How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe

by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

  I laugh and then furrow my brow. “You don’t have a girlfriend?”

  “Uh, no.” Andro shrugs. “Not for a bit. Been kinda busy.”

  “Of course.” I do this weird chuckle, even though I don’t know why I’m doing it. “It’s just, Santiago told me you did. Have a girlfriend, I mean.”

  “Huh.” Now Andro looks amused. “Well, no, not for almost a year.”

  “That’s a weird thing for him to say, then.”

  Andro shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. People do all sorts of things to protect their, ah, investments.” And he immediately looks guilty, like he’s said way too much, but the fact is, I have no idea what he’s even talking about. “So, no to readings. But you’re still up for being Merch Girl, right?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  “And you’re still cool with me selling the decks?”

  I pause, thinking of my mom. Remember, I tell myself. Hiding who you are isn’t worth it anymore. All those pep talks I gave to myself before must’ve worked, because I actually feel good about this. I feel good about becoming who I’m meant to be, no matter what my mom will think.

  I straighten my spine and offer a half smile. “How many did you want me to order again?”

  “A thousand.”

  I bury my face in my hands. This. Financial freaking independence. That’s going to be so fucking worth it. “That number doesn’t even sound real.”

  “So that’s a yes, I take it?”

  “Yes.” I want to cry. Gosh I’m emotional today. “Yes, yes, yes. And thank you.”

  * * *

  When I get back, the line to the tarot table is gone. Andro said I could join the merch table, but Santiago’s sitting there looking like a sullen little boy. And everything feels funny. Off-kilter. Like the earth’s become hollow without any of us knowing and, at any moment, we could slip through right into the middle of it.

  I inhale and walk up to him. “Hey.”

  He whips his head around, then schools a look of disinterest on his face, giving me a nod.

  And just like that, it hits me.

  Santiago is into me.

  It’s so obvious, I almost sway under the weight of all the evidence in my memories. The earth cracks under my feet as I think of them all.

  How he scoffs when I make a joke about how blobbish and unattractive I am, as though he of thinks me—all of me, size 16 jiggles and all—as unspeakably beautiful. How he gets mad when another guy is flirty with me, even if it’s just Andro. How he held me during the big bridge. Like I was everything precious in this world.

  But maybe he doesn’t like me anymore. Because I’ve been so dense, you know, saying things like, I don’t have a chance with your brother, as though I ever really wanted his brother. Andro may as well have ceased to exist the first time Santiago smiled at me.

  And now I’m speechless. What on earth am I supposed to do now? Say, Hey, I think I’ve finally figured out you have a crush on me and it doesn’t freak me out at all! No, no, no, that’s definitely not what I should say.

  Star sort of saves me. Sort of. The way she walks up, her hands on her hips, her hair uncharacteristically frizzy on the crown. “I need to talk to you, Luna. Alone.” She’s doing a perfect imitation of Mom when she’s mad enough to hurt me, but since we’re not alone, she has to appear somewhat in control of her murderous impulses. You know, pass for someone who wouldn’t stab her own child if she were mad enough.

  The only other time Star’s looked at me like that was when my computer deleted all the photos from the redwood shoot we did last fall. She’d worn a Navajo-inspired print from a white girl designer in Manhattan. So I honestly feel like my computer eating those photos right up was an act of karma.

  This, though. I don’t know what on earth I’ve done. She looks like she wants to grab me by the hair, drag me to a ditch, and push me in. We walk a little while away from Santiago, and then she speaks.

  “What’s this about you headlining the rest of the tour?” She’s breathless.

  “Uh, what?” How does she know about that already?

  “You went to lunch with Andro, right? Chamomila was around. She heard him talking about it.” Her cheeks are splotchy and pink.

  I sigh and close my eyes. “Star. He asked me to headline, yeah, but I said no.”

  Star’s face is ugly for the second or third time in her life. “Right. And what the heck did you do to make him offer that?”

  I open and close my mouth. Is she saying—

  “We all know what kind of girl you are, Moon.”

