The Living

by Matt De La Peña

  “I know.” But Shy also knew his sister didn’t have insurance. No way she could afford this on her own. Neither could his mom. “I want you to do something for me, Ma. I want you to cash that bond I won at the game. Give the money to Teresa.”

  His mom was shaking her head. “We have money. Teresa’s friends have been very generous—”

  “Cash the bond, Ma. I’m serious.”

  “I didn’t message you for money, Shy. I wanted you to know what’s going on back home.”

  “I understand that,” Shy said. “But you gotta do this for me. I love that little kid.” He felt a lump going in his throat. He’d shared a room with Miguel since the day Teresa brought him home from the hospital. They were more like brothers than anything else. “It’s the only thing I can do from way out here.”

  “You do so much for this family,” his mom said. “You have since the day your dad left.”

  Shy wiped more perspiration off his forehead. “Working on this ship was a mistake.”

  “Shy, you listen to me. You remember Teresa’s bunnies?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You remember, don’t you?”

  He did.

  His sister had two bunnies when they were little. She got them for a birthday present. She loved those bunnies more than anything, used to take them to neighbors’ houses in a cage and let her friends pet them. But one day, while she and her friend Marisol were eating lunch in the alley behind their building, a neighborhood dog got into the cage and killed both bunnies, then sat there guarding their remains. Teresa came racing into the apartment, screaming her head off. Shy and his mom followed her back to the alley, and Shy saw.

  His mom blew her nose, said: “Me and your sister were a wreck, Shy. We had to leave the room. And what’d you do?”

  “Cleaned up,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “You shooed the dog away and scooped those bunnies into a box. Took your dad’s old shovel and dug a hole in the empty lot next door. And you buried them. You were seven years old, Shy. Barely older than Miguel is now. I kept thinking, Where did my son learn to do this?”

  Shy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They honestly think the medicine can work?”

  “That’s what the doctor told us,” his mom said. “My point is, I don’t want you beating yourself up about being away. You’re working, Shy. You’re helping out your mom.”

  “Email me updates, okay? Many as you can. I wanna know everything.”

  “I promise,” his mom said. “Can we do this again tomorrow? I need to see my son’s face.”

  Shy nodded. He kept picturing his little nephew lying in a hospital bed, the whites of his eyes having already turned red. It broke his fucking heart.

  His mom wiped her face with tissues again, her eyes shifting off of Shy. “What happened to your room?”

  Shy looked over his shoulder, saw Rodney cleaning up. “We’re rearranging,” he said, turning back to his mom. “Tomorrow between two-thirty and three, all right? And email me.”

  “I will.”

  “And I’m serious, Ma. Make sure you cash that bond.”

  “Be safe, Shy. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Shy closed out of the call and turned off the computer. Then he just sat there for a few seconds, thinking about what he’d just heard. All his problems on the ship seemed laughable now that he knew his nephew had Romero Disease. He pushed down the urge to punch the wall in front of him.

  “You all right?” Rodney asked.

  Shy took a deep breath and turned around, saw that Rodney was now cleaning up his stuff, too. “I been better, man.”

  “Sorry to hear about your nephew,” Rodney said. “What exactly is Romero Disease, anyway?”

  “You never heard of it?” Shy asked. Back home it was all anyone ever talked about.

  “I’ve heard the name. And I’m pretty sure people have died from it, right?”

  Shy shook his head, remembering all the shit he saw his grandma go through. “It’s this awful disease going around back home,” he told Rodney. “People’s eyes turn red and their vision goes blurry. Then their skin gets so dry and brittle it starts flaking off. They die from fluid loss in like forty-eight hours.”

  “Jesus, dude.” Rodney looked horrified.

  Shy got up and grabbed his uniform shirt for the gym. He wouldn’t allow himself to even consider Miguel not pulling through. “He’ll be all right,” he told Rodney. “They got medicine now.”

  Rodney stood there, hands on hips, nodding.

