Soul Kiss Page 14

  I thought back to Mrs. Florez, and once again I had a clear picture of her in my head. “Maybe five-foot-seven, about a hundred twenty pounds,” I said. “Black hair. Like thirty-five years old?”

  I heard him typing, then he said, “Sorry, no one by that name, or matching that description. Have you called the police?”

  “I will.” I hung up. Phew. At least Daniel’s mother wasn’t dead. Well, maybe she was but the police didn’t know yet. Or maybe she was dead somewhere else; they had to have morgues in a bunch of places, like Philadelphia or even New York.

  I went back to the kitchen. The pot full of salty water and chicken was really heavy, and Daniel had to help me pour the water down the drain. “Why are you doing this?” he asked me, as I rinsed the chicken under the faucet.

  “The salt molecules go into the cells of the chicken and break down the protein in the meat. That lets more water get into the chicken.”

  I started patting the chicken dry with a bunch of paper towels. “When you roast it, the heated protein starts to draw in tighter and squeeze out the water. So the more water there is to start with, the more that’s left in the chicken after the roasting, which makes the meat moister and more tender.”

  I put the chicken into the pot with the vegetables and sprinkled some water over everything. “There’s more stuff about the pressure of the salt water but I got bored once I figured out the basics.”

  “Cool,” he said. “Have you been reading cookbooks?”

  “Just one, about the science behind cooking. It’s a lot more interesting than just reading recipes. But the guy has a tendency to drone on, though.”

  We studied while the chicken roasted. At dinner, my mom was impressed at how good the chicken was, but that didn’t distract her from worrying about Daniel’s mother. “Has she done this kind of thing before?” she asked.

  Daniel shook his head. “Never.”

  She put her fork down. “Why don’t you tell us what happened, exactly.”

  “She got a call from someone and she left,” Daniel said. “She wouldn’t tell me who called or what it was about.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since?”

  He shook his head. I noticed that he wouldn’t look at anyone, just down at his plate.

  “That sounds very worrying,” my mother said. “We should call the police. She could have had an accident and not be able to get in touch with you.”

  That was exactly what I had been telling Daniel since Saturday night, so I was glad he was hearing it from someone other than me.

  “She may just be distracted, Caroline,” my father said. “I’m sure she knows what a good boy Daniel is.” He looked over at Daniel and smiled. “I’ll bet she trusts you a lot.”

  I could sense Daniel’s confusion. On the one hand, this was such strange behavior from his mother that he had to be worried. But she had told him over and over again not to call the police if anything happened, and so he didn’t know how to react.

  Fortunately, my dad shifted the conversation to me. “This chicken is delicious, Melissa. If your mom doesn’t watch out you might be taking over all the cooking duties in the house.”

  “That’s not a problem for me,” my mother said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not a domestic servant,” I said. “And they have child labor laws in Pennsylvania, so don’t get any ideas.”

  Robbie snickered, and that made Daniel start laughing. That eased the tension around the table and gave Daniel a break. In the morning, though, as Daniel and I were getting ready to catch the school bus, my mother brought it up again. “I really think you should call the police, Daniel,” she said. “If your mother doesn’t come back today.”

  “Will they take me away?” he asked. “If she doesn’t come home?”

  “Let’s not worry about that right now,” my mother said.

  We walked out to the bus stop. “They will, you know,” Daniel said. “The police. They’ll call social services and put me in a foster home. And what if they think I did something? They could arrest me.”

  I took his hand and squeezed. “I know you’re scared. But the police will want to help find out what’s going on. Remember, I was with you when we came back to your place. And Oscar? He said he saw the men break into the apartment. He could tell the police, and they’d know who to look for.”

  Daniel looked at me like I was stupid. “Oscar won’t talk to the police,” he said. “And even if he did, they wouldn’t believe him.”

  “But it’s so unlike her to leave you.”

  “The police don’t know her, or me. They’ll just say she’s some dumb spic who’s a lousy mother.”

  “Daniel. People don’t believe things like that.”

  He turned on me. “You don’t know, Melissa. You live this happy little suburban life with two parents. You’re white, and so are all your friends. You don’t know what it’s like to be discriminated against.”

  I stopped and stood there, as he stalked toward the bus stop. He was right. Despite all my complaints, and all the problems with the Big Mistake, I had been very lucky to have the life I did. “Not all my friends are white,” I said, following him. “Lashonda is black.”

  “Lashonda is an Oreo,” he said. “Black on the outside but white on the inside.”

  He stopped by the street sign, and I saw his hand was shaking. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Daniel. Lashonda always does papers on Black History Month and stuff. She’s very black.”

  “And you’re very white, and I’m very brown,” he said. “Let’s just stop arguing about it, all right?”

  Daniel was starting to sound pretty paranoid, so I was glad when Brie came over and said hello, and then the bus arrived and we got on. Daniel and I didn’t talk about his mother during school, and after AP history he took the bus to ComputerCo for his shift. I went to literary magazine and gave Miss Margolis the story I had written.

  While Kate and Lashonda and I worked on layout on the computer, Miss M read the story. “This is very good, Melissa,” she said. “Can I show you a few comments?”

