CHAPTER 12

Lucy

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IT’S AROUND 9 P.M. when I hear a rock hit the back bedroom window where I’m watching TV. I know my grandpa couldn’t have heard it with his breathing machine, and Grandma, Mom, and Ruth are in the living room talking about school plays or something stupid. I get out of bed and peek out the faded floral curtains. To my surprise it’s Angel. His smile is wide, despite the fact he’s on crutches.

I crank open the rusty handle.

“How’d you know I was back here?” I whisper through the screen.

“The curtains are kinda see-through. I was creepin’.”

I smile. “I thought you were Ro.”

“Yeah, that was the plan. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, I’m just glad you’re out of the hospital. I was getting worried. It’s been three days.”

“Think you can sneak out?” he asks.

“Mom! Ro’s here. I’m going outside for a sec,” I yell down the hall. Nobody responds, which is what I was hoping for.

I slip out the back door. It smells like trash outside because the dumpsters are overflowing. A yellow streetlight hangs over the mound of garbage, illuminating the heap of diapers and broken black plastic bags.

Angel doesn’t seem bothered by it. He stands close to me in the shadows, and we talk by the trailer for a while. He tells me all of his gory hospital stories. Once he was shanked in the stomach, and they had to put forty-three stitches in him. Another time he had the bones in his arm shattered in five different places. He was shot in the left lower back but was lucky because it only went through skin. His most painful experience was when he had his collarbone broken and his pelvis cracked after four guys jumped him and beat him with a bat.

I can’t believe the things he tells me. I secretly hope he’s lying.

We start walking, on our way to his apartment, when we see Veronica and her boyfriend, Omar, across the trailer park. They wave at a young boy and his mother who stop under the streetlight to say hello. The boy looks no older than five. It’s a hot night and he’s wearing shorts but no shirt. His Mexican skin is dark from a summer tan. He squats next to them, collecting pebbles from the ground as his mom talks. She looks like a teenager herself, too young to have a child, but the boy keeps calling out for her.

“Mom! Look at this one.” She doesn’t respond to him, even as he holds stones out for her to see.

From this distance the four of them could be anyone. They could be four normal people with normal lives, but this is the barrio, and nothing is normal here.

Angel stiffens at my side as the car from the park shooting pulls into the circular drive. Its headlights shut off in a quick blink.

“Shit,” he whispers.

My feet start pedaling backwards. I think of Littles. What if they’re looking for me? If they see me...

“Vee!” Angel screams before he pulls me down in a rough jerk behind a hedge. My heart goes crazy. I stay still, but inside I’m wildly afraid. My mouth goes dry. It’s hard to swallow.

He peeks over the leaf wall and starts shaking his head.

“They didn’t hear me.” He grits his teeth. “Shit.”

I can’t help it. I have to look.

It takes about three seconds for a guy with curly black hair to roll down the window and pop off two shots. The tires smoke and screech as the car speeds off, and Angel and I flatten our backs against the side of a trailer so we’re not seen.

One of the girls is screaming. I can’t tell if it’s Vee or the young mother, but someone must be hurt. The scream is a high-pitched cry that makes my gut sink.

Angel moves to get a better view and I follow.

Vee is fine, but the boy...

His mother is cradling his limp body. There’s smeared blood all over his bare chest. I can’t stand here and watch. I have to do something. His mother’s screaming bores into my bones. It’s nightmarish, the kind of sound that jolts you from a dream.

I lurch forward, but Angel drops one of his crutches and grabs my arm. “Don’t! You can’t get involved. We have to move. They could come back.”

I duck behind the hedge again, unable to hold it in anymore. My hands grip the tops of my knees as I start to break down, but Angel ushers me on, speaking so fast I can barely understand. “We have to move. We can’t stay here. They’ll be looking. They know they didn’t get us. That’s why the driver sped off. They would have stayed to make sure one of us was hit.”

I turn into a heap of tears when we reach my grandparents’ back porch. There was so much blood. There’s no way he’ll make it, and if that’s true, I just saw someone die. A child die. The reality of something so horrific makes me sob harder.

Angel just watches me cry, waiting for it to pass as we crouch on the side of the stairs out of sight. Eventually he starts talking, maybe because he’s uncomfortable and I can’t stop the tears.

“...This is life on the streets. This is our reality. We don’t know anything else. It’s what we grew up with. My brother, my dad, my mom, my sisters, we’re all in it.” I think about what my family would say if they saw or heard about any of this. “Watch the news,” he continues. “This shit is everywhere. Not just here.”

“I know,” I admit weakly. “I’m just not used to it.”

The sound of sirens grows in the distance.

“It’s not like it’s outta nowhere. We’ve been fighting with them farther back then I can tell you. Those fuckers killed Omar’s youngest brother like a month ago. So Omar killed two of their guys. They’re just retaliating, that’s all.”

That’s all? I nod, trying to accept what he seems to feel is completely justified.

“I think you should go back inside,” he says. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning. We’re just going to hang at Leti’s tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I wipe my face with the bottom of my shirt, trying to pull it together. “Hanging out sounds good. I think I need a break from all this craziness. I’m going to go insane if anything else happens.”

“Well go sleep it off and we’ll talk more tomorrow. Try not to think about it.”

“Will you check on the boy?” I ask, still thinking of the way his arms hung outward as his mother held him.

“Don’t worry about it. Those fucks will get what’s coming,” he says. “See you in the morning.”

He kisses me one last time before he leaves. When I step back in the house, I listen down the hall. They’re watching some kind of reality show. Nobody has a clue what just happened. I turn off the light to the back room and sit on the bed in the dark. The sound of the TV murmurs through the wall, and the droning of its superficial bullshit feeds the rage already smoldering in my chest. My jaw clicks as I clench my teeth. I’ll never get the image of that boy out of my head.

I hope Omar kills those guys.