The midday sun shone down on the empty lot and the dozen ragged boys racing back and forth across it. Dark brown and black faces, with thin bodies barely clothed in worn t-shirts and shorts, yelled and cheered as they kicked a bright white soccer ball about a makeshift field. Two broken halves of an old cinder block marked the goal on one end of the lot. A broken lamp and an empty soda can a few yards apart marked it on the other end. Behind that goal a torn and soiled old mattress dumped on the lot was propped up to stop the ball from rolling into the road. Old abandoned buildings, boarded up and padlocked, bordered two other sides of their field and the last boundary was the sidewalk that ran along the potholed, untrafficked street. This was the old downtown, in an area between Rua do Triumpho and Rua da Vitória named Santa Efigênia . But people who saw it as a crime-ridden, decaying neighborhood filled only with vagrants, beggars and thieves called it by its common derisive name of Boca do Lixo, ‘the mouth of garbage’.
None of the homeless boys owned shoes. Though they had cleared most trash and debris from the dirty asphalt, timeouts were allowed to pull broken glass from cut soles before the action began again.
At the edge of the lot, a young girl sat on a patch of dirt.next to the cracked concrete sidewalk. Once decades ago the dirt was planted with grass or flowers but now held only a few stubborn weeds and the tall sickly eucalyptus tree whose trunk she leaned against. The only remaining tree on the block provided a bit of shade in the December heat. She was a small girl, slim and firm with a tan skin fairly lighter than the other children. Her hair was dark black, cropped short in a boylike cut that she preferred. Her eyes were bright blue with a wide and wary look. Like the boys she wore a threadbare cotton shirt and her faded blue shorts had tattered cuffs and a torn pocket. Like the boys she lived here because she had nowhere else to go.
The girl had lived in Santa Efigênia as long as she could remember. She didn’t return to a warm, safe home to sleep each night. She slept here on the streets. Her bed was the hard concrete of a hidden alley, with a piece of cardboard to lay on and an old beach towel found at the park as her blanket. She had waited by the bench for an hour to see if someone would come back for the towel. No one had so she thought it was okay for her to take it. But she didn’t steal it.
The city of Sao Paulo was a rich, vibrant city of towering skyscrapers, fine museums and historical architecture. Its wealthier residents enjoyed fine dining, fine music and expensive fashions. But that was not the Sao Paulo the young girl knew about. She didn’t know Sao Paulo was South America’s largest city with twenty million inhabitants filling its sprawling avenues, but she knew there were thousands of children like herself sleeping on the crowded dirty streets. She didn’t know the Jardims neighborhood where well to do families lived protected in spacious mansions, but she knew the dangerous slums where poor people lived a desparate hand to mouth existence. She didn’t know about elegant apartments in the tall highrise towers that crowded the horizons, but at night she could look up past the dark torn down warehouses and boarded storefronts and see their millions of faraway lights. All those lights of Sao Paulo were a world beyond the world she lived in.
In her hands the girl held a paperback book with frayed yellowing pages and creased cover. As she read, her mouth silently formed the sounds, slowing to figure out longer words. Perched on top of the open book was a small bird with glossy dark blue wings and a white front. At the end of her outstretched legs, two more of the little swallows sat on her right foot.
“Turn, Spero. Turn,” the young girl coaxed, and the little bird poked at the page on the right. Holding the edge in it’s beak, it hopped along the top and brought the page to the other side. The girl’s quiet laughter was interrupted by an “Ow!” as she instantly bent down to shoo away the other bird that had sharply pecked her big toe. She heard the whoosh of the soccer ball as it passed by where her head had just been.
“Sorry, Marissa!” called a younger boy who chased after the ball, aware that his stray kick had almost hit her face.
“Thank you, Fides,” Marissa called to the bird that had just fluttered to the branches above her.
The little boy came running back and tossed the ball to the others, then stopped by Marissa.
“How come you’re not cheering for our team?” he asked.
“I cheered for two hours, Tomas,” she replied, smiling. “My yell’s worn out.”
“Oh you just wanna read!”
“What’s the score?” she asked so he wouldn’t think she was ignoring them.
“A lot to a lot! You know I can’t count that high,” Tomas replied.
