“You can share my locker,” he said. “And I’ll carry your books.” It was the first thing he’d thought of when he hatched the “Yesenia takes Mission Hills” plan, that she would share his classes and he’d carry her books.
As they rounded the corner, Mission Hills came into view all at once, white and imposing, the sun like a spotlight above. Yesenia stopped walking and studied it without moving.
“Are you nervous?”
She shook her head no. “Not nervous.” She smiled and squeezed his hand, then let it go quickly, remembering. “Just happy.”
Alex slipped his forefinger into a belt loop of her jeans, holding her in a protective way. He was happy too. They’d done this big, brave thing, and they were safe now, and together, and they would be together every day of high school and then—well, every day after that too. Pulling gently, he led her forward, up the long walk and columned staircase and into the great front hall.
It was early. They had come for zero period—Yesenia was to wait in the library—but the school was alive already, and Alex found himself again surprised by the commotion. A group of Mr. Everett’s students leaned against the lockers, talking about their Christmas vacations in loud, animated voices. He was about to say something to Yesenia, comment on the earliness, the energy, that this was one of the first things he’d noticed to be different about the school and did she?—but when he looked at her he saw she was focused on something else: a man in a suit walking briskly toward them. Mr. Daniels.
“Hello, Alex.”
He was surprised the principal knew his name but also not—it was no secret he was one of Mr. Everett’s favorite students, and more than one teacher at the school remembered his mother too. Alex didn’t know how long the principal had worked at the school, but he certainly looked old enough to have known Letty as a student.
But Mr. Daniels wasn’t looking at Alex; he was looking at Yesenia. Standing just a few feet from her, he bent at the waist to study her beautiful, blushing face.
“You must be Yesenia Lopez-Vazquez,” he said, nodding to a security guard standing by the door, and for just a moment Alex thought they were both part of some welcoming party, to let her know how happy they all were to have her there, what great care they would take of her, that they would never ever let happen to her what had happened at her last school.
But there was nothing warm about the way they looked from one to the other, principal to guard and back again, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach Alex realized it was wrong, all wrong, and also that it was too late: Mr. Daniels was walking away, Yesenia trailing behind. Alex turned to follow, and the guard led them through the office and down a long hall, to a closed door.
Mr. Daniels opened it.
Inside, a table. At the table, two uniformed police officers, waiting for them.
Letty followed a probation officer down a long, dark corridor. Behind them a heavy door clicked shut, and in front another stood tall and locked. The PO swiped an ID badge and the door opened, leading to another dark hall and then another. The clicking of the locks made her head spin; she wanted to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit and the PO kept walking. If she didn’t keep up she’d be trapped between the doors indefinitely, unable to go forward or back. She concentrated on her steps, swallowed the bile that rose in her throat and mixed with the smell of sweat and soiled carpet, until the final door opened and she stepped into the light of the intake unit.
Outside the window, a police car pulled into a courtyard. A steel gate rolled down behind it, so that the car was contained on all sides before an officer opened the car door. The handcuffed boy who got out of the back wasn’t Alex. Alex had been there hours already, hours that Letty had spent waiting in the lobby for permission to see him. She paused at the window, pulled in by the scene playing out in the courtyard—the boy was pressed up against the car now, an officer holding him in place with his knee—but the PO barked for her to keep walking, and she was led around a desk and along a row of thick glass cells. A fat teenager with buzzed hair lay on his back on a wooden bench, his flesh pressed up against the glass, and Letty thought of the animals at the zoo, thick-skinned hippos and rhinos and elephants lazing against the viewing windows. The boy didn’t lift his head as she passed, but he tracked her just as any one of those animals would have, with neither interest nor self-consciousness. It wasn’t his first time here.
They paused in front of another locked door; on the other side Letty stepped into a cavernous, horseshoe-shaped room with steep steps down like an amphitheater. At the bottom, lines of empty chairs faced a dark television screen. From a cluster of desks at the top, officers monitored the movements of everyone in the room. The PO pointed to a table in the corner and left her there as he went to knock on a row of doors. One at a time, boys in navy blue pants and matching T-shirts came out to get their shoes, then disappeared back inside to put them on. At one room the PO lingered, exchanging words with whoever was inside. Letty held her breath, expecting it to be Alex. But instead the PO yelled something about him declining to speak, and a man with a clipboard and a mental health badge turned and left the room.
They were coming out now. Shoes on, shirts tucked in, heads down. They walked with their hands behind their backs as if they were handcuffed, and it wasn’t until the first one passed that Letty saw there was nothing actually holding their wrists together. It must have been required, though, because when a boy in the middle of the line lifted a finger to scratch his collarbone, a PO shouted an order and his hand immediately flew back into place.
Some of the boys walked lazily, others stiffly. Watching, Letty could tell by the amount of fear in their eyes how long they’d been there, and whether or not they’d been there before. A boy with a swagger and loosely held hands swerved wide, as close to the officers as he dared before turning and walking down the steps to the chairs below. Behind the desk a black woman with short white hair called out after him: “You going to walk right by without giving me anything?” He turned at the sound of her voice and flashed a lopsided grin. “That’s right, you’d better smile.”
