Page 127 of The End of the World As We Know It

“Es una gripa.” She laughed it off, rubbing her hands through her short, bouncy brown hair.

I always loved her hands. She said she’d go into San Juan every few weeks to visit her sister and there she’d get a manicure with bright red nail polish. Bright red nail polish always seemed like it was for someone special. I guess Mrs. Reyes was very special. I looked at my own hands, dirt lined right beneath the nails. In the morning and after school I’d spend it outside with the chickens or the cows, feeding them, cleaning them, and walking along with Choco, her little chicken body wobbling beside me. I guess if I were to be a farmer, I wouldn’t really be in need of a manicure.

That day in Mrs. Reyes’s class, I watched her stir honey into hermanzanillatea. She let go of the spoon and covered her mouth, those pretty red nails facing us. Her cough rattled her so much that her entire body shook. The kids laughed, but I didn’t.

Carlo behind me said something mean. “You sound like death.”

Mrs. Reyes stood, her legs shaky, her face pale, shiny with sweat.

“Carlo, are you reading?”

I turned around and saw that he nodded, but I knew he wasn’t reading the assignment. Mrs. Reyes approached and as she walked past me, the sound of her heels echoed like hammers on the tiled floor. I smelled sharp menthol from the Vicks VapoRub she must have smeared on her chest and shoulders.

Carlo’s eyes were wide as he held up his United States historybook. I always thought it was funny we had to read so much about U.S. history and so little about Puerto Rican history. It’s like we were supposed to learn about and love someplace most of us would never visit, but completely ignore where we lived.

Mrs. Reyes plucked a magazine that was tucked between the pages of Carlo’s book. “This is not what you’re supposed to be reading, Carlo!” she said, waving around the issue ofMadmagazine, taking it away from him.

Carlo started coughing by lunchtime.

I always thought Mrs. Reyes’s name was like a prediction, not just of her life, but for all of us, Socorro.

Help.

I’ve been here three nights in the elementary school. I’ve been too scared to make my move, but I have to.

I’m in the kindergarten classroom. I like it here because there are pictures of animals on the bulletin boards—birds, dogs, cats, goats, sheep, pigs, cows, more, so many more. It makes me sad, too, because I wonder if I’ll ever have a farm now that I’m leaving. I knew I’d miss people, but really, I miss the animals the most.

There’s a large map of Puerto Rico, all of the pueblos, Ponce, Jayuya, Yabucoa, Salinas, more. Next to it is a map of the mainland and it looks so massive, like another world. Square shapes and rectangle shapes and funny shapes with funny names like Louisiana and Texas, Missouri and New Mexico, New York and Nebraska.

I hop off my bed and move over to the map.

“Choco, we have to take the boat here.” I point to San Juan and then slide my finger to the tip of Florida. “And then we have to somehow make it all the way over here.” I slide my finger across the map and up to Nebraska.

Mami always wanted me to leave here. She said I’d have a better life if I went to San Juan, studied there, and then moved to the mainland. I wanted to visit San Juan, but to get my nails painted red like Mrs. Reyes, because I knew I was special like her, too, and to seethe Castillo San Felipe del Morro and maybe spot the ghost of the soldier who patrolled at sunset. But, never in my life had I planned on going any farther than that.

“I’m too scared of planes to leave the island,” I’d said.

“Then you can take a boat to the mainland,” Mami replied.

“I’m even more afraid of boats than planes.”

Papi told me about ships commandeered by dead pirates, drifting to nowhere. I feared finding myself aboard one of those crafts, doomed to die out there on the water with my island home just out of reach.

This morning, though, I had to take that risk.

“We die here, Choco, or we die out there,” I said, trying to sound brave, even to myself. I shoved my hand in the small pocket of my backpack. There’s a little Ziploc bag with dried corn. I pull out a handful of kernels and set them down on the ground for Choco and she begins to peck at them, cooing as she does.

“We don’t have a lot of food,” I say. “And I don’t know how long the trip will be to Nebraska.”

Jonathan said by plane to the mainland is just three hours, but by boat he said it could take three days to get to Miami alone. I wondered if it’d take months then to get across the mainland.

“I’m worried,” I say, stroking Choco’s brown feathers. “I don’t know how to swim. I never learned. And I’m scared of the water. I’m scared oftiburones. Oscar said that atiburóncan chomp down and remove your entire leg with a single bite. Laila said no, that the shark will just clamp down on your torso and chew and chew and chew. I know both Oscar and Laila are dead now.

I sigh and look back to the window and think of the crows outside waiting for us.

It’sla madrugada, that time of day that light begins to break through the clouds. The western part of the sky has gone from black to dark blue, but the east is this baby blue on top with a streak of peach and pink where the sun will rise.

“Once I open that door, Choco, we need to move fast,” I say, shoving the prayer card andmilagros, coloring books and crayons into my backpack. I look to the sheets I brought from home, but I can’t carry any more for this part of our trip.