The Painted Boy (15 page)

“Margarita’s dead! Don’t you get it? She didn’t have some magic power to protect her. She was just our friend, a kid who played in our band, and now she’s
dead
!”

Over her shoulder, Jay saw Rosalie approaching with Ramon and the other band members. They walked like zombies, dejected and stunned, carrying the few instruments they’d been able to grab before they’d fled the building. Behind them, Hector knelt beside a blanket-draped body.

Here he was thinking he was so cool, that Anna was going to be impressed. But their friend was dead. Murdered.

“I . . . I . . .” he tried, but he couldn’t find the words.

“You could have stopped it before.”

Jay shook his head. “I didn’t know that guy was going to—”

“Not now. Back when you went to see El Tigre. Instead you just made some kind of deal with him and now Margarita’s dead.”

“That deal was supposed to—”

“You make me sick. I hope I never have to see you again.”

“Anna,” he tried again, but she was already gone.

He could see Rosalie a step or two ahead of the others. He couldn’t read her expression, but still he didn’t know how he could face her. It was going to be the same as with Anna. All of them were going to feel the same.

Maybe he
should
have done something before. Instead of making the deal, maybe he should have tried to wake the dragon instead, smashed the crap out of the
bandas’
pool hall with all of them in it. Then Margarita wouldn’t be dead.

“Jay,” Rosalie began.

But he shook his head. He couldn’t stay to hear it. There was no place for him here.

Before Rosalie could reach him, before Anna could shove him again, he stepped away to the in-between place, its calming desert. He sank to his knees, too weak to stand.

He’d wrecked everything. He’d messed up and people had died because of it. Not as many as might have, but he was no hero for saving them. Not when he’d created the danger in the first place.

The image of Anna’s face—the tears streaming down her cheeks, the anger in her eyes—wouldn’t go away. He sat up and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth.

What was he going to
do
?

 

 

Rosalie stood with her mouth agape, staring at the place where Jay had been. She’d thought she’d seen the gangbanger turn to ash and vanish before the building came down, but even with everybody talking about it, she hadn’t really believed it. He had to have just disappeared into the crowd while everybody was looking at Margarita and Hector. But even if it had happened, how could Jay be responsible? Even if he
could
turn into a dragon, there’d been no dragon. Just Jay standing there with his arms spread wide.

But this . . .

“Mother of God,” Gilbert said, and crossed himself.

“What . . . how did . . . ?” Rosalie couldn’t seem to make her mouth work properly.

“It was magic,” Ramon said.

Rosalie glanced at him. She heard in his voice the shock and wonder that she and Gilbert were feeling, but there was also the satisfaction of finally having something confirmed. The only one of them who didn’t seem surprised was Anna. She just looked pissed.

“Did you see?” she said. “He’s like some kind of freaking superhero, but he still couldn’t take the time to save Margarita.”

“What are you talking about?” Gilbert said. “What happened to Jay?”

“He took off on us,” Anna said. “What else would you expect from a guy like him?”

Rosalie wanted to protest, but just then someone came over to say that the police wanted to speak to them.

“Wait up,” Ramon said. “Nobody saw anything, okay? Not unless you want to spend the rest of the night talking to some cop who could give a shit about a couple more dead Mexican kids.”

“Why should we protect Jay?” Anna demanded.

Rosalie could see that she still wanted to hit something.

“I’m not saying you should,” Ramon told her. “But tell me. What did you see him do in there?”

“He—well, the gangbanger—oh crap, I don’t know. But you all saw him just disappear in front of us, right? So he must’ve had something to do with what happened in the hall.”

“We don’t know that.”

“How about this,” Anna said. “He let Margarita die. Why should we cover for him?”

Ramon shook his head. “We’re not doing that. I want to protect
us
—all of us that are still here. If we tell them what some of us saw, or thought we saw, they’re going to think we’re high and be all over us for drugs and who knows what kind of crap. We could even get locked up for psychiatric evaluation. Do you want that?”

