enjoy!
Chapter Nine
My father is the first sight I see as I turn into my neighborhood. Worry induced fury covers his face as he stomps over to my car. Before he can say a word I cut him off. “Maria’s hurt. She’s been in a car wreck. She’s staying with us tonight. Can you help her out of the car?” His expression quietly changes to one of relief and understanding. Apparently he thinks I’ve been taking care of Maria this whole time. He need not know the entire truth.
Instead of supporting her, as I did before, he lifts Maria up and carries her inside. My father is rather robust and enjoys opportunities to display his strength. As she’s being carried inside I see the only trace of bodily harm the crash left: a large purple-blue bruise on her left thigh.
Closer examination reveals multiple cuts on her left arm and her stomach from shattered glass. None are very deep. My dad insists on helping bandage her up, but I reassure him that it’s better if I do it. He gives up his fatherly escapade and retires to his room for a night of reviewing court cases before he leaves in the morning for a week at the capitol. This happens every few months. I don’t mind because I get the house to myself for a while.
“Are you going to tell me what happened? Or am I going to have to stare it out of you?” I have an infamous stare among my friends; they call it the truth glare. Sitting up rigidly, I stick my head far forward and open my eyes as far as possible and concentrate right into her pupils. I look like a constipated goldfish, but it usually does the trick.
“You look ridiculous. Cut that out.” She snaps curtly. Maria is oblivious to the glare’s overwhelming abilities.
“Alright, be that way,” I retort, “see if I care next time you nearly kill yourself just for the sake of getting tipsy.”
“I haven’t had anything to drink.” Maria’s jaw is clenched tight.
“They how do you explain that accident? How?!? Telephone poles don’t just spring out of the ground and run themselves into cars. Something happened that made you swerve dangerously. You’re lucky that pole didn’t take more than your car.”
Maria doesn’t reply. She can’t even look at me. She fixes her eyes on her shoes that she’s bent down tying, stalling to avoid responding. Her face is unreadable, perfectly void of emotion. Her hands betray her thoughts: they’re shaking so much she’s had to untie her efforts and start again.
I breathe deeply to control my anger. Slowly, I bend down to meet her at eyelevel. The space between our eyes forms an invisible bond. Her recent fears are mirrored in her eyes, until they are clouded by tears. After a stunned moment I manage to whisper, “What happened to you?” My voice is barely audible.
“They came for me this morning.” She is sobbing hard now, “I heard a knock and the door and opened it without checking who it was. I expected it to be the mailman, but instead there were these three suited men standing on my doorstep. They wanted to know where Julio went.”
“Who were these men?”
“No clue, all I know is they were tall, broad, and were making an effort to keep their faces unidentifiable. Their sunglasses never came off, even when they stepped inside. They kept asking me where Julio went and why his parents didn’t know where he was. I told them he went to join the other revolutionaries, and it was too late to stop him.
“I wasn’t sure why they would even care about one teenager joining a national cause almost a hundred miles away, but they wouldn’t stop questioning me. They asked me where the NR was meeting, what their plans were, and all these other things that I have no clue about. I tried to get away but they cornered me.
“After an hour of questioning they started to get hostile. One of the guys with a moustache duct held my arms, so I was pinned to the chair. Then he started shaking me back and forth. It tipped once and I fell off and hit my head on an end table, but they just picked me up and pinned me back to the chair.” She moves her hair to reveal a small bruise on her forehead, right at the hairline. “My parents were gone for the weekend so there was no one who could run in and help me. I was petrified.
“Then the third guy, he had jelled back red hair, opened up this briefcase he carried in with him. Inside were a bunch of papers and a picture of Julio. I tried to get a better look at the papers, but something else caught my eye.
“The man pulled a small plastic box out from under the papers. He clicked it open to reveal a syringe and a small vial. I was practically livid; I thought these guys were going to inject me with some toxic chemical. I tried to break myself loose, but that gave the mustached man a reason to tighten his grip. The red head man laughed and filled the syringe with the liquid in the vial. They were crazy Margo, crazy! Who else barges into someone’s home and asks them about the whereabouts of their boyfriend and then frightens them half to death?
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but I was scared. So I did the first thing I could think of. When the mustached man loosened his grip- right before the red headed man was about to prick me- I bit him. I chomped down on his arm as hard as I could manage. His scream was deafening, but it distracted the other men long enough for me to run out the door to my car.
“Luckily my keys were in my pocket, so I took off as fast as I could. I expected them to chase after me, and I kept glancing over my shoulder. That’s why I hit the pole; there was a bend in the road I didn’t catch.
“I was so scared that they were going to find me that the policeman thought I was on some drug because I was paranoid and panicked. The fear, along with the adrenaline, made me almost pass out on the way to your car.”
The news of what happened in the last few hours is crippling. I try to stand up, but the news is so heavy on my shoulders that I plop right back down.
“You have a bloodstain here.” I point to the lapel of her blouse. There’s a slight pink line that leads from the corner of her mouth to the stain. She sighs.
“I hope Mustache Man doesn’t have AIDS.” She stands up and heads for the bathroom.
I pick myself up from the cold tile and wrack my brain for anything in her story I can piece together. What about the syringe? “Maria, did you happen to see a label on that flask the man filled the syringe with?”
“Yea,” She shouts from the bathroom, “now that you mention it there was some gibberish: sodium thiopental. You’re the smart one; do you know what that is?”
It doesn’t sound completely new. Somewhere in my brain I have stored something about sodium thiopental. If only it would unearth. Something in chemistry class… Out of the blue I recall it. I remember back to my chemistry class. The teacher hated liars, so every so often he would jokingly threaten if he thought we were lying he’d give us sodium thiopental: truth serum.
Someone wanted inside information about the NR, and they went to Maria for it. Why would they go to her? She isn’t in the NR… But Julio is. He must know something important, something the men thought he passed on to Maria. That’s why they were trying to scare the information out of her. I place my hands firmly on Maria’s shoulders and look definitively into her face. “Maria, tell me everything Julio has said about the NR.”
“He…he hasn’t mentioned anything. I tried asking him right before he left, but he got defensive. So I let it go.”
Releasing her I begin to pace. This overseas conflict has come too close for comfort.
To calm myself down I rationalize the situation. Those men are lunatics, I tell myself; this has nothing to do with my friends.
Still one question keeps returning to the foyer of my mind: What does Julio know?
