“Nah,” Pao said quickly. “I just know Emma’s ring really well, that’s all. It’s only—”
“Electrical impulses. Right.” But Dante didn’t sound fully convinced, and Pao didn’t know if she was, either.
Before they could discuss it further, Señora Mata banged through the front door with a crocheted shopping bag swinging from one arm, her normally well-ordered hair wild and her face red, like she’d been running.
Dante dropped Pao’s hand like it was a too-hot tortilla straight off the griddle, and even in the storm of other emotions coursing through her, Pao surprised herself by wishing he hadn’t.
“¿Dónde estabas?” Dante asked.
His abuela’s eyes flashed. “Oh, you’re the jefe around here now? You make the curfew?”
Dante looked at his lap and mumbled, “No, señora.”
“I needed a few things from the storage. Not that it’s any of your business, hmm?”
He nodded, and Pao kept her eyes on her plate.
For the first time in living memory, Señora Mata strode over to the TV and turned it off, the bag still dangling from her elbow as she looked back at them, her gaze softer now. “Eat. Rest. You don’t need to be watching this.”
At any other time, Pao would have been thrilled to see her turn off the news, but today it made her heart sink.
“Eat,” Dante’s abuela said again. “Worrying is hard work.”
But it was kind of hard for Pao to concentrate on eating when one of her two best friends had just held her hand and the other might have been the latest victim of a notorious kidnapper, and she couldn’t form a sensible hypothesis about either occurrence.
That night, Dante’s abuela made up the couch for Pao to sleep on. When they were younger, Pao and Dante had slept like sardines in his race-car bed, but Señora Mata had put a stop to that a few years ago for reasons she hadn’t bothered to elaborate on.
Well, unless crossing herself and glaring at them counted as elaborating.
Pao was sure she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but soon enough her thoughts grew fuzzy and disjointed. She was riding Emma’s purple bike, which turned into an eggplant that Pao’s mom had once received as payment for a remedio. The eggplant became a jack-o’-lantern, opening its mouth wide to swallow Pao whole.
She wasn’t surprised to eventually find herself back on the bank of the eerie river, its greenish glow still present, the strange shapes floating under the surface, beckoning….
Pao felt a familiar restlessness build inside her—the same feeling she got when her mom lectured her for too long about candles or intentions or various creatures from folklore. Pao didn’t have time for creepy dreams right then.
“It’s not real,” she said aloud, her voice sounding strange and muffled to her ears.
As if mocking her, the disembodied hand drifted toward her, Emma’s purple-polished finger sporting its ruby ring.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Pao said, though goose bumps chased themselves up and down her arms as the hand came closer. “It’s just a coincidence. Dreams are just dreams. And there’s no such thing as—”
“Ghosts! We know! Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your own repetitive skepticism? I know I do.”
Pao whirled around, her dream heart pounding, the hand now creeping clumsily toward her like a five-legged spider. “Who said that?”
“It’s always the same inane questions,” said the voice again, but there was no one around.
“I know this is a dream,” Pao said, trying to sound brave even as she kept one eye on the approaching hand. “I’m not really here. I’m on the couch in my friend’s living room. His grandma is snoring. I just have to wake up.”
Beside her, where there had been nothing but strange, dream-dense air a second before, the shape of a bored-looking girl materialized with a pop.
If she hadn’t been mentally reciting her This is all a dream mantra, Pao would have screamed, which would have been so undignified. As it was, all she did was jump back slightly, which, like, anyone would have.
Even if they were totally practical and levelheaded.
And not at all scared.
“Better?” the girl asked, tossing her nearly waist-length black curls behind her.
Pao gaped like a three-headed fish. The girl looked to be about her age. Her heart-shaped face was pale, and her wide, long-lashed eyes glowed eerily in the green light of the bioluminescent dream river. Her dress was black and old-fashioned, with a high collar and lace around the sleeves and hem. Her ankle boots, hovering strangely above the sand, had heels.
