“He looks brave, doesn’t he?” she asks me, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
I swallow hard. “He does. He really does.”
Maria Carmen returns the picture to the mantel and wipes her eyes. She looks at me with a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re here. After Carlos died, all my friends were really nice at first. But then they got upset that I was still sad. Talib was the only one who stuck around.”
I smile. That doesn’t surprise me. Talib seems like the kind of friend who won’t forget to write you.
Maria Carmen sighs. “You know, Nestor, just because it happened to my brother … doesn’t mean your dad—”
I inhale a sharp breath.
“I know,” I say. “Thanks. I’ve got to go.”
I burst from the front door, chased by images of soldiers rolling down dusty streets in Humvees, never knowing what’s around the next corner, down the next street.
The concrete hurts my feet as I run down the sidewalk. I make a sharp left and cut between two houses, into the woods. The sun has almost completely set, and the sky is a fiery red. My lungs burn as I trip over tree roots and rocks. I don’t care what’s in the woods, whether a wolverine is going to rip my throat out or a snake is going to squeeze me until my eyeballs pop. It’s nothing compared with what Dad is facing thousands of miles away.
A green blur slams into me and knocks me to the ground. I struggle against it, but my arms are pinned down.
“You destroyed my traps,” Brandon says, his hot breath hissing in my face.
“Of course I did.” I squirm underneath him, but he presses me down, rocks cutting into my back.
“You can’t do that.” Brandon releases my arm and slams his fist into the ground next to my head.
I kick my leg out and roll from under him. Jumping to my feet, I shout, “You can’t tell me what to do. And you can’t hunt whatever you feel like.”
“No, no. You don’t understand.” Brandon crouches in the dirt and pounds his fists into the ground, the rocks scraping his knuckles. “She needs them.”
I brush my hands on my jeans. “What are you talking about?”
Brandon looks at me and wipes the back of his hand across his face. His bloody knuckles leave a streak of red across his mouth.
“The witch. She made me set them.”
CHAPTER 12
“YOU’VE SEEN THE WITCH?” I ask Brandon.
He launches himself up from the ground and rushes at me. I drop to the grass and roll to my side, missing Brandon’s tackle. He slams into a tree with a grunt.
Panting, he sits against the tree trunk, struggling to catch his breath. “You know, a lot of people in town say you’re living with the witch.”
“My abuela is not the witch.”
I kick a rock, and it hits Brandon in the thigh. He grabs it, tossing it up and down in his hand. His chest heaves, and he starts to laugh. The unnerving sound spreads through the evening air.
“They don’t know about the real witch. But they sure think your grandma has something to do with all the missing animals,” he sneers. “It’d be bad if someone told them she was up to worse.”
I kick another rock and stomp toward Brandon. “You don’t get to say anything about my abuela. Leave her alone.”
Brandon jumps up and shoves me hard in the chest. The air pushes from my lungs, and I choke. “Then leave my traps alone. She’s gonna be mad at me. So, so mad.”
I stand my ground. “I’m not letting you … or her … hurt anyone else.”
“Oh yeah?” Brandon grabs my T-shirt with one hand and raises his fist, aimed right for my nose.
I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the blow that will rearrange the angle of my face.
Instead, I hear, “Aw, man! Gross!”
I open my eyes and see a thick, milky glob dripping down Brandon’s cheek. He lets go of my shirt and wipes it away with his hand.
“Is this…?”
“White lightning!” squawks Cuervito above me.
“That’s nasty!” Brandon cries as a squirrel jumps down from the tree onto his head. It pulls his hair and scratches his ears as he waves his arms around wildly. Brandon grabs the squirrel and throws it to the ground. It scampers up the tree and says to me, “We got you, buddy. Don’t worry.”
Brandon looks at me, cheeks red, chest heaving.
“Fire in the hole!” I hear above me. I take a step back in case Cuervito’s aim isn’t very good.
Brandon shoves me aside and takes off through the trees, the squirrel scampering behind him and Cuervito soaring above. His shouts disappear into the sky.
