Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

immediately pulled downstream by the fast-moving current.

Brownish water seeped in and out of him as he struggled. Paul had forgotten to teach him how to swim the right way, and now his brother was gone.

But then, just barely, he swam.

He was saved by the bend of land that snagged against his body. He was whipped against the land by his body’s trajectory through the current. He nearly vaulted out of the water. He quickly landed on the embankment, where his hands slipped into the mud, along with his knees and his bare feet. Before he could steady himself, he fell face-first into it. He coughed the rest of the river out of his body.

A stray dog with a brindled coat was the first to greet him. It limped over to Exequiel and sniffed the dried mud on the boy’s legs. Exequiel crouched down. He let the dog sniff his hands as well. The dog scooted back for a moment.

Its tail, thin as a foil, began to swipe the air back and forth.

Then the rest of its body was set in motion. Hysterical, the dog bounced up and down as the boy stood now and started for town. Mud cracked in places and fell with each step he took.

But much of the mud remained as Exequiel neared a group of boys crouched in a circle. They were playing a game using bottle caps. They were flipping them against insects from whose bodies they had already pulled off a wing or two.

The youngest boy, wearing only a long T-shirt, stood up and screamed when he saw Exequiel. The others looked up. They laughed at their friend.

“You fell into shit,” one said.

Exequiel only nodded.

They asked him what happened, and he told them about the place where he had fallen asleep and how he had awoken in the river.

“You must have really been dreaming,” one said.

“This was not a dream,” Exequiel said, holding his arms out wide. He tried his hardest to describe the way the land had saved him, as if it had reached out with a hand and pulled him to the shore. He mimicked the action. The entire time he spoke, the youngest boy stood next to him and scraped at the shapes of mud still clinging to Exequiel’s legs.

He let them have their laugh again. Their happiness rushed forward after Exequiel finished talking. It was happiness brought on by a fear that they had almost lost their friend unknowingly. They were grateful he had come back and given them this story.

Even the youngest had stopped giving his attention to the flaking of mud and began to look around at the others and giggle as the boys, the older ones, laughed hard and slapped each other just as hard on the shoulder. Most trailed off, then.

Exequiel was left with Vin, the one in the group whom he had hoped to talk with alone. Vin, a few years older than Exequiel, was smaller, thinner in frame, but his eyes, sunken in their sockets, gave him the appearance of being even older, almost elderly. Each of the boys considered Vin the wisest of their lot.

Vin, in some ways, was like the old man Nestor. The others in the group had only laughed after Vin had started to. It was natural that Exequiel would report the truth of the encounter to Vin. Natural, too, that Vin would see through Exequiel’s initial story and wait for the others to leave, as he had, and then ask his mud-covered friend to tell him what, exactly, had happened in the beyond.

Exequiel wanted to cry at first, but he knew that Vin would punch him for his weakness. Vin put his arm around his friend’s smooth shoulder and walked him behind the nearest house. After the two peered around the corners for good measure and went back to crouching in an intimate huddle, Exequiel found he could speak as he had wanted to all along.

He told Vin about the old man Nestor and the men who were setting up camp not too far from the town. How above all else, it was up to Exequiel to find some guns—one would do—and bring them to the old man Nestor so he could tell the others they were free to move north along the river and into someone else’s life.

Vin listened and nodded in spots.

Exequiel was grateful to see his friend agree, though he didn’t know exactly what Vin was agreeing to. When Exequiel finished, he glimpsed his friend’s sunken eyes, their ruefulness.

“You know you can’t give them anything, right?” Vin said.

“I have to. They said so.”

“I see. And if they asked for you to suck their dicks, you would do that?”

Exequiel didn’t answer.

“Did you?” Vin said.

“Fuck no,” Exequiel said.

Vin nodded.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. The boy went on to explain how his grandfather had a pistol that had been broken years ago, long before Vin had been born, in fact. He knew where his grandfather kept the gun. It was in a tin box under the old man’s bed.

“I can’t give them that,” Exequiel said.

“You have to. They’ll go away, right?”

Exequiel considered the plan.

“Come with me then,” he said to Vin.

Vin shook his head. “I’ll get the pistol from my grandfather, but I’m not going with you. They told you not to tell anyone. It’s better this way.”

Exequiel looked at his friend, who immediately looked away.

“You’re scared,” Exequiel said.

“I’m not scared,” Vin said.

“You are.”

“You’re stupid.”

“At least I’m brave,” Exequiel said.

“You’re not brave,” Vin said.

It was almost dark when Vin made it back to Exequiel. Without any ceremony the pistol was handed off from the one boy to the next. Exequiel took the gun and sprinted for the same spot near the river where he had fallen asleep. It seemed like years ago. The mud was mostly gone from him. Only his hair still bore remnants of the dried mess.

He plunged