To Play with Fire
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Tina Beckett
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Prologue
MARCOS HADN’T WANTED his father to go. But he’d gone anyway...just like he did every day.
Sitting in the dust outside their house, Marcos carefully sorted through the load his dad had brought home yesterday. Plastics here. Metals here... Careful, don’t get cut. A rusty cabinet he and his brother had to drag over to the pile. Marcos had already snuck the screwdriver out of his father’s backpack, so he could try to take the cabinet apart.
He had to do as much as possible before Papai came home, because it made something in Marcos’s chest hurt to see his dad’s hands shake as he tried to fit the tool into the screws—and the scared look he’d gotten on his face when he hadn’t been able to.
“Watch your brother.” His father’s words had rung in his ears that morning, just as they had every morning since he’d seen his mom in that funny box. His dad had looked real scared that day, too. Marcos had just felt sad and hungry.
So he kept watching Lucas, while moving things from one stack to another. His brother was dragging a stick through the dirt, his feet almost black. Marcos frowned. Where were his flip-flops? There were lots of sharp things out here. But Lucas never listened. No matter how many times Marcos told him. He stomped over to his brother and kicked off his own shoes and pointed at them.
Lucas’s lips got skinny, but he stuck his feet into the shoes. He was mad. Marcos didn’t care. It was his job to make sure Lucas didn’t get hurt.
And now he had to make sure his dad didn’t get hurt, either.
“We have to hurry.” He glanced at the sun, which wasn’t as bright any more. “Papai will be home soon.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. I heard you today. You said the same thing I did.”
“Did not!” Lucas picked up a plastic drink bottle and threw it as hard as he could across the yard.
Marcos didn’t argue with him. But before his dad had left this morning Marcos had told him he was going to be a doctor when he grew up, so he could make him all better.
Lucas’s head had bobbed up and down. “Me, too. I’m going to be the best doctor in the whole world.”
Papai had blinked his eyes several times and then turned away like he didn’t believe them. But he would see. Marcos would make himself smart. Then his dad would stop shaking, and that scared look would go away.
The sound of hands clapping three times outside made them both freeze. Papai never clapped to get in. Only visitors did that.
Marcos snuck over to the tall fence and peeked between the cracks in the boards. It wasn’t Papai. It was a man in a grey uniform. “Polícia,” he whispered.
He started to shake. Just like his dad.
Then the policeman squatted down and peered through the fence, staring right at him...
