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

be a little clay man, not a little clay angel, and for some reason this makes me sad all over again.

“Hey, Victor’s friend.”

I turn to the young man who’s trying to get my attention. I may be wrong, but I think it might be the one who had the photo and the flashlight last night.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any money?”

I shake my head.

“Any food?”

“Not anymore.”

“Coca? Cigarettes?”

“I don’t have anything,” I tell him, and hear the truth in my own words.

“Oh.” He heaves himself into a sitting position. “Are you staying or leaving?”

My eyes flick to Victor.

I need to go home. I’ve already put it off long enough. Now that I haven’t found Daniel, I need to get home to Mami. But I hate to leave my best friend like this. In the murky un-dark of the room I can see older bruises beneath the fresh purpling from yesterday’s beating.

There has to be a better way, I think.

I hate to leave him here battering himself for money and drinking to drown his feelings. Guilt has hollowed him out like four and a half centuries of mining have hollowed out the Cerro Rico. And like the mountain, if I put pressure in the wrong place, I’m afraid he’ll collapse entirely. No, I need to be smart about this. If I’m going to help Victor, I need more than good intentions.

“Leaving,” I tell photo boy. “I’m going home now. Will you tell him, when he wakes up, that I had to go home, but I’ll come back and visit again when I can?”

“Sure,” says the boy with a shrug. He doesn’t seem to care much one way or the other now that it’s clear there’s nothing in it for him.

I pull myself to my feet as quietly as I can, though that’s silly: if the noise of half a dozen people leaving for the day didn’t wake Victor, it’s unlikely that my quiet rustle will. The knee I twisted in the mine still aches in the mornings when I wake up, although once it loosens up, I can mostly walk normally now.

I limp out the door, down the dark, filthy hallway, and onto the street. When I step into daylight, I’m shocked to see the sun straight above me. In the darkness of that cinder-block box, without dawn to cue me, I slept through half a day! Angry at myself for wasting more time when I should have been home already, I hurry the best I can through the dingier sections of town, toward the areas I know and feel safe in. When I reach the familiar streets of San Cristobal, the miners’ neighborhood, I turn under the big stone arch and cross the bridge by the miners’ health center.

For a moment, I stare at the hulking red mountain before me. I let the big, heavy thoughts pile up in me: that I didn’t find Daniel, that Victor is hurting, that Mami and Abuelita will either be frantic with worry if they think I’m alive, or completely filled by misery if they think I’m dead. That I have no plan for any of us.

My feelings swirl through me like ashes on the wind.

Staring at my feet instead of the horizon, I start walking.

The difficult work of walking uphill sucks away my energy, and instead of the usual three hours it takes to walk to my house from Potosí, with my wonky knee today it takes me more than five. By the time I’m turning the last cliff corner, the long shadows of late afternoon stretch over everything.

When I finally see our little house and the light spilling out the open front door, I feel relief surge inside me, a hot pressure against the backs of my eyes. I’m home. I hurry my limping steps as much as I can. But when I get to the open door, I see not just Mami and Abuelita inside, but also César. That alone wouldn’t have confused me so deeply—César had been coming by every evening to update us on the search for Daniel, after all—but he’s not sitting and drinking a cup of coca tea or talking. Instead, he’s helping Mami and Abuelita pack all of our things into a pushcart.

Abuelita is facing away from me, folding our clothes and tying them into bundles. Mami and César are breaking down the bed frame. Mami’s face is lined and drawn, and César is moving slowly, as though he were carrying a heavy load or a great sadness. The two of them move smoothly around the small space, and it strikes me that, for so little time having known each other, they work together easily. When Abuelita turns around to place a bundle in the pushcart, she is the first to see me.

She makes a strangled sound and drops the clothes, covering her mouth with her hands. Mami and César spin to see if she’s all right, then turn to see what made her cry out. For a split second they all stare at me, faces pale and stunned. And then Mami is throwing her arms around me, sobbing hysterically, while Abuelita strokes my face with her knobby fingers. César pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Ana!” Mami sobs. “Mi hija! You’re alive! How are you alive? Oh, praise God!”

I hug her tightly, never wanting to leave this moment when I feel safe and loved and wanted.

Eventually the hugging ends.

“Here, sit here and tell us everything.” Mami makes me sit down on the tied bundle of folded clothes. “When you vanished the same day Daniel was found, it broke my heart.”

“Wait, what?” I’m glad I’m sitting down because suddenly it feels like the room is spinning around me. “You found Daniel? Where? Is he okay?” The questions tumble out, one after the other, so quickly I don’t even know what I’m asking.

“The night you disappeared, a tunnel collapsed at the mine,” César says, his rumbly voice cutting through my noise. “When we went to clear the rubble,