THE BIG MOVE (Miami Hearts Book 2) (9 page)

I dreamed about it still, Honduras. I dreamed about the good and the bad parts, about the mountains and the violence, watching the airplanes execute that hairpin turn to land at the airport in Tegucigalpa, and the gangs that roved the neighborhoods, taking what they wanted.

              My mother died giving birth to me — her sole achievement in growing our little family. I never knew her, never knew a mother’s love, but my father did the best that he could. He was killed when I was no more than eleven, gunned down for refusing to pay the “tax” for protection to the gangs. He owned his own small market, and was proud to keep it clean and as well stocked as he could manage. I still have memories of scrubbing at the linoleum floor tiles, working with him in the family business.

              I remember the way his blood stood out against those same tiles — so red.

              I remember my uncle coming for me, taking me away to his neighborhood, away from the blood and the market and that gang and into an entirely different nightmare. We were poor, always poor, and we couldn’t escape the violence in certain parts of the city. My uncle spoke often of the countryside, getting away from the city, living in the mountains or on the coast, taking charge of a piece of land and making a life of it.

              It was easy to talk, and easy to dream. Anything was better than this.

              We locked the doors and the windows as the sun went down, my uncle keeping watch through the curtains of the situation on the streets. My aunt would turn the radio on to drown out the sounds of revving motors and frequent gunshots, my cousin and I doing our homework, oblivious, for the most part, to the unrest around us. It had just become part of the soundtrack of our existences.

              School was somewhat an escape, to immerse myself in studies, to lose myself in the idea of other places beyond our neighborhood, beyond the city, beyond even Honduras. I could escape into a book or a thought or a lesson and forget about that blood on the tile, forget about the tattoo of gunfire interrupting my slumber.

              I wanted to learn more, but the teachers were underpaid, overworked, and the classes were too large. Students ran around largely unchecked, and I found myself getting frustrated at them distracting me from my studies. When class would get too rowdy to handle and the teacher would step out, giving up for the day, I’d decamp to the library, continuing my own education among the tomes I found there.

              Amid those shelves and volumes was where I met Antonio.

              Like me, he was diligent and passionate about education, touting it as the key to a brighter future.

              “So we should give all the gangs books instead of tax money?” I asked him wryly. I’d seen firsthand what happened if you tried to make a stand against the gangs. I’d lost my father to that brand of bravery.

              “I’m not an idiot, Sol,” he chided me. “I know there are problems. But education opens doors. Why do boys join the gangs? Why do people go along with what the gangs want?”

              “They’re afraid,” I said, shrugging.

              “They don’t know any better,” he said. “They think the gangs are as good as it gets, that the brotherhood of it will protect them and provide for them. If we could only get the education we need, we could protect and provide for ourselves.”

              “The gangs aren’t going to like that talk,” I said lightly. “You better not let any of the recruiters hear you.”

              It was something of a testament to my reality that I could tease Antonio about the gangs. They’d robbed me of the only parent I had left, made me flee to another neighborhood with my father’s brother and his family. But this was Honduras. If you lived your life in constant terror here, you’d never be able to so much as leave your house. You had to flavor everything with a little bit of humor or you wouldn’t be able to survive.

              “We need a better police force to root out the gang members,” Antonio said with disgust, shaking his head. “Get them out of the schools.”

              “And we need a better government to give us a better police force,” I said, mocking his often-repeated mantra. “And we must eliminate corruption, feed the poor, lift up the weary. Vote for Antonio Lloras! He will right our wrongs.”

              “Be sarcastic, if you want,” he huffed. “But if we see the need for change and ignore it, we’re no better than the gangs.”

              The gangs were a problem throughout the country, but it was most rampant in the poorest neighborhood. Kids saw it as security, as something to do. They were aggressive about recruiting boys young — to do everything from transporting drugs to acting as enforcers to being hit men. Everywhere you looked — especially if you were looking in the wrong places — you would see little boys carrying rifles nearly as big as they were. It was a horrifying, disgusting thing, but it was something our country seemed helpless about. No one could get rid of the gangs — no more than anyone could get rid of the poverty, or rebuild the country after the hurricane.

              Gangs were biggest problem, but they were so prevalent, it was becoming worryingly easy to live with it. Antonio might have been passionate about inspiring change, but that didn’t stop us from making sure we were indoors before dark, shunning certain neighborhoods as best we could, and having to accept the fact that bad things happened.

              When nightmares become reality, they become stunningly easy to adapt to. I’d lost my father. I’d seen his body splayed out across the floor of the store he’d been so proud of. And yet I kept going. What else was I going to do?

              But on the eve of my seventeenth birthday, my uncle and aunt scraping together some money to try to have a celebration, something truly horrible happened again, hitting close to home.

              My cousin was a year younger than me, and a girl in her class had been taken from school grounds forcibly and raped.

              These things happened. It was horrible but true. These things happened — only they happened to girls at other schools, or across town, or across the country. These things didn’t happen to sweet little girls named Maribel who often spent the night in the room I shared with my cousin, giggling late into the night about boys and crushes and who’d she end up marrying.

              No one would want to marry her, now. She was damaged.

              The event shocked my cousin into silence and stillness for an entire week. She couldn’t be coaxed to talk, to eat, or to move from her bed, where she stayed, white as the sheets she rested on.

              Maribel, on the other hand, returned to school within a few days.

              Most of the students shunned her, afraid that whatever misfortune that had singled her out would rub off on them — make them susceptible to some similar tragedy.

