by Mark Oshiro
“Tell me what?”
“If I go home, I need to be empty,” I said. “These stories … I can’t do it anymore.”
She held my hand, squeezed it. It felt so good, Solís.
“I support you, Xochitl. I already told you that.”
“They’re killing me,” I said.
I expected shock. Maybe anguish. But she nodded her head. “The pain,” she said. “How you keep touching yourself. I knew it was bad, but I … I understand.”
“I don’t know that you do,” I said, and I let go of her, not because I didn’t want to remain in physical contact, but because I needed to say this aloud, not through this strange power that neither of us understood.
“We were not meant to keep these stories,” I said. “I didn’t figure it out until after you told me about las poemas, about how you wrote them, and then discarded each one as you went.”
“But I had to—”
I raised a finger to stop her. “No, I have to say it all to you. It makes it real if I do.”
There was a scraping against the dirt. I glanced behind me: they were there, all of them, sitting proudly behind me, waiting to hear it, their eyes glowing.
Go ahead, señorita, Amato said. The world is here to listen. We are here to listen.
I smiled.
“I think I know why this is happening,” I began, and once it left my mouth, it was a flood, like the ones we got during the terrible rainstorms once a year, washing out the desert floor, cleansing it all, and it cleansed me. “Solís didn’t just want to protect others, to give them a means to tell the truth. They wanted to protect us. Las cuentistas. No one body is meant to hold so much … so many…”
I faltered, not because I didn’t know what to say, but because the moment had arrived.
We hear you, the guardians said. Please make your choice.
I kept going.
“I have it all inside me. Every emotion. Every feeling. Every possible pesadilla, every imaginable hardship, but none of them are mine. We are all so very alone, Emilia, and these stories have now found one another, have merged together, and they’re nearly a part of me.”
I breathed out, and with it went all my fear, all my hesitation.
“I know it’s happening. I keep trying to ignore it.”
She breathed in deep. “What do you mean?”
“I’m mixing it all up,” I said, choking back a sob. “The stories.”
“You said something earlier. About la señora Sánchez. I just assumed that you were … tired.”
“I am,” I said, letting that truth guide me forward. “I am so tired. But these stories … they’ve found one another inside me. And they’re becoming one thing, one living cuento within me.”
“Xo, are you—?”
“I’m giving them all back today, Emilia. Every story. Including my own. And then I’m never taking another one.”
There was no hesitation on her part. She threw her arms around me, and I wanted to tell her to stop, that there was one more thing left, the big thing, but Solís … she felt so good. No, she made me feel so good, and then the tears rushed forth, spilling down my face, and I pushed her gently.
“No, Emilia, you don’t get it,” I cried.
“Xochitl, I will support you through anything,” she insisted, and she moved toward me, but I moved back, farther from her.
And it was right there.
The tip of my tongue.
It was time.
“I’m a part of them. Which means when I give them back, I will lose myself, too.”
Her head cocked to the side, shook lightly. “I don’t get it. You always give the stories back, don’t you?”
“And I forget them. Solís strips them from my memory, and I can never remember what I was told.”
She shook her head slowly as it dawned on her. “And if you give Solís your story at the same time—”
“—I will forget,” I finished.
It grew, slow at first, like your light in the morning, spreading faster and faster until her face was twisted and uncomprehending. “No, that can’t be right,” she said, but I could see it in her eyes: she knew it was true.
“I don’t know how much I will lose, Emilia. It could be the past week or two. It could be most of my life. Where does my story begin? Where does it end? How much of it was claimed by the others, by the ones that have been eating away at me?”
She was crying now, too, but she wiped at her eyes, and her fury was defiant. “No, I don’t accept that,” she said. “Solís can’t be that cruel to you, not after everything you did for Them.”
“I don’t think they can do much of anything,” I said, and a calmness settled in my body, a clarity I had not possessed before. “I don’t think they ever planned for someone like me.”
She laughed, and when she hugged me, I did not reject her. Our emotions flitted back and forth, and then the humming began, the low growl, and los gatos joined us, and Amato leapt onto their hind legs and roared, a glorious, rebellious sound, and I kissed her, Solís. I kissed her because I wanted to, because she was la poeta, because I could.
“Oh, Xochitl,” she said. “I know this must be hard, but I want you to know that I will be here regardless.”
“Really?” I said, and I wiped the tears from under her eyes. “You mean that?”
“I think it’s my turn,” she said, “to become a cuentista.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, to refuse her, but she kept talking.
“Not like that. Not like you. There is no one like you, Xochitl.”
She kissed my forehead.
It hurts, Solís, please. Wait just another moment. I’m almost done. I promise.
“We are the stories we tell one another. That’s what las poemas were for. I needed to tell my story to someone, and you found them. You brought them back to me.”
Another kiss, between the eyes.
I’m almost there. Please.
