“I bet I can guess. She called me a long list of nasty names. Probably things like ‘ungrateful whore of a daughter.’ And then demanded I come home where I belong.”
Tía sighs. “That summarizes it. Except after all that I told her the only way she’d see you again would be if she came here and apologized to you. Far away from my kitchen and its knives.”
A wave of giddiness comes over me. “Really? You said that?”
“Really.”
“And what did she say to that?”
Tía snorts. “She hung up on me.”
I’m tearing up. Just a little bit. “Thank you for saying that. And for believing me.”
“Wish I could do more.” Tía moves her head and arms and hands. “Ah. Let’s shake off this bad energy, huh? Tell me about your date tomorrow. Is he hot?”
I laugh, and all of a sudden I’m hungry as heckle. And Tía and I talk and eat until we’re stuffed, and then she has the audacity to bust out passion fruit–vanilla ice cream, which we eat on the back porch in the topaz of the setting sun. And I think, this is all I ever wanted from my mom. But I can have it with Tía. And maybe new, future college friends. And, who knows, maybe even Marco. I can choose who I surround myself with and make sure they deserve me. Because maybe that’s thicker than blood, you know? Maybe love is thicker than blood.
51. Quite Possibly the Worst Date in the Known Universe
I’M IN A YELLOW-ochre dress, the color of almost-ripe mangos. It’s an A-line, flares a little, and shows off my brown calves and braided flower sandals. I put on some peach lipstick and gloss, braid my hair over one shoulder. And then I feel like I’m ready for my first date A.S.—After Santiago.
“He’s here,” Tía says to my door.
“What? But that’s, like, fifteen minutes early!” When I check my phone, though, I see that he’s exactly on time.
As I step out, Marco smiles really big. “Wow.” And then he pushes a bouquet out. Daisies, and mostly pretty, but… ones that are electric blue and pink. They’re kind of sticky on my hands, and I realize it’s because they’ve been spray-painted with glitter. “Wow, I love flowers,” I say, because it sounds like a compliment and it is also not a lie. Marco smiles some more as Tía takes the bouquet.
“Que bonito,” she says, but her nose is wrinkled. “Have fun, Moon. I’ll get these in a vase for you.”
“Do I have a curfew?” I ask.
“Just text if you’re going to be after midnight,” Tía says. She smiles at Marco. “Nice to meet you, Marco.”
“Nice to meet you, again, Esperanza.” Marco is the picture of perfect manners. He even kisses her hand. When he looks at me, Tía raises her eyebrow from behind him, and I swallow a laugh. I can’t tell if she’s impressed or thinks he’s trying too hard. I think it might be a little of both.
Marco wears a black-and-red button-down shirt, jeans, Converse sneakers. “You look gorgeous,” he tells me as he opens the door for me. He drives a sleek, low-to-the-ground car. I think I heard Santiago once telling Van that he drove a Mercedes G-Class. Something rugged, but also expensive. Probably a birthday gift from Andro or something.
“I thought we’d go do something kind of quirky,” Marco says. “There’s this new restaurant downtown called the Vine Box. My buddy says it’s incredible. They grow all their produce on the rooftop.”
“That’s awesome,” I say. Santiago would definitely be intrigued.
“So, you going to an art school in the fall?”
“Yeah, uh. I’m going to Tulane.”
“Really?”
“Um. Yes.”
“You sure you’re going? Tulane University? For art?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Or else I’m hallucinating the acceptance email in my in-box.” I chuckle, but Marco doesn’t look amused at all.
“That’s a really hard school to get into.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. A buddy of mine, he’s tried twice in a row.” He looks over at me. “Guess they must have a specific quota they need to fill.”
It’s been two minutes into our date and I can already declare it extraordinarily unsuccessful.
“Maybe you could apply to my program too, over at the university.”
“Oh wow. Maybe.” Super-weird offer, for me to apply to a school much less prestigious than the one I got accepted to, but whatever.
My response improves his mood for some reason, and he smiles. “So I want to get to know you, Moon. Tell me what got you into photography.”
