Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(104)

“What?”

“The theater. Shit!”

“What?”

“Roxanna Baez. Flora and her friend located Roxy in the theater this morning. Perfect place to hide out, they said, who would ever think to check all the rooms, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Okay.”

“She wasn’t hiding out. Dollars to donuts”—D.D. raised her coffee cup—“Roxy already knows what we just figured out. She didn’t pick the theater for its easy access. She picked it to ambush Anya Seton. This is the problem with a CI with a previous relationship working the case: Flora and her friend both see Roxy as a victim, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t capable of violence.”

“Where is Roxanna right now?” Neil demanded.

“In theory, stashed in a friend’s apartment.”

D.D. hung up, quickly dialed the number. But sure enough, no one answered.

D.D. downed her coffee, threw her vehicle into gear, and roared out of the parking lot.





Chapter 36


Name: Roxanna Baez

Grade: 11

Teacher: Mrs. Chula

Category: Personal Narrative

What Is the Perfect Family? Part VII

How do you become a family again? When you have lost so much, how do you learn to trust enough to get it back?

My mother’s new apartment is small. Cleaner than the one she had shared with Hector, but only two bedrooms and stuck in an apartment complex filled with old people. They had agreed to her tenancy because she was a nurse, and they wanted someone with medical skills. In return, she had promised them we would be good kids. No loud noises, rambunctious laughter, or running wildly through the long, neutral-painted halls.

After the crowded din of Mother Del’s, this new, carefully constructed space seems unreal. Like a tan bubble where we hang in suspended animation, waiting for the illusion of normalcy to be yanked away. Lola and I share the larger room. Manny has his own room. My mother sleeps on the sofa, proud to have her kids in bedrooms again. She has found two cherry-red throw pillows for the tiny love seat. The only splash of color in the place.

Somedays, I stare at those pillows, as if they can tell me what happened to all of us. As if they can direct me to where we go from here.

Manny takes it all in stride. But then, he’s Manny. His foster parents have returned him with two bulging suitcases of toys. Iron Man figures, decks of Pokémon cards, endless supplies of Hot Wheels. My favorite moments are hanging with him after school. Let’s play Iron Man, let’s play Pokémon, let’s race! Manny chatters and hugs and plays. He fills the entire too-neutral apartment with his trusting heart and little-boy glee.

I wish I could be him. I wish I could crawl inside his head and spend an hour as happy-go-lucky Manny Baez. But I’m not that fortunate, and neither is Lola.

We do our best. We go to school. We sit where we’re told, we keep our heads down, we call no attention to ourselves. And the moment we return to the tiny apartment, we wordlessly go to work. Cooking, cleaning, assisting Manny with his homework. Even if our mom is home from her job at the hospital. We need to keep busy, we need to help out. While we study our mom, watching the gait of her walk, listening to the cadence of her speech.

One day, I discover Lola searching the cabinets beneath the sink in the bathroom. I don’t say anything because I’d just gotten done pawing through the coat closet. Both of us looking for bottles of booze. Any sign the world is about to end again. This time, we want to be prepared. Hence the packs we both keep at the ready next to our bed.

But weeks become months. Our mother makes the long bus ride to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, then returns home again. If her working day is longer than she wants due to the commute, that’s okay. Nothing here Lola and I can’t handle. And, of course, Manny is always happy, quick to greet us with a hug before demanding to know what new game we’re going to play.

Sometimes, I wake up to the sound of Lola crying. Sometimes, she shakes me awake, telling me that I’m dreaming again. Sometimes, neither of us bothers with sleep at all: We simply lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling.

I try not to think of Mother Del’s. Wonder who’s comforting the babies. What new kid is probably being punished by Roberto and Anya right now. We got out. Our mother, despite the odds, came for us. It isn’t our fault most of the kids don’t have a mom and will never dream of such luxuries as a beige apartment in a senior-living building.

I catch Lola drinking several months after that. A bottle of tequila, of all things, which she’d stashed under the bed.

“Don’t you dare!” I snap at her, keeping my voice low, though our mom isn’t back from work and Manny is still playing with his action figures in the living room. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

She smiles at me funny. “What do you mean? Boys will do anything I want. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” She arches her back suggestively.

I slap her. “You’re not that person, Lola Baez. We know who is. Don’t let them wreck you!”

“Too late,” my sister says. Then she puts her head in her hands and cries, while I dump the rest of the tequila down the sink, then carry the bottle out to the building recycling center because I’m worried the sight of it might send my mom over the edge.

But I lick the top. Before I ditch it. I lick the clear glass. I try to taste what my mother tasted, what apparently my sister tasted. I get nothing. Just a burning sensation on the tip of my tongue that causes me to shudder, then spit.