by Edward Bloor
I looked more like his granddaughter, su nieta, than his daughter, su hija. I had a government ID card that said I was Caridad Nueves. It was a hortatory name, the same one my mother had given me. My straight brown hair was gone—it was now curly and black. My eyes were a deep brown to match it. My derma was three shades darker than it had been, too. I was wearing a Guatemalan corte jacket with deep pockets, and balsa-wood clogs that made me look ten centimeters taller. In my opinion, the girl on the vidscreen looked very much like Victoria.
I turned to watch the broadcast preparations. Lena hurried past me without so much as a glance. Then Mickie herself, while checking out the crowd, looked right at me. Clearly, she did not recognize me. Or my father.
I whispered, “Papi, Mickie doesn’t know you.”
He grinned. “No, Cari. She never did.”
Mickie’s attention switched to the two men standing next to her—Mayor Ortiz and Mr. Patterson. I edged close enough to hear her ask the mayor, “Why couldn’t you have started this party one hour later? Or moved it one street over?”
The mayor shrugged. “We only have one main street. And the Carnaval starts when the church says it starts. I have nothing to do with it.”
“Wouldn’t the church listen to you? Aren’t you the mayor?”
“I am. I am the mayor of Mangrove, which today is having its Christmas Carnaval as it does every year on El Día de los Reyes. If you want to do a show about that, you are more than welcome.”
Mickie shook her head angrily. “The show isn’t about that. It’s about my stepdaughter. My kidnapped stepdaughter. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh, I know it. She was taken from home, was she not, from The Highlands? With its great security? That would be an interesting show to see. And you could vid it right there, in The Highlands.”
Mickie pointed at the ground. “This is where she was held prisoner. In Mangrove. This is where the kidnappers lived.”
The mayor smiled slightly. “I don’t know about that. I heard it was an inside job.”
Mickie snarled. “All right. Forget it. Forget you. You’re never going to see your face on my show again, ever.” The mayor raised his eyebrows, indicating that he didn’t much care, which made Mickie even angrier. She went on: “And there will be no more Kid-to-Kid Days, either.”
The mayor smiled. “They really weren’t worth all the trouble for us. The extra security; the trash pickup. And then, most of our kids refused to wear those clothes anyway.”
Mickie opened her mouth to say something angry, but she never got the chance. A reveler in green sequins and pink feathers danced up beside her, raised a water pistol, and blasted her in the back of the neck. Mickie screamed like she had been shot by a bullet. She yelled, “My God! Lena! Get over here!” Then she ducked behind the line of bemused Highlands kids and started haranguing the security guards: “Did you see that? What if that was a real gun! I’d be dead now.” The guards, followed by the butlers, pulled out their Glocks. They aimed them at the feathered people in the crowd, who just laughed and squirted water at them.
I found a place about five rows back from the stage and waited, with about one hundred others, for Mickie to calm down, dry off, and begin the vidcast. The large screen went blank for a moment and then flickered on again with Mickie’s logo—a pair of rectangular red glasses beneath which, as if written by an invisible hand, appeared the name Mickie Meyers in lipstick-red cursive. Then the logo faded away and a new image appeared.
I stared at the vidscreen for several seconds before I could comprehend this fact: I was looking at myself, my old self from just one week before. My pale, unsmiling face, in grainy black-and-white, now filled the bottom two-thirds of the screen, while information about my kidnapping filled the top third. This was the “Taken” flyer that Patience and Hopewell had created and passed out all over Mangrove, at risk to their own lives. With my jaw hanging open and my lips moving slightly, I read the words: “Taken, January first, two thousand thirty-six, from The Highlands.”
The flyer then started to fade, and a live image of Mickie’s face filled the screen. She stared into the camera, rather grimly, and said, “This is Mickie Meyers, reporting from the town of Mangrove, a town sometimes associated with revelry and fun. But recently, it’s a town associated with a heinous crime—the kidnapping of my stepdaughter, Charity Meyers, and the murder of her father, Dr. Henry Meyers. The flyer that you just saw is part of a continuing effort to find Charity Meyers. That effort goes on, as I will explain to you later in the broadcast.”
