Vivian Divine Is Dead (7 page)

“Take care of yourself, right,” Nick says. “You couldn’t take care of yourself if it punched you in the face.”

“If you really don’t want to be here,” I say, “you can just point the way for me.”

Nick shakes his head. He stands up, retrieves two tacos from the blind man’s extended hand, and stuffs one in his mouth. “You’d starve to death. Or get eaten by animals. Or something equally
dirty and disgusting
,” he says, taking down the second taco before he sits back down. “We take care of each other, even people we don’t like. That’s how we
do it down here
.”

I take another long swallow of orange soda. “What’s your problem with me?”

He wipes his mouth, balls up the napkin, and throws it into the metal trash can. “You’re a spoiled brat. You have no problems,” Nick says. “You think your life’s so tough, but your rich mommy and daddy take care of everything for you.” He snatches my orange soda from my hand, takes the last sip, and tosses it into the trash. “You don’t know what real pain is.”

I can’t answer for a minute.
Is that really what he thinks of me?
I wipe my mouth, stuff the napkin in my pocket, and stand up. “If that’s what you think, fine. But you’re wrong.” My voice is shaking, and I’m glad the old man is blind so he can’t see how Nick’s words have torn through me. “I don’t know what pain is? My mom was murdered, my dad tried to commit suicide, and I had to pull the gun out of his mouth. I’ve got nobody left in the world. I wake up with nightmares every night. And I don’t know what
pain
is?”

Nick slowly stands up, holding his hands in the air. He looks at me, and his eyes aren’t mocking this time. “Okay, okay,” he says, kicking the ground with his shoe. “Sorry. Didn’t know.”

“Didn’t ask,” I snap.

We walk on, but he doesn’t tease me this time by running ahead. He waits for me, and we walk together, although several feet apart.

The darkness falls quickly. One moment there are streaks of light across the sky, and the next, the dark is so deep that only the thick slice of moon penetrates the black sky. The desolate flatland has shifted into a sparse forest, the trees getting denser with every step, so walking in the dark is even more difficult. My legs are pulsing with pain, and I can hear howling in the distance.

“What’s that?” I ask, unable to keep the terror out of my voice.

“Feral dogs,” Nick says. “They’re everywhere, and a pack of them will rip you to shreds. When my dad was still around, he’d take me on walks after he got off work. He didn’t want me to be afraid of them when it came my time to cross the border. He taught me how to scare them away by getting as big as I could, like this.” Nick stands up on his tiptoes and stretches his arms over his head. He does look pretty scary. “Never run; you don’t want them to chase you.”

“You won’t let them eat me?” I ask. I’m half kidding, but the other half is very, very serious.

“You wouldn’t taste good anyway,” he says. “Not enough fat. You’re all gristle.”

“Gristle?” I ask.
I’m all gristle.
It makes me feel a little tougher, like I’m pulled together out of weeds and spiny thorns.

“Yep, gristle,” Nick says, his arm bumping gently into mine. I notice that Nick and I are walking side by side now, and strangely, it feels normal, and kind of comforting.

“Did you ever try to cross the border?” I ask.

“Many times,” Nick says. “I learned English at school so I had an easier time than most, but it still didn’t work out,” he adds. “Besides, I have responsibilities here now.”

“Like what?”

“My godfather wants me to run his shipping business. I’m the closest thing he’s got to a son, and he wants to keep the business in the family. Besides, since my dad left, my godfather’s the closest thing I’ve got to a father, too.”

I scratch at the dirt caked onto my ankles, wondering why Nick sounds like someone dropped a weight on his chest and ordered him to carry it. “Do you want to run his business?”

“Do I want to? I don’t know. But it’s what I have to do.” Nick shrugs. “Don’t you ever do anything you don’t want to do?”

I think about the million things I have to do to be part of the perfect Divine family. How every day is scripted for me, from Mary being glued to my side, to constantly dieting to please Pierre, to Dad choosing the movies I star in.
Only Mom ever told me my future wasn’t written yet—that I got to write it.

“All the time,” I admit. “Sometimes I wish I could just do what I want, be who I want. I feel kind of stuck, like everyone’s making my decisions for me.” I stop talking, suddenly embarrassed. “Do you ever feel that way?”

“Yeah, I do,” Nick says grudgingly, but he looks at me with new respect. “I guess that means we have something in common.”

“I guess so.” I don’t want to admit it, but I feel better. Nick must feel some of the weight lift off him too, because his eyes don’t leave my face for a long time after that.

The moon is a glistening half circle in the sky by the time we reach his cousin’s house. It’s nothing special, just a small ranch home like on the studio’s “Downtrodden American Suburb” set. There’s a rickety garage beside the house, with a small speedboat rusting inside of it that looks like it hasn’t been used in years. Still, the house seems like a mansion compared to the handful of deserted lean-tos we’ve passed on the way here.

