Part 4 – The Signal He Left Behind
They buried Vergil at the edge of a community garden that barely qualified as such—just a fenced-off patch of land behind the parking lot with one lemon tree, some withered aloe, and a broken bench half-swallowed by weeds.
Luis and Rosa went early, before school, before the sun got too high, before the world had time to wake up and notice grief.
Rosa wrapped the blanket tighter and held it like a swaddled child. Luis carried the small garden spade they borrowed from the neighbor across the hall.
He dug in silence.
His hands blistered quickly, but he didn’t stop.
Some things you do with your own two hands, or not at all.
By mid-morning, the grave was no deeper than a foot and a half. The earth was dry, packed tight with stones and old bottle caps. Rosa offered to finish the job, but Luis shook his head.
When the hole was finally ready, he knelt and placed Vergil gently inside.
No box.
No collar.
Just the blanket, and the folded drawing Luis had redrawn the night before—this time with stars that looked like they were weeping.
He smoothed the soil back over, slow and careful.
Like tucking someone in for the last time.
He didn’t cry until he was alone again.
It came fast, sudden. A choking kind of grief. He curled into himself at the base of the lemon tree and let the tears take over.
He didn’t remember much of that hour. Just the sound of birds.
And how the wind kept lifting the edges of Vergil’s old food bowl, still sitting near the bench like it was waiting for its owner to come back.
Later that week, the school counselor, Ms. Alvarez, asked if he wanted to talk about it.
Luis said no.
“Do you want to write about him?” she offered gently. “Or draw?”
Luis considered it. “Maybe later.”
“Grief has its own schedule,” she said. “No rush.”
He nodded, but inside, the word grief didn’t feel right. It sounded too clean. Too adult.
What he felt wasn’t tidy or soft.
It was jagged. Lonely.
Like looking for a signal and getting nothing but static.
On Friday, Luis went back up to the roof.
He brought nothing with him. No Chromebook. No backpack. Just a leftover slice of tortilla and the old dish Vergil used to ignore.
He set it down in the exact same spot—just to see.
Then he sat beside it, cross-legged, facing the sky.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
And then he saw them:
Two kids in Building 2 across the alley—brothers, maybe—both kneeling on their rooftop, laptops in front of them. One looked over, saw Luis, and gave a little wave.
Luis waved back.
And suddenly, the rooftop wasn’t just his anymore.
That weekend, the Wi-Fi installation team came.
They wore neon vests and carried rolls of cable like fire hoses. They worked fast, sweating through their shirts, installing routers and extenders on every floor.
Luis sat on the steps and watched them, Vergil’s bowl still in his lap.
One of the workers, a young guy named Jonah, noticed.
“You the rooftop kid?” he asked.
Luis nodded.
Jonah grinned. “Heard you had a bodyguard up there.”
Luis smiled—first time in days. “Yeah. He retired.”
“Bet he was a good one.”
“The best.”
Jonah paused, then pointed to the bowl. “Wanna hang that somewhere? We could mount it on the wall. Like a plaque or something.”
Luis looked down at the metal dish. Scratched. Bent.
But it meant something now.
He nodded. “Yeah. Right here on the stairwell landing. So he can still watch the door.”
By Monday, the internet was strong. Really strong.
Not just in Luis’s apartment, but in every corner of El Monte Vista. Kids started doing homework on balconies. Adults used it to job search. Grandparents made video calls.
Even the building manager admitted it felt like something had shifted.
And in the stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors, someone had scribbled in blue marker just below Vergil’s mounted dish:
“Loyalty leaves a signal stronger than Wi-Fi.”
No one claimed it.
No one erased it.
Luis touched the edge of the bowl every time he passed.
Just once.
Just enough to say: I still remember.
At school, things changed too.
Carlos started saving him a seat at lunch.
Ms. Alvarez asked him to help design a mural with the art class.
The principal asked if he’d be the “honorary tech ambassador” for a community event.
“I don’t know anything about tech,” Luis said.
“You know about what happens when people don’t have it,” the principal replied. “That’s even better.”
Luis shrugged, trying to play it cool.
But the words stayed with him.
That afternoon, Rosa made albondigas soup—real ones, with fresh cilantro and soft carrots. She set the bowl in front of him, brushing the hair from his forehead.
“You’re still quiet,” she said.
Luis sipped the broth. “I just miss him.”
“I know.”
They sat in silence.
Then she reached under the counter and placed a small, cloth-bound notebook beside his bowl.
“What’s this?”
