The Only Road Page 15

  He stared at the sun setting behind a mountain. The way the red melted into yellows, greens, and purples and seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth did nothing for him. What was the point of this sunset? Or any sunset? And that mountain all ugly and bare, it looked nothing like Volcán Tacaná back home. He only had one pencil left, but he didn’t want to remember this moment. Nor this desolate place, where few things grew except prickly cactus and scraggly grass, where Ángela could leave him at any moment. His skin burned hot and dry from spending all day in the scorching sun.

  He hated this train, hated this land, hated this trip. He wanted to go home, have a bath, eat everything in the house, and let his mamá tuck him into the hammock outside. It’d be worth facing the Alphas if it meant being home.

  He buried his hands into Vida’s fur, and wished Ángela would stop giggling.

  • • •

  “Wake up!” Ángela cried.

  Jaime sat up with a jerk. Headlights from two trucks sliced into the dark night alongside the slow-moving train. A cry came from the front of the train and passed down the cars. “¡Los Fuegos!”

  Los Fuegos, who made the Alphas back home seem like annoying fleas. When they weren’t trafficking drugs into los Estados Unidos, they raided cities and trains, demanded pay, and killed whoever got in their way. It was said they etched marks on their arms to keep a tally of their murders.

  Four figures scrambled up the ladders of the front cars and a scream cut into the night.

  “Get off, get off,” Xavi urged. He tucked Vida under his arm and pointed to the ladder with his free hand. “Jump clear of the wheels.”

  Jaime shoved his sketchbook into the front of his pants and patted his pocket to check for his remaining pencil. Still there. He hurried down the boxcar’s ladder. The ground looked hard and far away from the last rung, but he didn’t have a choice. Another scream pierced the night. Glints of metal shone from the men on top of the train like they were swinging swords. Or machetes.

  Jaime glanced up to make sure Ángela was above him before flinging himself to the ground. He landed on his side and rolled until he came to a stop. His shoulder and thigh hurt from the impact, but he didn’t think any bones were broken. He looked up in time to see Ángela land on the ground, and a second later, Xavi with Vida in his arm.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” Xavi dashed to Ángela and helped her up while waving at Jaime to run.

  Only a few trees were scattered across the dry land. The emptiness made it feel like they were the last people on earth. Nothing around them would offer protection.

  “Run to the hill!” Xavi yelled.

  In the moonlight Jaime could just make out a dark looming shape in the distance.

  Bright lights from a third truck turned on directly in front of him. The contrast between the dark night seconds before and the spotlight was too much. He shielded his eyes and dodged to the side. The roar of an engine came from behind him.

  “There’s one of the bastards over there,” a voice cackled behind him. “Let’s see how fast the little turd can run.”

  Jaime put on an extra burst of speed. His sketchbook shifted to poke him in the stomach, but he didn’t let that stop him. The headlights gained on him. There was no way he could outrun a truck. Impossible.

  But you can turn faster, said a voice in his head.

  He could almost feel the heat from the engine when he darted to the right. He was so close to the car, he felt the swish of air near his head and knew he’d come close to meeting a baseball bat or machete.

  Behind him the truck skidded and kicked up a cloud of dust as it tried to turn.

  Over there, to the left, the voice said again.

  In the moment without headlights glaring at him, Jaime noticed a hole in the ground just ahead. He ran with all his might, hoping the scant moonlight wasn’t playing tricks on him, hoping the truck’s headlights didn’t spot him before he got there.

  The hole was small, probably made by a coyote or another animal. Still, he kicked his legs to wiggle in deep inside, leaving only his shoulders and head exposed. He hid his head under his arms, squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed.

  If I don’t look at them, they won’t sense me looking at them, he repeated in his head, even though Miguel always teased him for being superstitious. That trick had worked surprisingly well when he was younger playing hide-and-seek. Please, Miguel, help it work now.

