Yeah, I think. Sure, you have. Like you knew I was coming. I didn’t decide to come here until after I got back to the compound. But I don’t bother to correct her.
“You did the best you could,” Auntie Min tells me.
“Yeah, whoop-de-doo,” I say. “Householder’s safe and the person who tried to kill him is in jail. But Josh is dead. Doesn’t seem like much of a fair trade to me.”
Auntie Min nods. “The boy had so much potential. And I’m very disappointed in the young jaguarundi.”
“Was it the same deal as with the dog clans?” I ask. “Was she bound?”
That gets me a snarl from the dog cousin Jimmy. I give him a cold look.
“I’ve got things to do,” I tell him, “but I’ve got time to beat the crap out of you, you want to have a go at it.”
Before he can respond, the woman Lupe steps in front of him.
“I apologize for Jimmy,” she says. “He seems to forget that there is no longer a blood feud between your people and the East Riversea Blue Dog Clan.”
I look from the pissed-off faces of Jimmy and his sister, back to the woman.
“Yeah?” I say. “And why’s that?” “All bindings were broken, but we have sworn fealty to Marina Lopez and she would not wish us to engage in hostilities with you.”
Knowing that Elzie did the shooting of her own free will makes me even more pissed off, but I also know the crazy plan originated with this guy Nanuq. I just can’t believe she bought into it.
Jimmy makes a grunt in the back of his throat and Lupe turns, fast, assuming a fighter’s position. “You want to run the pack?” she snarls. “Then come on. Give it your best shot.”
If Jimmy had a tail, it’d be between his legs. He stares at the ground and shakes his head. Ana also looks cowed.
“I get why you did what you did,” Lupe says, turning back to me. “I’d probably do the same if strangers came after my pack. But the only thing that makes it okay between my people and yours is Marina. You understand?”
“I think she’s breaking up with me,” I say.
That gets me a wolfish grin from Jimmy.
Sure, yuk it up.
“So maybe you’ll still get a chance to take a run at me,” I say to him. I’d love to take the scumbag down.
Lupe shakes her head. “Breaking up with you doesn’t change how she feels about you. It just means she likes someone else more.”
Someone else? I hadn’t even thought of that. I just assumed it was the gang life that was making her back off. But as soon as Lupe says it, I know. I mean, really, it was always there, wasn’t it? They were probably the only people who didn’t know—or at least one of them didn’t.
“Josh,” I say.
“Bingo.”
Damn, that’s messed up. I might have fought to stay together if it was only about the gang life, but how do I compete with a dead guy—a dead guy I liked?
And she’s been mooning over him forever. I remember trying to console her when we were in the otherworld. Thinking about what came after that gives me a flicker of hope. But it dies just as quickly. Who am I kidding? I knew it was over the moment I saw her in the crowd at city hall. She’ll never feel anything like that toward me.
There’s a strange, tight feeling in my chest. I grip the tire iron a little harder and know I need to focus on something else. I’d like it to be this Jimmy asshole, but I have bigger fish to fry.
I turn to Auntie Min. “So, do you have a line on where we can find Nanuq or the remaining condor brothers?”
“I think so. But Theo, this is something that needs to be handled with diplomacy. Nanuq’s voice is listened to in many councils.”
“You wouldn’t last a minute with him,” Cory adds.
I shrug. “I owe it to Josh.”
“But he’s—” Lupe starts, but she’s smart. She doesn’t finish.
Losing Marina to Josh—even to the memory of him— doesn’t change anything between Josh and me.
“Don’t go after Nanuq,” Auntie Min says. “That’s not the way we do it.”
“I don’t care. It’s the way I do it. Will you just tell me where he is?”
“Not if you plan to harm him. Killing him now will only drive more cousins to his cause. Even just trying will make all of you young cousins look bad.”
Lalo nods. “As I explained to you earlier, nothing makes a better recruiting tool than a martyr.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But if he’s not around, will anyone even take up the cause? Is there someone just as dedicated and ruthless waiting in the wings? He’s the one that sent Vincenzo, who killed Tomás—one of your own elders.”
I look at Cory, who’s been uncharacteristically quiet. “And he would have killed you, if you were easier to kill,” I add. “He’s responsible for Lenny being dead, and now Josh. Are you really telling me you can just let it slide? Because I can’t.”
Cory’s always hard to read, but I can tell he’s uncomfortable.
“It’s politics,” he says.
“No, it’s bullshit.”
He glances at Auntie Min. “Yeah,” he says. “It pretty much is. But it’s how the elders handle things.”
Auntie Min sighs. “Why must you be so difficult, Theo? We’re trying to avoid further violence.”
“You should have thought about that before you got Josh killed.”
The pain in her eyes is real. I know she didn’t want things to turn out this way. “You seem to forget. We were trying to prevent bloodshed,” she says.
“What happened to using your poster boy as an ambassador between cousins and the rest of the world? Oh, that’s right. You got him killed.”
There’s a disturbance in the air behind her and I get a glimpse of those big moth wings of hers before she gets a rein on her temper.
“You will leave this to us,” she says.
