Before You

by Amber Hart

  Melissa smiles, a best friend to the end, and leaves me and Faith to spend the evening alone.

  “Did you plan this?” Faith asks.

  “Sí, mami.”

  I reach for her hips and pull her to me.

  “Why?”

  She can be who she wants to be here, who she truly is at heart.

  “Because you let me into your world. Now I want to let you into mine.”

  She has tried so hard to be what everyone wants. She has tried and tried and tried not to let them down. But time and time again, unhappiness was her reward.

  Where are they now? I wonder.

  Where are those people who expect the world of Faith, who smile as her dreams slip through her fingers like dimes and clatter to the ground? Who judge whenever they want and leave her for dead if she doesn’t meet their expectations?

  She doesn’t have to be that girl anymore.

  I take her hand and lead her through the streets. So many places to stop, so many things to see: the market, trinkets, music. Sugar cane plants sprout around us, their tall stalks swaying in the gentle evening breeze. La Plazita is alive, moving in beautiful chaos. I buy an annona cheri-mola, custard apple, for Faith to try.

  “This is delicious,” Faith says around a mouthful. She hands it to me so we can share.

  We pass several tents filled with everything you could think of—clothes, household items, artwork, instruments—all part of my world. Faith picks up half of the items, asking me what they are and what they’re used for. She wants to know why nothing has price tags. I explain that the vendors expect you to name a price.

  It’s common for an item’s price to be dependent on the purchaser. Salespeople throw out numbers; you counter with one of your own. If you’re good, you’ll barter them down to the bare minimum amount, like an auction, only instead of the price going up, it goes down. And unlike American markets, these sellers stay open well into the night.

  La Plazita is mostly Cuban, but other cultures trickle in. I take a seat on a bench in front of a Mexican mariachi band. Faith laughs at their huge sombreros; they look like ants trying to balance something three times their size.

  “What do you think?” I ask her.

  Faith smiles. “I think I love it.”

  Streetlights shine dimly on her face like a waning candle.

  “So beautiful,” I whisper.

  She leans toward me, her expression soft, so soft in the light. Warmth spreads just above my knee where her hand rests. Her lips part. It’s an invitation that I happily accept.

  “I’m glad you did this for me,” she says. Her breath tickles my skin, raising gooseflesh. “I know you miss home. And I know you can never go back. It’s probably hard to be around all this and not miss what used to be.”

  “It is,” I admit. “But I’d never change a thing, ’cause coming here gave me you.”

  “And I’d never go back to my old life because the new one gave me you,” she says.

  “Well, isn’t that preciosa,” a voice says from behind us.

  I stand and whip around so fast that I nearly lose my balance. My body tenses. Faith jumps up, too, clutching my arm.

  “Wink,” I say.

  Surely there are too many witnesses for him to fight me here. He’s wanted by the police. It’s taking a huge risk, showing up alone in a street full of people.

  “¿Qué quieres?” I ask.

  “What do I want?” He sneers. “I want revenge. You hurt mis amigos, mis hermanos. You insulted me and my offer for you to join us. It wasn’t hard to follow you. I know your past, Alvarez. You should have listened to me.”

  I take a closer look. So many people surround us, but four stand out. It’s the way they’re perched, motionless, statues in a river of moving bodies. It’s the way their eyes zoom in on us, oblivious to all else. They begin their march.

  There are other men, too—aside from the four—dressed in normal clothes, acting like part of the crowd. I see the way they watch us.

  “Leave,” I tell Faith.

  “No,” she whispers. “Not again. Last time you almost died.”

  I have to convince her to leave. Her life depends on it.

  “If you don’t go, they’ll use you against me. They’ll kill you.”

  Steely hard eyes return my gaze. “I won’t leave you again.”

  I don’t have time for this.

  “Please,” I beg. I will do whatever it takes to get her to listen.

  She doesn’t waver.

