How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe

by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

  When I slide back into the kitchen area, Santiago stares at me from the doorframe, one giant leg crossed over the other. “We need to get to work,” I say as I load my plate into the dishwasher.

  Neither of us speaks as we unload the merch, sell the merch, and pack up the merch again. So we’re back to that. And that makes me sad too, so when we finally get back to the bus, the sky as purple and gloomy as I feel, I crawl into bed, hiding. Like a loser.

  My phone buzzes a few times, and I ignore it. Finally it starts ringing, and for a moment I think maybe Mom is calling to check in on me. I grab it and sigh, because no, it’s not my mom. It’s Samuel. I don’t answer fast enough to catch the call, so I click over to my messages.

  Moon.

  Moon.

  You there?

  Moon.

  Luuuuuuuuuuna.

  MOON.

  I know I said he’s not my friend anymore. I know I said it. But right now, I really, really want to feel good about myself. And a lot of the time, that’s exactly what Samuel does for me. And even though I know his compliments aren’t in good faith, that reminder doesn’t stop me from answering when he calls again. “What do you want?” I ask when I pick up.

  “You mean, besides nudes…?”

  I scoff. “You’re such a—”

  “Stud? Catch? Well-rounded gentleman?”

  “I was going to say douche canoe.”

  He laughs. Everything always rolls off Samuel. I wish I could study how to be more like him, minus all the sleaze. “How have you been?” I ask.

  “Good. Balling. Partying.”

  “Who is your companion this week?”

  “Companion, Moon? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  I laugh.

  “I’ve been spending time with Maury Bodega.”

  “Wow.” Maury Bodega, despite having the name of a 209-year-old bartender, is hot. Like, Philips brothers hot.

  “You jealous?”

  “Of you, yes. Not of him.”

  “That hurts, Moon.” I smile as he adds, “It’s good to hear your voice, Loon.”

  Before I can respond, the curtain to my bed is thrown open, and I’m looking into the amber eyes of a certain fuming, hulking jerk-face.

  “I’m hungry,” the giant demands.

  I put a hand on my phone. “And what do you want me to do about it?” Even as my stomach growls loudly.

  “Kitchen,” Santiago says as he turns away. “Now.”

  My stomach growls again, as though to say, Oh God, yes, please follow that mofo anywhere please, thanks.

  “What the hell was that?” Samuel is asking.

  “Uh.” I’m not sure if he’s asking about my stomach’s or Santiago’s booming growls. “I’ve got to go eat now.”

  “Moon—”

  “Talk soon, yeah?” And I hang up before he’s got the chance to charm me. It’s weird, but in a matter of minutes, I don’t have time for that BS anymore.

  * * *

  I’m weeping over onions. Weeping like an even more devastating version of La Llorona.

  “Are they chopped yet?” Santiago barks.

  “Of course not.” I throw my hands up to gesture to my face. “I can barely see, much less chop. Unless you want me to cut open an artery.”

  “It would certainly make my life easier if you did.” He hands me something soft, and I wipe my eyes, blink a little, and get back to it.

  “What are we cooking tonight?” I ask.

  Santiago doesn’t say anything. Then: “So you’re not done with the cooking show.”

  “I thought you’d figured that out when I started crying over the onions for you.”

  He snorts a little. A little too smugly, in my opinion. He then barks orders at me, occasionally cutting in to take over, until I’m plating what he tells me is blackened tilapia with a mustard wine sauce and cheese grits with garlic spinach on the side.

  When I sit and take a bite, I swear, my eyes roll back into my liver. The fish is crisp and flaky, spicy and salty. The grits, which I seriously doubted were going to be edible, freaking rock my socks. I’d even smack myself in the face for the spinach. I imagine myself on the streets, holding a hand-painted sign: WILL SLAP SELF FOR WILTED SPINACH COOKED BY SANTIAGO PHILIPS.

  “So you still want to learn how to cook?” Santiago’s got an eyebrow raised, amused by the foodgasm I’m currently having.

