The Hunted (5 page)

“Don't you think I know that?”

“Then what's your plan?”

“I haven't gotten that far yet,” she admitted, “to have a plan.” Fanning her face with her hand, she added, “Oooh, it's hot in here.” Her skin was flushed, and Jack could see bits of perspiration glistening where her hair framed her face. Jumping to her feet, she flung open the door of the trailer as far as it would go, then stood next to Jack. Bending close, using an exaggerated whisper, she said, “For starters, maybe it would be a good idea to give him a bath. He kind of…smells.”

“Smell?” Miguel asked before he tipped the bowl and drained the last drops of milk.

“Sí, poco,”
Ashley answered, smiling apologetically at Miguel. “Let's grab some shampoo and head to the creek. While we're scrubbing, maybe we can figure out what to do next. Jack, do you have any extra clothes that will fit him?”

“Nothing his size. He's littler than you. What do you have?”

“A Utah Jazz T-shirt, which I love, but I guess it'll have to do, since everything else I packed would look too girly on him.” Sighing, she rummaged through her duffel bag and brought out a faded purple and gray shirt, and then a pair of black shorts. Elbow-deep, she poked around until she pulled up a pair of sandals, the kind with Velcro fasteners. “These might work, too,” she said.

“Mom bought those for you for this trip, and they cost 50 bucks!” Jack objected.

“So? I have other shoes. Miguel's got nothing. We shouldn't be pigs, Jack.”

“Pig?” Miguel repeated, looking puzzled. “Ah,
puerco!”
He laughed, then patted his stomach and burped, making Jack and Ashley laugh with him.

W
hite angelica next to Quartz Creek bloomed like soap bubbles on green straws, nodding to the water as it rushed on its way to Lower and Middle Quartz Lakes. Though it swirled with foamy ripples, the water didn't look too deep, especially where it pooled behind a string of boulders polished smooth by the swift current. Branches and bits of sticks had lodged against the stones, damming the water into a small pool. A perfect bathing spot.

“There,” Ashley said, pointing. “That's where we'll clean him. It'll be cold, but it's the best we can do, 'cause I don't have a clue how to rig up that shower bag thing Dad has. You ready, Jack?”

“I guess. I'm not sure Miguel understands what we're doing here.”

“Sure he does, don't you, Miguel?” Miguel shrugged and smiled, a sign Ashley took for “yes” but that Jack interpreted as “I have no idea.” Both he and Ashley were in their bathing suits, so Miguel most likely just figured they were going in for a swim. Jack looked away from Miguel's trusting eyes. Poor guy was really in for it now.

“OK, Jack, I'll turn my back while you tell him to get undressed. Tell him to leave his underwear on, though,” Ashley instructed.

“You do it.”

“I'm not going to. That's a guy thing. After you get him in, I'll give his hair a really good shampoo.”

Jack snorted. “Give us a break. Miguel can wash his own hair.”

“Not as well as I can,” came her reply. “You don't mind me washing your hair, do you, Miguel?”

Another shrug, another grin.

“There you go, Jack, he's fine with it.” Ashley had armed herself with a full load of supplies, from biodegradable shampoo to biodegradable soap to fresh underwear (Jack's), her own Jazz T-shirt and black shorts, a spare toothbrush and toothpaste, comb and scissors, and her sandals, all of which she'd loaded into a clean plastic garbage bag and slung over her shoulder.

They seemed like mother and child, Ashley and Miguel, which amused Jack because the two of them were exactly the same age.

“All right, I'll wait up on the bank,” Ashley told him. “You get him in the water and then call me.”

Jack asked, “You sure you want to do this?”

“Sure I'm sure. He stinks. Besides, I want to cut his hair after it's wet—”

“No way,” Jack protested. “The only hair you've ever cut was on your Barbie dolls.”

“They looked great!”

“They were
bald!”

“Only Malibu Barbie. Besides, that was a long time ago. Come on, Jack, it'll only be a trim! I'll just snip a teeny tiny bit, and he'll look a whole lot better.” Supremely confident, she retreated up the bank of the creek to wait. Bushes rustled behind her, and then, like a forest animal disappearing into the underbrush, she was gone.

Jack turned to face Miguel, who was studying him with his large, dark eyes. “OK,” Jack began, feeling completely stupid. “See the water? We want to go in. To wash.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and pointed once again to the stream.

“Sí.
Wash.” Miguel seemed to have understood enough to act amused. They exchanged a look of “she's a girl—what can you expect?”

“So, you need to take off your clothes. But leave on your underwear,” Jack added quickly. In a flash, Miguel kicked off his tattered sneakers, then scrambled out of his shorts and began to wade into the water. From behind, Jack saw that Miguel was completely naked. “Ashley,” Jack sputtered, “stay up on the bank. Whatever you do, don't come down here!”

