I yank my arm away with so much force I lose my balance and fly down the wooden steps. I tumble, hitting all the bony parts of my body with blunt force that sends shocking pain with each thunk. At the bottom, I whack my face into something solid, and dirt from the handrail falls into my hair like ash.
I lose consciousness, but I don’t know for how long. When I come to, I hear myself mumbling and moaning, but even I don’t know what I’m talking about.
There are people above me, speaking Spanish. Someone is crying. I register the pain, and begin to tremble. Angel. I scream, and scramble into a corner. “Get away!” I shout. “Not you. Get away!”
I bury my eyes into my knees, hiding from the people, the memories, the pain. All of it seems to float together, enveloping me in a terrifying fog.
I cry and scream at them not to touch me, and they don’t. They yell at each other trying to figure out what to do. It’s too much noise. I start to rock, praying I’ll wake up, begging God to make Angel leave.
“Lucy?” I jump so hard I knock the back of my head against a wall. It makes me open my eyes.
The girl in front of me isn’t Ro. I recognize her, though.
“I’m going to call your mom,” Dani says, resting a hand on my shaking arm.
I stare at her.
“You’re not Ro.”
“What?” she asks.
“Fuuuck,” Paco laughs. “She’s so fucking wasted.”
“It’s not funny.” Gabe’s look shuts him up.
My eyes drift between the three of them, and my chest loosens with the last of my shuddered sobs.
“Am I here? I’m here. Not in San Jose, right?”
Gabe lifts me to my feet, hoisting my arm around his neck. I can feel his chest against mine, feel his breath on my cheek. His hand touches the soft skin of my side.
“You’re okay,” he tells me.
He’s not Angel. He’s Gabe. He’s shy, quiet, sweet Gabe, and I’m so grateful that I don’t panic because he’s too close. The air in my lungs doesn’t anxiously fight its way in and out. For a second, I want to kiss him, because seeing his face feels like he saved me, but my body is heavy, and my vision clouds into a haze.
I slump against him and black out.
CHAPTER 24
Mom
IT’S ANOTHER ONE OF those quiet nights when both kids are gone. I’m getting tired of being alone. I realize the older they get, the less they are going to be home, and it depresses me. I didn’t sign up for alone. Ruth is off again with Josh. It seems she’s never here, and I guess I can’t blame her. Lucy is spending the night with her new friend. I turn in early from boredom and am sleeping soundly when the phone wakes me. It takes me a few seconds to blink away the grogginess, but as soon as I realize what time it is, my stomach turns. Only trouble comes at two in the morning.
“Hello!”
“Ms. Wilcox?” a girl’s voice questions from the other end.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“It’s Lucy’s friend. I think you need to come and get her.”
“Why? What happened? Is she all right?”
“Well, she’s pretty drunk and she fell down the stairs. She’s hallucinating or something. She’s crying and yelling a lot. Like, a bunch of stuff we don’t understand. You really need to come and get her.”
I don’t think to ask about the adults who are supposed to be there or how they got alcohol. I don’t even get her to tell me what happened, just an address. Then I rip off the covers and check to see if Ruth’s home yet. She is, and I shake her out of bed.
“What? What’s wrong?” she gasps, scrambling to make sense of her surroundings.
“It’s Lucy.”
Ruth starts moving without needing an explanation, and I’m so grateful she’s back home after her night out with friends.
We get in the car, and I drive as fast as I can. When we get there Lucy is barely conscious. Her face is wet from tears or sweat, her hair disheveled, and a baseball sized bruise protrudes from her forehead. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.
“How did this happen?!” I scream in the stairwell. I have one of Lucy’s arms around my neck and Ruth’s got her other, but one of the guys has to get her legs. She can’t even stand.
“Please, Ms. Wilcox,” the girl begs as Lucy mumbles something incoherent. “Just take her to the hospital. She’s acting crazy.”
I look over at my helpless daughter and have no idea what to do.
