The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 3

"I gave her that for Valentine's Day last year," said Logan.

Demetrio nodded. "I figured. She talked a lot about you after the crash." He smiled at me to let me know he was on my side, and didn't intend to make trouble for me. To Logan he said, "It's a nice gift." He handed the necklace to Logan. "I don't mean nothing by it. Just thought she might want it back. Cool?"

"I appreciate it," I told him. "That was very nice. I owe you twice now. Once for calling 911, and once for finding my necklace."

"How's the ankle?" he asked.

"Better."

"You gonna dance on it Sat.u.r.day?"

I felt my friends' eyes upon me, incriminating for my having told this stranger so much about myself. "Yeah. I think so. Doctor said it's okay, so, you know, if I wear an ace bandage and all that."

"Well, good luck."

"Thanks."

Demetrio reached into his pocket once more, and pulled out a small yellow card, laminated in plastic, and dusted it off on the leg of his jean. "This is just a little something I wanted to give you, too, because you don't never know what life holds."

He leaned toward me, and held out the card. I took it, and looked at it briefly. It was a Catholic prayer card for Saint Anthony the Abbott. My mother and I were Catholic, technically, but we didn't go to church as often as we should - which was a nice way of saying we pretty much never went. My dad's grandmother from Chimayo used to have things like this prayer card in her house. I caught Kelsey's look of amused cynicism, and tried to ignore it even though it mirrored my own feelings about the situation. The gesture was sweet, but the card was so not something any of us would ever carry around. It was in the realm of quaint superst.i.tion that most of my friends avoided, other than for purposes of erudite mockery.

"Uhm, wow. I can't say I've ever gotten anything quite like this before." I tried to conceal my own discomfort, but probably failed because Demetrio looked even more embarra.s.sed now.

"I know it ain't for everyone, but where I'm from, that's what we carry for protection."

"I would have thought a gun worked better for protection where you're from," deadpanned Logan, pretending it was a joke. Demetrio took a moment after the comment to take a deep, calming breath, then continued to talk to me as though Logan hadn't said anything at all.

"It's probably lame to you. He's the patron saint of animals, so I got it for Buddy, too. If nothing else, give it to your dog."

"That's so sweet," said Kelsey, leaning toward Demetrio with her elbows planted on the table and her chin in her hands. She might as well have had little cartoon heats floating up out of her big, s.h.i.+ny eyes.

"Uhm, no, it's fine! Not dumb at all." I blinked hollowly. "But what do I do with it?" I set the card down on the table and smiled at Demetrio to let him know I, too, had found Logan's joke in bad taste.

He shrugged. "Just carry it. If you need it, if you feel like, you know, like you're in trouble or danger or whatever, like if you crash again, which G.o.d forbid happens, you'll know what to do." He backed up a little and made room for Logan take his place next to the table. "I better go. Hope you all have a good day. Glad you're doing good, Maria. My best to Buddy. Laters."

Demetrio turned to walk away, a look of subtle humiliated annoyance on his face, but Logan swiftly caught him by the arm.

"Hey, bro," Logan said, coping a tough-guy stance I'd never seen him use before but that kind of appealed to me anyway. "Thanks, dude. Me and my girl? We appreciate what you did here. And I'd like to give you a little something for your trouble."

Logan took his slick black leather wallet out of his back jeans pocket with great show and pomp, opened it and flipped through the many crisp twenty-dollar bills he had there.

"Nah, man." Demetrio looked slightly offended, but unsurprised - almost as though he pitied Logan. He was patient with my boyfriend, and forgiving. "I'm cool. You have yourself a good day."

"At least let me get you a coffee or something," said Logan, smiling gallantly. "I mean, if it weren't for you, who knows what might have happened to my girl. Right?"

"We cool. Nah, man. I gotta jet."

"Ugh. 'My girl,'" said Kelsey under her breath, to me. "He thinks he owns you. How can you stand it?"

I ignored her, because that was just how Logan talked and nothing more, and watched the boys. Demetrio shrugged gracefully out of Logan's grasp, and faux-limped in his usual way, toward the door, nodding goodbye to me in a slightly wounded way that made me realize he thought I thought he didn't belong here. Which wasn't true, exactly. I felt sorry for him, and a little sickened by my own awkward behavior toward him. Mostly, I was confused.

I glanced at my friends' faces, and found that, with the exception of Kelsey, they still saw Demetrio as the potentially dangerous outsider that I had also believed him to be one week ago, because of his clothes, mannerisms and grammar. Logan's mouth had crept up into a cruel grin, as he fought the urge to openly laugh at Demetrio. I felt awful. How could Demetrio be all that bad if he'd helped me? If he'd gone out of his way to find me to return my beloved necklace? I just didn't understand things anymore. So much that made sense last week suddenly didn't seem fair anymore. My heart ached for the lonely gangster and I was suddenly ashamed - of myself, and of my friends.

"Thank you!" I called out to him, horrified to realize I - supposedly the superior one here - hadn't thought to say it yet.

