Her lips were dry and chapped, disappearing in the pale square of her face without their customary coat of gloss and glitter. It made her look older, like a grown-up who’d called in sick. “I saw it,” she whispered, sweeping her finger beneath her thin lower lashes. “In her drawer.”
“Whose? Monica’s?”
Elvira nodded, sitting down on the bench beside her gym locker. “She went down to the corner for some ahorritos. I told her I wanted some, even though I didn’t.�
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“What happened?”
A thin blonde walked past them toward the showers. Elvira waited for her to turn out of sight. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“Tell me what happened and then we’ll go.”
“I didn’t even know she had it. It was under an old shirt and a bottle of tequila. I just put my fingers on it and felt it. She brought that thing into our house, with my little brother.”
“Did you take it?”
“I didn’t even want to touch it.”
“Just wrap it in a towel, and put it in a bag. That’s all you have to do.”
If Elvira brought her the gun, she could search online for a user’s manual. Emma wondered if her parents’ internet account would be flagged by such a search. Didn’t writers do stuff like that all the time, though? Look up how to kill people, how to rob banks, how to build a bomb? I was writing, she’d say. I was telling my own story.
“If you bring me the gun, no one in your house will get hurt. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Sí. But what about you?”
“No one in my house is going to get hurt, either.”
“Monica will know I did it.”
“She won’t. How could she?”
“I’ll get in trouble.”
Emma dug her teeth into her lower lip. If Elvira’s cousin was in a gang, her whole family was already in trouble. “Listen, all you have to do is get it to school. And then no one will know anything about it but me.”
“I’m scared.”
“I am, too.” She reached for Elvira’s hand and pictured the snowy TV screen, buzzing in perpetuity, keeping her from facing her deepest fear: a future where her father was always the scared, shaking man he’d been yesterday. “That’s why I have to do this.”
• • •
The main hallway glowed with red, green, and brown, the colors of the Cinco de Mayo murals on the other side of the glass. Emma watched the colors wash over her boots. She turned down a perpendicular hallway, where the glare of fluorescent tube lighting replaced the eggshell glow of the front windows.