“Who’s winning?”
“We are!” he exclaimed with confidence. “We always win. We’re Sport Club da Luz!”
Tomas could be a hundred goals behind and would still believe his team was winning. Marissa knew reality was not allowed to intrude on what he wanted to pretend.
“Even the lady was watching us,” Tomas bragged.
“What lady?” she asked.
“The lady in the long dress,” he said and pointed behind the tree at the corner across the street. Marissa peeked around the tree but saw no one.
“She’s gone now but she was there,” he insisted. Now he was even making up pretend spectators.
“She probably went to bring back all her friends,” Marissa pretended along with him. “There’ll be hundreds of fans to watch you!”
Tomas grinned happily at the idea. Then standing still long enough made him notice something else.
“Marissa, I’m hungry.”
“I know. I am too,” she admitted. She felt the tight knot in her empty stomach. “But you guys wanted to play soccer today.”
None of them had eaten yet today, but they’d eaten twice yesterday. Pipio had shined shoes and bought bread for lunch. Then as they went back to the alley at night they were really lucky and saw a worker emptying trash at the back door of a restaurant. After he went back inside, Pipio and Nino checked the dumpster while Marissa and Tomas kept lookout so no older gang would see them and take anything they found. Most street gangs said they owned the dumpsters on their block and would beat you up if you went near them, so it was hard for smaller kids to get anything. But nobody caught them and they ran away quickly with what the boys found. There were three paper plates of half eaten dinners someone had throw away, with spicy fish, rice and black beans, and half a sandwich. Back in the alley, Marissa had divided it between the five of them and saved a bit of bread crust from her share for Fides, Spero and Amor, the three swallows. The food had been cold and a little wet from a discarded drink spilled on it, but it was nice to go to sleep with just a little more in their stomachs than bread.
“We’ll eat at the church tonight,” Marissa reminded Tomas as he rubbed his belly. Once a week the church by Parque da Luz served dinner for the homeless children. So at least this night she didn’t worry that the boys would go without. That was why she had agreed when they wanted to play soccer instead of going down to beg outside the bus stations. As long as security guards didn’t run them off, they could ask nice people there for change and collect enough to buy a meal. But yesterday a mean old man had spit on Tomas and called him ‘filthy vermin’. Then he held his arm and threatened to call the police because he swore Tomas was the boy who stole his wallet a few days before. It wasn’t true because Marissa never let them steal. Tomas almost broke his wrist getting loose and was afraid to go back. So this morning Pipio had decided that today was a holiday and they would play the Sport Club da Luz soccer tournament. The boys were so excited she just couldn’t tell them no. It was good to see them all happy.
“Wait,” she said rummaging something out of her backpack. “Here. Give one to Pipio, Nino and Paulinho too.” She gave him the last four sticks of gum and he ran back to the lot. It wasn’t real food but it might make them forget their growling stomachs for awhile. And if she could continue reading without being hit by a soccer ball that would make Marissa forget hers.
Pipio was the leader of their group. He knew he was eleven years old because his mother knew his birthday. She used to live in Santa Efigênia. Pipio visited her and his baby sisters sometimes, but had run away because her boyfriend beat Pipio when he got drunk. Then his mother moved across the city to Favela Morumbi and he never found her again.
Nino was probably ten, just a little shorter than Pipio. Marissa heard that there were good orphanages that took care of homeless children, but Nino came from one run by cruel adults who abused the children and punished them severely even when they did nothing wrong. He told about it like he had escaped from prison.
Both of them were bigger than Marissa, but they minded her on important things. They knew she was smart and did the best thing for their team. The two younger boys, Tomas and Paulinho, were both about seven or eight. Tomas was like her and had lived on the street as long as he could remember. Marissa did not know whether she was an orphan or if she had parents who were alive but had abandoned her. It was easier to believe that her unremembered mother and father had died when she was only a baby than to think they had just not cared enough to keep her.
Paulinho they had found huddled in an alley crying. He never talked at all so Marissa never knew how he got there or where he was from. But from his bruises and welt marks across his back she could tell it was someplace he didn’t want to go back to. Pipio let him join the group after Marissa said they needed to take care of him.
