Shatter Read online

  Cordero squints at the field grasses drenched in sunlight. My shoulders drop as I watch his body language. We can follow the growers to their secret meeting, but we won’t know who to focus on. Dad’s the only grower we have reason to suspect anymore.

  I don’t want to think about it. I should get ready for the mock trial anyway. I don’t have any more reason to stay with Cordero, whom I haven’t seen for nearly a week.

  “How’s … your sister? Jimena?” I ask instead of leaving.

  He meets my gaze. “I can’t visit her. I want to. I wish I could make sure she’s … better.” His hesitation makes it clear that better isn’t the word he wants.

  “Make sure she’s healing,” I say automatically. Worse, I say it slowly, well-articulated, looking right at him and waiting for confirmation that he understands. I tense at the scowl I know is coming.

  I wait a long moment.

  “Que está mejorando,” he says. Slowly. Well-articulated.

  He’s teaching me.

  “Que está mejorando,” I repeat.

  He nods at my pronunciation, pulling his forehead closer to mine, gaze steady. Steady and darkly intense. I’ll never be able to hold such a gaze.

  I step back, and neither of us says anything. I feel the length of the pause in the pulse of my neck and wrists.

  “AddyDay’s friend is planning to meet you at the school. Her name is Marissa,” I say finally, even though I’ve already verified this with him. Marissa will be surprised. I have no doubt Cordero will persuade her to let him into her car—probably without half-trying.

  “You have the last affidavits for me?” he asks.

  “Oh, right.” I swing my backpack forward and get out a paper sack full of clothes and typed pages.

  He opens the sack with a loud crinkle. The clothes he doesn’t care about, but he takes out the papers, folding the bag back down and holding it under his elbow.

  “And if I don’t understand the questions, I can ask the lawyer to repeat them?” His eyelashes flutter as he scans the page.

  I watch him pause and read a chunk of text.

  “You really want a good grade.”

  “Not really. I have no money for college,” he says, still reading. “I took the class because Carrie told me to.”

  “Carrie? Really?”

  I love her so fiercely right then. Of course she wanted him to see something outside of his rows of crops to harvest and his violent, gang-infested house at 147 Benjamin Road.

  “All that charitable work and Carrie was going to make you a schoolboy too,” I say, not sure if I’m allowed to joke about such a thing.

  He looks up and hesitates. “Maybe … but I was curious. The judge, the police … they aren’t for us, for those in a gang. She said I was wrong about that.”

  “Maybe the police aren’t perfect, but they go after gang members for a reason most of the time. Some of your gang members are following the killer’s orders. I mean, El Payaso and Tito do hurt people, and you’re trying to protect them.”

  Cordero shakes his head, expression dead. One mention of turning on his gang, and his moment of sharing is over.

  “Come on. You don’t think they should go to jail?” I ask.

  “Prison is the worst place for them. What do you think made El Payaso so bad? It’s up to me to stop El Payaso and Tito, not the police.”

  “You? How can you be more powerful than the police? Anyway, the killer has hired El Payaso and Tito. You think they’re going to stop picking on you if we discover who the killer is? What if we don’t have enough evidence to prove the killer is guilty? He’d go free and he’d still be after you. There is a downside to the court system.”

  “Not all justice is in the courts.” Cordero leans to put the notes back into the paper sack, bent as if with grave responsibility.

  Memories scroll through my mind like a slideshow on super speed—the flash in his eye the first time I asked him about Carrie, the conflict on his face when Slate and AddyDay talked about soldiers killing for their family.

  I back away from him. “That’s why you’re looking for the killer? So you can shoot him?”

  “He killed your sister.” Cordero’s anger is cold and well thought out. He turns away from me. “He’s hiring the gang—splitting us up.”

  That’s the plan. That’s always been the plan. Find the killer, get rid of him, and get Tito and El Payaso in line. Heck, take over the gang in a blaze of glory at the same time.