Demetrio didn't seem to hear me. He was halfway out the door, and just kept moving. My breath caught on the lump in my throat, as he swaggered out the door, into the swirling snow, alone. I was overcome with an urge to chase him down, and hug him - and this frightened me. I was more sensible than that, wasn't I? I was too smart to fall for a gang member.

"Well, that was alarming," said Thomas.

"You know, Maria," joked Victoria after the door had closed and Demetrio was gone. "You really ought to be more careful about who you crash in front of next time."

Kelsey pursed her lips in offense, but Thomas and Logan guffawed at her biting witticism. Normally, I probably would have joined it, but nothing felt normal anymore. For the first time that I could remember, I smiled politely, but did not feel like laughing with them.

A short time later, we all stood in the student parking lot looking at the big curved and barbed hunting knife Logan's dad had given him as a reward for making the skeet-shooting team. I pretended to be interested. Kelsey didn't. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Thing like that cost much?" asked Thomas, trying to look as manly as was possible for a toe-walking science geek once thought to be on the autism spectrum, but still looking a bit startled and discomfited by the tool.

"h.e.l.l yeah!" said Logan, turning the blade with an admiration in his gorgeous blue eyes that bordered on infatuation. "This here's an eighteen-inch big gamer, with special engraving. A beauty. I've wanted one for a while. Dad's awesome."

Seeing a teacher walking our way, Logan quickly sheathed the weapon and stuffed it under the seat of his silver Chevy Tahoe, as every sort of armament was forbidden on school grounds. We all agreed it was time to get going anyway, so I kissed Logan goodbye in the student parking lot - he and his amazingly broad, strong shoulders were headed to Calculus - and joined Kelsey for a frigid walk across the sprawling ivy-and-brick Coronado Prep campus, toward our Art History cla.s.s. I saw Logan toss a bit of uneaten bagel to a few crows as he walked, and pointed it out to Kelsey.

"See? He can be kind to animals. You've got him all wrong."

"Probably just fattening them up for the slaughter," she replied, bitterly.

"No one eats crows. Not even Logan."

"Blackbird pie, deary. You never heard that nursery rhyme? Two and tenty black birds baked in a pie."

"I never understood that one."

"Yeah, me neither. Come to think of it, I never understood most nursery rhymes and songs. They were always about the black death, or the plague, or some other horrible thing the old English found excellent for children to laugh about."

The snow was tapering off a little, but the wind had kicked up and literally sucked the air out of you when it gusted. We huddled together, arm in arm, leaning into the gales, and moved quickly.

"Oh, and by the way? When you told me some 'guy' called 911 for you last week, you neglected to mention the fact that he was young and incredibly freakin' hot," Kelsey said, her voice chattering with cold, near my ear. "I thought it was some fat truck driver type."

I turned my head to look at her, a look of puzzlement on my face. "He's not hot, Kelsey. He's a gang member."

"Right. A hot gang-member," she said. "You say it as if the two were mutually exclusive."

"They are. You need to be smarter about boys."

"Look who's talking, mister 'look at my big-a.s.s knife.'"

I shook my head. "Logan's a good guy. Maybe the other one is too, he's just - he's not my type." The words rang false to me, but I desperately wanted them to be true. He couldn't be my type. That would be stupid. I denied to myself that I'd felt a ma.s.sive attraction for him both times I'd seen him.

"That explains why you were so rude to him," she said.

"I wasn't rude to him!"

"Maybe not you, but Logan sure was, and you didn't stop him."

I flinched at her words. "What? What are you talking about? I swear, Logan could bring about world peace or something, and you'd still hate him. You just hate everything he does."

"Oh, please. Like you didn't notice? Idiotic gun joke aside, Logan was all, 'here, let me give you some money for your troubles you poor little underling,' like a total sn.o.b. It was disgusting. How can you stand him?"

I shook my head again, confused by her interpretation. "Kelsey, he was trying to be nice. Maybe that's why you don't have a boyfriend. You don't understand guys."

She laughed. "No. The reason I don't have a boyfriend is unlike some people, I'm very picky. Oh my G.o.d, you are so naive, Maria."

"Whatever."

"Logan was totally not trying to be nice. He was trying to put that guy in his place. 'Let me give you some money, poor homie dude, because I'm taller than you and Maria's my b.i.t.c.h, and you don't belong here.'"

"Shut up. He didn't mean it like that, and he's never called me a b.i.t.c.h. What is wrong with you today?"

We had arrived at the Visual Arts building, and I held the door for the girl I had, until now, considered to be my best friend in all the world. Once inside, we shook the snow off, and began to walk together toward our cla.s.sroom. I didn't look at her; I was too angry about all her insults.

"Maria, I know you are the nicest person in the world, and you always see the best in people, but just this once try to at least entertain the possibility that I might be right about Logan. He might not have been doing it consciously, but I think he was trying to insult that guy."

"Demetrio. That guy's name is Demetrio." It felt strange to say his name in the quiet elegance of the hallway.

"Demetrio, who is hot and as far as I could tell, pretty freakin' nice."

I paused at the door to our cla.s.sroom, to look her in the eye. "You think?"

