Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “Are you okay?” Dante asked Pao, giving her a once-over for obvious injuries.

  “I’m fine,” she said, though she wasn’t really. She was still thinking about what the fantasma had said. The way its words had echoed the ones her father had uttered in her dreams.

  She shook herself, locking eyes with Dante. “Is your abuela okay? And Emma? What happened in there?”

  Dante shook his head. “The doctors are hiding in the bathroom off Abuela’s room. She’s still unconscious, and Emma’s in there watching her. I told her to stay put.”

  As if on cue, Pao heard footsteps running toward them.

  “Are you guys okay?” Emma asked, skidding to a stop beside them. “That was incredible! I was watching through a crack in the door. What were those things? And how did . . . ?” She trailed off when she saw the looks on their faces. “Right,” she said. “Questions for another time.”

  “I told you to stay—” Dante began.

  Emma cut him off. “She’s fine. The doctors are still in there—I mean, they’re hiding, which is a little questionable, ethically, given the danger to their patient, but—”

  “I hate to bust up this reunion,” the custodian said, walking up behind them, “but I suggest you kids get out of here pronto. All those Karens who were working the floor have definitely called the cops by now.”

  Pao knew he was right, but there was too much left undone. “We can’t leave without—” she began, but Emma was two steps ahead of her.

  “I’ll stay here,” she said. “I’ll watch Señora Mata and keep you guys updated every step of the way.” She held up her smartphone. “I’ll just pretend I was hiding inside her room the whole time and I didn’t see where you went, okay?”

  “No way,” Dante said, the club shrinking back into a chancla now that the threat had been eliminated. “I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s safe.”

  “Dante,” Pao said, wishing they had more time, “I don’t think she’s gonna be safe unless I go.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dante asked, looking between Emma and Pao with a positively mutinous expression on his face. “She’s sick, okay? She’s got . . . Alzheimer’s or dementia or whatever. The doctors will treat her and—”

  “Dante,” Emma said gently. “You heard the doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong with her. And they said after a few days of no brain activity it’ll get harder and harder to wake her up. . . .”

  He whirled on Pao. “And you know?” he asked, half-desperate, half-furious. “You know what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t,” Pao said, shaking her head. “But I think I know who will.”

  Her phone rang then. Her mom again, of course. Pao could practically feel her getting angrier and angrier the longer Pao went without answering.

  “I’ve been having dreams again,” she said to Dante, silencing the call and getting right to the point. “Dreams about my dad. Your abuela knew him, and last night she was in my dream, too. She told me he’s looking for an answer, and he knows how to get it, and we need to get it before he does. She said that’s how we can save her.”

  “Pao, you haven’t seen your dad since you were four!” Dante said. “What could he possibly have to do with this? And where would we even find him?”

  “Oregon,” Pao said simply. “That’s where he is. And that’s where I have to go.”

  “This is insane,” Dante said, backing away from both of them. “You’re both nuts. We can’t do this again. I have to stay with her!”

  “Yo, this isn’t really any of my business,” said the custodian, still standing behind them. “But if you stick around here, they’ll have you in juvie before sundown.”

  Pao, Emma, and Dante all turned to look at him.

  “Right, sorry, I’m out,” he said. “Good luck with your abuela, kid. And listen to her, eh?” He pointed at Pao. “She’s kind of a badass.”

  He jogged to the exit stairwell before any of them could react.

  “Okay, he’s random, but he’s right,” Emma said, using her authoritative voice again. “Your only legal guardian is in some kind of mysterious coma, Dante, and it looks a lot like you two just trashed an entire hospital wing for fun. Best case? You end up in some group-care nightmare until she wakes up. Worst case, it’s jail. You’re better off leaving this to me and helping Pao.”

  Dante looked like he was being physically ripped in half.

  “I’ll take care of her, Dante,” Emma said. “And I’ll text you every hour if you want. It’ll be cool. I’ll be your guys’ Max Gibson!”

  Dante and Pao stared at her blankly.

  “Max Gibson? Batman Beyond?” Emma said, rolling her eyes affectionately. “She’s, like, the nerd who stays home and looks things up, keeps everyone’s cover stories intact and stuff.” Emma paused, looking pained. “Although on the show she’s dark-skinned, and you guys know I would never culturally appropriate, even for a metaphor, so—”

  Out the broken window at the end of the hallway, Pao could hear sirens. Like, a lot of them. “We have to go,” she said. “It’s now or never.”

  Dante closed his eyes and clenched both fists. “Fine,” he said. “Like I have a choice. Like I ever get a choice.”

  “Will you feed Bruto for me?” Pao asked Emma. “And play with him every once in a while? He likes walks and yellow Starbursts, and he’ll protect you if any more fantasmas show up and—”

  The sirens were getting louder.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Emma said. “I’ll take care of all of them. You guys just go, okay? Before it’s too late.”

  “Thank you,” Pao said, hugging Emma briefly and fiercely. “Thank you.”

  “What are best friends for?” Emma asked, with a little smile.

  “Ready?” Pao said to Dante, who just scowled.

  It would have to do.