“My subconscious has a lot of explaining to do,” Pao finally muttered.
“Please,” said the girl, rolling her eyes, a gesture she seemed to use her whole body to accomplish. “You think you have the imagination to create me? Tell me another one.”
“Stupid, snarky subconscious,” said Pao.
“My name,” said the girl, “is Ondina. Not Subconscious.”
“Please let me wake up now,” Pao said, looking beseechingly at the utterly black sky of her dream world. “I promise I’ll let my mom light candles for protection, or feed me weird tinctures for dreamless sleep, or do whatever else she wants to. Just let me wake up.”
Nothing happened.
“How’s that workin’ for you?” asked Ondina, hand cupping her chin, long, thin fingers tapping impatiently on her elbow.
“Fine,” Pao snapped, looking at her almost without meaning to, this stupid figment of her imagination that she’d probably (hopefully) forget about before breakfast. “If you’re not a dream, what are you?”
“This is booooring,” Ondina said, tossing her hair again. “It doesn’t matter what I am. What matters is that your friend is missing, and you’re obeying your bedtime just like the grown-ups told you to.”
The hand was reaching for her again, the gem on its ring now glinting green just like Ondina’s eyes. Pao’s shoulders slumped. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Do you really believe that?” Ondina asked, her gaze intense, all traces of boredom gone. “Or is that just what you’ve been told?”
“Now you’re definitely starting to sound like my subconscious.”
But before Ondina could retort, the hand finally reached Pao. It grabbed the toe of her shoe, and instinctively, she tried to shake it off.
“You can’t run,” Ondina said, but her voice sounded farther away now. “She needs you.”
The hand clung tighter, its pale fingers twisting into her shoelaces. Pao knew what would happen next.
“I can’t!” Pao said, but the hand refused to let go, like it was really Emma and Pao was trying to abandon her. “I can’t!”
“And when the time comes,” Ondina said, watching indifferently as the hand started to drag Pao away once more, “don’t hesitate. It won’t save them.”
“What do you mean?” Pao asked, fighting the pull, even though she knew how futile it was. “Save who?”
“You’ll find oooout…” Ondina said in a singsong voice, and then she was gone.
The hand dragged Pao toward the river, and the green glow took over her vision as water soaked her clothes. She dug her nails into the rocky sand, trying to claw her way back out, knowing it was pointless but unwilling to go quietly.
It didn’t help. Soon, the green blotted out everything.
Pao awoke to find a hand around her wrist. She thrashed her legs and pulled her arm away, a scream building in her throat.
But she wasn’t at the river. There was no green glow. And the hand, she understood as real life came into focus in the dark living room, wasn’t detached or ghostly pale. Above it was her mother’s face, looking tired and worried.
“Sorry,” Pao mumbled. “Time to go home?”
Her mom nodded. As Pao pushed herself up, she did her best to hide the fact she was shaking. She wondered if she’d been thrashing or moaning in her sleep. The feeling of Ondina’s dark, accusing gaze lingered, as did the death
grip of Emma’s hand.
The clock on the wall read 3:30 a.m. Under normal circumstances, Mom would’ve let her sleep at Dante’s until morning, but Pao figured she must have been thinking of the Lockwoods, whose daughter’s bed was empty again tonight. Pao didn’t mind the ridiculously early wake-up. It had rescued her from further terror, and even with the strangeness between the two of them, she felt better now that they were back together.
They tried to creep out as quietly as possible, but still Dante’s abuela appeared in her bedroom doorway in a dressing gown, her eyes wide.
For a split second, Pao wanted to ask if she’d had a weird dream, too.
Instead, she raised a hand in farewell, and Pao’s mom whispered her thanks. Pao could sense the señora staring at her until the door closed behind them.
“So, are you going to tell me what that was all about?” Pao’s mom asked when they’d reached their own stuffy, candle-scented living room.
“What?” Pao asked unconvincingly.
“The nightmare.”
“I wasn’t having a nightmare….”