“So, let me tell you a story,” she said, her eyes red and watery. “Or two. Or a thousand. I will remember all of this for the both of us, and no matter how many times you need it, I will tell it to you all over again.”
On the lips.
“I don’t know what we are. I only know what we can be. Is that good enough?”
A smile.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
She stepped back, an arm’s length from me, and she was still crying, but they were not tears of sadness.
No.
I think she was proud of me.
She wiped at her face. “I’ll wait for you to be done,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”
“Lo siento,” I said.
She shook her head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Xo. Never apologize for being yourself ever again.”
I left her there without another glance because if I didn’t go right then, I could have stood there forever, staring at her, her beautiful hair, her face of angles and sharpness.
I walked toward the whitethorn.
I knelt before it, underneath all of las estrellas.
I began.
And now I am here, Solís. That’s all of it. That’s why I left. That’s why I kept the stories, and why I am kneeling here.
The sun is out now. You have burned away las estrellas, and I hope you have been patient as I told you all of this.
I’ve never done this part. I have given you every story before this, and I don’t even know if this is going to work. But I have to try.
I hope you understand. I hope you grasp why I had to tell you everything, why I waited so long, why I am willing to give it all up. It’s not just for her. I promise. She is important. She means everything to me.
But this was all for me. It always was, and I am not afraid to say that anymore. I chose this for myself, and if you took my whole life from me, if you sent me back to my birth, I would do it all again.
Every last decision.
It hurts. I can feel them quivering in me, anticipatin
g the inevitable, and they’re latching on to everything as they prepare to leave my body. How much of me will they take? How much of this will I forget? Will you take all of me? Will I be an empty shell?
A desert, empty and vast.
I don’t think you can. I don’t think you care. I think you sit up there and you hear us. You observe, and then you move on.
I believe that there is too much of me for you ever to take. I believe I am more important than the role you cast me into, and when all of this is over, I know I will never take another story from anyone.
Instead, I will tell stories. I will listen to them, too, but not take them. And unlike you, I will do something about them.
No more obedience. No more bowing before someone who does not bow back.
See the truth. Believe the truth.
Because the truth is … we should not have this. No child should be granted this power. No one person should have this. What good has it done us?
Maybe that’s what was missing. Maybe when this settles, if I still remember, I’ll tell the world that we need a change. That las cuentistas are overburdened and overwhelmed. It’s time for a new honesty, one that cannot be corrupted by greed or ambition or fear.
But I know you’re there. Waiting. Watching.
I’m ready. The bitterness is here, in my throat, waiting to pass out of my mouth and into the willing earth.
The price is worth it. I am not ashamed of who I am or what I did.
I just hope that you have been listening.
Because this is the last story I will ever tell you.
Acknowledgments
Thank you.
To my agent, DongWon Song. You have been a force of support, love, inspiration, and creativity in my life. You encourage my ridiculous ideas (and trust me, there are so many more to come), you told me to write the book of my heart to follow up Anger, and you have gone beyond the call of a literary agent to make my life better. I would not be here without you.
To Miriam Weinberg. I handed in a horror novel set in a dystopian landscape to you over two years ago. You loved it, but you had the courage to tell me that I had written the wrong book, that the story I had given you was a scathing polemic, but was this really the novel I wanted to release next?
It wasn’t, and we set out over 2018 to drastically change this manuscript, which went through two complete rewrites. You pushed me to write fantasy. You pushed me to throw caution to the wind and compose the most complicated, ambitious book I’d ever attempted. When I told you that I realized that Xochitl’s voice would work best if the entire novel was a single prayer, you didn’t shut me down. Your eyes went wide over plates of French pastries, and you ordered me to do it.
Over and over again, as we have worked tirelessly to make this book the best it could be, you pushed me to be better. And every time, you were right. Each of Us a Desert does not exist without you, and I love you for that.
Thank you.
To the women of Deadline City, Dhonielle Clayton and Zoraida Córdova. You invited me into your lives through a Madcap Retreat (and one well-timed visit to a hot tub), then made me a part of our little office community in Harlem. We have spent many late nights together, all on deadline, complaining about the things our industry does wrong, making terrible, terrible jokes, stealing tiny spoons from Jeni’s Ice Cream (ZORAIDA), and you have both seen this book take shape into what it is now. You even took me with you on your trip to my second home: Hawai’i. I don’t think I would be where I am without my work wives. I adore and love you both.
To the homies: Adam Silvera, Arvin Ahmadi, Tiffany Jackson, Justin Reynolds, Ashley Woodfolk, Patrice Caldwell, Jalissa Corrie, Saraciea Fennell, and Kwame Mbalia. Thank you for making me feel like I could survive in New York City. In the world of Kidlit. As a writer. I cherish all the time I’ve spent with each of you, either at writing retreats, writing dates, French fry crawls, or cutting it up at festivals. I love you all.
