Don't Go by L.J. Breedlove (series like harry potter txt) 📕

no, they started learning Spanish in college and went on study abroad trips over Christmas break to Mexico to improve their accents.

“This is a cat,” she said, pointing to the words and to the picture of a cat. “He is wearing a hat.” They all giggled, and she laughed with them. Then the children took turns saying the words. And then back to Spanish. She wished she had books with written Spanish. She wondered if she could write the Spanish into the book. But she hated to deface the books the parents took such care with.

They might not understand.

Maybe she did them a disservice. But she’d also noticed that if they weren’t out in the fields, they listened to her with the children, mouthing the words with them.

Her heart broke.

If she ever got her life sorted out? This is what she would do. She would teach in the fields so that all who wanted to learn could.

The older children, who often picked fruit if there was a demand for their labor, would read in their own books after supper. She helped them with the words they didn’t understand, and sometimes whole concepts.

Occasionally whole books. Why would you ask a migrant teen to read The Great Gatsby? Maybe she was selling them short, she thought, watching the boy struggle with it. But really?

Tutoring them all in math was more challenging. She could do the math, even advanced math and she liked it, but teaching it was different. But the students treated her with respect, and they tried. Even in the few days she’d been with them she had come to adore them.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d travel with them. She needed to make plans. No one was coming to rescue her. She could rescue herself. She had made her son safe. She was safe. And she had a job that put food on her plate, and a roof over her head at night. There was an election coming. And things would change.

Nothing lasts forever. Not the good. Not the bad.

She reminded herself of that, as she tried to find sleep in the tent with two teenage girls who giggled late into the night.

Saturday was a day like any other day. Workers went to work at after a dawn breakfast of tortillas and beans — again. There had been chicken with the tortillas and beans for supper the night before. And the night before that. It was the way of things, Abuelita had explained. During the harvest, they made a big pot of beans, and if they had it, a big pot of rice. Whatever could be added to them, they did. And then they made tortillas. For supper? Chicken was cooked, or sometimes pork. It was cheap, it was easy to make at the campsites. If it got boring? Well, then, you weren’t very hungry, were you? And there would be time for celebration and fancy cooking when they reached Michoacán for the holidays. Oh, the foods that they made then, she would see.

Teresa had no plans on leaving the country, although Abuelita did paint a picture of Christmas worth thinking about. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad if she went on to Mexico, she thought. Maybe not to Morelia itself, but to the valleys and small villages like the ones these people were from. Maybe they’d welcome her as a teacher.

But she had no papers for Mexico either, she thought glumly. She couldn’t cross the border legally in either direction. There were alternatives to that. There always were. And Vic Ruiz had been a big help. She had resources, she reminded herself.

She would not think about that. She helped with breakfast, and then settled in to teach math to the little ones while the older ones were tracking their journey on a map, and doing research online through a cell phone to learn about the history of each place they’d been. Teresa asked them questions periodically to make sure that they learned of each region’s Latino heritage as well as the simplistic white heritage the book taught them. She thought of Miguel, her friend at the newsroom, who had been Hispaño, whose family had been in the California valley before statehood. She told the children about him. They were amazed.

She was being subversive, she thought gleefully. Who knew what would happen? She would plant the seeds.

She caught the eye of Abuelita, who smiled and nodded her approval. Teresa grinned and bent back over the math worksheets the teaching box had included for the little ones.

Chapter 16

8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020, OHSU Psychiatric Clinic — Ryan had planned to take Rafael into the office with him during the afternoon but had second thoughts after Black had shown up there the day before. So, he’d spent the day with Rafael, leaving the office to Emily and Cage. They had always been capable of being EIC, they just lacked confidence. Now, he could hear the confidence building in both of their voices. It pleased him.

He and his son had played in the back yard together, eaten lunch, taken a nap, and then read a book. Rafael had fallen asleep right after supper. Ryan carried him upstairs and put him to bed. J.J. followed him up the stairs. “I’ll do homework up here,” the younger man said. “With both doors open I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”

“Thanks J.J.,” Ryan said, touched at his thoughtfulness. “How did you do with going back?”

“Good,” he said. “I’m getting the hang of the bus route from here. And I met Carroll for lunch yesterday down on transit mall. They took me to a Pho shop. That’s good!”

Ryan felt like he ought to give him some big brotherly advice of about his unlikely friendship with Carroll, but what could he say? And what wouldn’t be completely hypocritical?

J.J. looked at him and laughed. “You’ve got the same expression on your face that Cage gets when Carroll’s name comes up. I do it just to watch. It’s OK,