Vivian Divine Is Dead (4 page)

Chapter Six

B
Y THE TIME
I
TRANSFER
buses in Tijuana, it’s almost three in the morning. Although the border crossing was easy (they barely glanced at the fake passport Mary gave me), the skin around my throat tingles from five hours of sitting in terror, waiting for my head to be sliced off at the neck. I’m breathing in shallow gasps, feeling disease-causing germs lining my lips, my tongue.
They’ll find my body on the dirty bus floor, dead from some airborne disease.
Every bone in my body wants to run screaming off the bus.
But if I get off the bus, they might be waiting to kill me.

Tears threaten to spill out of me, but I push them back and make myself sit on the edge of a plastic seat, sticky from ground-in gum, and try to avoid direct contact with my skin.
Think Mexican beaches, massages, the rolling surf.

Eventually the terror of the last twenty-four hours catches up with me, and I can barely keep my eyes open. To keep myself awake (and my head securely on my neck), I pull Mary’s directions out of my pocket again. The words blur beneath my lowering eyelids, but it doesn’t matter: by this time, I’ve read the note so many times the words are bludgeoned into my memory.

V,

Buy a cash ticket for the 1203 bus to Tijuana, then transfer to the 606 bus to Rosales. From there, take any ferry to Isla Rosales. Roberto will meet you on the dock. He’ll be wearing a cowboy hat. He’ll hide you for as long as you need—

My eyes are starting to close. I wrench my head back up and focus on the directions again.

—which hopefully won’t be long. Remember, don’t tell anyone who you are or where you’re going. Please take care of yourself, and know I’ll be there soon.

XO,

Mary

PS: Destroy this note after reading it.

My eyelids have drooped so low that the words are blurring together. I shove the directions into the bag at my feet, and let my eyes close. Exhaustion takes over and I crash headfirst into sleep.

Screaming wrenches me from my nightmare. My dream washes over me again, taking my breath away. I’m stuck in a black box. It’s baking hot, and I’m pounding the top with my fists, but nobody comes. I bite my lip to stop screaming, but it just gets louder.
I’m not the one screaming. It’s coming from outside the bus.

Outside my window, dozens of dark-skinned women are standing around the bus driver, yelling in Spanish and pointing to smoke billowing out of the engine. The bus driver looks scared, like these ladies are going to beat him to death with their hard little purses.
Is this when the decapitation happens?

Across the deserted horizon, the sun is rising over the cacti, reminding me that it’s now October 29—and that I might only have three more days to live. I want to curl into a ball and never come out, but the bus is getting so hot I make myself climb out into the scorching desert sunlight.

“How long until the next bus?” I ask as I approach the group of women, raising my voice and slowing down each word. An ancient lady shakes her head, her skin sagging around her two remaining teeth.

She doesn’t speak English? What do I do now?
I flash back to my half-hour Spanish tutoring session with Mary. Unfortunately, “Where’s the bathroom?” and “I’m looking for a man in a big hat” won’t help in this situation.

“Bus,” I say, pointing at the smoking engine. “No work?” I raise my voice and announce, “Does anybody speak English?”

The women all shake their heads, and I suddenly remember that I have my disposable cell phone in my bag.
I’ll just call the number Mary programmed in for me, tell her I’m stuck, and have her order me a car. I’ll be lounging on the beach in no time.

I quickly climb onto the bus, nurturing visions of the local Four Seasons picking me up in an air-conditioned private car. I’m so lost in my daydream of a cold pool and chocolate-dipped strawberries that I almost pass my seat, but thanks to the gum ground into the plastic, I find it. But when I reach under the seat, my bag is gone.

Terror jolts through me as my hand slides over empty ground.
My bag has to be here.
It has everything in it: my phone, my money, my fake passport.
This isn’t happening. Not now. Not to me.

Adrenaline shoots through me, and I drop down to my knees and look under the seat, breathing in the smell of urine and disinfectant. I run my hands over the floor, hoping I missed it, that the tacky camouflage is, well, camouflaged, but nausea rises in my stomach, and fear wraps its way through my body.
Someone stole my bag.

I jump up and race down the aisle, frantically checking all the overhead bins.
It has to be here!
I pull plastic bags, soccer balls, bottles of Fanta out of the bins until there’s a mound of supplies up and down the bus. It looks like a hurricane has hit here.
Still no bag.
Then above the last row, I pull out a bundle of thick material. But when it comes tumbling out, it’s a red soccer jersey with the word
MEXICO
printed across the back.

My knees turn to jelly, and I slouch against the back wall, my world crumbling around me.
Please, God. I’ll forgive Sparrow. Even Pierre. Just this one tiny miracle, please.
Those tears that never come threaten to spill down my cheeks, and the bus gets bleary. I blink, feeling the contacts scratch against my corneas. I pluck them out and toss them on the floor, and then bury my face in the jersey’s thick red cloth.

“
Eso es mío
,” a voice says from behind me.

I don’t bother to turn around. I feel like a cigarette someone stamped out on the floor. I have no idea what he’s saying, and tears are running down my face now, soaking the red jersey.

“
Eso es mío
,” the voice says again.

Can’t you see I want to be alone!
But he’s still there, so I reluctantly turn around.

Standing in front of me is the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen. His eyes are a rugged green, his black hair shaggy on his shoulders. His cargo pants hang off his slim hips, and a white undershirt clings to his chest. My personal trainer would kill for his body.
How could I have fallen for Pierre when there are men in the world like this?

“Hola
.
”
I’m completely tongue-tied. I try to smile at him, but it’s like my mouth has frozen.