  I reel back. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, even if you did turn it down, you’re still somehow the number one Fotogram story of the day.”

  “Because of the freaking feathers! La Raíz, Star, remember? Did you not see—”

  “What exactly were you doing with Andro before that lunch? Because you know when Mom calls, she’s going to want all the details.”

  I close my eyes once more. It’s the knife thing all over again. Only this time Star’s the one wielding the weapons and the target is my back. And it hurts. It hurts because Star’s the only one who knows how far Mom has gone. Not even Tía knows that.

  “By the way,” Star adds. “Tomorrow Oak is taking me out to Le Chateaubriand. So we can cancel our shitty Taco Bell plans.”

  And that marks the first time Star has cursed in ever. Ever. And it was at me. For daring to exist and do stuff, essentially.

  “You just can’t believe that I’d be more successful than you on my own. I gotta say, Star, unfounded accusations like that are most unchristian. It’s not what Jesus or the Virgin Mary would do.” I want to tell her I know about her and Belle. I want to tell her that I’ve never seen her happier, genuinely happier, almost ever. That it should be Belle taking her out to dinner, not slobbering Oak. The words don’t make it out, though. Even with how mad I am, I can’t do that to her.

  Star stares for a beat and then walks away. I can console myself with the fact that her hair’s frizzy crown has grown several inches since she started antagonizing me. It looks good. She looks human, you know? But she’ll hate it. In fact, she’s smoothing it down already, like she knows her mortality is being revealed or something. The fact that she hates it, that’s what matters to me right now.

  “Why do you let her talk to you like that?”

  These are the first words out of Santiago’s mouth. A chair has appeared beside him. I plop down and put my face in my hands. “Fuck,” I say, but it comes out like, “Hmmpth.”

  “I’m serious.” He sounds serious, and furious.

  I’m cringing. “You heard what she said?”

  “I didn’t need to. I could see that shit from all the way over here. You don’t take a single piece of shit from me, but you let her fucking pummel you on a daily basis.”

  I lean back in my chair. I feel like I might cry, so I look up to help the tears slide back in. “You don’t understand.”

  “Explain it to me.” He puts a hand on my knee, making his voice gentle. As gentle as a voice made out of a gravelly dirt road can be, I guess.

  “Not now. Please.” The tears are almost back in, but my words break a bit. He squeezes my knee and thigh a little. I am so hyperaware of his hand and the warmth of his skin. I wonder if he’ll put his hand on Tall and Willowy like that.

  “Okay. Maybe after dinner?”

  “Maybe,” I say. We’re staying at a hotel tonight, so no, I won’t even be near him after dinner. But it’s sweet of him to offer. So sweet I might cry again. Jeez Louise, what is wrong with me?

  I get my answer right before dinner, staring at the crimson stain that has reached the inside of my jeans. Thank God no one saw that, unless they were staring mega-hard at my crotch. I don’t know why, but knowing I’ve started my period doesn’t help me much. It makes everything worse, in fact. I burst into tears and shower and change into my pajamas.

  Santiago has all the food on plates when I get out.
He smiles when I reach him.

  “You cooked without me?”

  “I was hungry.”

  “This is the second dinner in a row—”

  “I’ll text you the recipes.”

  The gratitude overcomes me, in waves of linen, a little sharp, because of the recent memories of him and his willowy wife, but mostly soft, on my back, cheeks, neck. Willowy wife or not, if it weren’t for Santiago, I’d still be eating spoons of hydrogenated peanut butter and poisoning myself with knockoff Teflon cookware. So I lean over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. The muscles contract under my hand. And the moment I kiss his cheek, he gasps a little but tries to hide it with a grunt. I lean back again, and the look he’s giving me, like I’ve just handed him gold. And I know that the leggy wife has no chance. None at all.

  And then we eat, and now that I’m in the light of the kitchen fairy lanterns, he can see how red my eyes are, and probably I’m close enough for him to hear how snotty my nose is. He slides his arm on the table, the one he wraps with the gray cloth, and says, “You’re the only one who hasn’t asked about it.”

