Val and Salvador and me got along like blueberries in a muffin.
That first night we must’ve played a dozen games of Uno before we gave in to sleep.
Val was funny. She was quick with jokes and had a way of saying them that got me every time. But she was also a listener. Her eyes were always wide and looking into the eyes of whoever was talking, and she nodded along or shook her head or rolled her eyes to match what they were saying. Plus, she called Ivan “one of the handsomest cats I’ve ever seen,” so she scored a lot of points with that. She was a good one, that Val.
We talked about all sorts of stuff. Dreams and hopes and whatnot. Even Salvador felt comfortable sharing stuff around her, which is saying something. I told her everything; I told her about my mom and sisters and the accident and everything, and about why we were on this trip in the first place, though of course I was careful to talk quiet and make sure she knew not to gab about all that stuff in front of Rodeo. She teared up when I told her all that, which made me kinda uncomfortable, but she also reached across and held my hands tight in hers, which I liked an awful lot.
I learned a lot about Val that night. She was a poet and was hoping to someday move to New York City. She’d thought she wanted to be an actor, but last year had decided she wanted to do something in publishing and work on writing her own books someday. She thought anyone who puts ice cream on apple pie is crazy. Her favorite singer was some lady named Fiona Apple, and if you made her laugh hard enough she did this snort thing that was hilarious and adorable.
I also learned something about Salvador that night. Something surprising. Something good. We got to talking, somehow, about regrets. Things we wished had gone different, things we coulda or shoulda done different. It was exactly the kind of topic that was a no-go for Rodeo, so I was into it.
“Megan” is what Val said. “She was so cool. I don’t mean, like, the popular cool, I mean the real cool. I had, like, the biggest crush on her. Forever. And we were tight. But I never had the guts to tell her. And now … Shoot. Now I’ll probably never see her again.”
“That sucks,” I said, and Salvador nodded his agreement.
“What’s yours?” she asked me.
I looked for a second at the headlight-speckled blackness out the bus windows.
“Well. I guess my regret is kind of a work in progress. I regret waiting this long to go back for that box. Waiting until it might be too late. If I make it in time, well … no regrets, I guess. But if I don’t … If I lose that box forever…” My words choked off. Val and Salvador both had the decency to sit for a beat of silence, giving me a chance to finish. I was finished, though. Some things you just can’t quite put into words, and not speaking them is the only and best way to say them.
“Well, we better make it, then,” Salvador said. “Right?”
“Hells yeah,” Val agreed. “No regrets, sister.”
Now, I knew that Val meant that “sister” part in just a casual sort of way, like how guys call each other “bro.” I knew that. But still. I wasn’t sure at first whether or not I liked her calling me “sister,” but that was only for about a second and then, just like that, I decided that I did like it. I liked it a heckuva lot.
I smiled at ’em both. Then I tilted my head toward Salvador.
“How about you?”
He shook his head.
“Nah.”
“What do you mean, ‘nah’? We both shared. You can’t hold out on us, Salvador.”
Salvador shot me a look, but I was having none of that.
“Seriously,” I said. “That ain’t fair. And you know it. Give us a regret, man.”
“Okay, okay.” He sighed. “Here, hold on a sec.” Salvador got up and went and rustled through the pile of suitcases and stuff that his aunt had brought on board with her. He found what he was looking for and came back and set it down on the little table that held our Uno cards.
My jaw dropped.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
Salvador nodded. He unclipped the latches on the hard black case, swung the top open, and pulled out a shiny, deep-brown violin.
“You know how to play that?” I said in a whisper.
“Yeah,” he answered, kinda quiet and shy.
“You any good?”
He shrugged. But I could read that shrug. That was definitely a you’re-darned-right-I’m-good-but-I’m-not-gonna-like-brag-about-it-or-anything kind of shrug. I grinned in the darkness. That Salvador. A secret badass violin player.
“Cool,” Val said. “So … what’s the regret?”