  Shy looked at his clock. Two-forty-nine. “Anyways, I gotta get to the gym. Don’t worry about the rest of my stuff. I’ll pick it up later.”

  “I don’t mind,” Rodney said.

  “Soon as I’m off, I’ll go to Paolo’s office.” Shy pulled open the door, but just as he was leaving he heard Rodney call his name.

  He turned back around.

  Rodney cleared his throat. “You think whoever was in here will come back? Like while we’re sleeping?”

  Maybe it was because Shy’s mind was so tweaked after hearing about Miguel, or maybe it was pure exhaustion, but Rodney’s words made him feel choked up. Like if he breathed the wrong way or something he might start crying. And Shy hadn’t cried since he was a little kid. He took after his mom that way.

  “Nobody’s coming in here anymore,” he told Rodney. “I’ll make sure of it.” Then he turned and went out the door.

  11

  Names Have No Meaning Here

  According to a few of the passengers crowding into the gym, the sun had completely disappeared behind thick gray clouds out by the pool, and sunbathers were migrating to other parts of the ship. This made the gym so busy during Shy’s four-hour shift, he hardly had time to stress about Miguel. He handed out towels, Windexed the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, wiped down machines when they weren’t in use, demonstrated how to adjust the sauna controls, spotted for a few guys in the free-weights section, and handed out complimentary bottles of Gatorade and water.

  Shy had no idea it was the end of his shift until Frederick from Denmark came walking in to relieve him. “Everything is good?” he asked Shy, stashing his backpack behind the gym’s reception desk.

  “Just crowded.” Shy motioned toward the floor where a couple dozen passengers were sweating on treadmills and stationary bikes and elliptical machines—all of them glued to the little personal TVs in front of their faces. “We’re running low on towels, but I already called down to Claudia. They should be on their way.”

  “Very nice.”

  Shy grabbed his stuff from the employee cubby, saluted Frederick and headed for the exit. As he pushed through the door, he ran right into Addison and Cassandra, the girls he’d met at his pool stand earlier.

  They both looked at each other and started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Shy asked, glancing down at their tight workout gear. Girls this irritating shouldn’t be allowed to have such smoking bodies. And guys with sick nephews shouldn’t be noticing shit like that.

  “Oh, nothing,” Addison said.

  “You work in the gym, too?” Cassandra asked.

  “I do everything on this ship,” Shy said, trying to keep a playful attitude. “Couple more voyages and I’ll probably be captain.”

  They looked at each other again. “Ah, he made a little joke,” Cassandra said.

  “How adorable,” Addison said, and then they both burst out laughing again.

  Shy felt like a complete idiot. It was definitely time to get out of this convo and talk to Paolo. “Look, I gotta go handle a few things,” he told the girls, giving them a sarcastic thumbs-up. “It was great talking to you.”

  He started past them, but Addison latched on to his elbow, saying: “Just so you know, Cassie decided dinner should just be you and her.”

  Cassandra shot her an exaggerated look of shock and said: “You lying little bitch.”

  “What?” Addison said. “I doubt my dad w
ill be back by the weekend anyway. It’ll be perfect. I’ll post a bunch of pictures online—‘Cassie and her pool boy.’ Can you imagine everyone back home?”

  They laughed at him some more, and Shy slipped her grip, still smiling, and told them: “Have an excellent workout.”

  “Ah, don’t be all sensitive,” one of them called after him—he couldn’t tell which one. “We’re just joking around.”

  Shy waved over his shoulder and started down a flight of stairs, hoping they both ate shit on the treadmills.

  Paolo wasn’t in his office.

  Vlad and Kyle, the two security guys Shy found in the break room, said Paolo was meeting with the captain about the weather. They had no idea when he was coming back. Shy left the security wing and stood in the crew hall for a few minutes, trying to work out his next move.

  He had an hour and a half before he was supposed to meet Carmen at the Destiny Dining Room. He could keep searching for Paolo, or he could try and get some sleep. He wished he could go talk to Carmen now, explain the news about his nephew, but she’d want no part of him rolling up on her cabin after what happened.

