Delia's Crossing (Delia 1)

She asked Sophia, who rattled it off quickly. From the look on Señora Rosario’s face, I knew it was very bad.

“He was driving much too fast and went off the road and hit a stone wall. The airbag exploded in his face, and it seems right now that it has seriously affected his eyesight.”

“His eyesight?” I touched my face under my eyes, and Sophia brightened with even more fury.

“That’s right, you idiot. Edward is blind!” she screamed. “Blind!”

“They don’t know yet if he will be blind long, Señorita Sophia,” Señora Rosario told her.

“I heard the doctor, not you. He sounded very pessimistic about it. Well?” she shouted at me. She turned to Señora Rosario. “You translate so she has no excuse, Mrs. Rosario. Translate everything word for word.”

She turned back to me.

“What did you say to him? Tell me everything. Whatever you said to him sent him after Bradley. They had a bad argument, and Bradley ran away from him, drove off quickly. Edward went after him, and that was when he got into the accident. Bradley said you made up lies and told them to Edward. What did you tell Edward?”

I understood most of it, but Señora Rosario did translate for her.

“I made up no lies,” I said firmly. “No lies. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

Sophia deflated a bit and stepped closer to me. “Okay, then, what did you tell him?”

I looked at Señora Rosario.

“Señorita, this is…”

“Make her tell me. My mother is very upset.”

Señora Rosario looked at me. “Do you wish to tell her?”

I nodded. “Edward was waiting for me at the bus station,” I began. “When I got into his car, he saw I was very upset and knew something bad had just happened.”

“What?” Sophia asked. “Tell me, or I swear…”

“Bradley came for me at school,” I said. I was speaking rapidly in Spanish now, and Señora Rosario was translating without comment as quickly as she could. “He said if I didn’t get into his car, he would come here and tell your mother stories about me, and she would have me arrested and sent back to Mexico in disgrace.”

Sophia smirked, but her skeptical expression was weakening. “Go on, talk,” she ordered.

“I got into his car, and he brought me to another car, where there were two boys.”

“What two boys?”

“A boy named Jack and another named Reuben,” I said, and the skepticism left her face completely.

“Jack Sawyer and Reuben Bennet?”

“I do not know their family names.”

“And?” she asked.

“He wanted me to get into the car with them and go for a ride with them, but it would be more than a ride. They, too, would do bad things to me.”

Señora Rosario’s eyes widened as she translated. I was too nervous to use any of the English words I had learned.

“What did you do?”

“I got out of his car and ran down the street, back toward the school. Bradley came after me, but my friend Ignacio Davila, a boy in my ESL class, chased him away.”

Sophia looked pensive now. She was silent for a moment. Señora Rosario was looking at me and shaking her head.