The Hunted

by Matt De La Peña

  “You hear that, Carm?” Shy said. “Ol’ girl’s running a two-for-one up in here.”

  When Carmen didn’t laugh, Shy waved them both off and leaned back in the beanbag. He couldn’t believe she was taking it so seriously. She’d heard the recording about San Diego this morning. There wasn’t anyone waiting for anybody. Yet here Carmen was, holding out her palms and hoping her damn fiancé was pacing back and forth in some park, dreaming of her return.

  “He’s not where you imagine, though,” Esther said. “He’s somewhere else. Somewhere far away from home.”

  Esther started saying something about tree roots, but Shy was no longer listening. Not really. He was thinking instead. About Marcus and the last talk they had. About Shoeshine’s thigh. About his entire family being taken away, and how lonely he felt now. And then he thought about the trip they would resume as soon as the sun went down. Getting to Arizona was all he had left, he realized.

  What if they actually made it, though? What would he do then?

  His mind drew a blank.

  And then Shy found himself remembering Addie. The two of them sitting across from each other in their broken lifeboat. All the talks they had. And how they huddled together those last few nights to keep warm.

  Shy climbed out of the stupid beanbag. “Yo, this shit’s getting a little corny for my taste,” he announced. “I’m outta here. Peace.” He walked right past Carmen and Esther on his way to the door.

  He was surprised that neither of them even looked up as he left the room.

  44

  The Rainbow Connection

  Shy was halfway through reading the comb-over man’s letter—for maybe the eight thousandth time—when Carmen barged into their room. She stood over him, hands on hips. “Uh, what do you think you’re doing?”

  He didn’t look up. “Reading a letter?”

  “I mean why, pendejo!” She sat on the edge of his bed and snatched the pages out of his hands. “You’re just gonna mess it up. And then what good does it do us? Without this, nobody will believe us.” She stuck the pages back in the envelope and slipped the envelope inside Shy’s backpack.

  Shy sniffed the air. He was pretty sure Carmen’s breath smelled like vodka. “I need to keep reminding myself what those assholes did,” he told her.

  Carmen just sat there, staring at him.

  Shy linked his fingers behind his head and looked away. He wished it was dark already. If it was dark they could go do something, instead of just sitting around reading each other’s palms.

  They were both quiet for a few minutes, until Carmen got up from the bed and grabbed Shy’s arm. “Come with me.”

  “What now?” Shy sat up, acting annoyed.

  “I thought you wanted to go check out the hot springs.” She pulled Shy to his feet and pointed at the towel slung over her shoulder.

  This caught Shy off guard. “Wait, for real?”

  “Shoe said we should get some rest, right? What’s more restful than soaking in some damn hot springs?”

  Shy’s heart sort of kicked into gear as he followed her out the door.

  —

  Carmen reached down and stuck her hand in the most secluded of the mineral pools. “This one’s not even that warm,” she said. “But it definitely still smells.”

  Shy stood a few feet back, looking up into the sky. No helicopters in sight. In another hour or so the sun would set, and they’d start getting ready to go. But first…He was curious to see if Carmen would really get in the water. He sat on a large, flat rock at the side of the sulfur pool and watched her. The overgrown trees were packed so tightly around them it felt like their own little private world.

  Carmen kneeled near the lip of the pool and ran her right hand back and forth in the water. “I wonder if these minerals are as good for your skin as everyone says.” She scooped some of the water out and rubbed it into her cheeks and forehead and neck.

  “Nasty,” Shy said.

  “What?” Carmen wiped her face on her shirt sleeves. “I’m about to have perfect skin now, like my shit was airbrushed. You’ll wish you did it, too, when you get mad pimples.”

  “At least I won’t smell like a damn Easter egg.”

  Carmen scooped some more water and splashed it at Shy.

  He dove backward, managing to avoid most of the water, but a little splattered on the bottom of his jeans and shoes. “Come on, Carm! Damn!”

  “I guess now we both smell like eggs.” Carmen stood up and stared into the water, then turned back to Shy with a mischievous grin. “Might as well go all the way in, right?”

  “Go ’head,” he told her. “I’ll be the lifeguard.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to come out here in the first place. Now you’re gonna punk out?”

  Shy glanced over his shoulder. They were alone. He didn’t know why, but he had this weird feeling they were about to get busted.

  By who though?

  And for what?

  There were no rules anymore.

  He kept having to remind himself.

  “You’re going in like that?” he said, pointing at Carmen’s clothes.

  She shook her head and stepped out of her kicks, one at a time. “Nah, like this, vato.” She pulled her T-shirt over her head and started undoing her jeans.

  Suddenly Carmen’s beautiful brown body was in front of Shy. Her heavy chest weighing down her bra. Her bare arms and shoulders. The quote inked above her belly button—so close now he could almost read the words. She’d lost a little weight since the day their ship went down, but she still looked incredible.

  Shy swallowed hard watching her tug down her jeans and step out of them.

  Carmen turned and slowly lowered herself into the pool. “Oh, man, it feels good in here,” she said, wading to the other side. “Come on.”