Marissa tried to get back to her book. Fides swooped down from the branch above, made an acrobatic turn and snapped up a passing insect in his mouth. Spero and Amor circled about the tree chasing each other. Then the quick agile swallows darted right between her face and the book, their fluttering wings brushing against her nose. Gliding and diving around her, the chorus of chirping voices asked for her attention.
“Okay, I’ll come play,” she conceded and tucked the book away in the big faded pink backpack beside the tree. She rose from the ground, stretched her arms high above her head then spread them out like wings.
“Ready?” she asked. Marissa took flight, sprinting along the sidewalk in a curving left and right path as the birds followed along. She tilted and banked her thin arms and the three graceful swallows looped and swirled about her. Marissa imagined herself soaring high into the sky, flying far away from the neglected broken sidewalks of Santa Efigênia. For a moment she was free of all the hurt and uncertainty of this desperate place.
“HEY!” a loud deep voice yelled from the other end of the block. Marissa looked back. Four tall young men had just rounded the corner of the abandoned building. One ran over and scooped up the soccer ball as it rolled across the empty lot, halting the younger children’s play. The little boys stood to see what the older ones would do.
“Who said you could play on my lot?” demanded the largest one. He was dressed in a short sleeve silk shirt with long pants, a pair of new expensive athletic shoes, and a gold watch. Probably one he stole, thought Marissa. She recognized him as Leandro, a strong, dark, ugly-faced teenager who often bullied the street kids. The others were his followers. They were a real gang. They broke into cars and houses, attacked people to steal wallets and purses, and did errands for bosses.
“It’s just an old dirty lot,” Pipio said. Most of the time Leandro’s gang just threatened kids to amuse themselves when they were bored. Trying to show he wasn’t frightened, Pipio walked over to get the ball back from the teen who held it. ”It’s not yours.”
Leandro, in a mood to be mean, rushed up to Pipio and grabbed his shirt collar. He pushed him back a few steps and shoved him hard up against the concrete wall of the building. He pulled back his fist then slugged Pipio in the stomach as his friends laughed. Afraid they were next, the other six or seven young soccer players ran away across the street. Nino, Tomas and Paulinho had fled to the far end of the lot, but waited there to see what would happen.
“Whose lot is it?” Leandro threatened, his arm pulled back ready to strike Pipio again.
“Leave him alone!” shouted Marissa as she raced across the lot, pushing past the other teens to try and help Pipio. “He didn’t do anything to you!”
Leandro turned to see her. Far stronger than Marissa, his solid muscular arm simply backhanded her across the face and knocked her to the ground. Her hands scraped painfully against the rough ground as she landed. Her jaw felt like a brick had hit it.
“Not your business, boy!” snarled Leandro.
“Girl!” corrected Marissa. She should have stayed on the ground, but immediately lifted herself despite the pain. It was her natural response from years of fighting with the boys. If you let someone see they’d hurt you, if you let them believe you were weak, then you let them believe they could always push you down all they wanted. Marissa stood up.
The other gang members now stood to block her from reaching Pipio. Leandro held his large fist against Pipio’s jaw. “Whose lot is it, gutter boy?”
“It… it’s your lot,” Pipio conceded to avoid further beating. Leandro released his hold on the torn collar, but then took him by the shoulders and forcefully threw him to the asphalt. Pipio landed hard on his knee with a cry of pain as Leandro turned away with a cruel laugh. They all started walking from the bleeding boy. Pipio tried to stand but crumpled back down with a grimace on his face.
“Hey, nice soccer ball,” Leandro said and motioned the other to toss it to him. “On my lot, too. It’s mine now.” He kicked it high in the air up the street ahead of them.
The soccer ball was the best thing Pipio owned. Besides his few secondhand clothes and two cans of shoe polish, it was really all he owned. When it got scuffed he would wipe it on his pants to keep it looking new. When they passed by Parque da Luz he would dip it in the ponds and dry it on his shirt to clean it. Pipio washed the ball more than he washed himself. It wasn’t right that Leandro could take it.
The ball was sailing through the air in a straight line when slowly the kick began curving. Leandro’s gang watched in surprise as the ball arced in a half circle and heading past them in the opposite direction. It fell to the ground and bounced a few times then rolled to rest at Pipio’s side. One of the teens began laughing at Leandro’s poor kick. His angry expression showed that Leandro did not think it was funny that a street kid had made him look foolish in front of his gang. He charged back to where the injured boy sat.