I lean back against an oak tree to catch my breath.
A bully chased off by a lunatic squirrel and a daredevil raven.
A witch that may be a wolverine. Or a snake.
As I jog toward Abuela’s house, I rehearse in my head how exactly I’m going to explain New Haven to Dad.
Turns out my chance comes sooner than I expected.
I hear a call from upstairs the moment I enter Abuela’s house.
“Nestor! Hurry! Come up here!” Mom shouts.
I bound up the stairs two at a time and find Mom sitting on her bed with her laptop in front of her.
“What is it?” I ask, breathless.
“Your dad wants to talk to you,” she says, her smile stretching ear to ear. Her hand clutches Dad’s ring on her necklace as she motions me to the bed.
Mom hands me the laptop and kisses the top of my head. “Have a good talk,” she says, heading downstairs.
“Thanks, Mom,” I call after her. I look at the small square on the screen holding Dad’s video chat. It’s surrounded by the background on Mom’s computer—a collage of pictures I’ve drawn. I smile as I look over sharks, eagles, tigers, even Chela the deer. Mom has kept all my drawings, in her own way.
Dad waves at me from the screen. I wonder how I’m going to spin “there’s an evil witch in the woods, and I think Abuela might know something about it” to fit Mom’s Always Be Positive, Always Be Happy requirement.
I’ve got nothing.
“Hey, buddy. How’s school? Find anything good in town?” Dad asks. His ACUs (advanced combat uniform) look like they’ve been repeatedly washed in dust. His normally close-cut hair is a little longer than the last time we video chatted, and I can spot flecks of gray in it. His chin has a new scar that tells a story I’ll probably never hear.
“Oh, it’s good. It’s all good. Nothing special,” I offer with a lackluster smile. A witch forced the school bully to set traps in the woods, and Abuela’s covering up scratches from whatever she’s doing in secret. Yep, totally normal.
“Well, buddy, you know I appreciate your taking care of your mom.” He runs his hand through his hair. I notice cuts on his knuckles and wonder how they got there. “I know it’s hard, but you do a good job of being man of the house.”
I don’t bother to tell Dad that I managed to sweeten Abuela’s café con leche this morning with salt instead of sugar or that the breakfast taco I destroyed in the microwave is now a permanent fixture on the kitchen ceiling.
Before Dad’s first deployment, he took me to the bowling alley at Fort Carson, Colorado. We gorged ourselves on cheap nachos and Coke as Dad pointed out which of his commanding officers had a worse bowling score than he did (all of them). He told me random military trivia, like how they tried to train bats to drop bombs during World War II. Between gutter balls and strikes, he told me I was the man of the house and needed to look after my mom.
I was in second grade.
“I got the drawing you sent.” Dad holds up a picture of a reddish-brown coyote jumping up in the air to snatch the black raven flying above him. “This one’s really good.” I don’t tell him that one was drawn from real life as Val jumped up and down on my bed.
“Hey, I got one for you. You’re never going to get this one.” Dad smirks and rubs his hands together.
I know what’s coming.
Dad clears his
throat and folds his hands in front of him, doing his best impression of a game show host. “What animal lets out a bloodcurdling, laugh-like cry after it makes a successful kill?”
Please don’t let it be a wolverine. I think for a moment and smack a pillow on Mom’s bed. Dad’s image shakes on the computer screen. “Easy. Hyena!”
Dad laughs. “I thought I had you for sure.”
“Have you seen any hyenas over there?”
“Nah, we’ve been … busy.” Dad looks down, and there’s an awkward pause in our conversation. Then his head pops up. “Made friends?”
He always asks me this. I think he forgets that the instant camaraderie in the military doesn’t exactly happen in middle school. It’s a little more like cage-match fights to the death with cafeteria burritos and chocolate pudding.
Instead, I offer, “Yeah, there’s one kid who’s pretty cool. He’s sure his dog got eaten by a wolverine. My other friend had her goats taken by a huge snake. And there’s a bully who’s working with a witch.”
