AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They stood side by side, watching María work through her routine. Triple axels were followed by sit spins, alternating with dizzying footwork.
“So how did a girl from El Salvador decide she wants to become an ice skater?” Donald asked, resting his arms on the thick barrier wall separating spectators from the ice. “It doesn’t seem the most natural choice.”
Luisa laughed. “There’s not much natural about María.” She nodded her head toward the giant screen centered over the rink. Black and silent now, it provided close-up coverage during hockey games and high-profile skating events. “I blame the television. Too much Wide World of Sports, and here we are.”
“She must be incredibly determined.”
“All of the women in my family are,” Luisa replied. She eyed Donald sideways. “We decide we want something; we don’t stop until we get it.”
Donald smiled. “I’ll consider myself warned.”
Friday afternoon, half past two. Donald had the Alvarez phone number written on a Post-it note on his desk. Maybe it would be alright to call Luisa, invite her to dinner.
His office door flew open. His unflappable secretary, Shirley, with two dozen years’ experience, was in a panic.
“Mr. Altari! You’ve got to come quick! There’s big trouble!”
The hockey players did have brothers. Six of them, in fact. Six tall, chunky fifth-grade boys, nearly the size of men. They surrounded Christian in the boys’ bathroom and beat the living hell out of him.
It was over by the time Donald arrived. Two teachers had wrestled the boys out into the hallway and had them sitting against the wall. They stood over the culprits—two puffing, red-faced, oversized banty hens.
Christian lay on the bathroom floor. He looked very small, very red, and very still.
This can’t be happening, Donald thought, as he knelt to feel for a pulse. At the same time he was barking orders—for the nurse, for an ambulance, for the police.
His arm bent at a particularly ugly angle. Donald felt a slight pulse, faintly thudding in the boy’s thin wrist.
“How could this happen?” Luisa raged. She glared at Donald. “You told me he’d be safe in your school!”
Through the hospital window, they could see Christian sleeping. Doctors had set the multiple broken bones, stitched close the four-inch gash above his eye. No internal organs had been damaged, but the doctors still wanted to keep the boy for observation.
“He took quite a beating,” the doctor said to Donald and Luisa. “Luckily, it didn’t go much longer or he wouldn’t be here now.”
“I am going to find out what happened.”
“He could have died!” Luisa’s reply shot back like a rocket through Donald’s head.
“I know,” he said softly. Luisa fell into his arms sobbing. He held her tight, rocking back and forth. “I know,” he said, lips soft against her black hair. “I will make this better.”
Easier said than done. Christian’s recovery was slow, but not nearly as slow as the investigation into the school beating. The half-dozen boys had come from five of the town’s most prominent families, with fathers in law enforcement, medicine, and the media. And, of course, on the school board.
“What happened was unfortunate,” one of the fathers said at a meeting. “It shouldn’t have happened. But boys will be boys. Things got out of hand so fast they didn’t realize what was happening.”
“Not even when they heard the bones break?” Donald looked from one father to the next. “Not when they saw the blood spurting out of Christian’s head?”
They had the good grace to look ashamed.
“We need to have a policy in place,” another father said. “To deal with these transient type of students. They’re not part of the community. They’re merely passing through. It’s not realistic to expect that to happen without problems.”
“Baloney.” Donald snorted. “We’re a tourist community. We depend on people passing through here, for our livelihoods. Do you really want to put it out there, that it’s not a safe area to visit?”
“The right kind of people know that it’s a safe area already.”
“The right kind? Would that be the rich, white kind?” Donald shook his head. “That’s definitely the message we want to spread. Anglos only.”
“Get over yourself. Just ’cause you’ve gone soft on the kid’s mother is no reason to turn on your own.”
“That’s it!” Donald’s hand hit the table. “From what I’m hearing right now, it seems to me that you all are at least partially culpable in the beating of Christian Alvarez. If this is the kind of talk your kids hear at home, no wonder they don’t even hesitate before attempting to kill someone who looks a little different!”
