Oscar spooky diaz's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Three days after Oscar gave the money back, the pawnshop turned him away. So did the second one. The broker there wouldn't touch his abuela's gold ring. He kept glancing past Oscar to the corner, where a kid in a white tee leaned against a wall. Oscar knew the problem now. The Santos had put a watcher on him. Every door he knocked on closed the second the kid appeared. He found the watcher waiting outside the pawnshop. Sadeyes. A corner boy who ran errands for the older Santos and skimmed off the top when nobody looked. Gold chain, fresh kicks, a grin like he'd already won. "Spooky," Sadeyes said. "Boss says you're stubborn. Says a man who throws back good money is a man who talks. To cops, maybe." He spread his hands. "I'm just here to watch. Make sure you don't forget your friends." Oscar didn't answer. He walked. Sadeyes followed, half a block back, whistling. That night nobody would rent Oscar a booth for the farmers market. The seller saw the kid across the lot and shook his head fast. Oscar's clean start was dying in the open. So he stopped running from the watcher. He turned it around. The next morning Oscar cooked. He set a folding table by the fence outside his family home, the chain-link one his abuela had grown pink roses through for thirty years. He piled paper plates with carnitas and rice. Free, a sign said. He did not hide. He wanted the whole block to see him. People came. Neighbors, kids, old men. Oscar handed out plates and said the same thing to everyone. "Opening a restaurant. Honest food. Tell your people." Sadeyes stood across the street, thumbs in his pockets, no longer scaring anyone. You can't frighten off a crowd that's already eating. By noon the watcher walked over. He took a plate. He chewed slow. "This is good," Sadeyes admitted, mouth full. "Boss ain't gonna like this." "Tell him what you saw," Oscar said. "A man giving away food. Not talking to cops. Just cooking." He held out the food handler's license from his jacket, crisp and real. "Show him this too. I got nothing to hide. That's the whole point." Sadeyes stared at the license, then at the line of neighbors by the rose fence. Something shifted in his face. He pocketed a second plate for the road. "You're crazy, Spooky," he said. But he left. He didn't come back. The watcher was gone. Oscar had won his block's eyes instead of losing them. Word spread that Spooky was cooking, and it spread as praise, not fear. But that was the new problem. The Santos boss would hear the same word. He'd learn that Oscar hadn't gone quiet or afraid. He'd made himself loud, public, and impossible to threaten in the dark. A watcher had failed. The boss would want something that couldn't be fed a plate of carnitas and sent home.