  With one last look at Emma, Pao bolted for the stairs the custodian had taken, Dante close behind her. She knew where they needed to go, she just didn’t know how they were going to get there with cops and firefighters descending on them like cicadas in the end times.

  They only had to go down one flight to get to the first floor, but Pao didn’t want to go anywhere near the lobby, because that was where the responders would congregate.

  She motioned to the left instead, down a dark hallway that looked unoccupied. The monitors were all silent here, the nurses’ station empty.

  That’s a small-town hospital for you, Pao thought, spotting the exit door at the end, thankfully free of staff or police. She didn’t dare look at Dante as they pushed through it and stepped out into a courtyard on M Street, around the corner from the main entrance.

  “We need to get away from here,” Pao said, more to herself than Dante.

  “Obviously,” he retorted anyway.

  He doesn’t mean to be a jerk, Pao told herself. He’s just in pain.

  “Any other brilliant observations? Or should we get this over with and turn ourselves in?”

  He doesn’t mean to be a jerk. He’s just in pain, she repeated. He doesn’t mean to be a jerk. He’s just in pain. After three or four more repetitions she stopped wanting to kick him in the shins. Would she step on a toe, though? Maybe.

  They stuck to the side streets, ducking behind a house or a bush whenever a car drove by. Pao didn’t know if the nurses had described her and Dante, or if Pinky and the Brain had come out of the bathroom yet, but it was safest to assume she and Dante could be recognized.

  And if they were, there was every chance that whoever did the recognizing would call the police. The “Karens” (as the custodian had called them) definitely didn’t need an extra reason to report two suspicious brown kids in their neighborhood.

  Which was why Pao and Dante needed to get out of town as soon as possible.

  Two-story houses gave way to one-stories, then condos, then apartment complexes. Even in December, the sun was blazing overhead. They’d been running, hiding from drivers, and checking over their
shoulders for more fantasmas for almost an hour when they finally hit the trailer park outside of town.

  Her mom had called three more times, and Pao ignored the fourth call now, not even bothering to check her twenty-seven unread texts. Pao already knew what they would say.

  She turned off her phone, feeling a pang of guilt for worrying her mom. But that disappeared immediately when she remembered Aaron and his backpack full of stupid blue clothes.

  Who cared what her mom thought? Maria wanted to move some guy in, become a totally different person at the drop of a hat? What did she care if Pao was gone?

  Right now, Pao had only one goal in mind: Get to the cactus field by the Gila River.

  Dante hadn’t said anything for a long time, but Pao expected she’d hear from him when he realized where she was taking them.

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. Emma had said it—the longer Señora Mata stayed unconscious, the less likely she was to wake up. Pao had to get the answer the señora had told her about before it was too late.

  Pao couldn’t help it if her estranged father was the one who had it, right? And who could blame her if she wanted to get some of her own questions answered, too?

  Because whatever was going on—the appearance of her father in her dreams, and everything that had happened afterward—it was proof. There was something strange about Pao. Something she’d been in the dark about her whole life.

  The events of last summer hadn’t been a fluke. There was a reason she’d been drawn into that rift, and why she wasn’t ready to move on from what had happened to her. She could only hope her father would know what that reason was.

  The sun was sinking, Arizona serving up one of those sunsets they plastered all over travel brochures to make people forget about the heat. Pao and Dante were past even the last of the mobile homes now, with nothing in front of them but open desert and the promise of the Gila.

  Pao slowed to a fast walk, her legs burning from all the running they’d done, and chanced a glance at Dante. His surly expression hadn’t faded one iota, and his eyes were still looking determinedly at anything but her face.

  She understood why he was angry, and that he was scared and confused, too. But did that give him the right to be this mean to her? Things had been off between them ever since school started, and now this. Would their relationship ever get back to the way it used to be?

  Was that even what Pao wanted?

  As if he could hear her thoughts, Dante finally looked at her, something like disbelief slowly changing his face.

  “Pao?” he asked at last.

  “Yes?” she replied.

  “Why does it look like we’re headed straight for . . .”

  The appearance of the cactus field’s boundary finished his sentence. Dante whirled around to face her.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked, his cheeks flushing again. “I thought we were going to Oregon.”

  “We are,” Pao said, repeating her mantra over and over to keep herself from escalating this into an argument. He doesn’t mean to be a jerk. He’s just in pain. He doesn’t mean to be a jerk. He’s just in pain.

  “Really?” he asked scathingly. “Because this looks an awful lot like we’re going to the Niños’ camp by way of a stupid unnavigable maze when my abuela is in the hospital waiting for us to fix her brain before it stops working forever.”

  The mantra fell off the record player of Pao’s brain with a loud, angry screech.

  “Sorry,” Pao said. “Did you have some perfect, easy way to get us to Oregon that you conveniently forgot to tell me?”

  The flush was creeping down Dante’s neck now. “You’re the one who always has the answers, Pao. I’m just your pathetic sidekick, right? The guy with everything to lose who’s always getting dragged into things he never asked to be a part of.”

  “I didn’t ask for any of this, either!” Pao shrieked, remembering when they’d fought like this before, during their first trip into the cactus field. It felt like a million years ago. That Dante and Pao had been best friends, bulletproof. They’d made up in minutes because they’d both just been scared.

