Antes | Oscar Diaz

august, september, october.

The summer Claudia met Oscar—again—was the one before freshman year  of high school. She had been living with her latest foster parents (the  third set in two years, the first two too crowded for her and her the  latest to be shuffled off to someone else) since September. That  December, she learned it was, in fact, too good to be true, her  foster mother's brother eyeing her up in a way that she would soon  realize was not abnormal to experience.

That didn't make it okay, but it would take her a little longer to realize that.

Towards  the end of summer, a little before the school year started, this  brother would come to visit again, and Claudia—fourteen, still a little  gangly, her hair past her waist because she didn't want to ask for money  for a haircut—wrapped herself in an oversized sweater she had inherited  from her late mother and slipped from the house soon after her foster  parents had gone to bed. She didn't have anywhere to go. Or at least it  felt that way.

She wandered Freeridge for a while, flinching when  men—grown men, young men, kids her age or thereabout—called out to her.  Over the last six months she'd come to no longer recognize herself in  the mirror, seeing less of her mother and more of the father she had  never met. Soon enough she found herself at the park, and it was there  that she curled herself into as small a shape as she could manage, and  settled in underneath a bench.

It wasn't anywhere near the  smartest thing she could have done, but Claudia tries to forgive herself  for these mistakes. The big ones, the small ones, the ones that affect  no one but her and the ones that matter to everyone. It's a learning  process. She was just a kid.

It's not like she slept very well,  anyway. Half-awake, mostly dozing, the sounds of the city never really  gone even in the dead of night. She remembers it like it were a dream,  the sound of Mexican Spanish—no voseo, not that she had anyone to use it  with in Freeridge—and the smell of cigarettes and mota. Men's voices.  The sensation of moving from half-asleep to suddenly painfully awake.  The way it made all the hair on her arms and neck stand, the way her  muscles clenched in preparation of running.

She'd lived in  Freeridge long enough to have some familiarity with the Santos. Knew  they didn't take too many Salvadorans, though that was probably because  most of them were out in La Avenida or Pico Union, where she had once  lived. She figured they were a little older than her, generally  speaking, but something about one or two of them seemed vaguely  familiar, even if she was curled up on the ground and far away enough  that they hadn't noticed her. Yet.

That familiar shape eventually  broke off with another one of them, and when they came her way her whole  body went stiff. Like something heavy had settled into every part of  her, limbs suddenly heavy. Like dead weight could help her right now,  two Santos—the outfit gave them away, really, Sureños not really running  these parts—capable of who-knows what—

One of them stopped. Took a  step towards the bench, where she had been hoping they'd miss her and  continue on their way. He leaned down a little. His face wasn't that of a  stranger's.

"What the..." the boy said. Claudia blinked.

The  voice was mostly familiar. The name was on the tip of her tongue. She  leaned up on her elbow, just a little bit, the ground cold even through  the sweater and long-sleeved shirt she was wearing.

"Hey," he said, "don't I know you?"

"What?" she said, like he  was the one out of line. All things considered, they both were. One  gangbanging, the other clearly impersonating a runaway. Claudia's always  been one to call Oscar out, though.

His homie laughed. "That how you talk to all the hynas, ese?"

He  rolled his eyes, and that's when Claudia remembered his name. That  expression was one she saw often, or used to, at least. Oscar Diaz, his  hair still curling over his ears like it had all through middle school.  Dimple when he smiled, real good at language arts, that one year they  had it together. Seventh grade, when she first moved to Freeridge.  Spelling bee champ. She nearly cried over a bad test, that first  quarter, and he quietly slipped her his own sheet so she could make  corrections without having to talk to nobody. She was still new back  then. She wondered if he remembered how he knew her.