              Seeing her alone at a bench for lunch, her back ramrod straight, I had to speak to her, to show her some form of support and prove that not everyone had turned their attention carefully away from her.

              “Hey, Maribel,” I said, sitting beside her at the table. “I wanted to see how you were doing. My cousin is asking about you.” That, of course, was a lie. My cousin was asking about nothing, but had been silent for days.

              Maribel turned to face me, and I shuddered. It wasn’t the bruised lip and the missing tooth beneath it. It wasn’t the idea that this was a girl deflowered. It wasn’t the fear that me even speaking to her would mean I would be next.

              It was her eyes. Once sparkling and full of mischief and life, they were flat, dull, and dead.

              “Hi, Sol,” she said, smiling at me. The gesture looked brittle and fragile — like it would break at any second, sending the rest of her teeth clattering to the ground. “I’m doing fine. Just fine.”

              “That’s wonderful,” I said cautiously. Maribel did not look fine.

              “Tell your cousin not to worry,” Maribel said. I noticed for the first time that her lunch was spread out in front of her, but not a single item had been so much as taken from its wrapper. “Tell her that it wasn’t so bad, even. They told me I was pretty and the only reason I got hit was because I tried to run away. Next time, I won’t run away. I learned.”

              It was hard to stay seated, to not run away, but I felt like I owed to Maribel to bear witness to whatever she needed to say. I’d never tell my cousin, of course. Nobody needed to know this, just how thoroughly they’d broken Maribel.

              “I want you to know that I’m here for you, okay?” I told her, leaning closer to her and wincing as she flinched at the sudden movement. “I’m sorry. I’m here if you need to talk about anything.”

              “Thanks, Sol.” That sharp smile spread across her face again and I was afraid her lips were going to crack and bleed.

              “I have to get to class, now,” I lied. “See you around.”

              But Maribel stopped going to school, and no one was ever clear on what happened to her. Either her parents had taken pity on her and sent her away, or the gang had swooped in for her, deciding she was maybe too much of an asset to let go.

              Rumors swirled, speculation and unkindness. Seeing how the incident had affected Maribel so drastically bothered me in a way I had trouble defining, so I tried to stay above the fray, tried to walk away whenever anyone launched into the subject.

              But one time, I heard an ugliness that I couldn’t ignore while I was walking down the hall on my way to my last class of the day.

              “You know what I heard about Maribel, though?” a classmate was telling a tittering group of boys. Automatically, I did my best to shut my ears and walk faster, but I couldn’t outrun the next remark. “I heard that she liked it. I heard that she liked it so much, she went back to beg for more and that’s why she’s not around anymore.”

              I whirled around, unable to fathom what I was doing or why. I pushed the guy — I think he might’ve been in my first period class, but my rage was blinding — up against some lockers and put my nose against his.

              “You’re an ass,” I told him. “How dare you make that kind of shit up? You have no idea what she went through. Until you do, you don’t have the right to spout such absolute crap.”

              “Jesus,” he said, trying to squirm away from me unsuccessfully. I had him pinned. “Get out of my face, freak.”

              “Not until you admit you’re an idiot,” I spat at him. “Or I could just kick your ass, right here in front of all your little friends. Would you like that?”

              I heard myself speaking vaguely, as if my voice was floating up out of a deep well. I had never threatened violence against anyone. I considered myself generally as a person who could get along with most everyone. Why was this happening? Why was I feeling so righteously prepared to kick the ass of some misinformed, ignorant, immature classmate?

              “She got what was coming to her, and you’ll get yours, too,” the guy declared hotly.

              As if someone else was controlling it, my arm cocked back and I slapped him in the face — hard. He yelped and the rest of his friends gasped. When I drew my arm back again, this time balling my hand into a tight fist, intent on adding some injury to the insult, someone dragged me away.

              “Sol, what the hell are you doing?” Antonio peered into my face, more flabbergasted than angry.

              “Man, get control of your girlfriend,” my classmate spat, looking shaken in spite of his words of bravado. The outline of my hand reddened on his cheek.

              “Get control of yourself, idiot,” I snapped weakly, shock doing quick work of numbing my rage. I let Antonio haul me away, and we decamped to the library, my hand stinging. I wondered if my classmate’s face hurt even worse.

              “What’s going on?” Antonio asked, sitting me down at a study table tucked away behind several shelves of books. He towered over me, pensive. This was a side of me he hadn’t seen before. Hell, this was a side of me I didn’t know existed.

              “I’m sorry,” I said. “They were making fun of Maribel and I just couldn’t take it.”

              Antonio sighed and ran a hand through his hair before kneeling in front of me. “You can’t just accost people like that, Sol. What happened to Maribel is sad, but you have to keep your head down.”

              I blinked a couple of times. I expected to be admonished for resorting to violence — not fussed at for standing up to people destroying Maribel’s already tenuous reputation.

              “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Keep my head down? You’re the one who wants to influence social change in this place. We have to start somewhere, don’t you agree?”

              “I don’t mean for you to get embroiled in these things,” he said. “This kind of work is tricky and dangerous. If you attract the wrong kind of attention … I just couldn’t watch you get hurt, Sol. And since when are you interested in the cause?”

              I shrugged. I’d always been pretty blasé about Antonio’s social change underpinnings — if only for the reason that it was all but impossible to solve the problems of Honduras single-handedly. I’d just unexpectedly pounced on something that upset me, something that I wanted to see changed in my own life’s experience.