  This wasn’t about being scared. And Pao didn’t think they were best friends anymore. She didn’t know what they were now.

  “Really?” Dante asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “So you haven’t been waiting for something like this to happen ever since we got home? Trying to drag it all back up every day so you can feel special again?” The old Dante would have teared up here, but this one had nothing but cold fury in every muscle of his face.

  “Dante,” Pao said, taking a step back. “That’s not—”

  “I bet you’re glad she got sick,” he said viciously. “You’d watch anyone or anything suffer as long as it meant you got to play the ghost-hunting hero again.”

  “I didn’t—” Pao tried again, but Dante was still going.

  “You should have just stayed,” he said. “If coming back here was all you wanted, you shouldn’t have come home in the first place. We’d all have been better off.”

  Pao felt like he’d kicked her in the stomach. He certainly looked like he wanted to. She was almost afraid of him in this moment, his face flushed with anger, painted red by the setting sun.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice small.

  Dante didn’t answer, and Pao realized she didn’t even know who she was apologizing to. Thinking back on the past few months, she’d lost track of what had made them special, made them work so well together.

  She’d thought it was boy-girl weirdness, their attempt to turn friendship into something more, that had changed everything. Instead, it had been Dante, sitting right above her in his room, weaving a story in which Pao was the villain and he was the victim.

  And now? She barely knew the angry boy in front of her.

  Pao had pulled away, too, she knew. She hadn’t been the friend she should’ve been. She vowed that she would be that friend now, no matter how angry Dante was, no matter what he said. They would do this together, and by the end, they would remember why they mattered to each other.

  They had to.

  “Look . . .” Pao said now, knowing she would have to keep this plan to herself for the time being. He was in no space to hear how much she wanted to repair their friendship. “No one’s gonna let us on a bus or a train unaccompanied tonight, and one thousand eighty-seven miles is a long way to walk, so . . .”

  “So, what?” Dante asked, his voice flat, his gaze far away.

  “So,” Pao said, keeping her voice as even as she could, “I figured we know some kids who don’t let things like Greyhound age restrictions get in their way. And they happen to owe us a favor.”

  Dante just glared at her shoes.

  “We spend one night with the Niños to throw my mom and the cops off the scent, we ask Marisa to help us get out of town, and we don’t look back until we’ve figured out how to save your abuela, okay?”

  When Dante met her eyes, Pao thought she could almost see him in there, the boy she’d known since pre-K. “This is still about helping her, right?” he said, like he was testing the waters. “Not about your obsession with all things paranormal?”

  “It’s about getting to Oregon as fast as possible,” Pao promised. “It’s not my fault my only friends are immortal monster hunters, okay? If I knew any regular people, I swear I’d ask them for help instead.”

  “One night,” he said.

  “One night,” Pao echoed, and they crossed the barrier at last.

  The first time they’d traversed this cactus field, Pao had been carrying her magical flashlight—the same one that had repelled the ahogados. It had acted as a kind of compass, guiding them through the magically twisted landscape and pointing the way toward the powerful rift the field was supposed to protect. The flashlight had been a gift from her father for her fifth Christmas—the one and only time she’d heard from him after he left.

  This time, Pao had nothing but a vague hope that having once b
een to the Niños’ camp she could find it again, the way Naomi, Marisa, and Franco always could.

  Dante kept pace with her, his eyes sweeping up ahead rather than scowling down at his shoes. He’ll come around, Pao told herself, once she got to the bottom of everything. They would find their way back to each other, even if they’d never been so far apart before. . . .

  They kept walking in silence, but they’d only gone a short distance when Pao noticed that the landscape was already changing.

  Before, it had taken them hours to follow the flashlight through the maze of the cactus field. They’d crossed miles and miles of the same light-colored sand and passed the same stubby cacti until Pao had thought she was losing her mind.

  Now they were definitely going in the right direction. If they weren’t, this field would have just spit them right back out where they’d started. But that rock was new, Pao was sure, and the cacti were already getting taller and spindlier, and the sky . . .

  Pao’s stomach sank. An eternal dusk characterized this place, but they’d gone from sunset to twilight, and now the sky was deepening toward night. Something was definitely wrong.

  The problem became clearer when the massive cacti that formed the entryway to the Niños’ camp came into view.

  “Where is everyone?” Dante asked, his tone accusatory again, as if Pao had done this on purpose. He walked up behind her but stayed a few feet away as they surveyed the site together.

  Dante was right. No one was here.

  “No, no, no,” Pao said, walking up to the firepit, its ashes long cold. “Where’s the cookfire? Where are the tents?”

  There was nothing left of what had made this place a home. Only a few pieces of broken furniture and some other discarded items. Pao felt a sob catch in her throat.

  “Well, what now?” Dante asked.

  “Just . . .” Pao said, turning away from him, holding up a hand. “Just give me a second, please.”

  To Pao, this wasn’t just the thwarted first step of a plan. Dante hadn’t been dreaming of this camp for months while his best friends pulled away, while his mom was too busy having her “shower retiled” to notice something was up.