Dad pinches his eyebrows together. “What’d you say, buddy? I think the connection glitched.”
I pick at the hem of my shirt. “Nothing.”
We finish our video chat with our usual “Love you, stay safe.” I stare at the blank screen long after Dad has clicked off. Replaying our conversation in my head, I remember his voice, the way he scrunches his sunburned nose up when he laughs. I wish I could’ve reached into the computer and pulled him right through. That way, he’d be safe, and I’d have someone to help me make sense of this crazy town.
I close the laptop and head into my room. Taking Dad’s compass out of my pocket, I set it next to my sketchbook. I’m about to flip to my Days in New Haven page when a dull thud against my bedroom window distracts me. I look at the large sycamore tree outside the window and see one of the thick branches pushing against the glass.
Except it’s not a branch. It’s a snake.
Her tail is wrapped around a branch pointed toward the house, and she’s stretching her body out to the window. She smacks her brown snout against the glass. I shoot my eyes toward the window latch to see if it’s sealed.
It’s not.
The snake gives one more hard thud against the window and pushes it open, launching herself into my room and onto the floor.
“Well, that was a little more work than I care to do,” she hisses, curling her body and raising her head. “You should come to me next time, no? I’ve seen you meandering through the woods enough, my dear.”
I step back from the snake. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, you’ve spent plenty of time in the woods. Making a mess of things,” the snake responds, inching closer to me.
I’m pretty certain this is the same snake Maria Carmen saw in her backyard. That took all her goats. And did something to Talib’s dog in the woods. My throat closes up when I try to suck in a breath.
I choose my words carefully. “So, um, if you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are you doing in the woods in Texas?”
Where a snake like you has absolutely no business?
I try again to step away from the snake, but she slithers closer, closing the gap between us.
“You get right to the point, don’t you?” the snake says, flicking her black tongue in and out. “I’m surprised your grandmother hasn’t filled you in. I’m simply here to take in some sun.”
I look around my room, wondering if I can lunge for the dart guns dumped on the floor of my closet before this snake can give me a suffocating hug. Not that a foam dart would do much damage against something that could coil around me and snap my spine like uncooked spaghetti.
“You need to keep your grandmother out of the woods,” the snake says, her black beady eyes fixed on me. “You and your friends would do good to steer clear as well. You’ve already done enough damage.”
My heart is thudding in my stomach, and I’m desperate to get this snake out of my room. But I’m so tired of not knowing what’s going on. Not knowing what Abuela is doing in the woods. Not knowing what exactly this witch is up to. Not knowing everything that’s going on with Dad. I swallow hard and say, “Why did I see you talking to Miss Humala?”
The snake tilts her head and flicks her tongue out. She begins to slither toward the window, and I try to contain my growing relief.
“Oh, my dear, you can’t expect me to tell you everything. How silly.”
The snake reaches the window and turns toward me. “Just stay out of my way, let me do what I came to do, and you’ll be fine. If you choose to continue your little adventures through the woods and into my business … well, I can practically feel what it would be like to squeeze the last breath out of you.”
I swallow hard. “So … so you’re the witch?” I stammer.
The snake pauses. Her tongue flicks the windowpane. “A witch? Oh, I’m something so much better.”
She extends her body out the window and reaches the branch of the sycamore tree. Curling her body around the branch, she begins to slither down the tree.
Turning to flick her tongue at me one last time, she says, “Don’t disappoint me.”
My stomach churns as I watch the snake slither through Abuela’s backyard and into the woods.
I go downstairs and ask Abuela if she has a hammer so I can nail my window shut.
CHAPTER 13
I’M GETTING ANSWERS TODAY. No matter what.
