Flight Season: A Novel Read online

  “He’s thanking God for his freedom.”

  I wonder how long he had to sit in detention before being put on that airplane in handcuffs, but I don’t say that out loud. Vivi slips her hand into mine and squeezes. I know what she’s thinking. I know she’s worrying that we haven’t seen Ángel yet.

  I am too.

  A woman trips down the stairs, holding tight to a baby. A toddler clings to her side, looking down at the ground. When the woman sees a guy with a camera, she lifts her baby’s blanket to cover their faces, and she pulls the toddler close.

  Fifteen minutes pass, twenty. I’m trying not to stress about Ángel, and why he isn’t getting off the plane.

  “Are you sure this was his flight?” I ask.

  Vivi nods. “I confirmed with ICE, remember?”

  “Maybe he got an infection again and they needed to postpone.” I try hard to make my voice sound calm, but I’m pretty sure by the look on Vivi’s face, that it’s a fail. I grasp the chain above my head, staring out at the plane, telling myself not to freak out about all of the things I know could have gone wrong.

  The tarmac is empty. Everyone has moved on. We still wait.

  “What should we do?” Vivi asks, her voice wobbly.

  I shake my head, still staring hard at that plane door. And then somebody appears at the top of the stairs. No, not one person—two.

  “Is that…” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Vivi says. I turn around and sprint to the truck, grab the wheelchair from the back. Vivi and I break into a run, rolling the wheelchair toward Ángel, who is being carried down the stairs, cradled in the arms of an ICE officer.

  They stop halfway down the stairs, and the cop smiles and says something to Ángel. Ángel turns to see us, and a big, goofy grin lights up his gaunt face.

  He’s lost more weight. That’s not good.

  When they reach the tarmac, we push the wheelchair to meet them.

  “These are my friends,” Ángel tells him.

  “You have good friends,” the ICE cop says.

  He puts Ángel into the wheelchair, being more gentle than I would expect. But I’m not really thinking about that, because I’m too busy worrying.

  Vivi attacks Ángel with a hug. She’s crying, but I know she’s not sad. I know they’re tears of relief.

  “Where’s his oxygen?” I bark at the cop. “And his IV—please tell me he had IV fluids on the flight! And antibiotics? Is he on antibiotics?”

  My voice sounds pissed, but the cop replies calmly, “He had oxygen on the flight, but we can’t bring it off the plane. Once he leaves that transport, he’s no longer our responsibility. I’m sorry.”

  “S’okay, my vato,” Ángel says. “I’ll survive.”

  I clench my jaw tight, struggling not to go off on the cop, fighting to focus on Ángel instead. I lean in to check his pulse. “How you feeling, homie?”

  “Better now. Dude, I didn’t think I was gonna make it!”

  He smells terrible, like fear and body odor, like decay. But he sounds awesome, because he’s laughing in my ear.

  “We’ve got fries in the car—they’re a little cold,” I say, still holding on to his wrist.

  “McDonald’s?”

  “Yeah, homie! Only the best.”

  “What are you waiting for, vato?” Ángel asks, still smiling big. “Let’s get outta here.”

  Satisfied that his pulse is strong, I release the brakes on the wheelchair and push Ángel toward the car. Vivi starts to follow us, but the ICE cop stops her.

  “He’s a nice kid,” the cop tells her. I turn around, feeling pissed off again. But then I see him touch her forearm and hear him say, “I’m sorry for what he’s going through.”

  That’s unexpected.

  “Yeah,” she replies. “We are too.”

  “He told me about you two, and your mom, right?” The ICE cop looks across the tarmac toward me and Ángel. “You came all the way down here to be with him?”

  Vivi nods.

  “He’s lucky to have you,” the ICE cop says.

  If it were me back there, talking to that cop, I’d have a mouth full of choice words to spit at him. They’d probably start with my musings on why the hell a heart patient isn’t on IV antibiotics during a three-hour flight. But it’s not me, and I guess that’s a good thing.