“But I want to—”

“Miguel doesn't
have
any underwear.”

“Oh,” her voice floated down. “Never mind.”

Great, Jack muttered. Now he was going to be the one responsible for following through with Ashley's idea. Well, there was no way he was going to scrub another guy, no matter how bad the other guy smelled. Yanking open the bag, Jack rooted around until he found the shampoo, soap, and a washcloth. When he waded in, his breath was caught by the coldness of the stream, until he let out a loud yelp and chattered, “Man, this is cold.” Miguel didn't seem to mind it. Laughing loudly, he splashed the water with his palm, spraying Jack with an arc that caught the light in rainbow crystals.

“Oh, so you want to play rough, huh?” With his fist, Jack hit the water, returning fire, and as the battle escalated, both of them slipped on the algae-covered stones and fell flat in the stream. Laughing, sputtering out mouthfuls of creek, they kept up the water fight until they were thoroughly soaked. With hair plastered flat against their foreheads in wet stripes—Miguel's black, Jack's honey blond—they signaled each other: Truce!

Miguel then grabbed the shampoo and soap and cleaned himself until his brown skin was as smooth as a seal's.

“Ashley,” Jack yelled, “we need towels. Bring that big blue beach towel and leave it up behind those bushes that have the pink flowers.”

“OK, but it'll take me a minute,” she called back. “Last night I gave the blue beach towel to Miguel.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because he needed something to keep him warm, and Mom would have noticed if I'd pinched one of the blankets. Hang on—I'll run back for it.”

Jack felt a hint of worry. Their parents had told them to stay together when they went anywhere, especially into the woods, yet Ashley seemed to be going off by herself constantly without coming to any harm. In a few minutes she returned, the blue towel trailing behind her shoulders like Batman's cape. “Don't worry,” she said, taking a halting step forward. “I'm looking only at the ground.”

“Leave it on that bush. Good. Now, go away.”

“Hurry up. I didn't mean for you and Miguel to have all the fun.”

Back on the bank Miguel rubbed himself dry and dressed in the clothes Ashley had brought. Clean, dry, and sweet smelling, Miguel was a good-looking—dude. He seemed pleased as well. Rolling his old clothes into a ball, he was about to toss them into the creek when Jack stopped him. “No, this will go into the garbage,” Jack instructed, taking the bundle and jamming it into the plastic bag. “Don't litter.” He launched into a short lecture about keeping the park clean, about why they'd needed to use biodegradable soap and shampoo to protect the environment—but after watching Miguel's eyes glaze, he gave up. Jack had never realized how hard it was to get ideas across when there was no common language to build on.

“
Now
can I come down?” Ashley's voice drifted from somewhere near the picnic table. “I want to give him his haircut.”

Jack groaned. “She wants to—” With his index and third finger, he made snipping motions to his own hair.

At first Miguel looked alarmed, but then he gave one of his shrugs—this time without the grin—and said,
“Sí.
OK.”

When Ashley reached them, Miguel sat on a big rock, his back ramrod stiff, as if the slightest movement might result in decapitation. With the big blue towel wrapped around him to his feet, Miguel looked as small as an eight-year-old. “Now, don't move,” Ashley warned. “Don't even breathe.”

The haircut was not making Miguel especially happy, but maybe he felt he owed Ashley. Frowning in concentration, peering close, then standing back, she worked her way around Miguel, scissors winking in the bright sun.
Snip, snip, snip,
went the blades as bits of black hair fluttered to the ground. Bugs buzzed around, but Ashley ignored them, intent on her work. “OK…I think you're done.”

She surprised Jack. She did a reasonably good job on Miguel. “Not bad,” she cried, brushing his neck. “There, Jack.
Now
try to tell me I can't cut hair.” Looking speculatively at her brother, she raised the scissors and took a step in his direction.

“Not me!” he yelled, backing away from her. “Not ever! Forget it!”

“OK, OK, I'll just have to wait till you're asleep,” she agreed cheerfully.

“Ashley!”

“Just kidding. Let's all go up to the picnic table and sit there while we figure out what to do. First I'll get dressed, then I'll get us some cans of soda—you want grape or orange or cola?”

The way Ashley was taking charge was a little much, but if Miguel could take it, Jack guessed he could, too. After he'd changed out of his bathing suit, they settled themselves at the picnic table—Jack and Miguel on one side, like the troops; Ashley on the other, like the general. Jack thought, I don't ever want to live in a world run by girls. But he kept quiet because he was curious to hear what Ashley was hatching in her little pea brain.

