Ana led the way. Behind her was Iridian. Then Rosa. Bringing up the rear was Jessica. Her suitcase was so heavy it banged against the side of her leg with every step, and she had to keep switching it from her right hand to her left and back.
All warm, star-flecked spring nights in downtown San Antonio bring out the tourists, but this night was different from the other warm, star-flecked nights. The girls were making their getaway on one of the busiest nights of the year, during Fiesta, when the streets were packed, even in the middle of the night—and not just packed with tourists, but with locals draped in medal-covered sashes and wearing crowns made from paper flowers. They were out in droves to celebrate the Texians who fought long ago in the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. And even when we were still a couple of blocks away from downtown proper, we could hear the music—the blare of horns, the percussive thumps of guitars. Little bits of colored crepe paper floated through air and covered the sidewalks and the streets.
The girls chose to run away during Fiesta probably because they thought they could disappear in the huge, ambling crowd and no one would notice them, and maybe that was a good plan. We, however, could do nothing but notice them. None of the Torres sisters was particularly tall—Iridian was the tallest, but still not tall. Their heads didn’t bob above the crowd, but we could still see it shift and part as the girls pushed through. We followed, shouldering and ducking our way through people who smelled like beer and cinnamon and drugstore cologne. We thought we could stay hidden and that we could go unnoticed, but once the sisters had finally plowed through the crowd’s northernmost edge and were picking up their pace, Jessica, who was still bringing up the rear, glanced over her shoulder and saw us.
She stopped. Her eyes narrowed. We froze. She advanced.
“Shit,” Jimmy squeaked.
Even with a little square of pink crepe paper stuck just above her right eyebrow, Jessica Torres was still scary as hell. It seemed like she was always, always angry. In kindergarten, she bit a teacher on the wrist because snack time was over and he tried to take away her peanut butter crackers. In junior high, she keyed Jenny Sanchez’s mom’s car because she didn’t like the color of it, and just this last December, she got detention for three days after she’d jammed the tip of a lead pencil into Muriel Contreras’s pinky finger. The lead is still in there. Muriel tries to say it’s a freckle, but everyone knows the truth.
For a moment, there on the far edge of the Fiesta celebration, none of us spoke. Jessica stared us down. Her teeth were clamped together, bared slightly, just like they were when she was climbing down that tree. The other Torres sisters—realizing Jessica was no longer with them—halted and spun around.
It was Hector who finally mustered up some courage. He cleared his throat and asked, “Where are you going?”
“We can help,” Calvin quickly chimed in.
Ana took a step forward. She shrugged off her heavy backpack and slid herself in front of Jessica. She looked us over, met each of us in the eye for the briefest moment, but said nothing. A breeze caught her hair, lifting the strands, blowing them in our direction.
We’d never been this close to Ana Torres before, and it was disorienting. She was so, so beautiful. We’d imagined before—many times—what she might’ve smelled like. Maybe it was roses, vanilla, lemons, or maybe the first, fresh slice of white bread pulled from the plastic sleeve. But until then, we never truly knew.
It was laundry. She smelled like laundry, like dryer sheets mixed with a little stubborn sweat.
“We can help,” Calvin repeated.
“Boys.” Ana’s tone was full of scorn, and it burned our soft hearts. “Go home. We don’t need your help.”
Ana was suddenly lit up from the side. All four of the girls turned, and in that moment we knew from the loud rattle of the overstressed engine coming our way that Rafe Torres had discovered his daughters’ escape and had tracked them down in his truck.
Hector cried out, “Run!”
But the girls didn’t run.
They just waited and watched as their dad honked his horn twice and brought his old green Ford pickup to a stop in the middle of the street. Jessica’s heavy suitcase fell to the ground with a thud. Rafe, dressed in a white V-neck undershirt and jeans, jumped from the truck while the engine was still running and went straight for Ana. He gripped her arm, digging his thumb right into her shoulder joint.
“What were you thinking?” he barked. “Huh?”
Ana said nothing. She didn’t even wince. She just slowly turned her head to the side, and her gaze slid northward, in the direction of the bus station.
The passenger door of Rafe’s truck opened, and out came Hector’s mom, wearing fuzzy slippers and a red flannel robe over a long nightgown. She was watching Rafe and Ana with a strange expression on her face. It was a mix of things: like she was relieved, like she was furious, like she was guilty, like she felt sorry for the Torres girls, like she knew, deep down, that it may have been better for them to have caught a bus to the Valley or wherever else they’d hoped to go than to stay with their sad dad in Southtown.
Hector’s mom then turned toward us. She ticked up her chin and pointed down the street.
“Walk,” she commanded.
We walked. The last thing we saw before we were again swallowed by the noisy, sweaty Fiesta crowd was Jessica arguing with her father, refusing to get in the truck. If anyone else had noticed what was happening between the Torres girls and Rafe, they didn’t let on; everyone knew families were complicated and that dads were always dealing with unruly teenage daughters. Rafe gripped Jessica’s arm, then her waist, and then pushed her into the extended cab. She managed to pin us with one more stare, full of hot fury. We deserved it.
We learned on the walk back what had happened. Hector’s mom had heard us leave. It took her a minute to figure out what was happening and then to get up and wrestle on her robe. Once she got out into the front yard, she saw Ana’s wide-open second-story window. She went across to the Torres house and rang the doorbell until Rafe answered, still half asleep. Together, in Rafe’s truck, they drove around the neighborhood, searching for their runaways. At the time, Rafe didn’t seem all that mad, Hector’s mom told us. Instead, he seemed scared. His fingers were trembling against the steering wheel. He kept repeating, “My girls. My girls.” He kept asking Hector’s mom, “What will I do if they leave me?”
This is how we learned that we were the ones who had destroyed the Torres girls’ chance at escape. If it weren’t for us, things would’ve turned out differently. If it weren’t for us, Ana wouldn’t have died two months later and her sisters wouldn’t have been forced to suffer at the hands of her angry ghost.
Iridian
(Sunday, June 9th)
The routine on Sunday was simple. Rosa got up first. She’d shower, dress for church, and then go out into the backyard for an hour or so and try to talk to the animals. Jessica got up next. The first thing she’d do, even before using the bathroom, was check on Dad. Knowing him, he’d probably have gotten home just as the sun was coming up and would sleep well into the afternoon. After going downstairs to peek into his room, Jessica would head back upstairs and get ready to go to work, which usually took a while, given that she never left the house without looking flawless. Jessica’s Sunday shift at the pharmacy didn’t start until 11 a.m., but before that she’d pick up her boyfriend John from his house a couple of blocks away so they could go get breakfast somewhere.