“Si mucho te contentas con el orden, se dice, te vas convirtiendo en piedra.”
Marcela Serrano
Daniel Ortega had already worked thirty-two hours of what was supposed to be a forty-hour workweek and it was only Thursday morning. He turned his old pickup off Paseo and down Cervantes street towards the high school and slowly made his way towards the security gate. What a useless gate, he thought. All the students had to do was bribe the guard with a burrito and he would let them off. They could fire the guard and maybe we could get some new textbooks. But the parents didn’t know about the gate’s inefficacy and thus were sated believing that their children were safe in school all day, which apparently was more important than whether or not they …show more content…
His family had lived here longer than the United States had existed. He was born in a century old adobe house, just down the road from his best friend who lived in a colorful repurposed school bus. He spent his childhood building latilla fences with his father and going to mass on Sundays. When he was sixteen, he got a truck, the same one he was driving now, and would take his friends into the canyon to drink cheap beer and shoot chipmunks with a pellet gun. He went to college in the city and came back to town to teach math and work at the ski resort. That had been enough for him. Or at least, that’s what he thought. He had been relatively successful compared to most of his friends and he never really thought there could be more. But this summer he had gotten a job in California teaching summer school and it paid better than anything he could have gotten here. It was in a wealthy district with a dropout rate below fifteen percent. What amazed him most was that the majority of the students in summer school were not there because they were failing, but because they were trying to graduate early or with extra credits. He could picture his AP students at home cringing at the thought of giving up their …show more content…
The canyon walls kept the sun from reaching into the gorge and the shadows lay like bodies in front of gravestones. He clambered over the rockslide, pushing aside sagebrush, and eventually reached the concrete launch pad that the rafting companies used. At night, the normally sparkling green river looked black and unfriendly. The boulders on the shore and in the water seemed bigger, like they were trying to hide something. He took off his shoes and waded into the river. Even in August, the water was icy from snowmelt in the mountains. He felt the icy bubbles slither up his legs like reaching fingers, pulling him down while the river tried to lift him off his feet. He heard nothing over the roaring rapids upstream and the wind echoing through the canyon, wailing like it had a broken heart. He stood until his legs were numb and he couldn’t feel his toes. The moon had risen, casting white light against the canyon
Marcela Serrano
Daniel Ortega had already worked thirty-two hours of what was supposed to be a forty-hour workweek and it was only Thursday morning. He turned his old pickup off Paseo and down Cervantes street towards the high school and slowly made his way towards the security gate. What a useless gate, he thought. All the students had to do was bribe the guard with a burrito and he would let them off. They could fire the guard and maybe we could get some new textbooks. But the parents didn’t know about the gate’s inefficacy and thus were sated believing that their children were safe in school all day, which apparently was more important than whether or not they …show more content…
His family had lived here longer than the United States had existed. He was born in a century old adobe house, just down the road from his best friend who lived in a colorful repurposed school bus. He spent his childhood building latilla fences with his father and going to mass on Sundays. When he was sixteen, he got a truck, the same one he was driving now, and would take his friends into the canyon to drink cheap beer and shoot chipmunks with a pellet gun. He went to college in the city and came back to town to teach math and work at the ski resort. That had been enough for him. Or at least, that’s what he thought. He had been relatively successful compared to most of his friends and he never really thought there could be more. But this summer he had gotten a job in California teaching summer school and it paid better than anything he could have gotten here. It was in a wealthy district with a dropout rate below fifteen percent. What amazed him most was that the majority of the students in summer school were not there because they were failing, but because they were trying to graduate early or with extra credits. He could picture his AP students at home cringing at the thought of giving up their …show more content…
The canyon walls kept the sun from reaching into the gorge and the shadows lay like bodies in front of gravestones. He clambered over the rockslide, pushing aside sagebrush, and eventually reached the concrete launch pad that the rafting companies used. At night, the normally sparkling green river looked black and unfriendly. The boulders on the shore and in the water seemed bigger, like they were trying to hide something. He took off his shoes and waded into the river. Even in August, the water was icy from snowmelt in the mountains. He felt the icy bubbles slither up his legs like reaching fingers, pulling him down while the river tried to lift him off his feet. He heard nothing over the roaring rapids upstream and the wind echoing through the canyon, wailing like it had a broken heart. He stood until his legs were numb and he couldn’t feel his toes. The moon had risen, casting white light against the canyon