These guys gave looks like someone trash-talked their mothers. One said, Frankly, I’m offended Fernando would even suggest such a thing. We’ve only tried to befriend him since we noticed he’s had a hard time fitting in at our school.
The principal turned to me. I know English is not your first language, Fernando, so it’s possible you may have misunderstood what your classmates have been saying to you. As you can see, their only interest is in helping you fit in with our community.
That’s when I realized rich kids make for great criminals. After school, they followed me home. Watched in a car as I waited for the bus, driving behind until I got off at the stop down the road from our house, where there are only fields and horses around. They pulled onto the grass. Two guys jumped out and yanked me into the back seat. Punched me all over. Air left my lungs. But they didn’t touch my face, so when they pushed me out near our gates, though I could barely walk, Mom’s first thought when she saw me dragging myself up the driveway wasn’t that I’d had the shit kicked out of me but that I was coming down with the flu.
She helped me into bed and went to prepare me some caldo de pollo. I couldn’t tell her the truth. You only found out because those assholes took a video of the beating and sent it to their friends. And then they sent it to you and texted if you let them give it to you up the ass they’d leave me alone. You were crying when you told me this and that there was nothing to be done. I said I could get a Taser. Electrocute their balls off next time they touched me or threatened you. You made me cross my heart that I wouldn’t.
I remember wondering what it must feel like to belong to American whiteness and to know you can do whatever you want because nobody you love is deportable. Your worst crime might get you locked up forever but they’ll never take away your claim to this country. We both agreed telling anyone else would only bring attention to our family. You said you hate this place, and I hugged you even though it hurt my body and we aren’t really huggers anymore.
When Mom checked on us after dinner, we’d already sworn to each other not to say a word of what happened. When she asked how I was feeling, I said her soup had done its job, I was almost back to normal.
TWENTY-ONE
It should have occurred to them that by the time they’d arrive in Chiquinquirá it would be dark and cold and they’d be hungry and need a place to sleep, but it didn’t. The basilica was closed for the day. Aguja would have to wait till morning to visit the Virgin. They didn’t have enough money for a hotel room. It was Aguja’s idea to return to the town boundary, to a pedestrian bridge suspended over a thin river. Talia followed as he lowered the motorcycle down the ridge, resting it under the bowed branches of a roble tree. He lay beside it and made a pillow of his jacket.
“We’ll freeze if we sleep out here,” Talia said.
“Our bodies were made for this climate. Do you think our ancestors had electric heaters?”
“They had fire.”
“Keep complaining. The sun won’t come up any quicker.”
She sat beside him, knees pressed tight to her chest, felt the chill of the grass through her clothes.
“You can let your back touch the ground,” he said. “Nothing will happen to you.”
“I’m cold.”
“Lay next to me. It will warm us both.”
She leaned back, settling against him as their bodies aligned. “If you touch me the wrong way I’ll dig out both your eyeballs.”
“I don’t know why you want to leave the country. You’re obviously a guerrillera by nature.”
It occurred to her that if he smelled this badly, she must smell bad too. Their odors comingled from being pressed together through exhaust clouds, behind trucks and buses on highways and country roads. Self-conscious, she tried to tilt herself away, but he pulled her in closer. She felt his bones against her shoulder. He adjusted his arm to cradle her neck and set his palm against her side.
“Are you going to tell me the truth of how you ended up so far from home?”
“I told you. I was trying to get away from a bad guy.”
“But what were you doing in Barichara of all places?”
It had been only days since she’d fled from the prison school, but Talia felt she’d been lying for a very long time, maybe her whole life. She decided to give him as much honesty as she thought he could handle without being tempted to turn on her.
“I ran away.”
“From where?”
“A place they sent me for not being good.”