The Painted Boy (40 page)

“You weren’t going to get a choice.”

Rosalie just looked at him, not getting it.

“Maria did what she did,” he said, “so that they’d leave you alone.”

“Tell me that’s not true.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, God. That means . . . all this time . . .”

Rosalie put her face in her hands and started to cry.

Jay sat staring at her for a long moment, not knowing what to do. Finally, he put a protesting Pepito down and knelt by her chair, an arm across her shoulders. She burrowed her face against him, her whole body shaking. He patted her awkwardly on the back and wished Ramon was here because he didn’t have a clue how to deal with this. He just knew he felt awful for having caused it. Lupita had been so wrong.

“I should never have told you,” he said.

Rosalie kept crying, but she shook her head.

“I—I needed—to—to know. . . .”

Jay didn’t think so. Not if it left her feeling like this.

The dogs were restless now, sensing her distress. Oswaldo had begun to growl, low in his chest. His gaze raked the yard, looking for the cause of Rosalie’s upset. Little Pepito pressed himself against her leg, whimpering.

Jay came to a decision. He didn’t know if it would help or make things worse, but he had nothing else.

He stood up, pulling her to her feet. She had to lean against him, unable to stand by herself, her shoulders still heaving.

“I’m going to show you something,” he said.

And he took her to the plateau in
el entre
.

She stiffened in his arms, then slowly lifted her head and looked around. Jay didn’t think she could see much through the blur of her tears, but she knew she was no longer in Tío’s backyard. She stepped back, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt.

“What . . . where . . . ?”

She turned from the vast starlit view of the mountains. She looked him in the face, then saw the tall cairn of stones that rose up beside them.

“This is where I brought her,” Jay said. “It’s a place she always wanted to see. She called it Aztlán.”

“The promised land,” Rosalie murmured.

She knelt down in front of the cairn and laid her hands on the stones.

“Oh, Maria,” she began, then she could go no further.

She pressed her forehead against the stones and began to cry again, softer now. Jay sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders once more, offering what comfort he could.

This hadn’t been such a good idea, either, he realized.

It was a long time before Rosalie finally sat back. She wiped her eyes again, then turned to Jay.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what? Making you feel awful?”

Which was certainly how he felt for putting her through this.

She shook her head. “No. Thank you for giving me back my friend.”

 

 

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Jay said to Lupita. “I left him here overnight, but . . .”

The two of them sat on top of a jut of red rock and watched José walking aimlessly through the arroyo below them, kicking at stones.

“He’s just a wannabe gangbanger,” Jay went on. “He hasn’t actually done anything yet. But he seems pretty determined to get another gang started.”

“Have you asked him why?”

Jay shook his head. “I can’t get past the tough-guy mask he won’t take off.”

“He looks around fifteen.”

Jay nodded. “Any ideas?”

“You have to get him to talk to you.”

“Or maybe us?” Jay said.

Lupita grinned. “You’re pretty chicken for a big, scary dragon.”

“I just don’t know where to go with this,” Jay said. “I thought it was a good idea to take him somewhere to chill, but I didn’t really think it through. I should have let it go until he actually did something.”

“And then you’d banish him.”

Jay sighed. “Yeah, that doesn’t really work, either, does it?”

“You might not be able to save him. Some people don’t want to be saved. They need to make their own mistakes, no matter how much it hurts them.”

“I suppose. He’s a cousin of Margarita’s.”

Lupita nodded. “Okay. And sometimes you have to go all tough love on them.”

She stood up and brushed stone dust from her pants.

“Let’s go see what he’s got to say for himself,” she said.

Jay was so used to Lupita in
el entre
, walking around with her little horns and her floppy jackrabbit ears, that sometimes he forgot how other people reacted. José looked up when he heard them coming down into the arroyo and his eyes went so big Jay thought they might pop out of his head. And though he might be a wannabe ’banger, Lupita’s appearance had him ready to bolt.

“Hang on!” Jay called to the boy as they approached him. “I just want to talk to you. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”

José couldn’t stop staring at Lupita.

“What . . . who’s that?” he said.

Lupita grinned. “Oh, he’s cute. Can I have him?”

“Not helping,” Jay told her.

He stopped a few yards from where José stood, grabbing Lupita’s arm to keep her beside him.

“Seriously, man,” José said. “Did you spike that water you dropped on me last night? That
was
you, right?”

“I brought you the water,” Jay said, “and it wasn’t spiked. This is Lupita. She won’t hurt you.”

José nodded, though he didn’t seem convinced.

“Is she the devil?” he asked.

Lupita giggled.

“Okay,” José said. “I don’t see the devil giggling. But, man.” He gave his head a shake. “I don’t know if I’m coming or going anymore.”

“I know the feeling,” Jay said. “So Lupita says I should have asked you why you want to start a gang.”

José gave him a how-dumb-are-you look.

“You have to ask?” he said. “It’s the only way to stay safe. You need your homeboys to watch your back.”

“Against what?”

“Huh?”

“What kind of danger do you think you’re in?” Jay asked. “The gangs are all gone from the south barrio.”

“Yeah, and if we want to go across the river for a show or something? You don’t think the 66ers are gonna be all over our asses?”

Lupita laughed.

“What’s so funny?” José asked.

“Nothing. It’s just you five-fingered beings make everything so hard on yourselves.”

“Five-fingered what?”

“People,” Jay said. “Humans.”