“I found it at the market,” she said. “You said you might want to draw again.”
Luis opened it. The first page was blank. But the second had a single sticky note in her handwriting:
“He stayed beside you. Now you carry him.”
Luis stared at the words.
Then picked up his pencil.
And started to draw.
The first page:
A boy on a rooftop.
A bowl at his feet.
An old dog, resting beneath the stars, watching over the city.
And just beneath the sketch, in careful letters:
“Some signals never fade.”
Part 5 – What You Leave Behind
Luis Mendez didn’t speak much during the mural ceremony.
He stood near the far end of the gym wall, hands tucked in his pockets, while the others clapped and took photos. But when the tarp finally dropped, revealing the painted rooftop scene—Vergil lying beside him under a sky of swirling stars—something deep inside him gave way.
It wasn’t sadness, exactly.
It was something older. Something like honor.
The mural was the art class’s idea, but they asked Luis to help design it. He drew from memory—where the crack ran across the roof like a scar, where the satellite dish leaned like a tired shoulder, where Vergil always curled close without needing to be asked.
The final piece showed him just as Luis remembered: alert, quiet, waiting for nothing and everything all at once.
Carlos slapped him on the back when the applause faded.
“Dude. That looks epic.”
Luis smiled. “They got his eyes right.”
“They got everything right. Even your messed-up shoes.”
Luis looked down. His right shoelace was frayed. The left sole had peeled away slightly, flapping with every step.
Carlos nudged him. “Somebody’s gonna see that and think, ‘Dang, that dog must’ve loved that kid.’”
Luis nodded. “He did.”
Back at El Monte Vista, the changes were piling up like letters on the welcome mat.
The city had sent volunteers to repaint stairwells and repair the broken playground swing. A college group donated used laptops. And someone—no one knew who—left bags of dog food every week at the garden gate where Vergil was buried.
Luis started watering the lemon tree each morning before school.
He didn’t talk about it. He just did it.
Some things don’t need to be explained.
One evening, Rosa brought home a stack of mail. One envelope was different—bright blue, with handwriting instead of a printed label.
Luis opened it slowly.
Inside was a letter from a woman in Nebraska.
She’d read about him in The Valley Echo, then again in a local paper that picked up the story.
“My husband passed away in February,” it read. “He used to walk our dog Charlie every morning at 6 a.m. Since he’s been gone, I still wake up at that time, but I sit by the window now, wondering if Charlie feels it too. Your story reminded me that love doesn’t disappear—it just finds new forms.”
At the bottom, she’d drawn a tiny sketch of Charlie—ears too big for his head, tail curved like a question mark.
Luis stared at it for a long time.
Then he folded the letter and tucked it in his new notebook, behind his latest drawing:
Vergil beneath the lemon tree.
The dish mounted on the wall.
And a boy kneeling, watering the roots.
That weekend, Rosa asked him if he wanted to go to the shelter.
“Just to visit,” she added. “No pressure.”
Luis hesitated.
“I don’t want to replace him.”
“You’re not,” she said gently. “But you do have room.”
The shelter smelled like bleach and wet fur. A chorus of barks echoed through the kennels, some eager, some terrified.
Luis walked slowly, peering into each enclosure. A gray terrier barked so hard he fell over. A three-legged mutt licked the glass. A yellow puppy yawned and immediately fell asleep again.
But none of them felt right.
Until the very last cage.
A skinny black-and-white dog with one floppy ear and a missing patch of fur above her right eye. She didn’t bark. She just watched him quietly, tilting her head as if trying to remember something long forgotten.
“She’s been here a while,” the attendant said. “No name on record. We just call her Dot.”
Luis knelt. The dog leaned forward slowly, touched her nose to the bars, and let out a slow, gravelly sigh.
Luis exhaled, too.
“She’s not Vergil,” he told his mamá in the car.
“No,” Rosa said. “She’s Dot.”
Luis looked at the passenger seat, where the dog lay curled on a towel, too tired to stand but not afraid.
“She can stay with me,” he said. “If she wants.”
Rosa smiled. “Looks like she already decided.”
That night, Luis brought out the food bowl.
He filled it half-full and set it down on the tile.
Dot limped over, sniffed once, then began to eat—soft, slow bites, the kind that say thank you without needing words.
Luis sat beside her, one hand resting on the cool floor.
Above them, the Wi-Fi signal blinked green.
Steady.
Strong.
Unbroken.
Before bed, he opened the notebook.
He added a new sketch.