  Because, Vivi? Here’s what she tells that cop: “I’m the lucky one,” she says, shaking her head. “I am so incredibly lucky to have Ángel in my life.”

  That girl is amazing. It’s wild, how she can see the good in anyone—from a scrawny heart patient to a burly cop. She even sees the good in me. She thinks she needs me around, and maybe she’s right. But I need her too. And I’m pretty sure that coming down here is the first of a thousand crazy-good things we’ll do together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  VIVI

  “IT FEELS LIKE FLYING.”

  Ángel murmurs the words through dry, cracked lips.

  “What did you say?” TJ asks, leaning forward so that his ear is beside Ángel’s lips.

  Ángel repeats the words, his voice not more than a soft breath. I don’t need to hear them again. I know exactly what he said.

  It feels like flying.

  I understand Ángel, and he understands me. That has been Ángel’s gift to me. In these last few days, he has heard what I needed to say. I know it’s irrational and impractical, but I think that my dad had something to do with this. And, even though Ángel and TJ laugh at me relentlessly about it, I still think my father’s here, watching from the papaya tree. I really do believe that my dad knows—he understands how desperately I regretted his last days, and he’s given me this chance to say good-bye to someone I love, and to do it well.

  TJ, Mom, and I—we are doing it well. We are here with Ángel, all three of us holding tight to him and letting him go.

  Since the moment Ángel arrived at the edge of this strange, enchanted lake, we have sat with him, cared for him, fed him, laughed with him. Almost every morning, we have carried him to the blue water so that he could dangle his feet from the dock. On moonless nights, we have taken him out on a sailboat to watch the stars. We have cried together at the overwhelming beauty of them. And on all those nights between, we have taken turns sitting beside his bed, watching the moon wax and wane, watching over Ángel as his heart slowly quits.

  Now he is leaving us, and I don’t want him to go. It seems so wrong that my heart is working this hard, filled to bursting with the pain of it, while his own heart slows to a stop. But Ángel isn’t fighting the end; he’s simply living it.

  I don’t know whether TJ was right, when he said I help Ángel feel less afraid, but I hope he was. I hope Ángel’s not afraid.

  In the papaya tree, the quetzal sings loud and clear, telling us what he knows we need to hear.

  Very good, very good.

  I look outside and watch our quetzal take to the air. His feathers unfurl as he flies across the lake, in all of his resplendent beauty. He calls out across the water.

  Very good, very good.

  I hope Ángel sings that song too. And he flies.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In part, this book is about learning how to walk with suffering, and how not to turn away from it. It’s about the extraordinary, beautiful relationships that we build when we love each other in all of our faults, and through all of our pain; when we stay present to suffering, even though it scares the hell out of us.

  For many years, I have worked with a small nonprofit called El Refugio. We support detained immigrants and their families. Often, there is very little we can do to make their situation better. We simply accompany people through their suffering, stand beside them in love, refuse to ignore it or turn our backs to it. This journey of accompaniment has changed my life, again and again. I am grateful to every one of the beautiful people I have encountered in my work with El Refugio. This story would not exist without you.

  One of the greatest joys of this project was
the chance to work with my oldest friend, Emily Arthur. For many years (decades?), Emily and I dreamed of making art together. We finally did it! Emily, your illustrations brought this story to life for me—each and every one of them was a perfect gift.

  Many thanks to the incredible professionals with whom I have the honor to work at St. Martin’s Press: Sara Goodman, Alicia Clancy, Brittani Hilles, DJ DeSmyter, Karen Masnica, and Kaitlin Severini. I am grateful every single day for my agent, Erin Harris, and my publicist, Megan Beatie. You have been fierce and loving advocates, consistent and creative. I appreciate you so very much!

