We Never Asked for Wings (26 page)

“He was perfect,” Wes said, and Letty didn't know if he was talking about the picture or about his scores, but she nodded, agreeing.

“He was.”

Wes flipped the picture back over and held it just inches from his face, as if trying to catch a whiff of Alex's newborn smell.

“I miss him,” he whispered. “At night I dream about him, six years old with skinned knees, crying, and then he becomes one of my patients, dying, and I wake up sweating. Every night a different age.”

It made Letty feel sick, what she'd taken away from him, but there was nothing she could do, no way to bring back Alex at six, eight, ten, twelve. So instead she sat down beside Wes and started at the beginning, talking him quietly through each photograph. She told him about the way Alex had lunged at his first bite of rice cereal, about the fall after his first step, and how he didn't try again for another month. She told him everything she could remember, but there was so much she didn't know, and she wished Maria Elena had been there to fill in the gaps. Maria Elena knew everything.

When she finished, Wes put the photographs carefully back in the envelope and looked up, holding her gaze.

“Maybe we should try,” he said quietly. “Maybe it's the best thing—for all of us.”

From the living room, Christmas music drifted down the hall. She imagined a burning fire, a big tree in a big window, the kind of home and family she'd wanted as a child, long before she'd gone to Mission Hills, or met Wes, or had Alex. She'd loved Wes. It wasn't a far stretch to imagine that she could love him again. They could have a good life together. And it would be the right thing to do for Alex; it would make up, if only a little bit, for the landslide of wrongs she'd done throughout his short life.

But just then the music turned off, and when she looked up, Rick stood in the doorway, a sleeping Luna in his arms.

“I'm sorry,” he said, startled. “I didn't mean to interrupt.”

Luna slipped from his elbows to his forearms, and he jostled her up. Her head flopped back, mouth gaping open.

“You're not interrupting,” Letty said, jumping up, and even though she didn't look at Wes, she could imagine the expression on his face—wounded, incredulous, confused. She pulled down the covers on Luna's bed, and when she turned back, neither Rick nor Wes had moved. The muscles in Rick's arms were taut under the weight of her daughter; on the bed, Wes sat with knuckles white, clutching the envelope of photos.

Oh, God, what was she doing? Looking at them both, she was reminded of her mother in Mexico, buried in feathers and glass and the weight of having to choose. Letty had to choose now too, and either way she would lose.

Taking Luna out of Rick's arms, she tucked her into bed and pulled the covers up tight. From the living room she heard Sara calling her, trying to say good-bye, and she looked at Rick, and then Wes, and then Rick again.

“I guess that's it,” she said, finally, escaping into the hall. “I think this party's officially over.”

They followed her onto the front porch, where she said good-bye to everyone at once. When the last car had pulled onto the main road, Alex kissed her cheek and went to bed, but Letty didn't want to go inside. The cold night air was numbing, and she sank down onto the steps.

Christmas morning was only a few hours away.

She had stockings to fill, presents to wrap. It would be no use to try to sleep now. Leaning against the railing, she took a long breath and closed her eyes, listening to the cars in the distance, and then to the barn owls, and then, for a long time after, the quiet.

A
lex and Yesenia were still high on Christmas, draped in new clothes and shoes and backpacks, when they met at the top of the pedestrian bridge on January 5, the first day back at school. They would tell their mothers what they'd done after Yesenia was settled in and doing well, when it would be too late to pull her out. So for now, the secret was still theirs alone. Yesenia tried to hide her smile, just as Alex had tried to do on his first day at Mission Hills. But her happiness escaped her eyes, those deep black orbs taking in the sky and then Alex and then the sky again, and in her gaze he felt her joy envelop him and wondered if the sky could feel it too.

She looked beautiful. Carmen had bought her a fuzzy pink sweater for Christmas, tight in all the right places, a belt with a symbol of some fancy brand that Alex could never remember, and dark jeans long enough to cover up most of her orthopedic shoes. She'd fixed her hair the way Alex liked best, long and straight with the ends curled under and the red stripe in front held up by a diamond-studded pin, so that he could kiss her without getting a mouthful of hair. He kissed her now, and she smelled good, different—as if she'd guessed the perfume cloud at Mission Hills, though probably she'd just gotten something new in her stocking.

“Last kiss,” Yesenia said. “At school I'm your cousin, remember?”

Alex frowned. “Only if anyone asks. We'll give it a few days, and if no one asks, I'm telling everyone you're my girlfriend. I don't want my friends hitting on you.”

“They won't hit on me.”