  Staring into the field, Cordero expression becomes so conflicted I’m not sure he’s conscious of revealing his inner battle. Haunting indecision is cut into every sharp feature. I take in the half of his face that I can see, the black of his tattoo and the way he’s turned from me, almost in shame. He’s not only tortured by the idea of killing someone but by the indecision itself—like hesitancy in the face of moral corruption is some kind of weakness. A luxury that a real vato wouldn’t allow himself.

  “But you … you wouldn’t … you won’t,” I argue.

  Cordero composes himself, turning back to me. “You want the killer to have no punishment?”

  “No, I want … I don’t know—but you can’t … you can’t just kill him. It’d be …”

  It’d be messy. It’d be a secret. I’d have a secret I’d have to carry to my grave just like Carrie. What about the rooftops I was going to shout from? What about the rage of the rest of the world that was going to match my own? If the killer is shot down, he becomes a person—an entity I’d have to sympathize with. I reject that. I will only hate him.

  “People need to know she was murdered,” I say. “There needs to be a trial. Your whole idea—everyone knows it’s wrong. You know it’s wrong. You don’t like the way Tito bullies everyone. You broke up a fight between him and Slate the night Carrie came to talk to you and you don’t even like Slate.”

  He stops me. “What do you mean, the night Carrie came to talk to me?”

  “When Tito picked a fight with Slate at Mission Plaza.”

  He shakes his head, confused. “Tito didn’t pick a fight with Slate. And Carrie didn’t come to talk to me that night. Slate came that night to fight Tito.”

  I shake my head. “No, Slate fought Tito because he saw Carrie talking to you.”

  “That’s not what happened,” he says, upset—very upset. Slate’s name always makes him upset. “Slate was angry. He arrived at Mission Plaza. Carrie was in the car with him. He hopped out and came after Tito. Carrie and I stopped him.”

  “That’s not what happened,” I insist, sure there’s a misunderstanding. “Slate said—”

  “No? That’s not what happened?” Cordero leans into me, eyes flashing. “Because I’m in a gang and Slate isn’t?”

  “Can you just admit there’s a reason to be afraid of gang members?” I demand. “You don’t act the same around them. You practically threatened me after the drive-by.”

  “I’ll be deported if I’m caught with a gun.”

  “Yes, and it’s the gang that made you have one!” So he is an illegal.

  Conflict is all over his face, but he takes a breath and lifts his chin. “You only understand pride of a gang, not the shame of it. The gang is family.”

  “You’re right. I don’t understand you or your gang. Why can’t you guys stop hurting each other? Stop working for a murderer? Stop doling out your own version of justice so the streets are a war zone?”

  A rustle sounds from the road but Cordero’s focus on me doesn’t falter. He looks at me, with a vulnerability I rarely see in him. “You care what happened to Carrie. You understand loyalty. I would die before I left my people.”

  I want to see defiance sparking in his dark eyes, but I don’t. I see moral confidence. I see self-sacrificing commitment.

  I see Carrie.

  Footsteps crunch behind me and Cordero’s gaze shifts.

  I whirl.

  A heavy-set Hispanic man careens toward us through the long grass, his face pulled back into his signature
clown expression. El Payaso. He’s found Cordero somehow.

  “I’ll kill you!” El Payaso calls to Cordero.

  The black object in his right hand—

  It’s a gun.

  Cordero leaps toward the field. El Payaso changes his momentum, coming toward me now. Screaming, I lurch away too late. El Payaso grabs my wrist, twisting it behind my backpack. I’m bent forward, gasping in pain.

  “Let me go!” The pain is unbearable.

  El Payaso shoves the barrel of the gun into my neck, and I hear the hammer cock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Istop struggling when I hear El Payaso cock the gun. I can’t see Cordero. Just the strap of the older gang member’s sleeveless tank top an inch from my eye.

  “Cordero, you ain’t gonna let no chick get killed,” El Payaso chokes me with the gun as he spins around, like he’s searching.

  I hold still, frantic. There’s no sound but my labored breaths.

  “Let her go!” Cordero’s voice is well left of us, approaching rapidly.