Nick’s cousin isn’t home yet, but the door is unlocked, so Nick lets us into the house. There’s not much furniture, just an orange couch in the bedroom and a wooden table with four mismatched chairs in the kitchen.

“Take a seat,” he says, pulling a pot out from under the sink and filling it with water.

I drop into a chair and lay my head down on the kitchen table while Nick takes two tortillas and a hunk of white cheese out of the refrigerator. He tosses them in a pan on the stove, and the smell of burning cheese twists my stomach in knots. I’ve never been this hungry before (except for all-night shoots for
Zombie Killer
, but then I had a nutritional regimen and a personal dietician), and I don’t like it.

“Local specialty, no crickets,” Nick says as he places a tortilla stuffed with cheese in front of me, and puts a glass of boiled water beside it. “You’ll love it.”

Love it?
When did I last love food? It’s been years since I’ve thought about anything other than the calorie count.

I grab the glass of water with both hands and drink it in one big gulp. “My ex-boyfriend never would have let me eat this,” I admit. “It has too many calories.”

“Sounds like a jerk,” Nick says.

“You don’t know the half of it.” It’s embarrassing to talk about, but for some reason, I do. “My boyfriend dumped me for my best friend. In front of a lot of people.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. I hate him.”

Nick’s eyes narrow into little slits. “Want me to kill him for you?”

Yes. Absolutely.
I shake my head. Nick pushes away his empty plate and inches nearer to me, so close I can almost feel the heat on his skin.

With his body so close to mine, I’m so nervous I’m shaking. “What about you?” I ask, stumbling over my words. “When did you . . . um . . . graduate?”
I sound like an idiot.

“Last year,” Nick says. “From an American high school in Mexico City.”

“Why an American school?”

“My godfather sent me there when I was thirteen.” Nick rolls his eyes. “He said I needed to learn English to run his company.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Lot of good it’s done me. Now I work as a courier for my godfather’s company, just shuttling boxes around. But I owe him,” he adds.

“For what?”

“He paid for my education from prison,” Nick says. “
Fifteen years
for tax evasion.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Just to scare people into paying their taxes. ‘But that’s the government for you,’ my mom used to say.”

“Used to?”

Nick looks away, suddenly too busy clearing our dishes to answer.

“Nick? What do you mean by ‘used to’?”

Shaking his head, Nick turns the sink handle and drops our dishes into the basin, the ceramic clattering together before sinking into the water completely.

“You don’t have to tell me.”
Did I say something wrong, or does he not want to talk to me?

“You’re just not at all what I would expect,” Nick says, turning around to look at me.

What?
Instantly pissed off, I sit back and cross my arms over my chest. “What do you mean by ‘expect’?”

Nick blushes. “From an American lost in the wilderness with only a stranger to keep her company.”

Good answer.
“Are you still a stranger then?”

But as his lips curl into a grin, I realize that he
is
still a stranger. And as much as I want to tell him the truth about me, I can’t. I’ve probably told him too much already. If he were to tell anybody who I am, I’d risk both our lives. Besides, I kind of like being anonymous. All my life, people have liked me because I’m famous, because I’m a Divine. But I think Nick’s even beginning to like me—for myself.

Chapter Nine

I
SWEAR
I’
VE BEEN ASLEEP
on the couch for only two minutes when I jolt awake, the house drenched in sunshine. Dust motes swim through the air, floating from sunbeam to sunbeam. I’m wrapped in a rainbow-patterned blanket, and Nick’s pulled a wool hat over my head.

When I walk into the kitchen, Nick’s wearing his white undershirt with just a towel wrapped around his waist, and his hair is dripping wet and curling into damp ringlets on his forehead.
Wow
.

It hits me that I didn’t lie awake last night, terrified of falling asleep to bad dreams; I just lay down and went to sleep, listening to Nick’s steady breathing.

“So where’s your cousin?” I ask with a slight smile.

“He never came home,” Nick says, and the half smile dies on my face. “Let’s wait a bit. He’s gotta come home before work,” he continues, handing me a glass of boiled water. “If you wanna take a shower, it’s in there.”

I down the tall glass of warm water and step into the small, tidy bathroom. It’s the complete opposite of Pierre’s bathroom, which is stuffed with expensive colognes and hair gel, but then again, Pierre has more beauty products than I do.
It’s our job to look good
, Pierre would say, showing off his bags of free swag he got from Etv! parties.
We’re in the biz-ness.
Yeah, right.
The business of being a scumbag.
I’m inventing ways to make Pierre miserable, starting with putting quick-acting hair remover in his shampoo bottles, when I hear a crash from the kitchen.

