Half a minute more and her eyelids were too heavy to hold open.
SEPTEMBER 1998
Chapter 34 - Cel
When Cel returned home after delivering the sickening curse and carving TITS on Jose’s Mustang, her abuela was thankfully still asleep. She stripped down to her underwear, crawled into bed, and pulled the sheets up to her chin. She lay there in the dark, eyes wide open, struggling to stay afloat in a stew of emotion. She sighed. Cried. Ached. Regretted. Tossed and turned. Recited calming spells and soothing spells. Whispered angry words and curses at Abby. Questioned Parker’s heart, desire, sincerity. Part of her wanted to call him and demand to know exactly what had happened at Abby’s after she’d left. Part of her never wanted to know.
Sleep eluded her. Hours passed.
She didn’t have the energy to get up, but she couldn’t find a comfortable position in the bed or inside herself. Her brain refused to shut down. She ran through scenarios, possibilities, relived the night’s events, the last month’s events, every aspect of her and Parker’s relationship since their first clandestine kiss four months earlier.
Around six in the morning, she finally passed out. Yesenia woke her an hour later and asked if her stomach felt any better, if she felt well enough to attend school. Cel asked if she could stay home one more day, rolled over, and fell back to sleep as Yesenia rubbed her back.
She slept the morning and half the afternoon away. When she woke a little after three, her abuela had tea and tacos ready for her to heat and eat. She ate in the kitchen and then moved to the couch where she curled up under a blanket and watched Titanic on VHS. The credits were rolling when someone knocked on the front door.
Startled, Cel sat up and watched Yesenia crack open the door. She couldn’t hear what was said, but when Yesenia stepped aside and opened the door, she had an idea. A man wearing an Oak Mott PD uniform and carrying a small notepad stepped into the living room. He had a thin mustache and elephant ears. He appeared young and unsure of himself, new to the job. He gave Cel a closed-lipped smile and acknowledging nod.
“I’m Officer Gary Sanchez,” he said. “You can call me Officer Gary. Are you Cel?”
“Yes.” Cel shifted under her blanket when something inside her stomach torqued.
“Have a seat,” Yesenia said, gesturing at the couch as she sat in her chair.
Gary gave Yesenia the same closed-lipped smile he’d given Cel. “No thanks. This should only take a minute or two.” His attention turned back to Cel. “I need to know where you were last night. Specifically…” He glanced at his notepad. “From about eleven to six this morning.”
“She was here,” Yesenia answered for Cel, her voice sharp and defensive. “Asleep. We’ve both been sick, throwing up, and we haven’t left the house in days.”
“Is that right, Cel?”
Cel nodded, fighting as hard as she could to slow her thumping heart.
“What’s this about?” Yesenia demanded. “Did someone accuse her of something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Gary fumbled to flip to the previous page in his notepad and reread his notes before asking, “Do you know Jose Lopez?”
Cel and Yesenia both nodded.
“Well, he called us this morning and said his Mustang had been vandalized last night, and he wanted to file an official police report so his insurance company would cover the damage. Someone had scratched it up and written the word,” he nervously cleared his throat, “tits on the door. When Officer Jackson—that’s who talked to him, not me—asked who he thought could’ve done it, Jose said, and I quote.” Gary ran his finger under the words on his notepad as he read: “It was fucking Cel Garcia and her friends. I know, because one of them is called Tits.” He looked up. “Do you have anything to do with the vandalism or know who does?”
As Cel shook her head, Yesenia said, “Chingao.” She scooted to the edge of her seat, her eyes shrinking to slits, her brow scrunched. She pointed a teacher-finger at Gary. “Listen, I’ve known Jose since he was a toddler. I used to be good friends with his mother, and we used to spend a lot of time at their house. He always picked on Cel, and they never got along well, but she didn’t have anything to do with this. She was here with me all night.” She lowered her hand. “This is all for revenge. That’s how the Lopez’s work. He’s doing this because we filed a report on him a week ago after he attacked Cel and her friends at the fair. Hell, he probably did that to his car himself.”