  Butterfly wings were beating frantically inside Shy’s chest as he kicked off his own shoes and dropped his shirt and jeans. Hundreds of wings going at once. Thousands. He climbed in after Carmen in only his boxers, wondering if she was staring at his excitement. What if she laughed at him? Or what if she hopped out abruptly because he was reading the situation all wrong?

  Shy met eyes with Carmen again.

  Beautiful and brown and staring into him.

  This morning she’d climbed into his bed. Now they were damn near skinny-dipping. What did it mean?

  “Feels good, right?” Carmen said.

  “Feels perfect,” he told her. Because it did. The temperature and the wild trees that hid them and the endless desert sky.

  He breathed in the egg smell and glanced down at what he could see of Carmen’s wet body. Even after everything they’d been through, she was still the sexiest girl he’d ever been around—or sexiest woman. He never understood that. When did “girl” officially become “woman”? Because he didn’t want to mess that up when it came to Carmen. Someone should be explaining things like that to kids in high school.

  There are no rules, he told himself.

  Or anything else.

  Shy went all the way underwater, and when he came back up he brushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned his back against the rocky ledge and looked at Carmen, sitting across the water from him, both her arms resting on the pool’s edge.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  Or how to act.

  He needed a haircut.

  “What if this was the rest of our lives?” Carmen said. “Relaxing in natural springs every day.”

  “Up in the mountains,” he said.

  “Behind some old hotel where famous people used to go.”

  “Shit, I’d be down for that.” Shy tried to imagine it. Him and Carmen fixing up the hotel all by themselves. Slapping on a new coat of paint. Hanging with the Bright House folks every once in a while. Reading books like Shoeshine. “We’d probably even get used to the smell,” he said.

  “I’m already used to it.” Carmen floated her hands on the water’s surface for a while, then looked up at him aga
in. “Hey, Shy?”

  “Yeah?”

  She smoothed her wet hair behind her ears. “Did it weird you out this morning, hearing her voice on the radio?”

  “Who, Addie?”

  Carmen nodded.

  He paused, trying to think. “I guess so. Yeah.” But he didn’t know if that was the right answer, so he added: “Why?”

  Carmen shook her head. “It’s just…it sounded like you and her had this, like, secret language.”

  Shy frowned. “You mean the Shinola thing?”

  “How come I never heard of that?”

  Shy rubbed his eyes with wet fists and wiped the sulfur water away from his nose. “I guess while we were out there I told her some stuff. Like how I got my name. There wasn’t much else to do.”

  “How come I don’t know that story, though?” Carmen asked. “Did you get closer to her than me while you guys were stranded?”

  “Not even,” Shy assured her. But inside he felt kind of weird. Carmen was the one who stopped them from getting any closer. She was the one who made the rules. “I could tell you now,” he said.

  “Okay.” Carmen splashed away a dead bug floating on the surface of the water. “ ’Cause I wanna know stuff like that, too,” she told him.

  The way she was acting surprised Shy. It wasn’t like he had a fiancée waiting for him in a park somewhere. He’d tell her anything she wanted to hear.

  Shy rubbed a little water on his face—in case it really did prevent pimples—and then he told her the CliffsNotes version. “I guess when I was little, my old man used to have this saying whenever I knocked something over. At least, according to my mom and sis. He’d be like, ‘Damn, this kid doesn’t know shit from Shinola.’ Which is a saying from back in the day. After a while he started calling me Shinola as a nickname. And then he shortened it to just ‘Shy.’ I guess it sort of stuck. Obviously.”

  Carmen furrowed her brow. “How could he say that about his own son?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “Yo, if I ever see that pinche puto again, Shy, I’m kicking him in the huevos, for real. So he can’t have no more kids.”

  “Go for it,” Shy said. He cracked up inside a little, thinking about how different the two girls’ reactions were to his Shinola story. Addie had gotten all depressed-looking and said it was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. Carmen wanted to fight.

  Shy watched her go all the way under again and come up with her head tilted back so she could smooth the water out of her hair. He’d always loved Carmen’s wild hair. It was thick and wavy and sort of reckless, but it was soft, too. She had the kind of hair everyone in the mall turned to check out—especially other girls.

  “I think it’s my turn to ask a question,” Shy said. He pointed at the part of her that was underwater. “What’s it say on your stomach?”

  “My tattoo?”

  Shy nodded. He’d been wanting to ask her this since back on the ship.

  Carmen looked at him for a few long seconds. “It’s not that big a deal. Just some saying I always liked.”

  Shy waved her off. “Must like it a whole lot to ink it onto your stomach.”

  Carmen grinned. “I guess you got a point.”

  “So?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes but stood up and took a few steps toward Shy so he could see for himself.

  “ ‘Someday we’ll find it,’ ” he read aloud, “ ‘the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me.’ ” He looked up at her. “Who wrote that?”

  “Kermit,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “What, are you deaf now, ese? Kermit the fucking Frog, okay?”

  “Wait,” Shy said, trying to process. “Like, from the Muppets?”

