Red Road Page 3

  “Maybe I do,” the Mexican boy said.

  “Tim, come on,” Rachel said, wrapping her fingers around his bicep.

  Suddenly, Emma’s skin fit too tightly over her pulsing veins. She backed into the wall and touched it with her fingertips. Her mom would have said not to, that the germs on its surface outnumbered students in the school, but she had to know there wasn’t anyone behind her. She glanced at the boys surrounding Tim, their jaws loose and smiling. They weren’t scared at all.

  “Well, maybe,” Tim said, “you need to keep walking.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do, homes?”

  “I’ll show you what I’m gonna do.” Tim put his arm around Rachel, who stutter-stepped under the weight. “That all right with you?”

  The Mexican boy grinned. “Keep walking, then, homes. Maybe I’ll be behind you.” The boys standing behind him laughed. “Maybe we all will.”

  “You jaggers don’t scare me.”

  The smile fell from the boy’s face. “The fuck you mean, you jaggers?”

  Something tingled behind Emma’s ears—a whisper of hair, dislodged by the beating of her pulse.

  “Stay away from me,” Tim said. “Stay away from all of us.”

  “Or what?” The Mexican boy balled his fists and settled into his knees.

  One of his friends, the one with the moustache, said, “Do it, man.”

  “Tim,” Rachel whispered.

  A wave of heat crested inside her, forcing sweat through the skin of her palms. She remembered what her mom said after the city’s seventeenth homicide of the year, in March: Never look them in the eye. Never talk to them. Just let them kill each other.

  The Mexican boy pulled back his fist.

  Tim pushed Rachel out of the way.

  Emma shrieked and reached for Via’s hand. Via grabbed Rachel and they stood flat against the wall, strung together like a daisy chain.

  The Mexican boy’s haymaker whooshed through the air. Tim ducked, aiming a punch at the other boy’s ribs. The Mexican boy caught Tim under the chin as he straightened up. Emma watched Tim’s head snap back. A drop of spit, oblong like a galaxy, flew out of his mouth.

  “What’s going on out here?” Mr. Lopez hurried to the doorway of the chemistry classroom. He stepped into the hallway, arms held out from his sides, and inserted himself between the fighters. “All right, break it up, come on.”

  Tim stood up straight, one hand holding his jaw. The Mexican boy laughed and retreated into the protective circle of his friends.

  “You two, come with me,” Mr. Lopez said, pointing at each combatant and jerking his thumb down the hall. “You can explain yourselves to the principal.”

  “But he didn’t do anything!” Rachel said.

  The Mexican boy’s friends hooted and whistled. Without turning around, their friend held up his left hand and flashed a sign: four fingers held straight up, the thumb pulled back.

  “Come on,” Emma said. “Let’s get out of here.” She pulled their human caravan down the corridor. As she slalomed past cheerleaders and football players and gamers and gangsters, she felt it: the quick pang of panic, now compounded by guilt. A voice inside her head taunted her: In Tennessee, they got in trouble for moonshine, not gang signs.

  Chapter Four

  Thursday, March 27

  The locker room smelled of pine and vanilla. The vanilla came from a body spray, something cheap and bright that made Emma think of unicorn barf. She liked the pine better, with its earthy tang of damp and salty places. Her favorite smell was a sweaty penny in her palm, or the scent of her hands in elementary school after she’d played on the jungle gym or twirl bar.

  She waved her hand in front of her eyes to dispel the noxious vanilla cloud, then exchanged her sweater and jeans for a T-shirt and knit shorts stamped with the school mascot, the Minuteman. The logo featured a square-faced man holding a rifle, wearing tight white pants and a black tri-cornered hat. At football games, their mascot used to hold a wooden cutout painted black to look like a rifle. Parents got mad because it sort of did look like a rifle, and now the mascot didn’t hold anything.

  Beside her, Via laced a pair of scuffed tennis shoes in preparation for field hockey. Emma had signed up for badminton instead. Too many girls came to afternoon class with bruised and bloody shins to make Emma want to have anything to do with hockey. Her calves were the only body part she was proud of, the only part that didn’t jiggle.

