“Whoeee-ahhhh!” Esteban’s fist connected with his face.
Gidiot let me go and staggered back. He put his hand to his mouth and spit out a tooth. Gideon Benedict St. John looked like a pink-gummed, gap-toothed old lady. Then he let out a scream that was heard clear across Casa Paloma.
“If you can’t take, don’t give,” said Esteban.
I’m pretty sure it was some lost-in-translation line from a martial arts movie. It didn’t matter. Esteban didn’t have time to elaborate. Victor Madera found us. He took one look at the situation and grabbed Esteban by the collar.
“You little punk!”
Esteban twisted and turned in Victor’s grasp as the man dragged him away. “Touch her again and I’ll see you in hell,” he said to Gideon.
He was going all out with the movie dialogues. If I wasn’t so terrified for him, I would have laughed.
The adults started to gather and everyone was fussing over Gidiot. They were trampling all over Esteban’s strawberries.
It wasn’t fair!
I chased after Victor and Esteban, but they were nowhere in sight. I gave up and trudged back up to my room.
Esteban had been there, probably before the party started. He’d left me a present on the bed. A perfect paper giraffe.
I picked it up and marveled at his dexterity. When Esteban was little, he didn’t have many toys, so MaMaLu taught him origami. He couldn’t afford to buy me fancy gifts, so he created whole worlds out of paper—magical, wondrous animals we’d only seen in books, or heard about in the stories that MaMaLu made up: dragons and lions and camels, and something that looked like a kangaroo, but had a horn sticking out of its nose. A kangaroceros?
“Skye?” My father knocked on my door. “Want to tell me what happened with Gideon?”
“Not really.” I picked up the gangly giraffe and propped its neck up.
“Is that from Esteban?”
I didn’t reply.
“Let me see.” He took it from me and examined the gold leafed calligraphy on the paper.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It is. It’s also from a rare book that’s missing from my collection. I know you’re friends with him, but he just knocked Gideon’s tooth out, and now he’s taken a book from my library? That’s theft, Skye.”
“He didn’t take anything! I gave it to him.”
“Really?” My father put the giraffe back down. “Then you’ll know what color the cover is.” He looked at me expectantly.
“Dad . . .” I was on the verge of tears, torn between my father and my friend. “Esteban probably thought it was just a dusty old book that no one would miss. I know he would never take it. He just borrowed it because he likes making me things out of pretty paper.”
My father was quiet for a long time. “You’re so much like your mother.” He ran his thumb over the locket I was wearing. “She had me wrapped around her finger too.”
“Tell me the story of how you met.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
He laughed. “Well, I had just graduated from college, not a penny to my name, but I wanted to see the world and found myself in Caboras with a few of my buddies. On our last night, we crashed a wedding and there she was: Adriana Nina Torres, the most beautiful girl in the world. I told her I was a successful entrepreneur, a friend of the groom’s. She called security on me and had me thrown in the lock up for impersonating a guest at her brother’s wedding. I knew it was love at first sight when she came to bail me out the next day.”
“I wish I knew her.” I never got tired of hearing their story, of how he had to prove himself to win her family over.
“You were the most precious thing in her life, Skye. I couldn’t protect her, but I promise it will be different for you. I’m almost there. Just a little longer and we’ll be free.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew he missed my mother, and he loved me even though he was always away.
