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.