  “So,” Via said, wrapping the laces around her fingers to pull them tighter. Her nails were perfect ovals, filed religiously every night. “What do you think they’ll do to Tim?”

  “He’ll get suspended, maybe?”

  “He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “He threw a punch.”

  “What’s he supposed to do, let those other guys wail on him?”

  “No,” Emma said. “Yes. I don’t know.” Heather James walked down the aisle between them. Emma leaned toward her locker to avoid getting bitch-slapped by Heather’s enormous backpack.

  “If self-defense is a valid strategy in court, it sure as shit ought to work here.” Via touched her toes, then flat-handed the ground with her palms. “I’m out of here. Have fun flinging cocks, or whatever you do in that dumb-ass sport you signed up for.”

  Emma pulled her knit shorts an inch below her natural waistline. The longer they were, the more of her doughy thighs they hid. She walked to the gym alone, still disoriented by the almost-fight. She’d been sure someone would end up with broken bones, all because Tim and a Mexican boy couldn’t navigate the niceties of personal space.

  It wasn’t just a boy thing, either. She was forever angling her body sideways to avoid the press of the popular chola girls. They walked in rows five girls wide, like they owned every inch between the plastic baseboards. Her backpack had been knocked clean off her shoulder twice last week.

  In the gym, she found a match-up list taped to the bleachers and scanned for her name: West vs. Becerra, Court 3. She picked up a racket and birdie from the tub near the door and went to stand on the court. Next to her, Rafael Dominguez and Juan Sanchez began their match. She noted where they held their rackets and how far apart they spaced their feet. Rafael, graceful and athletic, never missed a return. He’d been in her world history class last year, but they never exchanged a single word.

  “Hey,” she heard. “Are you West?”

  Emma turned to see a short, pudgy girl with a flat face and curly black hair, the top half pulled into a ponytail. She had drawn-on eyebrows and four gold hoops in each ear. “I’m Elvira.” The girl pronounced her name El-vee-ra, with an accent on the vee and a trill on the r. Emma saw her eyes drift toward Rafael, who slammed his racket like he was playing whack-a-mole. “Damn,” Elvira said, licking her lips. “Let’s not keep score, okay?”

  Emma volunteered to serve first and barely cleared the net. Elvira hustled, but couldn’t get there in time. The birdie fell to the polished hardwood floor. “Chinga la madre,” Elvira said. She rested her weight on the racket and bent to retrieve the birdie. With a glance at Rafael, Elvira lifted her arm and tossed the birdie over the net. “Service.”

  Now it was Emma’s turn to dash forward and swing the racket in vain, air whooshing through its plastic strings. “Man, we really suck at this.”

  “Still better than field hockey.”

  “I know, right?”

  Elvira’s eyes tracked Rafael as he jumped to return a volley. A thin coating of perspiration shone on his forehead. “Sweat looks so much better on guys.”

  Emma offered a noncommittal “mmm.” She’d never seen Dan break a sweat. Water polo matches happened on Saturday mornings. In order to attend, she’d have to ask her parents to borrow the car. They’d want to know why, and she had no good reason other than to see Dan in a Speedo. It wasn’t something she could say to her dad. Still, she decid
ed to play along. Let Elvira think she was one of the normal kids—endowed with a C average, five real dates under her belt, and a clear picture of what a sweaty guy’s chest looked like. “Totally,” she said.

  “Sometimes I ditch class in the afternoon to watch the guys’ soccer practice. Most of the time, they take off their shirts.”

  The mechanics of ditching class were foreign to Emma. “Where do you go?”

  “The bleachers behind the tennis courts.”

  “How can you even see the soccer field from there?”

  “I have good eyesight.”

  “I think I need glasses.”

  “They’d make you look smart.”

  “I don’t want to look smart.”

  “Are you going to the prom?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” Elvira stared at Rafael’s sweat-haloed brow.

