No: Guadalupe was a tapestry built from jagged and mismatched pieces that, with care, could find a fit. Unlikely shapes, from a myriad of sources, joined by skilled hands and the eye of a believer. The broken, the lost, and the hidden from view, made into something new…
Linda McDonald stood in the entranceway and laughed aloud. All the hours she’d spent on that damned speech, sifting through words, searching for ways to make the metaphors less clichéd—while all the time, if she’d just stood here and looked, her speech would have written itself.
Ah well. There was always next year.
11:19
Eleven minutes away from Guadalupe Middle School, a car reversed out of a driveway. Its driver paused to take off a black baseball cap, dropping it onto the lumpy black gym bag that sat on the passenger seat, then shifted into Drive. He drove past the large neighboring homes, streets quiet but for the blower of a gardening service. At the main road, the left-hand turn signal went on. The car joined the light midday traffic, heading away from San Felipe.
11:20
Olivia
The session on a cop’s life was going well. There were some unexpected faces here—the presence of Chaco Cabrera gave Olivia pause—but either the troublemakers had decided to know their enemy, or they just wanted to stare at a heavily armed woman for fifty minutes. Then again, maybe Linda had assigned them here for reasons of her own.
At least they were paying attention. They laughed more or less where she wanted them to, and their eyes grew big at a couple of the war stories she’d run past Linda to make sure they weren’t too graphic. So far, nobody’d fallen asleep or surreptitiously checked an illicit cellphone.
Olivia managed to keep her hand off the butt of her gun, and thought she was striking a decent balance between the romance of the job and the tedium. As for its dangers, well, that was sure to come up during question time. Which would be asked first: Have you ever shot someone? Or, Have you ever been shot?
In either case, her answer would be the same: No.
But she’d be touching wood when she said it.
11:50
At ten minutes before noon, all the threads about to come together at Guadalupe Middle School gave a twitch of motion. The lunch bell sounded. At the far end of the county, Taco Alvarez, sitting beside his lawyer at the defendant’s table, looked up at the clock and wondered how his brother, Angel, was getting on. Five miles away, Bee Cuomo’s father glanced down at the printout of the latest #speakforbee outrage, then took his hands off the wheel long enough to tear it to shreds and throw it out the window—although when he later found the two pieces that blew back inside, his rage would flare up all over again. On the other side of town, a framed picture of Mina Santos looked on as her mother wrote a check to the security consultants she used to keep her family safe. On the other side of the world, a man sat in a darkened office and studied the list of names on his computer screen. Closer to home, Thomas Atcheson tried to remember why he had married Brendan’s mother.
As all these things were sending vibrations down their respective threads, a car pulled into an industrial lot that was forty-seven minutes’ drive from Guadalupe Middle School. The driver, whose face was all but invisible behind the brim of a dark baseball cap, seemed to know where to go. The car pulled through the rows of anonymous white delivery vans and stopped behind the main office building.
11:52
Brendan
In his rush out the door that morning, Brendan hadn’t made a sandwich, and forgot to stick any protein bars in his pack. He had money, of course, but the idea of the lunch line made him feel a little sick. It was less than three hours to the final bell now. The idea of going home to his letter and disc, that unmade bed, and the running faucet and scattered books…
He might as well just shoot himself.
But taking the final step was proving harder than he’d anticipated. He couldn’t even send Jock a text because he’d have to explain why he hadn’t made his move yet. Still, the office was always packed during lunch. It would screw up his timing. Maybe get some air first? Run through everything one last time in his head.
There was a basketball game on—but he wasn’t going to join in. And after today, what would it matter? Anyway, he probably shouldn’t leave his backpack unattended.
11:54
Linda
The staff lounge was filled with the guest speakers and parent volunteers. Señora Rodriguez thrust a plate in Linda’s hand before she could offer to help. Linda politely furnished it with one of the small sandwiches and some carrots, then started working her way around the room to thank the guests.
The three afternoon-only speakers had yet to appear, so she kept an eye on the front drive, to catch them if they arrived—and, equally vital, to guard against a return of poor Mr. Cuomo.
Other than that distant threat, the guest luncheon was going marvelously. Who’d have imagined that a forensic technician and a near-blind weaver would laugh so heartily over a dry remark from a professor of Japanese history? Or that one of the volunteer mothers would prove so fascinated with the work of the organic farmer?
The threads of community, indeed—or rather, disparate pieces, lost and found and brought together.
Nothing was going wrong. Her worries were childish.
11:54
Gordon
“Your wife tells me you knew Bee Cuomo.”
Gordon looked around in surprise as the school psychologist dropped into the empty chair beside him. Dr. Henry was one of the school figures he recognized but had barely spoken with, a short, squat, intense woman with wild curls and beautiful milky-coffee skin. She was now peering at him through the bright orange frames of her glasses.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Bee Cuomo. Linda says you knew her.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I met the child a couple of times, back in September.”
“What did you make of her?”
“In what way?” Gordon set his sandwich back down on the plate.
“I’m trying to figure out how the girl became so important to Nick Clarkson in such a short time.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.”
