“You can leave now.” I stand, grabbing my bag.
“Moon, don’t be like that.”
“How could I not be? You just told me I’d be an easy lay because I’m pathetically lonely, and that’s the whole reason why you’re here.”
He slings an arm around my shoulder, which I fail to shrug off, because I’m not spilling any of this awesome red curry. “I really missed you,” he says, and Lord help me, I want to lean in. I am that starved for human connection. And he knows it.
“Look, I have to get to practice. But I’ll be in the next town over all week. Call me if you need it, okay?”
He acts like he’s the one doing me a favor. When I don’t respond right away, he brightens. I think because he thinks I’m considering his completely generous offer. So he hugs me, and I let him, because I want him to leave as soon as possible.
“Think about it,” he calls as he leaves.
And when I sit back down in my spot, I stare and stare at the space where Samuel stood before he left. Because I know only a few weeks ago I would’ve. I would’ve fucked him, just to feel an iota less lonely. But now I want something better than that.
It’s weird how a human being can change so fast. I feel like I’ve cast off all my flowers, but now they’re busy making seeds. Like I can become brand-new, pure, over and over again.
“What happened to your friend?” Santiago asks when I walk up.
I shrug. “He’s not my friend anymore. Let’s just say that.”
When I glance over, Santiago looks pleased. I’m not surprised. Naturally, he’d bask in my misfortune. At that moment, the doors burst open and the herds of Foto-fanatics stream in. He and I don’t speak again until after the last customer disappears out the door. I stretch my back and crack my knuckles. “I’ll come help load the truck in fifteen, okay? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a tree to climb.”
“I hope you don’t happen to fall and break your face.”
I narrow my eyes at him, and he does the same to me. Poophead.
Before I make it outside, I pull out my phone and check my emails quickly. Tía’s written back on the Knight of Swords! He’s your enchanter. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Great, now Tía and Samuel are telling the same lies. Because there’s no way on earth Santiago will ever enchant me. Someone else has got to be the Knight of Swords. I guess I’ll find out who soon enough.
* * *
The wisteria is high. Really fucking high. If I fell, I’m pretty sure I’d break not only my face, but the rest of my skull, and my knees and toes, too. But I try not to focus on all that.
Wisteria smells bright and sweet like vanilla and honey and something in that exact shade of lilac purple (though, thank goodness, they smell nothing like lilacs). I shimmy up the trunk and onto some wide branches, going up and up until I can touch the thick, sinewy vines, rough against my fingers. The way they reach and lift, I imagine them directing the creation of universes. After talking to them a bit, and asking, I reach for the flowers.
Wisteria looks like the curly hair of pale-purple fairies, spiraling lovely and free. Its color is smooth like water, and cold, too. I shiver when I touch it and snip some away.
Tía said we always have to give thanks for whatever we take from a plant. It’s alive, like us, and what we have with it is a relationship. And I do. I say “Thank you” before sliding down the way I came, stumbling a little along the way.
And who should be waiting for me at the bottom? None other than my hulked-out enemy, wearing much too tight a shirt. His hair is wet, too. He must’ve just showered and changed. I could see his nipples from across a whole sea in that thing.
“What do you want?” I say, making my voice icy.
“Do you always have to climb random trees whenever we stop?”
“Yes.” I glare at him and drop my gaze to the dirt. It’s dark. Perfect and clean, the color of something fresh-baked and happy and best eaten with cheese. I drop to my knees and start arranging the petals.
“What are you doing now?” He sounds incredulous.
“I’m preparing a witching circle. So I can hex your dumb nipples away.”
When I look up, he’s staring at his own chest, but he lifts his head again and he’s grinning. Grinning! It changes his whole face, crinkling up his light-brown eyes, his white teeth making his lips look like slices of a peach. Then he says, “Why are you looking at my nipples?”
It takes me only a second to snap out of it. “Are you kidding? They looked at me first.”
