Sonoran summers:

Eight lanes of pavement boil and pop across the Mexico–United States border, and eight lanes of vehicles crawl slower than a walk, halting for several minutes at a time. Their passengers cool themselves down by running the heat with the windows up. They roll them down only for vendors walking fearlessly among them, selling ice water, claiming it is clean. Shrubby trees dry up tawny and crisp all through the unbearably blue-sky day. Then the sun sets without warning and it becomes almost chilly. Fires flicker beneath overturned plow disks filled with oil, a technique borrowed from Cantonese ex-patriates, as the back fat of pigs fries and melts from the flesh.

It was at the end of a summer like this when De Anza Junior High School came back in session and Marcos Bejarano disappeared.

Marcos’ family came from Tijuana in kindergarten, and nobody remembered when the visit had become permanent. In quiet migrant fashion, they kept to themselves. Marcos was a talented midfielder and the first sixth grader to grow a moustache. These feats set him apart from his peers in mystery transcending speech, shrouding him in his own glory. His wisdom arbitrated in disputes of petty justice and offenders deferred to his judgment; the student body unanimously agreed that his desires would determine the activity of the day. Marcos spoke little, but there was a certain eloquence to his movements and silences.

“Have you seen Marcos?” the cafeteria buzzed that afternoon. His absence was as palpable as his presence had been—already it was unsure how to proceed without a leader. At first, no one knew where he had gone. Then someone said that Marcos had been killed. It was a dirt-biking accident, they whispered, in the desert, near where Lucasfilm had abandoned pieces of Star Wars set. No, it was outside of San Diego, a car crash. No, it was the dirt-bike after all—the wheels had wiped out on a jump and Marcos was crushed. The official story was disputed until Milene Gonzalez remembered that her brother saw it happen. She enjoyed several days of celebrity while sickly sweet, slightly jealous girls begged for more details, and boys who had known Marcos from the soccer field or the lunch line paid her more attention. But suddenly they all knew all about it—everyone had always known, with the high sad mysticism of adolescence, that Marcos was dead.

Students shuffled aimlessly through the halls like slow-motion ping pong balls. Each hour presented a threat to the ordered camaraderie that had existed under Marcos—the field was lawless, the players unassigned, the hierarchy unclearly defined. When Carlos Campos was accused of cheating at kickball, there was no authority he could be brought to for justice, and the game necessarily devolved into chaos. The earth became transient; the clouds of dust rising from passing cars were tinged with hostility.

They found Hector Obregón throwing up in the bathroom. “No one I know ever died before,” he apologized.

Months passed. The lemons ripened at Christmas and flowered again for Easter, before another dead, hungry summer and the stalking of the lobo. Aquila, the Eagle, returned glittering to his battle with the serpent in the stars.

***

Danny Ramirez hoisted himself out of the window onto the flat stucco roof, trying not to drop any of the cans clutched haphazardly to his chest.

J.J. Garcia watched him with interest. “Where’d you get those?” he asked.

“From Peter.”

“Well, where’d he get them?”

“Hey, I don’t know, OK?” Danny pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket. He stuck one in his mouth, white end first, then flipped it around. He fumbled with the lighter for almost a full minute, but finally managed it without having to break his brooding expression. Hector looked away, as if witnessing something indecent.

“Are you gonna do FFA?” he asked, face set toward the horizon.

“Maybe,” Danny said. It came muffled through his teeth clamped around the cigarette. “Last year, when we paid for Suffolk lambs, Mr. Fletcher went gambling and stole some sheep from some farmer.” Besides Milene, Danny was still the shortest person in the class, but he tried to look majestic, standing in the harsh white moonlight casting shadows across his face.

“Te vieron la cara,” J.J. said wisely, picking up one of the beers.

“Hey, you think I could stop him?” Danny argued. He started to cough and got angrier. “Just shut up, OK?”

Hector inspected one of the cans that had rolled over to him. “Do you just open it like a coke?”

“Man, you never seen a beer before or something?” J.J. jeered. He opened his can with a satisfying hiss and apparent fearlessness.

“It sounds like a coke,” Hector said doubtfully. He and Danny opened theirs. Danny spat out the half-burnt cigarette and stamped out the embers. They sat down on the ledge, avoiding each other’s eyes.

J.J. was the first to interrupt. “A year ago today,” he said. Danny and Hector nodded. “Do you guys, like, think about it a lot?”

“Yeah,” Hector said. “I got so scared, I’m never going near a four-wheeler again.”

“Cause your mami won’t let you,” Danny said. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t anyone else die the whole time, huh?”

“He was just that kind of guy,” J.J. said. “You know how he just kinda looked?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hector said eagerly. “I always knew there was something special with him.”

“That’s true,” Danny agreed. He took several gulps of his beer and set it down, hiccupping.

Hector belched and shifted uncomfortably. “I heard Yasmin gave her dog tequila at the party last night, and it died.”

“Man, you just believe anything, huh?” J.J. said. But nobody drank any more.

They dangled their legs in the warm breeze, watching the lights of houses gradually switch off in surprise. The beer rose and settled in their brains. A neighbor began playing guitar; farther away, a coyote wailed. The music and the coyote became one in their mourning and seemed to meld with the sad and beautiful light of the moon.

J.J. shivered. “Your parents know we’re up here?”

Danny rubbed at the scar the cigarette had smeared in the stucco. “Probably.”

***

The next morning school convened again, but this time at the public high school represented by a hideous clip art bulldog. Its only claim to fame was a successful varsity soccer team composed of Mexican men in their twenties. The day promised to be like all those that came before: vatos smoking in the parking lot, fresh graffiti of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the bricks, dry cracked hands tearing and bleeding at the lift of a pencil. Then around eleven a.m. came the vague sensation of disturbance. It started lower, in the stomach, and wormed its way into the heart, forcing them to take notice. They all distrusted their senses and tried to turn away, but it insisted and would not be ignored. A cool fear rippled across the students in shudders and side-eyes—nobody was willing to admit the impossible, to ask another if they saw the same contradiction.

The apparition was taller and darker than Marcos had been, and somehow quieter. Yet there was something undeniably familiar about the gait and the jeans worn thin at the seams, exposing an inch of ankle above sneakers rubbed colorless with age. Between periods, the phantom slipped from class to class. Meager glimpses only tantalized the onlookers and caused them to catch at their breath. The school endured hours of agitation, waiting for the final bell, then poured out of the doors like a burst dam. A silent circle formed around the stranger in an uneasy, unconscious dance.

Marcos hung his head. “We were in Salinas,” he mumbled.

“Ai,” Hector accused. “You died in the desert. Oscar saw you.”

“My family went to work with my Tío Chuy.”

“No, I swear, man,” Hector panicked. “It’s like, I know that you died, like I knew it inside of me.”

Marcos wriggled with embarrassment. “I helped them on a farm.”

A moment of silence.

They felt the sun creeping overhead in its long and lonely arc. Marcos toed a picture in the silt. The circle continued to move around him, closing in as if for the kill, their haunches standing rigid, ready to tear him to pieces. In that moment it was possible to understand how the dogs of Actaeon had turned on their master.

Marcos lifted his head and met their eyes. They drew back in awe. It was their turn to feel the hot shame spreading red over their faces and their shoulders limp with guilt. He turned and parted the crowd wordlessly, walking home as they followed him with their gaze. The cruel heat of August stretched his shadow toward the east.