Ambassador (9 page)

“Last year I met with Mr. Paul Arpaio, the career counselor at school,” she told him. She said the name with exaggerated, sarcastic formality and antirespect. “That's it. That's the only thing that happened. I was working on my college applications. He told me not to bother. He told me that he controlled all the transcript files, that no college would ever see mine. And he told me to start walking south.”

Gabe felt the spark-bright beginnings of rage building in him. He wasn't really sure what to do about it. Dad and Lupe were the ones with quick tempers. They knew how to boil over, how to explode and still be whole afterward. Gabe didn't know how to do that. He tried to ignore the rage-sparks inside him. He hoped they would just go away.

“He was supposed to help you get
into
college,” Gabe said, “not keep you
out
.”

“Yeah, well, he's helping
citizens
get in by making sure
aliens
with perfect grades can't. Not that I have perfect grades anymore.”

“I'm pretty sure that's illegal,” said Gabe. “It has to be.”

Lupe laughed her bitter laugh. “
I'm
illegal, you idiot.”

Gabe ignored both insults—the one aimed at him, and the one she had shot back at herself. It took effort to ignore them. “Did you tell Mom?”

“No. And neither will you. It would break her heart
and then kick all the broken pieces around afterward. I let her think my grades slipped over a boy. Dad suspects otherwise, but he hasn't asked me for details. So anyway, summer school doesn't matter. Not in any way does it matter. Improving my transcript won't matter, because no college will ever see it—and also because Mom and Dad are getting deported. And because our house burned down. I can't believe it burned down
today
. You get to tell Mom. I'm not going to.”

I shouldn't be here to tell her,
Gabe thought.
I need to get away from all of you. Someone might blow another hole in the world wherever I happen to be.
But he wasn't sure how to leave, exactly. They had lost too much today already. The house was gone. Dad was in an orange jumpsuit and took very small steps with his feet chained together. Mom would need Gabe to look after the twins most of the time. He couldn't just leave. But he couldn't stay, either. Alien assassins might attack at any moment and hurt anyone who happened to be standing nearby.

This would be difficult to explain.

*  *  *  *

He was still trying to figure out how to tell Lupe that he had to run away when she accidentally kicked the Envoy under the table. It rolled across the floor, cleared its throat, and tried to recover its dignity.

Lupe stood up. She began to hiccup. She tried to stop. Gabe got her a glass of water.

Oh well,
he thought.
Guess I won't be keeping this part a secret.

“Lupe, this is the Envoy,” he said. “Envoy, this is my sister.”

The Envoy ducked its mouth in a sort of bow. “Honored,” it said. “Charmed. Hello. Hi, there. Greetings to you. I've heard that gargling can sometimes cure the hiccups.”

Lupe held the glass of water as if she didn't remember what glasses of water were for. “What is that thing?” she whispered. “It sounds like Mom.”

“Yes,” said the Envoy. “I've mimicked the shape of her vocal cords to sound comforting and familiar.”

Lupe sat down, sipped her water, and continued to hiccup while Gabe and the Envoy took turns explaining that her little brother Gabriel Sandro Fuentes had become the Ambassador of Terra and all Terran life. Neither one of them mentioned the assassination attempt. Gabe just told her “something went wrong” with the basement entanglement—something that needed fixing, somewhere else, somewhere not here. He wasn't very good at lying. He was far better at keeping quiet, keeping secrets hidden, than he was at lying about them. Lupe noticed, of course.

“Well, that's extremely vague,” she said. “I can't let you wander off alone! Not ever.
Definitely
not today. We need to stay here and wait for Mom.”

“I'm not alone,” said Gabe. “The Envoy's an adult.”

Lupe took up the hammer of wisdom and truth. She walked around the table, bent down, and whacked the Envoy with it.

“Hey!” Gabe cried out.

“Ouch,” said the Envoy.

“Just checking to see if it's an illusion I can smash,” said Lupe without apology. She sat down again. “I hate that it uses Mom's voice.
I absolutely hate that.
But at least I feel a little bit less like an alien now that I've met one.”