Gary nodded like an obedient grandson. “I didn’t know about that incident. I’ll look into it when I get back to the station.” He jotted down a reminder, met eyes with Cel. “Do you have any friends called…you know, that word?”
“Chingao,” Yesenia whispered. “Who calls their friend that?”
Biting her lip, Cel shook her head.
“Didn’t think so,” Gary wrote again. “Do you think any of your friends could have anything to do with this?”
Cel shook her head.
“They didn’t mention anything about it to you?”
“No. I haven’t seen or talked to them since I’ve been sick.”
Gary nodded. “Will you go ahead and give me their names, anyway? That way I can touch base with them, too, since you haven’t talked to them in a while.”
Cel did.
Officer Gary thanked her and Yesenia for their time and cooperation, and as Yesenia walked him to his cruiser, Cel hurried to her bedroom and dialed Parker’s number to warn him, but he didn’t answer.
Chapter 35 - Parker
“You know it was her,” Abby said. “Who else would’ve written that?”
Parker passed through the gate on the side of her house, stopped next to Cel’s bike which rested against the siding, and spun around. Light sliced through the blinds in Jeff’s bedroom window to his left, striping his face and chest. An Oak Mott police officer named Gary had left Abby’s house ten minutes earlier, after questioning her about her whereabouts the previous night, and about the altercation with Jose at the fair.
“I don’t think she would do that,” Parker said. “Besides, she’s sick, remember? She hasn’t left her house in days. And I have her bike. You remember how far away Jose’s house is?”
Abby cocked her hip to the side, planted a hand on her waist. “Why do you keep defending her? Is there more to you guys than you’ve told me?”
“No. And I’m not defending her, I’m—”
“Yes, you are,” Abby interjected. “You’re taking her side over mine.”
“I’m not taking sides. There are no sides. Jose pisses a lot of people off. He’s in fights like every other day. There’s no telling who fucked up his car.”
Abby shook her head, her arrogant smirk reaching her eyes. “No. She did it. She’s in love with you, and she’s jealous of us.”
Parker waved a dismissive hand and blinked longer than natural. “Listen, I understand. After everything with your dad and Jeff, and then the cops coming tonight to question you about Jose. You’re upset. I get it. They came to my house and questioned me, too. But until we talk to Cel and—”
“Let’s go. I’m ready. Right now.”
Abby moved as though she would march past Parker and led the way, but Parker threw up his hands and blocked her. “No.”
“What are you afraid of?” She knocked his hands down and stared into his eyes. “Do you love her?”
A nervous chuckle escaped Parker’s mouth. “Love? Really?”
Abby knocked his hands down and tried to inch forward. Their chests collided. Emotions were high. “Move.”
“No. Your dad is still out there somewhere. And what about Jose? He’s crazy. If he really thinks you did—”
“Move!”
“No!”
Abby grimaced and shoved Parker with all her weight behind it. He absorbed the blow, grabbed her shoulders, and slammed her back against the house just to the right of the Jeff’s window.
“Let go!” Abby reached ar
ound his arms and slapped his cheek hard enough for the smack to echo.
Parker’s temper flared. He pushed his forearm across her neck, pinning her head to the house. A stripe of light lined his angry eyes. “Stop fighting me! I’m not going to hurt you!”
They held eye contact, both breathing heavily. Tense moments slipped past.
A small round shadow appeared behind the blinds.
A head.
Jeff.
The cops had found him hiding in an abandoned house two blocks away earlier that morning. His dad had rushed to his house after the incident with Parker and Abby and entered the house through the unlocked sliding glass doors. When Jeff heard his dad yell out his name, he’d escaped out of his window and ran as his dad busted through his bedroom door, knocking down his dresser. He’d spent the night in the abandoned house, curled up in a ball inside the sleeping bag he’d taken there months earlier when he’d run away for a few hours after a fight with Abby.
Parker pulled his forearm away from Abby’s neck, and she slapped the window, rattling the glass. “Go away,” she ordered. “Leave us alone!”
The blinds twisted closed, and shadow Jeff vanished.
Watching the window, Parker stepped back.
Abby slowly peeled away from the house.