“Paola Santiago, I know you stopped having those dreams years ago, but don’t think I forgot what they look like.”
But of course, Pao hadn’t stopped having the dreams. She just hadn’t told her mom that.
“Yeah, maybe everything with Emma is getting to me,” Pao said, rubbing her eyes for effect. “It’s been a long day.”
“What did you see in your dream?” her mom asked, her eyes too sharp for someone just coming off a fifteen-hour shift.
Pao could have told her. Explained that she’d dreamed about Emma’s hand and the ring before her friend was declared missing. Dreamed about the Mesa kidnapper before the police made the connection. Pao could have asked what it all meant and accepted the help she knew her mom was dying to give her.
But telling her would mean that Ondina had been right (and real)—that Pao’s dreams had significance. It would mean admitting to herself that her best friend’s crawling zombie hand and the weird snarky girl and the green-glowing river were something more than just Pao’s subconscious reacting to a truly terrible day.
“I don’t remember,” she said, faking a yawn, even though she was anything but sleepy. “I’m sure it was just a one-time thing.”
The look on her mom’s face said she didn’t believe that for a second, but after a very pregnant pause, she smoothed Pao’s hair back off her forehead and let out a small, almost inaudible sigh.
“Get to bed, mijita,” she said. “Tomorrow will be better.”
Pao just nodded, but the space between them felt as big and empty as her dream’s black sky.
Without overthinking it, Pao stepped forward and hugged her mom, hard. “I love you,” she said.
Pao’s mom hugged her back just as fiercely. “I love you, too, Paola,” she said. “Por siempre. No matter what.”
I hope you meant that, Pao thought when she was back in bed. Because her stupid, snarky subconscious had been right about one thing: She wasn’t willing to let Emma go. She was going to do something about it.
And she wasn’t sure her mom was going to like the way she planned to fight back.
In fact, Pao was absolutely positive she wouldn’t.
Her mom was still fast asleep when Pao climbed up the fire escape to Dante’s window a couple of hours later, at 5:30 a.m., lifted the screen to let herself in, and breathlessly explained her plan.
“Please tell me you’ve been body-snatched, and the real, slightly more rational Pao will be back soon,” he said.
“Keep your voice down!” Pao whisper-scolded, flipping on the light and sitting on the corner of the bed as he continued to look at her in horror.
She couldn’t exactly blame him. Going to the Gila had always been dangerous, but revisiting the scene of the crime with the hope that the deranged kidnapper would be there? Downright madness.
But if they didn’t do something, they’d be doomed to inhabit the uninformed sidelines of Emma’s investigation for as long as it lasted, and Pao wouldn’t be able to stand that.
“If he comes back to look for Emma’s ring,” Pao explained, “we could be there waiting!”
“To do what, exactly?” Dante asked.
“Find out who he is! We’ll see him, and then we can tell the police what he looks like, and they’ll match him to the Mesa kidnapper and then catch him and find Emma!” It had sounded a lot less nonsensical in her head, she had to admit.
Dante looked at her with a pained expression for as long as he could, like he was hoping she’d poke holes in her own plan and save him from having to do it, but Pao did her best impression of a stubborn, chin-jutting statue, and eventually he relented.
“So you want to go skulk around the river—which is probably crawling with police and reporters, by the way—and just hope we spot a kidnapper?”
“Do you have a better idea, Dante?” She was beginning to regret not just going on her own.
“Yes!” he said, running a hand through his hair until it stood on end. “Stay home, sleep until a normal time, and let the adults do their jobs.”
“On the news, they said the county sheriffs will be coming in today,” Pao said. “We’ve got to get there now, before they do, and maybe just in time to catch the kidnapper while he’s trying to remove evidence!”
Dante looked at her with big, pitying eyes, and the concern in them made Pao turn away. If she let that pity in, if she let herself feel sad, she might never recover.