“I'm not technically alien to this world,” the Envoy said, but Lupe ignored it. She hiccuped and gargled the last of her water. Then she stared at Gabe for a long, unsettling amount of time.

“You'll be good at this ambassador thing,” she decided.

“You keep calling me an idiot,” Gabe pointed out.

“I said you
will
be good at this, not that you already are. But you learn fast. Just don't blow up the world like you blew up our house.”

“The house didn't explode,” the Envoy explained. “It
imploded
. It blew down rather than blowing up, and only caught fire afterward.”

Lupe didn't respond or even look at the Envoy. She clearly felt uncomfortable about the existence of the Envoy.
Maybe she's too old already,
Gabe thought.
She's smart. She's curious. She makes new friends easily. But maybe she isn't quite neotenous enough.

“We should go, Ambassador,” the Envoy said, quietly insistent.

Gabe stood up to go. She wouldn't let him leave if she thought he was in serious danger—but the serious danger was why he had to go. He didn't think he could explain, so he just had to leave.

“You can trust the Envoy to look after me,” he said.

In that moment he realized that
he
trusted the Envoy.

Lupe glared at him as if she were trying to set him on fire with her mind. Then she dug in her pocket and gave him all her spare cash.

“Buy a cheap, disposable cell phone and text me the number,” she told him. “That's the only way I'm letting you out of my sight. And move your ass, strawberry. Hurry up with whatever important ambassador business you've got going. I don't even want to think about trying to explain this to Mom when she gets here, so you need to get back first. The twins listen to you more than me. You really need to be here.”

“Okay,” said Gabe.

Sure,
he said to himself.
I'll do my best to deal with a potentially deadly intergalactic incident by dinnertime. Wish me luck.

He opened the backpack, invited the Envoy to climb inside, and hoisted the heavy thing over his shoulder.

“Take the cane,” Lupe said.

Gabe just blinked at her. “Dad gave that to you. You're the oldest. You're the fighter. It's yours.”

“Take it,” she said again. “I still expect you to bring it back.”

Gabe took his great-grandfather's walking cane. It did make him feel better to carry it, to have mighty secrets and hidden Toledo steel.

Lupe reached out with the mallet of wisdom and truth. Gabe gave it a fist bump. The beads rattled. Then he left the house through the kitchen door.

He paused in the middle of Frankie's backyard and wondered where he should go.

Away,
he thought.
Just keep moving.

He took a few steps. Then he turned around for one last look at his emergency refuge, the only safe place that he knew.

An energy beam burned through the sky and scorched the spot where he had been standing.

Gabe ran until he couldn't. Then he half-walked, half-jogged. His scalp itched while he waited for another energy beam to incinerate him.

It didn't happen. Maybe the assassins weren't in geosynchronous orbit and had to swing back around the world before taking another shot. Maybe.

His breath caught up with him. He noticed which direction he was going and decided it was a good direction. Then he ducked into a corner store to buy a cheap, disposable cell phone.

The building had four stories. Four ceilings stood between him and the sky, between him and whatever hostile thing was shooting at him from the other side of the sky.

He paced the store, waiting for another blast that didn't come.

He stood still, waiting. It still didn't come.

The front door of the corner store made an obnoxious, electronic beep when someone opened it. Gabe jumped. His heart smacked against the inside of his rib cage.

Someone is shooting at me. They imploded my house. They destroyed Dad's kitchen. Dad is getting kicked out of the country. Lupe is getting kicked out of college before she even gets to go.

Gabe's new rage-sparks blazed. More of him caught on fire. He didn't know how to handle that. He didn't know what to do about it.

Then he thought of something that he could do.

The store clerk obviously assumed that Gabe was an inept and fidgety shoplifter plagued by preemptive guilt, and kept a suspicious eye on him.

“Can I help you?” the clerk asked in a way that meant
I doubt it, and I'd rather not.

