Santiago resumes the circles on my back. “He was cheating on Mom,” I say. “He was cheating and she found out and she said she’d leave him and take us far away. She said he was worthless and she threw things at him. And then he left and… that was it.”
“I’m so sorry, Moon,” Santiago murmurs. “But you have to know he didn’t choose to leave you. He had depression, or something like that. People don’t just do that from out of nowhere.”
I sniffle. “Yeah, he was depressed, I think.” Especially toward the end, after he lost his job at the university. All he did was sleep, and some days I don’t think he ate anything at all. I don’t like to think about those memories, though. So I rub the tears away and take more long breaths. “Thanks for being here for me.”
Santiago grunts. Back to caveman-mode, I guess.
I push up from him a little bit. “Look,” I say, pointing out the window. “Poppies!”
“Papis?” He sounds confused, and a little breathless. My hand is pressed into one of his pecs, the other pushed right next to his hip, as I try to manage a cobra-like yoga posture in this tiny bunk.
“Sorry,” I say, shifting my hands and body away from him. It’s hard, because he’s so massive. I don’t know how he fits in this bed without me all in the way. But then he reaches out and grabs my arm, and then I’m back on top of him, only closer, way closer than I was before. I can feel his breath on my forehead. I’m looking directly into his lips, for God’s sake. His lips look like they’ve been kissed. Like they are so made for kissing, they’re perpetually swollen and peach, their outlines kind of blurry.
“Moon,” those lips say, and I kind of jump.
“Yeah?” I sound absolutely desperate for something, but I have no idea what.
“What’s a poppy?”
“Oh.” I lift my head, back to the window. They’re gone. “Damn it. You missed them.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
His lips graze my head. My temple. His voice is inside me. It’s uncomfortable but not in a bad way. It’s a lot like the band of rain clouds tightening in out the window, darkening and darkening until they can’t help but burst. Goose bumps echo over my body, up and down, like a current. A water current, an air current, or drops of actual currants, cold and small on my skin.
Crap. He’s still waiting for an answer. Only he looks less “waiting” and more amused. He even has those lips formed in a half smirk.
“What was the question?” I ask, and he smirks even wider while it comes to me. “Oh. Flowers. Poppies are flowers. They grow wild in this part of the country.”
And then Santiago lifts his torso up, balanced on a forearm, and he reaches over to tuck my hair behind my ear. “Flowers, huh.” He says it in a way that makes me think we’re not talking flowers at all, like we were never talking about them, in fact.
And then we lurch. Or, rather, the bus lurches as it rounds into what I imagine is our dinner destination. And I fall against the wall.
“You okay?” His hand is on my waist now, and Lord, why is it so warm? Does he hide a space heater in here somewhere? Has he been dipping his whole body in front of it without my knowledge?
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m a klutz.”
He pauses, looking at me as the bus parks. “You okay, though?” And now he’s not asking about my clumsiness.
I nod. “Yes. Thank you.”
And then I look out the window. At the corner of the gas station, a poppy winks at me, the red of it slick like wet silk.
“You can talk to me, you know.” Santiago’s voice is slick too but more like a forest in a fog, gliding down my back. “About anything.”
“Okay.” I nod again.
He stares at me again and licks his lips. I am not prepared for the way my insides get gooey at the sight of his tongue. There’s not enough air, I decide. We’re much too cramped on this bed. I climb over him to get out. “Thank you,” I say. My face is red, maybe as red as that poppy out there, but I can’t figure out why. Is it because I almost fainted over driving on a bridge? Or is it because I had to rely on Santiago—my literal archnemesis—to help me out? Or is it because of how effectively he did it? Too effectively. So much so that I don’t want it to stop. My body is currently screaming at me to get back in the bunk, now. For what, I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t want to know.
