The Sleeping World by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

Author:Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

Eight

Outside the train station Marco squeaked his finger across the greasy glass that covered the map. Along the border were the strips of wasteland that had held thousands of war refugees. The map like a gravestone, some clean way to show the dead.

“I think we should go to Paris,” I said. I looked down when I said it. I hadn’t meant to let the sounds out.

“Why?” Grito said.

“I want to see the museums.”

La Canaria rolled her eyes.

To say why I wanted to go would make it sound like what it was: desperate. All the other cities had disappeared—there was only one left. Borgi’s word wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d had before, and it was all I had. I couldn’t look at Marco because I was scared that as soon as I did, he would know why I wanted to go to Paris. But maybe he wanted to go there, too. We would go for the same reasons and help each other; we didn’t need to say why.

“I think we should head south to Cádiz,” Marco said. “We can hide out there.”

“You and Cádiz,” Grito said.

“No way,” La Canaria said. “They found us in Madrid. I want out of this facha country.”

“We’re not voting,” Marco said.

Grito moved his finger across the map, undoing our steps, pulling our clothes from the bonfire, tracing rings around Casasrojas.

“I’m going to Paris,” I said. Marco hadn’t seen Alexis’s tag and he hadn’t talked to Borgi. “I’m going whether you come or not.”

Marco’s face was still, his gaze fixed beyond us. He nodded, deciding something, though it took me a long time to figure out just what it was. “I’m staying with Mosca.”

“I don’t need your protection,” I said. He said nothing to that, but his eyes were the firmest I’d ever seen them. There was no pleasure in his words, only certainty.

“I know a place in Paris we could stay,” La Canaria said before Marco could answer me. “In France, once you’re in a spot that no one else is in, they can’t kick you out.” I didn’t care about the details of what she was saying, so long as it would get us where I wanted to go. And I was glad to have the attention pointed away from me. “This guy has a huge apartment, lots of rooms all shuttered off that he doesn’t even use.”

“So you don’t have a place for us to stay,” Marco said.

“No, I do,” she said.

“But we’d have to sneak in,” Grito said. His hand spread across the map, blotting out the whole country.

“Well, I wouldn’t, and I could probably get Mosca in, too—”

“Into what?” Marco said.

“Once we’d been there a couple of days, I’d sneak you in. He’s a total brat. Always traveling—actually, his place in the country would be the best, but we’d have no way to make money.”

“How long have you been thinking about this, chica?” Grito asked, leaning close to her, playing a nervous rhythm on her shoulder, easing himself back into the space around her body as if he’d never left.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.