To my incredible team at Tor Teen, who have been so deeply supportive of me, my work, and my vision: thank you. To Saraciea Fennell, my superstar publicist, who keeps me organized and is one of the reasons my debut book was as successful as it was. To Sanaa Ali-Virani, editorial assistant extraordinaire. To Anthony Parisi, Isa Caban, Eileen Lawrence, Devi Pillai, Renata Sweeney, Zakiya Jamal, Lauren Levite, Lucille Rettino, and all those who played a part in making this book (and Anger) a reality: you have helped my dream come true, and I’m indebted to you all.
To Project LIT, for the incredible support and community. I can’t wait to see you all grow.
To PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary Writers in Schools programs: thank you for putting my very queer books in the hands of students. It’s beyond my wildest dreams as a kid who grew up closeted in a small city near the desert to see children get to be their truest selves and express that through literature. You’re all changing the world.
To all the librarians, educators, teachers, students, booksellers, bloggers, Booktubers, bookstagrammers, and readers who have influenced someone reading my work: You are my everything. You have also helped make my dream come true, and I am appreciative of you all.
To the wonderful Mark Does Stuff community, for your patience as I continue to balance being a book/TV blogger and an author, for sticking with me for over a decade, and for allowing me to finally get revenge on all of you for every shocking plot twist you got me to experience. Here’s to another decade of being unprepared.
To all the authors I have befriended in the past three years: I won’t list y’all because there are too many, but I feel so privileged and honored to be in the children’s literature space with so many brilliant, empathetic, and kind creators. Thank you to all the authors who hosted me, were in conversation with me on tour, who gave me advice, who stayed up way too late at festivals and encouraged bad decisions, who made me feel like I belonged.
Thank you.
To Sarah Gailey, for brainstorming, our trauma bonding, your incredible advice for this book and others, your humor, your generosity, your brilliance, and for all the cursed things you send me. I owe you everything.
And finally.
To Baize White. In early 2017, at a writing retreat my agent hosted, I got to watch you read the first outline/synopsis for the book that would become Each of Us a Desert. I have experienced few things as satisfying as watching you get to the massive plot twist that was in the original draft of this book. I loved writing to impress you, and I so deeply wanted to impress you for the rest of my life. Then, a couple months later, you drove me (frequently well over the speed limit, I might add) to the Sonoran Desert so that I could spend days wandering in the heat, documenting the desert as part of the research for this book. Xochitl’s journey would not be what it is if you had not done this for me.
Then I wrote the book over most of 2017. You read it at the beginning of 2018, loved it, and gave me some wonderful feedback. I rewrote it once. And by the time I got to the second rewrite, my first book had come out in the world, and my dream had come true. Unfortunately, our dream was starting to crumble, and it was during that second rewrite—when Miriam insisted that Xochitl have someone her age on her journey, that perhaps the book needed some romantic tension—that I struggled with tension in our relationship. We were far from home, I could not figure out why these two characters should even like one another, and you and I were having such an awful time communicating, being present, making things work.
And that’s how I figured it out. I thought of you.
And then I wrote you.
Emilia and Xochitl are you and I, written backwards. I saw these two characters, unable to communicate, unable to see who they truly were, and then I designed a journey for them that was our own. I guided them to the place where you and I began. Because at the start of our relationship, you traveled an ungodly distance to be with me and tell me that you loved me.
And no one had ever done such a thing.
You read a draft of this last summer. You cried. You tol
d me it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever written. I was pleased because it meant I impressed you.
I wrote nearly all of this right after that. Which means I’ve reached the point where this has to change tense. Because you didn’t make it this far. You didn’t get to see this book set free into the world. And I have struggled for months with what I was going to do with these acknowledgments. Do I keep all this? Do I tell the truth?
I would like to think that my fiction does that: it tells a truth. And the truth is that I cannot divorce you from this book. You are written into the very fabric of it, and it does not work without you.
So.
Thank you, Baize. I wrote this book as my love letter to you, back when we were still together, back when you were still alive, and that’s the truth of it all. But I also hope that this accomplishes something else. You left your own legacy behind, in your work, in your kindness, in your originality, in your podcast. You don’t need me to add to that. Rather, I would like to do something else for you, to honor what you have done for me.
Each person who picks up this book, who makes it to the end, who reads these final words, will hopefully then think of you, even if they never knew you, never got to experience your energy or your beauty. Literature has a way of granting immortality, and so I hope that Each of Us a Desert has a long shelf life.
Because then that means you get to live forever in the minds of others.
Thank you, Baize, for being my Emilia, and for letting me be your Xochitl.
Mark
ALSO BY MARK OSHIRO
Anger Is a Gift
About the Author
Mark Oshiro is the Hugo Award-nominated writer of the online Mark Does Stuff universe (Mark Reads and Mark Watches), where they analyze book and TV series. Their debut novel, Anger Is a Gift, was a recipient of the Schneider Family Book Award in 2019. Their lifelong goal is to pet every dog in the world.