“Are you okay?” Marisa asked, but there was a strange edge to her voice.
Pao’s memory came back in snippets. The ghost kids hanging on to her…the flashlight turning on…
That’s when Pao realized—her hands were empty.
“Where’s my flashlight?” she asked, her voice hoarse, every word scraping her throat like sandpaper.
No one answered.
“Where is it?” she asked again, finally upright. She didn’t like the way they were looking at her. “I need it back.”
“The key, you mean,” Naomi said, and Marisa elbowed her to shut her up.
“What?” Pao asked, but Naomi’s words, combined with what had just happened with the flashlight and what she knew of Franco’s theories, finally brought it all together. “The key…”
“You had it the whole time,” Marisa said quietly. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Suddenly, Pao was very uncomfortable on the ground with the two of them standing over her. She pushed herself to standing instead, not quite as tall as them, but meeting them as equals at least.
“I didn’t know,” Pao said honestly. “Not until…”
Marisa nodded, but Naomi looked skeptical. “You didn’t know?” she asked. “When you followed it here? When you used it against the ahogados? What were you doing, then?”
“Honestly?” Pao said, her head pounding. “I was kind of just making things up as I went along.” That much, at least, was true. “All I’ve ever wanted to do is find my friend.”
Naomi scoffed. Marisa’s expression didn’t change.
“Tell me what happened,” Pao said, before they could ask her any more questions about the flashlight.
“They retreated,” Marisa said, her voice faraway sounding. “The light made them let go of you and anyone else they were holding, and they ran off. The scouts are sweeping the area now, but they’re gone.”
“And Dante?” Pao asked, barely getting his name out.
Naomi’s sneer softened, if only just a little. “He fought bravely,” she said, shaking her head. “We weren’t prepared. We didn’t know….”
“Was he killed, or taken?” Pao asked, not needing to know how Naomi felt or what she’d failed to account for.
The silence went on for a heartbeat longer than Pao could stand.
“Naomi! Was he killed or taken?”
Naomi looked at Marisa, who nodded slightly.
“Taken,” Naomi said. “I’m so sorry, P—”
“I want my flashlight,” Pao said, cutting her off. “Now.”
“We can’t let you—” Marisa began, but Pao didn’t let her finish, either.
“You don’t have the authority to stop me,” Pao said. “We had a deal, remember?”
“The deal has changed,” Marisa said, the lines of her face hard. She was a leader now, not a friend. She wasn’t going to negotiate. “We can’t let the key go now. Not when it can protect us through the solstice.”
“You promised!” Pao shouted, trying to stay standing, even though her head was spinning from exhaustion and grief. “You told me you would help me….” She wanted to believe Marisa was no longer the evil girl who had tormented her in school, but all she could hear were Ondina’s words, cautioning her not to trust Marisa, telling her the solstice was her only chance to get Emma back.
And now Marisa was trying to keep her from doing just that.
You don’t belong with them, Ondina had said. And maybe she’d been right. Because Pao was pretty sure that the giant, yawning black mouth had been the rift. And she was all the way sure she knew how to get into it.
“I know what you’re thinking, Pao,” said Marisa. “But it won’t work. You can’t get through. And even if you could, you don’t know what you’d be up against in there. None of us do.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pao said. “I can’t just sit here and let the window close. Not while my friends need me.”
“We need you!” Naomi said, the words exploding like a ball of flame. “You saw what that light can do! You could protect the whole camp with it! Keep the monsters at bay!”
But Pao was already shaking her head. “And then what?” she asked. “We drive them back, we lose some friends, and then it all happens again next month? Next year? It’s time to deal with the rift once and for all. To put an end to this. Because one day, you won’t be able to stop the monsters. It may not be today, or tomorrow, or even for another hundred years, but eventually they’ll get through. And then Silver Springs will be gone. The whole world will be gone.”
No one said a word.
“Give me my flashlight, please.”
Neither girl moved.
“The key takes something from you,” Marisa said. “All magic has a price. You can’t use it again so soon or you could—”
“I don’t have a choice!” Pao exploded. “The solstice starts in a few hours! I don’t know how long it’ll take me to find the rift, or how hard it’ll be to get in. I don’t have time to waste.”
“Would you just look at yourself?” Naomi said, pulling a compact mirror out of her back pocket and holding it up to Pao. “You’re not invincible. And you won’t be of any use to anyone once you turn into one of them.”
Pao took the mirror, her hands strangely steady. Her face was the same—same round cheeks, same long nose. Same heavy eyebrows, threatening to meet in the middle.
Only now, the left brow was pure white.
She pulled the mirror a little farther away from her face and surveyed the full picture calmly. It wasn’t just her eyebrow. One of her braids, from the part to the tip, was white, too. Like she was a little brown Cruella de Vil minus the puppy-skin coat.
“Oh,” said Pao, her voice sounding very far away. She remembered the pulling feeling in her chest, the way the heat had spread through her, the way she’d held on to the flashlight despite the pain. Was this the result?
And whatever it was, hadn’t it been worth it? She’d saved the camp, saved herself….