  He decided to go talk to his boss, Supervisor Franco. Technically he was supposed to run all concerns by him first anyway.

  Romero Disease

  On the long walk to the other side of the ship, Shy thought about when his grandma started getting sick.

  Her first symptoms had matched exactly with some new illness people were talking about on the news. The whites of her eyes were turning red. Her vision was blurring. She was so dehydrated her skin had become extremely dry and itchy and she was having trouble using the bathroom. Still, she refused to see a doctor.

  “I’ve lived through sixty-seven years’ worth of flus,” she told Shy’s mom. “I don’t see what’s so special about this one.”

  “That’s the point,” his mom pleaded. “I’m worried it’s more than just the flu.”

  His grandma shook her head and went to lie down in her room.

  Back then most people didn’t know about Romero Disease. Shy only knew what his mom had mentioned after reading an article in the paper. A few dozen people had died in America, all of them from border towns in California like Tecate, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa and National City. What he didn’t know yet was that thousands had already died on the other side of the border, in Tijuana, including a popular young governor named Victor Romero—which was how the disease got its name in the media.

  The next morning, Shy’s grandma collapsed in the kitchen while kneading dough for her sweet bread.

  She didn’t wake up until she’d been checked into the hospital for several hours, and she didn’t recognize Shy or his mom or sister. She asked if they knew where she could find Jesus. She asked if the world had ended and they’d forgotten to take her on their spaceship. The whites of her eyes were now blood-red and her tan skin had turned yellow and papery and she couldn’t stop scratching at her arms and legs.

  They diagnosed her with Romero Disease and placed her in the special quarantine unit. After Shy, his mom and his sister tested negative for the disease, they were allowed to sit outside her room and watch over her through a thick wall of glass.

  In the middle of that night, Shy heard an alarm go off and he lifted his head, saw his grandma scratching off chunks of her own skin. Blood all over the white sheets. His mom raced down the hall shouting for help. A group of nurses in full hazmat suits came and held down his grandma’s flailing limbs. A doctor rushed in, stuck a long needle into her thigh.

  Shy’s mom and sister were crying hysterically as the three of them were pushed out into the general waiting area. Shy paced the room, unable to comprehend what was happening. Just a couple days ago, his grandma was fine. She was working on a scrapbook and watching Telemundo. Now she looked like something out of a horror film.

  Thirty minutes later the doctor emerged shaking his head and looking at the ground.

  He said he was sorry.

  Shy went to knock on Supervisor Franco’s open door but froze when he saw someone was already in there—the older black dude with the funky gray hair who was always writing in his leather notebook.

  Franco looked up at Shy, said: “May I help you?”

  “It’s okay,” Shy said. “I’ll just come back later.”

  “Please. You can wait outside. We will be done here momentarily.”

  Shy stepped away from the door, leaned against the wall and let his warm eyelids slowly drop. As he listened to Franco’s heavy accent, he tried to imagine his nephew stuck inside the same quarantine room as his grandma. But he couldn’t. Miguel was too tough. Never even caught a cold. He remembered throwing around a football with the kid just a few hours before he left for his first voyage. In the alley behind their building. One of Shy’s longer tosses slipped right through Miguel’s little-kid hands, and the football smacked him in the face, split his lip. But Miguel didn’t go down. Just looked up at Shy as blood trickled down his chin, got all over his T-shirt. He forced himself to smile at Shy, laugh even—though his eyes were filling with tears, too.

  Shy felt a hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes.

  The man he’d just seen in Franco’s office was staring at him, holding his shoeshine kit. “How do you sleep standing up like that, young fella?”

  “I was just closing my eyes,” Shy said, wiping a tiny bit of drool from the corner of his mouth.

  The man grinned. “Franco’s on the phone now. Says he’ll have to check back with you later.”

  Shy nodded.

  Still no answers about the suit guy or their trashed room. Nothing to tell Rodney.