“Nice trick,” he sneered at Pipio. “How’d you do that?” Two of the others grabbed Marissa and held her arm twisted behind her back. She was unable to struggle loose.
“I didn’t do anything,” Pipio answered. He had no idea how it had happened. That wasn’t the answer Leandro wanted to hear.
“No little gutter boy disrespects me,” Leandro declared cold and cruelly. He slammed Pipio to his back on the ground, holding him down with a powerful grip on his thin neck. Pipio couldn’t cry out, couldn’t breathe. He smiled at the fear in Pipio’s eyes. “No gutter boy steals from me.”
Marissa gasped as she saw Leandro pull out a knife. He was moving the blade closer to Pipio’s throat and there was nothing she could do to help him. But she had to help him!
“Think I ain’t done this before?” Leandro boasted. “Nobody cares if a street kid dies in Boca do…”
Leandro’s arm was yanked back abruptly as the knife wrenched itself from his grip. The weapon flew away through the air and landed with a clang twenty feet away. Startled, he and the other gang members saw it fall to the ground and break. Then Leandro was suddenly slammed backwards off of Pipio by some unseen force. Marissa twisted free from her surprised captors and rushed to help Pipio to his feet.
“Run!” she cried, and pulled his hand to speed his pace. Pipio’s bleeding knee was badly hurt and he limped as they tried to escape. Behind them, Leandro had gotten up and all the gang were chasing them now. They were too fast for Marissa to outrun with Pipio. In seconds they were just a few paces behind. Leandro reached out to grab Pipio as he stumbled and there was a ripping sound. The torn shirt was in his grasp.
“Leave him alone!” pleaded Marissa, and she waved her arm back to ward them away. As if tripped by an invisible line, Leandro fell headlong to the broken concrete sidewalk. The other three tumbled hard to the ground alongside and on top of him, snared by the same unknown effect. For a moment, she and Pipio were a safe distance away.
“Hurry, hurry,” she urged Pipio. Desperately she tried to think of any nearby side alley they could get away through or a dumpster they might hide in.
As they ran by the eucalyptus tree, Marissa scooped up her backpack. The swallows alighted from the branches above and followed after her. Strangely, Pipio’s soccer ball was rolling along beside them also. Marissa hadn’t seen anybody kick it. Half a block away, she looked back to see how close the gang was behind them. Somehow they all still sat in a scrambling pile on the ground. Each time Leandro or another tried to stand, his legs would collapse beneath him and send him tumbling back to the sidewalk They couldn’t get up to chase them anymore!
Four blocks further, she let Pipio rest. It looked as if Leandro’s gang had given up on them for now. Pipio picked up his prized soccer ball which had curiously come to a stop with them after rolling the last two blocks uphill. Nino, Tomas and Paulinho, who had been running away the next block over, came down the cross street and met up with them. Some other boys who had been playing soccer were with them too. Pipio took off his ruined t-shirt. Around the back of a closed store, Marissa found an outside faucet where she could run some water to rinse off Pipio’s knee. She also rinsed the dirt out of her skinned palms that were bleeding.
“Wow! I thought you were dead!” said Nino. He had seen the knife at Pipio’s throat.
“Don’t say that!” ordered Marissa. But she had feared for Pipio’s life too.
“How did you do that? Knock all Leandro’s gang over like that?” said one of the other boys who must have watched the strange incident from across the street.
“That was like magic!” said another. A few others were looking at her and whispering to each other. They knew about the time street lights all went out or when the rolling dumpster chased security guards.
“I didn’t do anything,” insisted Marissa. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Marissa’s brave,” bragged Tomas to the boys from the other group. “She’s not afraid of anyone!”
“I’m not afraid of him either,” declared Pipio as she tended to his knee, embarassed a bit that all the boys saw he’d been saved by a girl. “When I’m older I’ll have a big gang. We’ll have guns then and I’ll…”
“No you won’t!” Marissa commanded. “I don’t want any of you to ever be like Leandro! Why would you want to act just like the people who hate you and hurt you?”