“I’m leaving in three minutes,” she said, her voice flat. “With or without you. If you’d rather save your energy for soccer or something—”
“God, I hate you sometimes,” Dante interrupted, stalking to his dresser and pulling cargo shorts over the basketball ones he slept in. His hair was still sticking up funny. “I get why you want to do something—I’m worried about Emma, too,” Dante said as he rummaged for something else. “But this seems…extreme.”
For a minute, she pretended not to hear him. After all, she couldn’t admit that a girl named Ondina and Emma’s disembodied hand were dragging her into it.
Dante found a baseball cap and jammed it over his unruly hair. He was still waiting for a response.
“You and I know Emma better than anyone,” Pao said, kicking the leg of his bed as he adjusted his backpack straps. “Better than her parents, I bet. We’re the ones who should be looking for her, even if they think we’re too young.” She thought of Ondina again. “We shouldn’t let other people tell us whether or not we can help her.”
Dante didn’t answer immediately, and Pao found herself getting frustrated with him. With everything. Of course it wasn’t a great plan! It wasn’t like she had a lot to work with. But was that all that was bothering him? She’d only been trying to push his buttons before, with the soccer comment, but had she hit on the truth? Was this the new Dante? Too into hair flipping and sports to go on a mission to save his friend?
The sun was just starting to rise, and the desert outside Dante’s window was washed in pinks and purples and sage greens. Not a bad morning to risk your life for someone, Pao told herself. Even if you have to go alone.
It would have been nice to have a dog, though. Pao had sung the praises of the Border collie for its search-and-rescue potential before, but she’d never thought she’d need one for an actual rescue mission.
“If you don’t like it, you can stay home,” she said, trying really hard to sound sincere. “I won’t blame you.”
“Well, I will,” came a familiar voice, and Pao’s heart sank. Señora Mata was standing in the doorway, the same crocheted shopping bag from yesterday dangling from her elbow. She looked more disheveled than Pao had ever seen her.
“Señora,” Pao said, her mind going a mile a minute to come up with an explanation for why she was here and what they were doing. But then it came to a screeching halt. “Wait—did you say ‘I will’?” Pao asked. “As in blame him? For not coming with me?”
; A truly otherworldly smile lit up the old woman’s face. “Of course I did,” she said, her accent thick, the first rays of the sun bouncing off her glasses. “I didn’t raise a coward, did I?”
Dante’s mouth dropped open, and Pao barely kept hers from doing the same.
“But…”
“¡Dios mío! You need to hurry! Get in here before I change my mind about helping you.”
“Helping…?” Pao began, but she stopped when she saw the look Dante’s abuela was giving her. “Yes, señora,” she said instead, and followed her into the hallway.
The living room of Dante’s apartment was being transformed.
Señora Mata had closed the blinds to the newly risen sun, plunging the space into darkness. Now she was rushing around lighting candles and muttering under her breath, which made Pao think guiltily of her mother, still asleep in the apartment downstairs.
Pao wanted to ask a million questions, but something in the señora’s straight back and seriously weird expression made her swallow them. She had a feeling she was going to find out what was happening soon, whether she liked it or not.
Dante didn’t hesitate, though. “¿Abuela, qué está pasando?” he asked quietly, sounding more like a little boy than he had in a long time.
The señora didn’t answer. She finally finished lighting the candles and stood beside her beloved recliner, rummaging through the crocheted bag.
“¡Abuela!” Dante said, a little sharper this time, and Pao wanted to shush him, but she found that, for once, she couldn’t speak.
The room looked eerie in the candlelight, the icons and statues on the shelves seeming to come alive in the jumping, shivering shadows. Pao hugged herself to ward off a chill—something she’d never had to do before on a June morning in Silver Springs. But this chill had nothing to do with the temperature outside.
When Señora Mata finally looked up from her bag, there was something odd about her eyes, as if they were reflecting the river’s green glow. “I wanted us to have more time,” she said, her English slow and precise, as always. “But we’ll just have to make do with what we have.”
Paola Santiago and the River of Tears Page 6
