by JB Salsbury
“Lucky me.” My jaw pops from the force of my yawn. “So what’s up? Why the wake-up call?”
“A little birdie mentioned Sebastian Vega is out and roaming the streets of Los Angeles.”
I grunt. “Julian. I should’ve known he’d spill.”
“Whoa, hold on. What about Julian?”
I rub my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. It’s too damn early for this convo. “We ran into Sebastian and Omar in Harvard Park.”
“What were you doing in Harvard Park?” His man-nerd parental voice is not the least bit intimidating, but I have to give him credit for effort.
“Buying meth for Jules.”
“Ha. Ha. I’m serious, Milo.”
“We were eating. Last I heard, that wasn’t a federal offense.”
He breathes hard, almost as if he’s releasing whatever ideas he had that had his panties in a knot. “You’re right. I’m sorry, go on.”
“Nothing to say. He stopped, we had a chat, then we went our separate ways. If Jules didn’t tell you, then how did you know he was out?”
“I’ve got a friend on vice, and he let me know. Your cousin seems to be on his best behavior, but they’re keeping a real close eye on the LS.”
“Fine. Whatever. You know we want nothing to do with that. They can do what they want. We’ll go on living our lives.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t sound all that convinced. He’s not the only one. “You promised you’d call me if you heard from Sebastian.”
“I didn’t realize that included accidentally running into him in the old hood.”
“I’m not so sure it was an accident.”
“You think he planned to run into us?”
“I think Esteban Vega keeps tabs on what he considers his, and his boys are on the top of that list.”
His. As if we’re valued property, so valued that he ran to Mexico without so much as a goodbye. “Whatever, man.” I check the clock, and it reads barely six in the morning, too early to unlock and dip into that emotional vault.
“Be on the lookout. Your dad shows his face and starts making promises, it’s really going to mess with the progress Julian and Miguel have made.”
“I know that.” But I can’t do anything. If my dad wants something, there ain’t shit that’ll stand in his way. He proved that by making my mother disappear. I grind my molars until my jaw aches.
Neither the state of California nor Andy can do anything to protect my brothers. It’s my job to keep them safe.
Andy asks me about school and work, all the typical questions, and I give him all the expected answers.
“Sounds good. Keep me posted.”
“Wait.”
“Yeah?”
I push to sit up and look out the window across the lawn to Mercy’s bedroom. “Do you know Mercy’s case worker?”
“Yes, we’ve spoken a couple times.”
“Do you know if the cops are going after the people who messed her up?”
My question is met with a few beats of silence, and I imagine Andy is staring blankly at a wall, trying to decide what he should and shouldn’t tell me. “I don’t know much, but I do know that there is an open investigation.”
“You think they’ll get the guys who held her?”
“I see she’s been open with you.”
“Yeah, she’s got this fixation on the Virgin Mary. I think . . . I don’t know. I know it sounds stupid, but I think she feels like we’re connected in some way because of the tattoo on my neck.” I can’t believe how utterly lame that sounds.
“It’s a prominent symbol of security for her, so it makes sense.”
“Do you know where these guys are? The ones who did this to her?”
“No, and I know I don’t need to say this out loud, Milo, but I feel like I should anyway. These things are best left in the hands of the authorities.”
“Way to ruin my plans, gringo.” I don’t realize until the words are out of my mouth that I’m only half joking, not to mention how much I sound like Esteban. I shake my head and snap back to reality, where I’m a just a guy trying to get through high school so he can get his brothers out of foster care and raise them right.
We say goodbye, and I toss my phone toward the foot of my bed. Wide awake, I head into the main house to grab a shower, and although I’m a little crabby after Andy’s phone call, I know from past experience that it’s nothing a little time won’t fix.
The house is quiet as I creep through the kitchen and down the hallway. All the bedroom doors are closed, including Mercy’s, which I admit is a little disappointing. I wonder what she looks like when she sleeps. I imagine her flat on her back with her hands clasped at her chest like a corpse. Nice, Milo. Real freakin’ nice.
The shower wakes me up, and with everyone still asleep, I take a few extra minutes under the hot spray.
I dry off quickly and pull on my shorts. Then I brush my teeth and grab my towel, still wiping water from my chest when I step out into the hallway.
Mercy’s round eyes get even rounder as she peers up at me. “Milo.”
“Güera, what are you doing up?”
“I heard something and then I . . .” She licks her lips and stares at the door behind me. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“Oh, sorry.” I step aside. “Sorry ʼbout the steam.” I pat my shoulders dry and watch how her eyes follow the movement. “It’s all yours.”
She scurries past me and closes herself inside. I head to the kitchen for some OJ, and when I hear the bathroom door open, I wonder briefly if she’ll come looking for me and am disappointed by the sound of her bedroom door closing shortly afterward.
I head back to my place, bummed that I missed a chance to talk to her alone. With nothing better to do, I crawl back into bed. I don’t know how long I sleep, but when I open my eyes again, the sun is high and shining in through my window.
I groan and roll over, my stomach growling for something to eat.
I head back inside to find the kitchen looking more like a typical Sunday than it did a few hours ago. Chris is wiping down the kitchen counters, and Julian is plopped in front of cartoons while Miguel is flat on his back with his earphones on in his bedroom.
