They all shook their heads.
“Sophia,” I said. “No más.”
“Oh, stop. She’s afraid because she’s not yet a legal citizen, but I don’t think it’s right that she was raped and no one will do anything about it,” she added without hesitation.
Ignacio looked at me sharply. “What does she say? You never said this,” he told me.
“Sophia, please, no.”
“She’s so ashamed. Imagine if it happened to your sisters,” she told them.
“Who did this to her?” Ignacio’s friend Vicente asked her, and she told them.
“He brags about how he got away with it. Ignacio saved her from even more damage,” she added.
They turned to him and asked him in Spanish if he had known. He shook his head and looked at me with some annoyance now.
“She never told me that,” he said.
“She’s just too embarrassed,” Sophia continued.
“Where is this Bradley Whitfield?” Vicente asked her.
“Oh, I know exactly where he is right this moment, in fact,” she told him. “He’s going to abuse another young, innocent girl. She might be Mexican, too. I’m not sure.”
They looked at Ignacio.
“You going to let Delia be dishonored this way?” Luis asked him.
Ignacio looked toward his father and then at me and his friends.
“No,” he said.
Sophia smiled. “Well, finally,” she said, “someone who really cares. C’mon. He’s not far. He’s having a private party in the very house in which he raped Delia. Let’s go there and surprise him.”
I shook my head at Ignacio.
“Let’s go,” Vicente said. “Time for some justice, Mexican-style.”
Ignacio hesitated.
“You should be the one telling us to go,” Manuel said.
“Sí, what’s wrong with your courage?” Vicente asked him, and Ignacio reddened.
“I am not afraid. I nearly beat him once before.”
“And now there is even more reason,” Luis said. They all agreed.
Sophia beamed.
“Wait,” Ignacio said. He pulled away from my hand and crossed to the table where his mother and some of her friends were sitting. “We
’ll be right back,” I heard him tell her. “We have a little errand to do.”
“What errand?” she asked.
“Just an errand,” he said.