“I’ve known him since he was thirteen,” the woman said, and it took a moment for Letty to realize she was talking to her. “I told him I’d come visit him on the outside—that he doesn’t have to get locked up to see me.”
The boy took his seat with the others and stared at the blank screen. From where Letty sat she could see only the back of his head, but she could tell by the way he held his shoulders that he was smiling, and for the first time since she’d received the call that morning, Letty felt the pressure in her chest ease. But then all at once there was Alex, the last of the long line of boys, his eyes angry and scared. Letty’s stomach heaved. She covered her mouth and closed her eyes and didn’t open them until he was seated at the table across from her. His chair scraped the linoleum as he pushed it in; she heard his clenched fists fall on the tabletop.
In the waiting room she’d thought of a million things she wanted to say, every variation of plea and accusation, but opening her eyes, she couldn’t remember any of them. There was a rough patch on his forehead, a layer of skin missing, and Letty imagined him being pushed by an officer or a roommate against the cinder-block walls. The image made her stomach lurch all over again. She swallowed hard and forced herself to speak.
“How are you?” she asked, stupidly, and the row of boys below sniggered. Alex said nothing. He wouldn’t look at her, and Letty felt her fear bubble suddenly into anger. She pushed her chair closer and whispered across the space between them.
“What were you thinking, Alex? You can’t just go breaking into computer systems and enrolling kids in Mission Hills who don’t belong there.”
She felt the hypocrisy in her words even before Alex looked up, his glare challenging her, forcing her to remember. He’d stood by her side in Sara’s kitchen as she’d filled out a phony lease, waited in line at the DMV to change her address to a zip code she couldn’t afford even in her dreams. She?
??d modeled all of it for him, the rationalizing and the carefully calculated action. The only difference was that he’d gotten caught.
“There were security cameras in all the halls,” she said. “They have everything on tape. Even if we had money to fight the charges, we’d never win.”
Alex exhaled. His posture was defeated; he’d known before she said it that he didn’t have a chance.
“Why are they charging me with burglary?” he asked. “I didn’t take anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. You broke in with the intention to commit another crime. So it still counts as burglary.”
“But I didn’t break in!”
“Quiet!” From the corner a PO barked. Letty startled at the gruff reminder, but Alex didn’t blink. Only hours in and he was used to it, a fact that made Letty want to take his hand and run. He shouldn’t be here, she thought, not Alex, but behind the desk the door slammed shut again, the lock clicking loudly. They weren’t going anywhere.
Alex leaned toward her, his voice low this time: “I didn’t break in,” he said again. “I had a key.”
“Well, you weren’t supposed to have a key.”
At the bottom of the steps the group of boys stood as one and filed out the door. She watched them go, looking into their faces as they passed and trying to imagine each of their mothers sitting in her place. Would they think, as she did, that their boys didn’t belong here? That they weren’t like these other boys? Maybe. But most of the young men who walked past had the empty, wandering look of the motherless kids she’d grown up with at the Landing, kids whose mothers had overdosed or been locked up or otherwise couldn’t be pressured to care. Alex was different in this way, just as she’d been different, and she knew from experience that it made the pain of screwing up more acute.
Only the white-haired woman behind the desk remained in the room. She stood up and moved to the chair farthest away from where they sat, an act filled with so much kindness Letty felt her eyes well. She clenched her teeth and waited for the feeling to pass before turning back to Alex.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered. “I don’t understand. You see her every day after school.”
Alex lifted his eyebrows in surprise. He thought he had been getting away with seeing Yesenia after school, but Letty had known. She just hadn’t known what to do about it. He shrugged his shoulders but didn’t say anything.
“You couldn’t wait until three? Really? You had to risk all this?”
Alex lurched forward suddenly, shushing her in a way that sounded almost like a hiss. “Stop saying that. I didn’t do it to see her.”
“So why did you do it?”
Alex slouched back in his chair, all the effort it took to hold everything inside seeping out in one long exhale. “She was getting beat up, okay? And she wouldn’t tell her mom, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
The words stunned Letty, even though she knew they shouldn’t. Of course a girl like Yesenia wouldn’t be safe at Bayshore High. No one was safe there; it was why she’d worked so hard to get Alex out.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Alex met her eyes, and she remembered: he had come to her—begging and tormented, the morning after Wes returned. But she’d been so distracted she’d pushed it away, not understanding his urgency. “You did come to me. You fucking came to me, and I ignored you.” The weight of it hit her all at once, and she folded forward onto the table, her cheek pressed against the smooth plastic. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop it,” Alex said. The harshness in his voice pulled her back to sitting. “I did this. I broke in and I enrolled Yesenia and”—he ran his finger over the scrape on his forehead, remembering—“I talked back to an officer.” His eyes filled. Curling in his bottom lip, he bit down, trying to stop the tears that wouldn’t be stopped. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
Alex bent over onto the table, as Letty had done only a moment before. He was silent, but his chest rose and fell as the sadness overwhelmed him. Letty put both her hands on his shoulders.