  I spoon another bite in before responding, and the buttery-cheesy amazingness hits me all over again. This whole meal is a hearth fire, warming my hands and lips and belly. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the smoke of it.

  “Fine,” I finally respond.

  Santiago tilts his mouth. “Meh, I don’t think so.”

  I blink. Swallow. Blink again.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” he says, shrugging. “It’s a lot of effort, putting up with you. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me.”

  I keep staring for a full thirty seconds and then say, “You are such a fucking—”

  “But,” he interrupts, “I could be persuaded if you’d say the magic word.”

  Oh my God. He’s going to make me beg. I spoon a giant-ass bite into my mouth and will my eyes to stop rolling like bowling balls. This. I’ll do it for this. Real food, nourishing my body. Self-care. Whatever.

  I lift my face and say, “Santiago, will you please teach me to cook.” My tone sort of sounds like I’m in a great deal of pain.

  He half smiles, and there’s mischievous glint in his eyes. “I don’t know—”

  “Motherfucking ass-pie.”

  “Did you just call me an ass-pie?”

  “I sure did. And you know what, I’m not sure the ass-pie pain you are is worth—”

  “Okay,” he says. “We’ll keep up the cooking show. But you’ve gotta be in the kitchen at six p.m. sharp, unless our work schedule dictates otherwise.” He narrows his eyes. “Not chatting to boyfriends instead.”

  I sigh and stare at my plate. Would it be too pathetic and gross to lick it clean? “Six sharp. Got it, Thor.”

  “No talking to boyfriends while we’re cooking,” he repeats.

  “I don’t even have a boyfriend, so you can stop worrying about that, okay?”

  His face is so completely blank, I half wonder if he’s turned to stone, if he’s been a robot this whole time and the system just conked out. And then he stands. “Come on, help me wash the dishes, fisherwoman.”

  Fuck, I hate this guy. Damn him and his delicious food.

  28. That One Time I Tried to Pray La Raíz Away (Spoiler: It Didn’t Work)

  AFTER THE LADYBUG incident, I was actually desperate enough to go to church without Mom forcing me to. It was Sunday, after morning Mass had ended. Everyone was making their way to the exits, and I sat in a pew and cried. Wasn’t it enough for me to have lost my dad and have a mom like mine? Wasn’t it enough that I was destined to be Moon, Weed Extraordinaire? It was quite the pity party, let me tell you.

  I thought everyone was too busy to notice me, but I was wrong. Because that’s when Father Luke approached. He didn’t sit down or anything; he stood super far away, like I had something contagious.

  “I heard a disturbing rumor, Moon,” he said in that fake-warm voice. The one he used when he was trying to prove to someone—God, I guess—that he had what it took to speak with people he really didn’t want to. That some part of him cared. I always thought if Father Luke couldn’t convince me he cared, that tone sure wasn’t going to work with God, but I never had the guts to tell him that.

  Right. Back to the story. So he was like, “I heard a rumor,” and my response was to laugh. Because of course the father had heard something bad about me. Rumors preceded me, launched and landed all around me, just like bugs. It’s the way it is when you’re a weed.

  You should’ve seen his face. He couldn’t hide his contempt any longer, not after I did that weeping-snotty laugh. “So it’s true, then?” he asked.

  “What’s true?” I said in
return. “About the ladybugs or about the fireflies? Or are you talking about the rumors of all the sex?” I wiped my nose with the end of my sleeve. “It doesn’t matter. Because you know what? They’re all true.”

  He audibly swallowed, like the way cartoon animations do when they’re terrified, and I swear, he used all his power to refrain from taking a step back. He could only say, “You must’ve angered God very much, to have these creatures be attracted to you.”

  Yep. An angry God sicced ladybugs on me. I was too tired to say this, though. When I didn’t respond, he added, “The confessional will be open until noon. You can do it, Moon. You can atone for your sins. That’s the gift Jesus gave us all.” And he nodded, the obligatory Save Moon Fuentez speech complete, and walked away.

  He walked away before I could ask him how many Hail Marys it would take to “atone” myself of a thousands-year-old curse in the bloodline. What did I have to do to burn out the original sin, the one that literally belonged to Eve?