"Duh," she said. "Dude calls 911, builds you a fire to keep you warm, puts your dog in his jacket even though it's freezing cold, stays with you until help comes, and goes out of his way to return your necklace? Seems pretty freakin' nice to me. When's the last time Logan did anything nice for you?"

I considered this as I opened the door, and we entered the cla.s.sroom. "All the time," I told her, even though in truth I had no answer. He'd been busy lately, preparing for the shooting team trials, and - something else. I didn't know, exactly. But I was sure he was busy, like he said.

Our teacher, Linda Yazzie, was at her desk. Her thick, s.h.i.+ny black hair, streaked with white but no less l.u.s.trous for it, was pulled back loosely in a bun. A thin, fit woman in her forties, given to yoga and tofu, she wore faded jeans and a colorful, beautifully woven woolen shawl, with big artsy turquoise earrings and cherry red cowboy boots. She wasn't a mother - and claimed quite vociferously that teaching all of us had rid her of that desire for all eternity - but the boys at school called her a MILF anyway. She pretended not to notice. At the moment, she held slides up to the light in her sinewy brown hand, scrutinizing them with her intense dark eyes, deciding to put some in the projector in front of her, and others to the side.

"Good morning, Maria," she said, glancing at us. Our teacher had a habit of favoring students she felt had artistic talent, and ignoring the others; for this reason, she always spoke to me by name, and never did so for Kelsey - presumably because my best friend had difficulty drawing even the mot basic of stick figures and I didn't.

"Morning, Yazzie," said Kelsey, her voice bratty. She used the teacher's last name - which was her middle name (no one knew her real last name) - as her only name, as everyone did. Yazzie was a well-known postmodern Native American painter from the San Juan Pueblo, of mixed Pueblo and Navajo ancestry, with her own studio and gallery in Old Town Albuquerque. She had once told me, during the oil painting workshop I took with her in the summers, that she had made millions through sales of her work; she taught because she said it was a moral obligation, "a way of giving medicine."

"So annoying," I whispered to Kelsey, of being singled out by Yazzie.

"You are the chosen one, Jedi warrior," she replied, sarcastically.

Kelsey and I walked to the second row, and took our seats at the table we shared.

"By the way, I think Demetrio's nice, too, in his own way," I said, trying to keep my voice low enough to be discreet. "But he told me he was in a gang. He actually said that. He also said that he was in big trouble for killing someone or something."

Kelsey, who was possibly the single most sheltered and rebellious person I knew, looked intrigued. "Really? That is so cool!"

"Yeah, okay, whatever." I started to unload my notebook and pencil case onto the table.

Yazzie set down the slide she was inspecting, and flashed her airy-fairy smile at me, still ignoring my friend. She arose, and glided over to me.

"I had a dream about you," Yazzie told me, in her new age, touchy-feely way. "I woke last night and spent hours on a sculpture that tells your story."

I didn't know how to answer this, so I just smiled awkwardly, aware that Yazzie had a reputation at Coronado Prep for being just a bit off her rocker, albeit talented. The reputation was justified as far as I could tell, though Yazzie's sculptures - soft-looking little Storyteller-type people doing active things in miniature - were charming, if weird, and very valuable.

"Did it involve rabid coyotes tearing Maria's limbs off?" asked Kelsey, trying to be funny but also, I realized, jockeying for validation from a teacher who didn't care whether she existed.

Yazzie grew concerned, and stared me down, as she often did. I hated it because it felt as though she could read my mind. At least she hadn't brought her pet crow to school today. Sometimes she did, and it stared me down, too.

"No," Yazzie mused. "No coyotes." Her eyes snapped over to Kelsey, for the first time today. "Why do you ask, miss, uhm...?"

"Conner. I'm Kelsey Conner. I've been in your cla.s.s for four months."

"What about the coyotes?" asked Yazzie.

"There are no coyotes in your cla.s.s," said Kelsey, obnoxiously.

"Maria's dream, I meant," said Yazzie, missing the humor.

Kelsey shrugged, and didn't seem at all uncomfortable the way I did. "Maria's been having a recurring nightmare since her car accident Friday, about coyotes eating her for lunch."

"More like dinner," I said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work. Yazzie's eyes burned through me again.

"That must be why your energy is off," she told me thoughtfully. "It makes sense."

"I'm just tired. And cold. Sick of the snow."

"No, it's not that." She frowned at me, and felt my forehead the way a mother might if you told her you wanted to stay home from school sick. "There's something else. Something in your etheric auric body feels agitated. You have brown in your aura for the first time. Are you confused about something? It feels tangled and unruly."

"Nothing a little heavy-duty conditioner can't cure," deadpanned Kelsey.

"Conner, hush," said Yazzie, holding up a hand to block her view of Kelsey altogether. "This is serious."

"Wow! You know my name!"

"I'm fine," I insisted to Yazzie. I didn't know what an etheric auric body was, and did not feel like finding out.

"My dream," Yazzie told me, her eyes widening. "I've only now remembered it. You were with Masewa, in the Cochiti story of the Arrow Boy."

"Sounds kinky," said Kelsey.

"Stop," I said to Kelsey.

Yazzie instantly, crazily, switched moods, perking up and traipsing with girlish glee back toward her desk.