“And we’re not a gang,” Nino reminded him. “We’re Sport Club da Luz!”
Marissa always tried to make them call themselves a team and not a gang. She didn't know why. Maybe if they dreamt of being strikers scoring the winning goal in the World Cup it would distract them from dreams of being a gang leader. Boys like Leandro wore new clothes with pockets full of money. He could always buy hot meals and would never dig in trash for scraps like they did. But having good things came from evil things he did. She never wanted Pipio or Nino to become a person who would beat someone for a purse or even a stupid soccer ball. But sometimes it seemed that was the only path boys in Santa Efigenia had when most people believed they were criminals already. Marissa hoped that life would change for them all someday. But she had no plan of how that could ever happen.
“How does it feel?” Marissa asked as she wrapped a strip of his ripped shirt around the knee to stop the bleeding.
“It’s better now,” Pipio said. He was trying to show that he was tough and not really hurt. “I just hit it real, real hard. You have a black eye.”
Marissa reached up to touch her face. It was swelled up beneath her eye where Leandro had hit her. She’d been so intent on running as fast as she could pull Pipio that she hadn’t even felt it. It didn’t hurt as much as her scraped hands.
Pipio stood up and paced back and forth on his injured leg. “See, Marissa. It’s okay.,” he assured her. Marissa was relieved. If he had broken it and needed a cast, she didn’t know if any hospitals would help street kids. They didn’t have money to pay a doctor.
Marissa saw by the shadows of the buildings that it was getting to be late afternoon. In an hour they could have dinner at Nossa Senhora da Luz, the old church by the park.
“Is anyone hungry?” she asked, knowing the answer even before the loud chorus of ‘Yes!’ came from all the boys. They started walking north along the street, up towards Avenida Tiradentes that led to the church. Nino in front and other boys behind her kept wary eyes in both directions, ready to scatter quickly if they saw Leandro’s gang again. But none of them noticed the lady in the long dress who stood watchfully at the corner across the street.
Pipio was still limping. Marissa held her arm around his back and put his over her shoulder so he could put less weight on his injured leg. Paulinho held her hand on the other side after going “Ooooo..” when he saw her skinned palm. That was about all he ever talked.
On the next block were an old hotel, used clothing shops and a second hand electronics store that sold old televisions and CD players. Empty buildings once were offices or restaurants but weren’t used anymore. Plaster crumbled off faded walls that had not seen fresh paint in many years. They were on the major street now where people filled the sidewalks and the noise of heavy traffic and smell of exhaust filled the air.
The electronics store always had a television on in the front window. On some days they could stand outside and watch a soccer game or other show unless too many street kids gathered on the walk. Then the owner would come out with his baseball bat and run them all off, yelling that they were scaring away his customers or trying to steal things. Most all of the storekeepers treated them like that, and most all of the store entrances had the same sign. ‘No children allowed without parents.’
Nino was talking to one of the boys from the soccer game, who was pointing to a side entrance of the closed and boarded building next to the store. A narrow sidewalk separated the two buildings and led to the alley in back.
“Lots of us sleep here,” the boy said as he showed Nino the chains on the double doors. “Bebo broke the padlock so we could get in. Then we chain it up again so the police can’t tell.”
“Don’t go in there, Nino,” Marissa told him as he hung around the doors with the others. It was a squat house that maybe forty or fifty homeless people used for shelter each night. Many of them were street kids, but a lot were bums, thieves and just violent crazy people. She and her boys had a safer place to sleep in their alley as long as they kept it secret.
Spero perched on her shoulder and the other two swallows landed on a windowsill. Pipio, Tomas and Paulinho had paused in front of the store window with the television.
“Aw, they just have news on,” Tomas said disappointedly, hoping for cartoons.
“Well we need to get going,” Marissa reminded them. “Nino,” she called to the boy behind them. But he wasn’t there. He had followed the other boy into the old building.
“Tomas,” Marissa directed, “go in and get Nino. Tell him we’re leaving right now.”
Tomas ducked into the door as she and the other boys waited. Minutes later they were still waiting. The building was three stories high and had many rooms. If Nino had gone upstairs and towards the back it might take Tomas a while to find him.