“I need a phone,” said Gabe. The cell phones on the counter in front of him were much too fancy to buy with Lupe's cash. Each was a pocket-size computer screen. “Can I see one that plays videos?” he asked, pointing.

A quick search found what he was looking for online: last year's commencement speech at Lupe's school, which had been taped by the phone cameras of proud parents.

“Hello, everyone,” said the little screen in a friendly, folksy voice. “I'm Principal Ginny Brewer. Welcome, friends and family of the graduating seniors of Southeast High!”

The clerk stepped back to let Gabe play with a phone that he obviously wasn't going to actually buy. It was chained to the counter, so Gabe couldn't steal it without bolt cutters. The clerk still watched him, just in case he had bolt cutters.

Gabe set his backpack on the counter, next to the phone. “Listen to this,” he whispered to the backpack. The Envoy made an impatient noise, but couldn't extend its throat enough to actually answer.

After watching Principal Brewer's speech, Gabe did another quick Internet search and found the phone number he needed. Then he dug Lupe's wad of cash out of his pocket and purchased a cheaper, disposable phone.

The corner store wasn't far from a light-rail train stop, and the train would be the quickest way to become a moving target. He hurried to the stop. He paced while waiting. He tried not to look up. The top of his scalp still itched in anticipation of shots fired from orbit.

The train arrived. Gabe hopped on board and hoped it was fast enough to keep alien weapons from getting a fix on his location. In his head he apologized to everyone
else on the train for putting them in danger just by riding with them, just by sitting nearby.

If his attackers were in orbit, then they might be on the far side of the world at that moment. Or they might have already circled the globe and come back again, ready for another shot. Or else they might still be directly above him, moving as the world moved, taking careful aim. Gabe didn't know. He didn't have any idea how much time would pass before they tried again. He didn't even know who they were. The vast expanse of everything he did not know stretched away from him in every direction. He felt like he was drowning in ignorance.

But he did have one thing that he planned to do with the low, slow rage simmering inside him.

He thought about taking the train as far as the Mall of America, which was huge and easy enough to hide in. But the great big mall was always crowded, and he didn't want to endanger more bystanders. He needed to find a place with fewer people nearby.

After that he needed to figure out why he was under attack at all.

Gabe disembarked at Minnehaha Falls, a large stretch of urban park. He was supposed to come here anyway for the summer reading project—though writing an essay about Hiawatha didn't seem too important now. But he
could still hide there. He could be alone there. He raced into the park as quickly as he could with a heavy, Envoy-filled bag on his back.

Minnehaha
was supposed to mean “laughing water” in Dakota, but it didn't. It just meant “waterfall.” So
Minnehaha Falls
was actually redundant, like saying “waterfall falls.”

Gabe followed sidewalk trails. He passed a statue of Hiawatha and Minnehaha. He kept looking up. Bright and fluffy clouds crossed the blue sky and gave no hint of what might be searching for him on the other side.

His stomach complained. He glanced up again and realized that it was early evening already. He needed to eat something.

He bought fish tacos from the park restaurant. It was the cheapest thing on the menu. He crossed his fingers and hoped that alien assassins did not attack while he stood in line. He kept glancing at the ceiling, expecting it to burn.

“Hungry?” he whispered to his backpack. The Envoy still didn't have enough room to make a mouth and throat for itself, so its answer sounded more like a whispered burp than a word.

“I didn't catch that,” Gabe whispered. “Do it again, once for yes and twice for no. Are you hungry?”

The backpack burped twice, so Gabe ordered food just for himself. Once he had his tacos, he went back outside and struck out across the park, keeping away from joggers, picnics, and people with strollers. He ate while he walked. The food vanished before he really noticed it was there. It must have been good.

The last time he had come here he'd chased the twins around for hours. He couldn't help looking around for them now, constantly noticing their absence, constantly reminding himself that they were not here with him—and that he wouldn't be at the Underground Railroad stop that was also Frankie's house when the twins arrived. They would need him, but Gabe and Dad would both be gone.