  The men stop several feet in front of me. “Hola, Diego. Remember me?” one of them asks in a deep accent.

  It hits me like a tidal wave. My mind is churning, churning, beneath the memories. He smiles. A gun flashes at his side.

  “Never thought you would survive that night,” he says, eyeing the scar on my neck. “I’ll be sure not to make the same mistake twice.”

  Faith stiffens and I know she understands. A diagonal scar protrudes proudly from his skin, traveling from the left side of his forehead to his chin. His nose is crooked, suggesting a severely misshapen bone beneath the surface.

  My stomach turns to water, twisting and clenching. I look at Wink. He’s smiling. This is because of him, because I didn’t join his gang. My refusal dug up my past.

  And now it will surely kill me.

  I whisper under my breath so only Faith can hear. “When I say go, run.”

  “But—”

  “Do it.” I smile for one second, the briefest flicker of love. I want to convey everything I feel into one moment, like she will somehow remember that last look every time she visits the memory of us.

  “Say adiós to your precious mujer,” he says with a smile. He doesn’t want Faith, but he’ll kill her to hurt me.

  “Go!” I yell.

  It happens so fast. Faith turns to run best as she can with her nearly healed foot. I jump to the spot where she once stood, blocking a direct shot at her. The bullet has already left the gun. Pain rips through my chest, tearing, clawing my flesh open on its way inside. I cry out. People start running through the streets like mad, deranged animals. As a herd, they don’t know where to go, unsure from which direction the gunshot rang.

  My body sways slightly, a pendulum swinging with one final effort.

  My time is up.

  I collapse. The air has been punched out of my lungs. My vision is filled with calves and feet. Some of them are stepping on me on their way to safety. My ears ring from shouts and the rushing of wind. I grab at my chest. My hands come away covered in blood.

  Suddenly Faith is at my side. People are running over her, too. Blood blossoms across my shirt.

  “Diego,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “No!” She is racked with sobs.

  “Don’t cry,” I say. My voice is raspy. The pain is nearly unbearable. I concentrate on Faith. Only Faith.

  She tries to apply pressure to my chest, but I scream in agony. She stops.

  “What do I do?” she asks desperately.

  “Let me go,” I say. At least she is safe. I took the bullet that was meant for her. The men got what they truly wanted—me.

  “No, Diego. No. I can’t. You’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

  I am dying. She knows it.

  “I love you. Te amo,” I say. “That’s what I brought you here for tonight. I wanted to tell you that I love you, Faith.”

  My eyes are heavy, so heavy. I take one last cherishing look before my final words escape me.

  “Te amo eternamente,” I whisper.

  49

  faith

  “I love you, too, Diego.”

  I choke on a sob, barely getting the words out.

  “Just keep breathing,” I tell him. “Help!” I scream.

  Diego’s eyes are closing. Sirens blare closer and closer.

  “Please!” I wail.

  I shake his shoulders. “Stay awake.”

  I kiss his lips. He is barely breathing. And the blood, there’s so much blood.

/>   Please don’t let him die, I pray. I’ll do anything. Just don’t let him die.

  I press my hands to his chest again. This time he doesn’t protest. He is fading, graying before my eyes.

  “No!” I scream.

  I cannot lose Diego. I finally found a love that ignites every part of me, a love that lives in the soul.

  Forever love.

  “No.” I sob into Diego’s shirt. He is drenched, soaked in blood, blood seeping across his chest like the stains of ink on his skin. Not him. Not my Diego. No.

  My strength is nearly gone. I feel it spilling out of me like Diego’s life out of him.

  I look back up at his face. We are both covered in the red stain of death. His lids are closed. I would give anything to look into his beautiful eyes again.

  I want to freeze everything at the moment before chaos erupted, the moment when Diego was about to confess his love for me. If only time could be a snapshot, be held still for eternity.

