Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francesco X Stork

emancipation. Pancho understood it as a kind of divorce between a minor and his parents. D.Q. wanted to know if Mrs. Olivares had ever participated in that kind of process and what it took for a minor to prove his case. Mrs. Olivares told him that emancipations were only granted when the parent was abusive or neglectful and the minor demonstrated the ability to take care of himself. Emancipations were very rare. It was easier for the court to appoint another family member or the State as the legal guardian for the minor. Mrs. Olivares looked at Pancho in the rearview mirror when she said this.
    Mrs. Olivares veered off Picacho Drive onto a dirt road. The trailer park where Pancho lived consisted of thirty quarter-acre lots. Each lot was separated from the adjacent lots by waist-high chain-link fences. The quality of the mobile homes and upkeep of the yards varied from lot to lot. There were eighty-by-twenty homes surrounded by emerald green lawns and crawling rosebushes, and there were rusty twenty-foot trailers resting on cement blocks in the middle of a patch of dirt.
    Mrs. Olivares pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. Pancho’s trailer was sad-looking. The grass in the front yard looked like hay that was ready to be harvested. Jackrabbits or prairie dogs had eaten the tulips around the flagpole. The windows were shut and there were yellow notices pasted to the door of thefront porch, as if the place had been condemned. The three of them sat in the car, observing, unwilling to move. Then D.Q. opened the door and swung his legs out. Mrs. Olivares was next. Both of them stood next to the car, waiting for Pancho to get out. Maybe it had not been a good idea to call Mrs. Olivares that morning.
    Finally he came out of the car. Mrs. Olivares opened the fence gate and stepped onto the first of the flat, round stones that led to the front door. The boys followed her. The energy that had animated D.Q. in the car was gone. He shuffled his feet as if he could barely walk. It was like they had entered a space where all happiness had been sucked out. Mrs. Olivares opened the door to the porch, tearing in half the yellow announcement for the upcoming auction. “I’ll wait out here,” D.Q. said.
    “Come in,” Pancho ordered. He held the door open for D.Q., and D.Q. quietly entered.
    Everything was the same as he had left it when the sheriff knocked on the door two weeks ago. There was the cup of coffee he placed on the kitchen counter on the way to the door. There was a pair of white socks on one end of the sofa and a rumpled pillow on the other end. Mrs. Olivares flipped the light switch up and down, but the electricity had been cut off. She went around drawing curtains to let the daylight in. “Oh,” she said, remembering. “I brought some boxes to put your things in. They’re in the trunk of the car. I’ll go get them.”
    When she left, D.Q. said, “I thought you said you didn’t read.” He had picked up a book that lay open on the brown chair. He read out loud: “The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life’s Journey, Muhammad Ali…” Pancho snatched the book from his hands.There was a knowing grin on D.Q.’s face. “You are not who you purport to be,” he said.
    “I don’t POOPORT nothing,” Pancho said. He tucked the book under his arm and headed for Rosa’s room. He stopped in front of the closed door and took a deep breath, then he slid the door open and entered. Immediately he was overwhelmed with her smell, a mixture of mint leaves and lilacs. He held his breath. If he didn’t breathe while he was in her room, he would make it.
    He opened the top drawer of the dresser and immediately saw the diary. It was locked with a small lock that opened with a tiny key. He went to the shelves where Rosa kept her dolls. Rosa liked to hide her money behind the dolls or inside the dolls’ dresses when she was a child. He figured she hid the key to the diary there as well. There were dolls from all over