  “Out of bounds,” he called, hopping back as the birdie plunked down on his side of the white painted line. “Fuck.” He lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his brow and Elvira’s eyes glazed over.

  “Still with me?” Emma asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Elvira grasped the net with pudgy fingers, each encircled by a gold ring.

  “Did you hear about the fight?” Emma asked. “It was right in front of my class before this.”

  “Oh?” Elvira didn’t sound impressed. “Who with?”

  “A guy my friend wants to hook up with and a Mexican guy.”

  “What Mexican guy?”

  Emma frowned. Her school had nine hundred members of the junior class alone, and it seemed like most of them were Mexican guys. “I don’t know.”

  “Was he wearing red?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a thing. Like a dare.”

  “What kind of dare?”

  Elvira’s eyes traveled from Rafael’s brow to his hands. “You know how it is.”

  But Emma didn’t know anything other than what she saw on the news, which was all bad. “No, I don’t know.”

  “I hate it,” Elvira said softly, turning her back on Rafael. “I don’t feel like playing anymore.”

  Emma looked over her shoulder. Mrs. Patterson was nowhere to be found. Most of the other girls were already sitting on the floor and gossiping. Some of them had rolled up their sweat pants as if the gym were a tanning salon. On the next court, Rafael and Juan engaged in a sudden-death volley, shoes shrieking against the hardwood.

  Elvira shuffled to the bleachers and sat down. Emma sat beside her silently, unsure what to say. It wasn’t until she got dressed in the locker room that she realized Elvira had a red bandanna tied around her half-ponytail.

  Chapter Five

  Thursday, March 27

  A wisp of steam swayed like a belly dancer above the platter of pork cutlets. A second bowl, with peas and butter, waited in the microwave. Her mom reached into the cabinet for four glasses. “Get the milk,” she said. “I heard the truck outside.”

  Emma couldn’t imagine doing her dad’s job. Counting the number of people in the entire country involved trusting them to a degree that she found unnatural, if not impossible. She watched her mom scoop peas onto each plate, portioning out equal servings faster than a lunch lady. A blue undertone made her skin look translucent, like the diamond in her wedding ring. On her other hand, she wore her mother’s ring, a skinny diamond with pointed ends perched on a thick gold band. Every memory she had of her mother was bookended by those rings, glinting in the sun as she reached out to catch Emma on a slide or push her on a swing.

  “Give your father more butter,” her mom said.

  Emma flung a spoonful of sun-bright margarine onto his peas just as his key slid in the lock. “Hi, Dad,” she said, licking the spoon and smiling as he came around the corner. He raised his hand to high-five her, the traditional father/daughter greeting in the West household.

  The thunder of quick footsteps on the stairs brought Mattie, hurtling toward him. “Dad! Happy first day at work!” He grunted as he caught her and wrapped her in a hug. “How was it? Were the people cool?”

  “Hang on,” Emma’s mom said. “Let’s sit and say grace first.” They took their seats at the table, hands folded over napkin-clad laps. Four voices repeated the old Swedish blessing that was the first rhyme Emma ever learned.

  Mattie flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Okay, now you can tell us.”

  Her dad chewed his first bite slowly and took a sip of milk. “Well, they gave us a list of people who didn’t send in their paper survey. We have to knock on their door three separate times to try and complete the interview.”

  “Why three?”

  “If you only try once, they might be at work or something.”

  “Three seems like a waste of time,” Emma said.

  “The census is important,” her mom said. “It’s how I found your great-great-great-grandfather.” Her mom’s desk was full of folders with notes on her family tree. The branches usually dead-ended with names like “Preserved Smith” and “Mollinex Ratcliffe,” Puritans whom Emma imagined as Hester Prynne’s next-door neighbors.

  “Speaking of the family tree.” Her dad smiled, deepening the creases beneath his cheekbones. After one day in the sun, his skin already looked darker. “Em, did we ever tell you who you’re named after?”

  Emma blinked. “Someone from our tree?”

  “My great-grandmother, Emma Christina.”