“No, it’s just—”

“We wouldn’t even be able to go to Margarita’s funeral.”

Anna thought it over. “Fine, I get the picture.”

Ramon looked at the others. “Everybody else okay with this?” Silence. “Okay, let’s go talk to the cops.”

 

 

It was easier and harder than Rosalie had expected. Easier because the police simply took their statements at face value, but harder because this was Margarita they were talking about.
Their
Margarita. Not some stranger, but their drummer and friend.

When they were finally done, Ramon, Rosalie, and Anna found themselves still standing in the parking lot, staring at the ruined music hall. Everyone else had gone home except for the police and the fire department, and a handful of rubberneckers, hanging on in case something else happened. Ramon draped an arm over each of their shoulders.

“Let me take you guys home,” he said.

Anna shook her head. “I want to go to the hospital or the morgue . . . or wherever they took Margarita.”

“You know we can’t do that.”

“Then what
can
we do?”

“We can go home.”

“You can stay with me,” Rosalie said.

“What if Jay’s there?”

Rosalie sighed. “I know it’s easier to believe that this was his fault—that he knew all about what he could do—but I really don’t believe that he did.”

“Margarita’s still dead.”

“I know. It’s horrible but—”

“The
bandas
killed her. Like they killed my brother . . .” Rosalie nodded. “I know. My mother’s dead because of them, too.”

“God, I hate living like this.”

Ramon drew them both in close. Anna wept into his shoulder while Rosalie stroked her hair.

“I’ll go talk to Margarita’s parents,” Ramon said when Anna finally pulled away and stepped back. She rubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Better they hear it from one of us than from the
policía
.”

He drove the girls back home and walked them to the door. Tío was waiting up so, once Ramon left, the two girls camped out in his living room. Over the cocoa Tío made them, they told him what had happened.

It was late before Tío finally let Rosalie chase him off to bed with her argument that he had a restaurant to open in the morning, and later still before Anna eventually fell asleep on the sofa. It was only then that Rosalie was able to deal with her own grief. Somehow, she’d managed to keep the flood of numbed shock and sorrow at bay while dealing with the police, taking care of Anna, talking to Tío. Now it washed over her like storm waters rushing through a dry riverbed. She cried for Margarita, for Margarita’s parents, for all of them. For the gifted life cut too short. For the friend she’d lost. For a world in which such things not only happened, but were all too common.

But while her tears exhausted her, she wasn’t able to fall asleep the way Anna had. She lay on her half of the big sofa and closed her eyes, trying not to think, but that just made her think more. After a while she got up and stood in the door of Jay’s room.

Enough time had passed that she had begun to question what she’d seen in the parking lot: Jay standing there, present one moment, gone the next. People didn’t just disappear—well, not into thin air the way it had seemed that he had. People disappeared all the time, but they either walked away from their lives, or someone took them.

So which was it with Jay?

When she looked around the room, there wasn’t much of his personality visible. The furnishings were all Tío’s, as were the posters on the wall, most advertising local galleries. But she saw his backpack lying in the corner by the dresser. His MP3 player was plugged into the wall socket, charging. Crossing the room, she opened the top drawer of the dresser. Jay’s few clothes were all still there, all neatly folded. She was about to close the drawer again when she saw the corner of the notebook she’d given him peeking out from under his T-shirts.

She hesitated a moment, then pulled it out. Sitting on the bed, she looked around again. It was hard to tell that anyone lived here, which also made it hard to tell if Jay had simply abandoned his few things or was planning to come back. The flimsy notebook felt heavy in her hand. She wasn’t sure she was actually planning to read it. Then she glimpsed her own name in the first paragraph and the next thing she knew, she was deep into what he’d written.

It was strange, reading about things she had experienced herself only to see them now from a different point of view. The change in Jay as the journal continued was disconcerting, too. He went from the kid she’d met a few weeks ago—not really sure what he wanted out of life, easy and fun to be around, crushing on Anna—to someone so full of—

Anna would say bullshit.

