Tortilla Sun (14 page)

My throat swelled. “Don’t go. Please.”

Rising from the bench, he held his hand out to me.

I folded my hand in his and pulled myself up into his arms.

He released me and looked into my eyes. “I love you.”

As I watched him walk toward home plate, I knew I would see him again. Someday. He turned and winked at me. For a split second I saw a stadium and a cheering crowd. Then a gentle wind swept across my face.

I sank onto the field and stared at the thousands of stars now cast across the sky. My eyes burned. I only wanted to close them for a moment. One short moment would make it better. Instead, I slept. A deep peaceful sleep, where I floated between this world and the next in perfect silence.

“Izzy. Izzy?”

I stirred. Don’t call me back. Let me stay here.

“Izzy!”

Opening my eyes to the chilly, dark bank of the river, I blinked back the darkness. The wind had disappeared and I rolled onto my side and sat up.

Mateo was at my side; he helped me to my feet. “You scared me half to death.” He squeezed me.

I let him hold me as I rested my groggy head on his shoulder. The events of the night began to unfold slowly. “You jumped in to save me.”

“I tried, but the river carried you farther and farther away.”

“You risked your life.”

Mateo pulled away from me. “I’ve been swimming here my whole life. Me and the river have grown up together. I was scared you were hurt but your nana said that these waters would never take you—”

Suddenly, I was jolted from my dreamlike state. “Nana. Maggie! Where’s Maggie? Is she hurt?”

“She’s with Nana. But Izzy …” Before Mateo could utter another word, I ran up the riverbank toward the flashing red lights in the distance.

The screeching sound of sirens filled the valley and reminded me of the distant, outside world. I found the paramedics setting Maggie on the stretcher and carrying her away. Nana followed behind them until she saw me. When I closed the distance between us and we stood face to face, I saw something in her eyes that scared me: emptiness.

“Nana, I’m so sorry.”

I collapsed into her and she wrapped her arms around me. Hot stinging tears streamed down my face. One tear after the other fell. Nana pulled back and wiped her hand across my cheek.

The pale moonlight shone across Nana’s face, making her look like a ghost.

“How’s Maggie?” I said as my feet sank into the muddied earth.

“The paramedics have stabilized her.
Gracias a Dios
. Are you in any pain?” Nana said.

“I’m not hurt,” I said. “But why did you say the waters wouldn’t take me?”

Nana gazed toward the full moon. “Socorro told me about a vision she had. You were fighting the pull of the waters, but you would find your way back to the village, unharmed.”

“Did she say anything about Maggie?”

Nana shook her head.

“Can’t you heal Maggie?”

Nana took a deep breath. “I eased the water from inside her and did what I could.”

“This is all my fault! I should never have tried to … I feel so stupid.”

“Izzy, I must go to the hospital.”

“But Nana. I don’t want to stay alone. Besides I have so much to tell you. I—”

“No, Izzy. I have no time to talk about this now. You cannot come with me. Now go home; I will call you soon.” She turned to Mateo. “Please take care of her.”

Mateo nodded.

I watched Nana push her way up the riverbank toward the ambulance. She turned and gazed at me. Her eyes had the same sad faraway look as Mom’s the day she put me on the plane and waved good-bye.

“Your mama called late tonight. She knows something is wrong.” And then she was gone.

I searched the night sky. Was he up there? Could he see me? The night’s events played out in slow motion and I trembled from the inside out.

“All this is my fault. I was too impatient and now Maggie is hurt because of me,” I told Mateo. Hot stinging tears ran down my cheeks. The wind dried them as fast as I cried them.

“Where’s Frida?”

“I found her right after I got Maggie out of the water. Never knew a cat could swim like that.”

“You mean
dog
. Where is she now?”

Mateo motioned to the right, where Frida was curled up under the moonlight, her small head resting on her paws as she waited to see what we would do next. I walked over and lifted her into my arms. “I’m sorry, girl.”

She rolled her head across my hand as I scratched between her ears. I kept my eyes fixed on Frida and said to Mateo, “You saved Maggie?”