I don’t want to mention Star this early in the game, so I say, “Oh, well, I first got into portraits and then documenting earth art. And now I’m kind of getting into self-portraits.”
Marco does this little impatient nod, and the second I’m done speaking, he inhales real big. “Right, well, what got me into it was film. I’m really kind of a film buff, you know, British New Wave, Italian neorealism. And then from there I got interested in photography, you know, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz, David Bailey.”
“Oh,” I say.
“But for film, you know, I don’t only watch really obscure movies you’ve never heard of. I also love Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Woody Allen.”
“Woody Allen?” I say. And I mean it as, Really, you support Woody Allen in this year of our Lord? But he mistakes the question for pure ignorance.
“Wow, you haven’t heard of Woody Allen?” He laughs. It’s kind of ugly. “Man, we really need to catch you up. Maybe a movie marathon. My place, next time.”
There will never be a next time, but I don’t know if I’m safe enough to announce that yet. I check the clock. We’ve been talking for a total of seven minutes, and I already want to open the door and roll into the bayou to escape.
“Oh man, I know just the films. First we’ll do all the Woody Allen classics. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters…”
I think I’d rather eat a pile of roasted DVDs. I give him a big smile and say, “Wow.” Because wow. Marco doesn’t notice the sarcasm in my tone and goes on to tell me the whole life and career of Mr. Allen. Ugh.
The Vine Box is dimly lit and there’s a whole wall covered in the names of their craft beers. Marco orders a pale ale as he starts educating me on microbrews. “This one, this one tastes like it was made in someone’s backyard, you know? Like it’s got hints of birch and cumulus clouds.” He grins and seems to bask in how deep and artsy he is. “Try it,” he says.
“I’m eighteen,” I respond.
“One sip.”
He already drank from it, so at least I know he didn’t drug it. I take the tiniest sip in the history of assholes pressuring girls to do stuff they don’t want to.
“Good, huh?” he says, and the only thing I can think is it tastes like it was actually made in someone’s bathtub, with leftover bath- and dishwater. But instead of saying all that, I make an excited-sounding mmm noise.
Our conversation stalls until our food arrives. I have hope it’s going to save this date, but when the plate of pasta is placed in front of me, Marco looks at it and goes, “Wow, that’s a lot of carbs.” He ordered chicken and waffles, but I guess he gets a carb pass or something.
It’s a margherita pasta dish, with gooey-looking homemade whole-wheat pasta. I swirl some on my fork and get it in my mouth, and my eyes water with the fight to spit it out.
“Oh man. You can taste how fresh it all is, can’t you?”
I sure can. The pasta tastes like soggy, half-ground wheat. The mozzarella is good, but it can’t save what is essentially a bowlful of spiceless Weetabix cereal.
“Everything okay?” he asks after wolfing down half his plate.
“Yeah, of course. I wasn’t expecting it to be cold, you know?”
From the look on his face, it seems like he wasn’t expecting that, either. But then he sort of smirks and says, “Well, the ingredients are so fresh, you know? Rooftop garden? It hardly even needs to be cooked.”
“Or to be salted,” I say, and he nods enthusias
tically.
“Exactly.”
I eat all the cheese and tomatoes, slowly, while Marco goes on and on about really obscure films I’ve never heard of. And all I think about is how Santiago would hate this restaurant so freaking much. He’d yell at them about French gray sea salt or even just regular table salt and pepper, and then he’d sweep me away and angrily make me mac and cheese with truffle oil or something. And serve it while it was so hot, I’d be able to warm my hands over its steam before eating.
I time Marco to see how long it takes for him to notice I’m not speaking. He never does. He speaks for thirty-eight minutes after I finish what I can and then asks for the check. At least he pays, I guess.
He walks me back to his car. I have my phone in my hand, on a screenshot of my last message from Santiago. Forget it. It’s there to remind me when I start to miss him too much. Like right now. Like all the time.
“Are you in the mood for dessert? Or did you have too many carbs for dinner?”
