Hurricane Power (6 page)

“Sure,” I said. “Let me hold your purse while you beat them up for me.”

She took a step toward them.

I groaned. I grabbed her arm as she tried to walk away.

“Wait here,” I said. “Get ready to call nine-one-one. I'll need an ambulance.”

I walked toward the small group.

All three turned their heads toward me.

“Hey, guys,” I said.

“Beat it,” the bigger guy said.

“I can't,” I said. I spoke to Carlos. “You okay? You need help?”

He shook his head.

“You sure?” I asked. “I saw that guy pull a knife on you.”

Both of the tattooed guys stepped toward me.

“Listen, jerk,” the smaller one said, “we'll take you down right now. It'll happen so fast we'll be out of here before anyone notices your guts on the floor.”

I was scared. But I was in this too far to back down.

“Just leave him alone,” I said.

“Or what?” the big one sneered.

I didn't have a good “or what” to give him as an answer. I did my best to stare him down and show him I wasn't afraid. Although I was.

He took another step closer. I held my ground. I didn't look away.

He was so close that we could have bumped heads. His shiny brown eyes looked like snake's eyes.

Then, without warning, he stepped back.

“Okay,” he said. “You win this one. But we'll be looking for you.”

I hid my surprise, hardly able to believe that my tough guy act had worked. Especially since I'd never tried it before.

“Yeah?” I said, feeling braver. “Anytime you want, bring it on.”

He didn't answer. He and his friend walked away.

Leaving me and Carlos, with Jennifer somewhere behind me.

I let out the breath I'd been holding.

Wow, I thought, I hope Jennifer caught all of that. Forcing those two to back down had been kind of impressive, even if I did say it myself.

“Hi,” I said to Carlos, “glad we could help. It looked like you were in trouble there.”

“You guys gone crazy?” His eyes were wide.

“They pulled a knife on you. What else were we going to do?” I was more than a little proud that they had just backed off. I wasn't going to mention that Jennifer had made me stand up to them. “And I wanted to talk to you.”

“Man, you got any idea who they are?”

His words had this fast, cool rhythm.

“No. I'm new around here. My name is David Calvin.”

Jennifer stepped up beside me.

“And this is Jennifer Lewis,” I said.

I stuck out my hand, waiting for him to shake it and introduce himself, even though I already knew his name.

He ignored my hand. He didn't introduce himself.

Instead, Carlos Pelayo groaned. “Watch your back. That's all I can say. Watch your back. Nobody messes with those guys and gets away with it.”

I shrugged. It wasn't like they would kill me or anything. I'd just make sure I stayed in places where there were other people around.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out some money.

“Here,” I said. “This is yours.”

He scrunched up his face, making it into a question mark.

“From the other day,” I said. I explained the thing about the water pistol. I hoped he would find it funny.

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.

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.”

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.