When I stand and look at Santiago again, my eyes become traitors and practically leap out to glue themselves to his lips. “I gotta go,” I say. My voice sounds so clipped, like it’s coming out of my chest rather than my mouth. And when I look over his shoulder, back at the window, my voice wilts down into the core of the earth. Because there, right there, is a moth. Not just any moth, but a luna moth. The same sort of moth that followed me home the night of the knives. It’s huge and hairy and the color of a pale lime, and I swear I can see its little beady eyes staring at me.
When Santiago glances behind him with a puzzled look on his face, it snaps me out of my terror. My voice rises once more to say this eloquent line: “Uh. I’ll be back.” I grab my purse from the top bunk and run.
35. And I Mean, I Run (Straight into La Raíz, Because That Is Just My Luck)
I DID TRACK in school, so this isn’t an unheard-of thing, but I’m not in my gear, I don’t have Maluma singing about his hot girlfriends in my ears, and without a sports bra, my boobs are bouncing so much, I wince from the pain.
I’m running. Running from a boy.
I’ve never run from a boy before. Mostly I run to them. Anything for a scrap of attention. “You’re like a dog,” my mother has told me. “Except I have to feed you.” Which, Mom’s obviously never owned a dog before, but still. That one really stung. What Mom tells her daughter that? What human tells another human that?
Santiago doesn’t think I’m like a dog, I bet. He doesn’t even think of me as a whore. And the way he looks at me. He looks at me the way people look at Star. But better. Because there’s no hint that he wants to get something from me. He looks at me like I’m perfectly lovely, and funny, and beautiful just as I am, and that is all enough.
It’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. And once I had an eagle land on my car in the middle of the day. I swear to the Lord in heaven. It looked at me right in my eyes, like it had a message for me. Still haven’t figured that one out, sorry to say.
I barely realize I’m heading straight for that lone red poppy out there like it has a message for me.
I run even harder until I reach it, and when I do, I gasp, because just beyond it, behind the gas station, are mountains, gold in the setting sun. They look carved from a jeweler’s bench, set with emeralds here and there for all the trees. And right before me, right here, a field of poppies. All rubies and garnets and red jasper, dappled pink in the light.
There’s an invisible thread pulling me in. I am a piece of wool, brown, about to be stitched to a great cosmic blanket. Or maybe I’m a petal stuck to a spiderweb, one tiny fabric-like spot making a whole universe undulate like wisps in the wind.
And I plop right in the middle of it, leaning back to look up at a sky that reminds me of the hand-sewn prom dresses a designer sent Star a couple months ago, teal and periwinkle and lapis lazuli, the shimmery hints of stars beyond thin, tulle-like clouds. The red of the poppies surrounds me, their heads bobbing soft, sometimes touching at my arms. I can’t decide if I am in an ancient red sea or being swallowed by a whale made of jewels and dresses that will never belong to me.
“Hey.”
My eyes are closed, but I’m so used to Santiago’s voice crawling over my skin like satin, I don’t startle in the least. “So these are the poplar flowers?” he asks.
When I do look at him, he’s smiling, like he’s got a secret, and I’m immediately breathless. I manage to rein it in a little and say, “Poppies.”
“I know. I’m just messing with you.”
I knew that, but Santiago’s smile makes it hard to mess around. As well as speak in general. And
move. And breathe.
He has a seat next to me. Great. “Got your cards with you?”
He gestures to my purse, still slung on my shoulder and lying next to me. “Uh. No, sorry. I left them in the box in my bigger bag.”
“Too bad. Was hoping you’d give me a reading.” He says it casually. Almost too casually.
I push my torso up. “You ever had your cards read before?”
He shakes his head. “You’d be my first.”
I fall back down. I’m too weak, too exhausted, too breathless to run and grab the cards. So I say, “How about a mirror-stone reading instead?”
“Mirror stones, huh? I thought you said you hadn’t worked up to those yet.”
“It’s not that. They just kind of…” Terrorize? Horrify? “Intimidate me.”
“Okay. A challenge, then.”
I reach in my purse, to the tiny, almost secret compartment. Before I left my tía’s that one summer she taught me divination, she gave me my own onyx stone. “I don’t know what happened between you and mirror stones,” she said, “but you two need to make your peace.”