Mercy’s door is open, and she’s folding some clothes on her bed.
“Morning. Again.”
She turns and smiles at me. “Good morning.”
“You going to church?”
She shakes her head and goes back to folding her clothes. “No. Chris and Laura are taking Julian to a birthday party.” Her lips press together as if she’s not sure of the meaning of the words but is simply regurgitating whatever Laura told her. “And Miguel is going somewhere with Liam.”
“You want me to take you?”
Her hands still, and she slowly turns toward me. She doesn’t ask verbally, but I see the question in her eyes.
“It’s not a big deal.” I take a few steps deeper into her room. “I can take you if you want to go.”
She turns and lowers herself slowly to the bed as though she’s afraid if she moves too suddenly I’ll change my mind. “Will you drop me off or . . . ?”
“Do you want me to?”
She shakes her head, and her hands worry the fabric of the front of her shirt. “I don’t want to go alone—”
“Oh, Milo,” Laura says as she pokes her head into Mercy’s room from the hallway. “Chris and I have to drop Julian off across town, and since we’ll have a couple hours to kill, we’re going to the Huntington Library to see the corpse flower.”
“You’re driving all the way to Pasadena to see a dead flower?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, it’s not a dead flower, it’s a flower that blooms every four years, and when it does, it smells like rotting flesh.”
Why the hell does she look so excited about that? I shake my head. “That must be a white-people thing.”
Her eyes brighten even more. “Do you guys want to come?”
“You’re joking, right?”
She ro
lls her eyes playfully. “Fine. But Miguel’s gone too, so you and Mercy will be on your own. There’s some veggie quinoa in the fridge and some sandwich stuff if you get hungry.”
“Cool, thanks.” No way I’m eating quinoa.
Her eyes go to Mercy. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
Mercy shifts on her feet and tugs at the ends of her long white hair. “No, thank you.”
Laura lifts her brows. “Are you sure? It’ll be fun.”
“Oh um . . . no, I don’t mean to . . .” Mercy looks up at me, her eyebrows pinch together, and her teeth worry her bottom lip. “I’m not fuckin’ with you.”
Laura gasps, and I quickly drop my chin and scratch at my jaw, hoping my foster mom can’t see me smiling. “Sorry ʼbout that.” I clear the laughter from my voice. “That might be my fault,” I mumble.
“Okay, well . . .” Laura wipes the shock from her face and nods. “That’s all right.”
Mercy doesn’t seem to know what she’s done, which just makes her dropping the f-bomb all the funnier. “Laura, would it . . . I mean, if . . .”
“Go ahead,” Laura says in her therapy voice. “Remember, questions are okay here.”
My gaze jumps back and forth between Laura and Mercy as Ghostgirl works up the courage to ask.
“Would it be okay if Milo takes me to church?” She rolls her lips between her teeth almost before the last word completely leaves her mouth.
Laura’s eyes widen dramatically, and if I thought that damn corpse flower had her grinning, that was nothing compared to her smile now. “Of course that’s okay. That’s wonderful.” She squeezes my arm. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Church starts at eleven, so you better get ready.” Laura seems a little worried as Mercy ducks her chin, grabs some clean clothes, and scurries past us into the bathroom. As soon as the door clicks behind her, I focus on Laura.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I suppose I could ask you the same thing. Nice vocabulary lesson, Milo.”
“Sorry about that. But what’s up with the not-wanting-to-ask-questions thing?”
She contemplates something for a second then motions me to follow her to her room then leans around me to peer down the hall, ensuring our privacy. “It’s an old hang-up. She’s working on it. How did things at the mall go yesterday?”
I shrug. “Good.” If you don’t count Carrie being annoyingly insecure.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I just . . .” She huffs out a breath. “I know I can’t protect her forever, but I don’t want to push her too hard either. I only want her to do things she feels ready for.”
I nod. “She was uncomfortable at first, and the girls we met there—Carrie and Amber—Mercy would’ve thought they were being nice, but you know how girls can be.”
“Mm. Well, that explains the makeup.” She looks down the hallway toward the bathroom. “She’s just going to have to learn to deal with it like the rest of us did—do. Was church your idea or hers?”
“Mine. Why? Do you think it’s a bad idea?”
“No, no, not at all.” Her eyes zero in on me as I lean back just slightly. “I trust you.”
“Okay.”
She blows out a breath, releasing all the tension she was holding in her shoulders. “Right. Well, you better get ready if you want to be there on time.”
“Can I ask you something?” I whisper. “I noticed the ink on Mercy’s back.”
She makes a pained face. “The tattoo.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
“You should ask her—”
“I did, but the things she tells me, it all . . . It makes no sense.”
“I know. My best guess is she was ten or maybe younger when they gave that to her.”
Her eyes are downcast, so she can’t see the expression on my face, no doubt the epitome of pure shock. Ten? Or younger?
“She was only a child, and they marked her body permanently in such a painful way that—”
“They?” I’m grateful my voice doesn’t give away the rage boiling just beneath the surface.