  Even with his eyes squeezed tight, the change in darkness told him the headlights were passing over him, searching, seeking. He didn’t move a hair, even with dust entering his nose. But then the truck roared off in a different direction. He blew the dirt out of his nose with a sneeze. It was impossible. The lights had been right on him. Had Miguel—

  But the thought left his mind as a scream forced him to open his eyes and lift his head.

  “¡Ángela!” he called out, then stopped, fearing he’d just given them both away.

  If those guys dared lay one finger on her . . . He knew why everyone kept saying it wasn’t safe for girls to make this journey. He knew why Joaquín pretended to be a boy. He knew what they’d do to his cousin if they caught her.

  “¡Ángela!” Better they get him than hurt her.

  He pushed against the dirt to free himself from his hiding place. The soft, sandy ground that had helped him fit into the small animal den crumbled and filled the gaps around him. The more he tried to get out, the more sand and dirt sifted in and the more stuck he got.

  More screams came from different directions followed by revving engines and laughter. Jaime tried to turn around in his trap. The headlights from the three trucks were fading away. In the distance a steady beam of light kept moving toward the horizon. The train continued heading north without stopping.

  “¡Ángela!” he said again. Nothing. The night became still with only the chirp of insects. A partial moon and the stars gave off enough light to show the empty land. Everyone else who’d been on the train seemed to have disappeared, or worse. No, he couldn’t be the last one left, no.

  Don’t do this to me, Miguel. I need you. I need her.

  He tried again to push himself out, slowly, carefully. By twisting like a corkscrew, he was able to get some leverage, until his whole chest lay flat on the ground. He extracted his legs and stood, his chest heaving to catch his breath. He brushed the dirt from his clothes.

  “¡Ángela!” he called one more time. He tried to remember where they’d last been together . . . not too far from the railroad tracks, right before the truck’s lights turned on and blinded them. That was where they had split up. But where near the tracks, he had no way of knowing.

  Tire tracks lined the desert ground, but they were hard to see in the night and it was impossible to tell which ones were coming and which were going.

  He turned in a slow circle, pretending he was Batman with night vision. It didn’t work. He saw nothing but the dark shape of the large hill. Or maybe it was a volcano like Tacaná.

  That was it. Xavi had said to head there. That was where they’d be waiting for him.

  Jaime jogged toward the looming shape. A couple more times he called out Ángela’s name, but heard no reply. Maybe the wind was carrying his voice in the wrong direction. Maybe she was afraid one of the thugs was still around. Maybe she was still mad at him. He pushed that thought out of his mind and kept jogging.

  No one was at the foothill, or anywhere nearby. No Ángela, no Xavi and Vida. He sat on a rock and tucked his knees to his chest as he watched for anything that might be a shadow walking in his direction. He waited and searched. No one came. The temperature began to drop. During the day it had been scorching hot; his skin still pained with sunburn. Now the night chilled him to the bone. He pulled his shirt over his knees as he began to rock back and forth. To keep warm. To stay awake. To stop himself from crying.

  What if no one came?

  What if he never saw Ángela again?

  What if he was all alone?

  What if all of
this—the lost bags, the lack of food and water, this whole trip, Miguel’s death—was his fault?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jaime woke up with the sun. He could still feel the cold that had lodged itself in his bones, but already the sun’s rays were warming him up. His legs were stiff and half-asleep from having been curled up under his shirt all night.

  Now with the daylight he took in the vast landscape. The scattered trees seemed more like bushes and the bushes were more spiny growths surrounded by brittle grass, all of them in various shades of brown and tan from the lack of water. From where Jaime stood, he couldn’t even see the train tracks.

  The only good news was that there were no trucks and no dust being kicked up—and there was nowhere los Fuegos could be hiding, waiting to pounce. Now that he could see, he had to find Ángela. She was out there, somewhere. He knew it. Just like he knew she wasn’t . . . No, she was out there. He just had to find her.

