Chapter 06
The Shoe-Stealing Mud-Sucking Hole
“Did Rafael call for you?”
“I am here.
I take you.
Where you need go?”
“Balboa High School.”
“I know where that is.
I take you.
What time you need there by?”
I had been told the school was six minutes away.
I had twenty minutes before my meeting.
That felt like luxury.
“Six minutes,” I said. “I have time.”
“You know how we go?”
“I know it’s close.”
“You know the way? I take you safe. I get you there.”
I do not think he is Rafael-approved.
I paid anyway and climbed into the cab… certain I was being overcharged—and equally certain I was being paranoid.
He promised to pick me up after the interview.
I nodded politely, already calculating how much more the return trip would cost.
By the time he pulled to the curb in front of Balboa High School, I was convinced I had made a foolish decision, wasted money, and I was about to be late anyway.
The front doors were visible across a stretch of unbelievably green grass.
Students sat along the sidewalks but not on the lawn.
I noticed the sign only after I stepped off the concrete.
KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
It didn’t look muddy.
It didn’t look newly planted.
It looked faster.
I was late.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Six enormous strides.
I wasn’t strolling.
I was moving fast enough to feel efficient, almost proud of the shortcut.
Then my leg betrayed me.
I was down.
One leg behind me, one leg just… missing.
It’s not there.
My knees were in the grass, but my back was flat on the ground—and half of my right leg was missing just below the knee.
My leg has been erased.
That’s not right.
It doesn’t hurt.
If my leg were gone, it would be hurting.
A burst of voices surrounded me—laughter, alarm, Spanish, English—none of it useful.
I twisted, trying to sit so I wouldn’t fall completely forward.
My other foot held, but barely.
“Miss! Don’t move!”
“Your leg is gone!”
“¡Tremedal!”
“You going to teach us?”
“You can’t read a sign!”
I shifted my weight, relieved for half a second that the ground beneath me felt solid.
“Pull your knee,” I said to my own arms.
“I’m late. Just get yourself up.”
The voices got louder, overlapping, impossible to follow.
Then one voice was isolated from the crowd.
A boy stood just across from me, but on the sidewalk.
He was not on the grass but leaning over it toward me.
He wasn’t laughing.
He wasn’t yelling.
He was watching my feet.
“Miss,” he said, steady and calm, “you not safe there.”
One more tug, I freed my leg!
“Sluuuurrrp.”
But my shoe had vanished.
“The ground ate your shoe, Miss!” Someone shouted with delight.
I leaned forward and reached down, determined to retrieve it.
My arm sank to the elbow into Panama.
“Now you have more mud!” another voice announced helpfully.
“Corndog. Mud down my leg, mud on my arm. I gotta get out of this grass now.”
The calm voice again: “Listen to me. Not them. Me.”
I looked at him. He pointed—not at me, not at the building—but behind me.
“That way is shorter,” he said, indicating the direction I had been heading.
“But uncertain.”
The word was careful. Deliberate.
“You walk back. Same steps. Only same steps.”
I looked at him and stood.
His ground was the sidewalk.
Mud was still dripping from my shin and fingertips.
The boy didn’t move closer.
He’s obeying the sign.
The shouting began again as I stood.
This time, the boy stood out from the others.
“No,” he said. “You step where you stepped before. Look.”
He counted, pointing with his finger, marking the depressions my own footprints had left.
“One, two, three, four, five, six. You step there, nowhere else.”
I listened to his direction.
I stepped only where the impressions said it was okay.
I stepped onto the sidewalk.
I stood there.
My right leg was covered in brown-black muck.
I was holding one coated arm away from my body.
Relief.
I was exhaling but not inhaling.
He nodded once. “You are safe now. Stay off grass. Look for signs.”
I asked his name.
“Angel,” he said, already turning back to his friends. “I go now, not cool to talk to you.”
He paused and looked back at me with one last piece of knowledge:
“Panama can swallow you whole.”
I walked toward the building.
One shoe was missing.
My dignity was missing entirely.
But I was upright.
I didn’t know it yet, but Angel was not finished with me.
Daniel's Den 