Trouble in a Tank Top

“Ande!” Tony whispers harshly as he shakes her awake. She looks at him with groggy eyes, trying to see through the dark room. There was motion going on behind Tony in the hall, and the different shadows of people walking by teased Ande’s eyes. “C’mon, Ande, you have to wake up.”

For three days Ande had not gotten a healthy amount of sleep. She continued to have the same nightmare, watching that final needle prick Tony’s skin and his eyes slowly lose that dark, mysterious light that they had. Sometimes her brain would flash to that image, and Ande would have to watch the scene unfold over and over again throughout the day until she couldn’t stop crying from the fear.

And now, just as she grew too tired to keep her eyes open, Tony is waking her up. She groans and rolls over, pulling the blanket tighter across her shoulders. Tony pulls at it, and after a few tugs, gets it free to sit her up.

“Tony, what the hell?” Ande complains, rubbing her eyes to get the sleep out. Tony grabs one of her arms and pulls it through the sleeve of a large jacket.

“We’ve been compromised. There’s a helicopter about a mile away looking for us. You have to run. There’s someone going to pick you up and take you across the border.”

“No,” Ande says, stopping Tony from putting her feet into a pair of snow boots. He looks up at her, frowning. “I’m not going to be separated from you again.”

Tony shakes his head and goes to grab the other boot. “No, Ande, you have to go.”

Ande continues to fight him. “No, you listen to me, Tony Perry. The last time we were separated I almost went crazy with worry. I’m not going to risk losing you again.”

He pauses, but soon the sound of a helicopter gets louder and louder, and he finished tying the string to her boot. “No, I’m not running the risk of you getting caught with us. They’ll try you as an accomplice or do anything to get information out of you.” Tony pulls Ande to her feet and holds her close for a few seconds. He says into her hair, “I would rather die than see you get hurt.”

“Don’t say that,” Ande whispers back, shaking with frustration of the situation.

Tony drags her from the room and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Ande tries to keep up, and she tries to fight him in her half-sleep state, but there isn’t much she can do now with the added muscle that Tony has acquired over the past few months. Downstairs is a frenzy between everyone, but Jaime and Jess are already gone. Frenchi stands still, out of the way, clutching a pillow and Mike keeps glancing back at her every few seconds as he bumps heads with Casey over what to do.

“Ande,” Tony calls and she puts her attention on him. His tattooed hands feel smooth on her warm cheeks and his lips, as he kisses her sweetly, steal away that short breath she had. The frenzy dies down in her head for just those few seconds. Ande feels relaxed, but the fear of losing Tony again, and this time for good, makes her sick to her stomach.

“I love you,” she says, and it feels too much like a horribly done romantic-comedy.

“I know,” Tony replies, and the smile on his face says that he has wanted to say that for a long time.

“Guys,” Vic says, pulling the couple’s attention away from each other and to him. “Ande has to go.”

The pair wraps their arms around each other again, and Tony almost refuses to let go, but Ande pulls away first and follows Vic. They walk down the stairs that lead to the pool. There’s another door hidden behind a set of shelves that Vic opens and lets Ande in first.

“Follow the hall,” he explains. “At the end are four doors. Go through the one on the far left. Make sure you lock it behind you. At the very end there will be a cabin. Go inside and call the number written on the table.” He hands Ande a small disposable phone. “As soon as you hang up, destroy the phone any way possible. Wait three minutes and then go outside. There should be a white car. Tell the driver, ‘I swear to God I’m going to change the world,’ and he has to answer with, ‘Oh my god, this is paradise.’ If he doesn’t…”

Vic pauses, and he hesitates for a few seconds longer than usual. Ande grows cautious and weary because she knows what he is going to say next.

He pulls out a blacked-out hand gun from the inside lining of his jacket. Ande’s body curls away from it as Vic begins to quickly explain.

“Right now, it won’t shoot. Push this pin in until it clicks,” Vic does as he instructs, “and you can start shooting.” Vic pushes the pin back, making it safe to carry. “I know you’re scared, but so am I. I won’t let anyone else in my family get hurt.” He pulls her into a hug, and Ande is almost certain that Vic is more scared than she is.

“I’ll see you in a few days,” Ande says, not knowing if any word of it is true, into his shoulder and she can already tell there will be a brother-like relationship between her and the Fuentes brothers when everyone is reunited.

“Also,” he says quietly, before reaching into his pants pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. “This should get you by for a while, just in case everything doesn’t go as planned.” Ande looks at it and slowly takes it, putting it in the inside pocket of her jacket. “See ya, Ande,” he says with a sad smile, something that should never grace his lips. He watches as Ande goes through the hidden door before he shuts it behind her. The hall is dark, but there is a dim light coming up from the floor that lets her see where she is placing her steps. It is cold, colder than she expected, and Ande is forced to stuff her hands into the pockets of her snow coat. The cool metal of the gun singes her fingertips and she just lets that hand hang and grow cold.

It’s barely a two minute walk before there is a break in the long, descending hall and she comes to the four doors. For a second she forgets which door Vic told her to go through, but her body knows what to do and Ande goes through the far door on the left. As soon as it closes, a lock clicks and the second hall lights up brighter than the last. It smells like stale smoke and greasy food, something Ande immediately connects to Mike.

Just as she takes a step to start the second part of her journey, there’s a loud bang that scares her and echoes through the halls. Ande turns and tries to open the door, but it’s locked and there’s another loud bang followed by someone yelling. Ande turns and starts to run down the hall. It breaks off into a few sets of stairs, usually no more than three or four steps, and then back into long descending hall. What did the bang come from? A gun, maybe? Who was that yelling? Vic?