Again he grins. Again it makes my whole equilibrium flip upside down. The cells of my body tell me that the ground is sky and the sky is ground. I look down at the dirt fast, hands back on the flowers, but I’m halfway expecting to reach down and touch clouds instead.
He clears his throat. “I was wondering how tired you were of popcorn and peanut butter on a spoon.”
“I never eat popcorn and peanut butter on a spoon.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“If you wanted to use my pans…” He lets his voice fade away, and now he looks equal parts angry and bashful, which shouldn’t even be possible, yet here we are.
“I have a pan,” I respond. I haven’t had the guts to use it yet, but the fact is, I do own a pan.
He makes a face. “You mean that Teflon shit that looks like it’s been through a meat grinder?”
“Yes.”
He makes another face. “I only use cast iron.”
“Okay, great. I’ll order you a parade.”
He clears his throat again and puts his hands in his pockets. His nipples are still about to unravel holes in his shirt, and he shifts his weight from side to side until I can’t take it anymore. I sit up and say, “Are you offering your kitchen stuff for me to use?”
“I—uh—yeah, I guess. If you want. Or not. Whatever.”
I take a breath and look back down at the Wheel of Fortune. When I look up again, Santiago is already making his way back to the bus.
Jeez. What was that about?
24. The Second Time I Ever Had Sex
IT WAS A year later, I was sixteen, and Mom had spent all week really getting on my case about my weight. My butt had somehow gotten even bigger, to the point that when I looked at myself from the side, I was reminded of things like wheels of cheese and Alaskan mountain ranges.
“The only acceptable size a woman can get to is a ten,” she hissed at me every time I sat down to eat. Mom is a size ten. But when she was an eight, she said the only acceptable size was an eight, so I really doubt her sources on that information.
Either way, by Saturday I was pretty sick of her and myself, the way I’d lock myself in my room and try not to cry all the time. So after everyone was in bed, I snuck out the front door and got in my car, driving around with no purpose at all. I mean, I did go by the cemetery a few times, but I still wasn’t ready for that. Not even after years. So eventually, I pulled up at the movie theater, where there was a group of guys hanging out.
One of them, he noticed me. He was like a wild animal, looking for a girl just sad enough. That’s what it seems like now, when I think back on it. At the time, I thought he thought I was pretty.
His name was Ryan, and he was a senior at our school. “Hey,” he said, draping his long, lanky body over my window.
“Hey,” I said. I unlocked the car doors. “Wanna get in?”
It happened so fast. He barely even kissed me, and next thing I knew, his hands were in my shirt and shorts. We ended up in the back seat and he moved, moved, moved like he couldn’t have me fast enough, like if he didn’t get it within the next two minutes, he’d explode. The only time he stopped was to grab a condom.
So less than two minutes later, he was done, looking so pleased with himself. And I realized right then and there, he didn’t care who I was. I could’ve been any person with a vagina to him, and he would’ve reacted the same. And I had to knock him off hi
s high horse. I couldn’t let him think any of that was good for me.
“You’re already finished?” I asked.
And that’s when things got really, really bad. He didn’t hurt me, not physically. But when I pulled into my driveway that night, my whole body shook and shook and wouldn’t stop. My window was cracked open a little and a moth landed on it. Pale green and fuzzy. It slid inside and landed on my chest, like it knew I was about to be sliced open right there.
What I didn’t know was that Mom was waiting inside for me. What I didn’t know was that several more luna moths were trailing after me, like I was made of their favorite flowers. What I didn’t know was that Mom would take one look at them and know everything I had done.
What I didn’t know was that my mother would punish me so thoroughly, for the first time I couldn’t pretend to love her anymore.
25. The Worst Omelet in the Known Universe, and Soon Thereafter, the Actual Best Omelet in All the Universes of All Time
STAR WANTS ME to meet her at the restaurant chosen to host our influencer gods and goddesses tonight. Bring the flowers, she texts.
