The Thing You're Good At by Lesley Choyce

Author:Lesley Choyce
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459818064
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2018-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Maria and I spent the evening in my bedroom, where she told me again what had happened that day and how she hid on the fire escape and then watched as her parents were put into the back of a van and driven away.

“I felt like I lost everything,” she said. “And there was nothing I could do about it. I was afraid to stay there in the apartment because I thought if they found out about me, they’d come back for me too. So I just went walking around the streets. Then I ran into Oscar. He walked me here. Some other people in your apartment building started to give him a hard time, so he had to leave. But nobody bothered me.”

“I’m glad you came here,” I said.

“I had no place else to go.”

I told Maria how Mr. Lotz had gone into the detention center. She cried a little when I told her he’d confirmed that they were definitely there, but no one was allowed to visit them.

I gave Maria the room Luke and I slept in, and I slept on the couch in the living room. Luke slept on the floor beside me. “This is great,” he said. “Feels just like camping.” Weird, since neither of us had ever gone camping.

In the morning my dad cooked us some eggs but didn’t eat anything himself. He just drank two cups of black coffee from a big mug and said he was going out for a walk.

“You know I have to go be with them,” Maria told me after a long, awkward silence.

“Okay, but we should talk to Mr. Lotz first,” I said. “He was going to do some digging and find out what can be done.”

It took a bit of persuading to get Maria to go with me back to school. I wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to do. If the immigration people knew about her, it would be the easiest place to find her. But I had no other plan. “I’m gonna watch out for you, Maria. If those goons show up, we’re gonna run.”

“Where are we going to run to?”

“I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later.”

But there were no goons waiting for us at school. Leo and Toe saw us walking in together and Toe said, “Look what the cat dragged in.” I wanted to give him the finger and tell him to bugger off, but I didn’t.

Before classes started we went straight to Mr. Lotz. He was thrilled to see Maria.

“You found her,” he said.

“She found me.”

“Either way, I’m relieved,” he said. Turning to Maria, he added, “Maria, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said. I wondered when I would see her smile again.

Kids were starting to file into the classroom, so Mr. Lotz led us back out into the hall. “Okay, so I did get to speak to an old college buddy of mine who now practices law. He says this sort of thing is happening all over. The bad news is, he doubts he or anyone else can stop the deportation.

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