I’m finally back with another Teaser Tuesday entry with the last one (and first in my WIP, the urban fantasy/paranormal thriller I, Nemesis
) being over a month-and-a-half ago. Link. Here we find the MC Sofia and her brother Junito living on the streets a year or so after being orphaned by Hurricane Mitch. Sofia is 5 at the time and Junito is 14. This is the end of Chapter 2, which eventually leads to the "possession" in the following chapter.
***
I would like to say that life got easier as we became accustomed to our lifestyle over the passing months, but that wasn’t the case. That was because of
El Carro Asesino and the gangs. As
La Capital emerged from the devastation of
El Mitch, the fear of gang violence and crime became prominent. The sensationalist nightly news and newspapers and the gang graffiti everywhere fueled public angst. With that, the death cars returned. They were red, four-door Mazda sedans with tinted windows. The gunmen pull down the window and shoot at least a dozen rounds each time. Any approaching car that was close to that description made people run. Being stealth was never an issue because everyone knowing what it looked like was a more effective means of terrorism. Being street kids like Junito and I was a crime punishable by death. And if a street kid wasn’t killed, it would be a gang member, or a woman with her infant. It didn’t matter. The irony was that
El Carro Asesino killed more people than the gangs did.
Fortunately, I was good at was spotting the death car and I pulled my brother out of harms way on numerous occasions. So I didn’t often play the pint-sized damsel in distress. I was the hero too. Yet all of this took a toll on my brother. While I still had those nightmares about my parents, his nights were restless as well. He eventually confided in me that he wondered how long he could protect me. He could do it alone for so long. One day my brother took me to a boarded up row house not far from El Parque de la Paz. We went to the pantry adjacent to the kitchen, setup our sleep area, and spent the night. It was dark and musky, but safe. The following morning he told me he was going to do something that he had never done before. He was going to leave me alone.
The faintest of morning light bled into the room through the rickety pantry doors so I could barely see his face. He said with a soothing voice, “Sofí, I want you to stay here for a couple of hours until I come back. You have enough food and water for that time. Do not leave here. Understand?”
I couldn’t understand. I hadn’t been away from him since before the hurricane so the thought of being separated was absurd. “But where are you going?” I asked. Tears stung my eyes.
He caressed my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.”
“I want to go with you.”
“You can’t, but don’t worry.” He gave me his switchblade. “Use this if you must. But don’t worry, you probably don’t have to.”
A chill crept down my back. “I’m scared.”
“Scared?” Junito chuckled bitterly. “After everything we’ve been through, now you’re scared? I can’t think of a braver girl than you. I’ll be back, I promise.” He held me tight and kissed me on the forehead. I watched him get up and leave the room. Once he was out of sight I bawled.
Those were the longest couple of hours I could remember, but I did as my brother said. I didn’t leave, not even to go to the bathroom. I held it is as best I could. I sat down, pressed my back against the cinderblock wall, gripped the switchblade in my hand, and waited. Fear held me in place, fear of this abandoned house, and fear that something bad would happen if I didn’t follow Junito’s instructions. My brother returned as he promised. I jumped into his arms when I saw him and he grimaced as he caught me. I tried to get a better look at him in the dim light. He had a black eye and swollen lip. His arms and legs were bruised and bloodied.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
“We have to see a doctor.”
He gingerly put me down on the floor. “A doctor?” he said. “I’ll be safer out here than seeing a doctor.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“I’ll be fine. And don’t worry, we’re both better off because of it.”
Junito’s wounds from his gang initiation eventually healed. As the days went by he would leave me alone again from time to time. We still did our hustling together, but those times happened less and less. Over a period of time, his appearance changed. He shaved off his think, shoulder length hair and would come back with a new tattoo ever so often, some on his hands or on his arms and torso. They were of letters and numbers, rosaries, and devil’s head. I asked him why he got them, but he didn’t tell me. Instead, he said I should be happy with the extra food and clothing he brought back with him. I was happy for everything, not realizing then what he had been doing.
One day he came back to me with a large tattoo on the left side of his chest peaking out from his white tank top. It was “MS” in Old English calligraphy.
“That’s pretty,” I said. “What does that stand for, Junito?”
He didn’t say anything, instead, he gazed off into nothing.
“Well, Junito?” I said and rubbed his tense forearm.
He hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. Later I would learn that the letters stood for the most dangerous gang in the world,
La Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13.
Instead, my brother looked at me with glossy eyes and said, “It stands for, ‘
Mi Sofí.’ ”