“I miss my nana,” he whispered, the words barely audible, and Letty remembered Luna on the back of the airport chair, wailing. Alex’s voice was deeper, but the heartbreak was just the same.
“I miss her too,” she sighed. “But we’re okay. You’re okay.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You might have done something stupid, but you did it because you thought it was right. You did it for Yesenia.”
Alex began to cry in earnest, not even trying to contain himself, and Letty glanced nervously around the room, thinking about what the others would do to her skinny, crying boy after she left. But the room was empty now. They were all out somewhere, in school or walking the grounds, and so she sat quietly and listened to him cry, stroking his back until all the tears were gone. Gently, she felt the back of his neck for temperature.
When she looked up, the white-haired woman stood beside her.
“Time’s up, Mama.”
Letty kissed the back of Alex’s head and then reached for the hand the woman offered, allowing herself to be pulled up and led to the door. When she looked back, Alex sat tall in his chair, face wiped clean and hands behind his back, waiting for direction.
She paused at the door. “Do you want Wes to come? He wanted me to ask.”
“You told him?”
“Of course I told him.”
Alex shook his head no.
“Okay. I’ll let him know.”
“And, Mom? Tell him I’m sorry. And Carmen too. Tell her it was my idea—that it’s all my fault we’re in here. Will you tell her?”
Letty wanted to go back to him, to squeeze out the guilt and despair, to hold his head up high on his shoulders, but the door was already open, Letty being led through.
“I will,” she said. “I love you, Alex. Remember.”
The door slammed shut behind her, and Alex was gone.
—
Letty sat with Luna on the steps of Courtyard Terrace, waiting for Carmen to come home. In the parking lot, two girls drew hopscotch squares with fat chalk, and Luna wandered over every few minutes to see what they were doing, hopping once, twice, and then remembering. Guiltily, she raced back to her mother’s side, slunk down on the steps, and waited, her lips in a thin, grim line.
It was late afternoon when Carmen finally came. The smile on her face as she climbed out of her car confirmed Letty’s fear: she didn’t know anything. Yesenia hadn’t called. She hadn’t given the police her mother’s phone number—she probably hadn’t even given them her name. Everyone was afraid of la migra, and from what she knew about Yesenia, Letty was sure she would do anything she could to protect her mother. Letty felt a fresh wave of nausea, thinking about Yesenia and Alex within the dark maze of locking doors, all alone.
When she saw the expression on Letty’s face, Carmen’s smile faded. She asked something loud and fear-filled in Spanish that Letty didn’t catch, but someone in a nearby apartment heard. A head popped out of a doorway; Letty felt ears all around the crowded complex, straining to listen. She shook her head no—not here—and climbed the stairs to Carmen’s apartment, waiting as she unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Inside the apartment, Yesenia was everywhere. Classwork framed on bookshelves, report cards taped to the refrigerator, photos smiling down from every wall—her absence was like a living, breathing thing, stealing the oxygen from underneath Letty’s nose, and in the time it took her to walk from the front door to the living room, she felt herself dizzying from asphyxiation.
“¿Dónde está mi hija?”
Where was her daughter? Panic raised her voice.
Luna reached up, and Letty lifted her into her arms. Like a lemur, she clung to her mother’s neck as she crossed the room and opened the window.
“They’re in trouble.”
Carmen’s hands flew to her stomach, and Letty thought she was going to be sick, but then she saw her mime the round s
tomach of pregnancy.
Letty shook her head. “No. Not that. With the police.”
“La policía?”
Disbelief warped Carmen’s soft features into hard lines. It wasn’t possible, her expression said. Yesenia wasn’t that kind of kid. And neither was Alex. Letty set Luna down on the carpet, needing all her energy to explain. So many of the legal terms she barely knew in English, and it took more than one try to explain everything. They’d broken into the school in the middle of the night; they’d enrolled Yesenia in the computer system using Alex’s address; it had all been recorded on the security cameras.
“It’s a wobbler,” Letty finished. “That’s what the PO said. They could be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony, and just because it’s recorded as a felony now doesn’t mean it won’t be lessened, or dropped altogether.”
Letty couldn’t tell if Carmen understood this last part, but she could tell she’d stopped trying. With great effort she walked to the couch, collapsing onto the lopsided cushions. Luna ran to her, crawling up onto the couch and covering Carmen like a blanket. It was too much, to learn the loss of her daughter with someone else’s daughter in her arms, the touch of young skin, the smell of tangled hair, the steady, shallow breathing; she pulled a pillow over her face and began to cry. Luna’s thin body shook as she squeezed Carmen tighter.
On the other side of the room, Letty stood at the window, watching clouds gather in the sky. It had been less than two weeks since her Christmas party, all of them toasting and together, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Everything had changed. Alex and Yesenia were locked up. Carmen didn’t have the language skills or the documentation to even visit her daughter. Letty understood for the first time just how different their lives had been. All her life Letty had felt like an outsider, but Carmen was an outsider. The laws of the land that existed to keep Letty safe, to give her a chance at success—even if they didn’t always work—these laws didn’t apply to Carmen. She was beyond alone. She was invisible.