For the love of everything, why is this dude so fucking hung up on the amount of carbs I’m eating? I want to tell him he ought to have shoved his chicken and waffles up his dick hole, and by the way, he owes me a thousand carby meals for making me suffer through that pretentious restaurant and crappy conversation and his implications that I need to limit carbs in the first place.
But the thing is, I can’t. I don’t want to make Marco mad, especially when I’m in his car. Boys can get so jerky when a girl is real with them. That’s why so many girls just put on a smile and play nice. We are literally trying not to make a dude so mad, he’ll punch us, or kill us. And then guys pretend that’s not a thing. Marco seems pretty nonviolent so far, but I once went out with a notorious Nice Guy who banged his fists on the wheel and screamed his face off when I said I thought it’d be best if we were just friends.
So instead of telling him off, I say, “You know, I better get home, if that’s all right.”
Marco furrows his brows. “But your aunt said—”
“Right, but I feel a little sick. I’m sorry. I guess I’m not used to fresh ingredients.” He looks like he might argue some more, so I add, “I’m trying not to hurl as we speak!”
Well, that gets his mind off dessert. He looks a little crazed as he asks, “Do you need me to pull over? Do you need me to pull over?”
“No, no. I’m stable. For now.”
“I’ll get you home, okay? God, let me know if I need to pull over.”
Ah. The ol’ potential vomit. Gets ’em every time. Once I had a guy question it, but all I had to do was gag a little and he freaked too, just like the rest of them. One of the best parts about the vomit act is there’s no way you’re getting an after-date kiss.
True to the tradition, Marco about pushes me out of his car without so much as a peck on the cheek. “Sorry about that,” he says. “We’ll have to do dessert another time, okay?”
I cover my mouth and nod as I quickly make my way to the door. He squeals his tires as he makes his getaway.
The vomit act is probably the most effective. Then there’s the just-got-my-period-with-reeeally-bad-cramps one, which I learned works well from it happening for real. That one is great because most guys are such babies about periods, plus it eliminates the chance of them getting any action, so they stop putting any effort into pretending to be decent people in the first place.
I’m so lost in thought about how shitty it is for girls to date that I barely notice the strange car in the driveway. It’s so dark, I almost convince myself that I’m just mistaking Tía’s Oldsmobile for something huge and sharp and shiny. But no—Tía’s car is actually in front of this thing.
I approach it slowly, maybe like how someone would tiptoe around an ornery beast. What if it belongs to Tía’s Orchid Man? How romantic would that be, after all these years?
Only then do I notice the logo. It’s a Mercedes. Goose bumps trickle down my back and arms like long coils of small snakes. I rush to the front door and stuff my keys in the lock, pulling the door open with such force that I’m mildly surprised it doesn’t fly off.
Tía sits on the sofa, coffee in hand, and opposite her, on the edge, tears on her face and shaking, is my sister.
At first the shock is just the fact that Star’s here. And then another wave of shock comes over, and it’s the fact that she looks like shit. There are half-moons under her eyes the color of winter shadows. Her hair has a half inch of mousy brown roots. Her skin is blotchy—pale, pink, red.
“What happened?” I ask. But I think I already know the answer.
“Mom.” Star’s voice is shaky. “I guess… I’ve been reading a lot about it. I was the golden child. You were the scapegoat. But then you left, and she couldn’t handle not having a scapegoat.”
“Did she cut you?” I want to run to her. She’s so pale and sick. But I don’t know. It’s like my whole body isn’t sure if it can trust her again.
Star shakes her head. “No. Just throwing stuff. Books. My computer. My, uh, television.” I gasp because that’s an eight-thousand-dollar television. It’s massive. I don’t know how Mom could lift it, much less throw it. Star takes a shuddering breath and continues. “Every day. Every day she lost it and threw things, screamed. It’s like she can’t pretend to love us anymore.”
“Well, she never pretended to love me, Star.” I know it sounds ridiculous and bitter to say, especially while she’s falling apart, but I’m not ready to act like Star and I were ever on the same level as far as our mother goes.