She’s wearing a baby-blue sundress, a white knit thing covering her shoulders, because purity. Most everyone’s at the table. “Moon!” She gestures to her hair. She’s braided and wrapped it around her head in a Grecian headband, the rest of it flowing behind her like a piece of pale silk.
I arrange the wisteria over her ears. When I’m done, she looks like Mab, queen of the fairies. And it makes me smile, because she is so beautiful, and I love fairies.
“Do you want me to photograph you here?”
“Yes, yes,” she says, checking the flowers with her phone, adjusting little strands of her hair.
I take a step back, pulling my camera out. Star and Chamomila are side by side, with Van and Oak on either side of them. It doesn’t escape my notice that Oak’s hand is on the back of Star’s chair, and it doesn’t escape Belle’s notice either. If I had to name the look Belle is giving her, it would be longing. What on this green earth is that about? Before I can ponder it too long, though, Star gives me a gesture that says, Get on with it.
Oak is telling a joke, I think, because when I pull the camera up, Star laughs. Chamomila adds something spectacularly funny, and Star unhinges her jaw and makes the walls shake with her cackling. It’s amazing how much teeth I’m able to capture. Click. Star, cackling again. Click, Star’s eyes wide as Chamomila reveals that she is, indeed, a snakeskin ogre underneath all her lithe musculature. Click, Star, shining so bright and pretty, she actually becomes the sun and roasts us all to ash.
Andro’s voice slithers around me from behind. “Wow, Moon. Those came out great.”
I jump a little, and he laughs. “Sorry, I keep doing that, don’t I?”
“It’s fine.” I get the feeling that he likes making me jump. Kind of a dick move, to be honest.
He smiles at me and I don’t know how to act or what to say, so I open and close my mouth like an animal on the verge of death, and he smiles some more, tolerating my demise, apparently. “Can I see the rest?”
I nod, snap my mouth shut, and hand the camera over. Andro clicks through the memory, nodding here, raising an eyebrow there. He stops abruptly, and my hands go a little numb when I realize he’s looking very intently at my wisteria Wheel of Fortune.
“Holy shit,” he says. “Did you make this?”
My mouth is open again. No sound is coming out again. Finally, just as I’m forming words, Star is right there, saving what’s left of my pathetic life.
“Moon makes earth art,” she says.
“Wow. Wow.” He’s zooming in on the wheel. You can practically see the microscopic mushroom network in the dirt. “What do you do this for? A school project or something?” His eyes widen a touch. “Wait, are you on Fotogram with this stuff?”
Star laughs. “Oh, no. Moon hates Fotogram. Like, legit wants to light it on fire and toss it into the sea.”
That’s right. My sister tells the creator of FG that I want to murder his billion-dollar life’s work.
But Andro chuckles in response and hands me back my camera. “I can relate to that. Hey, maybe we can talk tomorrow about that custom font, okay?”
I nod and take several steps back before waving goodbye and promptly running away. When I turn my head a little to see if everyone is laughing at me, I’m slightly dismayed to see, instead, that Star is already pulling Andro back into her orbit. She’s giving him a good smile. Not as good as the one she pulled on Santiago earlier, but pretty close. When Star smiles like that, she may as well pull out a microphone and sing, “And oh, you’re gonna love me.” All the spells she puts on everyone all the time, you’d think she had La Raíz, not me.
* * *
I’m so out of sorts, I entirely forget what I’m so pissed about until I finally reach the bus. “Fucking Star,” I mutter, leaning my head against the smooth of the outside metal. Fucking Star and playing down everything I do. Star has always made me feel small, but it’s never felt this… purposeful before.
I’m not taking another photo of her until she apologizes. With chocolate.
At that my stomach grumbles so loud, I think the bus shakes a little. My mood improves immediately when I remember Santiago basically gave me permission to use his kitchen. I can think of only one thing I want. “Onward, omelets,” I say to no one, and march right in.
* * *
Why didn’t anyone tell me that I’d need a degree in astrophysics to make a stinking omelet?
