The Painted Boy (20 page)

“Let me get changed and leave a note for Tío,” she said.

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7
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IT WAS ALMOST
dawn before Jay became aware of his surroundings. As soon as he did, his heart sank. He was still in the desert that existed sideways to the world where he’d woken the dragon and killed a man. He might want to think of that place as “the real world,” but so far as he could tell, this other desert had just as much substance as the one he’d left behind.

He could feel the dirt under his knees. He could smell the desert all around him. His throat was scratchy and dry. He could hear quail and doves and the rustle of a snake as it moved through the dirt nearby.

No, this world was real. It was just a different kind of real.

He was stiff from the awkward position he’d slept in. As he stretched, arms overhead, he realized there was someone sitting a few feet away. Lupita. She grinned when she saw he was awake.

“I’ve never seen anyone sleep like that before,” she said. “You know, on their knees with their face pressed against the dirt. Is that particular to dragons?”

He dropped his arms. “Not now. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

“That’s usually the best time for a joke.”

He shook his head again. “You have no idea what I’ve done.”

“Sure, I do. I was up in the rafters watching the whole show and I really had to scramble when you brought the roof down. But you were right. They’re a great band.”

“Lupita, please . . .”

“Please, what? You’re not going to go all morose on me now, are you?”

All Jay could do was look at her.

Lupita shrugged. “Well, it seems like you are.”

“In case you don’t remember, a friend died and I just killed someone.”

“He deserved it.”

“That’s not the point. Whether he lived or died wasn’t up to me to decide. And Anna was totally right. I could have stopped it all from happening in the first place. But no, I had to make some stupid bargain instead. I should have just knocked that pool hall down around their ears when I first got there. Then they would have known I was serious. Then they wouldn’t have messed with any of us.”

Lupita shook her head. “And you’d be no better than them. You took the high road. You didn’t just lash out
before
they did something. That’s how
they
do things.”

“But if I had shown them I meant business, Margarita wouldn’t be dead.”

“You didn’t kill her, Jay.”

“Right.”

“Your friend’s death is awful—I get that,” she said. “But look at what else happened: You got in touch with the dragon part of you and you didn’t lose control.”

“How can you say that? I almost killed everybody in the hall.”

“
Almost
, but you didn’t.”

“I don’t see how that makes much of a difference.”

“Do you see a bunch of old dragons standing around, waiting to lay down their judgment on you?”

“No.”

“That’s because they came and checked out the ruin of the dance hall, decided you were cool, and then went back to whatever it is that dragons do. Sleeping with their faces pressed into the dirt, maybe.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I try,” Lupita said, pretending not to hear his sarcasm.

Jay thought about what she’d said.

“They were really here?” he asked. “A bunch of dragons?”

Lupita nodded. “Everybody’s talking about it. They showed up like they owned the place. They were in all shapes and colors. Big and small. Black and white and Asian. They had some big discussion, and then they left. Remember what I told you about the feathered serpents down south? Don’t you think that if these dragons had thought you were a problem they’d have found you by now and shut you down?”

“I guess.”

“And, anyway,” Lupita said. “It’s not up to you to deal with El Tigre. He’s not your responsibility.”

“But that’s what dragons do. We protect.”

She shook her head. “If you get rid of him, somebody else is just going to come along and take his place. Maybe somebody worse. At least El Tigre keeps most of his business out of the barrio.”

“But the
bandas
make everybody miserable. Everybody’s scared of them, and with good reason. Look what happened to Margarita.”

“The only way you could make it better,” Lupita said, “would be if you took charge. And that means you’d have to stay here. Not just for a week or a few months. You’d have to stay here forever, because as soon as you leave, someone else will be sniffing around to take El Tigre’s place.”

“I could do that,” Jay said. “I could live here.”

It would be a way for him to atone for what had happened to Margarita.

But Lupita shook her head as though she could read his mind.

“You can’t do it out of duty,” she said. “You have to do it out of love.”

“Love? You mean I have to be in love with someone who lives here?”

Lupita gave a small laugh. “I’m not talking about how you feel about that cute guitar player you’re all gaga about. I’m talking about the barrio. About the land under the barrio. The desert. You have to love this patch of the world with all its warts and blemishes.”

“Oh.”

“And you’d have to get Señora Elena’s okay.”

“Who’s she?”

Lupita shook her head. “Ask Rita.”

“You mean the woman from the pool hall?”

“What you’re getting into is the business of the big cousins. It’s not stuff anyone like me should be involved in.”

“Why not?”

Lupita sighed. “Remember? Jackalope equals joke?”

“Not to me.”

“That’s sweet, but it doesn’t change anything. If you want to know more, you really need to talk to someone like Rita.”

“I don’t know,” Jay said. “She seems to have her own agenda.”

“Everybody has their own agenda—that’s the way the world works.”

“Even you?”

She grinned. “Even me. Though mostly I’m about staying off everybody’s radar and having fun. You remember fun, don’t you?”

She gave him an expectant look, but Jay was too preoccupied with what she’d said about agendas. He supposed he must have one, too. He just wasn’t sure what it was. Would staying here be something he did because it was what he wanted to do, or because it was a duty that Paupau had laid on him? He was the one who’d put his finger on the map to choose Santo del Vado Viejo, but she was the one who’d had him do it. To complete his training, she’d said. That made it sound temporary. But if he took on the responsibility of protecting this place, Lupita had already told him that he couldn’t simply walk away later, because that would only make everything worse for those still living here.