  Her mom’s notes only covered her side of the family. Her dad’s side, generations of silent Swedish farmers, remained undocumented and undiscovered. “Why did you pick her?” she asked.

  “She came to America with her brothers when she was seven. She was the only one who got to keep her name.” He forked the last piece of his cutlet. “Everyone called her brother ‘Frank.’ I never knew his real name was ‘Svante Enoch’ until he died.”

  “Why didn’t they keep their names?” Mattie asked.

  Her dad shrugged. “Too hard for the immigration officers to say. Emma’s is the only real family name left.”

  Emma gulped. As if she didn’t have enough weight on her shoulders, now she had to live up to a relative brave enough to leave her country forever at the ripe old age of seven.

  “What about me?” Mattie asked. “Who am I named after?”

  “Well, we were going to name you after my favorite baseball player, but then you were a girl.”

  “Wait.” Mattie put down her fork. “You named me after a boy?”

  “We figured, why change a perfectly good name? So we called you Matt. Well, we put ‘Mattie’ on your birth certificate. The nurse convinced us.”

  Mattie’s eyes clouded like glass in the “before” picture for a dish soap commercial. “But what if your favorite player was named Walt or something?”

  Their father grinned. “Waltina. Has a nice ring to it.”

  Mattie held out her hands, one toward each parent. “Never tell this story again, okay?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Mattie is a beautiful name.”

  “You wanted me to be a boy!”

  “But you’re you,” her dad said calmly. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything.” This was how he handled any explosion of female ire—he only got calmer, softer, gentler. Emma wondered how big the hole inside him was, the one where a father envisions playing catch with his son.

  “So how many people live on our street?” Mattie asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, scooping peas onto his fork. Two of them plummeted back to the plate as he raised the fork to his mouth. “They didn’t assign me to our street.”

  Emma’s mom looked up from her cutlet. “Where did they send you?”

  “El Camino Rojo.”

  Her mother dropped her fork. The clatter echoed from the kitchen to the family room. “Roger, can’t you do something?
”

  “It’s a job, Sharon.”

  “That doesn’t mean—”

  “It’s a job.” He scooped up the last few peas and dredged the side of his fork through a pool of melted butter.

  Emma shivered. She couldn’t reconcile the images of her gentle father and the asshole in the hallway who threw a punch over an elbow’s worth of space. An elbow. The dumbest body part to start a fight over. El Camino Rojo was in the heart of the east side, where most of the gangbangers lived. Its residents didn’t expect, or want, white people knocking on their doors.

  Emma glanced at her mom, whose lips were clamped shut. She wasn’t going to say it, even though they were all thinking it. I guess it’s up to me, she thought. “Dad, don’t they have Spanish-speaking people they can send?”

  “They sent me, Em.”

  She bowed her head. It was the same work ethic he’d instilled in her, the one that allowed her to do stupid homework assignments that had no bearing on real life. If you accept a challenge, he said, you accept everything about it, good or bad.

  “How about your day?” he asked. “Did anything interesting happen at school?”

  Before today, she might have answered honestly. But knowing he had to go into the heart of East Malo Verde tomorrow, she couldn’t do it. “No,” she said. “Not a thing.”

  • • •

  After dinner, she went up to her room. At the far end of the hallway, it had a view overlooking the street. She filled it with books and stuffed animals and rarely put away the pile of folded laundry her mom left on the foot of her bed. A small desk sat beneath the window, holding her ancient desktop computer, a hand-me-down from SeedCorp. She spied on the neighbors with zero shame and even less impunity, having personally tested her desk’s visibility from street level.

  Emma turned on her computer, listening to the hard drive grind like a bike chain without oil. Her English paper was on The Great Gatsby and the green light across the bay, the one Gatsby watched from his yard and turned into a symbol of Daisy. To Emma, a glowing green light indicated only one thing: a phantom. Every kid who watched re-runs of Scooby-Doo knew that. The phantoms were always the product of an old caretaker, left alone with an abandoned amusement park and a gallon of phosphorescent paint.