Pirata by Patrick Hasburgh

Author:Patrick Hasburgh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

35

We ate standing up at a taco stand on the shoulder of the highway, about ten miles below Malaki. I had a tongue taco for the first time—by mistake—because I was showing off my mad Spanish skills to Jade.

It wasn’t really the taste that was weird. It was the texture. When I chewed it, it felt just like tongue, and all I could think of was Bonnie Gordon teaching me how to French-kiss back in seventh grade.

I was glad we were going to get home before dark, because we were in an area just on the edge of where things are still a little sketchy. The drug wars had gone from boil to simmer with the Peña Nieto presidency, but south of Guadalajara and along the Michoacán frontera, drug turf was being contested by a new-generation drug cartel called the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación. The name had a bilingual kind of terror, despite its lack of originality. Murder was down, but kidnapping was up, and I still hadn’t forgotten my lesson in linguistics with El Jefe. So the farther north we got, the better I’d feel.

Jade had been rock solid behind the wheel, and even though I was kneeling on my seat and looking backward, I was very tranquilo. But the sea-urchin needles in my ass were entering the insanely itchy stage. I needed some serious tweezer work.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” I said, thinking wishfully. “I’m the designated dad on this road trip.”

“Who can sleep kneeling?”

“Married guys and holy men,” I said.

Jade laughed, but I knew he was just being polite. He adjusted his hands on the steering wheel. “How am I doing?”

“You could drive for Uber.”

“Really?” He was thrilled. “My mom drove for Uber.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, but she got fired for not having a car,” Jade said. “And they wouldn’t let her keep using rentals.”

“The bastards,” I said.

Jade laughed. I think he knew his mom was a little nuts.

“How did you think you did out there today?” I asked.

“That’s not up to me to say, is it?”

“Probably not. Were you scared?”

“Heck, yeah. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I was. And I was only watching you.”

“Was it that big?”

“As big as I’ve ever seen Alacráns. Triple overhead. Easy.”

“No way.”

“It had to be close.”

“But I’m short.”

“Not that short. It was big. You could tell anyone that, and it would be true.”

He smiled.

It looked like he was proud of himself. It wasn’t something I was used to seeing.

“I wish someone had seen it,” he said.

Ouch.

“Well, I saw it,” I said.

Jade could see that what he’d just said zinged me a little.

“Oh, you know,” he said. “But not a surfer. Somebody more real.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know. Like a real dad, maybe.”

At this rate, I was going to ask Jade to pull over so I could find a roof to jump off.

“What makes the difference between a real dad and a regular dad—or like a stepdad?”

Jade looked at me. “No offense, but I’ve had a lot of stepdads—buddy dads and uncles. I love my mom, and nobody’s perfect.

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