Nobody saw the whole school thing coming. Well, maybe some people saw it, but I sure didn’t.
It started when the government announced that it was going to increase the educational opportunities for everybody and make the whole system fairer. Then we heard that everyone was going to get the new supertablets and individual instruction in any field you wanted. Free. That was, like, really great. All these trucks started pulling up and unloading boxes of electronic stuff and passing it out like it was free candy or something.
What came to my mind was that there were so many around that the favelos wouldn’t steal them. The tablets were good. They had all the connections you needed, but the apps were just so-so. If you knew what you were doing, you could fix the apps, and I did. There were also some weird things going on in the registry. They spooked me out, but I fixed them, too. What I couldn’t fix, what blindsided me, was when they closed the schools. I was almost fifteen.
What did you need schools for if the curriculum apps were available? You could go over and over the material until you got it in your head, and the FAQ sections were intuitive and generally on the money. I took advanced math courses and dug them, but I missed hanging out in school. The word on the street was that the higher-level Gaters were hiring private tutors. The rest of us were on our own. It was nothing new, once you thought about it. It just was smack up in our faces for the first time.
I don’t know what it was about hanging out with other kids in school that was so good. I learned as much about the subjects I liked from the apps as I would have sitting in a classroom. But when school actually shut down I felt terrible. Something deep inside of me was going crazy, as if I was having trouble breathing. A friend said it was just because we were getting older, that letting go of being a kid was hard. I don’t know, maybe she was right.
I used to look forward to being seventeen. Now it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. If seventeen happens, it happens.
2
Every day for the next week I watched the minutes pass, and then the hours. The light outside my window changed the color of the ancient blinds from pale yellow to gray to charcoal brown as the sun slanted from across Rainey Park. María’s death pushed in on me, squeezed me against the walls, and I realized how quiet I had become. She just stopped singing, Ernesto said. That was what America had become. In the old films, families chatted around the dinner table, making smart-ass remarks over canned laughter and twisting their faces to show what you were supposed to think. I loved the old films because the people in them were so uncomplicated. It was as if they had nothing really to care about.
I thought that I had nothing really to care about.
Footsteps on the stairs. Clunk, tap. Clunk, tap. It was Ramon, and by the rhythm of his steps, I could tell he was in a hurry. Perhaps his toilet was stopped up again and he wanted to use mine. He would pee all over it and I’d have to scrub it down.
“Girl!” he called in a hoarse voice. “Girl!”
I got up quickly, moved across the floor in the darkness, and turned on the lamp. My bathrobe was hanging on the door, and I threw it around my shoulders. Through the opened door I saw his half-moon face close to me. His eyes were dark and shining. There was a fear in his manner.
“What?” I asked.
“Two boys down there,” he said. He pointed with a bony finger toward the floor. “They ask for you.”
“They said my name?”
“Yes!” He nodded furiously and his eyes grew wide.
I thought of going back to bed, of ignoring whoever it was, but I knew I would never go to sleep. Who were they? Maybe the old man was wrong and they didn’t know my name. Maybe they were just asking for a girl.
“What did they say?”
“They said Dahlia Grillo!” The bony finger was pointing up. “You can run to the roof and come down in the back where the cleaner’s used to be!”
“What do they look like?”
“One is in a wheelchair, and the pajaro is walking!” The old man wiped at his chin. “Rafael is downstairs. He has a pistol in his jacket.”
A wheelchair?
“I’ll come down. Tell Rafael not to go away.”
“You should run!”
“What do they want?”
“Maybe they’re looking for a woman.”
“One in a wheelchair and the other is gay? I don’t think so.”
I put on my jeans and a sweater and followed the old man downstairs. He stopped every few steps and peered down, like a cat. The smell of fried garlic came up to meet us, and I felt better.
From the window on the first floor I saw them. Two white boys. They were in the street next to a small van. It looked like some kind of military vehicle. Wheelchair Boy looked anxious. The other one sat on the bumper and had one leg crossed over the other. He looked freaky. I went downstairs and to the front door. Rafael was standing near the front gate. His hand was in his pocket, and I knew he was holding his gun.
The boys looked at me. I couldn’t tell how old they were, but they were young. The one who the old man described as gay seemed confident. Either he had beautiful eyes or he was wearing eye liner. His hair was streaked with colors.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked.
“Someone who wrote an article on computer projections for the Math Journal,” Wheelchair Boy said. “Dahlia Grillo. Do you know her?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Javier.”
“Michael,” the other one said.
For a moment, I thought they were making up the names, but then a flash hit me and I wanted to look up again at the boy who was standing. I thought I knew him.
“Why do you want to see this … what did you say her name was?” I was not looking up.
“Dahlia Grillo,” Javier said. He was smiling slightly. I didn’t like him.
“Why do you want to see her?”
“You live here,” the other boy said. “You know what is going on in the world. How screwed-up things have become. But there are people who want to change things. Mostly young people.”