  An unexpected pleasure that came with writing this story was learning to pay close attention to the lovely, intelligent, remarkable winged creatures that share our space in this world. I am grateful to Jennifer Ackerman, whose fabulous book The Genius of Birds opened my eyes to their abundant presence around me. I owe a great debt to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Sibley Guide to Birds. They were both constant companions during this project. I’m especially grateful to my nephews and birders-extraordinaire, Ander and Paul Buckley, whose love of birds is infectious (and who generously corrected a couple of egregious errors in the manuscript!).

  Enormous thanks to those kind and generous people who allowed me to pick their brains as I researched this story: PJ Edwards, Marcia Johansson, Marina Monteiro, Marilia Brocchetto, Robin Moscato, Alice Carrera Lopez, Wendy Tatter, and Dorothy Foster. And, to the wonderful friends and family who kept me from losing my mind while I wrote it: Les and Tanya Zacks, Juan and Anja Ramirez, Araceli Martinez, Cynthia Elizondo, Ana Maldonado, Holly Kroll Smith, everyone in the talented and super-fun Atlanta YA and MG writers’ group, and all the wonderful neighborhood friends who generously loaned me their kids to keep mine busy. Speaking of kids, my four are more of a joy with every passing year. Mary Elizabeth, Nate, Pixley, and Annie: I love you with every ounce of my being, and I adore hanging out with you. Thanks for being so supportive of my work.

  Elizabeth Friedmann (aka “mom”), Lee Taylor, and Mayra Cuevas: What can I say? I’d be absolutely adrift without you three. Thanks for keeping me moored.

  And to Chris, who chose to walk with me through my most profound suffering. It would have been so easy for you to turn away, but you never did. Thank you for loving me through the pain all those years ago and for loving me even more today. Vale? Vale.

  ALSO BY MARIE MARQUARDT

  The Radius of Us

  Dream Things True

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARIE MARQUARDT is a scholar-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and the author of Dream Things True and The Radius of Us. She has published articles and coauthored two nonfiction books about Latin American immigration to the U.S. South. Marie is chair of El Refugio, a nonprofit that serves detained immigrants and their families. She lives in a busy household in Decatur, Georgia, with her spouse, four children, a dog, and a bearded dragon.

  Visit her online at www.mariemarquardt.com, or sign up for email updates here.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Emily Arthur is a studio artist and professor of printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work can be found in museum collections, including the Denver Art Museum, the Tweed Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Weisman Art Museum. Her studio practice includes working with scientists who study endangered birds and threatened habitats. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Emily now lives in snowy Wisconsin, where she shares a home and studio with her partner and a long-haired shepherd dog. Emily and Marie met in the third grade of elementary school and have been close friends ever since. You can follow her at Dark Horse Press or at www.emilyarthur.org.

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  FLIGHT SEASON. Copyright © 2018 by Marie Marquardt. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.wednesdaybooks.com

  Designed by Steven Seighman

  Illustrations by Emily Arthur

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-10701-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-10702-2 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250107022

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: February 2018

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Vivi

  Chapter Two: TJ

  Chapter Three: Vivi

  Chapter Four: Ángel

  Chapter Five: Vivi

  Chapter Six: TJ

  Chapter Seven: Vivi

  Chapter Eight: Ángel

  Chapter Nine: Vivi

  Chapter Ten: TJ

  Chapter Eleven: Vivi

  Chapter Twelve: Ángel

  Chapter Thirteen: Vivi

  Chapter Fourteen: TJ

  Chapter Fifteen: Vivi

  Chapter Sixteen: Ángel

  Chapter Seventeen: Vivi

  Chapter Eighteen: TJ

  Chapter Nineteen: Vivi

  Chapter Twenty: Ángel

  Chapter Twenty-One: Vivi

  Chapter Twenty-Two: TJ

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Vivi

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Ángel

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Vivi

  Chapter Twenty-Six: TJ

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Vivi

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: TJ

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Vivi

  Chapter Thirty: Ángel

  Chapter Thirty-One: Vivi

  Chapter Thirty-Two: TJ

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Vivi

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Marie Marquardt

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright