“Yeah.”
We fall silent. I listen to the sound of the tires on the road. The bump of the rocks, the sputtering engine and squeaky cab. I try to concentrate on the little things around me. But my parents keep creeping into my mind. I picture them tied up, scared. I wonder if they’re being tortured. The thought of those animals hurting them makes my bones ache. I wonder if Torres’s plan is to kill them or just use them as bait to lure us there. Lure me there. I picture my mother’s face, her green eyes defiant, her body strong. She won’t break down. I may not know everything about her, I don’t know her fears or the secrets she carries in the corners of her soul, but this, I know. She’ll go kicking and screaming, not sobbing and begging.
“Reagan?” Luke speaks. His head is turned toward me and I can feel his warm breath on my cheek.
“Yes?”
“Are you scared?” Luke asks in a small voice, somewhere next to me in the darkness. I let the question soak into my skin.
“No,” I say after a beat. “Not for me. But I’m scared for them.”
Just saying those words out loud triggers the panic I’ve been suppressing to rise up my chest. I swallow it hard, trapping it in my throat. I won’t allow myself to be afraid.
“I just want to bring them home,” I whisper. He doesn’t say anything, but I know he hears me. I feel his hand run along the bed of the truck and reach for me in the darkness. I open my palm to him and take his hand in mine. He squeezes my hand three times. I squeeze three times back. And we ride just like that, our fingers laced together, in total darkness and silence, all the way across the Colombian border.
TWENTY-SIX
“You guys are almost out,” Eduardo’s hollow voice calls to us below the boards of the beaten-up truck. A shovel scrapes above me as he scoops up manure and dumps it over the side.
“God, it’s hot in here,” Luke says. I cannot see him, but I hear him tapping against the boards. “And smelly.”
“You’d better get down on your knees and kiss that manure when we get out of here,” I say, my voice scratchy from not speaking. “Without it, they would have found us for sure.”
“First of all, that’s gross,” Luke says, the volume of his voice changing. He has turned his head toward mine. “Second of all, what do you mean?”
“They wanted to search the truck when we got to the border,” I say and drum my fingertips along the bed of the truck, the metal beat bouncing around the hollowed space.
“Your Spanish must be fluent, right?” he asks.
“Of course,” I answer.
“How many languages do you speak?”
“Seven. Well, eight if you count English.”
“Whoa. I speak like two and a half counting English. The half is Spanish so I didn’t really understand what they were saying.”
“Just glad we got through,” I say, drumming my fingers faster on the steel bed, its metallic ting a perfect anxious soundtrack.
I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but I could hear key words like busca, which means “search.” Caja means “bed.” At one point I heard a deep voice say “retira las tablas.” Retrieve the boards. That’s when I couldn’t breathe. I squeezed Luke’s hand so hard. He clearly didn’t feel the fear in my grip because he answered me with a few short squeezes. “Retira las tablas,” they said again. I don’t even want to think about what they would have done if they found us hiding below. Arrested us? Maybe killed us? I will never look at manure the same way. I want to hug it right now. Eduardo too. He was right. As soon as they saw the manure in the bed of the truck, they were no longer interested in searching beneath the boards. They let us through.
Bump. Bump. Eduardo’s feet walk over the boards. The truck creaks as he jumps off the back and then, light. I squint and shield my eyes as the light hits my face for the first time in hours.
“Get ready to get screamed at,” I say to Luke, the knot compressing in my stomach.
Eduardo removes the boards one by one, throwing them in a pile on the floor. Each board lands with a crack louder than the one before. I open my eyes wider and see we’re inside another warehouse. The late afternoon sun shines through dust-covered windows near the ceiling. Even through its layer of filth, I’m grateful to see the orange glow.
“You guys are free,” Eduardo says, removing the last of the boards. I push my hands against the metal bed and lift myself up. I push out my chest and lean my body to the right, then the left, working out the tiny knots that have formed in my lower spine.
“What. The. Fuck?” Sam’s voice pierces the air. I turn around to see Sam standing near a second beat-up truck, her mouth open, her hands pressed tightly to her hips.