First of all, the eggs stuck. And that whole stuck layer burned up into a thin, black forest of smoke. I scrub the whole mess up, and while I’m doing so, pieces of that piece-of-crap nonstick skillet start scrubbing off. Like metallic dead skin after a terrible sunburn. I end up throwing the whole thing away, pan and all.
Well, Santiago said I could use his precious pans, right? So I grab one of his smaller cast irons. Put some butter on it, heat it up. Whisk the eggs, pour them in, start praying the rosary, light a cone of holy incense… and about burst into tears when the omelet sticks again. Smoke pours right up from it, so I scrape it out and put soapy water in the pan, which causes Santiago to jump out of wherever he was hiding to scold me. “It’s porous, Moon! The iron is porous. Do you know what that means?”
“Oh, yeah, porous. You can pour stuff on it.” I give him a buttery fake smile and flutter my lashes. “Funny, right?”
He gives me a look like he can’t believe how unfunny I am, takes over, and finishes washing his pan. I rummage in the cupboard for my popcorn. I throw a bag in the microwave, sit at the table, put my face in my hands.
What am I doing here? What am I doing with my life? I mean, I know I’m getting paid enough to live on campus at my dream school, but anytime I ask myself those two questions, the answer, like a compass, always points to Star. Always. And right now school and my tarot art have been on the back burner, with me, as usual, struggling to keep it on the flames at all. What am I doing here? Taking photos of Star. What am I doing with my life? Taking photos of Star. And what is Star doing? Eating caviar from rare platinum jellyfish wild caught from Siberia. Making friends. Getting every guy to trip over his dick for her, even Andro.
I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself once the microwave dings. Unfortunately, my pity party has an audience. When I lift my head, Santiago’s in the doorway, his arms crossed, his biceps looking more like hubcaps than bowls. Ugh. Get those things away from me. I’m not in the mood for that sort of distraction.
I stand and flip open the microwave. “What are you doing?” Santiago asks.
I pause, letting some of the steam out of the bag. “If you’re here to laugh at me, I will throw this burning-hot popcorn all over your boobs.”
He doesn’t even blink. “What happened to your eggs?”
I sigh. “In the trash, man. Can I eat my popcorn in peace now?”
He stares at me for a second, then takes a step forward, grabbing my popcorn and topping my s
ad little omelet attempt with it.
“What the hell—”
“Get the eggs.” His voice is so gruff, goose bumps—against my will—run up and down my arms.
“Why—”
“Because I’m tired of watching you eat garbage instead of food. The eggs, Moon. Please.”
Him adding “Moon” and then “please” somehow gets me in motion, even though my goose bumps have multiplied by a zillion trillion. There are fewer stars in the sky by now. I am a whole galaxy of goose bumps, spiraling and swirling into some distant black hole.
“How many eggs of an omelet?” he asks when I hand him the carton. Then he looks down. “What is this junk?”
It’s some eggs I bought at a creepy gas station after Belle snuck me those omelets from that one hotel. It says “farm-fresh” right there on the package, but he’s frowning at it like it reads “may or may not poison you” instead. Then he pops the eggs in the trash too.
“Hey! I paid good money for that!” A little over a dollar, but that still definitely counts as money last time I checked.
He ignores me and grabs other eggs—his eggs presumably—which are in a biodegradable container, covered in fancy scripted words like “free-range,” “organic,” and “meet your egg’s makers inside!” That last one makes me think there might be a portrait of God, white-bearded and cuddling hens, and it makes me half smile, even in these circumstances.
“How many eggs?” Santiago repeats.
I started with two in my previous attempts, but now I am much, much hungrier, so I say, “Six.”
“Six?” His pretty eyes are bugging out. “Quick question. Have you ever cooked anything before?”
I straighten my back and stare right at his pecs. “I’ll have you know, I can make the best grilled cheese on Planet Earth.” Until I ate them every day for six months—because yeah, it is the only thing I know how to make—and got deathly sick of them.
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe Page 9