Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

his face has been niggling at me. He’s the same man who spat on the ground when I first arrived at the mine, the one I called Bumpy. I struggle to keep my smile in place, a whole lot less sure than I was a moment ago about him being an improvement over his son.

“That must be busy. I have only one brother at home.”

Francisco pins me with a glare that is not at all friendly, and my next words shrivel and die.

“You should be at home and your brother should be here,” he says seriously.

“I . . .” I lick my lips to gather my courage and try not to choke as the tastes of rock and sweat fill my mouth. “I’m just here until he gets better.”

Francisco shakes his head solemnly. “Your father”—he drops his voice and gestures at Papi loading the ore cart—“should never have let you come down here. We will all be made to pay for your stupidity.”

I feel like I’ve been punched.

“I won’t be here long,” I mumble.

Francisco shrugs and sets his shoulder to the side of the ore cart. “The damage is probably already done,” he says.

I’m glad we’re pushing the cart again and I need my breath for other things, because it keeps me from answering.

Francisco doesn’t talk to me again as we heave and strain the bin out of the mine. He doesn’t talk to me when we stand off to the side and swing the bin on its hinges so it dumps our load of debris on the pile. When we head back in and he still hasn’t spoken to me, I start to think that maybe we’re done, but as we scrabble with our feet against the angled floor, using our bodies as brakes to keep the bin from freewheeling out of control, he starts talking again.

“You say you’re only here until your brother gets better,” Francisco mumbles around the coca wad in his cheek. “Either you’re an idiot or a liar. I worked with that brother of yours for a day, and let me tell you, that’s all I needed to be able to tell: that boy will never make a miner. Always wheezing, barely able to keep up, let alone work in any meaningful way. If you’re waiting for him to get better and stay better, you’ll be working here the rest of your life.”

Guillermo, the tripping jerk, clearly eavesdropping, chimes in.

“Even if that scrawny runt does come back and César decides to keep wasting good pay on him, the mines will kill him quickly enough.”

I glance at Papi, knowing he must be able to hear this, but he won’t meet my eyes.

I clamp my lips shut to avoid saying something that could make him angry at me and focus on my feet. Luckily, we’ve arrived at the slag site again and I can vent my frustration. Even though my muscles cringe, I throw myself at the pile of rock, heaving pieces that are too big for me into the wheeled bin with a fury that makes the men shake their heads at me.

How dare they—how dare they talk about Daniel and me like that! How dare they insult me and then turn around in the same breath and say my brother is going to die?

I spend my energy before my anger has burned off, and it leaves me feeling shaky. I slump against the cold side of the hinged bin and rest my cheek against its grime-crusted surface. The others leave me alone. Every time one of them throws a rock into the bin, I feel the reverberation through my cheek, into the bones of my face.

The thing that really kills me, though I hate to admit it, is not that these strangers said those horrible things, but that Papi heard them say it and did nothing. Not a word of defense for either of his children. Almost as if he agreed with them.

I do not cry.

Finally, unable to bear the others working while I don’t, I heave myself off the side and bend over to pick up another rock.

In and out, in and out. Again and again and again for another six hours. I don’t lag behind once. When we finally stop at dinnertime, I think I might have caught a glint of new respect in Papi’s eyes for my hard work. But by then I’m too tired to care.

When I walk in the door, I’m thrilled to see that, even though he’s still pale and covered in fever-sweat, Daniel is sitting up in bed. I squat just off the edge of the pallet we share, not wanting to get grime all over where we sleep.

“Hey,” I say, taking off the helmet and tucking it under my arm. “How are you feeling?”

Despite the fact that he hasn’t done anything but sleep for most of two days, he stares at me through red-rimmed eyes that have deep purple bags under them.

“Better,” he says. “Ana . . . I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You know . . . if I weren’t so sick, you would never have had to go into the mine.”

“Not your fault you got sick,” I say, because we both know he’s right.

“Still. I’m sorry. I know how awful it is.”

I consider telling him it’s not awful or that he’ll be better in no time or that I don’t mind. But none of those things are true, and unlike Daniel, who treats it as a competitive sport, I don’t like lying. Instead I ruffle his sweat-dank hair.

“You’re worth it,” I tell him. I stand and strip off what I’m starting to think of as my miner’s coveralls and go outside to try to wash off some of the filth before dinner.

When I get outside, Abuelita is hunched by the dung stove, stirring the soup. She glances up when she hears me, but when she sees who it is, she turns away again.

I stand by the blue plastic water barrel and slowly rub the rag along the lines of my impossibly dirty hands and