  I went up to her desk, and we looked over the story together. She pointed out places where I was writing in sentence fragments, and then asked me a bunch of questions. They really made me think about what I was trying to say in the story. “Look these over and bring the next draft of your story next week,” she said. “Now you guys had better go if you want to catch the late bus.”

  I fidgeted all the way home. My dad was supposed to pick Daniel up on his way home from work, and I couldn’t wait to hear if Mrs. Florez had showed up. I couldn’t concentrate on reading so I made a stir-fry for dinner, chopping up the carrots and onions and green peppers, and anything else I found in the vegetable bin in the kitchen. There was no chicken left over from dinner the night before, but I found a piece of flank steak in the freezer, defrosted it a bit in the microwave, then chopped it up and threw the pieces into the wok with the vegetables.

  “I don’t know where your father is,” my mother said, as the meat started sizzling. Usually he comes home at the same time every night, as long as the train isn’t late. “He’s not answering his cell.” She sniffed the air. “That smells so good. I guess we should sit down to eat.”

  My mom, Robbie, and I were almost finished when we heard my dad’s car in the driveway. I jumped up to open the front door, and flashed on this memory of me as a little kid, so eager to see my daddy that I would rush out to his car to greet him. He’d pick me up and swing me around and I’d giggle.

  Something was up, though. I could tell from the way he and Daniel got out of the car, kind of stiffly. “Sorry we’re late,” my father said. “I took Daniel over to the police department to report his mother missing.”

  “You did? What did they say?”

  “They took a report,” my father said, as we all walked into the kitchen. “I’m starving. Did you save us any dinner?”

  I served out the rest of the stir-fry and big heaps of jasmine-flavored rice.
I could tell my mom was bursting to interrogate my dad and Daniel, but she was smart enough to realize that she had to wait for Daniel to say something first.

  “The police were not as bad as I thought they would be,” Daniel said finally, as he pushed his empty plate away from him. “The officer was nice and he promised they would do everything they could to find my mom.”

  “Daniel was very strong,” my father said. “He answered all the questions even though I know it was tough for him.”

  “If it’s all right, I would like to go back to my apartment for some other things,” Daniel said. “If Melissa could drive me?”

  “Absolutely,” my father said. He even gave me his keys.

  We got in the car, and I backed out of the driveway. “Spill, Daniel. Tell me what happened at the police.”

  “I told you. This officer asked a lot of questions, and I answered as much as I could.” He turned to face out the window. “He called my mother’s work while we were there, and they said she hadn’t come in since Friday.”

  “Oh, Daniel, I’m so sorry.”

  We didn’t talk for the rest of the ride. As we pulled up in the parking lot, I asked, “Did the police say anything about you staying with us?”

  “Your father was very nice. He said that he and your mother would be responsible for me until the police found out what happened to my mother.” He turned to me. “What if she’s dead, Melissa? I can’t stay with your family all the way until graduation.”

  He got out of the car without waiting for an answer, and walked up to the apartment door. I followed, arriving just as he pushed the door open. The apartment smelled dry and musty, like no one had been in it since we left on Saturday night. And there was no sign his mother had been back.

  While he packed up some more of his stuff, I sat at the kitchen table and thought about what he had said that morning. True, Daniel’s skin was darker than mine, like coffee with a lot of milk in it. And he spoke with a bit of a Spanish accent, especially when he was upset. But what was the big deal? Maybe a hundred years ago, people discriminated because your name ended with a vowel, like Torani, or because you spoke with an accent from the old country.

  But this was the twenty-first century. Nobody still believed stuff like Italians were in the Mafia, or Scots were cheap, or people with darker skin weren’t as good as those who were white.

  Or did they? Was I really that naïve, or privileged? Did Daniel know more about the real world than I did, moving around every year the way he had?

  He came out of his bedroom with a pile of clothes and books and sat down at the table with me. “I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk,” he said, looking down. “But I’m really scared.”

  “I know.” I put my arms around him and hugged him. “It’s going to be all right, Daniel. I’m sure.”

  I wasn’t, of course. But sometimes you just have to keep those feelings to yourself.

  In Transit

  The Big Mistake pulled me aside after we got back home. “How long is he staying here?” he asked. “It’s all right for you, you’re not sharing your room. But I am.”

  “His mom has disappeared, all right?” I said under my breath. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Robbie wasn’t the only one who was concerned about Daniel’s situation. For the next two days, my parents were uncomfortable, but they tried not to show it too much. And Daniel was nearly out of his mind with worry. No one from the police called to follow up, which I thought was strange. Did that mean they weren’t looking for Mrs. Florez? Or were they just doing things they didn’t want to tell Daniel about?

  Thursday night I found Daniel in the Big Mistake’s room, sitting on the extra bed, going through the stuff from the metal box. I picked up one of the IDs, from when his mom was younger. “This almost looks like me, doesn’t it?” I asked. “If I pulled my hair back and put on a ball cap.”

  “Not really. But enough to pass, I guess.”