“As soon as I jumped in I lost sight of you, but then I saw Maggie surface. When I finally caught her, she had swallowed a lot of water.” He shook his head. “It was that back sack of hers that saved her. It got caught on a rock and slowed her down long enough for me to get there.” He put his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels and toes. “I yelled as loud as I could, and in a flash your nana was here helping Maggie breathe.”

“Then what happened?”

“She sent me to search for you. I was so relieved when I saw you crawl to the water’s edge.”

“I didn’t crawl out of the water though.”

“Yeah you did. I saw you.”

“It was my dad. He pushed me out of the water. He was there, Mateo. He talked to me and everything. We played baseball …”

Mateo’s face fell and his voice quieted. “Izzy, you must have dreamed it.”

“No! He was here with me. He told me what was written on the baseball.” I set Frida on the ground and reached into my pocket. “It’s gone!”

“What? What’s gone?”

“My baseball. I had it.” I patted my pocket as if I could have missed it the first time. Frantically, I scanned the ground.

Mateo hung his head. “It probably fell in the river, Izzy.” He tugged at my arm. “We can find it in the morning.”

“No! It’s special. You don’t understand.”

I ran up and down the river’s edge searching. “Please help me, Dad.” I murmured. The water tumbled along as if nothing had ever happened.

Mateo followed behind me, searching under bushes and rocks and the last bit of moonlight hid behind a long cloud. It seemed impossible now to find it in the muddy dark.

But before I could take my next breath, Frida bounded toward me wagging her tail and carrying my ball in her mouth as if we’d been playing a game of fetch. How she ever got her small jaws around it is a mystery.

I dropped to my knees and eased the ball from her mouth, whispering, “Good dog.” She stood on her hind legs and licked my cheek. I lifted her into my arms.

“She found it,” I called to Mateo a few feet away. “Frida found it.”

Within seconds Mateo stood in front of me, scratching Frida’s back. Her mouth parted in a dog grinning way. “Good job, girl.”

Mateo’s eyes met mine. “What now?”

“I have to see Socorro. I have to tell her what happened.” I turned and hiked up the riverbank carrying Frida, my baseball, and an armful of dread.

A glow shone though Socorro’s front gate like a distant lighthouse guiding me home. Somehow I knew she was expecting me.

As we approached her front door, I turned to Mateo. “Could you wait outside?”

He took Frida from my arms. “Sure.”

Before I could knock, the front door opened and Socorro reached out her arms to hug me. “You have been through quite an ordeal haven’t you?”

“Maggie is hurt and—”

“I know, Izzy.”

“She’s going to come home soon, right?”

“I don’t know.”

My heart caught in my throat. “But why? I thought you were a seer.”

“I may see things that are to happen, but I can’t always control what I see.”

Socorro led me to a small sofa in the living room. “Please, sit and I will make you some tea.”

I cupped my head in my hands and dragged my hands down my face. I wanted Socorro to fix it. She returned with a tray of tea and set it before me on the pine table. She poured me a cup and I watched the steam rise in swirls.

“Why did I have to be so stupid? Please tell me she’ll be fine.”

She stood and walked across the room to the window. “Remember the story I told you? Do you want to hear the ending now?”

I nodded.

“Once the girl showed her family the silver, the whole town soon knew about the treasure. Then one night, a thief stole it while the family slept. Everyone was saddened by their loss. They believed they had nothing left and would never be able to rebuild their home.”

She took a sip of tea.

“But what does it mean?” I asked.

Socorro’s eyes softened and she set her tea on the table. “You must find the answer for yourself.”

“So did they rebuild their home?”

“Of course with the silver it would have been easier, but after many, many years of hard work they did rebuild it.”

Tía and Mr. Castillo were pacing under the back portal when Mateo and I arrived back at Nana’s house.

“
Gracias a Dios
!” Tía dashed toward me and Mateo in a long pink robe and hair curlers. “When Nana left here, she was frantic.” Tía made a sign of the cross, her face streaked with black mascara.

I nuzzled my face into her neck. She smelled of freshly washed towels.

“They took Maggie to the hospital,” Mateo said.

Mr. Castillo’s eyes drooped more than usual. He gazed at both of us. “Are you two okay?”