Maybe now’s the time for peace. I pull the stone out. It’s almost perfectly circular, and there are tiny gray veins on its edges. It looks ancient and holy, like Tía pulled it out of ruins on one of her travels to Mexico. Wouldn’t surprise me if she had.
“Do you have a question?” I ask. “Like, something specific for me to focus on?”
He shakes his head and shrugs. “Let’s see what comes up.”
I turn the stone over and over, looking, letting my eyes unfocus a little. Looking, looking, like Tía does, but I have no idea what for… until the whole universe, the one out there and the one inside me, feels all calibrated together. Like a tiny piece of quartz and a watch, tuned and rhythmically counting from this moment till forever, and all I have to do is reach my hands in and touch any time I’d like.
“Can you touch the stone?” I ask, placing it facedown in a wild grass patch between us. He scoots a little closer and tentatively brings a couple fingertips to it.
I look up at him when he releases his touch. “Sometimes weird things happen when I read. I hope that’s okay.”
He scoffs. “Right. Your curse.”
I roll my eyes and say, “You can be quiet now.” Because the last thing I want to do is explain exactly why attracting zillions of bugs from time to time is, indeed, a curse.
And I look. And I blush. Because there’s snowcapped mountains and stone phalli and lilies. Sex, sex, sex. Each image is its own composition, coming in and out on the stone, like fog, like long-ago memories, wrapping around my brain with one distinct message.
The reading is about sex. It’s about a guy who meets someone full of mysteries and secrets and then they bang each other’s brains out.
I have two warring thoughts as I evaluate the reading some more. One, I hate this woman. I keep getting images of her with hands all over Santiago, and I want to kill her. But the fact is, she’s into her sexuality, which means it’s not Star, who’d rather have her heart shot with an arrow than engage in anything remotely sexual. Or at least that’s what I thought, before I saw her wrestling tongues with Belle Brix. Still, this person’s vibe isn’t Star-like at all. Maybe it’s a girl I’ve never met before.
Santiago’s never talked about a girlfriend. Maybe it’s some guy I’ve never met before. Maybe this is why he didn’t go for Star. Oh God, he doesn’t like girls. What if he doesn’t like girls?
It doesn’t matter. My heart is already broken, so it doesn’t matter.
Okay, my secondary thought is taking the reins. Which is, how the hell do I tell him—
“You’re going to be having a lot of sex in your near future.” Well. Like that, I guess. Thanks, big mouth.
His mouth opens for a few seconds, but all that comes out are almost-coughing sounds.
“That’s good, right?”
He sputters, and now his cheeks are pink. Pink! Almost as pink as the crepe myrtle’s fuchsia petals outside of Tía’s home.
And then a new thought occurs to me. “Oh, sorry, are you celibate?”
“Celibate?” His voice is loud, too loud for a conversation in a field.
“You know, you don’t engage in sexual—”
“No. I’m not celibate.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, that’s great, because all I see is sex. All kinds of sex. Very amorous vibes going on here.”
Now his neck and ears are just as pink as his cheekbones. “Does it say who—”
“Uh, well, her hair kind of goes this way, and she’s a bit round here. Does that sound like someone you know?”
“Uh… is that supposed to sound like a person?”
“Yes! God! There’s hair… and sort of hips here—”
He grabs the stone and examines it closely. “I feel like I’m looking at my baby cousin’s ultrasound picture.”
“Oh, you…” I grab it back. I don’t feel so awkward anymore, and his cheeks are a little less rosy. I take a breath and place the stone back down. This is okay. This is easy, even.
“So is there anything else besides hot sex in my future?”
Hearing him actually say that word. Now my cheeks are heating up. “Uh…”
A dragonfly lands on the stone. “Well, there are people in your way, as far as what you want to do with your life.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re going to have some heavy opposition, which will force you to stand up to all of them.”
“Uh—Moon?”
