the machine,” he teased.
She got her own, and an energy bar, and sat down to eat it. “How was school?” she asked.
“Great! I may get to go out for soccer in the spring!”
“You like soccer?” she asked. “It’s my favorite sport! What’s your team?”
“Madrid Real,” he said at once.
She grinned. “Mine’s Mexico. The World Cup comes up next year. I can hardly wait! We’re going all the way this time, idiot referees notwithstanding. Last World Cup, we got penalties we never should have had, because one of the referees made bad calls.”
“I saw that,” Tonio confessed. He cocked his head. “You don’t root for the American team?”
“Well, it’s like this,” she said. “My great-great grandmother was one of Pancho Villa’s band during the Mexican War, back in the early part of the twentieth century.”
“Really?!”
She laughed. “I know, I don’t look it, do I?”
He shook his head. “No. You don’t.”
“Well, there are lots of blonde women in northern Spain. That’s where my ancestor came from. She married an American and they lived in Mexico. She was a character. She flew planes, drove race cars, they even said she was a spy for a while.”
“Gosh.” He was impressed. “Our people came from Spain originally, too,” he confessed. “But our family came to America from Argentina.”
She caught her breath. “Argentina,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve read about it for years. The gauchos. The pampas. The dances!”
“Dances?”
“The tango. It was almost invented in Argentina,” she said. “It’s the most beautiful dance I’ve ever seen.”
Tonio almost blurted out that his dad was a past master of that dance, and many others. But he didn’t want to talk about his dad. Very often, when people knew his father was in law enforcement, they started backing away. He didn’t want to lose Sunny when he’d only just found her.
“When I grow up, I’ll learn it, just so I can dance with you,” Tonio teased.
“Gee, by the time you’re grown, I’ll be walking with a cane,” she teased back.
“Will not!”
“I’m twenty-three,” she pointed out. “Old, compared to you.”
“I think senior citizens are very cool,” he replied with twinkling eyes. “So I’ll keep your cane polished and repaired. How’s that?”
She smiled from ear to ear.
“There was another gang shooting last night,” he said after a minute.
“Another one?!” She didn’t stop to question how he knew. She looked at him worriedly. “You don’t have gang members where you go to school, do you?” she asked. She was concerned, and it showed.
Tonio felt warm inside, seeing that. “No, of course not,” he said at once, lying because she seemed really worried about him. “Just regular kids, like me.”
She let out a breath. “Thank goodness!” She finished her coffee. Her eyes were sad. “That Rado,” she said with quiet venom, “should be locked up and the key thrown away. He’s gotten away with more murders than he’s even been charged with.”
His heart jumped. “He has?”
She looked down at her coffee cup. “It was his gang that killed my mother and my little brother,” she said, and then regretted saying it out loud. She grimaced. “You don’t tell anybody that, okay?” she added worriedly. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
“I never tell anything I know,” he replied. “They killed your family?” he added, shock in his voice.
She nodded. “They were after the former tenant, who’d sold them out. They didn’t know he’d moved.” She swallowed down the memory. It was horrific. “That didn’t bring my family back, of course. He and the boy who did the shooting were arrested. The boy did time. Rado had a convenient alibi. They couldn’t break it.”
Now he understood that sadness in her, that showed even when she smiled. He could only imagine how it would feel, if his own family had been shot to death in front of his eyes.
“Do you have anybody else?” he asked.
She managed a smile. “I had an elderly aunt, but she died two years ago. I’ve got nobody, now.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, and he smiled at her. “You’ve got me. I’ll be your family.”
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over. She grabbed a napkin and dashed them away, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “If I offended you...”
“No! I’m not offended.” She swallowed, hard. “It was the nicest thing anybody’s said to me, in a very long time.”
He sighed, and smiled, relieved.
She stuffed the napkin into her pocket. “I’ve got to go or I’ll be late for my shift.” She paused as she started to leave. “Do you have family?”
“It’s just me and my dad,” he said reluctantly.
“At least you have somebody,” she pointed out. She hesitated. “But you’ve got me, too. If I’m your family, you’re my family, too. Right?”
He cocked his head. He grinned from ear to ear. “Right!”
She laughed. “Okay. See you.”
“See you.”
* * *
One of the nurses on duty had seen the story about the gang shooting on the news, but it was only a flesh wound. Police had been at the hospital to take the boy into custody, but his companions rushed him out the door before the police could get near him. The name he’d given was an alias. They noticed tattoos on him. Wolves’s heads. Retaliation, probably, for the dead Serpiente gang member. The nurse said they were still hunting for the victim.
Sunny worried about Tonio. He was just the right age for Rado to want to recruit him. She didn’t know what she could do to protect him, but she’d do anything she could. She was already fond of him.
* * *
Two days later when she came on shift early, Tonio was in the canteen again, waiting for her. One of the nurses noticed this and teased Sunny about her young gentleman friend, only to be informed that he was her family. The nurse knew her background and understood. She just smiled.
After her shift, Sunny was thinking about Tonio as she went down the hall. She was almost due for her days off, so she wouldn’t see him again right away.
