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  He didn’t laugh. And he didn’t take the money.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t really pull a gun on you?”

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “This isn’t just about a few dollars. You think maybe you’re the big hero, chasing me down to give this to me. But what you’ve done just makes things worse for me. You think I won’t have to answer to those guys later?”

  “Answer for what?” I asked.

  He wiped all expression from his face.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I got to go.”

  “Look,” I said. “If I can help you...”

  “You’ve done enough,” he said. He didn’t mean it like a thank-you.

  Jennifer finally spoke. “Carlos, my dad is a teacher here and the coach of the track team. He’d love it if you came out and ran for the Hurricanes. Maybe he can help—”

  “The two of you are crazy. All I want is for you to leave me alone. You think maybe you can do that for me?”

  I was slow to answer. So was Jennifer.

  He took our silence to mean yes.

  He walked away.

  “Oh,” I said to Jennifer. The money was still in my hand. “That sure didn’t go the way I planned.”

  “You did your best,” Jennifer said.

  I brightened. “Yeah, at least I got rid of the other two. And in a hurry.”

  Jennifer shook her head. She held up a little plastic tube.

  “Before you start thinking you’re Superman,” she said with a smile, “you’d better get one of these. You’ll need it if they show up again.”

  I squinted.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Just breath spray,” she answered with a grin.

  “Oh,” I said, “so I can attack their bad breath?”

  She laughed at my confusion.

  “No,” she said, “but it also looks like mace. While you were playing tough guy, I walked up and held it behind your head. Like I was going to spray them. I figured guys who played with switchblades would assume I had mace. And I was right. They backed off in a hurry.”

  Wonderful. So much for being impressive. I had been rescued by a girl armed with breath spray.

  chapter sixteen

  Our doorbell rang and woke me up. It was still dark out. The bell rang three times, quickly, like someone was in a hurry to get the door answered.

  I sat up. My alarm clock read five minutes past three. Who’d show up at five minutes past three in the morning?

  I heard footsteps in the hallway. Heavy footsteps. Dad, not Mom.

  It was so strange that I got out of bed and put on my jeans. I was used to phone calls in the middle of the night—Dad was a doctor. But who could be at the door?

  I stepped into the hallway as I pulled on my sweatshirt. Dad was already walking back toward me.

  “David,” he said, “some kid is downstairs. Wants to talk to you. Says his name is Carlos.”

  Carlos?

  I felt my heart bump into a higher gear.

  Carlos. After school, I’d made sure I was never alone in the hallways, and I kept an eye out for those two guys with the tattoos. During practice, I’d hardly noticed my sore feet. I’d even secured my place to race on Saturday. But I’d spent most of my energy thinking and worrying about getting caught alone at some point. The only good thing was that some of the guys on the team had been friendlier to me. A couple had even pulled me into some of the joking around between sprints.

  I hadn’t seen Carlos’s friends—if you could call them that—on the way home, even though I’d been watching for them. At suppertime, I’d been so distracted that Mom asked me if something was wrong. If I had thought there might be something she could do to help, I would have told her. But it didn’t seem right to get her worried about something I had to deal with, so I’d kept my mouth shut.

  Even falling asleep, I’d been thinking about those two guys and wondering what hold they had over Carlos.

  And now he was on our doorstep at three in the morning? It didn’t make any sense to me.

  “Who is he?” Dad asked.

  “A guy from school,” I said. “The one who thought I pulled a gun on him.”

  “I see,” Dad said. His short hair stuck up in all directions. Much like mine probably did. “Guess you had a chance to talk to him. That explains why he knows where you live.”

  Then I realized something. All Carlos knew was my name. I hadn’t told him where I lived. This was getting stranger by the second.

  I followed Dad down the stairs.

  We found Carlos bent over in the front entry, leaning his hands on his knees. He was breathing heavy. Sweat popped from his forehead like he’d run to get here.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He straightened and tried not to pant. “Remember today you said maybe you could help if I asked?”

  I nodded. Dad was beside me.

  “I came here because I got nowhere else to go. It’s Juanita. My baby sister. I think maybe she’s dying.”

  Carlos moved his dark eyes from my face to my dad’s.

  “You’re a doctor. Can you save her?”

  All I knew about Carlos was that he was proud and stubborn and, until now, had wanted me far away from his life. For him to be here and begging for help told me he was desperate.

  Dad must have understood that. He didn’t even hesitate.

  “I’ll get my coat and car keys,” Dad said, “and tell your mother where we’re going. You guys meet me at the car.”

  chapter seventeen

  Dad carried a small leather bag filled with emergency medical equipment. And he was wearing a baseball cap. He threw one at me as he got into the car.

  “Your hair looks goofy,” he said. He tugged his hat down on his head. “And I’m afraid mine looks as bad as yours.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not meaning it. Still, I put my hat on.

  Dad started our Jeep Cherokee. He adjusted the rearview mirror to look at Carlos.

