Until I Find Julian (6 page)

“Whew,” Angel says. “A rich guy.”

Julian? No. As I count the numbers on the door, I see that it's not Julian's place. Of course not. “I wrote about him while we were in the truck,” I tell her. “You can read it later.”

She twitches one shoulder. “What is he doing here, anyway? Making money?”

“He's not here anymore. At least, I don't think so. This is just where he was.”

I walk up the street, searching. “If I had enough money,” he said once, “I'd put up a little house in
el norte,
or maybe even a tent. I'd farm a bit, and draw foxes at night, and the birds and geese during the day.”

And there's his house, in the middle of a row of houses; most of them seem empty. They're attached and lined up the way Lucas lines his toy blocks along the floor. The roofs are flat. You could run on top of those houses from one end of the street to the other.

Julian's house doesn't look friendly the way ours does at home. Charcoal paint has chipped off in spots, showing paler gray underneath; the front steps list to one side. And the square bit of grass in front is brown in spots. But it isn't that. Maybe it's the windows with the faded curtains that hide the inside from the street.

I shiver. Who'd want to live here?

I think of our house, the stray cat curious, her sharp claws reaching through the cracks in the boards, the sun drawing square patterns of light across the bedroom floor and the kitchen wall.

Please let Julian still be here in this terrible house, waiting for me.

I dream about what could happen next. I'd bang hard on the door. As he pulled it open, he'd mutter, “Who's making all that noise?” and I'd be standing there.

Angel taps my shoulder with her fingers. “I guess I'll leave you here.”

In the middle of nowhere?

“So long, Matty.” She takes a few steps away. She doesn't look like her usual take-charge-of-the-world self.

“Where are you going?”

She raises one bony shoulder. “Anywhere.” She keeps going, walking faster, swinging her arms, as if she's forgotten all about me.

“Angel?” My voice is loud, almost as bossy as hers.

She doesn't turn, but she stops, her hands on her hips, her sharp elbows out like a pair of triangles.

“Want to hang out for a while?”

She doesn't answer.

“Help me find my brother?”

“You can't do that alone?”

I open my mouth, ready to say
get lost,
but her voice sounds strange, garbled, almost as if she's trying to hold back tears. She's all alone. Maybe she needs a friend. Maybe that's why she was so willing to help me.

“I guess I can't,” I make myself say.

“All right, then.” She walks toward me, sneaker laces flapping. “I'll stay, but only for a couple of days. I have a bunch of things to do. Do you think I can waste my whole life with you?”

“No,” I say. I see she's trying not to smile. I see how happy she is. So I'm right about her being lonely. And then I remember hearing her whisper a name in the truck. What was it? Dario? Desiderio? “Who's…Danilo?” I ask.

“How should I know?” She wipes her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Let's go,” she says, back to her bossy self. “Do you want to stand here forever?”

I take a breath and go up the cracked cement path to the middle house. The bell is broken. I knock a few times, then turn the handle, but the door doesn't budge; it's locked, of course. I listen, but inside, everything is still. I stand on tiptoes to peer through the window on top.

The living room, if that's what it is, is almost empty: no rug, no chairs; only a couch, a table full of scratches, and a TV.

A TV! We don't have one at home. We don't have an iPhone or an iPad, or any of those things I hear about in school.

“Someday,” Mami said, sighing.

Angel doesn't wait for me. “We'll go around the back,” she calls over her shoulder. She cuts across the weedy lawn and disappears along the side of the house.

She's impossible.

I follow her, though. What else is there to do?

There's one backyard for all the houses. It's filled with junk: an old tire, pieces of wood, a table turned upside down. Four brightly colored wooden birdhouses hang from a tree. They match the birdhouses that hang over our door. Julian!

I circle around to the steps and glance up to see a fuzz of green trees in the distance.

Angel is in the kitchen, her hand on the faucet; rusty water runs in the sink. She shrugs. “The door wasn't even locked.”

She motions to me, still on the step. “Move it, Matty. We don't want the whole world to see we've broken in.”

I shake my head. “We didn't break in,” I say as I go inside. “It's Julian's place.”
Was
Julian's place? “Besides, it was your idea, Angel.”

The water runs clear in the sink now, and Angel takes a sip.

How strange. There's nothing in this kitchen of Julian's that I recognize. “Almost empty,” I whisper. There's a smell of sour milk.

“Not exactly. We haven't looked in the cabinets yet. And there's an old cup in the sink. A plate, a spoon, a bowl of half-eaten cereal, and a half-eaten piece of toast on the counter.”

I nod. The cup in the sink is half filled with dried-out coffee.
“I can't start the day without it,”
Julian said.