“You'll see,” Alex said. “The guys here have this thing for pretty girls.”

Yesenia smiled and took his hand, and they started the long walk to school. They talked about Christmas, Yesenia describing her gifts and the movie they'd seen, on Carmen's first Christmas off, ever; Alex told her about the ecstatic mayhem that had ensued when he and Luna had pulled the pretend plane tickets out of their stockings. As they got closer to the school, their conversation shifted to Mission Hills, and Alex told Yesenia everything he could think of: where he sat in Mr. Everett's class and the latest developments in his science project (he'd gone to the lab with his father three times over break) and who his greatest competition was and also that Mr. Everett disallowed competition; he told her what they had just finished reading in English and what they were about to start and about the kids in his classes, Nathan and Bobby and Sophia, who he'd already decided would be her best friend—they both liked salt water, wasn't that enough?—and about the piles of homework and the weight of the textbooks.

“You can share my locker,” he said. “And I'll carry your books.” It was the first thing he'd thought of when he hatched the “Yesenia takes Mission Hills” plan, that she would share his classes and he'd carry her books.

As they rounded the corner, Mission Hills came into view all at once, white and imposing, the sun like a spotlight above. Yesenia stopped walking and studied it without moving.

“Are you nervous?”

She shook her head no. “Not nervous.” She smiled and squeezed his hand, then let it go quickly, remembering. “Just happy.”

Alex slipped his forefinger into a belt loop of her jeans, holding her in a protective way. He was happy too. They'd done this big, brave thing, and they were safe now, and together, and they would be together every day of high school and then—well, every day after that too. Pulling gently, he led her forward, up the long walk and columned staircase and into the great front hall.

It was early. They had come for zero period—Yesenia was to wait in the library—but the school was alive already, and Alex found himself again surprised by the commotion. A group of Mr. Everett's students leaned against the lockers, talking about their Christmas vacations in loud, animated voices. He was about to say something to Yesenia, comment on the earliness, the energy, that this was one of the first things he'd noticed to be different about the school and did she?—but when he looked at her he saw she was focused on something else: a man in a suit walking briskly toward them. Mr. Daniels.

“Hello, Alex.”

He was surprised the principal knew his name but also not—it was no secret he was one of Mr. Everett's favorite students, and more than one teacher at the school remembered his mother too. Alex didn't know how long the principal had worked at the school, but he certainly looked old enough to have known Letty as a student.

But Mr. Daniels wasn't looking at Alex; he was looking at Yesenia. Standing just a few feet from her, he bent at the waist to study her beautiful, blushing face.

“You must be Yesenia Lopez-Vazquez,” he said, nodding to a security guard standing by the door, and for just a moment Alex thought they were both part of some welcoming party, to let her know how happy they all were to have her there, what great care they would take of her, that they would never ever let happen to her what had happened at her last school.

But there was nothing warm about the way they looked from one to the other, principal to guard and back again, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach Alex realized it was wrong, all wrong, and also that it was too late: Mr. Daniels was walking away, Yesenia trailing behind. Alex turned to follow, and the guard led them through the office and down a long hall, to a closed door.

Mr. Daniels opened it.

Inside, a table. At the table, two uniformed police officers, waiting for them.

L
etty followed a probation officer down a long, dark corridor. Behind them a heavy door clicked shut, and in front another stood tall and locked. The PO swiped an ID badge and the door opened, leading to another dark hall and then another. The clicking of the locks made her head spin; she wanted to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit and the PO kept walking. If she didn't keep up she'd be trapped between the doors indefinitely, unable to go forward or back. She concentrated on her steps, swallowed the bile that rose in her throat and mixed with the smell of sweat and soiled carpet, until the final door opened and she stepped into the light of the intake unit.

Outside the window, a police car pulled into a courtyard. A steel gate rolled down behind it, so that the car was contained on all sides before an officer opened the car door. The handcuffed boy who got out of the back wasn't Alex. Alex had been there hours already, hours that Letty had spent waiting in the lobby for permission to see him. She paused at the window, pulled in by the scene playing out in the courtyard—the boy was pressed up against the car now, an officer holding him in place with his knee—but the PO barked for her to keep walking, and she was led around a desk and along a row of thick glass cells. A fat teenager with buzzed hair lay on his back on a wooden bench, his flesh pressed up against the glass, and Letty thought of the animals at the zoo, thick-skinned hippos and rhinos and elephants lazing against the viewing windows. The boy didn't lift his head as she passed, but he tracked her just as any one of those animals would have, with neither interest nor self-consciousness. It wasn't his first time here.