But Rosalie thought it was maybe more like potential. Big, weird, mysterious potential.

She tried to convince herself it had to be a story he was writing. But she knew it wasn’t. She’d probably always known that it wasn’t, that it was all real—the dragon, the magic,
everything
.

“But how can it be?” she said aloud, the words startled out of her mouth.

She looked to the doorway. She half expected someone to be standing there, shocked that she’d be invading Jay’s privacy. Truth was, she was shocked herself; guilty, too. But these things she’d been reading . . .

She fell back on the bed and let the journal drop as she stared up at the ceiling. She was so tired. Too tired to get up and go to her own bed.

In the end, she fell asleep where she lay.

 

 

The destruction of the dance hall brought out half the neighborhood. Whether or not they’d actually seen anything, they were all happy to talk to the various news reporters who vied to get reactions from people on the street.

Five-fingered beings weren’t the only ones drawn to the wreckage. Cousins stood around the parking lot in human form, exchanging their own stories.

“Oh, man, you should have seen it,” Miguelito told his crew.

They stood bunched in a group just beyond the spotlights of the television cameras and the lights of the police cars, a group of javelina boys, thin as rakes with spiked hair, baggy pants, and oversized sweatshirts.

“He just filled the whole hall,” Miguelito went on, “this huge freakin’ dragon, bright as gold. He didn’t need no bling—he
was
bling. He just opened that big dragon mouth of his and
fried
Alambra.”

Dino, the youngest of the gang, had stayed inside with Miguelito.

“It’s true,” he said.

Carlos elbowed Rico. “And you had us come out for a smoke.”

Rico shrugged. “Hey, what can I say?”

“I heard the dragon just turned him to dust,” Javier said. He’d been outside with the others.

Miguelito shook his head. “No way. He turned him to
ash
.”

Carlos sighed. “Aw, man. That’s so awesome. Why couldn’t I have seen it?”

They all started talking at once.

“Word.”

“Totally.”

“So sick, man.”

Dino poked Miguelito in the shoulder.

“Look,” he said, and pointed across the parking lot.

The boys all turned to see.

“Holy crap,” Carlos said.

They didn’t need their enhanced night vision to pierce the shadows where the foursome stood.

An old Chinese woman. A hot little white woman. And two scary dudes, one black, the other Asian.

At least that’s what any five-fingered being would see. The javelina boys saw four dragons, auras of their great golden shapes rising behind them to fill the sky.

Rico shivered. “Oh, man. What are
they
doing here?”

“Looks like they’re arguing,” Carlos said.

Miguelito nodded. “Totally intense.”

“You know what this is like?” Javier said.

The others all turned to him.

“It’s what they say about the feathered serpents down south,” he said. “They watch to make sure no one gets too cocky. I’ll bet they’re here to check out the damage.”

Miguelito nodded again. “And maybe lay down some of their own damage on our dragon.”

Because that was how the javelina boys saw it. The dragon that had fried Alambra was one of their own. He’d taken down a King, just like that. The freaking Presidio Kings ruled the barrio and everybody had to stay out of their way, five-fingered beings
and
cousins. But their dragon, he hadn’t taken any gangbanger crap. He’d just fired up some righteous dragon retribution.

Javier gave Miguelito a push. “You’ve gotta tell them, man. Tell them our dragon had cause. Alambra knifed that girl—isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah, but—”

“You’ve got to set them straight. You know how it goes with the feathered serpents. They figure someone’s gone a little loco and . . . ” He mimed cutting his throat his throat. “They just shut him down. That’s why those dragons are here.”

“I can’t just walk up to a bunch of big cousins like that and tell them what’s what. Man, they might fry
me
.”

“No, it’s on you,” Rico said and the others all nodded in agreement. “We’ll have your back, man.”