“You? A juvenile delinquent?” Jojo let out a belly laugh. “You’re, like, a cute little girl. You’re like Mattey.”
“Hey!” Mateo protested. “Really? A little girl?”
“Totally. Jane, you seem like a complete rule-follower.”
“Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Cade said.
Mateo squinted at him as if to tell him to shut up. But Jojo remained clueless.
“Come on!” She led me into the bathroom and tilted me over the sink to wash my hair.
“Aw, hell yeah,” she yelled once she started blow-drying it and seeing the results. “I am seriously missing my calling if I don’t become a stylist.”
“You want to be a hairdresser?” I asked.
“No. Not at all. I’m just saying I’m good at it. I want to be the president.”
“Ha ha.”
“What ha ha? I’m serious. I want to be the first Mexican American and/or woman president. Preferably both. Or at least a senator. I mean, I guess I could start out as the governor if I had to.”
“I’m pretty sure you’d have to start out lower than that,” I said. “Like mayor, maybe. County commissioner. Board of education.”
“Ugh! I say I want to be president of the United States of America and you make me president of the school board?” Jojo huffed melodramatically. “A lot of faith you have. Thanks a lot! You didn’t ask how I was going to get there. You asked what I wanted to be.”
“I meant realistically.”
“Dreams won’t ever be real if you don’t dream big,” Jojo said. “That’s my theory anyway. Don’t you have a pipe dream, the thing that would make you happiest?”
“Sure,” I answered.
“Well, you can be a supermodel if you stick with me. Check yourself out, Jane!” Jojo shooed me over to the mirrored medicine cabinet.
A chestnut-haired girl with big blue eyes blinked back at me.
Dead and pretty. Pretty. And dead. Yes. Old me could be gone. The girl in the mirror never lived in Mexico. She never found her boyfriend staked to a chair by the pool with a black gunshot hole in his forehead.
This was going to work because I would make it work. No more running. My whole life, I never got to stay anywhere. Not with my mom. Or my first foster family. Or the second. It was time for something different. Maybe this was it. That was my pipedream: a home.
The girl in the mirror was going to save me.
CADE
The girl I found in the corn had cracked lips and a black eye and smelled sour. She was bloody and scared, and scary, bloody things happened to me because of her. That first version of Jane was not a girl to me; she was someone who needed help. That Jane was a ghost.
This Jane had smooth skin and shiny, dark hair that brushed the tops of her narrow shoulders. It angled around her face and made her bright blue eyes look even brighter.
“Let’s get going!” Jojo was excited to go shopping for school clothes before the first day tomorrow. She was running around the house, throwing her things into her purse. Jane and I sat on the bottom bunk, waiting.
The cash my dad gave me for back-to-school supplies was supposed to somehow cover new cleats too, but so far, my patchwork was holding. I figured Jane could get a couple of things, and when she got a job, like she planned, I could get the new shoes then. It would work out. Who knows, maybe we’d find her bag and Jane could pay me back. The thought of using drug money made my stomach turn, though. It was too close to how my mom weaseled her way out when things got hard. I forced the thought out of my mind and looked over at Jane next to me. She was trying to fend off Jojo, who was armed with lip gloss.
“It’s pretty on you,” Jane said with an apologetic smile. “I’m just not really a bright coral sort of girl.”
Jojo’s makeover had turned Jane back into . . . one of us—someone to call for algebra help or take to the movies, someone I would throw balled-up paper at in chemistry class to get her attention or run faster for if I knew she was in the stands at a game. Someone I shouldn’t be thinking about like this. She’d be gone as soon as she had the chance.
“Okay, I’m ready! Come on, people!” Jojo pushed. “What’s the holdup? The mall is calling.”
But before we could get in gear, Jojo and Mattey’s little sisters came barreling in.
“Showtime, everybody!” Nina announced.
“Hiii, Cade.” Viviana batted her eyes at me.
“Hiii.” I rolled my eyes at her and ruffled her hair.