This one showed two dogs: one curled beneath a tree, the other standing beside a boy at the top of a long stairwell.
And beneath it, he wrote:
“Loyalty isn’t something you lose. It’s something you carry forward.”
Part 6 – The Dog Bowl and the Lemon Tree
Dot didn’t sleep like Vergil.
Vergil had been quiet, still—like an old man who knew his dreams by heart. But Dot twitched in her sleep. She barked at shadows. She kicked her legs like she was running somewhere she’d once been.
Luis didn’t mind.
He understood what it meant to be chased by memories.
On the first day of spring, Dot followed Luis up to the rooftop.
Her steps were slow, cautious. The fire escape creaked beneath them, but she didn’t flinch. When they reached the top, she paused, nose in the air, tail stiff.
Luis waited.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re allowed.”
The city stretched before them like always—dry grass, concrete sprawl, the occasional pickup rumbling below. But something felt different now. Not because of Dot. Because Luis was different.
He set down the bowl in its usual spot.
Dot walked a full circle around the rooftop before lying beside him—not on top of his feet like Vergil used to, but close enough to touch.
Luis took out his notebook and began to sketch.
This time, it was her.
And as he drew, he spoke softly—not to Dot, but to Vergil, wherever he might be.
“I think she’s gonna be okay,” he said. “I think I might be, too.”
That afternoon, Luis stopped by the garden behind the parking lot.
He hadn’t visited since the burial.
The lemon tree had new buds—green and pale yellow, still small but promising. A few bees drifted lazily from bloom to bloom. At the base of the tree, the mound of earth he’d raised for Vergil’s grave had softened into the soil, no longer obvious unless you knew what to look for.
Someone had placed a painted stone at the head of the grave. It read:
“Thank you, Rooftop Dog.”
Luis smiled, brushing dirt from the letters.
Then he knelt and placed his hand on the ground.
It wasn’t a prayer exactly. Just a moment. A stillness.
When he rose to leave, he noticed something odd:
Dot wasn’t with him.
He found her a few minutes later, standing near the mounted bowl in the stairwell.
She wasn’t sniffing it or pawing at it. She was just looking.
Head tilted. One ear twitching.
Luis stood quietly, watching.
And then she did something he hadn’t expected.
She sat down. Right beneath the bowl. Just like Vergil used to.
And for a moment, Luis felt a wave of something so deep it almost knocked him off balance.
Not grief.
Not even sadness.
Just memory, blooming like lemons in spring.
At school, the mural sparked more than just praise.
The principal announced an “Every Voice” essay contest, asking students to write about moments they felt seen or forgotten. Luis didn’t know if he’d enter—writing wasn’t his favorite.
But the prompt stayed with him.
When did I feel seen?
The answer wasn’t a moment.
It was a presence.
Vergil on the roof. Dot in the stairwell.
His mamá at the stove, saving the best piece of meat without saying why.
Maybe, he thought, it wasn’t about being seen.
Maybe it was about being remembered.
That night, he sat at the kitchen table, chewing the end of a pencil.
Dot lay under his chair, sighing now and then.
Finally, he flipped to a blank page in his notebook and began to write:
He didn’t bark. He didn’t beg. He just showed up and stayed.
That’s how you know someone’s worth trusting.
Not because they promise things, but because they don’t leave—even when there’s nothing in it for them.
Vergil didn’t know I was a news story. He didn’t care that I had no signal. He just knew I needed someone.
And now, I think I know why people keep writing to me. They see something in that photo—something they forgot they needed.
A reason to believe loyalty still matters.
Rosa read the essay over his shoulder when he was done.
She said nothing for a while. Just pulled him into a hug.
“Maybe you should enter,” she whispered.
Luis looked at Dot.
Then at the bowl on the wall.
Then back to his notebook.
“I think I already did.”
At the end of the week, a truck pulled into the El Monte Vista lot with no announcement and no press.
It carried a small bronze plaque, paid for by anonymous donors. The maintenance crew mounted it beside the garden fence.
Luis stood beside it with Dot at his feet.
The plaque read:
In memory of Vergil, the Rooftop Dog
He kept watch through the silence.
He brought signal where there was none.
He reminded us that love doesn’t need words to be heard.
Luis touched the cool metal, then bent to scratch behind Dot’s ear.
“I think he’d like this,” he said.
Dot licked his hand, once, then rested her head on his knee.
The sky above was full of wind and gulls. The Wi-Fi signal blinked steady green through the apartment windows.
And on the rooftop, a new story waited to be told.