Salvador ran his fingers over the violin’s strings, not hard enough to make a sound, but gentle enough so you could tell he loved that thing.
“My mamá. She’s never got to hear me perform. I mean, she’s, like, heard me practice and stuff. I’m in this—or, I guess I was in—this youth orchestra thing. First-chair violin. Youngest ever. But she always had to work when we had a concert or whatever. We had a big one coming up, too. I was, like, a featured soloist and everything. And, man, I got that sucker down. I own that solo. And she’d already worked out to have the time off. She was gonna get to finally see me, up there on a stage, with the lights on and the audience and everything. But then … then all this happened, and we had to leave, and now…” He sighed and shook his head. “But, you know, whatever. It’s not like the end of the world or anything.”
The way Salvador said that, the way his voice sounded all defeated and hopeless, made it sound like it kind of was the end of the world.
“Crap,” I said. “Man, that totally sucks.”
“Suck city, no joke,” Val agreed, and she hit him on the shoulder in a friendly sort of way and then leaned back on the couch. “So … play us something.”
“Nah,” he said, softly putting the violin back into its case.
“Come on!”
“No,” he said, and he said it firm enough that we knew not to push it. “I’m not in the mood. It just … bums me out, okay?”
Salvador snapped the latches closed with a loud double click.
“I’m wiped out,” he said. “I’m gonna hit the sack.”
“Yeah,” Val said with a sad kind of sigh. “Me, too.”
And that was that. I guess that’s how regrets are … they’re anchors, not balloons. And we were sunk.
I sat there in the swaying bus, looking out at the highway headlights.
I watched as Salvador walked up and scooted into the seat next to his mom. I watched how she put her arm around him and leaned to kiss him on his cheek and then how he leaned his head down to rest it on her shoulder. Her shoulders had sort of been slumped in defeat most of the time since I’d met her. She cried at night. I heard her once. When Salvador was asleep. Just little sniffles and some ragged breathing, but I heard it. Saw her dabbing her face. I didn’t tell him about it, of course. It was almost funny, thinking about that secret he’d shouted on our Attic ride. Almost funny that they both secretly cried at night when they knew the other one was sleeping. But not really funny at all, really. I thought about how brave they both were, and how tough. I thought about what they’d been through, with his dad and everything. And her courage, in leaving behind their whole life and everything. And then finding out there would be no job in St. Louis, and then her abandoned sister in Michigan, and now heading out to someplace they’d never been for a job they only hoped was waiting for them. Life just kept hitting ’em, and they just kept on going.
They could use a win, those two. They deserved one. The world owed it to ’em, I thought.
An idea slowly sparked to life in my head as the miles flew by. An idea I kind of fell in love with the more I thought about it.
Ivan purred in my lap, looking up into my eyes. I scratched my fingernails down his spine.
“I think we can do this, Ivan,” I whispered. I smiled at him and he blinked in agreement.
I was thinking.
Okay, maybe more like planning.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
It took some planning, this little plan of mine, along with some persuading of Rodeo, though not too much because this scheme was kind of right up his alley. It took more than a few whispered conversations between me and Lester and me and Rodeo and probably Lester and Rodeo, too. There was quite a bit of phone searching and location researching and timeline checking. I did the math and counted the hours and added up the miles three times, four times, five times. It was Monday night. We could pull off our plan Tuesday morning. The day before I had to get home. With Lester driving at night, we had twelve extra hours. Twelve. I could give up thirty minutes to help out a friend. It made my stomach kinda squeeze with anxiety, but I could do it.
We had to do all our whispering and planning that night, while Salvador was sleeping. But by the time we rolled into Billings, Montana, we had the pieces in place. We’d still need a lot of luck and we all knew there were plenty of things that could go wrong, but we were gonna give it a shot.
It all started at breakfast. We pulled off into a diner Lester had picked out on his phone earlier. We all shuffled off the bus and went inside and ordered our food and camped out at a bunch of tables.