“Nick?” I call timidly. “Are you okay?” I open the door, and bright yellow egg yolk soaks into the spaces between my toes.
What’s going on?

“Stay there,” Nick says. He’s dressed now and crouched on the floor, surrounded by a yellow pool of yolk and broken eggshells. The ragged edges of the eggs look sharp, like broken glass.

“What happened?”

“Shut the door and lock it,” he whispers. “Someone’s here.”

What does he mean, someone’s here? Isn’t that what we’re waiting for? For his cousin to arrive?

“Go in the bathroom and lock the door,” Nick says again, and it slowly sinks in:
The man from the church. He’s found me.

My feet are iron weights on my useless legs. “Come with me.”

Nick glances over his shoulder, and then crawls across the kitchen floor to the bathroom, his knees dragging in the broken eggshells. “We’ll go out the window,” he says, locking the door behind him. He hoists the window up, then grabs my shoes and drops them out. “When I say it’s clear, follow me.” Before I can ask him anything more, he shimmies out the window. “Clear.”

Someone bangs on the bathroom door. I climb out behind Nick, my feet sticky with egg yolk, and he helps me down onto the bed of pine needles.

“Ouch!”

Nick claps his hand over my mouth to stifle my cry. As I pull my shoes on, I hear the dry crackle of wood splintering.
He’s breaking down the door.

“Follow me,” Nick says, pulling me to my feet. I wince as dry needles crack beneath my shoes. “This way.” He grabs my hand and we run into the safety of the forest.

I feel like we’ve run for miles, my hand tight in his, before Nick finally slows down. We’re in the thickest woods I’ve ever seen. Vines wide as snakes climb from tree to tree, making a woven forest canopy that blocks out the sky. A stream winds through the few drops of light that are filtering through the trees.

I lean over, my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. With each inhalation, my nose is filled with the rich scent of loamy soil. My feet are blistering in my shoes now, and the sticky egg yolk has congealed between my toes.
Yuck.
“Who was that?” I ask, my side splitting with pain.

“I don’t know. He looked like a cop, and down here, cops shoot first and ask questions later,” Nick says. “But whoever he is, he can’t find us out here, if we stay off the road. This forest is hundreds of miles wide. And if we head straight uphill, we can get to Rosales tomorrow.”

Looking around, I realize Nick’s right that nobody can find us here. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The only sign of civilization is a little wooden shack with a tin roof, a radio antennae sticking out of the top. The door is ajar, the scratchy sound of mariachi music leaking out of it. Inside, a woman glances up at us, her head still lowered over a small pile of dead fish. She slices into the bright red belly of a fish, never taking her eyes off us.

“Who is she?” I ask.

“She’s a Zapotec. One of the indigenous tribes that ruled Mexico before the Spanish arrived. My godfather calls them
perros
, dogs,” Nick says, shaking his head. “But they’re harmless.”

Outside the door, a small boy, wearing only a black cowboy hat and a red Coca-Cola T-shirt hanging down to his knees, reaches inside a tin barrel of water as tall as he is. With two fingers, he pulls out a giant bullfrog by the feet, its big mouth puffing out in protest.

With the boy’s oversized cowboy hat, he reminds me of old pictures of Dad, when he was a child actor in Western shoot-’em-ups. Dad says he got his craving for authenticity then, because the Indians were portrayed as bloodthirsty savages, but the cowboys were the ones who really did the killing.
Tell the truth
, Dad always says,
and the audience believes.

“We should keep going,” Nick says. He yawns, stretching his arms above his head, and his jersey lifts off his muscular back. In the middle of his lower back is the tattoo of a skeleton in a wedding gown. She’s holding a scale in her hands, and her eye sockets are empty, but she has a ghastly smile on her face.

It’s not like tattoos are new to me. Everyone in L.A. has a tattoo, but they’re usually some ancient symbol meaning eternal happiness or world peace, not something out of a horror flick. “What is it?” I ask, trying to hide my shock. I mean, I’ve kinda had a tattoo too. Last year I wore a heart sticker on my lower back for the whole summer, and by August, I had a bright white heart on my skin. Pierre called it a tramp stamp.
But at least mine was a heart!

“Santa Muerte,” Nick says. “When my godfather was in prison, I got it to show solidarity with him.”

A shriek of delight suddenly pierces the air. On the other side of the stream, the boy in the black cowboy hat dashes away from his sister’s swinging arms, running straight toward us. But when the boy sees us, he grinds to a halt. Dust swirls around his feet as he stares at us, unblinking, a terrified look on his face.

