Vivian Divine Is Dead (6 page)

Chapter Eight

A
FTER HEARING MY NAME
, I duck behind the altar, and I’m too afraid to move for over an hour. Even after the gunman leaves, I stay frozen in place, my eyes peeled open as the priest gets a rag and cleans the urine off the floor on his hands and knees.
How did that man know I was here? What does he want from me?
Those questions repeat endlessly in my mind until the priest folds the dirty rag and leaves the church, closing the front door softly behind him.

I sneak back into the other room and force myself to close my eyes on the hard little cot.
I can’t handle this
, I repeat to myself, clutching the cheap cotton mattress with tight fists.
I should just go back to L.A.
and take my chances. It might be better than this.

The morning finally comes, after hours of alternating between sweat-soaked fear, my eyes pinned open, and deep, exhausted sleep, plagued by nightmares.

“Ines?” Nick’s voice hits me at the same time the smell of coffee fills my senses. I sit up on the cot, my back stiff from the thin mattress.
It was just a nightmare.
I pick up the lukewarm cup of coffee on the floor beside my cot, already feeling a little better.

“You made it through your first night of poverty?” Nick sneers. “How’d you like it on the other side?”

I shrug my stiff shoulders, the sound of the man growling my name rolling over me.
What if he’s still here?
My coffee spills over the side of the cup and splashes on the floor.

“You okay?” Nick actually sounds slightly concerned, and the sound of his voice helps chase away the memory of the man’s low growl, the smell of urine, the knife-sharp edges of my real name.

“I’m okay,” I say.
What am I supposed to say? Somebody wants to kill me? I’ve been lying to you about who I am?

I take a long drink of the bitter coffee, and it dribbles out of my mouth and runs down my chin.

“Somebody call the servants,” he says, and claps his hands twice.
So much for concern.

I wipe my dripping chin with my tacky black T-shirt. “Shut up.” I scowl.

Across the room, the woman with the long braid opens a woven basket, and the little girl bounds across the room toward her, the baby lamb at her feet. The woman hands the girl a tinfoil package, and then calls across the room to Nick.

“
¿Tienes hambre?
” she asks, shooing the baby lamb away from her ankles.

“
Sí
,” Nick calls back.

“What’d she say?” I ask him. “And what did you say yes to?”

“So you know the word for yes,” he says. “That’s a start.”

I glare at him.

The little girl pads across the room and drops the tinfoil package in Nick’s lap.

“
Gracias
,” Nick says, and she squeals in shy pleasure as she dashes back to her mom’s side. Nick quickly unwraps the tinfoil package, revealing two corn tacos with something green oozing out the sides, and hands me one of them. “Guacamole,” he says when I look at it suspiciously. “What, are you afraid to eat it?”

“Um, yeah. It’s from a
stranger
,” I point out.
How do I know she’s not trying to poison me?

“Never mind,” Nick mutters under his breath. “I’ll eat them both.” But when he tries to take the poisonous green taco back, my traitorously hungry stomach wins out, and I stuff it in my mouth and devour it in two bites. It’s creamy and crunchy and salty, and gone way too fast.

“I want another,” I insist, holding my palm out for the other one.

“You want
mine
too?” Nick asks angrily. “Do you ever stop wanting?” He rolls his eyes in my direction, but then his face quickly transforms into a smile. “Sure,
no problema
,” he says, peeling his taco open and laying it flat on my upturned palm.

Inside, in a straight line across the tortilla, are a dozen dead crickets.

I think I’m going to puke. “You jerk!” I snap, ignoring how everyone in the room is turning to watch me. “Were there crickets in my—”

“Local specialty,” Nick interrupts. “But they tasted good, didn’t they?”

I glare at his grinning face, summoning up the right words for how much I hate him, when the priest steps into the doorway.

The room drops into complete silence. My anger at Nick dies in my throat, and fear surges through me as I remember the priest on his hands and knees, wiping up the urine after the man finally left.

“
Buenos días
,” the priest says, his voice sounding much prouder than it did last night.

“
Buenos días
,” the little girl says, breaking the silence.
“Gracias.”

The priest nods as the room rings with a chorus of “
gracias, gracias.
” He bows his head slightly as each person steps up to say thank you. But after the priest nods politely to Nick, he turns to me. The smile instantly slides off his face and his jaw tightens into a quivering line. His previously compassionate eyes turn hard, unreadable.

“
Gracias?
” I say, hoping the smile returns to his face. It doesn’t. Instead, he continues to stare at me, his forehead wrinkling in anger. Slowly, every person in the room turns and stares at me.

“
¿Cómo te llamas?
” the priest asks me.

My mouth feels sticky and dry. I shift uncomfortably, averting my gaze to Nick. He’s glaring at the priest, his fists curling up by his sides.

“
¡Estás en peligro y estás poniendo toda esta gente en peligro!
” the priest says, moving so close to me I can smell his coffee breath.

“What’s he saying?” I ask Nick, my voice trembling.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick says. “He’s just a crazy old man.”

Now everybody’s staring at me. “Nick? What’s going on?”

Nick throws the priest another sharp look before translating for me. “He says you’re in danger, and that you’re endangering us all by being here.”

Black edges into my vision as my legs strain to hold me up.
Don’t pass out now.
The priest bursts into another rapid litany of Spanish, nodding at Nick to translate. Nick glares at the priest before turning to me.

“He says you have to leave now and never return,” Nick says. “He says you’ll be the death of us all.”

It feels like a fist is closing around me, tightening until I can hardly breathe.
They’ve found me. I’m trapped here, and these people are trapped with me.
The priest is still glowering at me, but there’s more fear than anger in his stare.
Who was he talking to last night?
People are backing away from me as if I’ve caught a contagious disease. The girl’s mother shoots knives with her angry glare, and the mariachi band mirrors her expression.