“I've wanted to keep Miguel a secret because Mom and Dad will have to call Social Services, and the officers will take Miguel away and send him back to Mexico, like they did the other two times.”

When Miguel heard the word Mexico, his face clouded. “No Mexico,” he told them.

“But how long can we keep a secret like this?”

 

Jack protested.

“That's just it. Maybe we don't need to keep Miguel a secret any longer because I've been thinking,” she announced. Obviously, while Jack and Miguel were in the creek, she'd been constructing a whole scenario of her own. “I'm figuring this: When Mom and Dad see Miguel, especially now that he looks so nice with that
great
haircut, they'll think he's cute.”

“And your point is…?” Jack asked.

“Well, you know how we take in foster kids?”

Oh, wonderful, Jack thought. The one vacation we've had without a foster kid tagging along, and she wants to pick up one on the road. Out loud he said, “Ashley, that won't work. No matter what you're cooking up, he's still an illegal alien. He can't be a foster kid in the Social Services system if he's illegal. They'll have to send him back.”

“Back? Nogales? No!” Miguel shook his head.

“I don't want Miguel as a foster kid,” she said impatiently. “This is my idea: We'll
adopt
him! Then he'll be a U.S. citizen. He couldn't be sent away.”

Jack sat in stunned silence.

“Listen, I've figured it all out. He'll sleep in the extra bedroom in our house where the foster kids usually stay, and when school starts in the fall, he'll go with me on the bus, because this year you'll be in junior high, Jack, so we won't be taking the same bus. I don't suppose Miguel will be put in my grade until he learns to speak English better, but he's smart, and I'll help him learn, so I bet by the end of the year—”

“Ashley!” Jack yelled to stop her.

“What?”

“You can't decide everything for everybody. Maybe Miguel doesn't want to live with us.”

“Who wouldn't want to?”

“Me, sometimes!”

“What are you talking about?” Ashley looked at him with her chin thrust out stubbornly.

“Look, it's one thing to give someone a haircut when they don't want one, but it's a whole different thing to boss them on how they're going to live the rest of their lives. You can't just take over people, Ashley. You gotta stop this—hey, are you listening to me? I'm trying to talk to you.”

“Shhh.
Wait a second. Did you hear that?” Ashley held up her hand, motioning for Jack to be quiet. Looking toward the woods, she peered intently into the distance, her eyes narrowed.

“Come on, Ashley—”

“No! I mean it! Listen!”

Jack strained, but he heard nothing except the chirping of birds and the rustling of the wind through the treetops. “It's just the wind.”

“No, there it is again. I can just barely hear. Way off, it's like a thumping.
Boom, boom, boom.”

“Are you trying to psych me out?”

Ashley shook her head. “It's really soft…like…I don't know…a heartbeat.” Tilting her head, she asked, “Didn't you hear that?”

The tiny hairs on the back of Jack's neck stood up when he heard the sound—a soft thumping in the distance, as if the air itself were pulsating. From the direction, he guessed it was coming from an area on the farthest edge of Quartz Creek Loop, maybe a quarter of a mile from their campsite. Whoever it was, they were back in the trees, well hidden from the Landon camp.

“I don't get it. No one is supposed to be in here,” Jack said. “The entrance into Quartz Creek Campground is chained. This whole area is closed.”

“Well,
somebody's
in the woods,” Ashley shot back. “It sounds like music.”

“The only other people who could possibly be back there are rangers. Or hikers.”

“Maybe. I just hope it's not….” Ashley's face clouded. She bit her lip and looked at Miguel.

“What?”

Mouthing the words, so that she barely made a sound, Ashley whispered, “The police!”

Miguel must have been able to read lips. He jumped forward so fast Jack barely had time to grab his arm.
“¡Policía! ¡Policía!”
Miguel exploded.

“Hold on, Miguel, don't listen to Ashley—she's just crazy.
¡Loco!
There's
no
police!”

“No Nogales! No!” Miguel cried, tugging at Jack's arm. For someone so small, Miguel was amazingly strong. It took all of Jack's strength to hold him.

“Way to go, Ashley,” Jack hissed at his sister. “You've got him all freaked!”

“I was just thinking about the newspaper. They said the police were looking for him.”

“Police don't crank up music in their patrol cars in the middle of the woods. Now Miguel believes he's about to be deported. Nice going!” Then, to Miguel, “Calm down. Listen to me, you're OK.”

Miguel stared at Jack, his eyes round with panic, his breathing shallow.

“No police, Miguel. No worries. It's just hikers.” He moved his index and third finger through the air as if they were walking. “Hikers.
¿Sí?
”