  “Tell me where to go,” Dad said, backing the Jeep into the street.

  “You turn right at the corner.”

  Carlos gave Dad directions turn by turn. Other than that, we said little as we drove. It had rained during the night. The streets were oily wet, and as we passed beneath each streetlight, the drops of water on our windshield glinted like round diamonds.

  Finally we reached a huge old house on a street near the school. Dad parked. We all got out.

  Carlos walked ahead of us without a word.

  We followed.

  The grass had not been cut in weeks. As we walked up a crooked sidewalk, I saw bicycles buried in the yard like rusting skeletons. Ahead, in the shadows that fell on the house from a dim streetlight behind us, I saw that some of the windows were broken. There were few lights on inside the house.

  It occurred to me to wonder if Carlos was taking us into some kind of trap.

  Before I could say anything to Dad, we were at the front steps.

  Then inside.

  The air smelled stale. Like old garlic and grease. And cigarette smoke. And a little like a cat’s litterbox. Somewhere deep inside the house a television blared.

  Carlos flicked on a light.

  We were in a hallway. I saw four doors, all shut, each with a name written on it in blue pen. Some names had been scratched out to make way for new ones.

  I also saw a set of stairs leading up.

  Carlos took the stairs.

  I heard crying above us. I heard voices below from behind one of the doors. The stairs creaked. I was glad that Dad was here with me. We kept following Carlos.

  At the top of the stairs, he turned on a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. It brightened a long hallway to our right.

  As we walked, I heard crying as we passed more doors with names scratched on them.

  I finally figured it out. It looked like this house had been turned into a bunch of tiny apartments.

  I found out I
was right when Carlos opened a door at the end of the hallway. A light was already on.

  Dad and I stepped into the room behind Carlos.

  We saw a man about Dad’s age. A woman standing behind him clutched his arm. There were four children—two boys, two girls—all younger than Carlos, all wearing long T-shirts for pajamas.

  Carlos said something quickly in Spanish to the man.

  The man nodded and replied in Spanish.

  “My father says thank you. He is honored you have chosen to visit us.”

  “Tell your father that my son and I are equally honored for the invitation.”

  Carlos translated, and then we all listened to his father speak again.

  “My father says he has no money to pay you for your help. But he promises to do whatever work you might have for him around your house.”

  “Tell your father I do not need money or repayment. Perhaps someday I can come to him with a request of my own.”

  Carlos passed that on to his father, who broke into a wide smile.

  His mother tugged at his father’s arm. She had a worried face. She said something to Carlos.

  “My baby sister,” Carlos said. “She is getting worse. She has become too weak to cry.”

  “Please take me to her,” Dad said.

  To me, Dad said quietly, “Wait here.”

  I did. Dad followed Carlos into another room. His father and mother went too.

  That left me alone in what was both a living room and a kitchen. Alone except for the four little kids. They all stared at me as if I had landed from Mars.

  Four little kids, a mother, a father, Carlos and a baby sister. Eight people living in two rooms. I saw five blankets with five pillows on the floor in this room; a sink, a stove and a fridge sat against the far wall. At the other side of the room was a table with two rickety chairs. There wasn’t much else in the room except for an old sofa and a television with a broken antenna.

  The little boys and girls kept staring at me.

  I wiggled my eyebrows. They began to giggle.

  I made a face, sticking out my tongue. They giggled more.

  We were just becoming friends when Dad stepped out of the back room, holding a little bundle in a blanket. Carlos and his parents were close behind him.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re taking this girl to the hospital.”

  “No!” Carlos said. “You can’t!”

  His mother and father exchanged worried looks.

  “She has a temperature of one hundred and three, her throat is swelling and she’s dehydrated,” Dad said. “I need to get some fluids into her fast.”

  “No hospital,” Carlos repeated.

  “Don’t worry about the money,” Dad said. “I’m a doctor there.”

  “No hospital.”

  Dad gave me the bundle to hold. I was surprised at how light it was. I saw a little of the baby girl’s face. Hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were shut tight, with shiny stuff leaking from the corners of her eyelids. I thought of a helpless kitten, so young that its eyes hadn’t opened yet.

  Dad put his hands on Carlos’s shoulders and faced him directly.

  “I think I understand,” Dad said. “Your parents don’t speak English. You are in charge of the family. And you’re afraid that someone at the hospital will start asking questions about how you all happen to be living here.”

  Carlos didn’t say anything. But tears began to silently slide down his face.

  “Son,” Dad said gently, “I will do everything possible to protect this little girl. And your family. There’s a nurse who will help us too. She and her family have faced the same problems you are.”

  Same problems? I wasn’t sure what Dad meant. But I didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Carlos finally nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “We go. We have to save Juanita.”

  chapter eighteen

  Carlos and I sat in the emergency waiting room of the hospital. It was so quiet we could hear the electric hum of the clock on the wall. Like all hospital clocks, it was big and ugly, designed only to show the passing of time as clearly as possible. Time of hope or nervousness or fear. Time that people spent waiting for news—good or bad.