When we get to the car, the three of us manage to slide her into the backseat so she’s lying down. I don’t bother with a seatbelt. Ruth’s already in the front when I slide behind the wheel. In moments I’m driving down the street with no real knowledge of where I’m going.
“Where’s your cell phone?” Ruth snaps. She’s digging through my purse in a frustrated fury.
“I don’t know,” I whine.
She sighs and throws my bag on the floor. “You didn’t bring it with you?”
Tension radiates down my arms from a pinched nerve in my back. No cell phone. No GPS. We haven’t been in Glendale for that long, and I have no idea where the hospital is.
“Great!”
I drive, tears wetting my cheeks and look for a phone booth—do they still have phone booths? Street after street races by, and I pound on the steering wheel while Lucy lies there mumbling and groaning.
“I know there’s a hospital here,” I say. “We’re in the city. I’ve seen the signs near the high school.”
“We should go home and get the phone,” Ruth offers as I drive aimlessly.
I follow her instructions, but two blocks up I see that blue square with the white H on it. We arrive shortly after at the hospital, and I drive us into the ambulance bay.
“Help me!” I scream, drawing the attention of two concerned nurses. “My daughter needs help. She can’t walk.” One of the nurses sprints through the sliding doors and returns momentarily with a wheel chair. We pull her out of the backseat and plop her into it. She moans, and says something I don’t understand. Her head hangs over the back of the chair and her mouth slacks open. They wheel her to their nurse’s station, taking vitals and asking me what happened. All I can tell them is she’s been drinking and fell down the stairs. Ruth does her best to calm me as they examine her.
“Is she okay, though? She’s breathing, right?”
“She’s breathing,” the heavyset black nurse tells me.
“The bump on her head is bad,” the other one says, “but probably looks worse than it is. I’m more concerned about how drunk and out of it she is. I’m going to check her BAC and set up an IV with fluids until a room is ready.”
They transfer her to a rolling bed and park it in a hallway off to the side of the main patient wing. Beeps, chimes, and voices over radio mix with the complaints of the injured. Ruth and I sit on metal fold out chairs next to the head of Lucy’s bed waiting for her to come around.
I look at the machines, the bag of saline hanging from the metal pole, the blanket they’ve draped over her.
“I wonder how much this is going to cost?” I whisper.
My question gets Ruth’s attention. She pulls her knees to her chest, fitting her scrunched up body onto the small metal square of her chair.
“We’ll get them to write it off as a charity case,” Ruth says. “Don’t worry.”
“They can do that?”
She nods, but her eyes are on a woman with greasy grey hair being wheeled down the corridor. “Remember when Jenna from back home was in that car wreck?”
“Yeah,” I answer, thinking of the scar Ruth’s friend still has on her upper arm.
“Her Mom couldn’t pay so they just filed it as charity, and the hospital got a tax write-off.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s Massack. Everybody knows everything.”
The idea makes me feel better, but this isn’t Massack. I hope it’ll work.
We wait for over an hour for a room to open up, and
Lucy stays unconscious the whole time. I just watch her breathe, reaching out to touch the blonde hair fanned out beneath her and the bruises on her swollen face. Every time the nurse passes, she tells me she’ll be okay, but I’m drained and empty as I sit and wait. Not just by the night, but by the whole journey from Massack to LA. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. This was supposed to be our new start.
Lucy wakes me from my musing with a weak “Mom?”
I rush to her side and smile, but only with my lips. I can’t get the concern out of my eyes. “What happened?” Ruth asks, scooting into my chair so she’s closer.
“I don’t know...I had too much to...we were drinking. I think I fell, and I thought I was in San Jose again. I got scared, I guess.”
I nod. I can’t bring myself to reprimand her. All I see are the tears and bruises, all the hurt in her eyes.
“You’re okay now. We’re here,” I say, kissing her forehead.
* * *
The sun rises on our way home, blushing the sky rouge-pink.
“You feeling better?” I ask, reaching out to touch her leg.