“Why not? And go ahead and eat, you’re obviously needing your lunch.”
He obediently took a bite, following it with a swallow of tea before he replied. “I’ve never had children, and never been in a situation to know a lot of them, so I’m not sure I’m the best judge, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met a child quite like Bee Cuomo. She was…fey.”
“‘Fey’ as in elfin? Or as in otherworldly?”
“Both, I suppose. She’d look at you with this absolutely direct gaze, and at the same time give the impression she was looking somewhere else. Or perhaps listening to something you couldn’t hear. If you’d told me she read minds or saw the future, I wouldn’t have been entirely astonished. And she was completely fearless. She’d talk to anybody. One day out on the playground, a couple of us were moving toward this pair of eighth-grade boys who were clearly about to go for each other’s throats, and out of nowhere, Bee Cuomo walked up and said something. Both boys just froze and looked down at this strange little mite, completely befuddled.”
“What happened?”
“Eventually one kid answered. And Bee said something else and their fists came down slowly, and the three of them talked for a minute. When she walked off, they stared at her like they were too stunned to remember what they’d been arguing about. I always wondered what it was she’d said.”
“Fey.”
“Or brain damaged.” She looked up, startled, and he smiled. “As I said, I never knew any kids this age before Linda came here.”
Dr. Henry nodded. “She’s doing an extraordinary job. A year ago, a lot of adults wouldn’t have ventured into the yard during lunchtime.”
“She bullied the District into giving her the moon.”
“Including my expanded hours here. But it’s not just what they gave her. It’s what they got. Linda’s good. She listens. Mor
e than that, she’s made sure the teachers are listening, too.” She stood up as abruptly as she’d arrived. “Okay, thanks.”
The woman hurried away, leaving Gordon to stare at her back…then decide that a breath of fresh air might help clear his mind before the afternoon session.
11:55
Forty-seven minutes from Guadalupe Middle School, a long white Ford van pulled out of a company lot. As it drove down the busy street, one car after another pulled irritably around it. The driver remained oblivious—either distracted by some internal dialogue, or cautious over the unfamiliar dimensions of the van.
Or perhaps the driver’s caution had to do with the contents of the van. Since the only windows were in the front, none of the passersby could tell if there was equipment, or livestock, or something else back there that jostling would endanger.
Had anyone been close enough to see—
No one was. So the van continued on its anonymous, inexorable path.
11:58
Mina
People figured Mina Santos for a Mexican-American until they heard her Spanish or saw the lunches her mother fixed. Mina was getting pretty fluent, but Español was only her fourth-best language, not as good as her mother’s Farsi, her father’s Portuguese, or the English they all used at home. Mostly she just let people think she was Hispanic, since saying she was Iranian carried the risk of racist comments or boring conversations about terrorists and head scarves.
The day was almost warm, and Sofia had grabbed a table in the sun. Mina sighed as she took out her insulated lunch bag with the folded paper napkin and the little plastic boxes, wishing for the thousandth time her parents would let her buy lunch. Instead, every day here she was, unpacking her containers of rice and pickles and the flatbread that her friends thought was a really lopsided tortilla.
She guessed that for her mother, it was like the phone-tracking app: safe food to keep her safe.
Putting their only daughter into public school, letting her have a bike and the freedom to use it was probably enough for traditional parents to worry about. Especially after last year. For a while after Gloria’s murder—when Mina had helped the witness, hung out with a weird old man, and nearly been murdered herself—Mina lost all her freedoms: bike, school, friends. No cellphone, even, until Mâmân realized it was better to have her in touch. Good girls did not get involved with murders, ride all over town, or deceive the police—and far worse, her parents. It took months to work her way back from that, months of tears and threats and bargains and obedience. Mina was still in what her father called a deficit of trust.
She didn’t like to think what they’d do if they found out the things that were going on at school.
If tidy boxes of her mother’s cooking was the price to pay, Mina would shut up and eat them. Anyway, she could always find someone willing to trade the kebabs and pulau for a bologna sandwich or school-lunch taco.
Today she ate quickly, since she’d spotted the principal’s husband walking toward the basketball courts with Tío, and she might be able to get another lesson out of him before the bell rang. Mr. Kendrick was one of the most interesting people she knew. He reminded her of some of her mother’s friends, the ones who’d fled Iran when the mullahs came in. When she heard Mr. Kendrick had lived in New Guinea and spoke Pidgin English, she asked him about it, and he promised to teach her. Pidgin wasn’t really a language, and it sometimes made her laugh—like when the nut on the end of a bolt was called mama bilong skru or sky was ples bilong klaut, and my home was asples bilong me. (When something broke it went bagarap—“bugger” meaning something so rude in English-English it made Mr. Kendrick change the subject, which was kind of cute. She’d had to Google it.)
Foreign languages were the baddest thing ever.
She made sure Sofia was okay with her going, then headed toward the courts, where she found Mr. Kendrick holding the ladder so Tío could hook up a new net. They were talking in Spanish—Mr. Kendrick’s wasn’t nearly as good as hers—and they greeted Mina in that language as she came up. Then Mr. Kendrick shifted to Pidgin—Tok Pisin—to ask if she was enjoying her day.