Dad calls this forward observation. When they come across a bomb that’s been hidden in a building or buried on the side of the road, they send in a remote-controlled robot to investigate the area. I got to drive one at a family day at Fort Carson. It had a camera on the end that let you see exactly where a threat was.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an EOD robot to run around the woods behind Abuela’s house. Dad and I started to build one with parts we’d ordered little by little, but the unfinished pieces are scattered among a handful of boxes in my closet. I’m going to have to stomp around out there, not knowing if a giant snake is curled up in a cedar tree, ready to give me a death hug. Or if a wolverine is hiding behind a mesquite bush, waiting to sharpen its claws on my stomach.
I plan to round up Talib and Maria Carmen. Safety in numbers.
But first, breakfast.
I head downstairs and pause at the bottom step. I can hear Mom talking to Abuela in the kitchen, her voice tight. It makes me nervous.
And think of Dad.
“Lupe, what’s going on?” I hear my mom say. “Some random woman came up to me in the grocery store yesterday, ranting about how you needed to stay away from her chickens. She said she saw you running around between her yard and the woods. I had no idea what she was talking about.”
“No es nada, mi amor. Just talk. Nothing to worry about,” Abuela replies.
“Well, she practically rammed me with her shopping cart. Not sure why she would be so mad about nothing.”
I round the corner, clearing my throat as I enter the kitchen. “Morning, Buela. Morning, Mom.”
Abuela and Mom stop their conversation and smile at me, Mom’s lips a tight line across her face.
I walk over to the stove, where Abuela is frying ham croquetas, the breakfast of champions. I pick one up and start to pop it in my mouth.
“Dejalos en paz. They’re still hot,” Abuela says beside me. Her yellow daisy housecoat swishes back and forth to the sound of Celia Cruz’s “Quimbara” playing from the small radio in the corner of the kitchen.
I put down the freshly fried croqueta, the crunchy bread crumb coating sticking to my fingers. I can practically taste the salty ham filling, making me forget about my scaly visitor last night. At least for a few seconds.
The doorbell rings, and Mom rises slowly from the kitchen table, still tired from her overnight shift at the hospital.
“How much longer?” I ask, my mouth already watering.
Abuela clicks her tongue. “Ay, sin paciencia.”
We hear a thud come from the living room, followed
by Mom’s shouting, “No! No!”
I look at Abuela. She drops her wooden spoon, and we race out of the kitchen. Mom is crouched on the floor, hugging her knees, muttering no over and over.
At the front door stand two men in uniform. My heart jumps into my throat, and I run over to Mom. I wrap my arms around her, squeezing her as she shakes.
This can’t be happening. My brain flashes to the flag folded on Maria Carmen’s mantel. Mom always hated answering the door wherever we lived, afraid it would be men in uniform notifying us that the worst had happened to Dad.
Looking again at the uniformed men, I squeeze my eyes closed and then open again. They aren’t men. They’re kids. High schoolers, to be exact, probably from the ROTC program.
One of them clears his throat and extends a flyer to us. “Um, would you like to buy some popcorn?”
Abuela gives them a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, niños. We’re fine. No popcorn today, I think.”
“Okay, thank you, ma’am,” one of the boys says. They shuffle down our front walk, casting one last glance at Mom, who’s still in my arms on the floor.
I brush the hair from her face and whisper in her ear. “It’s not what you thought. It’s okay. Dad’s okay.”
Mom takes a deep breath, her head still sagging. “I know. I know it’s stupid. It’s just that when I first saw them…”
I grab her hands and squeeze. “You thought they were coming to tell you something happened to Dad.”
Mom lifts her head and looks at me. “I didn’t really see them. All I saw was their uniforms. It’s silly, but I’ve thought about that…” Her voice catches in her throat, and she presses her hand over her mouth.
I press my forehead to Mom’s. Taking a deep breath, I struggle to keep my voice from quivering. “I know. I have, too.”
Abuela puts her arms around Mom, and we help her stand up. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, Mom gives a weak laugh. “Those poor boys must think I’m insane.”
I look at Mom and notice the deep wrinkles that climb from the corners of her eyes to her temples. I shrug. “I don’t think so. They probably just think you really hate popcorn.”
The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez Page 8
