Free The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil by Alisa Valdes

it
does. Maybe it held true for people, too.
If we thought a person mattered, they did; if we thought they
didn’t matter, they didn’t. Demetrio had thought I mattered enough
to call for help on my behalf, and to find me at the coffee shop to
give me my necklace. The least I could do was think he mattered
enough for a proper thank-you.
    I pulled the Land Rover off the highway, onto the
gravel at the San Pedro Overlook, with its cliff-top view of the
barren mesa scrubland below, covered in white snow, and I typed the
address into the navigation unit on the dashboard of the car. That
way, the car could be responsible for me going there, not me. It
was starting to get dark, and you just never knew what you might
find out here in the middle of nowhere.
    I drove on along the twisting
narrow road, until I got to the town of Golden, at which point the
navigation unit took me off Highway 14 and onto a series of even
narrower, and more twisty dirt roads. Soon, I was directed just off
a road called Luz Del Cielo, onto a stark and narrow lane where the
houses were few and far between. The soothing woman’s voice of the
navigation system announced: “You have arrived at your
destination.”

♦
    It was only now that I realized I didn’t
have anything to give him - in the event that I actually found him,
that was. I’d meant to maybe have a card, some way to thank him for
helping me. Maybe a handshake would have to do, I thought. That’s
when I remembered that I had a gift card for $50 worth of free
downloads on iTunes, somewhere at the bottom of my backpack. It was
a late birthday present from Missy, my dad’s new wife, and even
though I liked iTunes as much as the next girl, I didn’t
particularly like the home-wrecking usurper that was Missy , so I’d essentially ignored it rather than deal
with my emotions. I burrowed through my pack until I found it,
buried at the bottom and covered with lint and cracker crumbs. I
wiped it off, then slipped it into my jacket pocket.
    I exited the Land Rover and set
out on booted foot across the frozen, snowy ground, heading for the
small, decrepit-looking house. The ground was uneven, so I moved
slowly and cautiously. The house was typical for this area, a
slightly saggy, nondescript square of pink-beige stucco, capped
with a simple pitched tar-shingle roof. As I approached the house,
I saw that it bore the same number on the mailbox as the paper in
my hand. This was the place. My pulse accelerated again, and I
tried to calm down, telling myself - ridiculously, really - that
of course it
wasn’t dangerous to go looking for a known gang member in the
middle of nowhere, alone, at a house with a broken fence and a
rusting hull of an old, tireless car in the side yard. The home
looked abandoned, except for the wisp of smoke rising from the
chimney, and the glow of lights behind the yellowed curtains hung
in the smudgy windows.
    I approached as quietly as I could, smoothed my hair
down a little, and pushed the doorbell with my gloved finger. The
button was crusted and sticky, and didn’t seem to have been getting
much use, so I removed my glove and knocked hard on the door as
well, just in case. I replaced the glove and then stood there,
shivering with cold and nerves, for what seemed like five minutes.
Though I heard a small dog bark inside, and rustling noises, no one
came. I was just about to turn around to leave when the door
finally opened a crack, with a stiff, horrible scraping noise. My
heart thundered as I peered into the musty darkness within the
house.
    I hoped to see Demetrio, of course, but I was met
instead by a sharp and narrow chin that jutted out from an ancient
face, the way chins do when the teeth are missing from the mouth
and the lips have caved into the visage. The body upon which the
countenance sat was skinny and short, and I was forced to look down
to see it. A large nose curled downward toward the chin, both of
them housed in a narrow brown face crisscrossed with