Haltingly, she told him that she liked what the principal had said during the assembly (the miting bilong olgeta skul), but was sorry she couldn’t hear Sergeant Mendez talk about being a policewoman (meri bilong polis). Mr. Kendrick listened. When Tío had finished and carried the ladder away, she and Mr. Kendrick sat at a picnic table to Tok Pisin.
Mina might be only thirteen (until next month!) but she knew people thought her pretty. She was also aware—both from boring maternal lectures and uncomfortable personal experiences—what female prettiness did to boys and men. And she was grateful for men like Mr. Kendrick who could treat her like a human being instead of giving off all kinds of creepy hormones.
She trusted him. Sure, he was old enough to be her grandfather, but he was still male. And since another parental crackdown would mean private school for sure, she’d made a point of asking both parents if she could spend time with her principal’s husband—in public, out in the open, no closed doors in sight—for the purpose of learning a new language. Naturally, they insisted on coming to school to meet him—like that wasn’t embarrassing—but Mr. Kendrick was easy about it, and Papa seemed to approve of him and Mâmân ended up treating him like a sort of uncle, so that was fine.
She liked the old fellow. Well, all the girls did, in a giggling sort of way (it was his English accent, mostly), but Mina was learning from him, and not only Pidgin. He had a lot to say about the world and how it worked. And although he had a habit of turning aside any direct questions about his past, something about the way he glanced at her sometimes made Mina suspect she reminded him of someone. Someone whose memory made him sad.
11:59
Coach Gilbert
Coach, being a part-timer, usually came to school just before lunch hour. Not that he was paid for that, but he figured it was useful to have another adult wandering around the playground (they didn’t call it a playground, but if these kids weren’t playing, what were they doing?). Anyway, it gave him an excuse to keep an eye on Nick.
Today he’d arrived at school first thing, but when the 11:50 bell rang, he gravitated as usual toward the outdoor tables and courts. Not as a coach, although if one of the kids asked him onto the courts he was happy to go. And not as an authority figure, although he could be that, too, when trouble rose up.
No, Coach was just there as part of the background of life at Guadalupe. Sometimes he sat with Nick, although he tried not to make that a habit. More often, he laid out his lunch on the furthest table, reading a book or chatting with whichever teacher had outdoor duty that day, talking with the students only if they approached him first.
But today his usual table had an occupant: Brendan Atcheson.
Coach paused to let his eyes drift over the basketball players while he stood thinking. He didn’t want to push the boy. Especially not during lunch, a time Coach firmly believed was meant to provide fifty minutes of school holiday, with a minimum of structure and as much anarchy as the buildings would permit.
However. Brendan might not always be part of the lunch tables’ social community, but he was here enough to know where Coach generally sat. Yet there he was, his long arms loosely circling the laden backpack on the table before him.
Claiming the territory, or inviting approach?
In Coach’s long experience, as well as in his reading about troubled kids, they’d talk if you gave them an honest chance. And Carol’s words came back to him: You could just ask Brendan himself…
Coach pulled his eyes from the game they hadn’t really been focused on and continued across the blacktop. He stopped just short of the table and spoke in his most easygoing voice. “How you doing, Brendan? Hey, I sometimes eat lunch here, but if you want to be alone, son, I’ll just head over to one of the other tables.”
The boy didn’t look up, and his only reply was a shrug, but Coach Gilbert was fluent in the language of ado
lescent shrugs. This particular one was a surprise, coming from this particular kid. It was virtually a plea to sit.
So Coach sat, his back to the courts, and laid his lunch bag on the table. He took out his sandwich, a packet of corn chips, a can of non-iced tea, and an apple cut in quarters. He opened the tea and took a swallow, unwrapped the sandwich and started in on that, all motions calm, watching kids kick a soccer ball around the field, no suggestion of a glance toward the far end of the table.
When the first half sandwich was gone, he drank some more tea, then picked up the chips. When he got them open, he glanced inside, then made a faint but audible noise and made to drop the packet—then paused, and put it down halfway along the battered wooden surface. “Not sure if you like corn chips? My wife forgets that they stick in my teeth.”
Coach packed his own lunches.
He resumed his sandwich, gazing intently into the distance as the boy’s hand came out to retrieve the chips.
The two ate beneath an invisible flag of truce. Coach finished the sandwich and opened the bag with the cut apple. He took out one quarter, then nudged the remaining three a little farther along the table. “Like some apple? A little brown, but they taste fine.”
To his utter astonishment, the boy scooted down on the bench just enough to reach his offering. What’s more, when he had a slice in hand, he didn’t pull back to the furthest point from Coach.
What the hell was going on with this kid?
They each ate two quarters of the apple. Coach put the empty baggie into the paper bag, drank the last of the tea, and dropped the can in on top. He then casually swung both legs over the bench to lean back, elbows on the table, facing the same direction as Brendan. As he turned, his eyes caught on the remarkably full backpack.