Over My Head (Wildlings) (12 page)

"It's okay," I tell him. "We'll get this worked out."

He gives me a doubtful look.

"Come on," I say. "We're going to be late for homeroom."

Josh

When I see that car coming toward me, my first thought is that the Kings are making their play. I start to slip behind the trunk of the palm where I plan to wait and see what happens, but then I realize the vehicle's not tricked-out enough to be a bandas car. A moment later I recognize Solana behind the wheel. I step out from under the palm and walk to the street. He pulls in across from Ampora's house and lowers his window.

"Everything quiet?" he asks.

His voice is pitched low, but my Wildling senses lets me hear him easily, even over the low murmur of the car engine. I nod.

"Let's talk," he says.

Even though he's saved my butt twice in as many days, I'm not sure I can trust him. But I'd like to know what he really wants from me, so I give him another nod and cross the street. He kills the engine as I go around the front of the car and slide into the passenger's seat. I twist around with my back to the door so that I can look at him.

"So let's talk," I say.

"What do you want to talk about?"

Cops and psychiatrists—they're all the same. They want you to do the talking. But I'm not playing that game tonight.

"How about we start with who are
you
, really?" I say. "Why are you still following me around?"

He holds both palms open between us like he's got nothing to hide.

"I'm just what you see," he says.

I shake my head. "No, you're more than just a cop and I know you're not a shapechanger."

Solana smiles and his eyebrows go up. "Yeah? How do you know that?"

"Hey, I can just get out of the car right now," I tell him. "I don't have to put up with this."

"Fair enough."

He leans back in his seat and looks out the front windshield.

"I grew up in Santo del Vado Viejo," he says after a moment of contemplation. "In the barrio. But my best friend lived just west of town on the Kikimi rez in the foothills of the mountains. I spent pretty much every weekend out there. My parents didn't mind because it kept me away from the bandas."

He smiles, still looking out the windshield, but I'm guessing he's looking a million miles away into the past.

"Man, I wanted to be an Indian," he says. "Jimmy—my friend Jimmy Morago—he was training in the Warrior Society and I got to train right alongside of him. But I could only go so far because I wasn't Kikimi." Solana turns to look at me. "Lots of tribes have a Warrior Society, but the Kikimi have two. One follows the warrior's path like you'd expect, but the other society, they're all shaman. They protect the tribe's spiritual well-being, guarding against the monsters that are always circling around, looking for an opening."

"What do you mean by monsters?" I have to ask.

"They're skinwalkers," he says. "Shapechangers."

I don't know what any of this is supposed to mean, but I think I see where it's going.

"You mean Wildlings," I say.

He shakes his head. "No, the monsters literally have to put on the skin of whatever they want to change into. They can even put on the skin of a dead person and become that person—or at least, look just like them."

I guess he mistakes the look of distaste on my face for disbelief.

"You've seen kids turn into animals," he says, "and you have a problem with this?"

"No, it's just—you know—pretty sick."

"That's why the Kikimi call them monsters. They'll do anything to feed on the souls of the People—that's what Kikimi means in their own language."

"Where do they even come from?"

Solana sighs. "See, what they are isn't even the worst of it. The monsters are made by black witches who kidnap and rape young girls, then take their babies and raise them into these amoral creatures."

"Okay, that's
really
sick."

"I know. That's what Jimmy was training to fight against, and I so wanted to be fighting right at his side, but the big mysteries of the shaman's Warrior Society are only for people born to the tribe. I got to be with Jimmy until it was time for his vision quest, and then I was cut out."

I try to imagine being told I couldn't hang with Des anymore and can't.

"What did you do?" I ask.

"There was nothing I
could
do. But Ramon—that's Jimmy uncle and the main shaman out on the rez—he knew I was hurting. He took me aside the night Jimmy was going on his quest and told me to meet him at this abandoned ranch in the north part of the rez. He said my people had their own mystery traditions and it was time I learned about them."

His gaze goes distant again as his memories pull him back in time. I take the opportunity to do a quick check of the street and the area around Ampora's house. Everything's still quiet.

"So did you go?" I ask when I look back at him.

He nods. "Sure. It was strange. Out back of the ranch house there was a campfire with all these dark-haired, dark-skinned old men sitting around it. They were Mexicans, but they had more Toltec in them than Spanish, if you know what I mean."

I shake my head.

"Indian blood," he explains. "Back in the day, everybody would claim their ancestors were Spanish because the Europeans looked down on Indians even more than they did Mexicans. Most of us have Indian blood, but it doesn't seem to matter so much anymore, except how the tone of your skin will probably always make a difference. The lighter you are, the easier you fit in.

"Anyway, it ran strong in these guys. They were lean and wiry—a tough-looking crew—and even though I trusted Ramon, my heart still sank a little when he just introduced me to them and then walked away."

"Jeez," I say, knowing how I'd feel.

Solana smiles. "Sorry, I'm falling into storytelling mode. I start thinking about those days and old habits come back. Really, it wasn't so bad as all that. They were a tough old crew, but they treated me well. There was only one other kid there and he had a few years on me. He'd been studying with them for three years by the time I got there."

"Studying what? And who were they?"

Solana gives me another smile. "Mysteries. In the barrio people call them
los tíos
—the uncles. Some people dismiss them as a bunch of old men who sit around drinking mescal tea, but they're really warriors—just like the Kikimi shaman.

"The Toltecs believed that everyone has a parasite living inside their minds—a thing that tells you lies and then feeds on the fear that the lies bring.
Los tíos
believe that too, but they also know that sometimes the parasite can break free and then they have to deal with it, just like the Kikimi do their monsters.

"The parasite inside yourself—each person has to handle that on their own. But it takes a specialized knowledge to deal with the ones that run free. And then there's the parasite that lives inside the dream of the world—you really don't want to face that if you're not prepared."