“Who are you?” Nina pointed to Jane.
“Nina and Viviana, meet Cade’s cousin Jane,” said Jojo. “Jane, meet my roommates. Because sharing space with an eight- and ten-year-old is stupendous.”
“We’re not stupid, you are.” Viviana stuck out her tongue at Jojo in response but quickly spun around to size up Jane. She had the attention span of a puppy. “You’re pretty!”
“Thanks,” Jane said with a shy laugh.
“We’re putting on a show!” Nina announced, grabbing Jane’s hand. “You have to be in it.”
“Leave her alone, psychos,” Jojo said. “Sorry, Jane.”
“No. It’s okay.” Jane seemed pleasantly surprised by the attention.
The girls plugged in a beat-up iPod player and cranked up the volume.
“Is that my iPod?” Jojo lamented. “Did you ask if you could take it?”
They just laughed and started a rehearsed little routine for us.
“Now you!” They took Jane by the hands. She hesitated but then gave in to their pleading. She moved slowly, still sore, but even so, it was hard not to just stare at her. Her hips swayed with the beat, and her arms seemed to meld with the music like it was coming out of her body instead of the speakers.
“Wow!” Jojo exclaimed. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
Jane abruptly stopped.
“Oh my gosh,” Jojo exclaimed. “You are so joining dance team with me.”
“Oh, no, I . . .” Jane shook her head.
“Oh. Yes. You . . .” Jojo imitated her. “. . . are an amazing dancer. It’s happening.”
“I . . .”
“Shush! I’m so excited! Okay, pollitos, good show!” Jojo planted wet kisses all over her little sisters’ cheeks, squishing them against her as they tried to squirm free and wipe off their faces. “More later, okay? We have to get going before the stores all close!”
The four of us squeezed into my truck. Jojo sprawled out in the middle, leaving Mattey so squashed up against the door his elbow and half his face stuck out the window. Jane wound up pressed up against my side, and her arm had nowhere to go except on my leg. Her touch was light at first, but when I didn’t shy away she let it rest a little heavier, and that’s how we rode into town.
“You guys do your thing. We’ll do ours,” Jojo ordered.
Mattey and I hesitated. This was Jane’s first time out in public.
“It’s okay, we can hang with you . . . ,” I said to Jojo.
“No, really . . .” She tried to get rid of us again.
“No. Really. It’s cool.”
“Fine. Frickin’ pains in my you know what! Better keep up. Let’s go, Jane! I know we must have the same taste. I swear I have the exact same outfit you’re wearing today.”
Jane made a little face behind Jojo’s back to Mattey and me. We laughed silently. It was her outfit.
“Hey,” I pulled Mattey aside to ask quietly, “where are we meeting Sophia?”
“In the food court at three. She’s on her break then.”
“You sure this is going to work?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mattey reassured me under his breath. “Her boyfriend gets fake papers for people all the time. This is easy. Jane Doherty. From California. She’ll never be anyone else again.”
JANE
I saw him
everywhere. Ivan. He twisted the eyes of the clerk in the shoe store, warped the guy serving smoothies. He was the soft-faced dad, the papery old man sitting by the fountain.
And Raff. The mannequins became Raff, haunting me through the glass display windows, their unseeing eyes like his . . . when whatever it was that made Raff Raff had already slipped away. I could faint. I shouldn’t have come here.
“Mattey.” I froze. “Are you sure I look different enough?”
“You look way different. Why . . . hey . . . are you okay?”
Mateo reached out and took my hand. I clenched back hard, trying to make myself breathe.
“What’s wrong?” Cade turned back toward us, his eyes instantly locking on our hands.
“Oh, sorry.” Mateo let go.
“For what? I was only asking if something was wrong.” Cade’s cheeks seemed to flush for a split second. “Jane, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay then . . .”
“What’s the holdup?” Jojo rounded the corner with a huge soda, somehow already slurping at the ice even though she just bought it.