“The key,” Marisa said again. “It draws energy from you to power it. Franco said—”
“I get it,” Pao replied, not wanting to talk about Franco or what had happened to him. Not when she needed to be able to do what he did and survive. “It drains you, just like the ahogados do.”
Pao’s brain was just as tired as her body, but even so, something was sparking there. If the flashlight drew from her life force to repel the ahogados, were the ahogados powering themselves by drawing energy from the living?
From Emma, said a voice in her head. From Dante.
“Whatever you decide, you have to rest first,” said Naomi, her voice pitched too high, trying to sound concerned and sweet.
It was unnatural, and Pao didn’t trust it. But she would have to play along for now. She was outnumbered and weak, and she was running out of time.
“You’re right,” she said, in just as saccharine a tone. “I’ll rest awhile, if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” said Marisa, too quickly. “Here, lie down in one of the tents. We’ll keep watch in case the ahogados come back.”
Pao nodded, allowing herself to be led to the tent full of cots—the one Naomi had banished them to before the Manos Pachonas attacked. Dante had been with her then. Pao had argued with him about soccer, of all things. And now—
“Here,” said Naomi, gesturing to a cot near the back. “We’ll wake you in an hour, and then we’ll decide what to do.”
Pao nodded again, even though she knew there was nothing to be decided. She would lull them into a false sense of security, and then she would find her flashlight and get out of here. She would do what she had to do.
She would pretend to sleep.
She only had to stay awake a little longer.
Just a little…
It was dark when Pao opened her eyes again. She had slept without dreaming. Had the flashlight stolen her dreams? Or had she just seen enough for one day?
Her eye itched, and she reached up
to scratch it.
At least, she tried to.
Pao’s wrist was tied to the side of the bed, as was her other one, and both her ankles.
“Let me go!” she shouted. But her voice was all but gone, too.
Her heart was racing, her thoughts struggling to catch up with her reality. They had made her their prisoner. But why?
Had they started to suspect her connection with the corrupted magic? Had they restrained her for their own safety?
If they did, you can hardly blame them, said her critical inner voice, but something was telling Pao that wasn’t the reason.
She pulled again at the ropes, but they didn’t give, even a little. Her heart wouldn’t slow down, and her thoughts were racing, too.
Was it dark only inside the tent, or had night really fallen? If it had, she had a lot less time than she’d planned on. The solstice could be over by now, for all she knew. She was alone, weaponless, and powerless….
Someone sniffed in the darkness, and Pao’s pulse reacted, pounding faster still.
She wasn’t alone after all.
“Who’s there?” she whispered, and the cot beside her creaked. A shape moved in the darkness. “Who is it?” She was trapped. If the person wanted to hurt her, there was nothing she could do to stop them.
Pao closed her eyes, then opened them again, hoping to catch even the faintest light from outside to see who was approaching with shuffling footsteps.
“I may not be armed, but I can still scream,” Pao said, hoping it was true, that her ravaged throat would obey.
“Please don’t scream.”
The voice was quiet, timid, the accent familiar as home. Every muscle in Pao’s body relaxed.
“Sal?” she asked, her voice finally catching, giving her a little more volume than a whisper.
“Shhh,” he said, stepping close enough that she could see the lines of his face. “They don’t know I’m here…. And if they found out, they’d…” He trailed off, his eyes darting every which way in the darkness.
“What’s happening, Sal?” Pao asked, her whisper as quiet as she could make it. “Why am I in here?”
“They said…” Sal began, then took a shaky breath. “They said you’d leave with the key. That it was our only hope. They said you were…un poco loca from being sad and you were going to put yourself—and all of us—in…danger.”
Pao was suddenly so mad there could have been steam coming from her ears. “So I’m crazy, huh? And they’re keeping me and my flashlight hostage so I don’t endanger us all. That’s just great. Totally true and not at all self-serving and just totally, totally great.”
“Paola?” Sal asked, his voice tiny.
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t believe them.” He held out her flashlight.
Before she could process what was happening, Sal was untying her left wrist.
“Sal, what are you doing?” Pao asked. “You can’t!”
“I’m doing what is right,” he said, focused on undoing the knots. “You are not loca. You are brave, and your friends need you. It’s not right for Marisa to take your things. To take you…” He choked up then, his hands going still on the rope until he could breathe again. “People shouldn’t be taken,” he said firmly, and then her arm was free.
As he worked on her other wrist, Pao struggled not to tear up. This boy had been through so much. They’d all been through so much—the invisible kids. The stuck-in-between kids.
Maybe she didn’t agree with the way they’d gone about it, but could Pao really blame Naomi and Marisa for wanting to protect the Niños? For not wanting their best chance of survival to disappear on what they assumed to be a suicide mission?
“I’ll come back,” Pao said to Sal as he finally freed her other hand. “I’ll find my friends, and we’ll return before the rift closes.”
It was a big promise, she knew. Even if she made it to the rift by midnight, got inside, figured out what was causing all the supernatural strife, and found Dante and Emma…there was no guarantee she’d make it back out before the solstice was over. Before they were all trapped in the rift, and the key was trapped with them.
“I believe you,” Sal said, and together they worked to untie her legs.
