Avenue of Mysteries Read Free Page B

lot to learn.
    That was when the constantly complaining but unseen dog showed itself, if it was actually a dog. The weaselly little creature crawled out from under the couch—more rodential than canine, Pepe thought.
    “His name is Dirty White—he’s a dog, not a rat!” Lupe said indignantly to Brother Pepe.
    Juan Diego explained this, but the boy added: “Dirty White is a dirty little coward—an ungrateful one.”
    “I saved him from death!” Lupe cried. Even as the skinny, hunched dog sidled toward the girl’s outstretched arms, his lips involuntarily curled, baring his pointed teeth.
    “He should be called Saved from Death, not Dirty White,” JuanDiego said, laughing. “She found him with his head caught in a milk carton.”
    “He’s a puppy. He was starving,” Lupe protested.
    “Dirty White is still starving for something,” Juan Diego said.
    “Stop,” his sister told him; the puppy shivered in her arms.
    Pepe tried to repress his thoughts, but this was harder than he’d imagined it would be; he decided it would be best to leave, even abruptly, rather than allow the clairvoyant girl to read his mind. Pepe didn’t want the thirteen-year-old innocent to know what he was thinking.
    He started his VW Beetle; there was no sign of Rivera, or el jefe’s “scariest-looking” dog, as the Jesuit teacher drove away from Guerrero. The spires of black smoke from the basurero were rising all around him, as were the good-hearted Jesuit’s blackest thoughts.
    Father Alfonso and Father Octavio looked upon Juan Diego and Lupe’s mother—Esperanza, the prostitute—as the “fallen.” In the minds of the two old priests, there were no fallen souls who had fallen further than prostitutes; there were no miserable creatures of the human kind as lost as these unfortunate women were. Esperanza was hired as a cleaning woman for the Jesuits in an allegedly holy effort to save her.
    But don’t these dump kids need saving, too? Pepe wondered. Aren’t los niños de la basura among the “fallen,” or aren’t they in danger of future falling? Or of falling further ?
    When that boy from Guerrero was a grown-up, complaining to his doctor about the beta-blockers, he should have had Brother Pepe standing beside him; Pepe would have given testimony to Juan Diego’s childhood memories and his fiercest dreams. Even this dump reader’s nightmares were worth preserving, Brother Pepe knew.
    W HEN THESE DUMP KIDS were in their early teens, Juan Diego’s most recurrent dream wasn’t a nightmare. The boy often dreamed of flying—well, not exactly. It was an awkward-looking and peculiar kind of airborne activity, which bore little resemblance to “flying.” The dream was always the same: people in a crowd looked up; they saw that Juan Diego was walking on the sky. From below—that is, from ground level—the boy appeared to be very carefully walking upside down in the heavens. (It also seemed that he was counting to himself.)
    There was nothing spontaneous about Juan Diego’s movement across the sky—he was not flying freely, as a bird flies; he lacked the powerful, straightforward thrust of an airplane. Yet, in that oft-repeated dream,Juan Diego knew he was where he belonged. From his upside-down perspective in the sky, he could see the anxious, upturned faces in the crowd.
    When he described the dream to Lupe, the boy would also say to his strange sister: “There comes a moment in every life when you must let go with your hands—with both hands.” Naturally, this made no sense to a thirteen-year-old—even to a normal thirteen-year-old. Lupe’s reply was unintelligible, even to Juan Diego.
    One time when he asked her what she thought of his dream about walking upside down in the heavens, Lupe was typically mysterious, though Juan Diego could at least comprehend her exact words.
    “It’s a dream about the future,” the girl said.
    “ Whose future?” Juan Diego asked.
    “Not yours, I hope,” his sister replied,