He looked away, down the street. I checked to see what he was looking at, and there wasn’t anything to see. We looked back at each other and he started talking again.
“There’s going to be a conference in London of people from around the world who have the idea that we can save the world. I’ve been invited to the meeting and want to bring some people with me. Very bright people who want to redirect the way the world works. There’s a bit of a crisis going on. The Central Eight—you know who I’m talking about?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Okay. They’ve leaked a report, or maybe it was hacked, that they expect a two-percent growth in the economy next year. They’ve been feeding us zero growth for years as some kind of balanced utopia, and now they’re going to start heating things up again. That’s got to be either impossible to pull off or very painful to somebody else. Or it could mean that C-8 is going to expand.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“So?”
“So the Eton Group—that’s what the Brits call themselves—is organizing the conference to see what can be done,” Michael said. “I would like to take an American team with me. Seven or eight good people who care about doing something positive. I hoped that Dahlia Grillo would be part of that team.”
“From what we’ve heard, she has mind-blowing math skills.” Javier spoke again. “Someone in California saw an article she wrote in the Math Journal. She’s smart enough, but we’re leaving for the UK in two days, so we need her on board quickly.”
“If I see her, I’ll tell her,” I said.
“I’ve got a handout you can show her,” Michael said. “If she’s interested, there’s a number she can call. We need the best people we can get. I know the Brits are sharp, and I know they can’t handle the job by themselves. There are people all over the planet forming small resistance groups. The C-8 companies know about us, but they don’t
see us as a threat. And I guess we haven’t been up to now. But if the two-percent figure is right—I just want to know whose veins they’re going to take it from.”
His voice trailed off. He looked serious.
“We’ll wait for her call,” Javier said.
“Who is we?” I asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m somebody who thinks that a group of us can make a difference,” Michael said. “I’m getting together other people who at least want to try. Or maybe they see that doing nothing when you see evil means that eventually you become part of that evil.”
“Could be,” I said.
“You don’t trust us.” Javier was smiling again. “That’s a good sign. Trust isn’t worth a lot these days.”
“Neither are words,” I said, wishing I hadn’t.
“Yeah, that’s true, but if you happen to see Dahlia”—Michael stood and extended his hand to me—“tell her we really need her.”
“You say the English call themselves the Eton Group,” I said. “What do you call yourselves?”
“The Resistance,” Javier spoke quickly.
“Not very original,” I said.
Michael shrugged and held out his hand again. It was soft and cool to the touch.
I looked away from his eyes.
Then they started to leave. The old man and Rafael stood at the door, watching them. I turned and saw Mrs. Rosario looking out of the doorway. We watched as the motorized wheelchair went into the back of the van they were driving. It looked like Wheelchair Boy was getting into the driver’s seat.
“You want me to run and shoot them?” Rafael asked.
“Not yet,” I said, smiling.
Rafael smiled back. He told me not to trust them. “They don’t know you are Dahlia,” he said. “They come tomorrow and we’ll tell them we don’t know her or you.”
I kissed the old man and shook Rafael’s hand. He took the pistol out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was old and rusted around the barrel.
“If you need me …,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered.
3
I rushed upstairs and to my dresser. Bottom drawer. Photos. A folded program from my mother’s funeral. Two notebooks. Then, still in the manila envelope they came in, two copies of the Math Journal. My heart was beating faster as I opened the envelope and turned to the page where I had not resisted the urge to put in a bookmark. There, under a picture of me trying to smile, was my name—Dahlia Grillo.
They had seen my picture. They had known who I was.
Footsteps in the hall. For a wild moment I thought it was the boys coming up the stairs, but then I recognized the pattern of the steps. Mrs. Rosario.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” she said. “Come down and help me cook.”
I didn’t want to cook, but I wanted to be with Mrs. Rosario. She reminded me of my Dominican heritage more than anyone I knew. She was memory in the way she walked, the way she moved.
She took me by the arm. She smelled of onions and garlic, and my arm felt good against the side of her heavy chest. We went down to her apartment, and it was warm and inviting. My mind was racing, and I could feel the excitement in my legs. The boys had read my article on computer modeling and said they wanted me. If they had pushed me harder, if they had said “Come right now!” I might have done it.
We cooked. I was cutting up the meat. Mrs. Rosario said that it was pork, but the small bones told me that it was goat.
“One time, maybe a thousand years ago, two boys came to visit me.” Mrs. Rosario’s voice was low, husky. The voice of a woman who had lived. “They wanted me to go camping with them. They were going to climb some mountain—Pico Duarte, I think, I don’t know. I had to ask my mama, but I had to ask in a way that made it seem like I didn’t want to go. You know what I mean?”
“Did you want to go?”
“No, because I thought they just wanted to do the bang bang with me,” Mrs. Rosario said. “I didn’t want to do that, but at the same time I wanted to go. My mother grabbed a wooden spoon and chased them from the house.
“They took another girl, a skinny girl named Lisette, and they went off for a whole week!”
