Excerpts from

HELLSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

 

There was nothing going right for Officer Carlos Lopez that Friday. He had just been called into Captain John Blackwell’s office and was not happy with the news he was hearing.

“Why me?” asked Carlos. “Why do I have to be Northside Elementary School’s resource officer next year? What is the matter with the SRO they have now?”

“He’s not as observant as you are,” answered John. “There is something wrong going on in that school. Too many children have died. I want to know why.”

“Children always die—every year. There are deaths all the time.”

“Not like these. My instinct tells me the deaths weren’t normal. I want you in that school. You have to find out what Linda Garza knows. She has been withholding the truth from us. She knows more than she is letting on. You are Hispanic, the same as she.”

“But I’m not dark like her,” interrupted Carlos. “Everyone thinks I’m Anglo.”

“That doesn’t matter. You know her language and culture. You can get the truth from her.”

“I don’t like to be devious,” admitted Carlos. “Prying the truth from Linda Garza will require every indirect police skill I know. I left Los Angeles to come here to Lincoln with the hope of escaping such tactics.”

“For goodness sakes. With your style of thinking, why did you ever become a policeman?”

 “Actually at one time in my life I was going to be a priest,” admitted Carlos.”

 “So you joined the police force instead? What caused the drastic change in choice of vocations?” asked John.

“There isn’t that much difference between a police officer and a priest. Both have to reject a desire for money. Both have to have a firm longing for that which is good. Both have to place the lives of others before the love of his own life. Both have to fight on the front lines against evil.”

John laughed. “I never thought of myself in the same category as a priest,” he confessed. “But you, Carlos, are going to be on the front lines at Northside Elementary School. You are going to fight for the children. And that is final!”

 

***

Carlos Lopez quickly went to sleep that night. But his slumber was neither peaceful nor dreamless. He dreamed that he was a little boy in his barrio in East Los Angeles. He was playing on the sidewalk with a little Mexican-American girl. He knew he shouldn’t be out there playing because it was very smoggy. He couldn’t see halfway down the block. The smog hurt his eyes and throat. He knew that inside his house it wouldn’t be so bad, but he didn’t want to stop playing.

The irritating smog grew thicker and thicker until he couldn’t see the little girl any more. He got up to go into the house, but he couldn’t find the way. With terror in his heart, he realized he was lost. He wanted to escape the terrible smog. So he started to run. He ran on and on with his heart pounding in his chest until he realized he was no longer in the midst of smog but was surrounded by a clean white mist. As he stopped running and let his hot, irritated lungs breathe in the soothing cool mist, he saw a beautiful brown-skinned woman gliding toward him. She was dressed in a long, flowing, white robe. A white veil covered her black hair. Her clothing seemed to be made from the mist. As she came closer to him, he noticed that tears were flowing down her lovely cheeks. She must have just got out of the smog, too, he thought. That’s why her eyes are still watering.

Suddenly, the woman threw back her head and let out a cry that pierced every cell of Carlos’s body. “¡Aayyy!”

Carlos immediately woke up and exclaimed, “La Llorona!”

 

 

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