  We had already spent half an hour alone while Dad worked with other doctors somewhere down the hall. Carlos had said nothing in that half hour.

  I decided I wasn’t going to break into his silence. I had plenty of questions for him, but this wasn’t the right place. Not with him so clearly worried about his baby sister.

  I stared at the hands on the ugly white clock. I was thinking about life, about how it didn’t seem fair.

  Why had Carlos been born into a family that had to share just two rooms? A family that couldn’t even get medical help and had to send their oldest son to the hospital with a sick baby because he spoke English and his parents didn’t?

  Why had I been born into a doctor’s family? A family where my brother and I had our own rooms? A family that could afford to send us to university?

  Dad had once explained that the answer was less about what was or wasn’t fair. It was more about life not always being fair and about helping people whenever we had the chance and...

  “That was a funny thing,” Carlos said, interrupting my thoughts. “You with that pistol.”

  I blinked in surprise. That was the last thing I had expected him to say.

  “Funny? I nearly got thrown in jail. And that wasn’t the worst of it.” I explained the part about the crap that I had rolled into.

  For the first time, I saw Carlos smile. “Crap, like from a dog?” he asked.

  “A big dog,” I assured him. “A big dog that had eaten way too much.”

  He made a face and laughed. Long and hard. It was like once he got started laughing, he was using it as a way to get rid of all his worries. Even if just for a few minutes.

  When he finally quit laughing, I spoke again.

  “You run fast,” I said. “You really should think about what Jennifer said. About running with the Hurricanes track team.”

  I thought about Carlos’s family and how Dad had said Carlos was the one in charge. And I knew his family needed help.

  “Maybe,” I said, “you could get a track scholarship and go to university.”

  His face brightened. “That’s what a person needs in America. Education. People who are born here think life is so easy. They don’t take advantage of what they can do. People who are born outside, they would die for a chance like that.” His face saddened. “And sometimes they do.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You probably figured it out by now,” he said. “Me and my family, we’re illegal.”

  Illegal. That’s what Dad had meant when he said the nurse had faced the same problems Carlos faced. The big smiling nurse had told Carlos not to worry about the paperwork for now.

  “Illegal,” he repeated. “From Cuba. Even with the worst job, living here is ten times better than living where we did in Cuba. But some people don’t make it across. I had a friend...”

  His voice drifted off. His face got sadder. It didn’t feel right to push him to finish.

  He took a deep breath. “See, there are these people who promise to be guides, to take you across the ocean. They make you pay plenty. Sometimes they take you across. Sometimes they just take your money. My friend and his family, they got in a boat. No one has seen them since. It’s easy to throw someone off a boat out there—lots of water.”

  I shook my head in sympathy. I mean, what could a person say after hearing something like that?

  “My father’s dream,” Carlos said, “is for all his children to grow up here. Become part of this country. Be citizens and have good jobs and freedom.”

  I finally understood why Carlos had not gone to the police when I’d taken his money. But it didn’t explain why the school’s computer had the wrong address for him. Or what was going on with those two guys with tattoos. And it didn’t explain one other
thing.

  “Carlos,” I said, “how did you know my dad was a doctor? And how did you know where I lived?”

  He turned his dark eyes on me. “Please,” he said. “Don’t ask. For me and for you—you don’t want to know.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he said, “listen. You talk to me about getting on the track team and trying for a scholarship. That would mean the world to me and my family. But there is no way I could do that. Not with where I am now and what I have to do to stay here. It is only a dream.”

  “But—”

  “You can’t even let anyone know I came to your house. If they find out, they will do terrible things to me and my family. Maybe to you too.”

  “They?”

  “Please. I have already said too much.” His mouth snapped shut.

  I wanted to know so badly that I would have pushed him hard for an answer.

  But I didn’t have a chance.

  Dad walked into the waiting room. He had dark bags under his eyes. And a big grin on his face.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said to Carlos. “We brought her temperature down and gave her fluids. She’s breathing easier, and the antibiotics seem to be working.”

  “Thank you,” Carlos said quietly. “Thank you so very much.”

  He bit his lower lip, as if he was trying not to cry from relief.

  I kept my questions to myself.

  chapter nineteen

  The school hallways were empty. Except for the two guys who had threatened Carlos in the library. Their footsteps echoed as they walked toward me. I backed away.

  Then my feet got stuck. I looked down. My shoes were trapped in a puddle of black tar. I couldn’t move.

  The two guys got closer. They flashed their knives at me. Big knives with shiny blades.

  I pulled at my feet. I still couldn’t move.

  I was desperate. I reached down and untied my shoes. I jumped sideways, landing clear of the tar. I turned and ran—and smacked into a wall that appeared from nowhere in the middle of the hall.

  I was trapped!

  I turned around again to face them.

  They moved in closer and closer. They moved like zombies.