  El Payaso swings me toward Cordero. I use the momentum to grab a fistful of the man’s hair. He drops me.

  I land on my tailbone, pain ripping up my spine on impact. I’m screaming, twisting. The gun—Cordero—I can’t see anything. El Payaso will kill him right here, right in front of me.

  Cordero crashes into El Payaso and the older banger falls on me, pinning my ear to a bed of weeds. The gun tumbles. I roll out from under him and go after it. Dry thatch tickles my throat. El Payaso claws at my face, my hair. Somehow Cordero is at my elbows, lifting me, shouting at me. The gun is in his hand. I’m up.

  I’m tearing across the field, Cordero at my side.

  El Payaso screams behind us.

  “I’ll find you!” His words recede quickly.

  Cordero breaks toward the river. I keep up easily, long grasses slapping my shins.

  Overgrown oaks make our path jagged. At a sudden slope, we splash into the San Joaquin River. I catch my breath, wet to the bottom of my backpack as I fight thigh-deep currents, lazy but insistent.

  We climb the opposite bank.

  Cordero tucks the gun into a side pocket of his soaked, baggy jeans.

  “Is he coming?” I scan the direction from which we came. I was too frightened to look back.

  Cordero’s chest heaves for air as he looks at me. “He didn’t follow.”

  “He’s trying to kill you, not convince you. Kill you,” I insist, afraid of everything, even Cordero. I put distance between us. Dark leaves scratch my face.

  He pursues me as if to make me feel better. “He is far away. Very far.”

  Just as he reaches for me, I collide with a dead branch. It catches me under my jaw, splintering from the tree with a crack. Pain cuts into my neck, and something falls onto my cheek from above, small and writhing. I cry out. I swipe my face and bring my hand in front of me. Cordero’s chest is at my shoulder blades.

  A black widow crawls across my knuckles.

  “Oh!” I jump back, pressing more firmly into Cordero.

  He reaches around my waist and flicks the spider away. I bring my hand to my face, knocking heads with Cordero who leans to see as well. Black widows are deadly. There’s blood on my trembling pinkie finger. But no pain. The blood is from the cut on my neck, not a spider bite.

  He grabs my fingers, anxious. “It bit you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” I say, turning to him. “I wasn’t bitten.”

  Adrenaline has flooded my system too many times today. I can’t stop shaking. I’m dimly aware of Cordero sweeping the wet skin of my neck with both hands, tipping my head back to inspect the underside of my jaw, his pressure holding me steady. I can feel river water snaking from my shorts to my thighs.

  “I ran into a branch.” I try to pull back from him. He won’t let me. “See? It’s a cut. See?”

  “Is okay,” he says, relief in his voice. He straightens and finds my gaze.

  There’s no release of his hold on me.

  Behind Cordero, rays of sunlight speckle brightness onto the oak trees on the far banks. A slight wind sways them. Cordero came back to rescue me from El Payaso and the banger didn’t follow us.

  I keep thinking about it. How Cordero could have left me with him.

  Cordero’s fingers are light on my skin, his gaze focused.

  “I hate black widows,” I find myself saying, confused and not knowing why.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “They’re poisonous.” If I could calm down. If he would take his hands off my neck.

  He doesn’t answer. He’s close, looking at me with that expression of his that seems so familiar, though I can’t read it. Guilty or hesitant. Or vulnerable.

  His gaze is slow over my face, intense. More questioning than frantic. He needs me to know what he’s doing. He needs my approval. For what, I can’t stop to wonder—not when he’s impossibly close, not when the hard line of his lips softens so that I know his defenses are gone.

  He lowers his dark lashes to look at my mouth.

  He’s not breathing anymore.

  He never moves, I swear, but he’s closer. Closer.

  Eternity is interrupted as I pull away from him in a stunned search for air, finally understanding his intent. My hands fist over my stomach in insecurity because I can’t get the idea out of my mind.

  What would it have been like? If he had done it, if he had kissed me?

  He turns his back to me. There’s a snap of branches past the river.

  Footsteps maybe?