“God, I know, Moon.” And that’s odd, so odd, hearing her take the Lord’s name in vain. “I should’ve defended you. Especially with the knives. I was so scared of her, though.” Star looks at my scars. “I’ve been the worst sister.” She’s sobbing now. “And I’m not saying that because I’m trying to make this about me, okay? I’m saying that because it’s true and I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Can you forgive me?”
I sigh, and when I look down, my hands shake. “Of course I forgive you, Star. You’re my sister. You’re my best friend I’ve had most of my life.” I shake my head. “But it’s going to take a long time before we’re close again. I have to make sure I can trust you.”
Star nods slowly. Her eyes are red and her face is puffy and her skin is magenta on her cheeks, like spilled ink. She still looks beautiful. But for the first time ever, I don’t hate her for it. “That’s fair,” she responds.
“So are you going to stay here?” I ask.
“If…” Star looks at Tía. “If—”
“Well, you can’t go back home,” Tía responds. “But Moon has the guest room. You’ll have to sleep on the pullout.”
I open my mouth to say she can share with me, but Tía stops me with a single look. It’s time for her to learn a little humility, she says with her eyes.
“Thank you,” Star says. “That’s perfect.”
“Does Mom know you’re here?” I ask.
Star’s eyes well up. “She probably does now. We left while she was at church, praying for your and my souls.”
“We?” I say. “Whose car is that?”
Star sniffles. “It’s Santiago’s. He drove.”
Star and Santiago. Star and Santiago alone in his big, ugly Mercedes for who knows how many hours. I didn’t know they even were close enough to arrange their own personal road trip. But I guess they didn’t waste any time, did they?
Probably because he was eavesdropping, Santiago steps into the opening of the kitchen, facing us. He’s staring straight into my eyes and it hurts me right in the middle of my chest. He looks beautiful. All tall and gold in Tía’s chili-pepper lights, in a linen button-down top and jeans. “I made tea,” he says, and lifts a mug to me, like an offering, but… but… Star and Santiago. In a car. In a hotel room. Both beautiful and glowing and smiling. The image of them happy and laughing together comes so vividly, it takes my breath away, and I stand up.
“I’m going to bed.” I
look at no one as I say it. I look at no one when I walk to my room, when I open the door, step in, close it behind me. Inside, I think nothing as I undress and take the flowers out of my hair, and I think nothing as I brush my teeth and ignore Marco’s texts asking if I’m okay and when will we get dessert. I say nothing until I get in the shower. And that’s when I speak, but I’m speaking with wild, blubbery tears, and I slide down the silver and teal fish tiles and just try to keep it quiet.
When I get in my bed, there’s a few knocks on my door, but I pretend not to hear them. And when I go to sleep, it’s to the faint sound of rustling paper. I think that’s why I dream of a darkroom, under the red glow of those developing lights, dipping memories into the water, pulling them up and each one is ruined. I guess that’s how broken hearts go.
52. How a Letter Wraps Around My Whole Heart like a Vine
I’M SCARED TO leave my room in the morning, but my growling stomach and the smells of Tía cooking breakfast force me to cave. I open the door a little, peeking.
“He’s at his hotel,” Star says. She’s on the sofa with a book in her hand. She looks a little better from yesterday, but still tired.
I bite my lips. “Okay.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Like you weren’t looking for him?”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes and walk to the kitchen, where Tía hands me a plate of tacos filled with cheesy eggs and fried plantains. “Thank you.”
“Gracias,” she corrects. “You two need to learn Spanish while you’re here.”
“That wasn’t one of your rules before.”
“Well, it is now.”
“Gracias, then.” The word is warm. I think of a family, cooking around a hearth fire. There’s smoke. Laughter. Gracias.
I sit down and Star joins us. I’m not really sure how to act around her, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She knows exactly what questions are flying around in my mind like vultures.
“I was at Mom’s, locked in my room, trying to figure out how I was going to get out. She’d pushed furniture in front of the door.”
How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe Page 27