  “About what?”

  He lifts his arm.

  “Oh.” I glance over. I never let myself stare. Especially not after I acted like a total cabbage-head when I first met him. I thought really hard about if I were him, what I wouldn’t appreciate, you know? And that would include staring, talking about it, acting freaked out and pretending not to be. Treating him like he wasn’t normal. He’s a really moody, grumpy, hulky, hot, thoughtful, generous boy. That’s it. Well, that’s not quite it. He does have this ridiculous superhuman power of getting hotter every time I look at him. Especially when he planks shirtless in the mornings. And sometimes, in the evenings, I do stare at him, all of him, when he’s doing those wild handstand push-ups against the wall by our bunks.

  “Why?”

  I blink away thoughts of how taut Santiago’s forearms are during his push-ups. “Why what?”

  “Why haven’t you asked about what happened to my hand?”

  I swallow. Dinner tonight is arroz con pollo. It reminds me of my mom. The good times, when she still cooked, before Dad left. “I thought if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” I gesture to my chest, to the scar on and below my collarbone. “Why haven’t you ever asked me about this?”

  He stares at it for a moment, and then his eyes run up to my face. He smiles. It’s a… I don’t know. A sad smile, I want to say. “I thought if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me,” he says finally.

  We talk about little else besides cooking-related subjects. It’s Switzerland for us as far as conversation. Neutral ground. Garlic goes well with everything, but it especially does justice to tomatoes. Santiago says it’s because of the natural umami flavor in tomatoes. You don’t need much else in arroz. Tomato, garlic, salt, pepper, chicken. The simple ingredients make something so good, it almost hurts to eat.

  On the side, he’s fried up sweet plátanos, almost black on the edges of the slices, so the starchy sugars caramelized. He finished them with gray salt, something fancy from some French sea.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” he’s saying. He stands, grabs the little glass container of salt. “This, coming from those old salt marshes in Guérande. It made it all the way here. Into this kitchen. Into our bellies.”

  “It is amazing,” I say. I take the jar and tilt it. The salt is made into flakes and little crystal chips. It looks like jewels. Gray diamonds. “They’re beautiful.”

  When I look at Santiago, his eyes are dark and twinkling. I don’t think it’s just the lantern light. “Yes,” he says, looking from the salt back to me.

  I clear my throat. “That girl you were talking to today was really pretty.”

  “What girl?”

  “You guys had your phones out… exchanged numbers.…”

  “Oh. Her.”

  “Yes. Her.”

  He smiles at me and leans back, taking the salt jar back. “She wanted to know Oak’s Fotogram handle.”

  “Huh,” I say. He’s still smiling at me. Tossing the salt jar, catching it, over and over again. It looks like a single marble in his giant hand.

  “What?” I finally snap, standing. I grab the dishes and walk to the sink.

  “I didn’t realize you were watching me so closely today.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, really.” He stands and takes a couple of steps toward me. When I turn around to give him a glare, I almost jump back. He’s so close, our arms are touching. And then he takes another step closer. My right side is lined up with his left, from the fronts of our legs to our bellies and chests. I feel everything when he breathes, when I breathe, when I sway a little from light-headedness. He lowers his face until his lips reach the shell of my ear. I shudder. “You were all the way across the lawn and you still noticed me.”

  “Sounds like you knew exactly where I was,” I respond in nearly a whisper. There are goose bumps on my neck, sliding down my back like salt. “I’d say you were the one watching me way too close.”

  He leans down a little more, and I swallow a gasp. His face is an inch from mine. His mouth, more specifically, is an inch from mine. And he smiles and says, “Not close enough, I guess.” And he lifts the plates out of my hands and takes them to the sink.

  As soon as feeling has returned to my feet, I go to grab our cups. And then I gasp for real. Because there is Star at the front of the bus, looking like I stole something from her. Looking like I stole her whole life and hid it in a milk jar. She turns and runs out, and there is Chamomila, fucking smirking. “We were going to see if Santiago wanted to go to dessert with us. But I guess y’all are busy.”