Her eyes come back to mine, and she smiles sadly. “I’m sorry. This isn’t my story to tell.”
I check down the hallway, thankful that Mercy is still in the bathroom, and I continue. “Papa and Señora?”
A flicker of recognition appears in Laura’s eyes.
“Who are they? Her parents?”
“Ask her—”
“I did. She mentioned Papa and Señora with perfect Spanish pronunciations. I think . . . It seems crazy, but I think whoever had her was Hispanic.”
She blows out a breath and takes a seat on the foot of her bed.
“Please, just tell me something.”
“Mercy was found on the US side of the Mexican border by Tijuana.”
“Found . . . ? As in—”
“Dumped.”
Every muscle in my body turns to concrete. “Was she hurt?”
“No, but she was drugged almost to death. As far as we know, Papa and Señora were her caretakers. From what she’s told us about them, they were not together, not a couple. It seems Papa was Señora’s boss. It’s my belief that they purposefully kept their names vague just in case Mercy got free. No one would be able to track them down.”
“Is that what the cops are doing? Trying to track them down?” My mind struggles to connect the dots. “What if they’re in Mexico?”
“That’s where our hands are tied. We just don’t know. But the investigators are doing everything they can, looking into human trafficking, sex slavery—”
“Oh God . . .” I grip my head and pace the small space, wanting to put my fist through a wall.
“Milo, relax. We have no indication that she was . . . abused . . . in that way. But we can’t rule anything out, and that doesn’t mean what she was involved in wasn’t life threatening. It is our belief that Mercy was rescued from something much larger than just a simple captivity. If she didn’t get out when she did, I believe things would be much worse for her. One more day and she may have been lost forever.”
I step closer. “Lost where?” Fury shakes my voice. “Who would do this to her?”
“Authorities are still trying to figure that out. It’s like we’re missing the one piece of information that would make up the big picture of her past, and we just can’t find it. She has only a few memories of her life, and they’re all basically the same. We believe, because of the condition she was in when she was found, that they’d kept her drugged with Valium during pivotal events, which has an amnesia affect. She doesn’t know her birthday, her name, nothing. It’s like she fell out of thin air.”
“Mercy’s not her real name?”
She shakes her head. “They called her Angel, but to protect her, we legally named her Mercy to help her separate from her traumatizing past and, ya know, just in case.”
I grip both sides of my skull, feeling as if it’s about to split in two. “In case they come after her again.”
“I would hope that they wouldn’t be that stupid, but we just don’t know.”
“Are you going to find who did this to her—”
The bathroom door behind us clicks open, and we both look to see Mercy stepping out with wet hair. Water drips off the ends, making it look like blood on her red shirt.
“Right, so . . .” Laura’s eyes dart between me and Mercy before she hops to her feet. “We should be home around four. Call if you need us.”
I step into the hallway, my body numb with a mix of worry and rage that anyone would take someone as innocent and pure as Mercy and put her through any kind of pain—physical or emotional.
“Milo!” Julian comes running down the hallway, waving a piece of paper in the air. He slams into me and shoves it in my face. “Look what I made. It’s for Dad when he comes back!”
I take the crayon drawing and study it. Two stick figures are holding hands, one bigger than the other, al
ong with grass, trees, and a big yellow sun complete with a damn smiley face.
“It’s us! Me and Dad!”
This isn’t the first picture he’s drawn for his padre. Laura even encourages him to do it for some psycho-bullcrap reason. “I see that, ʼmano. Good job.”
Mercy peeks over at the picture. She brings her face close, tilts her head, squints, and studies.
“We’re at the park he always used to take us to.” Julian shoves a finger at the tree. “By the big tree. You remember the tree, Milo?”
Do I remember . . . ? Yeah, how could I forget? Jules doesn’t know why our Dad had us come with him to the park. We were his cover for whatever product he was moving at the time—we’d have backpacks stuffed with action figures and handguns or bricks of heroin.
I rub his head. “Go get ready for the birthday party, yeah?”
“Okay.” He takes the drawing.
When he does, Mercy’s gaze snaps to mine, a question in her eyes.
“He misses our dad, but only because he’s too young to remember what a complete piece of shit he is.” I’m constantly balancing on this thin thread between protecting my brothers from our dad and keeping the positive memories—although totally misunderstood—alive for them. The effort alone infuriates me.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Yes.”
She blinks those ghostly eyes up at me. “And your mother?”
I swallow hard past the lump that single question puts in my throat. “She’s gone.”
I expect questions. If it were me, I know I’d ask her a million questions about where her mother went, but Mercy simply nods and heads into her room. I suppose for her, parents are irrelevant. Hearing about ours is probably no different than someone explaining to me the difference between crack and cocaine. It’s information, but it doesn’t apply to my life, so who cares?
I could learn a lot from Ghostgirl’s attitude on the subject.
Parents only matter if you let them.
WE END UP getting to Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral—fitting name for Mercy’s church—later than eleven and manage to sneak in and secure seats in the back. Not that it really mattered. I realized only minutes into mass that Mercy wasn’t there for the service. Just like the first time, she slumped low in her seat, tilted her head back, and fell into a kind of trance while staring up at the mural of angels on the ceiling.
