The Only Road (22 page)

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.

“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.

“Yeah. The train tracks are our best hope to head north,” he said.

“No. Back home. To Guatemala.”

“What?” Jaime jumped to his feet and glared at his cousin. It was one thing to think these thoughts, but to say them out loud?

Ángela hugged the knee of her good leg to her chest. “I'm tired of being scared all the time. I miss my parents and Abuela. I want to hang out with
mis amigas
. I want a bath and regular meals. I want things to go back to how they were.”

More than anything, he wanted those things too. He hated that even here, thousands of kilometers away, the Alphas were still controlling their lives. He kneeled next to her. “You know we can't go back. Things will never be the same.”

“But they'd be better than this here, in the middle of nowhere.” She lifted her head, her dark eyes turned wild. “I've been thinking. It won't be that hard. We turn ourselves in to
la migra
and they'll load us on a bus back home.”

Jaime couldn't believe his ears. This wasn't Ángela. Ángela took care of everyone. She told everyone what to
do, and how to do it. But she wasn't a person who gave up.

They'd seen how
la migra
had treated that Salvadoran lady on the bus. What about everything they didn't see? There was no guarantee that
la migra
had even taken her back to the México-Guatemala border.

“But the Alphas,” he reminded her. “They're sure to make us pay for fleeing. If they killed Miguel for refusing to join, what will they do to us?”

Ángela gulped and turned away. “Maybe it won't be so bad. Manny Boy is in the gang and we used to be friends. Maybe, maybe he can soften the blows.”

Manny Boy? Jaime swallowed a snort. Please. He remembered when Manny Boy and Ángela were “friends.” They were eight and Manny Boy would chase her around the schoolyard, trying to kiss her while Ángela screamed for him to stop. Really screamed, not teasing, playful screams. Jaime didn't want to think how Manny Boy would behave now.

“We can't go home. You know that,” he said. A new determination surged through his body. They were going to continue, or die trying. No giving up. Normally he was happy to let her make the choices, but this was one decision he wasn't going to let her make. Time to be strong and brave. Like Miguel. “I miss
la familia
too, but it's for them we have to keep going. What would Tío say if you joined the gang that killed your brother?”

Ángela turned away.

He lifted her chin so he could look right into her eyes. He had to make her understand. “If we don't make it, then Miguel died for nothing.”

Ángela shook her head. “But it's hopeless. I can't walk. I'll never be able to get back on the train.”

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest and used the same glare both of their
madres
had gotten from Abuela. “But you think you can walk to a
migra
station? There's nothing out here. We're in the Chihuahua desert. No one's going to find us until our bones are bleached by the sun. And I'm
not
going to let that happen.”

“But . . .”

“But
nada
.” There was no way he could have saved Miguel—he understood that now. But as long as their hearts continued to beat, he wasn't giving up on her. “You can't always be the boss. I'm in charge now and I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to help you—we're going to keep heading north, even if I have to carry you on my back like a burro.”

Ángela's shoulders dropped as she let out a deep breath. Finally she nodded.

“C'mon, let's get back to the tracks.” Jaime stood up first and then offered a hand to his cousin. Ángela got up slowly but scrunched her eyes in pain the second she put weight on the ankle. This time, she didn't give up and fall to the ground. Jaime put his arm around her waist for
support. By stepping on the ball of her foot, Ángela managed to stagger a bit. Without Jaime, though, she wouldn't have been able to do more than hop.

It took forever to get back to the tracks. While Vida trotted ahead of them, her paws barely touching the railroad ties, Jaime tried his hardest not to show how tired he was. He couldn't let her down. Ángela didn't complain once, just did what he said. Miguel would have been proud, of both of them.

They hobbled along while keeping an ear out for the next train. It could come in a few minutes or a few days. If it came in a few minutes, it'd be near impossible to board it; if it came in a few days, they could be dead.

As they walked, he searched for something that might help them survive in the semi-desert. He didn't have Vida's nose; the fresh, unpolluted air was more a non-smell than a scent. There was no obvious water nearby. He figured if there were, there'd be clusters of trees and greener shades of brown huddled around the water source. Maybe even the scent of moisture. Instead his nose itched with sunburn and dust.

There were various plants besides the patchy grass, shrubby bushes, and prickly cactus. Plants with little purple flowers and others a cluster of spines with a flower stalk jutting high up the middle, but he had no idea if any were edible. None of them looked the least bit appetizing. Occasionally
a plastic water bottle lay near the tracks—dirty, cracked, and bone-dry.

And there was no shelter where they could rest and escape the scorching sun.

“We'll keep following the tracks,” Jaime said, breaking the silence to keep optimistic. “Maybe there's a sharp turn where the train slows down enough to hop on.”

But realistically, he didn't see how that would work. His determination to do or die seeped away. Even if the train slowed to a crawl, climbing a ladder to the top of a boxcar with only one leg would require a lot of arm strength for Ángela. And he didn't even want to think of how they would get off the train if los Fuegos came back.

The intense sun continued to beat down on them. It was past midday when a rutted dirt road crossed over the tracks. Vida retracted her tongue, which had practically been hanging to the ground, as her nose twitched down the road. Jaime kicked the dust under his shoes and blinked his sore eyes.
Was that . . . ?
In the far-off distance he could just make out a structure. The dry heat evaporated most of their sweat, but beads rolled down his forehead and drenched the areas where their arms were around each other. White salt stains appeared under their armpits. He was so thirsty, it surprised him that they had any fluids left to sweat.

“Is that a house or are my eyes playing tricks on me?” Ángela squinted down the dusty road as she panted.

“It's
a building of some sort,” he confirmed. “Let's check it out. Maybe there's water.”

She leaned against him to catch her breath. “What if that's los Fuegos' headquarters?”

Jaime licked his chapped lips and took a deep breath. “Then let's pray they're sleeping and left the keys in the truck.”

It was a joke, but better to think about that than the more realistic truth—they had no other choice. They wouldn't survive another hour under this sun.

They dragged their feet to the house that slowly grew closer. It was a mobile home, rooted securely to the ground with an added wooden porch, and four times the size of Jaime's two-room house. There was a truck parked in front, but instead of being sleek with oversize tires like the ones los Fuegos drove, this one was battered and scratched, a result of many years as a farm vehicle. Jaime didn't get close enough to check for keys in the ignition.

A cow pasture stood half a
fútbol
pitch away from the front door. On the side closest to the rutted track stood a metal cattle trough. Water.

Jaime stepped on a strand of barbed wire and helped Ángela through the gap without getting snagged before ducking through himself. For a few seconds they stared at the half-filled trough. A quick glance around confirmed no water spigot nearby. Slimy green and buzzing with flies,
the water smelled as appetizing as sewage. Still, it was better than nothing. Vida didn't hesitate to lap up the muddy water that had seeped out underneath.

“What are you two doing? Get out of here.”