She shifts under my hand, but smiles at me. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know about these kids, Luce,” I say, feeling the need to open up now that it’s all over. “I don’t think you should hang out with them anymore.”
“What?” she snaps.
I look away from the road to see her glaring eyes. They take me by surprise. I assumed this quiet drive home was a raw and vulnerable moment we were sharing, but she has already shut me out.
“It wasn’t them,” she insists. “It was me. I drank too much. I took it too far.”
“You shouldn’t have been drinking at all,” Ruth says from the backseat. “You’re fifteen.”
Lucy rolls her eyes.
“Well they didn’t force me. It was my choice.”
My lips press together in frustration. “There shouldn’t have been a choice. Where were her parents? You said there were going to be adults there.”
She pauses with her mouth open and shakes her head. “They were there. They were just sleeping.”
“Oh, yeah right,” Ruth mocks.
“Ruth!” I scold her before the two of them start fighting.
I glance at Lucy, trying to decipher the truth. It doesn’t matter. “Either way, that’s not a good environment. Nobody was supervising.”
“Supervising?” she starts yelling. “You never supervise me. Why now, huh?”
“That’s different. I have to work and go to school. You need to be responsible.” I can hear the whiny desperate tone in my voice, because she’s actually right. But what else can I do?
“Look, I just want you to be safe,” I concede.
“Fine,” she says, throwing her back into the seat. “But don’t tell me I can’t keep my friends.”
“Okay. Okay,” I sigh. “Just calm down.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence, and I can see Ruth shaking her head in the rearview. I’m still worried and mad, but I keep it in, locked behind the ever-present crease in my brow. When I pull the car into our spot, I turn the engine off and sit, feeling the urge to tell her I’m sorry. It’s backwards, but I can’t stand it when my kids are upset. I need to fix it, make them happy again.
Lucy turns to me, and all of her rage is gone. It’s amazing how quickly her eyes can turn. One moment they’re black with something terrifying, and the next they’re soft and searching like a scolded pup. “Sorry Mom,” she says.
I feel my heart unclench, releasing tight fistfuls of unease.
“It’s okay,” I say, and I dust her troubles under the rug, thinking that will be the end of it.
CHAPTER 25
Lucy
I AVOID DANI FOR a few days, ditching sixth period and climbing the fence behind the building before she gets there. I’m not ready to face my embarrassment. I wait at the park for a while, then take the long way home, lingering at the place where Gabe’s street crosses my path.
I don’t remember what I said to him. All I know is that I was mean. I want to say sorry, but I’m reluctant to see him for the same reason I’m not talking to Dani. I don’t know what I said about Angel.
I don’t have a clue which apartment is his. I can’t imagine I’d find it, even if I tried, so when I see him coming toward me, I’m shaken. I immediately turn around and start speed walking the other direction, hoping he didn’t see my face.
“Lucy!” As soon as he calls my name, I know I have to stop and say hi, but it takes me a while to muster the confidence.
“Hey.” My throat catches a little as I try to act surprised.
He slows as he gets closer, keeping a generous distance, and winces. “That’s a fucking gnarly bruise, Luz.”
The low hum of his voice distracts me, but my hand flies up to my forehead on impulse. “Oh. Yeah. Looks worse than it feels.” I tried covering it with my hair, but apparently not well enough.
“I’m glad you’re okay. We haven’t heard from you or seen you. I got worried.”
“I’m fine. I—”
“Gabewiel,” a little boy, who looks just over two years old, runs our way. “Look. Look. A pollie wollie.”
He holds it up for us to see, but his eyes stay on the bug.
Gabe kneels down to the boy’s height, and I notice their resemblance immediately. Golden curly hair, deep walnut eyes, and perfect caramel skin.
“Oh my God. Is this your son?” I ask, kneeling with him to get a better look.
Gabe laughs. “No. He’s my brother. He does look like me, though. I raise him. Mom’s got five of us. I have three brothers and a sister.”
“One sister? That’s one against four.” I widen my eyes playfully at the little boy and he smiles, shying his face away from me.