  And then I feel it. The last beat of his heart. Barely a flutter, really. But I love that flutter. I love it with all that I am. It’s Diego’s heart’s way of telling me what his lips already said. I love you. Te amo. His heart’s way of telling me that he will die for me, a thousand and one times if necessary.

  Shh, listen. Can you hear it? Fluttering, flapping softly like broken wings daring to fly. It’s saying good-bye.

  I don’t want to let him go, but I have no choice. Silence descends. The lack of beating—the void—pounds the loudest.

  I’m being pulled away from Diego. Or maybe I’m being pushed. It’s all the same, either way. He’s gone. Gone.

  Emergency workers surround Diego, attaching pads to his skin, yelling “Clear!” They shock him, his limbs flinching from the introduction of electricity. Diego is put on a board, strapped down. His shirt is ripped open.

  And yet all I want to do is curl up next to him. I want them to take me wherever they’re taking him. I belong with him. He is bloody and motionless, and yet I don’t think I have ever, never in my life, seen anyone as beautiful as he is.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something moving like a shadow on the outskirts of my vision. It’s him. The shooter. He’s pretending to be part of the crowd, but I know better. There are other men, too, following him. The shooter smiles at me as I hear the worst word of my life. He hears it, too, I know. And finally, the man with the gun is satisfied. It’s what he wanted all along.

  I look back to Diego as the shooter disappears from sight.

  They’re closing the ambulance doors and somehow I know this is the end. But no matter what, I will love Diego forever. For the first time, I truly understand sacrifice.

  “DOA.”

  That’s the word that came out of the emergency worker’s mouth, the word that made Diego’s killer smile.

  “DOA.”

  Dead on arrival.

  50

  faith

  It’s been six months since Diego died. I didn’t try to find out about his funeral because I didn’t want to remember him that way, in a casket, or maybe burned to ashes. I want to remember Diego smiling, touching me.

  Every day is still as excruciating as the last. It feels as though I’ve been tossed off a ledge and I’m desperately trying to climb back up, hopelessly grabbing on to jagged rocks, pain lancing through me with each beat of my heart.

  A heart that was meant to stop with the bullet that killed my love.

  I miss him. God, how I miss him. He died right before Christmas. I’ve spent every holiday since thinking about him, wishing I could feel his arms around me, screaming at the sky, begging someone to listen.

  Even winning Prediction couldn’t make me smile, though it surprised Melissa when they called her name for homecoming queen. And I still remember the look on her face as she threw away the last of her cigarettes, never to pick them up again. High school graduation was torture. It was supposed to be one of the most joyous times of my life, but it was misery. I kept thinking that Diego should’ve been there, walking the stage.

  I cannot, even for one hour, stop imagining the way his lips used to curl like a wave whenever he saw me, or the sound of his laughter, or even his moments of silence. Nothing is ever silent now. I dream about him constantly. It’s the only place where I can see him in vivid colors. I don’t want to forget.

  I refuse to forget.

  It took me until the day Diego died to realize that I no longer have autophobia. Because of him, I don’t worry about being alone. Diego is with me always.

  People don’t understand why I left Florida, why I moved to Estelí, Nicaragua, as soon as I graduated. All I can say is that it felt right. I’ve been here one month, and I’ve already done more for, and with, these people than I ever did in America.

  Dad helped me find this place, knowing I needed to leave the States. It was then that Dad and I had a long talk for the first time. Things were said that have been locked away in a box, rusting, dying. He brought them to life. I learned that he only ever wanted the best for me, that he regrets not communicating better, that my clothes and the church’s opinions do not count for more than his daughter’s well-being.

  I’m to blame, as well. I should’ve asked how he felt about things instead of assuming. I should’ve taken the initiative. I’m the only one who can be me, who can choose my destiny. Fate was waiting silently, like a dusty relic, for me to grab it, to polish it, to make it mine.