“Nothing. I’m hungry. Jane, you?” Cade asked.
“I just asked if you guys wanted anything!” Jojo said.
“Yeah, sorry. Changed my mind. We’ll only be a minute. Mattey, we’ll catch up?”
“Sure.” Mateo took the hint and steered Jojo back toward the stores.
As soon as they were out of sight, Cade turned to me.
“Hey, look at me, Jane.”
I forced my gaze to hold his, focused in on his gray-green eyes, the ocean on a quiet day. His chiseled jaw made me think of Superman—no, Captain America—everything about him from the line of his eyebrows, the angle of his cheeks, the sweep of his shoulders, strong and perfectly symmetric.
“You’re going to be okay,” Cade said with a firmness that made me believe him. “You can do this.”
He pulled his baseball hat off his head, his sandy hair immediately popping up in messy tufts.
“Here. Put this on. It’ll make you feel better.”
I could have kissed him right then. Honestly. Not like that. I just wanted to be close to him. To somehow tell him he was the only thing keeping me anchored to this planet, that without him I would break into little pieces and swirl around like a dust storm and be gone.
CADE
Jane looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she pulled my hat low over her face and leaned into me a little, our arms touching lightly as we headed over to the food court to meet up with Mattey and Jojo’s oldest sister, Sophia.
I could have spotted Sophia from a mile away. As usual, she was a walking makeup experiment. Her passion, she said. A calling. Today her hair was on the top of her head like a plant sprouting some weird branch. Her lipstick was gold.
“The eighties are calling. They want their backup dancer back.” I slid into a plastic chair across from her.
“Shut your face, Cade. I changed your diapers. And for your information, this”—she gestured to her face—“gets me thousands of views on my YouTube channel. I’m going to get scooped up to do makeup for music videos before you know it. Obviously, art is lost on you. Anyway, I only have, like, a minute before I have a client at the counter, so tell me what’s going on. Why did you need this . . . favor?”
“My cousin hung with a bad crew and really doesn’t want any of them knowing where she moved.”
Sophia gave us a squint of scrutiny. I kept my face blank like I knew how to do too well. No, my dad doesn’t hit me. I don’t miss my mom. And yeah, this is my cousin.
“We really appreciate this. A clean slate means more than you know,” I said evenly.
Sophia gave us both another long look and then shrugged in acceptance. My shoulders relaxed with relief as she smiled at Jane.
“Hey.” Sophia turned to me. “Jojo doesn’t know about this, right?”
“No way.” I laughed a little.
“Okay, good,” she said.
“Why?” Jane asked.
Sophia rolled her eyes and leaned over to Jane. “My little sister is like the paparazzi. Everything she finds out she tells to everyone. And her version of the story is usually only a little bit right. . . . Oh! There he is! Diego! Hi, babeeeey.”
As usual, Sophia’s boyfriend was decked out like a total sleaze. He had a tacky designer T-shirt covered in roses and skulls, matching trucker hat, and way-too-tight black jeans all skinny at the ankle. His sneakers could probably pay a month of our mortgage. It bothered me that he was wearing dark aviator sunglasses inside the mall.
He leaned down and tilted Sophia’s face up toward his, and they French-kissed hello like they couldn’t care less we were sitting right there, waiting. I tried to wipe the grossed-out look off my face. Diego finally trailed his fingers off her shoulder, hoisted up his pants, and sat down across from us.
“Cade, nice to see you, bro,” Diego said to me before laying out his rules. “I’m not going to ask why you need these papers. And you’re not going to ask how I got them. Deal?”
I glanced over at Jane. She gave a little nod.
“Here you go, everything you need to enroll in a new school with a new name. Fake ID. Birth certificate. You’re seventeen. Almost legal.” Diego slid over the papers one by one, cracking himself up with his own commentary. “Immunization records. Good girl, you got your shots. Report card. Mmm, might have to work a little harder in math. And transfer card from your old school. That should cover it.”