  “Hell yeah, from the Muppets. Don’t talk shit about it, either.” She sank back into the water. “To this day that damn song makes me cry every time. I’m not afraid to admit that shit, either.”

  Shy couldn’t help it, he started cracking up. He’d expected some deep quote or passage from a poem. Like Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespeare or something else from back in the day. The last thing he would’ve guessed was Kermit the Frog. When he looked up he had little tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. He thought Carmen might be pissed, but she wasn’t. She was laughing right along with him. Which made him crack up even harder.

  Both of them laughed and laughed for days.

  After all they’d been through, it felt amazing to let go. Laughter-tears flooded Shy’s eyes, blurring everything, and he slapped at the surface of the lukewarm sulfur water. Carmen tried to explain through her laughter how the lyrics reminded her of childhood, back when everything was simple, and how they made her believe she’d one day find true happiness, but the fact that Carmen was trying to justify her Kermit tattoo just made Shy lose it even more.

  When they finally settled down, Carmen took a deep breath and reached for the towel to wipe her eyes. She leaned back against the pool wall across from Shy and said: “I’m glad my dreams make you laugh.”

  “Me too,” Shy said. “I needed that shit.”

  Carmen shook her head and stared at the water in front of her. “Do you ever get the feeling you were born in the wrong time and place?”

  Shy made his face go serious. “Like how?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “It’s just…what if everything was different? What if we existed decades before this disease was ever invented? Or centuries before? Or what if we were born in a completely different country? Like Russia or France or Argentina?”

  Shy nodded. “I guess I sort of do think about that,” he said. “Especially since our ship went down. And everything that happened with Marcus. And”—he made sure Carmen was looking at him—“what the DJ said about San Diego.”

  Carmen’s eyes dropped to the water again.

  It seemed strange to Shy that she still hadn’t brought up what they’d heard about back home. It was like she was trying to pretend it never happened, which didn’t seem healthy.

  “But I was thinking about this a couple days ago,” Shy said. “Maybe there’s always been a drug company trying to get rich off people like us. Throughout history.”

  Carmen nodded. “I wonder if it’ll ever change.”

  Shy thought about it for a couple seconds. “I wish I could be there to see it. The people who finally decide to stand up to that shit.”

  They were quiet for several seconds, then Carmen waded slowly across the pool toward Shy, saying: “Hey, maybe you could tell me about our space versions one more time.” She reached for his hand underwater, made it so their fingers linked together.

  Shy’s heart started thumping its ass off.

  He’d only seen this look in Carmen’s eyes one other time. Back on the cruise ship. When they were sitting outside her cabin door together, talking. Brazilian beats playing quietly on her laptop computer. An empty bottle of wine between them.

  It was the only time they’d ever hooked up.

  45

  Space Versions

  Shy tried to maintain his cool, but inside he was panicking. This was everything he’d ever wanted. But at the same time, what would happen after? It was like when he used to stand on the highest deck of the cruise ship, at night, and look down. Sometimes he wanted to jump. He wanted to fly free into all that dark, whispering water. But he never did, because what if that was it? What if it was the end?

  He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “You sure you’re ready for all that?”

  “After everything we been through,” Carmen said, “I think I need to hear it again.” She stared straight into his eyes without blinking, like she was reaching for something inside his chest, something true, something beyond the physical world.

  Back on the ship Shy had claimed there was a “space version” of him and Carmen that lived on a distant planet somewhere. And this version was together. They were in love. And he came up with some hokey hand-hold
ing test that led to them hooking up.

  This time, though, they were already holding hands.

  And it felt even better than he remembered.

  “I’m saying, though,” he told her, “it’s some powerful information.”

  “I think I can handle it,” she said.

  But before he even got a word out, Carmen pulled him closer, so that their faces were only inches away. He looked into her dark brown eyes and breathed in her breath. “By the way, were you drinking with Esther?”

  Carmen’s lips broke into a little grin. “You should’ve stuck around for the end of the palm reading.” She reached out and poked Shy’s stomach and said: “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I like your body.”

  “Me too,” he heard himself say. She’d never said anything like that before. “I mean, I like yours,” he said.

  “You can touch me if you want.” She never broke eye contact.

  Shy’s heart was in his throat now. He could feel himself brushing up against her, and he didn’t know if he should feel embarrassed. “But what about—?”

  Carmen put a finger to his lips to shut him up.

  “Okay,” he mumbled through her finger.

  And then he reached through the water, slowly, and touched her bare knee, gently. When she didn’t pull away, he shifted to the under part of her thigh.

  Her skin was so soft.

  So warm.

  He tried to imagine if he was her fiancé and he could touch Carmen’s thigh like this whenever he wanted. After breakfast. Or in the middle of the night. He slid his hand down to her shapely calf and held it tight and stared deep into her eyes, trying to reach inside her chest now.

  “I had a feeling,” she whispered in his ear.

  “What?” he said.

  “I just…I like how your hands feel.” She put her palm on his chest and looked down into the sulfur water, at his excitement. And this time he didn’t move, didn’t pull back. Because if she really wanted his truth, this was it. This was how he felt.

  And there were no rules.

  There was only him and Carmen.