They paused in front of another locked door; on the other side Letty stepped into a cavernous, horseshoe-shaped room with steep steps down like an amphitheater. At the bottom, lines of empty chairs faced a dark television screen. From a cluster of desks at the top, officers monitored the movements of everyone in the room. The PO pointed to a table in the corner and left her there as he went to knock on a row of doors. One at a time, boys in navy blue pants and matching T-shirts came out to get their shoes, then disappeared back inside to put them on. At one room the PO lingered, exchanging words with whoever was inside. Letty held her breath, expecting it to be Alex. But instead the PO yelled something about him declining to speak, and a man with a clipboard and a mental health badge turned and left the room.

They were coming out now. Shoes on, shirts tucked in, heads down. They walked with their hands behind their backs as if they were handcuffed, and it wasn't until the first one passed that Letty saw there was nothing actually holding their wrists together. It must have been required, though, because when a boy in the middle of the line lifted a finger to scratch his collarbone, a PO shouted an order and his hand immediately flew back into place.

Some of the boys walked lazily, others stiffly. Watching, Letty could tell by the amount of fear in their eyes how long they'd been there, and whether or not they'd been there before. A boy with a swagger and loosely held hands swerved wide, as close to the officers as he dared before turning and walking down the steps to the chairs below. Behind the desk a black woman with short white hair called out after him: “You going to walk right by without giving me anything?” He turned at the sound of her voice and flashed a lopsided grin. “That's right, you'd better smile.”

“I've known him since he was thirteen,” the woman said, and it took a moment for Letty to realize she was talking to her. “I told him I'd come visit him on the outside—that he doesn't have to get locked up to see me.”

The boy took his seat with the others and stared at the blank screen. From where Letty sat she could see only the back of his head, but she could tell by the way he held his shoulders that he was smiling, and for the first time since she'd received the call that morning, Letty felt the pressure in her chest ease. But then all at once there was Alex, the last of the long line of boys, his eyes angry and scared. Letty's stomach heaved. She covered her mouth and closed her eyes and didn't open them until he was seated at the table across from her. His chair scraped the linoleum as he pushed it in; she heard his clenched fists fall on the tabletop.

In the waiting room she'd thought of a million things she wanted to say, every variation of plea and accusation, but opening her eyes, she couldn't remember any of them. There was a rough patch on his forehead, a layer of skin missing, and Letty imagined him being pushed by an officer or a roommate against the cinder-block walls. The image made her stomach lurch all over again. She swallowed hard and forced herself to speak.

“How are you?” she asked, stupidly, and the row of boys below sniggered. Alex said nothing. He wouldn't look at her, and Letty felt her fear bubble suddenly into anger. She pushed her chair closer and whispered across the space between them.

“What were you thinking, Alex? You can't just go breaking into computer systems and enrolling kids in Mission Hills who don't belong there.”

She felt the hypocrisy in her words even before Alex looked up, his glare challenging her, forcing her to remember. He'd stood by her side in Sara's kitchen as she'd filled out a phony lease, waited in line at the DMV to change her address to a zip code she couldn't afford even in her dreams. She'd modeled all of it for him, the rationalizing and the carefully calculated action. The only difference was that he'd gotten caught.

“There were security cameras in all the halls,” she said. “They have everything on tape. Even if we had money to fight the charges, we'd never win.”

Alex exhaled. His posture was defeated; he'd known before she said it that he didn't have a chance.

“Why are they charging me with burglary?” he asked. “I didn't take anything.”

“It doesn't matter. You broke in with the intention to commit another crime. So it still counts as burglary.”

“But I didn't break in!”

“Quiet!” From the corner a PO barked. Letty startled at the gruff reminder, but Alex didn't blink. Only hours in and he was used to it, a fact that made Letty want to take his hand and run.
He shouldn't be here,
she thought,
not Alex,
but behind the desk the door slammed shut again, the lock clicking loudly. They weren't going anywhere.

Alex leaned toward her, his voice low this time: “I didn't break in,” he said again. “I had a key.”

“Well, you weren't supposed to have a key.”

At the bottom of the steps the group of boys stood as one and filed out the door. She watched them go, looking into their faces as they passed and trying to imagine each of their mothers sitting in her place. Would they think, as she did, that their boys didn't belong here? That they weren't like these other boys? Maybe. But most of the young men who walked past had the empty, wandering look of the motherless kids she'd grown up with at the Landing, kids whose mothers had overdosed or been locked up or otherwise couldn't be pressured to care. Alex
was
different in this way, just as she'd been different, and she knew from experience that it made the pain of screwing up more acute.

