Do Not Become Alarmed(61)

The windows of the red car were broken but she didn’t see any blood. Something dark moved inside, and Liv jumped backward and fell. The police guard lunged forward. The shadowy thing darted out of the car. It was a striped mammal with a long tail, a little bigger than a house cat. It ambled away.

“Oh, shit,” she said, her heart booming in her ears. “That scared me.”

“It’s just a coatimundi,” Kenji said.

“That’s a coatimundi?” Benjamin said. “That’s what we came ashore for? It’s a fucking raccoon!”

“Please don’t start blaming me for the zip line again,” Liv said. Her tailbone was bruised. She felt woozy and confused, on a cocktail of adrenaline, Xanax, regret, leftover Ambien, and coffee.

“No one is blaming anyone for the zip line,” Benjamin said.

“You are,” she said. “And I’m sick of it.”

“Liv,” he said.

“You all blame me!” she said. “You do! But I’m not the one who was fooling around with the guide, okay?”

There was a silence. She saw a quick look of naked fear on Nora’s face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raymond asked.

Liv covered her eyes. “Nothing. I just meant they were off looking for monkeys or whatever. Birds.”

Benjamin turned away and walked back to the Suburban. So did Nora.

Liv’s face burned with shame. She was sure Nora had been with Pedro this morning, but she’d had no right to say anything. Her heart could break for Raymond, but the code of female friendship required her to keep her mouth shut. She had sounded like Penny having a tantrum, blaming anyone but herself. The zip line had been her idea, and she had fallen asleep.

Raymond put out a hand to help her up, and she took it, gasping at the pain in her tailbone. “Oh, fuck,” she said. “Hang on. I really hurt myself.”

“You okay?” Raymond asked.

“Yeah. I will be.” She straightened carefully.

“What happened with the guide?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I got scared by that animal. I took a Xanax with coffee, I’m not used to it. I’m talking shit.”

“You sure? Nothing happened?”

“Positive.”

He studied her face. She turned from him and limped back to the Suburban, wincing with every step. Nora was in the way back, earbuds in. Liv had not thought she could feel more miserable, but here it was. There were always lower circles of hell. Welcome to the next level down. She climbed in.





39.



IT HAD GOTTEN dark outside the train. Isabel sat against the wall as the car rumbled and swayed, and she bit at the skin along her thumbnail. It hurt and bled. If her mother saw her, she would tell her to stop. But her mother wasn’t here. She hadn’t protected Isabel. She’d let her swim in a river that had taken her away.

She tried not to think about Raúl. The pain, or the blood after, or even his eye hanging out and his head half scraped off. She found she could only push him away with another painful idea, so she thought about how much she missed her brother. If they had only waited for Hector to come back, then none of this would have happened. But no one had listened to her.

The brakes of the train screeched, metal against metal. It ground slowly to a halt. Oscar didn’t move, so Isabel stood and looked out into the dark. Men were shouting up ahead.

“There’s a car on the tracks,” she said.

Someone in a striped shirt appeared outside the train car, a small girl with black hair, a little Mayan-looking kid.

“We’re friends!” the girl said breathlessly, holding up her hands to show they were empty. “My name is Noemi. This is my uncle, Chuy.”

A man emerged from the dark beside her. He had a square, solid face. “You have to get off the train,” he said quietly, in the same strangely accented Spanish as the girl’s.

Isabel looked to Oscar to confront these people, but he sat curled up and frozen, after leading them thrashing through the woods. He was so useless. She turned back to the man. “Who stopped the train?”

“Thieves,” Chuy said.

“We don’t have any money.”

“They’ll recognize you. Rich Americans are looking for you.”

“You’re on television,” the little indio girl said shyly. “You’re famous.”

Isabel had heard about these migrant kids, and she’d seen pictures. When she hadn’t wanted to go to the passport office, her mother had lectured her about what a privilege it was to have a passport, to be able to go anywhere you liked. Those migrant children would do anything for a luxury like that. The passport office would be exciting to them. It occurred to Isabel that if she made it home, her mother would never lecture her ever again. She looked ahead, to where the car had stopped on the tracks. “Maybe they’ll take us to our parents,” she said. “For the money.”

“You want to trust those men?” Chuy said.

Isabel felt a roiling in her empty stomach. She remembered the weight of Raúl’s body, the tearing feeling, the blood. She couldn’t have it happen again, and her legs started to tremble.

Oscar spoke up. “Where would we go?” His voice was small and whiny, but at least he’d snapped out of his silence.