  He found truck tracks and followed them but couldn’t be sure they were made by the truck that had been after him—he never came across the hole that had almost swallowed him. Occasionally he found footprints, but they were too scuffed up to tell him anything. There had been lots of other people who’d jumped off the train. And yet Jaime didn’t see any evidence of another soul.

  “¡Ángela!” He removed his sketchbook from his waist and took off his shirt and waved it over his head like a flag, even though he was still cold. “¡Ángela!”

  He turned in a slow circle, focusing on every detail he could see and listening as hard as he could. He waved his shirt and called out again.

  Then, there it was. A faint sound. Something moved in the distance by a bush. An animal, maybe. Didn’t matter. Shirt and sketchbook clutched tight, he ran.

  As he got closer, the shape took form. First black, then blue—neither were colors that belonged in the browns and tans of the desert. A call came, louder than before, but muffled in the wind. A few seconds later arms waved over her head, and there was no doubt who she was.

  Ángela stayed sitting but held her arms out to him. He dived right into them.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He couldn’t stop the tears that stained his dirt-caked face.

  She hugged and kissed him, then kissed and hugged him some more as she cried too. “You’re here, you’re alive.”

  “I didn’t mean to lose the bags,” he sobbed into her shoulder. “And if you and Xavi want to be alone, I don’t care. Just don’t leave me.”

  “Who cares about the bags?” She shook him by the arms. “Don’t you ever leave me again, you hear?”

  “Please forgive me. I never meant for Miguel to die.” For the first time, he let his guilt pour out as he confessed. “If I hadn’t been sick—”

  “Then you would be dead too, and I couldn’t have dealt with that. Miguel’s death wasn’t your fault.”

  Jaime hugged her tight. She was his whole family, the only thing that mattered.

  After a minute he realized there was still something wrong.

  “¿Y Xavi?” He looked around.

  Ángela shook her head. “I don’t know. We got separated.”

  “Now that it’s day, he’ll be here soon,” Jaime guaranteed. Any minute Vida would be leading Xavi to them. If Jaime could find Ángela in the middle of the desert with nothing more than his senses and a family-homing gut feeling, Vida could sniff them out. She knew her family too. She would find them—he knew it. “Or we can look for him.”

  “I can’t walk,” Ángela said, wincing and looking like she might start crying again. “I hurt myself last night.”

  Jaime glanced at her legs. A huge rip exposed her left thigh, but there was no sign of a cut. On the other leg, however, in the gap of flesh revealed between her jeans and sock, her right ankle looked double the size of the other. “Is it painful?”

  She tried to laugh. “Like an elephant is balancing on it. It won’t take any weight.”

  Jaime stood and held out a helping hand.

  “You’re not—” she started, then looked him up and down with the sun behind him casting a long morning shadow. “When did you get so tall?”

  Jaime shrugged and teased. “Last Tuesday?”

  Ángela cracked a smile. She took hold of his hand, but as soon as she put the slightest pressure on the ankle, she crumpled back to the ground.

  “We should make some kind of brace,” he said.

  “¿Con qué? We don’t have anything.”

  Jaime looked around. One of the bushlike trees stood nearby, but none of its branches would work. Too thin. The grass wasn’t long enough, much less strong enough to weave; it crumbled in his hands when he picked it. Still, there had to be something. His eyes landed on his sketchbook lying in a heap with his shirt. If only he could draw her crutches that would come alive to help her out . . .

  “Do you still have your sewing kit?”

  Ángela pulled the packet of needles, thread, and tiny scissors from her pocket. Before she could stop him, he grabbed his sketchbook and tore off the front cover. The tiny scissors couldn’t cut the cover, but he took one of the blades and made an incision in the middle of each side and was able to bend it until it tore in half. Then he cut a strip from the hem of his shirt and double-checked Tía hadn’t sewed money into it. She hadn’t.

  He took off Ángela’s shoe but left on her sock, pulling it up her leg; Ángela bit her lip in pain. He sandwiched her foot between the two cover halves and secured it tight with the strips of cloth from his shirt. By loosening the laces, he carefully replaced her shoe over the mock cast. It was the best he could do.