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even call these words after him, because he stopped a few feet away and said this: “It’s a shame you aren’t more like your sister.”

  That was the moment I decided I was sincerely done with the church. No amount of threats from my knife-wielding mother could make me endure that again. It’s a shame you aren’t more like your sister. I’d heard enough from my mom and strangers from the internet. I wasn’t going to let some asshole in priest’s robes tell me too.

  Tell me I’m not as good as Star.

  That I’m not as worthy, lovely, charming, or valued as Star.

  It’s already tattooed on me, in the shape of a fat pink scar on my chest. What else could I possibly need for it to sink in any more? A larger kitchen knife? A sword?

  Oh, and praying the curse away didn’t work, by the way. Only girls like Star get their prayers answered.

  29. In Which a Wild Nebula Picks Wild Huckleberries (and Is Also a Big Jerk About It)

  IT’S WEIRD. WE have the day off, but I haven’t seen Santiago for hours. Not that I’ve been looking for him or anything ridiculous like that. Just, when you’ve spent the last couple of weeks in close quarters with an enormously grumpy giant lurking about, it’s a little weird when he’s not there, stomping around and grumping about stuff like hidden preservatives and monosodium glutamate.

  I’m googling how long it takes before someone is considered missing when the bus’s front door is flung open. The steps that follow shake up the whole vehicle, the whole universe even. Asteroids far and wide are disrupted on their paths. The slow migration of the Milky Way hits a bump like on a dirt road. So I know exactly who it is without looking.

  He appears in the kitchen, and I freeze for four whole seconds before I can move again. Because he wears a tight-as-flip tank top and striped running shorts and he’s sweaty. Sweaty not in a gross way, but in a Men’s Health photo-shoot-next-to-a-waterfall way.

  He’s got a baby-blue Easter basket in his hand, full of berries. Berries! They’re small like dried black beans, dark, and the color of indigo mixed with burgundy. They’re shiny like beads made of the chert my father used to bring home from archaeological digs.

  “What’s that?”

  He sets the basket on the table and grunts in an especially grumpy manner. He turns to the sink and runs the water.

  I grab a berry and pop it in my mouth. “Ugh,” I say, making a face. “Are these even edible? Why are they so tart?” I reach for another, because the flavor is already growing on me, but Santiago swipes the basket away before I can get there. “Hey!”

  “They’re huckleberries.”

  “Oh! Like Huckleberry Finn. Are you going to make a pie? Please tell me you’re making a pie.”

  “They’re for a special occasion.”

  “Ooh. What’s the occasion?”

  “Don’t know yet,” he grunts so deeply, I can scarcely make out what he’s saying. This is reason number 399 why Santiago makes me want to throw eggs at him from time to time—his tendency toward caveman language.

  “They’re ridiculously sour,” I say. I don’t know why I’m still talking. Guess I’m a little lonely for company.

  “They’re ridiculously rare,” he says as he pours them into a stainless-steel colander in the sink.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What I mean is real huckleberries are next to impossible to cultivate.” He shakes the colander as he swirls it under the tap. “You can really only get them in the wild. And wild huckleberry patches need to be burned every few decades, or they won’t make berries anymore.”

  He’s smiling as he grabs a pot. “These berries are only here in my hand”—he lifts a few—“all because of their own prerogative. Humans had nothing to do with it.” And the treatise is finished. He moves on to what I think is blanching them. All I can do is watch in wonder.

  I feel all strange in my chest area, listening to Santiago wax on about huckleberries, how they seem to have the desire to stay as wild as possible. After he went out and picked several cups into a pale-blue Easter basket. It reminds me of my dad, how just talking about things makes them miraculous. “That’s beautiful,” I finally say.

  “Yes,” he agrees. “And they won’t be wasted on anyone who doesn’t appreciate them.” He levels a blamey stare at me.

  “I appreciate them! They’re a little sour is all. I bet they’d bake up real nice in a pie. Hint, hint.”

