Chapter 1 — Diego Nelson
It all started with fire. I wanted to show Sabrina Vincent I’d do anything for her. Naturally, I set fire to the garbage in the first floor washroom, strategically near a sensitive smoke detector. Now I’m forced into The Walk, and Sabrina still doesn’t even know I’m alive. Well, she may know the name of the guy who gave everyone a free period. But, I mean, she doesn’t know me know me. Unrequited love’s a drag.
I still think it might have been worth it. I mean, I did get my name on the map of her universe, right? Maybe now she wants to know more about Diego Nelson. Maybe she’s intrigued. Who knows? Maybe I’m now a satellite in her night sky. I just have to wait for her to turn her telescope on me.
I know one thing for sure. The first part of the summer is not mine. The Walk Youth Diversion Program owns my ass, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. If your one and only slipup is a big one, your leverage gets taken away from you. Juvenile detention or The Walk.
This Gilbert dude who runs the program sounds like a total douchebag, too. My life is over. First of all, who the hell is called Gilbert, and why wouldn’t they change their name if they could? Clearly his parents had it in for him. A week and a half with him, and I’ll be ready for death. Hell, I was ready for it after fifteen minutes with him in the meeting with Moms, Principal Peters, and that lawyer. Dude is about as interesting and relevant as a dead cat. I might die of boredom before exhaustion ever even takes place.
But I guess The Walk is known for exhausting people. I don’t even know how it’s legal to take a kid out of his own country and force him to walk a gazillion miles in the hot sun over mountains and shit in a foreign country. I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me.
By the time I get back, summer will be almost over, and I will have missed any and every opportunity I would have had to keep myself in Sabrina’s universe. I’ll fade from her sky, probably forever.
Slight exaggeration, I know. A week and a half does not a summer make. But the beginning of summer is the most important time for setting things up socially. Hell, even my best friends will forget who I am by the time I come back from Spain.
Lesson learned? Don’t set fires for people who will never appreciate the gesture even if you’re mad crushing on them and desperate to get them to notice you. Dude, it just ain’t worth it.
Now I find myself—me, Diego Nelson—packing a backpack with all this random crap, preparing for a flight across the frigging Atlantic Ocean. I mean, I’ve never been on a plane before. I’ve never even been outside Toronto.
Moms must totally hate me. Why else would she send her one and only child into the jaws of death just for setting a little fire at school? No matter how much my abuelita thinks it’s a great idea.
I still remember the day the ultimatum came down. Moms freaking out all the way home on the subway, ranting about not having money for the program. “Look at all these things, Diego. Look at them—the backpack alone. I cannot afford this. What have you done?”
“I’m sorry, Moms.” I pleaded with her to calm down. People around us were staring, listening in. “We won’t do it. I’ll take the other one. I have to.”
“And have a record? Be with those bad boys? I’ll never get you back. You’ve ruined everything. Everything your grandmother and I worked so hard for, Diego, paving the way for your success. It’s gone.”
She stormed off the subway at our stop. Didn’t even look back to see if I followed.
When we got home it was even worse. She told my abuelita everything. Watching my grandmother’s face sink as she learned of her grandson’s crime? It felt like a piece of me died as that look of disappointment washed over her. I was mad. Mad at myself for being so stupid. Mad at Moms for telling her after she said she couldn’t, after she said she wanted to spare her the shame and the hurt.
When Moms brought up the alternative to juvenile detention, though? The second she told my abuelita about the diversion program—about the Camino de Santiago—the look on her face changed instantly.
As Moms cried in desperation because we couldn’t choose the costly diversion program, my grandmother took Moms’s hands in hers, looked her in the eyes, and said, “He must go.”
“Mami, he can’t. I cannot do this. I can’t afford these things,” Moms said, tossing down the crumpled list she pulled from her purse.
My grandmother picked it up, glanced at the long list of random crap, set it back down, and said, “He goes. Ana, it is the Camino de Santiago. The pilgrim’s path, the way of St. James. Pilgrims have been walking the Camino for hundreds and hundreds of years. Since before the Middle Ages. They walk to the bones of the apostle St. James that rest in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. They walk to find themselves. He goes, Ana. That is all. You tell them. Make the arrangements. It will be his penance. He is a good Catholic boy.”
So not only have I totally disgraced and humiliated the two most important women in my life, I’m also going to the Camino de Santiago on my poor abuelita’s dime, her cherished savings.
“Ma?” I yell as I continue to scroll down the Things to Bring list. “What’s a spork?”
“It’s a spoon and a fork in one.”
I barely hear this. She’s in the kitchen. I know what she’s doing. The same thing she does every morning when I’m getting ready for school and she’s getting ready for work. She’s standing at the kitchen counter having her cup of instant coffee and her one slice of slightly burned toast with a light spreading of cottage cheese. Ack.
This morning isn’t a schoolday or workday, though. This morning is the day of my flight. The bad kids’ field trip begins.
“Why do I have to bring a spork, anyway?”
“Because Gilbert told you to, Diego.” I can hear her walking down the hall. Coming to lecture me again. Just one more time. Again.
“Starting today, that man is your boss,” she says as she arrives at my bedroom door, spork in hand. “You do what he says, when he says. If that includes carrying this spork on your nose across Spain, then you will do it. Do you understand me, mister?”
She tosses the spork onto the bed.
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t yeah but me, Diego Nelson. You will listen to him, young man. I didn’t raise an arsonist. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Moms has been on high octane ever since the incident. She’s a tough cookie at the best of times. I don’t blame her, really. She has all these dreams for me—university and a career—and she’s seen how close I came to destroying it all. I’m such a loser.
“You’re almost done packing, Dee. Just finish that list and come to the kitchen and eat your breakfast. You need to eat before we head to the airport. Breakfast is the most—”