“Hold on. I’m almost done.” A dragonfly lands on my hand and I lightly shake it away. “So after that…” I finger the stone, turning it over and over in the grass, where more dragonflies have gathered. “You have to stay firm about what you want, you know? You…” And I stop. Because I’ve looked now, and Santiago’s holding his arms out stiff, and his spine is so straight and still.
There are dragonflies all over him. And I mean all over. They’re sitting in his hair and on his shoulders, perched on his bare forearms and hand and the soft black T-shirt over his torso. One moves across his jaw, and he breaks into just the biggest smile, which makes me feel so weird, like my whole body is made of dragonflies and they want to fly all over him too. Like he is the center of the Dragonfly Universe.
“It’s La Raíz?” he whispers.
I swallow and nod. “Yes. It’s the curse.”
“I don’t believe you.” His tone tells me different.
“Oh?” I pick up the stone and slide it back in my pocket. It’s weird, but if they come when I’m slipping my hand into another time and I stop my reading? That makes them scatter. Nothing else but that. “There.”
The second I say the word, the dragonflies, each and every one of them, leap up. They hover around us for a second, long enough for us to hear the whisper-buzz of their beating wings, long enough for me to shriek a little, and then they decide, all at once, to fly away. And we watch all three hundred thousand zillion billion dragonflies slide over the poppies, in the warm sheets of sunset light, like a murmuration, like they’re made of nothing but magic.
“Okay,” Santiago says, still staring at where the dragonflies disappeared. His eyes are so wide, and when he looks at me, he doesn’t even blink. “I might believe you now.”
36. The Stuff I Don’t Like to Remember
YEAH, TOWARD THE end, Dad wasn’t doing well. Once I found him in his office crying so hard, he could barely speak.
“Daddy,” I whispered. I curled into his lap and hugged him. I initiated a lot of hugs back then. I thought if I hugged him hard enough, I could hug that sadness away, you know? “Maybe you could go to a doctor,” I said to him.
He never acknowledged this. Instead, he said, “Maybe if I got a dog, it would help. You wanna get a dog, Moon?”
Uh, yeah, what eleven-year-old girl doesn’t want a dog? But Mom put a stop to that right away. “I’m not taking care of you all and a dog.”
I want to blame
her for what happened. If it hadn’t been for Mom, he might still be alive, right?
But after he was gone, it was like his sadness stayed around and went right inside Mom. Her skin turned gray, almost, and her eyes looked as though someone had punched her over and over again. This was in the old house, when our rooms were really close together, so Star and I heard her weeping almost every night. She’d talk to Dad sometimes too.
“I’m like this because of you,” she’d scream. “You did this to me! You made me into a piece of shit!”
This is what I try to remember when Mom makes me feel worthless. That somewhere deep down, she feels worthless too. It’s not like it erases everything she’s done to me, but remembering that she’s a wounded human sometimes helps a teeny-tiny bit. Only sometimes, though.
And when I get to thinking about all this stuff, I can’t help but wonder, What if Dad hadn’t done it? I mean, not the cheating. I don’t care about that. That only proves to me that my father was human. That he made mistakes. Just like me.
No, what I mean is, if he hadn’t driven off a bridge. If he’d left Mom for whoever had stolen some of his heart. What if he could’ve taken me, you know? Imagine it. Me, Moon Fuentez. Instead of my eleven-year-old heart shattering into so many pieces it may as well have been dust, I was tucked up and rescued to a new family. With a stepmom who maybe wouldn’t have loved me, okay, but there’s no way she’d have hated me as much as Mom did. And does.
I could’ve gotten away, you know? From the hurt, the pain, the knives. I could’ve been safe, treasured, and loved.
But he chose to leave me. Forever.
I could smack myself for this sometimes, but every now and then I feel more hatred for my dad than for my mom. I wish it weren’t this way, but it seems as inevitable as the light lime of a luna moth’s wings, smooth, smooth, smooth like a sky.
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe Page 17