I put flour on the goat meat and dropped it into the heavy skillet. It sizzled nicely as I pushed it around with a fork.
“When I was very little,” Mrs. Rosario said, “a woman told me that women in love always cooked with their fingers in the pot. I used to turn the meat with my fingers. You get lots of nice burned fingers that way.”
“So what happened to the other girl?” I asked.
“Nothing. She swore it and I believed her, but her reputation was ruined anyway. No woman in our village thought the same of her after that. I think they felt as I did. We were mad at her but a little envious.”
“You were lucky you didn’t go,” I said.
“That girl was stronger than I was, but her reputation was ruined,” Mrs. Rosario said. “All my life I wished I had gone with those boys. I think of it a hundred times a year. Most of the time I imagine being out there in the rain, on Pico Duarte, and being cold and shivering as I huddle between them. Even today I love the taste of rain. It brings back memories of what I just imagined. Isn’t that strange? Nothing happened, but you remember what you thought might have happened?”
We took the seared meat out of the pan and put it in a bowl as the cooking garlic filled Mrs. Rosario’s kitchen with its magic odors. I scraped the pan and put the little bits into the bowl with the meat.
“Don’t be afraid of adding salt,” Mrs. Rosario said. “When you’re cooking, a time comes when you have to take a chance. With the spices, with life.”
My mind was already racing ahead, much too fast for me, much too close to the edges. Thinking became impossible even as I kept telling myself to think.
I put salt and red pepper on the meat and put it back into the black iron skillet in big handfuls. Mrs. Rosario pushed the meat around with a wooden spoon until each piece had touched the hot iron of the ancient utensil again. Then we added the canned tomatoes and oregano. More stirring. We turned the heat down and poured cold chicken broth into the center. It smelled good, and I thought that maybe I would eat it.
She talked as she mashed some of the chick peas with chili flakes, adding just enough water to make them mushy. Woman stuff. Good.
“Not too much, not too much,” she said as she lifted the salt with her fingertips from her palms and sprinkled it on the meat.
I knew the mushy peas would go in first, and then the whole ones later. The fragrant smells were filling me up, comforting me.
“Did you ever speak to the girl?” I asked.
“To Lisette?”
“Yes.”
“At first she was upset because people thought of her as a bad girl.” Mrs. Rosario leaned against the table. “Then she began to walk with her head up and her back straight and look everyone in the eye. When I spoke to her, she said, ‘Who I am is who I am!’”
When we were finished cooking, Mrs. Rosario called in the old man and Rafael. Rafael brought a young girl with him. She was eight, maybe nine. She sat at the far end of the table, at Rafael’s elbow, and bent her head slightly forward to see me at the other end.
The old man was talking about the van the boys had come in. He said that it was probably an old army vehicle.
“Maybe bulletproof!” he said with a nod.
“You can always shoot the driver,” Rafael said. “Even if the glass is shatterproof, a good bullet goes right through.”
The little girl was looking at me, watching me. Big, dark eyes that questioned me from five feet away. Who was I? Would she be like me one day? I was closest to her age. I was the next step in her life.
“They might have got your name from the school records,” Rafael said. “They’re selling the lists of students to private teachers. They sell everything these days.”
Mrs. Rosario was watching me too. She was thinking about the time when she could have gone away with
some boys.
And who were these boys? I had glanced at the handout they had given me. It was the same crap that everybody knew about. The Central Eight had become a huge force that ruled the universe. If C-8 had been around at the time of the Incas, virgins would have been sacrificed in the volcanic heat of their power. C-8 postured like they were some kind of modern gods, while the poor, the old, the millions of children scurrying like roaches around the world were supposed to thank them for their very existence. Taking C-8 down wasn’t the work for strange boys with a half-assed idea.
There had been other groups that had tried to stand up to the Central Eight. They had protested in mass meetings, had locked arms and tossed flowers at the police, had done all the crap people did, and then had gone away to their own little holes. The boys had said they were going to a conference somewhere. Big deal. What difference did it make? They would be beaten back, knocked down. Maybe killed if they were too convincing. What difference did anything make anymore?
Like my cousin, they would see the futility of it all and stop singing.
But the boys had asked for me. They had known my name, had read my piece in the Math Journal. I was breathing faster just thinking about it. What were they going to do? I thought of Mrs. Rosario thinking about the boys who had come for her. What would she have done? What was she telling me to do?
I had remembered Michael. He had fronted a band known as Plato’s Cave, or something like that. It was hot for about three years and he had made buckets of money with music the zines had called the Flare sound. They’d start with one melody over a hard driving beat, follow that up with a different melody over a counterbeat, and then bring them closer and closer together until they overlapped. It was edgy and frantic and I liked it a lot. Then, in the middle of a concert in Australia, had Michael walked away from it all. Some people said he had just made enough money, and some said he was working on something new, but his band died after that. I heard he had been accused of supplying money to some kids in Oregon who were protesting something, but that didn’t make the papers for more than a day or two. Hardly anything did anymore.