Mickie followed Kurt and his camera to the center of the stage. “First, though, I would like to begin with a very special story. Isn’t it always at times like these, when evil seems to be winning, that a hero emerges? That’s exactly what happened here. Let me open this segment by reading a passage to you from one of the most popular novel series of the last ten years, brought to you by SatPub. I am, of course, referring to the Ramiro Fortunato Series for Young Readers.”
Mickie held up a familiar-looking book and started to read out loud: “‘Even though we needed the currency badly to fix a hole in the roof, I returned the bound-up wad of dollars to the elderly couple. They were so grateful. They called me a hero. But no, I wasn’t a hero. I was just someone trying to do what was right.’”
Mickie closed the book dramatically and explained, “The speaker is a young man named Ramiro Fortunato. In this series of books, he faces many challenges, some of them dangerous, but he always triumphs because he knows what is right. And he does what is right. But don’t just take my word for it.”
Mickie stepped down from the stage and walked into the crowd. At first I was shocked by such an un-Mickie-like move, and I started to back away. But I soon figured out that it was prearranged; a group of kids had been hand-selected to talk to her. Mickie extended the microphone and asked the nearest girl, “What is your favorite Ramiro story?”
The girl leaned toward it shyly and replied, “The one where he saw a lawn guy rob a kid’s bike and throw it in a van. Ramiro ran after the van so fast that he caught the guy and made him give the bike back.”
“Good,” Mickie replied. “Great.”
She turned to a short boy. “How about you?”
The boy smiled slyly. “Uh, I like the one where Ramiro Fortunato gets into a fight with a drug dealer.”
“Yes? Really? Go on.”
The boy went on. “Yeah. And he kicked his lily-white ass.”
The rest of the kids snickered. Mickie pulled back the mike. She muttered to Lena, “At least we’re not live.” Kurt set up next to her, the light came on, and she continued. “Like these children, one boy from this town grew up loving Ramiro Fortunato novels. He took them to heart. Then, one week ago, he had the opportunity to become a hero himself. You are going to meet that very special young man today.”
Mickie climbed back onto the stage, talking as she went. “You all know by now what happened to Dr. Henry Meyers and his daughter, Charity. It was a tragedy that struck close to the heart for me. And I want to thank all of you for your prayers and for your messages of hope.”
Mickie paused and looked upward. Even from my spot, some ten meters away, I could see her eyes moisten. As if on cue, tears rolled down her cheeks. They looked positively enormous on the vidscreen, like an avalanche of phony grief. Mickie gulped audibly and then continued: “It was especially moving to hear from parents who have gone through such a tragedy themselves, and who are still going through it. Still ‘living with it,’ as I am.
“What you might not know is the role a young man from Mangrove played in a daring rescue attempt. He did not succeed, but he did try. He did what he knew was right. And that’s why he is a real-life Ramiro. Let me introduce you to a young man who just wants to be called Dezi.” She turned to Lena and added rhetorically, “His mother must have been a big I Love Lucy fan to call him that. Right? Let’s bring him out.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I looked around and caught my father’s
eye. He raised his shoulders, as puzzled as I was.
At Lena’s urging, Dessi walked out from the side of the stage and stood next to Mickie. He looked terrified. I saw no trace of the anger, or the arrogance, that usually showed on his face.
Mickie took him by the elbow. She began by mispronouncing his name again: “Dezi, first of all, thank you for what you tried to do for me and my family.”
Dessi didn’t correct her pronunciation. He just answered nervously, “You’re welcome.”
Mickie held up her book. “Tell me, Dezi, when did you start reading Ramiro Fortunato novels? Was it as a child, as I’ve been told?”
“Yes.”
“Did your mother read them to you?”
