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

direction will lead me to my new home. The other will take me down and around the Cerro Rico, to Yenni’s house. I know I should go help Abuelita, but for just a few moments, I’m desperate to talk to someone whose life is working out and breathe air not laced with rock dust and regrets.

I turn left and start downhill to Yenni’s.

I have the parcel in my hands and a smile on my face when the door opens, but it’s not Yenni who answers the door, it’s Santiago.

“Ana!” He breaks into a beaming smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I—I’ve come to see Yenni,” I say. “I’ve brought the clothes she loaned me.”

“Oh, yeah, I washed your stuff for you too,” he says, pointing to a corner where Papi’s suit and my clothes are clean and folded, the helmet stacked neatly on top. “But Yenni’s not here. She’s working.”

I could smack myself. Of course Yenni’s not sitting at home waiting for me to return her second-favorite leggings. It’s Thursday. She has a good job in the city, working weekdays. So much has happened that it’s hard to believe we’re still in the same week that she found me. On Monday I was here, and she left early for work, and Santiago . . .

“What are you doing home? Shouldn’t you be in school?” I feel like a hypocrite, but I ask anyway.

Santiago makes a face.

“I’m sick,” he informs me. “Papi wouldn’t let me go today.”

I reach out and press my hand against his forehead, a reflex after so many years of worrying about Daniel.

“Stop it! One big sister is enough.” Santiago swats my hand away, but not before I feel how hot he is. He’s not faking it: he really is sick.

“Get into bed,” I say, ignoring his sass. “We can talk with the door closed and you lying down.”

Santiago climbs into bed without too much of an argument, a clear sign from any young boy that he’s not feeling well, and lies against the pillows with a grumble. I put Yenni’s folded clothes at the end of the bed.

“Was your mami happy to have you home?” he asks.

“Yes.” I smile.

While Santiago settles back into his blankets, I tell him how, after my adventures in the city, I got home to Mami and how I’m suddenly living in a new house with a man who used to be my boss but is now my stepfather. “I have a new stepsister too,” I tell him, “a little younger than you.”

“And what about your brother?” Santiago mumbles, tired after even that short time out of bed. His papi was right to make him stay home.

“Yenni thought she found him for me.” I get up and get him a glass of water from the barrel outside. “But it wasn’t the right boy. They did find my brother, though, back in the mine, while I was gone. You need to drink,” I say, holding the cup out to him.

Santiago makes another face.

“Now you know what it felt like to be me the day you pulled me out of the cave.”

I’m rewarded with a smile. He takes a sip of water.

“Happy?” he grouses.

“Soooo happy,” I joke, putting on a big clown smile.

Santiago snorts and curls up in the blankets. “Well?” he asks once he’s settled, showing I haven’t managed to distract him.

“The boy in town wasn’t my brother,” I start, “but he was a friend. He’s in trouble . . .” I trail off, not sure how to explain Victor’s situation to a sunny nine-year-old. “And my brother, they found him too, but he’s hurt. Really hurt. I . . . I wish I could make things better for both of them.”

Santiago hears the catch in my voice. “But . . . ?”

I want to pour all my worry and heartache out at someone’s feet—anyone’s feet, even Santiago’s—to not feel so alone with my problems. But seeing his young, feverish body hunched in the bed, I refuse to give him one more thing to carry.

“But life is hard and people are complicated,” I say, “and I’m not sure how.”

Santiago nods, as if that makes perfect sense.

I hesitate for a moment, but then I force the words out, admitting the terrible thing I overheard in the middle of the night. “And they’re talking about sending Daniel away, down to the lowlands, to some cousin of César’s.”

Santiago considers me for a long moment.

“Sometimes people can’t stay with you,” he says softly, “but they still love you and they’re still okay.”

I glance at him, startled, but Santiago is looking at his hands, twisting the blanket between them.

“My mami left us to go work in the capital because she couldn’t stand it up here anymore,” he says.

“Oh.” I put my hand over his. “I’m sorry.” I had wondered where their mother was.

Santiago shrugs.

“I was little,” he says, dismissing the old pain. “Yenni says she hates Mami for leaving us. But Yenni goes down to Potosí to make money at the posada and only comes home on weekends. She says she’s trying to get enough so that she can get a little place in the city and I can come with her. But most of the time I’m here, and she’s gone, just like Mami.” He sighs. “I mean, I get it. It’s bad up here. Sometimes the only way to survive is to get away.”

I have no idea what to say to all that. I know how it feels to lose someone. My life used to be like a three-legged stool: I was supported, in different ways, by Mami and Papi and Abuelita. Then, suddenly, Papi was gone. Now it feels like my whole life is wobbling, unbalanced, likely to tip over at any moment and crash into a million pieces. Santiago’s mother and sister have gone to work in different cities. My papi is dead and my brother is being sent away. We’re both being left behind here.

I take Daniel’s little angel out of my pocket, where I put it this morning, and run my fingers over its cracked edges. Just