“Thanks, man.” I slid the papers over to Jane fast. Why was he being so showy about it in the middle of the mall?
“You got it,” Diego said, and then with a wink toward Sophia, “Bill ya later.”
“Wait,” Jane interjected. “How much did this cost?”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Favor for a friend.” Diego wrapped an arm around Sophia’s waist, resting his hand in her back pocket.
“He’s happy to help, right, Diego?” Sophia said.
“Anything for you, gorgeous,” Diego said before turning his attention back to Jane. “Where’d you say you were from again?”
“California,” we both answered quickly, but he wasn’t done.
“Straight from there? Didn’t go anywhere in between there and Tanner?”
“Nope,” I said. “Right, Jane?”
“Right.”
She was clenching and unclenching her hands on the edge of her chair.
I reached under the table and grabbed hold of one of her hands, silently telling her to stop worrying. I didn’t blame her, though. It’s easy to think anyone who runs a little sideways of the law is linked to the cartels. But Diego was just a car mechanic who knew how to game the system and make money on the side hustling paperwork, especially immigration papers so people could get jobs. I’d known him for years.
He gave Jane an invasive once-over. “You got real pretty blue eyes.”
“Thanks,” Jane mumbled, looking down.
“Really, Diego?” Sophia fake pouted. “I’m right here.”
Diego laughed and planted a big, wet kiss on Sophia’s neck, biting at her ear until she laughed too and swatted him away. Diego slid his sunglasses down and peered over them at us. He looked from Jane to me and back again.
“Just saying . . . you remember eyes like that.”
JANE
My eyes stayed open almost all night.
When I did fall briefly asleep, my dreams twisted everyone into someone else.
In one nightmare I tried to pet Hunter, but then I realized he was a wolf. The wolf snarled, and I started running. But when he caught up with me, instead of attacking, he smiled. And I knew that the wolf was actually Ivan. As its face shifted from animal to human though, I saw that it wasn’t Ivan after all. It was Raff.
�
��You’re next,” Raff said before he picked up a gun and shot himself in the head. His eyeballs turned black, and he dropped to the ground. I ran over to the body and discovered a lifeless Cade instead.
The sequence snapped me awake. I won’t tell. I won’t tell. I heard my own mid-dream mumble before my eyes even flickered open to stare helplessly at the shadows in the barn, dark and darker.
I lay there thinking about Raff . . . that day he was super messed up on who knows what and got a call directly from the big boss, the one no one ever met and never questioned. Grande. You need to go give people some medicine, Grande told him, and whatever that meant had Raff scared enough that he told me I had to help. I had to drive him. He could barely stand up and walk straight let alone get behind the wheel. But you don’t say no to Grande. There was a kid, Raff told me. They called him the Wolf Cub. He was trying to challenge Grande’s turf, take his tunnels. They had to send a message to some of his men.
We drove a long time, at least a few hours from Playa Lavilla, to a little pharmacy outside Montera. Two other cars pulled up. I recognized one of Raff’s friends. He looked surprised to see me and pulled Raff aside, speaking angrily and pointing back at me. Raff pushed him away and told him it was fine. Raff took his biggest gun from the trunk. His handgun was on his belt. I’m sure he had his knives. He stroked my cheek. If I’m not out in one hour, you leave without me. Promise. He grabbed my face. I mean it.
I promised. But I didn’t mean it. Promise is what you say to people when you’re going to do whatever you want regardless.
They pulled three blindfolded men out of the cars and disappeared inside the pharmacy. I stayed with the engine running, lights off, like he told me, watching the numbers on the dashboard clock creep. If you drive the getaway car, that makes you an accomplice, right? Accomplice to exactly what, I didn’t let myself answer, even silently in my head.
But I knew.
Forty-seven minutes later, when Raff finally came out, there were tiny sprays of blood across his right arm and the side of his face. Red sea-foam.
Hide with Me Page 8