  He grunts like a caveman again. I guess the conversation is over.

  That night, I’m curled up in a blanket, thinking a lot about my dad. “You’ve been collecting words since you were little,” he told me. “Ever since you fell in love with ‘malvavisco.’ ” Marshmallow.

  I still love that word, even more so now because I know it first came from a plant. A really lovely one, growing tall, with pale-pink flowers all along its stalk. Dad, Star, and I found a field of them once in South Dakota. Just like fireweed, seeing those layers and layers of rose-quartz blooms made me fall in love with the universe all over again. A whole sea of flores de malvavisco.

  “Santiago,” I say. I reach for the handle next to me and shake the bed frame a little. “Santiago!”

  “What?”

  “What’s your favorite word?”

  He grunts noncommittally. He’s quiet for so long, I think he must’ve gone back to sleep, when he says, “Ocean.”

  “Ocean?”

  “Yeah. The sound is like a whole wave, if you think about it. The o of it curling, and the crashing c sound, and the end of it, smoothing out. Ocean.”

  “You can hear the bubbles, too,” I say.

  “Yeah.” He shifts in the bed. “Why? What’s your favorite word?”

  “I like…” I pause. There’s too many, really. “I like ‘ambiguous’ and ‘moss’ and ‘murmuration.’ And ‘fog’ and ‘piedra’ and ‘caderas’—”

  “You have to pick only one, like I did.”

  “ ‘Nebula.’ I like ‘nebula,’ then.”

  We’re both quiet for a while after that, so I grab my Spanish-English dictionary. Nebulosa. That’s “nebula” in Spanish. I like that, too. How it’s drawn out a little bit more, making it epic. How it sounds like the name of a benevolent and powerful prince. Nebulosa. I close my eyes, and that’s how I fall asleep, thinking about nebulas shaped like humans, hundreds of light-years long, lit up by aurora borealis–like colors all around. I fall asleep wondering what other words a caballero de nebulosas might love.

  * * *

  “I feel like we haven’t hung out in forever,” Star says, collapsing next to me.

  “That’s because we haven’t.” I don’t lift my eyes from my computer. I’m actually not touching up photos right now, believe it or not. Samuel sent me this wild computer game download. I’m not all that into video games, but this one is really up my alley. Basically, you kill the bad guys with whatever you can find in your kitchen—spoons, woks, teakettles. Which has proved to be ridiculously cathartic as of late.
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  “You’ve been busy.” Star’s tone is a little accusatory.

  I finally look at her. She’s thrown over the side of the sofa in our shared hotel room. Her dress is pale pink, the color newborn babies wear, in a lace that reaches her knees and wrists. I already want to scratch at my arms until they bleed, so I glance back at my computer screen quickly.

  “I’ve been working,” I respond.

  “So have I.” Now she sounds defensive, so I hold back a sigh and close my computer screen.

  “I know. We’ve both been working. A lot.”

  Star lifts her eyebrows. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Andro’s brother.”

  “He’s the merch guy. I’m the merch girl. Spending time together is part of the job description.”

  “I told Mom about him.”

  Great.

  “She thinks I should ask him out on a date.”

  “What?” I basically choke it out, then sputter, then cough.

  “You know. Be a good Christian. Because of… you know.” She whispers the last bit.

  I’m going to pretend like she didn’t go there. Because the scales are back on my skin, my teeth are grinding, and my chest is glowing with embers. My nails turn into cactus spines, my tongue, covered in poisonous warts.

  “You know?” Star asks.

  “I don’t.” I say it through gritted teeth.

  “His deformity.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not okay. It’s rude.” I looked it up right after I first noticed Santiago’s disability. “Deformed” is offensive and mean, and lots of other common terms used to describe a disability are too. Stuff like “wheelchair-bound” and “crippled.” I didn’t want to accidently hurt him, so I educated myself.

  But Star just shrugs and says, “What do you think?”

  If I say I think it’s ridiculous to use a guy to score some Jesus points—actually, you know what? “I think it’s ridiculous to use a guy to score some Jesus points.”