THE THINGS I REMEMBER ABOUT COMING TO SANTA Teresa are mostly just snippets of a long journey I thought would never end. I remember an empty stomach and sore feet and being impossibly tired most of the time. I remember Adelina begging for change, for food; remember the seasickness and the vomiting it caused. I remember disgusted looks from passersby. I remember every time we changed names. And I remember the Chest, as cumbersome as it was, that Adelina refused to part ways with no matter how dire our situation became. On the day we finally knocked at the door Sister Lucia answered, I remember it being on the ground tucked snug between Adelina’s feet. I know she stowed it away in the shadows of some obscure corner of the orphanage. My days of searching have turned up nothing, but I still keep looking.
On Sunday, one week after Ella arrived, we sit together in the back pew during Mass. It’s her first, and it holds her attention about as well as it holds mine: not at all. Aside from class, she’s pretty much been by my side since the morning I helped her make her bed. We walk to and from school together, eat breakfast and dinner together, say our nightly prayers together. I’ve grown very attached to her, and by the way she follows me around, I can tell she’s grown attached to me as well.
Father Marco has droned on for a good forty-five minutes, and finally I close my eyes, thinking of the cave and debating whether I should bring Ella along with me today. There are several problems with it. First, there’s zero light inside, and there’s no way Ella will be able to see through the dark in the way that I can. Second, the snow has yet to melt, and I’m not sure she’d be able to make the trek through it. But most of all, I worry that bringing her would be putting her in harm’s way. The Mogadorians could arrive at any moment, and Ella would be defenseless. But even with these obstacles and concerns, I’m eager to take her along anyway. I want to show her my paintings.
On Tuesday, minutes before we were to depart for school, I had found Ella hunched over on her bed. Still chewing on a breakfast biscuit, I looked over her shoulder to see her furiously shading a perfect drawing of our sleeping quarters. The details, the technical accuracy of each crack in the wall, her ability to capture the faintest of squares of sunrays that dropped through the windows in the morning, was astounding. It was as if I was looking at a black-and-white photograph.
“Ella!” I had blurted.
She had flipped the paper over, trapping it against her schoolbook with her tiny smudged hands. She knew it was me but didn’t turn around.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” I’d whispered. “How did you learn to draw so well?”
“My father,” she whispered back, keeping the drawing turned over. “He was an artist. So was my mother.”
I’d sat down on her bed. “And here I thought I was a pretty good painter.”
“My father was an incredible painter,” she’d said plainly. Before I could ask her more questions, we had been interrupted and then ushered out of the room by Sister Carmela. That night I’d found Ella’s drawing under my pillow. It’s the best present I’ve ever received.
Sitting in Mass, I think that maybe she can help me with my cave paintings. Surely I can find a flashlight or lantern somewhere here to take with us. And then my thoughts are interrupted by a fit of giggles beside me.
I open my eyes and look over. Ella’s found a red-and-black furry caterpillar that’s in the process of crawling up her arm. I bring my finger to my lips in a sign of silence. It stops her for a brief moment, but then the caterpillar climbs higher and she begins giggling again. Her face turns red while trying not to laugh, but the fact that she’s trying to stifle it only makes it that much harder. And then she can’t help herself and a string of laughs escape. Every head snaps around to see what’s happening, and Father Marco stops his sermon in midsentence. I snatch the caterpillar from Ella’s arm and sit upright, staring back at those staring at us. Ella stops laughing. Slowly the heads turn back around and Father Marco, clearly flustered at having lost his spot, resumes his sermon.
I sit with my hand around the caterpillar. It tries wriggling free. After a minute I open my fist, and the sudden movement causes the furry little thing to curl into a ball. Ella raises her eyebrows and cups her hands together, and I place the caterpillar in them. She sits there smiling down at it.
I scan the front row. I’m not at all surprised to see Sister Dora glaring sternly in my direction. She shakes her head before turning back to Father Marco.
I lean over to Ella.
“When prayer ends,” I whisper into her ear, “we have to get out of here as fast as we can. And keep away from Sister Dora.”
Before Mass I’d fixed Ella’s hair into a tight braid; and now, gazing up at me with her big, brown eyes, it looks as though the heavy braid is weighing her head back.
“Am I in trouble?”
“We should be okay,” I tell her. “But just in case, we’ll rush out of here before Sister Dora can catch up to us. Got it?”
“Got it,” she says.
But we don’t get the chance. When there are just a few minutes left, Sister Dora stands and casually strolls to the back, and then stands waiting at the door a few steps away. When my eyes reopen as the final prayer ends with the sign of the cross, Sister Dora places a hand on my left shoulder.
“Come with me, please,” she says to Ella, reaching across me to grab her by the wrist.