  “That feels better,” Ángela said. He couldn’t tell if she was lying or if it really did work. She hadn’t tried standing again.

  Before she could, a high-pitched yip came from the south. A white-and-brown blur dashed toward them, a single ear flopping up and down.

  “Vida!”

  The dog greeted them with slobbery kisses while Jaime and Ángela petted and scratched her. They stared at the horizon and waited.

  “Vida, where’s Xavi?” Ángela finally asked the dog.

  Vida lay down with her muzzle over her paws, staring at them with sad eyes.

  Ángela repeated the question. “Where’s Xavi?”

  The dog looked away, as if she couldn’t bear the awful truth.

  Xavi wasn’t coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Maybe he and Vida got separated. Maybe he got back on the train,” Jaime tried to comfort his cousin. But he didn’t believe his words anymore than she did. A gut feeling told him Xavi was gone. Like Miguel. Forever.

  “I’ll go look for him if you’d like,” he said. “Vida can help me.”

  “No, don’t leave me.” Ángela clung to his arm. He nodded. He didn’t want to leave her either. He stood up and stared into the horizon as he had to find Ángela.

  “¡Xavi!” Jaime called out. “¡Xavi!”

  He paused, listening to the quiet surrounding them. Nothing.

  “He might still show up.”

  But he didn’t.

  Finally Jaime put his arm around her shoulder, letting her cry on him like he’d cried on her. “I’m sorry. I liked him too. I know how you feel.”

  Ángela stopped crying and snapped. “What do you know? I’ve lost a boyfriend and a brother. You still have your brother.”

  Her words stung. For a moment the anger and resentment he had felt yesterday flooded back. Then he remembered how lost he’d felt last night, all alone. Now was not the time to argue with her, no matter how much they were both hurting.

  Still, he let go of her to look her straight in the eye.

  “Miguel was like my twin, a part of me that is gone forever. Don’t ever think I loved him less because we had different parents.” Jaime looked at the east. The sun was fully up and threatened to be hotter than yesterday, yet the cold from the night before still chilled his bones.

  “We didn’t know Xavi for very long,” he continued,
“but he was always there for us. Like family.” There was still a chance Xavi would come back, right? Unless they found proof, there was no way of knowing if he was truly gone. Jaime remembered Miguel in his coffin. As horrible as it had been to see his cousin like that, at least there was no question of his death. With Xavi, nothing was certain, and Jaime didn’t know if that was worse. “But last night, when I thought I’d never see you again, I didn’t know if I could go on. Even if Miguel helps me, like I think he did last night, I can’t do this trip without you.”

  Ángela collapsed into his arms. They hadn’t had anything to drink since yesterday, and still her body seemed to have an endless supply of tears. After several minutes her breaths were more chokes. “It’s just . . . I’m so scared.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I barely felt the pain in my ankle last night—I was worried I’d never see you again.”

  “You almost didn’t.” He told her about the truck chasing him and getting stuck in the animal den. She told him how she’d twisted her ankle in a rabbit hole and then had lain flat on the ground, praying the bush and grass would hide her if the trucks returned.

  She yanked up a handful of brittle grass before throwing it to the side. “I’m going to end up like Tía, barely able to work, having to depend on others to take care of me.”

  Jaime pressed his lips together. His mamá might have a limp, but she wasn’t helpless.

  “Mamá doesn’t depend on anyone. She can take care of herself, and everyone else. You know that.” How dare Ángela suggest that being like Mamá was anything to be ashamed of, that she was less of a person because she couldn’t run well, when Mamá had raised Ángela like her own? “Stop acting like your life is a telenovela.”

  Ángela stared at the dusty ground and then around the vast landscape. “I think we should go back.”

  With no sign of civilization between the scraggly bushes, not even a cow grazing or a rabbit searching for a nibble, Ángela had finally spoken some sense.