Only the white-haired woman behind the desk remained in the room. She stood up and moved to the chair farthest away from where they sat, an act filled with so much kindness Letty felt her eyes well. She clenched her teeth and waited for the feeling to pass before turning back to Alex.

“Why did you do it?” she whispered. “I don't understand. You see her every day after school.”

Alex lifted his eyebrows in surprise. He thought he had been getting away with seeing Yesenia after school, but Letty had known. She just hadn't known what to do about it. He shrugged his shoulders but didn't say anything.

“You couldn't wait until three? Really? You had to risk all this?”

Alex lurched forward suddenly, shushing her in a way that sounded almost like a hiss. “Stop saying that. I didn't do it to see her.”

“So why did you do it?”

Alex slouched back in his chair, all the effort it took to hold everything inside seeping out in one long exhale. “She was getting beat up, okay? And she wouldn't tell her mom, and I didn't know what else to do.”

The words stunned Letty, even though she knew they shouldn't. Of course a girl like Yesenia wouldn't be safe at Bayshore High. No one was safe there; it was why she'd worked so hard to get Alex out.

“Why didn't you come to me?”

Alex met her eyes, and she remembered: he had come to her—begging and tormented, the morning after Wes returned. But she'd been so distracted she'd pushed it away, not understanding his urgency. “You did come to me. You fucking came to me, and I ignored you.” The weight of it hit her all at once, and she folded forward onto the table, her cheek pressed against the smooth plastic. “God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Stop it,” Alex said. The harshness in his voice pulled her back to sitting. “I did this. I broke in and I enrolled Yesenia and”—he ran his finger over the scrape on his forehead, remembering—“I talked back to an officer.” His eyes filled. Curling in his bottom lip, he bit down, trying to stop the tears that wouldn't be stopped. “I don't know what's happening to me.”

Alex bent over onto the table, as Letty had done only a moment before. He was silent, but his chest rose and fell as the sadness overwhelmed him. Letty put both her hands on his shoulders.

“I miss my nana,” he whispered, the words barely audible, and Letty remembered Luna on the back of the airport chair, wailing. Alex's voice was deeper, but the heartbreak was just the same.

“I miss her too,” she sighed. “But we're okay. You're okay.”

“I'm not.”

“You
are
. You might have done something stupid, but you did it because you thought it was right. You did it for Yesenia.”

Alex began to cry in earnest, not even trying to contain himself, and Letty glanced nervously around the room, thinking about what the others would do to her skinny, crying boy after she left. But the room was empty now. They were all out somewhere, in school or walking the grounds, and so she sat quietly and listened to him cry, stroking his back until all the tears were gone. Gently, she felt the back of his neck for temperature.

When she looked up, the white-haired woman stood beside her.

“Time's up, Mama.”

Letty kissed the back of Alex's head and then reached for the hand the woman offered, allowing herself to be pulled up and led to the door. When she looked back, Alex sat tall in his chair, face wiped clean and hands behind his back, waiting for direction.

She paused at the door. “Do you want Wes to come? He wanted me to ask.”

“You told him?”

“Of course I told him.”

Alex shook his head no.

“Okay. I'll let him know.”

“And, Mom? Tell him I'm sorry. And Carmen too. Tell her it was my idea—that it's all my fault we're in here. Will you tell her?”

Letty wanted to go back to him, to squeeze out the guilt and despair, to hold his head up high on his shoulders, but the door was already open, Letty being led through.

“I will,” she said. “I love you, Alex. Remember.”

The door slammed shut behind her, and Alex was gone.

Letty sat with Luna on the steps of Courtyard Terrace, waiting for Carmen to come home. In the parking lot, two girls drew hopscotch squares with fat chalk, and Luna wandered over every few minutes to see what they were doing, hopping once, twice, and then remembering. Guiltily, she raced back to her mother's side, slunk down on the steps, and waited, her lips in a thin, grim line.

It was late afternoon when Carmen finally came. The smile on her face as she climbed out of her car confirmed Letty's fear: she didn't know anything. Yesenia hadn't called. She hadn't given the police her mother's phone number—she probably hadn't even given them her name. Everyone was afraid of
la migra,
and from what she knew about Yesenia, Letty was sure she would do anything she could to protect her mother. Letty felt a fresh wave of nausea, thinking about Yesenia and Alex within the dark maze of locking doors, all alone.