“
¡Vete!
” she yells at me.

“
Por favor te marchas,
” the driver says, pointing to the door.

My eyes are filling with tears. I’m standing in front of a firing squad, and they’re yelling directions I can’t understand.

Trying not to cry and failing miserably, I walk as fast as I can out of the room. Nick’s words echo through the room behind me, getting louder until he’s practically shouting. I can only imagine what he’s saying about me: how he knew I was evil all along, how he’d tried to get rid of me but I followed him onto the truck, begging for him to save my pathetic life.
Of course Nick hates me. I put all those people in danger. Everyone could have died because of me.

I run up the aisle and out of the bright gold church, letting the door bang closed behind me. As I emerge into the hot air, I wipe my tears off with the back of my hand; white streaks run down my grimy fist.

When I reach the end of the courtyard, I glance back at the church, imagining people with pitchforks chasing me.
Is that how it ends, with a pitchfork in my back?

The courtyard’s still empty, but I hurry up the road anyway, hoping I’m walking toward Rosales. Dust swirls around my feet, coating my shoes and ankles in a layer of itchy brown powder.
I have to get to Rosales. I have to find Roberto and get to the safe house before that man finds me.

Behind me, a door creaks open. Footsteps pound across the courtyard.

“Ines!” Nick yells.

If he’s coming to say good-bye, he can keep it.
I continue walking, watching the dust add layers to my dirty skin.

“Wait for me!” he yells.

So you can tell me to go away, like everyone else?
I walk faster, spitting my words behind me. “I’m going to Rosales.”

Nick catches up to me, grabs my arm with his cold fingers, and pulls me to a stop. “I know the way.”

I wriggle my arm out of his grasp. “I’m gonna be the death of you, remember?”

“That old fool thought you were someone else,” Nick says.
Is he trying to make me feel better?

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself,” Nick says. “Besides, you can’t go alone. You’d never survive out here without me.”

We’ve been walking this dirt road for hours, with nothing but the occasional tree breaking the endless brown horizon, and my feet hurt like they’ve been run over by a train. Spying a boulder on the roadside, I stop and rest my aching soles.

“How much further?” I ask.

“Tired already, princess?” Nick says, stopping a few feet ahead of me and looking back.

“Stop calling me that!”

“Is it not true?” Nick asks innocently, and then raises his voice to a higher pitch. “I can’t touch a lamb! I don’t want to sit in the back of a truck! I lost my bag and I can’t find it myself! Give me a break.” He shakes his head and continues to walk up the road, kicking the dusty ground with his feet. “Coming?”

“Nope.” I let myself sink to the ground and lean against the boulder. My jeans are immediately coated with a light brown dust. “Not with you.”

Nick stops again. He turns around, but he doesn’t make a move to come back and get me. “Is any of that not true?” he asks.

I jump to my feet, my Gucci sneakers kicking up dirt. “I
did
hold the stupid lamb!” I yell at him. “And I sat in the back of the truck, even though it was dirty and disgusting!”

“Dirty
and
disgusting?” he mocks.

I stomp my feet into the dirt, and the flying dust makes me sneeze. “I don’t know how you live down here,” I say, covering my face with my sweaty elbow and sneezing into it, “but at home, we don’t make our guests eat
crickets
!” I start hiking up the road, cursing all the four-letter words I know under my breath.

Nick just whistles as he watches me go by. “Nice words for a fancy lady.”

“You made me use them!” I say over my shoulder.

In two large steps, he catches up to me, grabbing my elbow and yanking me to a stop. “I didn’t
make
you do anything,” he says. “Don’t blame your petty problems on me.”

Petty problems?
Anger races through me, and I remember the judo move I learned for the all-night shoot of
Zombie Killer. I’ll show you petty problems.
I wrap my hand around his right wrist and twist as hard as I can. He yelps, his eyes widening in surprise, and he drops my arm. I storm past him up the road, and this time, he backs up a bit as I pass him by.

I’ve lost track of time by now. Everything looks the same—dry and deserted and kind of . . . vacant. And since Nick and I aren’t talking, everything sounds the same, like stale silence, and I’m so thirsty I can feel only the dry itchiness of my throat.

Not a single car has come by, and I’m thinking maybe the apocalypse has come, that humanity has been wiped off the earth or something, when we turn a corner, and there’s a dumpy little taco stand on the roadside. Beside the rusty taco stand is a red cooler and a single card table, shaded by a ratty blue tarp. I have no idea who his customers are, but the old, blind man looks like he’s been waiting for us.

Nick speaks to the man in Spanish for a moment, and then turns to me. “Taco?”

I shake my head. “Water.”

Nick opens the cooler, and inside there are a few orange sodas. He hands one to me, and I pop it open and drink it half down in one breath.

“Take it easy,” Nick says, and I drag it away from my lips. “
Dos tacos
,” he says to the blind man, who nods at him, pulls a package of stuff out of the cooler, and drops it all on the grill. “You need to eat,” Nick says.

“How do you know what I need?”

Nick sighs.

“But thanks for this,” I say, gesturing to my orange soda. I pull out a plastic chair and drop into it. “Don’t you have to pay?”

“He knows my cousin Antonio,” Nick says. “He’ll pay him later.”

“Are we far from your cousin’s house?”

“We’re only half a mile away,” Nick says. “If you can make it that far, Antonio will drive us to Rosales.”

“I can make it.” I glare at him, secretly hoping I really can make it to Antonio’s house without lying down and dying of exhaustion by the roadside. “I told you, I can—”