“You should not upset Pedro like that,” her mother said in Spanish.
“Like what?”
“I was watching you through the window, and he did not look happy. What did you do?”
“You spy on me and you take his side,” Esmeralda said.
“What were you fighting about?”
“It was nothing. He is jealous of everything.”
“You should keep him happy,” Esmeralda’s mother said. “That boy is going to be very successful one day.”
“A very successful asshole,” Esmeralda muttered in English as she walked into her room.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing!” Esmeralda closed her door. Then she locked it, which she rarely did. She even made sure the blinds were down, as if Pedro would be outside her room, staring at her. Sometimes she felt like he was. She’d had enough of her mother always taking Pedro’s side, too. Her mother wasn’t exactly a master in the art of picking good men, anyway.
Esmeralda opened her closet door, stood on her tiptoes, and felt around on the top shelf. She brought down a Reebok shoe box, which she had long ago decorated with glue, glitter, butterfly stickers, and markers. Much of the glitter had fallen off over the years, and the butterflies were curling off the cardboard.
She sat down on her bed and took off the box lid.
The shoe box held a few pictures from her childhood, a letter from her grandmother in Matehuala, one of Esmeralda’s baby teeth, some Valentines she had received in middle school. Esmeralda dug through these to the bottom of the box.
She took out the gold coin. It was engraved with an Indian chief’s head, and the word “Liberty,” on the front, and a bald eagle on the back. The coin was dated 1908. She had never taken it to a coin shop to check its value, for fear her mother would somehow find out and ask questions.
Esmeralda had also never turned over the thousand dollars to her mother.
When Tommy suggested she hide the money, it was the first inkling Esmeralda had that she could hide anything from her mother, even for a minute. The farmer woman who had called them to the middle of nowhere, in Oklahoma, had been livid when she opened the dead man’s trunk and found nothing. Esmeralda’s mother had screamed at her, but Esmeralda had kept the secret.
As they drove home, Esmeralda wasn’t sure how to tell her mother what happened. The longer they drove, the more possible it seemed that Esmeralda could keep the secret forever.
The real secret, though, wasn’t about the stolen money.
“What is wrong with you?” her mother had screamed as they drove back to Texas. “Why did you lie?”
“I can’t do it anymore,” Esmeralda had whispered.
“Can’t do it? Can’t do what?”
“I can’t talk to the dead anymore,” Esmeralda had said. “I don’t remember how.”
“Remember? What is to remember? You have always done this.”
“Yes,” Esmeralda said. “But maybe I am too old now.” At the age of thirteen, Esmeralda was sick of her mother dragging her around like a freakshow attraction, charging people money to hear from their dead relatives. The dead didn’t bother Esmeralda, but the living did—people greedy to find money, jealous wives wanting to know whether their husbands had cheated on them or not, and too often, there were children crying and upset as they learned the pain of losing someone close.
Esmeralda didn’t like it. And if she could get away with lying about money, maybe she could get away with more.
And she had. Her mother hadn’t dragged her out to read the dead again. Instead, her mother had finally gone back to her housekeeping job at the hotel and stopped living off her daughter’s strange gift.
As far as Esmeralda’s mother knew, Esmeralda hadn’t had the special touch in nine years.
Esmeralda rubbed the gold coin. The paper dollars had trickled away over the years, on movies and candy and shoes, but she kept this because it reminded her of him. His unreal gray eyes, the power in his hands and lips. He had frightened her deeply…but she had liked it, and relished the memory again and again.
Until today, she had almost forgotten he was a real person, and not a dream or a fantasy.
He had found her, after all these years. Esmeralda didn’t know what it meant, but she felt scared and exhilarated. She needed to see him again.
She closed her hand around the gold coin and held it tight.
Chapter Nineteen
When Fallen Oak High School re-opened at the beginning of May, Jenny drove herself there for the first time ever. She’d always ridden the bus, until the past few months when Seth had started picking her up. The school issued a limited number of the jealously guarded student parking passes, and those were earmarked for certain juniors and seniors—student council, varsity football players, people like that.