“Well—”
“And then she died, tragically, leaving you those memories of reading together, didn’t she?”
Dessi shifted uncomfortably. “Sort of.”
“So, Dezi, I’d like you to tell the audience now, in your own words, what you did to become a real-life Ramiro.”
Dessi flinched as the mike was thrust in his face, but he did speak up. “I tried to help the girl who was taken. You know. Your daughter.”
“My stepdaughter, Charity Meyers. Yes. An upcoming series of shows will be dedicated to finding her and to bringing her home. Now, tell us how you risked your life trying to rescue her from a gang of kidnappers. They were armed and dangerous, weren’t they?”
“Yes. They had Glocks.”
“Glock semi-automatic machine guns?”
“Right. They were searching in a grove for something, or somebody. I thought that looked strange, so I investigated.”
“As Ramiro might have done.”
“Then I saw a girl hiding. She begged me to help her, so I did.”
“And that girl was my stepdaughter, Charity Meyers?”
“Yes.”
“So what did you do next?”
“I told her, ‘Come on, I know where we can get help.’ And we started running. We found some abandoned houses to hide in. But—but they caught us.”
“And what did they do when they caught you?”
“They knocked me out. I thought I was dead. But then I woke up in a house, and…I wasn’t dead.”
Mickie turned and looked purposefully at the mayor. “And that all happened right here in the town of Mangrove, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So you risked your life to help this girl. You didn’t even know her, did you?”
“No.”
“So why did you do it?”
Dessi hesitated for just a moment before answering, “Because it was the right thing to do.”
Mickie lowered the microphone and looked at the audience. The people started to clap warmly. Mickie talked over the sound. “That’s the kind of heroism, the kind that asks for no reward, that he learned from the Ramiro Fortunato series of novels. And that is precisely why we think he does deserve a reward.” The people applauded louder. “And the folks at SatPub agree, Dezi, which is why they are giving you this: a complete set of Ramiro Fortunato novels, hardbound. What do you think of that?”
Dessi didn’t answer. He just shifted from foot to foot.
Mickie went on. “But that’s just the start of it, Dezi. When we were talking earlier, what did you tell me that you wanted to do with your life?”
“I said I wanted to be a doctor.”
“To be a clinic doctor.”
“Well, to be a doctor.”
“A doctor who runs a clinic that helps poor people like you.”
“That helps people like my mother.”
“Okay. Well, you might need a doctor yourself when you hear about this next gift. We are presenting you today with what college administrators call ‘a free ride.’ Based on your very impressive high school transcript, you will receive a full scholarship—tuition, room, meals, books—to the University of Miami.”
The audience broke into spontaneous applause. Dessi turned to the crowd and smiled shyly. His eyes started filling with tears.
Mickie continued, “You’ll be majoring in pre-med, I take it.”
He nodded, clearly overcome with emotion.
“And you’re going to work very hard?”
He managed to choke out, “Oh yes.”
“Because, Dezi, there is a catch. We’re going to be checking in on you from time to time. Is that okay?” She waited for a reaction. When there wasn’t any, she went on. “If you can maintain a three-point-five average, your free ride will continue right through medical school. What do you have to say about that?”
The applause started up again. Dessi spoke over it. “I say thank you. Thank you very much.” He pointed to the sky. “And thank God.”
“Yes indeed. Now what might your mother say about all this?”
“My mother would be very happy. And my father.”
“Happy that their son was a real-life Ramiro Fortunato.”
Dessi tried to say something else about that last comment, but Mickie had already turned away and was addressing the camera. “Still, as you know, Dezi’s heroic actions could not prevent this tragedy. Charity Meyers was taken away by those kidnappers, a vicious band who also murdered her father in the process. Where is she now? We do not know. When we return, I’ll speak to some of Charity’s classmates to ask them how they are coping with this tragedy.”
