Salvation

by Anne Osterlund

  He sought refuge in Beth, who was watching him. She’d dressed for the part, though no one else ever did. Her grandmother’s gauzy white gown practically screamed Juliet. Or imminent disaster.

  Beth had been tardy for both of their classes together this morning, then spilled the contents of four loose-leaf notebooks in the hallway. When he’d asked if she was all right, she’d muttered something about Ni having left town early for spring break. Which seemed irrelevant. He suspected his partner had freaked.

  We could not do this. We could just accept a lower grade and perform the whole thing somewhere else.

  But they really couldn’t. There wasn’t time. They had used up every single possible day of rehearsal. And even if the Mercenary would have allowed them to undermine her schedule and move the scene, they couldn’t because they had blocked out the whole thing to work here. It was do or die. Now.

  Salva strode forward, dropped the tray on purpose, and gestured for his boys to drum-roll the table. They complied. Any excuse for a drum roll.

  He vaulted over the corner of Numero Uno and skidded across the floor for his grand entrance, coming to a sharp halt at Beth’s table.

  Every sound in the cafeteria ceased.

  She was dead. Her back arched across the table’s surface, her knees crumpled sideways. Dramatic.

  “‘Here lies Juliet,’” he said, “‘and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.’”

  That got the crowd members. They knew now what the scene was going to be.

  A rim of heads rose as people stood up at the edges of the room.

  Salva fell to his knees on the floor. “‘How oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry! Which their keepers call a lightning before death.’” He stood and stepped to the side of the table closest to Beth. “‘O my love!’” Without intention, he brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek.

  She didn’t move, or even flinch. She really was excellent at playing dead.

  He was talking about her crimson lips now, and from the nearby table, Pepe was standing, shouting something suggestive.

  Perfect.

  Salva had thought about letting his best friend in on the whole plan, but decided against it. Technically, it was outside the rules to prep someone who wasn’t in the scene. As with the drum roll, Pepe didn’t need prepping to ham it up.

  Salva made a skewering motion as though thrusting a sword at his best friend. “‘Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?’” The move was a gamble. Though not much of one.

  His best friend collapsed as though dead.

  The audience erupted.

  Salva stumbled back, grabbed at his own shirt, and reeled off his next line. “‘O, what more favor can I do to thee, than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder his that was thine enemy?’” He splayed his hand in a beseeching manner toward his best friend. “‘Forgive me, cousin!’”

  “We’ll see about that!” Pepe shouted back.

  The audience roared.

  Salva kept in character and waited out the applause. He knew he was good.

  After all, Beth had trained him.

  “‘Ah, dear Juliet…’” He walked around her, because it would have been really boring just doing the whole speech looking at her, and the scene had needed more movement before getting to the poison.

  During the bit with Pepe, students had started to joke and whisper, but the room drifted now to silence.

  “‘Why art though yet so fair?’” Salva scaled the table, and eased down, his knees straddling one of hers.

  Whistles launched from the corners of the room.

  “‘Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous…’” He cupped her chin in his hand, then traced the backs of his fingers along the side of her face. “‘And that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?’”

  The whistles grew louder.

  She was trembling.

  Remember to breathe, he told himself. Dios mío, he was only half done. The next several lines rattled off his tongue. “‘For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; and never from this palace of dim night depart again.’” He ran his fingers through her hair. Thank God it was the last time he had to do that.

  “‘…And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh.’” He lifted her chest and shook her torso. She fell forward against his shoulder. Her hair was everywhere: in his face, in his mouth. He had to spit it out surreptitiously as he dropped her back.

  God, she was gorgeous. “‘Eyes, look your last!’” He let himself peruse her entire figure. The last time.

  More whistles, but he wasn’t really hearing them. His heart was beating faster than it should, and he was in the middle of an adrenaline rush. “Arms, take your last embrace!” He pulled her once again to him, this time her chest against his. Her heart against his own, beating just as hard.

  His hands moved to her shoulders, his eyes to her mouth. “‘And, lips, O you the doors of breath…’” He was out of breath. Her mouth was partly open. Her eyes were closed, and Salva knew, right then, that he was never going to get another chance. “‘…seal with a righteous kiss.’”

  And his mouth was on hers. Not briefly. Not lightly. But long and deep, and my God, she was kissing him back. Maybe this was one of those dreams he’d been having ever since second rehearsal. But it didn’t feel that way. It felt a hell of a lot better.

  He came up for air and found the audience still there—saw the mouths forming screams and whistles that might have been a problem if he could have heard them over the desperate roaring in his own head.

  Somehow he finished the monologue, drank from the poisoned goblet, and died.

  By the inconstant moon! Beth’s head screamed. He had kissed her. After all the rehearsals in which she had wished he would kiss her. In which he had pulled her close, then released her as though she was the poison. Beth opened her eyes to find him dead. Thank the heavens. She could never have finished the scene otherwise. She wasn’t at all sure she could finish it now, but her mouth opened and words came out: “‘What’s here?’” Her eyes flew to the carton in his curled hand.