Mateo nodded and I wiped my face with both hands.

Tía squeezed my shoulder lightly. “Nana told us to wait here in case your mama called back.”

“Has she?” I said.

Tía glanced at Mr. Castillo and back at me. “Not yet,
mija
. But your nana said she sounded very worried.”

Mr. Castillo patted Mateo’s back. “You two should get some rest. In the morning everything will be better.”

That night, everyone slept on Nana’s side of the house—Tía and Mr. Castillo in one of the guest rooms and Mateo on the couch.

As I walked toward Estrella, I ran my fingers along the
santos
on the walls and whispered prayers: a prayer for forgiveness, a prayer for Maggie. A painting of
la familia sagrada
hung right outside my bedroom door. I stopped in front of the framed picture and stared at the faces of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

“Please bless Maggie. Give me a sign she’ll be home soon,” I whispered and made the sign of the cross.

The three faces just stared back, as solemn as before. I pressed open the heavy wooden door to my room. I blinked and stepped inside to get a closer look. My story cards were tied together with Maggie’s yarn and hung delicately from the light fixture in the center of the room. They looked like creamy clouds inching across the sky. Had Maggie done all this?

“I helped her with it.” Tía stood in the doorway.

“She used all her yarn for me? What about her ladder to heaven?”

“She was so upset about breaking your truth catcher. We spent hours threading and hanging the cards. She said they had to be connected so you could write a story.”

Tía smiled softly. “She loves you like a sister, Izzy.”

I nodded and whispered, “I love her too.”

As Tía closed the door I climbed up on my bed and ran my hand through the floating story cards. Each one held strings of words that needed a place to belong. But one stood out among them all: Maggie’s card. The one where she wrote
Flyeng Princis
.

I took a stack of blank story cards and wrote across the top one:
Maggie’s Story, by Izzy
and as I began to write Roybal, my hand swept across the card and looped into a
B
and I wrote
Bella
.

I liked the way
Bella
looked on paper and I finished it off by writing
Reed Roybal
. Staring at the card I realized Mom had given me two pieces of my name and so had Dad.

With the pen in hand, I set my baseball on the desk and ever so carefully wrote in the missing words, beginning with the loop of the
L
for love.

Because love is magic.

Now the baseball was complete. Suddenly, I felt a warm tingle up my spine and down my right arm and the pen in my hand began to move as Maggie’s princess story unfolded. I wrote every
detail as it came to me and before I knew it I had a stack of cards filled with words.

The one-winged angel on the wall seemed to wink down at me.

“I wrote my first story,” I whispered. “For Maggie.”

A breeze drifted through the window and brushed my face. I grabbed a sapphire blue pencil from the desk drawer and jumped onto the bed. “If you really are a guardian angel, could you watch over Maggie now?”

Slowly, I traced the pencil across the plaster wall and drew a wide open wing on the right side of the angel reaching toward heaven. “There. That should help you fly a little faster.”

A few hours later, the sun rose over the majestic Sandias, washing Nana’s house in pink light. When Nana arrived home at lunch time, sadness draped across her shoulders, and she looked even smaller than usual.

“How’s Maggie?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Nana sat by the Santa Maria altar and lit two small candles. The pink morning light crossed her face as she turned to me, and for a moment it looked like she was happy. But just as quickly, the candle light flickered, casting shadows across her stony face, and I saw the truth.

“The doctors say there is nothing wrong with her, but she won’t wake up. So all we can do is wait.” She rubbed her hand across her brow.

I kneeled in front of her. “Nana, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I was just so tired of waiting and—”

Nana held up her hand signaling for me to stop talking. “Gip entrusted Maggie to me, and now I have let her down.”

“No. This is my fault. I thought if I could just talk to my dad that everything would be clear. Please forgive me.”

“I have already forgiven you. I see your intentions were good. But sometimes we must stop thinking of ourselves and think of others.”

“I know. That’s why I need to see Maggie.”

Nothing could have prepared me for the ashen whisper of a girl Maggie had become. The pale edges of her face sank low, leaving her cheeks hollow and frail. The small white room smelled like my last school after the janitors had pushed their blackened mops around the hallways.