The hall goes on longer than she thought it would, and it gives Ande too much time to think.

If the guy in the car does say the right thing, where will they go? Which border did Tony mean?

Ande had been hurriedly walking for almost ten minutes, and her adrenaline was starting to even out, bringing heart rate down and the tiredness of just waking up was back. She brought her hands up and blew warm breath on them, rubbing them together and putting them under her arms in hopes to not lose circulation from the cold.

The walk continues, and the farther she goes the colder it gets and the more she worries that it will never end. The bright lights hurt her tired eyes, and it is now that she realizes she has no idea what time it is, and those ten minutes of walking have turned into no real amount of time.

The hall turns into stairs, and it seems like an endless amount. Ande’s equilibrium is thrown off about half way down and she has to catch herself with hands gripping the smooth walls so not to fall the rest of the way down. Her body screams that it needs sleep, but Ande has to keep fighting.

She just isn’t sure for how much longer she can keep on, though.

Suddenly the stairs stop and its back to walking, but there’s another door, this one taller and wider than the other. It’s black, with three latches keeping it closed. Ande unlatches all three, and the squeal the metal gives from dry rubbing gives her goose bumps. The door opens, quite loudly, and it echoes down the hall before Ande looks through from the now-dark hall into the dark wilderness of the California Mountains.

Snow crunches under foot and there’s a whistle of a wind in the air that plays with the falling snowflakes. Already her eyelashes are covered in them and the shoulders of her jacket are acting as a shelf to carry the weight of more. Ande dunks and makes a run for the cabin Vic told her about that is about ten yards away. Just as she goes in through the one door, the black door from the hall closes by itself and is hidden again by the falling snow in the side of the mountain. Her footsteps are covered within minutes.

The cabin is cold. Faucets drip-drip¬ every five seconds so that the pipes do not freeze. There is a dead fireplace along the wall opposite of the door. Beside the sink where a faucet drip-drips, there is piece of paper weighted down by an a bruised, green apple.

Ande wastes no time picking up the paper and dialing the numbers into the phone Vic gave her. It rings four times before someone picks up. Vic never specified what had to be said, and she’s scared that he forgot or she’s not supposed to say anything at all.

“Hello?” She says softly, once the ringing stops and she can tell someone has picked up on the other line. There’s nothing but a dial tone to follow. She calls the number again; the weight of the gun in her jacket pocket is heavier. The call goes straight to a dial tone and an automated voice saying that the phone has been disconnected.

Ande gets frustrated and throws the phone down. It shatters into bits of plastic and phone parts under her feet. A small red light blinks, and she watches it for so long that she can almost hear it make a sound. Headlights highlight the wall through one of the three windows in the one room cabin, and Ande remembers about the car. Has it been three minutes? She wasn’t even counting, she doesn’t know.

Her hand finds its way into the pocket of her jacket, and the gun feels warmer than usual, or maybe her hand is just colder? Ande has many options of how to deal with the situation. Her mind repeats the endless blurb of code she’s supposed to repeat and then hear back. Her pointer finger pushes against the safety pin into it clicks. The barrel is loaded. Ande is about to kill a man.

She takes a deep breath and walks outside. It is a white car, and the windows are tinted a dark color. However, as Ande walks closer, the window begins to roll down and snow blows into the car. The man sitting in the front seat has dark hair and a pair of sunglasses that obstruct all features from his nose up. Whatever breath she had been holding is blown out in a cloud of warm vapor that melts all the snow falling around her.

“I swear to God I’m going to change the world,” she says, and her voice cracks half way through. The driver, who continues to wear an expressionless face, replies:

“Oh my god, this is paradise.”

Her trigger finger relaxes and her shoulders loosen. Some snow falls off them. His accent is thick, with underlying tones that he is more fluent in Spanish than English. The safety is clicked back into place. He hears it and glances down at her jacket pocket. Ande slowly takes her hand away from it, empty of the gun, and puts it by her side.

“Get in,” he tells her, nodding to the passenger side door. “It’s going to be a long drive to Sonora, Senorita Ande.”

Everything from there is a blur. The colors are nothing but white and dark grays as the night bleeds orange into the day and the interstate is hot black asphalt instead of makeshift snow roads in the mountains. They continue to go south and the almost-full day trip of interstate driving and food stops trickles out until they get just a few miles past the California border going into Arizona, with the Mexican Border off to Ande’s right. She could see the large concrete wall that separated the two countries. How were they going to get over there?

“Stay calm,” the driver tells her, still wearing his dark shades, but now his jacket is off and he’s wearing a simple black shirt that shows off his uninked arms. It’s something Ande isn’t used to. She finds it unusual that Vic is the only one of the group to not have tattoos, but that’s Vic. This is a man whom she doesn’t even know the name of. “We’ve got Visas. Do you speak any Spanish?”

He looks over at Ande, and she shakes her head. He frowns, but says nothing more. They fall into the line of cars that are slowly making it past the Mexican border, each being checked and accepted or denied. When it is their turn, he hands their Visas over; the guy glances at them and lets the car through. He holds a solemn face, almost as if he is erasing their faces from his memory.

(“No, I never saw them. I do not know who Mikael and Andrea Perez, are,” he will say later on.)

“Welcome to Sonora,” he says, waving his hand toward the scenery of desert and adobe colored houses and palm trees. “This will be your new home for six months.”
‹ Chapter 9

Notes

Happy Singles Awareness Day!