  The man looked toward the window down the hall. “They’re worried about this storm rolling in. Supposed to hit sometime tonight.”

  “It’s an actual storm now?” Shy had yet to experience even a drop of rain in the time he’d spent out with the cruise ship. But he’d learned in training how badly storms affected the way passengers spent money. Which meant fewer tips. Less money to bring back home to his mom and sis.

  The man set down his shoeshine kit and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “If it’s as bad as they say, this boat’s gonna get to rocking pretty good.” He reached down into his kit, moved his notebook and some other books to the side and pulled out a gray wristband-looking thing, held it out to Shy. “Wear this when it picks up.”

  “What is it?” Shy said, turning the thing over in his hand.

  “Something I made for seasickness. Be sure the white button in the middle is against your inner wrist. Same idea as acupuncture.”

  “Thanks,” Shy said, shoving it into his pocket. He was pretty sure the nasty-looking band would never make it onto his wrist, but he didn’t want to offend the guy.

  “You’re the one who saw the man take a dive, that right?”

  Shy nodded. He glanced in Franco’s office, saw him pacing back and forth, phone pinned to his ear. “Guess everyone knows about that now.”

  “And there’s a man on board who’s been watching you.”

  Shy stared back at him, shocked. “How’d you know that?”

  “Always keep my eyes open.” The man pointed at his kit. “The job puts me in a certain position of observation.”

  It baffled Shy that a shoeshine guy, someone he’d never given a second thought to, knew what was going on in his life. “You know who he is?” Shy asked. “Is he FBI or something?”

  The man shrugged. “Don’t know. But let me ask you something, young fella. Would it make sense for an FBI man to focus on just you?” He pointed at his own temple. “Think it through some.”

  Shy studied the man in front of him. Tired-looking eyes that never blinked. Wild hair. For some reason, Shy felt like he could trust him. He held out his hand and said: “I’m Shy, by the way.”

  The man grinned and gripped Shy’s hand. “Shoeshine.”

  They let go and Shy pointed at the kit on the ground. “I know that’s what you do on the ship. But what’s your name?”


  “Names have no meaning out here, young fella. I’m just an old man passing through.” Shoeshine picked up his kit, gave a nod to Shy and started down the hall. He stopped in front of the small window and looked outside. “Oh yeah. Looks to be the real thing, all right.”

  Shy went to the window, too. Saw a dense ceiling of nasty-looking storm clouds rolling in. Blocking out the setting sun. The ocean was choppy and raw. A crooked pulse of lightning stabbed into the horizon in the distance.

  “Best prepare yourself, young fella. The sea is fittin’ to make itself known tonight.” Shoeshine continued down the hall, his wooden kit dangling from his right hand.

  Shy watched him for a few seconds, playing with the crazy wristband in his pocket. Then he turned back to the window and what was coming.

  12

  Storm in the Forecast

  An hour later Shy was standing against the wall near the entrance of the Destiny Dining Room, waiting for Carmen—the ship now swaying underneath his feet. Most of the formally dressed passengers had already been seated for dinner, and the half-dozen hostesses moved from table to table, greeting everyone.

  Shy scanned the restaurant, looking for familiar faces. He spotted the Muppet boy from the pool, dressed in a tux. He tried to imagine his nephew dressed like that, but all he could picture was Miguel in one of those hospital gowns, lying in his quarantine bed, alone. He spotted Addison and Cassandra, all done up, sitting with a few men in tuxedos. The gray-haired dude wasn’t one of them. Shy then spotted the oilman sitting next to an empty chair, downing a glass of red wine.

  Just when Shy started thinking Carmen was a no-show he heard the ding of the elevator and looked up. The doors slid open and Carmen came walking out in a long black dress and heels and his stomach instantly filled with butterflies.

  “Don’t tell me I missed the proposal,” she said.

  Shy shook his head. He couldn’t stop staring. She looked more beautiful than ever.

  “What?” Carmen asked.

  “Nothing.” Shy rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You just look real nice is all.”