  He picked up the piece of paper with Egidio Lopez’s name and address on it. “I feel like maybe she left this for me,” he said. “So I would go see this man. Maybe he has some information.”

  “We could call the police in Miami and ask them to go over there,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Why would they go talk to this guy when we don’t even know who he is? Besides, if he’s someone my mother knows, he probably feels the same way she does about the police. He wouldn’t talk to them, anyway. Only to me.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, sitting down on the Big Mistake’s bed. “You want to go to Miami?”

  He looked up. “Yeah. I do. I can use the money she left. Fly down to Miami and go find this man.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t fly, Daniel. They check IDs too much. I don’t even think they’d sell you a ticket because you’re under age.”

  “Then I’ll take the train, or the bus. I have to go.”

  I looked at him. “All right. But you can’t go alone. I’ll go with you.”

  “No, Melissa. It’s too dangerous.”

  “How can it be dangerous? We’ll ride the train down, go see this man, then come back.” I put my hands on my hips. “You shouldn’t do this by yourself.”

  We argued some more, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “Fine, then,” he said. “How are we going to get there?”

  We went next door to my room and I looked up the train schedule. “There’s a train called the Silver Meteor that leaves Trenton tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “It gets to Miami Saturday night. I’ll just drive us to the train station after school.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to take your mother’s car. She’ll be angry.”

  She was going to be angry about a lot more things than taking her car, I thought. “Then how do we get there?”

  He pulled the gangbanger’s business card from his pocket. “We’ll ask Oscar.”

  Daniel used my phone to make the call, while I got us some snack foods from the kitchen. By the time Daniel came into my room I already had some clean clothes in my backpack and was layering the food on top of them.

  “He’ll pick us up at school tomorrow and drive us to Trenton,” Daniel said. He sat down at my desk. “You’re sure you want to come with me?”

  “Of course. We’re a team. We’re going to figure out what’s going on and why your mom ran away. Then we’ll come back. No big deal.”

  He shook his head. “You make everything sound so easy.”

  “It will be. Go get those IDs so we can see which one matches me best.”

  I had trouble falling asleep that night. I kept thinking of the backpack full of clothes and food in the back of my closet. The next day it would be on my back, and Daniel and I would be off on an adventure.

  I had never been to Miami and didn’t know anything about it, or what to expect. But I’d been to cities before, so I figured we’d walk out of the train station, catch a cab to this Cuban guy’s house, and quiz him about why his name and address were in Mrs. Florez’s box. With luck, we could catch a train back to Trenton that night and be home on Sunday.

  The next morning, Daniel told my mom he was going back to his own house after school, and he dragged his suitcase with him. “A friend of my mom’s is going to come and stay with me,” he lied. “I really appreciate your letting me stay here, but it’s time I got back to my own apartment.”

  My mom smiled. “I’m glad things are working out for you, Daniel.”

  I left my school books at home because there wasn’t any room for them in my backpack. All day it was hard to concentrate. Fortunately I had read everything we were covering in class so I could fake paying attention, answering a question correctly when Mr. Iccanello called on me.

  As soon as AP History was over, Daniel and I walked down to fire door on the other side of the building from the bus dock. It was the way we always went out with classes when we were going to sit around the flagpole. We didn’t want a lot of people seeing us get into a strang
e car and drive off, especially if my parents started to freak when I didn’t come home that night.

  Oscar drove up in the same old low-riding car. Daniel climbed in the front seat, and I scrambled into the back with his bag and mine. My heart was beating fast. What did we know about this guy, anyway? Suppose he had kidnapped Mrs. Florez himself? What if he took us away to hold for ransom, or sell us into white slavery?

  Okay, I was going overboard. I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as white slavery. And Daniel was Hispanic. Could you be sold into Hispanic slavery?

  While my thoughts were running away with me, Daniel was talking to Oscar in Spanish. I could only pick out a few words—damn my parents for making me take French instead in seventh grade.

  Oscar drove fast and aggressively, moving around cars on the highway, speeding up whenever he had an opening. It was kind of cool, although it didn’t calm my nerves any. He was the kind of driver my parents were always cursing at as they drove more sedately.

  As we crossed the bridge over the Delaware, I caught Oscar asking Daniel about dinero, money. Was he going to charge us for this trip? We had barely enough for the two train tickets from the cash in Daniel’s mother’s box. And I had the bills my dad had given me, as well as another twenty bucks from my piggy bank, mostly in singles and quarters. Guess I should have been saving more, but who knew I’d be taking off on this wild trip to Miami in the middle of the school year?

  Oscar and Daniel were arguing about dinero as Oscar pulled up in front of the Trenton train station. As I opened the door to get out, Oscar turned around to me. “Here, since Daniel is being a donkey, you take the money.”

  He handed me a couple of bills folded together, and I took them and said thanks. Then I got out of the car and started dragging the bags out.

  Daniel was still in the front seat arguing with Oscar. “Little help here, Daniel,” I said.

  He said, “I’ll pay you back when I return,” to Oscar, then got out of the car. He took his suitcase and I put my pack on my back, and we walked inside.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.