I shake my head. “That’s not the way I roll. You want to avoid bloodshed, I’d advise you to stay the hell out of my way. Because I’m going to find this guy and when I do, he pays.”
“With a tire iron?” Auntie Min says. “Do you remember how well that worked with Vincenzo? Nanuq is far more powerful.”
I lift the tire iron. “This was only insurance in case a bunch of you decided to jump me.”
“We would never—”
“And I’m not so stupid. I know it’s not enough to deal with him. For that I’m going to see some brothers in L.A. and get me some real firepower. Crips up there know gunrunners. I figure they can set me up with something with real stopping power.”
Auntie Min closes her eyes. “Can somebody talk some sense into him?” she says.
No one speaks and I walk away. No one tries to stop me, either.
I’m tempted to blow into the barrio on my bike and break some heads because I really need to hit something right about now. But I know I have to play this smart.
First up, talk to J-Dog. See if he can hook me up with somebody in L.A. to get what I need.
Then I need to find a cousin to help me track down Nanuq.
I smile as I get to the parking lot and swing my leg over the bike’s saddle.
And I know just the bloodthirsty little coati girl for the job.
I don’t think I can do this. I’m already hanging on by a thread, but standing here at the front door of Josh’s house … I know I’m going to lose it.
I saw him die, yeah. But this feels even more real. This is the house where we spent so much time together, except he’s never going to be here again. No more hanging out in the backyard. No more grabbing our boards and heading for the park, or the boardwalk. No more jamming late at night, earphones on, our instruments plugged into the computer.
But his mom needs to know, and I’d way rather she hear it from me than the Feds.
Knocking on this door is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Until my knuckles hit the wood, I could still walk away. But as soon as the sharp rap is echoing through the house, I’m committed. I can
’t back out now.
Donalita stands beside me, her palm resting on my back between my shoulder blades. It’s such a simple connection, but so soothing. I don’t know why she’s still here with me when she could be off doing whatever it is that cousins do, but I’m grateful and I tell her so.
“Dude,” she says.
Just that, and nothing more, but it says everything. I don’t get a chance to figure out what that means for us, how I feel. The word’s still echoing in my head when the door opens and Naomi is there, her eyes puffy and red.
She knows.
“Oh, Des,” she says as she steps out on the porch and opens her arms.
I don’t know which one of us gets more comfort out of the embrace. I could stay like that forever, but we finally step back from each other.
“Detective Matteson just left,” she says. “Were … were you there?”
“Yeah … we were trying … it was a Wildling thing …”
She gives a sad nod. Her mouth is trembling. “Are you one, too?”
“No, I …”
I almost say that I didn’t draw the lucky card in the Wildlings sweepstakes, but then I think of what our lives have become since this all started—what happened to Josh—and I can’t finish the thought because I don’t believe it anymore. Instead, I just look helplessly at Josh’s mom.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Donalita says, and Naomi seems to notice her for the first time.
“Thank you. I—this is hard. Are you one of Josh’s friends?”
She nods. “Through Des. I didn’t know him well, but I really liked him.”
Naomi’s eyes fill again with tears. She wipes them on her sleeve. Clears her throat. Motions toward the door.
“Did … did you want to come in?” she asks.
“No, I—” can’t, I want to say. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to walk through that door again. But I just say, “My parents will be worrying. We came right here from, you know, the rally.”
Naomi nods. “Of course.” She hugs me again. “Your coming here means so much to me,” she says, her mouth close to my ear. “Go home and hug your parents. Please come back when you can.”
I swallow hard. Her eyes are filling yet again and I will lose it for sure if I stay any longer.
“I—I’ll come by. Soon. When I can.”
She nods.
“If you need anything—” I begin.
“You’re a good boy,” she tells me. “Josh was lucky to have a friend like you.”
She wipes her eyes again and slips back into the house, closing the door behind her.
I stand in front of the closed door for a long moment before I turn to Donalita. She puts her arm around my waist and steers me back to the street.
“We’ll get through this,” she says.
We, not you.
But I’m not sure that’s true. The “getting through this” part. They make it look so easy in the movies. The characters feel bad, maybe there’s a montage of past good times, then they carry on.
How do they carry on?
What do you do about that big black hole in the middle of your chest?
I’m not sure if I need to cry or puke.
I always knew it would be bad when Mamá found out about the otter living under my skin. Given her fanatical religious beliefs, how could it not? But I never dreamed it would be as bad as this.
It’s my own fault. I’m just barely holding it together when Lupe sees me to the top of my street and I continue home on my own. Mamá and my stepfather are waiting for me in the living room, and when they ask me where I’ve been, all I can think of is Josh lying dead on the stage at city hall, under that awful “Humans for Humanity” banner.
The rally was to support Householder’s bill, the one that would imprison people like Josh and me in camps because we’re unpredictable and dangerous. But it’s Josh who died to save that fat pig of a congressman. Householder gets to live and keep spreading his hate, while Josh—the sweetest, most empathetic guy I know—is gone.
So when they ask me where I’ve been, I tell them. I tell them everything, and Mamá has a complete meltdown.