  Why had he kissed her?

  She reached for the goblet and had to pry it from his fingers. His hand was warm. Like his chest. He had been so close when he had pulled her to him—his heart beating so fast. At a whole other level for the performance.

  Maybe that was what the kiss was about. Some kind of ploy to impress his friends.

  “‘O churl!’” She tossed the carton into the audience, then thrust his chin back with the heel of her hand. “‘Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?’”

  It was utterly unfair. That he could die and leave her to complete the performance.

  She touched her fingers to his mouth. “‘Thy lips are warm.’”

  Good God, they had been. They had been strong and intense, and she would never in her entire life forget the feeling of that warmth on hers.

  “‘Noise?’” She whirled her head around as if searching the crowd, but it was all a blur. She hadn’t made out a single face, other than his, since opening her eyes. “‘Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!’”

  She snatched the foil-encased weapon clipped to the neckline of her bodice and pulled it out.

  “‘This is thy sheath.’” The tinfoil glittered with promise.

  She plunged it to her belly, wrenching gasps from the crowd.

  “‘There rust…’” She curled over the weapon, then released her grip, allowing the foil to tumble to the floor.

  “‘And let me die.’”

  Her back arched, and she fell—in a cross—over his chest, her head to the side, her arm dangling.

  The applause was immediate. And loud. Really loud.

  She made herself count ten, then lifted off his chest and scrambled from the table. He was right behind her. She didn’t look at him—co
uldn’t. Not yet. It was much better to soak in the realization that they had done exactly what they had hoped. The entire cafeteria was drum-rolling now. Nothing could take this rush away.

  Salva’s hand touched her elbow. She assumed he wanted her to bow so she gave a deep Juliet-like curtsy.

  But he had not bowed.

  His hand was back at her elbow, and it was tightening. He bent down to talk right into her ear, or she wouldn’t have heard. “Markham.”

  She glanced up. And saw the principal glaring back at her. Fie!

  “Sorry,” Salva said.

  13

  LANGUAGE BARRIER

  Salva had never been in a Cell before. He had been in the Pen, for ASB meetings. He’d even been in Markham’s office, acting as a witness when Pepe got himself in trouble, and, of course, for that lovely chat at the start of the year about AP English. But Salva had never previously been assigned to wait in one of the cheap particleboard stalls on either side of the secretary’s desk.

  The principal had called his father. At work.

  God, this is not happening. But it was. Salva’s insides had squeezed together when Papá had walked into the building. Markham, moving his large frame faster than memory could recall, had intercepted Señor Resendez right at the counter, then led him directly behind closed blinds into the principal’s office. Making certain I don’t sway him toward my side of the story.

  Like that would have happened.

  Plus, Salva didn’t merit a side of the story. He shot a glance across the Pen at the Cell holding Beth. Her head was down on the desk. All he could see was the slumped back of that gauzy dress. She didn’t deserve to be here, much less the half-day in-school suspension they had both been dealt. And the phone call. Which was worse. Far worse.

  Salva had tried to explain—that the kiss had been all his idea—during his one-on-one interrogation with Markham.

  But it hadn’t gone over too well. “I sure as hell know the difference between a mutual display of affection and her giving you a slap in the face.” The principal had glowered.

  Now if Markham chose to swear in front of Salva’s father, that might lose some points. But Salva knew exactly how the conversation in the closed office was really going. His father would agree with everything the principal said. Because Markham was the authority. His job was to help students have a good future. He deserved respect. Yada, yada, yada.

  “Salvador.” The principal’s door opened. “Come in.”

  And Salva exchanged one cramped space for another, walking into the office with his head up. Okay, he’d done something stupid. He’d take the hit for it. But no way was he going to look cowed into submission. It’d been a kiss, for goodness’ sake, not a line of cocaine.

  “Salvador,” said the principal, already seated as he gestured at a chair wedged between the front of his desk and the wall. Salva sat and locked his eyes on Markham. Easier than facing Papá—whose presence loomed to the right, in the only corner not occupied by a file cabinet. “Your father and I have discussed the incident in the cafeteria,” Markham continued. “And I have been telling him the reason this most disturbs me is because, until today, you have been what I considered to be a leader in this school.”

  What you considered to be a leader?

  “As the head of the ASB”—the principal locked his thick hands together and leaned forward, negating what little space there was—“you are expected not only to follow the rules, but to serve as a role model to the rest of the student body.”

  Yeah, yeah. Salva got it. He had embarrassed the school. Because he was the ASB president, and all those kids from the cafeteria were going to go home talking about what he and Beth had done for their project—which was what they had hoped would happen. But then some of those kids’ parents were going to freak out, probably the same parents who thought their precious children were being corrupted by all the other teens at Liberty High, and Markham wanted to be able to tell those freaked-out parents that he’d dealt with the problem—that there were no exceptions to rules in the student handbook, even for the student body president.

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” Salva threw in the “sir” for good measure because he knew his father expected it.