José gave him another withering look. “You trying to tell me you’re not human?”

“Have you really looked at Lupita?”

“Oh . . . yeah. But what about you?”

“You don’t want to see my other face,” Jay said.

Something in the tone of his voice kept José from making a smart remark.

“What are we going to do with him?” Jay asked Lupita.

She shrugged. “Let him do whatever he wants across the river. If he’s stupid enough to still get mixed up with the
bandas
over there, is it really your responsibility?”

Jay shook his head. “That’s Jesus Abarca’s territory.”

“So there you go.”

“You can’t tell me what I can or can’t do,” José said.

“Do you want to stay here?” Jay asked.

“No, but—”

“Then listen up. Do whatever you want when you’re on the other side of the San Pedro. But if you bring gang business southside—and I mean
any
kind of gang business—you’ll be seeing me again. But for only as long as it takes me to escort you to the border.”

José shook his head. “What makes you think—”

“I think he needs a demonstration,” Lupita said.

Dragonfire would be impressive, but Jay bent and picked up a rock.

“This is your head,” he told José.

He asked the rock for a favor, and when he closed his hand the rock crumbled into dust. He opened his hand.

“And this is your head if you keep pissing me off,” he said.

José paled.

“Yeah, it’s real,” Jay told him, “and yeah, I’m serious. Do we understand each other now?”

José gave a quick nod. “No gangs southside. Got it.”

Jay crossed the distance between them, and José cringed.

“Relax,” Jay said. “I’m just taking you home.”

He returned the boy to the school yard. When he came back to
el entre
, Lupita was still waiting for him.

“Ay-yi-yi,” she said. “Aren’t you the tough guy.”

“I feel like an idiot saying stuff like that.”

“But if it works . . .”

“I suppose. Are you coming to the street party?”

“I think all the cousins are coming. I just hope they don’t get too rowdy, because then you’ll have to go all tough guy on
them
.”

She danced around, shadow-boxing with a fierce look on her face.

All Jay could do was laugh.

The night before
the big fiesta street concert we’re all out putting up decorations, setting up the stage and food tents, and getting the other last-minute preparations done. We don’t get back to Tío’s until past midnight and we’re all tired so no one stays up long. Ramon and Rosalie go to her trailer, Anna crashes on the couch, and Tío and I go to our own rooms. Everybody else heads for home.

I lie down on my bed but I can’t sleep. It’s not only because I know Anna’s on the couch, though that’s part of it. Things are good between us. Not exactly where I’d like them to be—she’s not my girlfriend yet or anything; I haven’t even kissed her—but we’re spending a lot of time together, getting to know each other better, and I have the feeling that if no new disaster comes along, it’ll only be a matter of time.

Just lying here waiting to fall asleep makes me feel even more restless. Finally, I get up and step over into
el entre
. I figure I’ll pay my respects to Maria—I haven’t been out there for a couple of days. While I’m doing that I’ll grab the chance to soak in some of the peace I always feel when I’m there. It makes me feel so grounded when I get back.

I shouldn’t have thought of disasters—Rosalie’s always telling me not to put negative thoughts out into the world because that just gives them substance. But I did, and wouldn’t you know it, when I arrive on the plateau, someone else is there. I get that
ping
in my head that tells me it’s a cousin. A powerful cousin, and nobody that I know.

She doesn’t look like much from first glance. She’s sitting cross-legged in front of Maria’s cairn, a small woman with brown hair falling over her face as she plays a loose blues progression on an old beat-up small-bodied guitar. When she looks up, I see her violet eyes first, and then a moment later I see the spirit shape rising big into the sky behind her and I realize what she is.

“You’re a dragon,” I say. “Of the Yellow Dragon Clan.”

The woman mutes the strings of her guitar.

“Yeah,” she says. “Your grandma’s really disappointed by that, too. White girl stealing away some Chinese kid’s heritage and all.”

“No, it’s not that. I just didn’t know it was possible.”

“Yellow dragons come in all shapes and sizes and colors now. I know it wasn’t always like that—used to be there was one emperor, one dragon protector. But the emperor’s long gone and there are lots of us now. These days our protection is centered on a place, or it covers less conventional subjects.”

“Say what?”

She shrugs. “You watch over the land on the other side of these borderlands. I protect the homeless.”

“But . . . they’re everywhere.”

“Yeah, I know. It keeps me busy. It’s like trying to carry water in a sieve, but I do the best I can. Mostly I travel around and set up operations that can help them help themselves.”

Her fingers have gone back to the guitar again, noodling the way Anna does when she’s talking, except the woman’s playing a soft blues riff.

“What’s your name?” I find myself asking.

“People call me Berlin.”

What kind of a name is that? I want to ask and I guess she sees something in my face.

“It’s not that complicated,” Berlin says. “I used to walk around with this great big wall inside me, keeping the world out. I managed to take it down after a while, but the name stuck.”

“So why are you here?” I ask.

I can guess. I don’t know what they think I’ve done, but the clan must have decided that I’ve become too dangerous so they’ve sent her to deal with me. Why else would a yellow dragon be here?

At least they didn’t send Paupau.

I use the medicine wheel to check out the plateau, but the threads don’t connect to anyone else—dragons, cousins, or even Abuelo. I suppose they don’t think I’m much of a threat, because they only sent one of the clan to deal with me. But I won’t go without a fight. I start to talk to the winds, to the stone under our feet, getting myself ready for her attack.