Then the boy starts yelling a word I can’t understand, over and over. It sounds like it’s coming from deep down in his throat. Each scream is like ripping a hair out by its root, and I clap my hands over my ears so that I can’t hear it again. The woman glares at us, her hand tightening around her sharp, bloody knife.

With the boy still bellowing, Nick yanks his shirt down over his back and grabs my hand. He hikes straight uphill, away from the village, his face filled with rage.

“What did that boy say?” I ask. “And why was that woman so angry?”
Or scared. She was definitely scared.
I stamp my feet, dust spitting up around my shoes. “What are you so mad about?”

“Why am I mad?” Nick stops beside a fallen tree trunk, where colonies of squirmy black insects are crawling around the pile of branches. He turns to me, and the anger drops off his face. His smile grows lean, mischievous. “Because he called you the White Devil.”

My mouth falls open in surprise. “The White Devil?”

“He’s just ignorant,” Nick says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it? A woman with a bloody weapon thinks I’m a demon and I’m not supposed to worry about it?

“But we’d better get going, devil girl, if you want to find food before nightfall.”

“Find? Like look under rocks? Or do you know of a taco stand around here?”

Nick grins, then leans over and wipes a bead of sweat off my face. My skin tingles where he touches it, and I feel my body being drawn toward his.
Hello? This is Nick, who calls me a spoiled princess and fools me into eating crickets.
But my head is dizzy with the closeness of him, and every cell in my body is pulling me toward him. Then he’s leaning in too, the space between our lips vibrating with heat.
He’s going to kiss me.

Nick pulls away suddenly, his eyes blazing. “Um . . . I’ll take care of it,” he says, dropping his gaze to the ground. He turns and walks into the woods.

As soon as I’m alone, my fear comes back, rolling over me in waves. The memory of that man’s gravelly voice in the church makes me shiver under my layers of sweat.
Did he follow me to Nick’s cousin’s house? What would’ve happened if Nick weren’t there to protect me? Nick’s right: I couldn’t take care of myself if it punched me in the face.
I fight the urge to curl up on the ground and cry. The only thing that stops me is the silence. It’s so large that Nick would hear me going totally fetal in an instant, because I can hear every sound for miles around. And then I hear something that makes my skin crawl:

The crunch of footsteps behind me.

I’m too terrified to look back, so I make myself a deal: count to ten, and then do it. By the time I get to five, all I can imagine is someone blowing my head off from behind, so I do it: I look back.

It’s not a killer.

It’s the boy.

Under the curved brim of his cowboy hat, he’s staring into the woods, focused on the place where Nick walked into the trees. The boy says something then, his voice anxious. I can’t understand anything, but he repeats the same word as before: White Devil.

I’m starting to get insulted.
Why did he chase me down if he thinks I’m the White Devil?
“Speak English?” I ask.

The boy shakes his head, and then starts speaking rapidly in his language. I can’t understand a word of it. It doesn’t sound like Spanish, not that I’d understand that either. He crouches down, smoothes out the ground in front of us, and draws something in the dirt with his index finger.

“A stick?” I say as a long, wavy rectangle finds its way out of the dirt. He shakes his head and draws a line coming out of it.

“A lizard?” He shakes his head again, his black cowboy hat falling over his eyes.

I hear Nick’s footsteps crunching on the dirt behind us. The little boy pushes his shaking finger into the ground again. He draws a circle coming out of the rectangle and looks at me, willing me to get it. It must have worked, because suddenly, I do:

A gun. He’s drawing a gun.

Panic surges through me.
Why would he draw a gun? Did he see that man following us from the house?
I squint into the thick green forest, and a shudder cycles through my body. I feel enemies hiding behind every tree, but besides the squirrel racing across a branch with a nut in his teeth, and Nick walking toward us empty-handed, there’s no one out here.
Nobody’s following us.

“What’s the kid doing here?” Nick asks.

“I don’t know. He followed me.”

“He must be hungry.”

Facing the little boy, I point to myself, shake my head, and then stuff an imaginary burger into my mouth. “We don’t have any food.”

The boy looks at Nick, then back at me. He repeats that word again, the one that means I’m the White Devil, and then he jumps up and sprints full speed down the road. We both watch him go, dust spitting up beneath his bare feet.

“Poor kid,” I say. “I can’t imagine being that hungry.”

“I can.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. I just stand up and dust off the back of my jeans, hoping Nick notices the effects of my weekly abs and butt workouts. He doesn’t. He just points to the boy’s drawing in the dirt.

“What’s that?”

Since when has a kid’s stick drawing been more interesting than my butt?

“I think it’s a gun,” I say, “but I don’t know why he drew it.”

“Probably because of this,” Nick says, pulling a small black revolver out of the side pocket of his cargo pants.