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

An odd feeling wraps around me when I arrive at school. Even though school won’t start until eight, there are already people there at a quarter to seven. Through the blue metal gate I can hear the shrieks of the little kids who arrived early, playing, and the subdued burble of older voices, waiting for their work day to start. It all seems surreal.

How can it be just another day?

I stand there, my hands splayed on the door, my forehead resting against the peeling blue paint, waiting for my racing heart to slow. Finally, I’m able to pick up a little rock and knock on the gate. The clanging brings Doña Inés, clutching her belly. I stare at it for a second, wondering how she feels about bringing a child into this world after what happened yesterday.

“Ana!” she says, opening the door for me to come in. “I heard about your father and brother. I’m so sorry. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. “Where’s Don Marcelino?”

She points to the teachers’ block.

I walk there without thanking her. It hurts to talk.

The doors of the teachers’ block are open to the courtyard: the school psychologist’s room, Don Marcelino’s office, the toilets. I push through the middle door. Don Marcelino is sitting behind his desk. There are papers piled everywhere on it, and a battered ancient laptop is open to one side, but he’s not looking at the papers or the laptop. He’s not preparing his morning speech. Instead, he’s resting his head in his hands, his glasses pushed up into his hair, as if he can’t bear to see the world. I know how he feels. I clear my throat. He startles.

“Ana,” he says. I see him slip a mask of I’m okay over his face. He pulls his glasses onto his nose and runs his fingers through his hair, official once again. “How is your mother?”

“My mother’s fine,” I say, and I wonder, having used the word fine twice in as many minutes, whether it is ever true.

“What can I do for you?” His eyes are kind. I take a deep breath.

“I was wondering if you would help us bring my papi down the mountain to the graveyard?” I pause for a moment. When he doesn’t answer immediately, I rush to clarify. “In your truck. Like yesterday?”

“Ana, I . . .” He trails off. Then he, too, takes a deep breath. “Yes. Tomorrow, before school, I will come by your house. It will be early . . . Will that give your mami enough time to arrange things?”

“Yes,” I say, relieved. “Thank you, Don Marcelino.”

When I turn to leave, he stops me.

“Ana.”

“Yes?”

“Will you stay?”

I think about a standard school day: saluting the flag, drinking my oatmeal, lessons on the cracked chalkboard, reciting answers, singing, practicing my dance for the upcoming festival. I think of Mami right now, sitting alone beside the lump of clay slowly turning to stone that used to be my father. I think of resting my head against the gate, working up the courage to even be able to knock on the door of normal.

“No,” I say finally. “I don’t think I can.”

Don Marcelino doesn’t say anything. His face is very sad.

I walk out of his office.

It is only when I’m at the fork in the road that I realize he might not have been asking about today, but about me continuing at school at all now that my father is dead. I’m just as glad this hadn’t occurred to me in Don Marcelino’s office.

I don’t know the answer.

I should go straight home, but instead I turn my feet in the direction of El Rosario. One night with no word was too much: I have to go back to the mine and see if they’ve found Daniel.

They’ll have cleared the debris from the mouth by now and they’ll have dug through to wherever he was trapped, and they’ll have given him water and coca and wrapped him in blankets, and he’ll be waiting for me.

I hurry my steps. When I get to El Rosario, work seems to be going on as usual. I run up to the first miner I see and ask him where César Jansasoy Herrera is. The man points at the shed to the left of the mine.

When I open the door, I see that it’s a toolshed, but with most of the tools having been pulled out to clean up yesterday’s mess, there’s space for a single rickety folding chair. César is slumped in the chair, head resting against the wall, helmet in his lap, sleeping the deep sleep of the exhausted. I hate to wake him, but I need to know. I shake his shoulder gently. César jolts awake.

“Oh! Ana.” He sits up and scrubs his hands over his face.

“Don César. Did you find my brother?”

César’s eyes are sad.

“Not yet,” he says simply. “I’ve had every man searching, but no one’s found him yet.”

“But what if he—” My voice hitches. “What if he’s trapped? What if he lost his way in the mine and couldn’t get out and is stuck down there somewhere, hungry and thirsty and running out of air, and can’t find his way to the surface?”

Spots dance in front of my eyes and I have to sit on the ground, light-headed at the thought. I press my hands against the floor as if I could feel Daniel’s heartbeat through the thousands of tons of rock between us. There’s a creak as César gets out of the chair, and I feel him lift me into it as if I weighed no more than a baby.

“Put your head between your knees.” César’s hands guide my shoulders. “Breathe.”

I follow his murmured instructions, and slowly my vision widens out to normal and I can sit up without feeling like I’m going to fall over.

César is kneeling in front of me, so we’re eye to eye.

“I promise you,” he says softly, “that we will comb through every pile of rock moved by