No one noticed when Rodeo slipped right back outside again and ducked around the corner.
We all ate and chatted and used the bathroom and Lester and I did our best to dawdle and drag our feet and convince everyone else to do the same. Minutes passed and most of us were done eating, and Lester and I started trading nervous glances.
Then, finally, when folks were just starting to get restless, Rodeo ambled back in through the doors, walking easy as you please but breathing a little hard if you looked close.
I shot him a well-how-did-it-go kind of look. With one of his magic eyes he gave me a quick little wink. And I had to shove a forkful of eggs into my mouth to hide my smile. The plan was a go.
We all piled back onto the bus and then Rodeo fired up Yager and we were off. We didn’t head toward the highway, though. We drove right out the back of the parking lot, across an alley, and into a different, bigger parking lot.
Rodeo rumbled Yager up to the rear of a big red-brick building. There was a dumpster and loading ramp and some unmarked double doors, and that’s about it. No signs, no other cars, no nothing. Rodeo cranked on the parking brake and killed the engine and Lester hopped off and ducked through the double doors at a jog. Everyone else just sat there, looking at the empty parking lot and then at Rodeo.
“What are we doing?” Salvador asked.
Rodeo just did a big dramatic yawn-stretch thing like he hadn’t heard the question.
I figured Lester had enough of a head start by that point, so I stood up and walked to the front of the bus. I gave the Holy Hell Bell a couple of good clangs and then looked back at everyone and cleared my throat.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I began. “We been covering a lot of miles, and not taking a lot of breaks. So, Rodeo and Lester and I have planned a little something. For your, uh, enjoyment.”
“Some entertainment,” Rodeo added, spreading his hands wide, “to revive your morale and inspire harmony.”
“Come on,” I said, and led the troop off the bus and toward the double doors. They were propped open with a brick and I grinned, remembering me and Lester and Rodeo’s first planning session.
“If it’s got a double door, I can probably get us in,” Lester had said, and I’d asked, “How?” and Lester had answered, “I’ve worked in plenty of bars and theaters and stuff. There’s a trick I know that’ll get you through just about any double doors, as long as they’re kinda old and not chained shut. It’s exactly why places do chain them shut,” and I’d said, all excited, “What’s the trick?” and Lester had pointed a finger at me and said, “Uh-uh. I’m not telling you,” and then he looked at Rodeo and said, “But I’ll tell you.”
We walked into darkness. I paused, blinking the daylight out of my eyes, and Lester called out from somewhere ahead of me, “Keep on coming, you’re clear,” so I shuffled straight ahead and heard the rest of the crew making their way behind me.
The floor was cement, polished and smooth. Shadowy shapes emerged, things covered in cloth, ropes dangling from the ceiling. I could hear Lester rustling around, holding up his end of the bargain.
“Okay, I’m going up to the controls,” he whispered to me. “Sound’s good to go. Just head through that curtain ’bout twenty feet ahead of you.”
“Got it.”
The cement gave way to a creaking wooden floor beneath my feet. I ducked under a dangling rope and felt ahead of me with my hands until my fingers met thick velvet. I kept on, feeling with my hands along the curtain until I got to the break in the middle where the two curtains met.
I waited a tick, letting the rest of the group bunch up behind me.
“All right, y’all,” I said. “Right this way.” And I held open the heavy curtains.
We were on a stage, looking out on a dark auditorium full of empty red fabric seats. There was a single microphone on a stand in front of us, at center stage.
“What in the…,” Concepción started to say, and then wherever Lester was he musta flicked the right switch because a single spotlight flashed on, training a bright circle of light on the microphone. I knew he was off somewhere in “the booth,” as he’d called it, where he’d be able to make the lights and sound and stuff work. All his experience as a musician had really paid off for our little plan.
“Stairs are just to your left, folks,” Rodeo said, his voice back to mellow and easy. “Head on down and get yourself a front-row seat.” He sidled up close to me and whispered, “I put it over there by the piano.” I nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about.