And even if he did decide to become the protector of the southside barrios, who said he was good enough? He’d called up the dragon and killed a gangbanger, but he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d done it, and Amada Flores was no common gangbanger. Jay knew that if he made the decision to stay, eventually he’d have a confrontation with Flores.

“God, I really have to think about this,” he said.

“You should have some fun first,” Lupita told him. “The best way to think about something is to not think about it. Then before you know it, the thing you need to figure out comes bubbling up from somewhere in the back of your head and you’re all ready to go. But in the meantime, you’re not sitting around all moody and unhappy. You’ll never get that time back, you know.”

Jay shook his head. “No, seriously. I have to work this out.”

Lupita sighed. She studied him for a long moment, then abruptly stood up and vanished. Jay blinked. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to that.

I’m not sure
how long it is—maybe fifteen minutes later—when Lupita reappears.

“Here,” she says, and drops a school notebook onto my lap.

It looks just like the ones that Rosalie gave me back when my life was only mildly messed up. A pen is clipped to the front cover.

“Where’d you get this?” I ask.

“From your room. I couldn’t find the one you’d already been writing in so I just grabbed a fresh one.”

If she couldn’t find the other one, that probably meant Rosalie had it. Which also meant she’d read it, looking for clues as to where I’d gone. Great. So now she knew the full depths of my obsessing about Anna. But I supposed that was the least of my worries. It wasn’t like Anna was ever going to talk to me again. Probably none of them would after I’d let Margarita get killed.

Then I realize that Lupita had to go into Tío’s house to get this.

“This was all you took, right?”

“Ay-yi-yi. Now you think I’m a thief!”

“No, of course not. I don’t know what I think.”

“I thought it would help,” Lupita says. “Like when you wrote in it before. But now you’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

I shake my head. “No, I’m not mad,” I tell her.

At least not in the angry sense, I add to myself, but there’s always the possibility I’m going out of my mind.

“You’re right,” I add. “Writing things down did help me put it all in perspective. Thanks.”

She pulls a burrito wrapped in waxed paper out of her pocket.

“Here, I brought you this, too,” she says. “To give you the energy to think.”

“Thanks.”

I unwrap it and take a bite and my mouth explodes with spicy flavors. The filling might even beat Tío’s, and that’s saying something.

“This is really good,” I tell her once I’ve swallowed. “Where did you get it?”

“I made it.”

I lift my eyebrows.

“I’m not totally useless,” she says.

“I didn’t think you were. You just never struck me as the homemaker type.”

“There’s lots you don’t know about me.”

I nod. “There’s lots I don’t know about
me
.”

She pokes me with her finger.

“Don’t start brooding about that, too,” she says. “Everybody’s got a piece of the stranger inside them. It’s what lets us surprise ourselves and keeps things interesting.”

“Everybody doesn’t have a dragon that could wake up and smash everything around them.”

But she disagrees with me again.

“Everybody’s got that, too,” she says. “Their dragons aren’t always so literal, but if they get out of control they can do all kinds of damage just the same.”

“I suppose.”

She grins. “Eat. Write. Work your way back to the dragon boy I used to know.”

Then she gives me a jaunty wave and she’s gone again.

“That doesn’t surprise me anymore,” I say to the empty place where she was a moment ago.

But I’m lying.

I finish the burrito and drink some of the water that Lupita also brought me. Then I find a piece of shade under a stand of palo verde and mesquite. With my back against the trunk of the mesquite, I open the journal and try to catch up.

I write for at least an hour, but it doesn’t help. All the things that have happened in the past twenty-four hours or so have been about doing and surviving, and not so much about reflection. I read it over, trying to find something I can hold on to, something that has meaning, but it’s not there.

What I need is a new perspective. I roll up the notebook and shove it in my pocket. Standing up, I get my bearings, then go up into the mountains along the trail that Ramon took me to, what seems like a lifetime ago.

The trail I’m following isn’t the exact same one. It’s not a hiking trail in this desert, and it doesn’t take the same winding route up the mountainside, but there’s still a kind of path I can follow, and it does seem to go in the same general direction. I don’t know who made it. The Native people, maybe, or cousins. Or it could be a game trail, beaten down by the hooves of deer or bighorn sheep. I wouldn’t know.

It takes me a few hours, but by mid-afternoon I’m finally at that lookout Ramon showed me. I drink the last of the water—I know I’m going to regret that later—and sit down on a big rock to take in the view.

I needed this. When I look out on the vast panorama—the sweep of the desert below the mountains, untainted by buildings and roads, no matter how small; the blue expanse of sky above without a single jet contrail—I really know I’m outside of everything. My problems seem small and insignificant, remote from this place, from me, from anything of importance.

I lean back until I’m stretched out on the rock, the back of my head on the rough stone. I stare up into the endless blue for a long time and I let it take me away. When I wake up, the day’s gone and so is most of the night. The dawn pinks the distant horizon and I watch as the sun’s light intensifies and slowly spreads across the landscape.

I realize I’m thirsty and that’s when I notice the two water bottles and what must be another burrito. I look around.