“Police! Police!” a boy’s voice shouted from down the street, warning that an officer was approaching. The other boys with them turned and started fleeing in the other direction. Police were the most feared opponent of street kids. The armed, uniformed men that other Sao Paulo citizens viewed as their protectors were seen by the poor homeless children as cruel oppressors. Hungry boys received brutal beatings as punishment for taking a piece of food off a street vendor’s cart. Others were arrested and jailed only for begging in a place where business owner’s thought they were too much of a nuisance. Most fearsome of all were the whispered stories of the Death Squads, the secret groups that came late at night and killed street kids simply to eliminate the excess of them. Older boys told younger ones that some men in those masked groups were truly police.
“Nino! Tomas!” Pipio yelled at the doors of the building, anxious for them to leave before the officer got nearer. “NINO!”
“POLICE! POLICE!” A young boy ran up and screamed at the top of his lungs towards the broken barred windows on the second and third floor. Marissa looked up the street.
“Oh NO!” she cried. Twenty yards away was not a single officer, but ten! They jogged along the sidewalk flanked side by side like a wall, wearing visored helmets and heavy dark vests. Police vans pulled around the corner ahead. “Pipio, look!”
Panicked boys were rushing out the doors of the abandoned building now. Pipio knew immediately just as she did that it was not just a regular patrol. Someone had reported the squat house and they were here for a round-up. They would arrest and take away every street kid and vagrant they could capture.
“Run!” Marissa shouted. “Take Paulinho to the park. We’ll meet…”
“NO! I’ll get Nino and Tomas. You take Paul…”
“You’re not fastest right now,” Marissa pleaded, pointing at his leg. When the police got close, he would be the easiest to catch. Pipio, knowing she was right, grabbed Paulinho’s hand and ran limping away. More ragged poor people scrambled out the doors. Marissa hoped two would be Nino and Tomas, but she didn’t see their faces among the frightened ones fleeing the building.
The officers reached the doors and knocked down the last two kids coming out. Six of the police drew their batons as they went inside. Four stayed at the doors to prevent anyone else escaping. Unless there was another way out, Nino and Tomas were trapped!
The police vans parked and more officers got out. A dozen more entered the building. A crowd was gathering and that was good because police never injured anyone as badly when there were witnesses around. Marissa held back among the spectators. She could hear screaming and yelling inside. Soon they would start bringing people out and filling up the vans. When she saw Nino and Tomas she would get them free somehow. An officer would be holding them and maybe she could trip him or bite him and then the three of them could run fast enough. That was all the plan she had.
“Front entrance secure,” one of the officers spoke into a two-way radio. “Rear entrance secure. Doors still barred and locked here,” came a reply. There were more police surrounding the back of the building.
“Broken open window bars upstairs,” buzzed the radio again. “Trying to climb out.”
BANG! BANG! BANG! Marissa heard the gunshots from the alley. With sudden panic, she realized they were shooting at people trying to escape out the windows!
The four officers at the doors stood ready to apprehend any persons coming out. They were too surprised to catch the quick little girl that slid right between them to rush into the building. Three blurs of blue streaked after her.
Inside was a trash-strewn graffitied hallway. Marissa saw officers at the other end pushing along two bloody, roughed up vagrants. Turning left to avoid them, she entered a stairwell with steps leading up to the second floor or down to a basement. The swallows darted upwards and she dashed up the steps after them. At the top of the stairway another officer had a teenage girl down on the dirty floor, threatening her with a baton. Marissa jumped over them. The birds were flying rapidly ahead of her down another hall as if they knew where they were going. Without knowing why, Marissa sped after them down the smelly, grimy passage. They glided past four or five rooms, then dove through a door at the right. Marissa skidded to a halt as she rounded the corner and stood in the doorway.
A half dozen ragged boys were kneeling with hands behind their heads. Nino and Tomas sat nearest the two large brawny police officers with batons. At the feet of one officer another boy lay unconsious with blood matted in his hair.
“Who’s next?” shouted the officer, then smacked Nino hard on the back of his skull with the baton just to show who was in control. Nino stumbled forward with tears in his eyes.