  Cordero turns and pushes me away from him. “Go.”

  “What about you?”

  “Go!” He darts away through trees toward the freeway.

  I sprint in the opposite direction.

  The river pushes me west. I squish into pockets of sand covered in blackberry vines. Low-hanging willow branches slap my face. When the flowing water blocks me entirely, making the start of an S-curve, I don’t check behind me. I splash through it rather than backtrack.

  Once up the opposite bank, I’m less than a mile and a half from the Laborer’s March and all those camera-wielding union supporters. I head into an orchard and pass a group of Hispanic men. People.

  I pause and turn a complete circle, muscles shaking. Why aren’t these men at the state park with the Laborer’s March?

  What if the noise next to Cordero wasn’t anything—a falling branch, a fox in a hole? What if it was El Payaso and he catches Cordero? I don’t know where Cordero is or what he thinks of me. Does he think I kiss boys just because they look at me too long? That I like him? I do like him, but it’s not like I admit it or act on it. Should I? How did I have no idea he thought that way about me when I think that way about him constantly?

  The more oxygen I gulp down, the more my head clears, but not my emotions. I hate myself for not controlling what I communicate, the way he does. When he’s not vulnerable, I mean. When his lips aren’t soft like they were as he leaned into me on the riverbank, his gaze unsure and pleading.

  I run three strides, stop, and spin again. I smell like mud and I’m all turned around. I’m in an orchard. I feel west of the state park, but as a group of college-aged kids pass near me, moving even farther west, I second-guess myself. That would mean they were headed toward Elena’s house and AddyDay’s house. I picture Cordero inside Elena’s bedroom, the way he looked when he stopped to gaze at me before escaping through her window—bruised, covered in broken glass, less guarded every moment he lingered, with his face just inches from mine. Did he want to kiss me even then?

  I refocus on walking but the next thing I know, I’m thinking about the time between today and when Cordero and I kneeled next to each other on Elena’s bed. One week.

  Is that a long time for a boy to want to kiss a girl?

  I continue along the row. I feel ridiculous for not having an answer. For not recognizing that Cordero wanted to kiss me.

  For stopping him.

  Because
… because if I had recognized what he was doing I would have stopped him earlier. Or, no, I would have made up my mind first. I would have decided if my attraction meant that I truly cared for him. Before he pressed his fingers into the skin of my neck in his rush to see if I was okay. Before he leaned into me so close that I smelled the river water on his skin and saw from his caution and his longing how very serious, how very irreversible the kiss would be. How can I trust a feeling that takes over so completely? Or is that the very thing I should trust most?

  Union supporters come from the east through the trees, chanting, “Right makes might!” A stone’s throw ahead, the row of trees opens to a road lined with dozens of idling buses, waiting to take thousands of marching laborers to Sacramento.

  In a disorienting paradigm shift, I realize I’m on Louise Avenue, my own street. I made it home. I’m safe now, I guess. If home is safe. I swing my backpack forward and dig for my phone. I’ve got texts and voicemails from Slate, Dad and AddyDay. Nothing from Cordero.

  Slate: Where should we pick you up?

  Dad: I know you’re reading this text. I love you. Please tell me where you are.

  Slate: Earth to Salem.

  AddyDay: Slate says ur not answering. r u okay? Where r u?

  Dad: Where are you?

  AddyDay: Slate’s looking for you. He left for ur house, trying to beat the protesters.

  I frown. Protesters—at my house? What is she talking about?

  I text Slate and AddyDay that I’m on my way home and send Cordero a message.

  Me: Where are you?

  Should I get help?

  No answer. More marchers pass me. I spot a pair of bobbing black braids.

  “Envy,” I call, jogging to her. “What’s everybody doing here?”

  She purses her lips and looks at the screen of her cell. “I’m getting pictures of grower vandalism.”

  I lean to see. Her phone displays an image of the ax broken earlier.

  I frown. “That’s not grower vandalism. That was you guys.”

  “Could’a been a grower—and it’s not like they’re getting caught for everything they are doing.”

  “Envy!”