Everyone else filed down the stairs off the stage and squeaked down into one of the seats.
It was a big place. Could probably fit a couple hundred people. At the back, behind the last row of seats, was a pair of double doors leading out to an entry area. Beyond that were some big glass doors to the front parking lot.
I stepped up to the microphone and squinted into the spotlight. I cleared my throat. Wrestled for a minute with the swarm of butterflies that came to life out of nowhere in my belly. Living on a bus for five years with a solitary hippie, I hadn’t gotten much practice at public speaking.
“Hello,” I finally managed, and flinched a little at how loud my voice boomed out from the microphone. “Welcome, fellow travelers, to the Billings Center for the Performing Arts. We’ve planned a little, uh, cultural treat for you. So, sit back and enjoy.”
I could barely see the faces of the folks, the spotlight was so bright. They mostly just looked confused.
I gulped. This was the scary part. The part where it all might fall apart.
“Um. Salvador Vega, please come up onstage.”
Even through the brightness, I saw Salvador’s jaw drop and his eyebrows lower. Saw his mom turn her head to him in surprise.
Salvador didn’t move.
“Salvador Vega,” I repeated, my voice getting a little higher and a little shakier, “please come up onstage?”
Salvador didn’t move.
I was crashing and burning. Epic fail.
But then I saw Ms. Vega nudge him with her elbow. Kinda hard, actually. I heard her murmur, “Go, mijo.”
And I heard Val say in her voice that was sharp even when it was soft, “Go on, man.”
And then he did.
He shook his head, and he clenched his jaw, and his hands were in fists, but he stood up and walked over to the stairs.
I went to the piano and saw it sitting there in the shadows where Rodeo had put it while the rest of us were chowing on breakfast. I clicked open the latches of the case. I pulled it out gently. I grabbed the bow. And I met Salvador at the top of the stairs.
I held the violin out to him.
“Coyote,” he said, his voice quiet and shaky and also definitely not super friendly. His eyes were serious.
“I know,” I said quick
and soft. “This looks cute and all, but I know in a lot of ways it’s really not cool. To spring this on you without asking. But there ain’t no pressure. You had a regret. We’re giving you a shot. If you don’t want this, that’s cool. I could do a tune on my uke, and Rodeo is just itching for an excuse to run out and grab his guitar. We can go instead. It’s all good.” I swallowed, then leaned into him a little closer. “So. I’m sorry for the ambush. But. If you want the chance to play that solo for your mom on a stage with lights and an audience … here it is.” I pressed the violin into his hands. They took it, natural and familiar.
He looked down at the instrument. Then out at the audience, sitting in their seats. Then up at me.
“I’m gonna get you for this,” he said. But he didn’t hand me back the violin. And he didn’t go back to his seat.
He swallowed. A swallow so big I could see it in the Adam’s apple in that skinny neck of his. “What’s the name of the song?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“The song you’re playing. What’s it called?”
“Oh. Uh, it’s Violin Sonata Number Two. In G minor. By Handel.”
“Okay.” I turned and started back toward center stage, but Salvador grabbed my arm.
“Coyote, it’s, like … ten minutes long.”
I smiled at him.
“Well, we better get started, then.”
I walked out to the microphone.
“Please welcome Salvador Vega, of Orlando, Florida, where he was first chair violin in the…” I trailed off and looked over at him, standing just out of the spotlight.
“Orlando Youth Orchestra,” Salvador mumbled.
“Where he was first chair violin in the Orlando Youth Orchestra,” I finished. “Today he’ll be playing for you Violin Sonata Number Two, in G minor, by Handel.” I spread my arms wide and bowed my head. There was an awkward second or two.
I raised my mouth back up to the mic.
“This is where you clap,” I said, and then they did, and then I walked out of the spotlight past Salvador, who was still looking pretty pale and still shooting me a fairly wicked glare. I bumped his shoulder as I passed and whispered, “No regrets, brother.”
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise Page 15