“Eh, it toughens her up.” He looks over his shoulder toward his apartment and nods in the general direction. I catch sight of a little girl with long brown pigtails. She’s probably five. “She’s spying on us,” he says, standing to look for her.
“Come on, Gordo.” He tugs at his brother’s shirt, and the boy takes a few stumbley steps as he obsesses over his pill bug.
I follow Gabe and Gordo to the open door of his family’s ground-level apartment. A Christmas tree with too much tinsel is pressed into the corner, and empty stockings hung with push pins line the windowsill. His sister is hiding in the doorway. She beckons for Gabe to come closer and whispers something in Spanish.
He laughs and looks at me. “She says you’re very very pretty, and she wants to play with you.”
Kids have a way of making me smile. “Aaaaw,” I say to her. “What do you want to play?”
“Barbies, please,” she answers, her fat cheeks dimpling as she flashes two rows of spaced baby teeth in a wide grin.
Gordo reaches his hands up and stands on his tip-toes in front of Gabe until he picks him up. I follow them into their apartment and the little girl takes my hand, pulling me to the floor of the living room. The white carpet is stained with a multitude of colors, from faded grape juice purple to cheeto orange. Barbies are everywhere, their hair tangled into tiny blonde nests.
“You can be her,” she says, thrusting a naked classic into my lap.
Gabe sits on the couch next to us with Gordo on his lap, and switches on the TV. I watch him when his eyes are averted, wondering why he never asked me what I was doing here, on his street.
“What happened to your head?” his sister asks.
“Celia!” Gabe scolds her. “Don’t be rude.”
She stares at the floor, clutching her Barbie as her lower lip folds out in a pout.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I fell.” My eyes drift to Gabe. “I was being stupid.”
He gives me a sideways sympathetic smile and goes back to watching TV.
“So what did you ask Santa to get you for Christmas?” I ask Celia.
She starts listing things in very specific detail, and we play Barbies long enough that Gordo falls a
sleep on Gabe’s chest. I watch him comb his little brother’s hair and play with his ears in a rhythmic trailing motion like petting a cat. It’s sweet and makes me realize just how gentle-natured he is. Nothing like Angel.
My head lifts as someone comes through the front door.
“Gabriel! Ayudame con las bolsas.”
A woman I assume is his mother, lugs fistfuls of white plastic grocery bags through the front door. We both get up to help. I try introducing myself, but I can tell by the lost look in her eyes that she has no idea what I’m saying. But she smiles, and the smile never lets up. Gabe translates a short conversation between us, but it gets tedious, and eventually I just listen to their Spanish.
After we’re done unloading he grabs his backpack and shrugs it onto his shoulders.
“Come on,” he says. “She wants us to take the grocery cart back to the store.”
I follow and so does Gordo. “You have to stay here, hermanito,” Gabe tells him.
Gordo cries until his face is red, and Gabe pulls him from his legs. “Celia, find him that green car,” he says as he shuts the door.
“Will he be okay?” I ask.
Gabe pushes the cart and I keep up.
“Yeah. He’ll be fine. He freaks out every time I leave.”
“That’s cute,” I say as we walk.
His face turns serious. “Not to me.”
“I guess it’s probably annoying—”
“No. No. He doesn’t annoy me. It just makes me mad at life. The poor kid’s afraid I’m not going to come back. My Dad left after my older brother died. I think it fucked Gordo up. He’s obsessed with me.”
“What happened to your older brother?”
“He went to get milk at the liquor store and the cops thought he was robbing the place. They shot him.”
Maybe he was robbing the place. I keep the rogue thought to myself, but I can’t help but wonder.
“I’m sorry,” I say instead, realizing all of this must have happened recently if Gordo can remember. He’s still just a baby.
“Yeah. Fuck the cops. They acted like it was my brother’s fault, and they’re always all over me. So I say, fuck ‘em. If they’re going to make my life hell, I’m glad to return the favor.”
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