“¿Esa es mi camisa?”
He points to my chest. I shake my head, not understanding, and grip the wet jersey tighter.

He leans forward, coming close enough to me to touch. “My shirt?”

I flush a crimson red. I’ve got his soccer jersey balled up against my chest, covered in tears and snot.
Can this get any more embarrassing?

I release my death grip on his jersey and hand it to him, and he pulls it over his white undershirt. To my horror, his chest is splotched with wet stains, but he doesn’t even notice.
Maybe girls cry on his shoulder all the time
.

“What are you looking for?” he asks, eyeing the disaster I’ve created. His deep voice is tinged with a slight Mexican accent.

“I lost my bag.”

“I guess so,” he says, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “So what was in the bag?”

What wasn’t in the bag?
“My money. My phone. My passport.”

He whistles under his breath. “Probably long gone. Hard cash? Gone. And American passports are like gold around here.” He adds, smirking at me, “Not a smart move, princess.”

What a jerk! I lost my entire life and he calls me a princess and tells me I’m an idiot? This day is getting worse every minute.
I think of my options: walk hours through the middle of nowhere until I get to the border and make them let me back in, probably straight into my killer’s hands, search every passenger head to toe, or have someone else find my bag.
Perfect.

“Will you find my bag for me?” I ask, putting on my most helpless look. It isn’t hard: the damsel-in-distress role is one I know well. People are always ready to save me from a mistake on set—an unruly costume change, or a forgotten line in my script. Everyone loves a damsel in distress, and if there ever was one, it’s me right now.

“Me? Why me?”

“Well, someone on the bus stole it. And you speak Spanish.”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t even know your name.”

“We don’t have time for this.” I’m getting impatient, and when I get impatient in my world, heads roll, people are fired, shoots are canceled.
But what happens here?

“I have all the time in the world.” He leans against a bus seat, like he’s lounging on a beach somewhere, waiting for his massage. “So, do you have a name?”

Good question.
Suddenly I can’t remember the name on my fake passport, even though Mary made me say it over and over until it sounded natural. Isabel? Ingrid? “Ines,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear. I figure that’s the closest to real I’m gonna get. And I’m so used to hearing it on set, I might just answer to it. If I’m lucky.

“Okay, Ines. I’m Nicolas, but my friends call me Nick,” he says. “You’d better stick with Nicolas.”

“Okay, Nicolas. Enough small talk. Get me my bag.”

“
Bueno
, princess,” he says. “Just don’t ask for any more favors.”

I follow Nicolas off the bus. Around us, the desert stretches out for miles, broken only by prickly cacti and tumbleweeds. When he walks up to the group of women, they immediately stop talking and look him over from head to toe.

“
¿Quién se llevó la mochila de la gringa?
” he asks, pointing to me. The women all glare at me for a second, their anger searing me like a hot wind.

“What did you say to them?” I demand when he returns to the bus.

“I said, ‘Give back the bag you stole,’” Nick says, “‘or the gringa will kill you.’”

“You did not!” I snap. “Do you at least have a phone?”

He pulls two pieces of a shiny black phone out of his pocket. “Broken. I dropped it in the station.”

Who better to steal a phone than someone who just broke theirs?
I scan every ragged tear in his clothes, the grime under his fingernails, his shaggy hair that so obviously needs a haircut. “You know what? I think you stole it!”

I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth. All the light drops out of his eyes, and his face becomes hard, unreadable. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me,” I say, but softer, hoping to retract the words.

He glares at me as he pulls his pockets inside out and dumps their contents on the ground. A torn bus ticket, a pocketknife, and a pack of Chiclets roll in the dirt at our feet. “Satisfied? Or do you want to check my shirt again?” He grabs his pocketknife, stuffs it in his side pocket, and then stomps off.

I watch him storm up the road, getting smaller every second, and a knot forms in my stomach. “Where are you going?” I call after him.

“None of your business,” he yells back.

“But when does the next bus come?”

I can’t see his lips move, but the wind carries his words back to me. “Next week.”

I hate asking for help. Luckily, I never have to. A team of specialists is paid to take care of my every need, to anticipate what I might want and have it prepared ahead of time. If they don’t have the right brand of mango lip balm ready for me after a shoot, they’re done.

But this isn’t quite so simple. I’m standing on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere, feeling more alone than I ever have in my life. Dry grass and cacti spread out as far as I can see. Besides Nicolas, who is pacing back and forth with his thumb out, the word
MEXICO
on the back of his red soccer jersey wavering in the heat, everyone from the bus is so far up the road that they have almost disappeared into the dust.

A hot, itchy hour passes before I see a thin line of dust rise in the distance. As it gets closer, I can make out a large yellow pickup truck with a blue plastic tarp tented on poles over the back. There’s black smoke coming out of it, coloring the sky, and it sounds like something is beating it to death.

As the truck pulls up beside me, the driver leans out his window, his mustache curling up on the edges.
“¿A dónde vas?”

I know what Mom would do. She’d say,
Leave it to the universe,
and jump in the truck, and then amuse the driver by telling a story about how she fell in love with my dad on the set of
Medusa’s Revenge
and got married three months later. By the end of the story, the driver would adore her, but I’m not Mom, so I shake my head, sure that he just asked me if he could cut out my kidneys and discard my lifeless body on the side of the road. I’ve seen this movie before: the organ trafficker makes thousands and the girl always ends up dead.

Farther up the road, Nicolas holds his hand out to the organ traffickers and the truck pulls to a slow stop. As my stomach growls like a rabid animal, I weigh the options:
Lose a kidney or starve to death?
I swallow my spit to soothe my throat, and as the truck pulls away, I swallow my pride, running after it at full speed.