  When I mentioned leaving, Dad told me about American missionaries who built schools and helped out local people in a poor part of Estelí. They were looking for another person to join them, so I did. I don’t plan to be here forever, but it’s a start. I want to travel to other places. Help more.

  People back in the States think I’m running away. They’re wrong. I’m running to, not away, from Diego. I want to be somewhere I can make a difference. I want to carry out the dream that Diego and I shared. A dream to make this world a better place. To love in the face of hate. To laugh in the midst of turmoil. To create hope instead of fear.

  Diego never gave up on me. This is my way of never giving up on him.

  As I unpack the new shipment of supplies—medicine, water, packaged and canned food—I hear Raymond, one of the American missionaries, entering the building.

  “Hi, Faith,” he says to me. “Hola, Faith.”

  He’s teaching me Spanish, the native language in Nicaragua. He says things to me in English, then Spanish. I always thought Diego would be the one to teach me. He’d be proud of my progress. I allow myself a small smile.

  “Hola,” I say.

  My story is an open book to Raymond and his wife. They share my need to help others, a need that motivates me to place one foot in front of the other, to wake up each morning. Maybe I can plant seeds of hope in young people, water them, watch them grow.

  Every time I tell Diego’s story to a young person, every time I help build a new school, or help a local build a home, or give the community food and water, I have a chance of reaching them. If I help save even one life, it’s worth it. Maybe in the future, the streets can be a safer place. Maybe kids will see that there is always another choice besides hate and fear and violence.

  Raymond asks me to go to the backyard—which is more like a tropical paradise considering that the year-round temperature is eighty degrees—to hand out food. I pick up the box of food and head out back. There can be anywhere from two to twenty kids at once. Parents are usually working in the middle of the day, so I only expect children.

  I walk outside, squint, pause on the back step to let my vision adjust to the bright midday sun. Trees block little of the glaring sun. Using my hand as a visor, I take a few steps and stop dead in my tracks. The box of food drops from my hand.

  This can’t be.

  It’s impossible.

  There aren’t children waiting for me. In fact, only one person waits and he looks just like—

  “Diego?” I say.

  I must be dreaming becaus
e when I say his name, he smiles and walks toward me. He wears a plain blue shirt and jeans, his hair mussed. He looks angelic, sun bursting around the outline of his body, filling in the cracks between his arms and torso.

  “Faith,” he says.

  I run to him like I’m chasing the past. Dream or not, I want to feel him. I need to feel him.

  “I’ve missed you, mami,” he says.

  I back up. I haven’t heard that word since before he died.

  “How? But . . . I saw . . . they said you were—”

  “Dead?” he finishes.

  I nod.

  “I was. For three minutes and two seconds, apparently,” he answers. “They restarted my heart in the ambulance.”

  “This whole time,” I say.

  Diego rubs one thumb tenderly across my cheek.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. The government wouldn’t let me. For your safety. For mine, as well.”

  “Government?”

  He holds me close. “They’ve been watching El Cartel de Habana. When some of its members entered the U.S., American operatives followed, which led them to me. They were there, in La Plazita.”

  “They should’ve stopped them,” I say, touching the spot above Diego’s heart.

  His thumb strokes my jaw, then my lips. “The crowd was too thick. By the time they made it, well, you know.”

  I do. I always will. The image haunts me.

  “Like I said, it wasn’t safe,” Diego continues. “Will you forgive me?”

  Safety. He hid from me, to protect me. He took a bullet for me, to protect me. Will I forgive him? There’s no question. I will.

  “Yes, of course, yes. But what about the guy with the gun? The gang? They’ll come for you,” I say.

  He brushes hair away from my face. “Don’t worry about that. They think I’m dead. La policía covered all tracks. I am invisible. Forgotten. They took me to a government hospital, hoping for my help when, if, I awoke. I’ve spent the last six months recuperating. If you thought I had bad scars before, you don’t want to see my chest now.”

  I love his cocky grin. He knows I don’t care about his scars.