Her next stop was the bus station, where she was horrified to find out that American dollars didn't go near as far in the States as they did in Mexico. She couldn't afford a ticket.
And that was when she made the crucial mistake.
Being young and sturdy she figured she could set out walking, maybe earning enough on her way to keep from starving. She didn't want to hitch a ride, but the idea was in the back of her mind.
All she knew was she wasn't going back to Mexico, and she felt a compelling need to put as much distance as she could between her and the nation of her birth.
She had been a young female alone in Mexico, and she figured if she stayed, she would be a prostitute or dead within a month. Besides, she reasoned, she had as much right to a better life in the United States as the next person. She was a citizen, after all.
Knowing she wasn't breaking any laws, she set out walking. Her first stop was a grocery store where she bought a large jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. It took four dollars, but she left knowing she wouldn't starve for at least four or five days. She wished she had enough money to load her cell phone with minutes, but it would totally wipe out her funds and she didn't have anybody to call anyway. Her few friends in Mexico would be of no immediate help to her if she got into a sticky situation. She had to save the money for more food.
When she left the outskirts of Laredo behind, walking along the interstate, she felt true fear slither down her spine. She tried to think of this as an adventure, when in reality it was a terrifying experience. And she was smart enough to know the difference. She continued to put one foot in front of the other.
It was May, and the heat of the day was already brutal. Again she tried to think of the bright side, and realized she wouldn't have to fear freezing to death in the middle of the night.
She spent that first night about ten miles outside the city limits of Laredo, behind an abandoned building not far from the side of the road. Somehow, even as terrified as she was, she managed to get about three hours of fitful sleep. She woke up before dawn and brushed her hair, drank some water, and ate a piece of bread with peanut butter she smeared on with her finger.
She was ready to move on.
With despair, she realized how big the world could be and how alone in it she was.
The second day, she put about twenty more miles behind her. She was dead tired, and the blisters on her feet had popped and were oozing puss and blood. She slept behind an abandoned gas station at a crossroads. Sheer exhaustion let her sleep a little more that night.
The third day she ran into the drug runners. Two guys cruised up beside her in a big, white pick-up truck, stopped and demanded her participation with transporting drugs into Houston. She had fought back. As desperate as she was, she wasn't going to do anything that was related to murder or drugs. Or hopefully, God willing, prostitution.
They would have killed her when she resisted, and she received a vicious hit to her ribs and one to her face, but a Texas state trooper had driven by. The men dropped her to the ground, jumped in their truck and fled, the trooper chasing them.
That was the last she had seen of them, or of the state trooper. She picked herself up off the ground and resumed walking. Her face and side throbbed in painful agony. When she came to a dirt road, she turned and followed it away from the paved highway. She needed time to regroup, and to think about her situation. She desperately needed a new plan.
About a half a mile down that sandy road, she found the mesquite tree and collapsed underneath it. Her ribs were killing her and she was starving. But she was too nauseous to eat. She drank a little bit of the precious water, took comfort from the slight protection of the deserted country road, and fell into a troubled sleep.
****
Travis glanced up from the tractor engine he was working on when he heard his name called. He took the dilapidated straw cowboy hat off his head and wiped the sweat from his forehead and waited for Jim, who was walking toward him from the bunkhouse.
"Boss. You better come with me and see what we got down at the bunkhouse." Jim leaned over and spat a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt.
"What's up that you can't handle? I've got grease up to my armpits." He glanced up and gave his foreman a cursory look and then went back to what he was doing.
"Got us an illegal that's beat up pretty bad. Juan found him along county road up by the north pasture. I think you better come take a look."
"Call the sheriff. He'll be out in thirty minutes, or he'll send the border patrol." Travis stood and picked up a rag and started wiping his hands.
"I don't know if we should do that, Boss. He's just a kid, probably only a teenager and he told Juan he's not illegal. Says he's an American citizen. I think you should come take a look. He don't look Mexican. Except for the black hair. He's sunburned, but he's got white skin. I think we ought to find out for sure before we call Sheriff Parker. You know how he is. Bastard thinks you're guilty unless you can prove your innocence. I don't think this kid would stand a chance in his custody. If what he's saying is true, then he risked a lot walking all this way. We might be sending him to his grave if we turned him in and he got sent back." Jim turned and spat on the ground again.
Travis tossed the rag on the tractor seat. "Shit. Okay. I really don't have time for this crap. Let me get cleaned up and I'll be down there in a few minutes."
****
Selena clutched her hoodie to her chest and tried to breathe without blacking out.
She looked around at the five cowhands crowding in the back of the room, all staring at her with curious eyes. She sat on a narrow bunk in the corner of a small room with her back against the roughhewn wood. Bunks just like she was sitting on lined one wall. A large table with chairs took up most of the space on the other side.
She had been sitting here for the last hour ever since the man named Juan had found her on the side of the road. He had asked her about her injuries, questioning her in Spanish, and then gently lifted her and put her in the truck and brought her here. The move had sent arrows of agony through her ribs. She had briefly blacked out once.
When she left Mexico, she hadn't intended to masquerade as a boy. The thought never even crossed her mind. She only wanted to blend in. Putting her hair up in the baseball cap had been designed for comfort. Her hair was long and thick and she knew it would be hot.
But when the man had said, w hat's your name, boy, some feminine instinct made her answer, Manuel.