“NINO!” Marissa cried out. The officer turned to see her. Suddenly a flurry of wings covered his face as the swallows clawed and pecked at his eyes. His arms flailed about his head trying to disperse them. Marissa lowered her body and charged at him as fast as she could, slamming her head into his stomach. Claank! It was meant to knock the breath out of him but the thick vest was hard as metal. He hadn’t even moved.
Marissa crumpled dizzily to the floor, her eyes going dark for a moment. Then she felt the jerk of being lifted up by her arm in the painfully strong grip of the other officer. The swallows were screeching and scratching as both the officers towered above her with their heavy sticks held ready to assault her. How could she help the boys now?
“Crazy boy needs a lesson,” snarled one of them.
“Girl,” she protested weakly as they raised their weapons high to increase the force of the swings. Marissa waited for the pain of the bashing batons. Nothing happened.
She looked up to the officer’s faces. Scratched up by the swallows who now sat resting on their helmets, both bore blank expressions as if they had forgotten where they even were. They lowered the batons hesitantly with dumbfounded looks.
“Who are y… who am I?” the first officer politely asked Marissa.
“You’re.. um.. the Samba dancers,” she replied with the first idea that came into her head.
“Oh,” smiled the other officer, pleased at the idea. They looked at themselves, confused that they were not wearing the sparkly parade costumes they should be dressed in.
“Run!” Marissa ordered the kneeling boys who seemed almost as confused as the forgetful police officers. She rushed out of the room with Nino, Tomas and the other boys following close behind her. They ran back along the hall, pushing past the other officer with the girl. Scrambling down the stairwell, they all came to a stop ten feet from the guarded doors. The four huge officers were waiting with weapons drawn.
“We have them,” one responded into his radio.
“We can’t get past them, Marissa,” Nino conceded in defeat. “We’re going to jail.”
Marissa heard the fear in Nino’s voice. She recalled the stories of the children detention centers. Stories that they caged street kids up like animals and that prison guards tortured and beat them. She knew boys from other gangs who had returned from the jails scarred and broken. She knew boys who had never returned at all. She wouldn’t let it be her boys.
“NO. We’re not,” she stated. She reached out to hold Nino’s hand and took Tomas’ on her other side. “Ready?” she asked. The police officers were advancing towards them.
Marissa rushed directly at the police. Weighing only fifty pounds, she should have bounced off the four massive men like a feather. Yet before even making contact, the officers were all thrown back as if a truck had hit them. They flew across the sidewalk, slammed against the wall of the store and fell semiconscious to the ground. Stunned spectators gasped in disbelief as Marissa ducked in and out among the crowd with Nino and Tomas behind her. Two more officers were thrown to the ground as she passed them. The other boys following them scattered away free. Running as fast as they ever had in their lives, Marissa, Nino and Tomas raced up the avenue then turned through a narrow alleyway that connected with a smaller backstreet. The three swallows glided along above them as they escaped.
“That was…” Nino spoke breathlessly as they ran, “impossible!” Marissa would have to tell them once more that she didn’t do anything. Sometimes things just helped them.
They arrived at the park ten minutes later and found Pipio and Paulinho in their secret meeting place. The birds flew off into the tall trees that lined the walkways. Falling to the ground in exhaustion, Marissa laid out on the grass trying to catch her breathe. She closed her eyes and felt her whole body shaking.
“What took you guys so long?” Pipio asked.
Nino and Tomas were collapsed to their knees, panting for air. In a few minutes they could tell their story to the other boys. It was an escape no one else would ever believe. But Tomas had something else on his mind before relating the adventure.
“I’m hungry,” he stated again as he sat up. “Is it time to eat yet, Marissa?”
“Definitely…” she gulped in another breath of air, “time to eat.”
“Marissa…” Tomas said again with a slow cautious tone in his voice now.
“What?” she replied, her eyes still closed as she rested.
“Look,” he suggested.
She opened her eyes. Standing directly above her, having approached without any of the watchful, wary boys noticing until just this moment, was a lady in robelike dress. Her flowing cloak of pastel turquoise blue rippled in the breeze. Her fair white skin was framed by dark brown hair braided with little silver jewelry. Her hazel eyes gazed directly down into Marissa’s black-eyed blue ones.
“Hello, Marissa,” said Grace Merrythought.