Lena herded “my classmates” onto the stage. Dessi tried to step off, but Lena hissed at him to stay in place. Then I saw a young woman in the crowd with long, lustrous hair. She was standing to the right of the stage. Dessi bent down to ask her something, and she replied.
It was Victoria. Why on earth was she speaking to Dessi?
I puzzled about that as I watched the Dugan sisters clomp onto the back riser. They were followed by Sierra, Patience, Hopewell, and Sterling Johnston. Lena must have been distracted by all the water squirters, because she allowed Sterling Johnston to stand in the front. Apparently, he was still taking his medication.
As soon as they were all in place, Kurt the cameraman positioned himself in front of Mickie and she began: “A young child, just like these children standing behind me, is taken by ruthless kidnappers. What will happen to her? Let’s ask some of her classmates what they think. Sierra, do you believe you will see your classmate Charity again?”
At first, Sierra didn’t answer. But when the microphone remained in front of her, she muttered, “I don’t know.”
Mickie tried again: “Who does believe we will see Charity again, that we will get her back where she belongs?”
I watched with pride as Patience and Hopewell raised their hands.
“That’s right. So do I. And because I do, I want to address Charity directly.” I froze, but I quickly realized that Mickie was not looking at me. She was looking at Kurt. I met her gaze on the big vidscreen. “Charity, honey, I feel in my heart that you are still alive. I want you to know that we, meaning the crew and I and the people from GlobalKidSearch, the most successful victim-retrieval agency in the United States, are determined to find you. As soon as we leave here today, we are heading to South America. Could you have been taken there? To Brazil? To Argentina?”
Mickie backed up toward the Highlands kids in order to make her final remarks. “I intend to find out where you are, whatever it takes. I pray that we may have a glorious reunion show someday.” She paused and concluded, “But for the present, and for the near future, we will all be ‘living with the uncertainty’ of not knowing.” The red light blinked off, and Kurt lowered the camera.
As the people in front of the stage dispersed, my father slipped into the space next to me. “Mi hija, what did you think of all that?”
I answered with a whispered syllogism: “All Mickie Meyers specials are stupid. This was a Mickie Meyers special. Therefore, this was stupid.”
“Yeah. If she only knew how stupid, huh?”
His eyes twinkled merrily behind his old-guy disguise. I had to smile. But then I told him seriously, “You kn
ow why I’m really here, Papi. There’s someone I have to see.”
He nodded. “I know. You can go talk to her, but you must be very careful.”
“I will be.”
“We’ll have to be getting back soon, Cari. There’s much work to be done.”
“Sí, Papi.” I stood for a few more minutes, watching as my classmates left the stage. I noticed that Whitney was not among them. I figured that her family wouldn’t let her leave The Highlands, not even in the security van. All the other Amsterdam Academy students were there, though, looking miserable, especially against the backdrop of the laughing, singing revelers.
Victoria’s words came into my head: “You need to live life, Miss. You need to have adventures.” Patience’s feisty spirit came into my head, too, and I decided to have an adventure. I walked right up to Sierra and the Dugans as they stood together, silently picking at threads in their plaid jumpers like uniformed orangutans. They did not seem to notice me. I stopped in front of Pauline Dugan and smiled. She didn’t even look up. I spoke to her anyway: “Tu hermana es mierda.”
“Huh? Hey, Sierra, what’s she saying?”
Sierra sneered widely. “I don’t know.”
Maureen added, “Tell her to get lost, Sierra.”
“I told you! I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Yeah. Right.”
I pointed at each of them in turn and told them, “Tú, y tu amiga, y tu hermana son mierdas. ¿Comprende?”
All three turned their backs. But before they did, Maureen snarled, “Hey, go tell it to the lawn guy.”
I smiled pleasantly and walked on, to my true destination.
Victoria was still standing to the right of the stage, where I had last seen her. I walked up and just stood for a moment. Then I pulled a small orange from my pocket and held it out for her to see. I whispered, in my best Spanish, “¿Quiere usted una naranja?”