  Santiago looks up and frowns. “Yeah. No thanks.”

  Chamomila makes this humming noise and shoots me a knowing smile. Like I want drama. Like I’m orchestrating it for her entertainment.

  I scowl and glance out the window. Out where Star is wiping her eyes. Like she hasn’t had everything her whole life, like this isn’t just about her for once, for once, not getting something she wants. Imagine if she’d grown up as the ugly one, the one Mom likened to a dog, the one the whole school rumored to be as loose as the Grand Canyon. And Santiago is her side crush! Her this-will-look-good-on-Fotogram crush. And the sight of me with him makes her break down in the parking lot.

  Star wouldn’t have survived a trillionth of a period of what I’ve gone through. It wouldn’t have been possible.

  38. How Star and I Are Quilted Together in a Whole, Wild Constellation

  YOU LET HER fucking pummel you on a daily basis. Santiago’s words echo in my brain and skin and bones. I know I blew him off about it, but the fact is, I don’t know how to respond to that, or to the question underneath it. Why? Why do I do this to myself?

  I think of Star, how when we were little, we wouldn’t go anywhere without holding hands. How when I had my first broken heart in the ninth grade, Star and I took the bus to Taco Bell and that’s when the tradition started, eating all we could from the dollar menu with ten dollars. How at the end of the day, when our phones and cameras are off, Star and I are the only ones who really, really get each other. We’re the only ones who know. Know what it’s like to have Mom with the way she is, to have had our dad, to have had our hearts ripped into pieces the day he decided to die.

  There’s so much that connects me to Star, beginning from in the womb, when she and I were little specks in a dark, watery galaxy. Now I imagine it like thread: we’re stitched together by the truth of who we are and where we came from. There’s so many strands of string between us, it’s like a thousand constellations. It’s a quilt of planets and space stuff, all twinkling and bright when no one is looking.

  As for me and Mom, I don’t know. I don’t know why I let Mom pummel me. The kindest she’s ever been, to me, is indifferent.

  I don’t care about losing Mom.

  There’s almost no stirring inside me as I realize it. My footing is solid. This feels like
home, like the truth.

  I’m better off without my mother.

  What I do care about is if I lose Mom, I’ll lose Star, too. And then who will I be without the other half of my constellation quilt? Who else knows me like Star? Who do I connect with as deeply as my sister?

  I’m not sure I want to know the answers to these questions. I certainly don’t want to think about them anymore, so I don’t. I put my earbuds in and turn up some music so loud, I can’t even hear the beat of my own heart.

  39. I Finally Free My Red-Feathered Wings

  IT’S EIGHT AT night. Thank goodness we were close enough to the hotel that I could hole up in my room right after dinner. Which is where I’ve been, basically, for the last twenty minutes and am going out of my mind a little. The fight with Star is biting at my skin. Like I’m covered in horseflies. I keep reviewing it, thinking about phrases she said to me. We all know what kind of girl you are. I should’ve said something else. I should’ve smacked her. I should’ve decapitated her with my mind.

  Santiago was right. Even if we have a quilt of constellations between us, I can’t let Star talk to me like that again.

  My phone buzzes. Mom again. It’s the third time in the last hour. And she only ever calls if she needs to threaten me or make me feel like shit. Which means Star has definitely spoken to her, lying about Lord knows what. I sigh and click open the call.

  “Moon.”

  I cringe. The tone of her voice is enough to slay me.

  “Yes, Mami?” Unfortunately, my diminutive use of “madre” doesn’t help.

  “What would your father say?”

  Ouch. So that’s where she wants to take this.

  “He would’ve never favored you if he knew what a worthless slut you were going to turn out to be. What were you thinking? Seducing your sister’s crush? What were you thinking? You weren’t, that’s what. I’ve always known you’d be that kind of woman. Just like that whore your father had—”