“Your brother isn't going to win any prizes for keeping a neat house,” Angel says, and hesitates. “Maybe he left in a hurry.”

How can I tell her about Julian? That he's usually neat, that he's a terrific cook, and when he talks, he always has his hand on someone's shoulder.

Outside, someone is walking a dog. Angel looks up. A flash of unease crosses her face. She puts her finger to her lips and runs out of the room.

We're far from the border now. We don't look as if we belong. And we certainly don't belong in this house.

I stand back, peering out the window to see a woman on the sidewalk. As I turn to follow Angel, my arm grazes the bowl on the counter. It tilts, spins! I reach out, too late, as it smashes on the floor.

I'm frozen, listening. Outside, the footsteps stop. Maybe I should open the door and tell her who I am, ask if she's seen Julian. But I don't know that many words in English. It won't help to say:
The cat is scrawny.

Scrawny.
I love the feel of that in my mouth.

And what about
Clouds are puffy
?

Puffy,
a good word too.

Julian taught me those.

I try to remember what I know, and begin to whisper to myself: the days of the week,
broom
and
sweep, fish after work.
What else?

But suppose the woman outside calls the police?

Another word:
illegal.

I can't take a chance.

I skirt around the broken bowl and the lumps of cereal and dive into the bedroom behind Angel, closing the door. I check to be sure the long curtains cover the window in case the woman peers in.

A clock with a dusty face stands on a small table; the hands have stopped at twelve. When I pick it up the battery falls out: the whole thing's a mess. Was it even Julian's?

I look out the window. The woman is gone. I sink down on the edge of the bed. The closet door is half open, and there are clothes inside. Julian's clothes? A pair of jeans, the hems in strings, and a pair of sneakers as worn as mine, with rubber missing at the toes.

I turn. On the bed is a patchwork quilt made with red and yellow squares. It lights up the room, even though it's a little torn, a little dirty. It's come a long way. I flip it over, and in neat dark stitches, I see the initials, Mami's and Abuelita's.

I run my hand over it, patting it, almost the way I'd pat the cat's head. If only I could find Julian. I'd fly home like one of Julian's birds and be there in time for dinner.

“What's going on with you?” Angel bangs her hand on the door molding.

She sees too much.

I don't answer. Instead, I pull open the drawer in the clock table. Inside, Julian's flashlight rolls around, and there's a small package of batteries in the back. I reach for the lamp, but nothing happens.

“No electricity,” Angel says.

I take one of the batteries and slide it into the back of the clock, which begins to tick immediately.

Back in the living room, we sit in the dark. A spring from somewhere deep inside the couch suddenly pokes up between us, with an odd sound.

“Boing,” Angel says, and we both laugh.

I like Angel's laugh; it's almost as if she's trying to catch her breath, sucks it in, and begins that small
uh-hu
again.

A streetlamp goes on—it's so strange to see it—shedding a path of light across the couch.

It isn't much, but enough to see a pile of mail scattered on the floor that's come in through a small slot in the door. I hesitate. Should I look at it?

It's not mine. And no one I know would write to Julian.

I glance at Angel. She has a sour look on her face. Her mouth is pursed like a bird's beak.

She reminds me of the old woman at home. I pull Felipe's pad toward me.

The house halfway down along the creek where the old woman lived. Her dark hair, shot with gray, was always pulled back in a bun, with pieces of hair flying into her face. She wore jeans that must have belonged to someone much bigger than she was.

She seemed to know when I was wading in the creek, bending over to run the cool water over my head, singing the frog song with my cracked-egg voice.

“I need peace,” the woman yelled.

I looked up. She was standing at her door with a broom in her hand.

I backed away toward the bank of the creek. Was she going to swing at me with it?

Yes. She moved forward; I moved back. We were like the fighters in the ring I saw one summer night. If she landed with that broom, I'd be like the fighter who staggered around with a bump on his head the size of a rock.

But Julian splashed in behind me, scooped me up with both hands under my arms. We headed toward home along the creek, my feet hanging just above the water, laughing.

“Don't tell Mami,” I said. “She'll want me to stay out of the creek.”

“How about Abuelita?”

“Neither one.”

We sat at the edge of the creek close to our house.

“That old woman is mean,” I said.

“Abuelita says she's not mean; she's miserable.”

“What do you say?” I asked.

Julian tilted his head. “She's a little wretched, I guess.”
Wretched
.
An English word. I could say it with my teeth together and my mouth barely moving. Wretched!

Julian skipped a stone into the water; then he ran his wet hands through his hair.

I didn't bother to tell him that his head was full of mud now.

Instead, lying there on the edge of the creek, we held our faces to the sun.

“Wretched,” I said again.