“What are you doing?” I say.
Sister Dora pulls Ella past me. “It’s none of your business, Marina.”
“Marina,” Ella pleads. As she’s being dragged away, Ella looks back at me with scared eyes. I panic and rush to the front of the church where Adelina is standing, talking with a lady from town.
“Sister Dora just grabbed Ella and pulled her away,” I quickly say, interrupting her. “You have to make her stop, Adelina!”
She looks incredulously at me. “I will do no such thing. And it’s Sister Adelina. If you’ll excuse me, Marina, I was in the middle of a conversation,” she says.
I shake my head at her. Tears form in my eyes. Adelina doesn’t remember what it feels like to ask for help and not receive it.
I turn and run from the room and up the winding staircase to the church offices. To the left, at the end of the hall, the only door closed is the one leading to Sister Lucia’s office. I race towards it, trying to decide what I should do. Should I knock? Should I kick straight through it? But I don’t get the chance to do either. When I’m within reaching distance of the knob, I hear the crack of the paddle, followed instantly by a scream. I’m frozen in shock. Ella cries on the other side of the door and a second later the door is opened by Sister Dora.
“What are you doing here?” she snaps at me.
“I came to see Sister Lucia,” I lie.
“She’s not here, and you’re due in the kitchen. Go on,” she says, shooing me the way I came. “I’m headed there myself.”
“Is she okay?”
“Marina, it’s none of your concern,” she says, and then grabs me by the bicep, spins me around, and gives me a shove.
“Go!” she orders.
I move away from the office, hating the fear that runs through me every time confrontation stares me in the face. It’s always been that way—with the Sisters, with Gabriela García, with Bonita on the dock—I get the same feeling, the same nervousness that quickly segues to dread, that always causes me to walk away.
“Walk faster!” Sister Dora barks, following me down the staircase and towards the kitchen where El Festín duties await.
“I have to use the restroom,” I say before we reach the kitchen, which is a lie; I want to make sure Ella’s okay.
“Fine. But you better make it fast. I’m timing you.”
“I will.”
I duck around the corner and wait thirty seconds to make sure she’s gone. Then I rush back the way we came, up the staircase, down the hall. The office door is slightly ajar and I walk through it. The interior is dark, somber. A layer of dust covers the shelves that line the walls, upon which sit ancient books. The only light enters through a dirty stained glass window.
“Ella?” I say, for some reason thinking she might be hiding. No answer. I walk away and poke my head in the rooms situated off the main hallway, all of which are empty. I call her name as I go. At the hall’s opposite end is the Sisters’ sleeping quarters. There’s no sign of her in there either. I go back down the stairs. The crowd has made its way to the cafeteria. I walk to the nave looking around for Ella. She’s not in there, nor is she in either of the two sleeping rooms, nor the computer room, nor any of the storage rooms. By the time I’ve looked in most places I can think to check, a half hour has passed and I know I’ll be in trouble if I go to the cafeteria.
Instead I hurry out of my Sunday clothes, pull my coat off its hook, swipe the blanket from my bed, and dash outside. I trudge through the snow away from town, unable to push the sound of the paddle’s crack and Ella’s scream from my mind. I’m also unable to forgive Adelina’s scorn towards me. My whole body tense, I focus my energy on some of the large rocks I pass, using telekinesis to lift and hurl them against the mountainside. It’s a great way to blow off steam. The snow’s surface has hardened, creating a thin layer of ice that crunches underfoot, but it doesn’t keep the rocks from skidding downhill. I’m so mad I could let them go, careening towards town. But I stop them in their tracks. My gripe isn’t with the town but rather its namesake, and those who live within it.
I pass the camel’s back—half a kilometer to go. The sun is warm on my face, situated high in the sky and slanted towards the east, which means I have at least five hours before I’m due back. I haven’t had this much free time in a great while; and with the bright sun and crisp, fresh wind pulling me from my dismal mood, I hardly care that I’ll be in trouble when I get back. I turn to see how effective my blanket cape is at hiding my prints in the hardened snow, and I’m afraid to see that it hasn’t worked at all today.
Nevertheless, I push forward until I spot the rounded shrub sticking up over the snow, then I race towards it, at first not noticing the very thing my eyes should be attuned to: that the snow at the base of the cave is tossed up and pushed around. But as soon as I reach the cave’s entrance, I know immediately that something is horribly off.
Approaching from the south, a single set of boot prints, double the size of my own, dot the mountainside, a perfect straight line cut into the snow leading from town to the cave. They seem to tromp around its opening, as though circling it. I’m flustered, certain there’s something else here I’m missing. And then it dawns on me. The prints—they lead into the cave, but they don’t lead back out.
Whoever they belong to is still inside.