A couple of hours later I’m still sitting in my room, but now I’m listening to two sets of parents arguing over what to do with me. Mamá’s first solution was to take me to a priest to have the demon exorcised, but when my stepfather, Jim, finally convinced her that wasn’t possible, she insisted that they turn me over to the FBI, where she says I’ll be safe. What she means is, everybody else will be safe from me.
They were still arguing about this when Papá and Elena arrived.
The four of them have been at it for at least another hour. Papá blames Mamá for this happening, Elena is crying. Weirdly, my stepfather is the voice of reason. Quiet Jim, who never raises his voice and certainly never gets in between my parents when they go at it. No church or Fed camps for me, which is good. But he does want to send me to live with his brother’s family in Wisconsin until this all blows over and we have a better sense of what’s really going on and how it affects me.
Of course, nobody asks what I think. What I might want. I’m just this freak that they have to deal with.
The worst thing is how they’re scared of me. I can hear it in their voices. They talk about having to keep me away from my little sisters, as though I’d ever hurt them. Mamá thanks the saints that I didn’t attack Ampora. All of them agree that I can’t mix with regular kids because it’s too dangerous. For the other kids.
Maybe they have no idea that I can hear every word they say. Maybe they don’t care.
But more awful than any of that is the one thing I keep circling back to over and over again, like a crappy drum loop that just won’t quit.
Josh is dead.
I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t get it out of my head. It breaks my heart. I’m sick to my stomach. I’m cold and clammy. I feel like I’m burning up.
Tears don’t help. If they did, I’d have been cured hours ago. But around and around it goes, everything circling back to the body of the boy I love lying dead on that stage.
I don’t know how to make it stop.
I can’t just sit on my bed and stare at the wall, listening to parents and stepparents discuss my fate. I tried going online, but it doesn’t help. The blogs are full of what happened at the rally.
I read several, out of some morbid curiosity. An argument’s raging about whether Josh was part of the attack on Householder, or if he saved him. Householder is quoted as saying that this is exactly why stronger measures are needed to deal with the Wildling problem.
But as I keep clicking from blog, to news report, to blog, something interesting emerges. The news footage proves that Josh did deliberately save the congressman’s life. Apparently, there are so many video recordings of the event that even the most pigheaded, stupid person could see that when Josh leapt onto the stage, he wasn’t going for Householder. He was jumping in the path of the bullet. I don’t click on any of the videos. I couldn’t bear to see Josh murdered a second time.
And now Congressman Householder does a complete aboutface. I hate to admit it, but I have to give him props because instead of denying and lying, and basically being an asshole like every other politician and celebrity who gets exposed in some scandal or other, Householder immediately retracts his previous position on Wildlings. He says he’s withdrawing his bill, and offers his condolences to Josh, his family and friends. He also says that in light of what happened this afternoon, he wants to convene a committee to re-evaluate the whole Wildling issue.
I didn’t see that coming.
It’s not worth Josh’s life, but it’s something.
If only my parents would do a little of this re-evaluating. But from the conversation going down in the living room, it’s clear that’s not going to happen. There’s no Maybe Wildlings aren’t dangerous. It’s just a matter of Where do we send her?
I’m this close to asking Lupe to get me out of here. She gav
e me her number before she left me at the top of my street. All it will take is one phone call.
And then what?
I need to ask somebody for some advice. Just a day ago, Theo would have been the obvious choice, but how do I face him, having slept with Josh last night?
I could try to contact another of the cousins. Auntie Min. Cory. But I don’t feel like I know or trust them enough to ask for their opinions about what I should do. It’s not just about tonight. It’s about my whole life.
In which Josh is dead.
Eventually I start a text to Des: Grounded forever. How about you?
But before I can send it, I get one from Ampora, of all people. Asking me if I’m okay. Telling me how sorry she is about what happened to Josh.
I don’t know how to respond.
She has no clue that the interest she had in him was only because of pheromones, which Josh wasn’t in control of at the time. She probably has some huge romantic notion of how their relationship might have gone, and wants to talk to me about it. I imagine how much more she’d hate me if she found out that before he died, Josh chose me.
I sit there staring at the phone for a long time before I finally punch in Lupe’s number. I don’t know her well, either, but at least I know that she thinks she owes me. If I go with her, no one’s going to be able to make me do anything I don’t want to.
I have no idea what I want. But I need the decision to be my own.
My call connects.
“Marina?” Lupe asks.
“Can you get me out of here?” I ask.
There’s a moment’s pause before she asks, “Do we need to come in soft or hard?”
I imagine a pack of dog cousins rampaging through the house, roughing up my parents.
“I don’t want anyone hurt,” I tell her. “I don’t even want them to know I’m gone until somebody bothers to come into my bedroom looking for me.”
“I’ll be right there,” Lupe says.
The party’s going strong when I pull into the clubhouse. Music blasting. Laughter and shouting. A typical bash at Casa Ocean Avers. Some guys are hanging around the back porch, along with a girl who sits on the steps with her head between her knees. An early casualty of the night’s festivities, I’m guessing.