"You're losing me," I tell him. "What's this dream of the world?"

"According to the Toltecs," Solana says, "everybody walking around is really asleep. The dream they live in is
this
world—where everything is a certain agreed-upon way because that's what we're all brought up to believe from the time we're kids. All those individual dreams create a bigger dream, which becomes the dream of the world. It's kind of like Jung's idea of a shared subconscious, except hardly anybody wakes up from it. Those who do become warriors like
los tíos
. And their world is far more complex than ours."

"So that's what you did? You studied with them and—what? Woke up?"

Solana shakes his head. "I did study with them, but maybe I was too deeply asleep because I just couldn't get it. It never felt real to me. With the Kikimi, what I loved was the physical training. There was some of that with
los tíos
, but also a lot more woo woo stuff. Like, they'd talk about this place called Aztlán, which is one of the worlds that lies invisible next to this one."

I give him a sharp look. Is he talking about the otherworld that the cousins took us to? But he takes something else from my face.

"Yeah, I know," he says. "And they say that
los tíos
can become hawks, or that they can put their souls in the body of a hawk, and that's how they know so much,because they can be anywhere and see everything."

"They turn into hawks," I repeat to make sure I heard him right. "Like Wildlings."

"I don't know.
I
never saw any of them change into a hawk—or any other animal, for that matter. I saw nothing to make me believe the world is anything other than what it seems. In the end, I became a cop instead, because that way I could actually see the results of what I was doing. Catch the bad guy and put him away."

He falls quiet again.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" I ask.

"Because once kids started turning into birds and animals here in Santa Feliz, I realized that maybe
los tíos
weren't so woo woo after all. If Wildlings can exist, then maybe those spiritual dangers are real, too. Maybe the only way to get through it is to wake up."

I nod, but I say, "I still don't see what it has to do with me."

"Once I saw what was happening here," Solana says, "I went back to talk to
los tíos
. They told me to find you—the boy that becomes a mountain lion."

"I've told you a million times, I'm not a—"

Solana waves away my protest. "Say whatever you want, but it doesn't change what we both know is true."

"Just because some bunch of old guys—"

Solana cuts me off. "
They're
the ones who told me to find you and help protect you until you wake up. So that's what I'm going to do, whether you like it or not."

I rub my face with my hands. I can't believe this. If it wasn't bad enough already that the cousins think I'm some charismatic emissary for their cause, now I've got a bunch of Mexican mystics, who can maybe turn into hawks, also convinced that I'm supposed to save the world. Or at least wake it up.

"What happens if I don't?" I ask.

"Don't what?"

"Save the world. Wake it up. Whatever it is that these guys think I'll do. What if they've got the wrong guy?"

"They don't."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because the more I get to know you, the more I understand why you were chosen."

Considering all the weird stuff Solana's been telling me, I don't suppose there's any point in continuing to deny what's under my skin. But what he and everybody else doesn't understand is that it was purely random. When whatever it was shuffled the deck, some people turned into birds or otters. I pulled the card that says mountain lion. Lucky me, one of the major arcana of the animal people.

"I wasn't chosen," I say. "It just happened, that's all."

"Do you really believe that?"

That's when I realize that there's no point to this conversation. Nothing that I say will change his mind about my so-called destiny.

I open the door, half-expecting him to stop me. But he doesn't.

"I need to think about this," I tell him.

But I'm just being polite. It's say that or tell him I think he's as deluded as the rest of them.

"I understand," he says.

No, you don't, I think. You don't have a clue.

But I get out and nod, then shut the door. He waits until I'm back under the palm in the yard beside Ampora's house, then he starts up the car and pulls away. He's probably only going around the block or something, but I don't care, so long as I don't have to listen to him anymore.

But it doesn't matter. The things he told me keep running through my head for the rest of the night.

I'm standing at the end of the driveway when the front door opens and Ampora comes out with her sisters. Their dad left for work earlier, but I made myself scarce when he came out. Ampora makes the girls wait by the door while she comes over to me. Her sisters are so cute. They look like twins—just like Marina and Ampora do. I give them a wave and Ampora frowns at me.

"I didn't think you'd still be here," she says.

She's looked out the window from time to time throughout the night, so I know that's a lie, but I don't call her on it.

"I told you I would," I tell her.

"Right. I forgot. You're the big hero."

I don't bother responding to that.

"At least you didn't get beat up again," she adds.

"Funny."

"No, I'm serious. Someone really went to town on you. What makes you think it'll be any different when the Kings come down on you?"

"It'll be different," I tell her. "Trust me."

She makes a dismissive sound. "Why I should I?" she goes on. "And I don't know why you're here. I don't need your help."

"I know
you
don't. I'm just here to make sure nothing happens to your sisters."

"So what are you—a boy scout looking for another merit badge? Or maybe you think it'll score you some points with your BFF Marina?"

God, she's a bitch. "Let's go," I tell her. "Otherwise the girls will be late."

"And what about after school?" Ampora asks. "What about tomorrow, and the day after that, and the week after that? Are you planning to play bodyguard for the rest of their lives?"

"Hey, I know it's not a perfect solution. I have to figure something out. But today I'm just concentrating on getting your sisters safely to school. Can we agree on that much?"

She shrugs. "Whatever."

She makes a beckoning motion with her hand and the girls skip down the driveway to join us. I sit on my haunches so that I'm closer to their height.

"Hi," I tell them. "I'm Josh—a friend of your sister Marina."

They tell me their names, then Suelo tilts her ear to her shoulder and asks, "Are you her boyfriend?"

Ria punches her lightly and they both giggle.

I smile and shake my head.

"Are you Ampora's boyfriend?" Ria asks, and they giggle some more.