  “I’m not sure you do.” Markham eased his pudgy fingers over the formal discipline slip he’d written up twenty minutes before. “To be clear, if anything like this ever happens again, you will risk losing your place as president.”

  The hell I will! For a kiss? Salva’s gaze drilled into Markham’s muddy brown eyes. This was the guy who had told Salva he had no choice but to take on Julie Tri-Ang’s spot—that if someone else wanted to run for vice president, that was up to Nalani, but Liberty High had to have a leader from the very first week of the school year, and Salva was it. “I’m an elected officer.”

  “Then prove yourself worthy of your post.”

  Worthy! He’d done more than his share for this school. And Principal Markham’s friggin’ reputation. Salva was the reason Liberty High had won the county math contest four years in a row. He was the reason they’d had a science Odyssey team in the state final for the past two years. He was on the football team. He’d organized the service project that had given six tons of food to the food bank. He had run the fund-raiser that had raked in enough dough to put up a new school sign so the people driving by the building didn’t think the place was just another prison getting forced on the county.

  “Salvador.” That was his father, waiting for a respectfully submissive remark.

  “It will not happen again, Principal Markham.” Screw the “sir.” The guy could prove himself worthy of his post.

  Señor Resendez stood up. “Principal Markham, I think that Salva should not be allowed to remain in school today. I will take him home with me now.”

  This was great. Just great! Even Markham knew the kiss didn’t merit an out-of-school suspension, but Papá was going to yank Salva out of the building anyway.

  The principal looked doubtful, like he thought Señor Resendez might try to sneak his son off for an early vacation.

  As if. Salva knew exactly what waited for him at home. Crucifixion.

  “Salva’s mother,” his father continued—No. That was not fair— “and I always believe our children should value school. Salva needs to come home and work so he understands what life has for him if he does not appreciate his education.”

  There was no way even Markham could misread that speech.

  The principal stretched out his hand in a forthright gesture. “It was a pleasure, Mr. Resendez.” They shook.

  A frigging pleasure. Salva stepped outside the cramped office.

  To his horror, his father blew past him to confront Beth. “Who are your parents?” he asked.

  Her face turned pale as she sat erect, then brushed the wrinkles from her dress. “My mother is Rachel Courant. She works at the Eastside Hotel.”

  Señor Resendez grunted. “I see.”

  Salva seriously doubted his father saw a thing, other than the fact that he didn’t have any connection with this girl’s parents.

  “Hijo.” Señor Resendez ordered his son to go.

  But Salva didn’t move. Because for the first time since the performance, Beth was looking at him. He wanted to explain—though he wasn’t sure what to say. He knew he should apologize again, no question. But what he wanted even more, what he really wanted, was to know how she had felt about that kiss.

  Had she hated it?

  Was she furious with him?

  Had she died of embarrassment in front of the entire student body?

  Because it hadn’t felt like she had. It had felt like maybe she had wanted that kiss as much as he had. Like she might not mind if he did it again.

  Señor Resendez’s hand tightened on Salva’s shoulder, breaking into his son’s thoughts, and escorted him out.

  The only sounds on the pickup ride home were the rattle of the dash, the jerking of the gearshift, and the coughing of the engine. Salva k
new better than to talk first. He had never before been on the receiving end of his father’s silent treatment. But he had seen the silence explode—the year Miguel had been kicked out.

  The vehicle choked and died about twenty feet from the single wide, then coasted the remaining distance.

  Señor Resendez failed to exit. Leaving his youngest son trapped against the nonfunctioning door.

  “You work with this girl on a project for English class?” his father finally said.

  “Sí, Papá.”

  “You do not have a relationship with this girl?”

  “No.” Salva didn’t, at least not in the way his father meant.

  Señor Resendez climbed out of the pickup, allowing his son to follow.

  Lucia’s half-ass car was already parked by the gate. Not good. She wasn’t supposed to show up at home until after five o’clock.

  But she was reading on the couch in the Shrine. Or pretending to read, a massively thick textbook titled Psychological Theory. “¡Papá!” she said, acting surprised. “¿Qué pasó?” Salva noted she didn’t mark her place when she set the book down.

  Señor Resendez launched into the Lecture. “I am home,” he said, “since I receive a phone call que se requiere I leave my place at work without warning. Because my son is a disgrace to the school.”

  Lucia’s eyes went wide, though for once she kept her mouth shut.

  Papá strode up to the perennial altar above the fake fireplace.

  Salva looked away. From the candles that smelled like his mother, the dried flowers he knew sat beside them, and the photo that threatened to tear him apart.

  His father continued, “But the answer to your question, Lucia, is that I am here because your mother no want you to grow up ignorant, serving berries to the gringos and turistas in Michoacán. Because when she becomes pregnant with Casandra she says she will not raise any more children in la pobreza.”

  “And then,” he added, “when I want to go north without her, she say I can get a visa for her also, or I can get a divorce. So I work for all the wrong people to get the bribe so my whole familia can come into los Estados Unidos. Then your mother, she works pregnant, so the farmer won’t accuse her of lying and send us back.”