Within a minute, Pao was on her feet, her head swimming from exhaustion, hunger, and the key’s drain on her. She would have to be careful. If her hair color was any indication, she would only be able to use it once more—and even then there was every chance it would drain her completely. There was no time to test the way it worked, no time for hypotheses or trial runs.
Would she turn into an ahogada? Or was this different? Maybe she would just die. Was that what had happened to Franco?
Somehow, Pao felt like she was still missing part of that story.
But she had the key, and he hadn’t, so maybe…just maybe…
Pao took a step and immediately tripped over something bunched up at her feet. She stood again, irritated…until she realized what it was—her shopping bag. The one Señora Mata had given to her like a million years ago. The bottle of Florida Water was still inside, and Sal was handing her the flashlight.
“You have to go now,” he said. “Before they come back. You have to go.”
“Thank you,” Pao said, taking the flashlight—the key—from him and examining it closely. It had a long crack down one side that hadn’t been there before, but otherwise it was intact. Pao flicked it on and off experimentally, wondering if she’d feel it, the pull on her life force.
All she felt was her stomach growling.
But at least the light still worked.
“Here,” said Sal, pulling a small backpack off his shoulders and offering it to her. “Food, water, supplies. You will need these. Marisa says it’s a long way.”
“Sal…I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without you,” Pao said, touched by his kindness. “How can I ever thank you?”
“Do a good job, Paola Santiago,” he said in a tone way too solemn for an eight-year-old. “Then come back and help us kill the monsters.”
“If I do a good job, Sal, there won’t be any more monsters to kill.”
He nodded only slightly, like he didn’t really believe her, and then hugged her unexpectedly. When he let go, she heard voices and footsteps outside the tent. Pao’s pulse sped up.
“Go!” Sal said, smiling once more as he scampered outside.
There was no time to wonder what Marisa would do to him when she found out he’d let her go. But Sal wasn’t the same boy who’d had his parents taken away six months before. He was strong now, and she would have to be, too.
She clicked the flashlight on again and the beam was clear and strong, pointing just a little to her left. Turning her sneakers to follow, Pao let the light lead her, away from the fire and the camp, away from the people who were trying to protect her world.
Pao followed the beam for what felt like an hour without stopping, wanting to make sure she left the firelight of camp far behind before she rested.
Fear and doubt were creeping into her mind like a fog, stealing the spring from her steps, urging her to turn back, but she kept going.
Finally, when she was sure she was alone in the field, she sank to the ground on her trembling legs and put her head in her hands.
What had she done, leaving the protection of the camp behind? Taking the key, leaving the Niños defenseless. Pao’s breath came in shorter and shorter gasps, and she struggled to regain control. This far away from Marisa’s capable attitude and Naomi’s attack power, Pao felt impossibly small and defenseless.
The sky seemed to agree with her, opening up completely for the first time, revealing its distant, indifferent stars in glimmering clusters you could almost never see from Silver Springs.
Pao tried to feel comforted by the constellations, as she had so often before. But her problems were no longer those of an almost seventh grader stuck in a tiny apartment with her superstitious mom. Before, her world had been too small. The
stars had encouraged her with the promise of more.
Now her world was too big, too full of impossible problems that rested on only her shoulders. Now, though she was reluctant to admit it, she wanted nothing more than to return to her old life.
But there was no going back, and the clock didn’t wait for uncertainty. The solstice began tonight, and from the moment midnight hit, she’d have twenty-four hours to get into the rift, rescue her friends, save the world, and get back out.
The moon was sinking. Midnight was coming too fast. And Pao still didn’t know any more than she had when she’d left camp.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself, rubbing her tired eyes and getting back to her feet. Adventures, she was learning, weren’t really about what you knew. They were about what you were willing to do.
In the shopping bag on her shoulder, the Florida Water bottle lay on the bottom, the sole item remaining. Pao reached in and pulled it out. The cologne hadn’t worked on the monsters, but Pao remembered Dante splashing it on them before they left the apartment. It had made her skin burn when the apartment filled with green light.
She’d never liked its scent, but she sprinkled it on herself anyway, surprised to find she didn’t mind it as much as she used to. It smelled like Señora Mata…her mom’s cards…Dante’s room. It smelled like home.
The reminder of it made her feel stronger.
Maybe home wasn’t an apartment with burn marks in the shag carpeting and a fridge full of condiments and tinctures. Maybe it wasn’t candles and rosaries and depictions of saints. Maybe home was something you carried with you. Something you could call on, even if you couldn’t go back to it.
It was with that comforting thought, the smell of the Florida Water in her nose, and the flashlight warm in her hand, that Pao forged ahead, toward whatever was next.
The key’s beam changed directions seemingly at random, but Pao had learned her lesson about underestimating it, so she followed, even when it made no sense.
She walked in circles. She doubled back. She went left for what felt like hours only to take three right turns in a row. But the landscape kept changing, even when the path seemed the same, and soon the cacti were growing taller and more spindly, their silhouettes looking skeletal and creepy against the starless night sky.
Paola Santiago and the River of Tears Page 19