“Sorry,” Parker offered. “Sorry…I…”
Abby straightened her shirt, checked the sides of her hair with her hands.
“I feel like we have something good going here.” Parker flicked a finger back and forth between Abby and himself. “I don’t want to fight about Cel. I don’t even want to think about her when I’m with you.”
“Then you need to decide. You either tell her about us and to leave me the hell alone, or I will.”
Parker’s insides—lungs, intestines, every part of him—felt as if they were inflating beyond control. On a mission to burst. “She’s fragile right now. After Dillo and all.”
“I don’t care. That’s no fucking excuse to mess up my life.”
“Fine,” he said calmly, trying to hide his inner turmoil, his desire to refuse. “I’ll tell her.”
“Tonight?”
“You know I can’t tonight. I have to get home before my parents get back from the church, and I don’t want to do it over the phone.” Fearing for his safety after the incident at Rita’s, Parker’s parents had told him he wasn’t allowed to leave the house after dark until Tom Powell was found. Abby and Jeff were given similar instructions. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
Abby searched his eyes. “Promise?”
Parker took her hand in his. “Yes.”
She nodded as though she believed him, but her eyes didn’t align with the action.
Parker cocked his head slightly sideways, jiggled her hand playfully. “Come on. I promise I’ll take care of this.”
She half-heartedly nodded again.
Parker stepped forward, their faces close enough for him to smell the remnants of a menthol on her breath. Anger radiated off her in pulses of heat. He took her other hand in his. “Everything’s going to be okay. You have to believe me.” When he leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t throw her arms around his neck and close her eyes like she always had before. And when their lips met, she barely responded. Her lips felt tougher than normal, almost plastic, nowhere close to soft and eager. And there was no tornado tongue action.
“I have to go,” Parker said, letting go of her hands. He pulled Cel’s bike away from the house, threw a leg over the frame, and glanced at Abby. She crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing the bike with disdain. “See you in the morning.”
Her gaze shifted to Parker, but she didn’t speak.
They stared at each other for a few awkward seconds before he pedaled away.
Chapter 36 - Cel
After Officer Gary left, Cel and Yesenia exchanged a few cross words about Jose and Maria. Yesenia reiterated her belief they had damaged the Mustang themselves—“It’s a double whammy. An insurance scam to get a new paint job and make us look bad.”—and Cel let her believe it. She wished she could spill her guts about Abby and Parker, the sickening curse she’d delivered to the Lopez’s, and what she’d done to Jose’s car. Telling someone, especially her abuela, the smartest woman she knew, would be such a relief, a weight off her shoulders. But Yesenia had been so angry after she’d kidnapped and killed Frito, and when she and Parker had lashed out at Jose at the cemetery, that she had to lie. She didn’t want to disappoint her abuela again. Or get into legal trouble. Last night’s truth would have to be hers and hers alone.
They ate a light dinner, tortillas and queso fresco, and when Yesenia went to take a hot bath afterward to help ease her arthritic hips, Cel made her way to her bedroom and closed the door.
She turned on her alarm clock’s radio, heard Nirvana’s Teen Spirit playing, and turned up the volume. She shrugged off her pajamas and changed into jean shorts, a black T-shirt, and her blue and black flannel, and then paced back and forth from the window to the door as the night sky swallowed the sun. She thought about Parker and Abby and Jose, reliving, re-evaluating. Repeating what-ifs. Re-feeling. Obsessing. Trapped inside her own head, just like the previous night.
The song ended, and after a commercial another came on. Then another.
She kept pacing. She had a stack of make-up work on the foot of her bed that she needed to complete, but there was no way she could slip into a school mind-frame right now. Her legs were as restless as her thoughts. Eventually, she decided to head outside for some fresh air, more room to walk, hoping a change of scenery and stimuli might help her break her circle of thought, stop the emotional rollercoaster.
She poked her head into the bathroom. The shower curtain was partially closed, exposing her abuela’s upper half. The water-damaged book Yesenia was reading, Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief, blocked her face.
“Buela?”
Yesenia lowered the book.
“I’m feeling cooped up after being inside all day. Is it all right if go out back and cricket hunt for a little bit?”
“Okay. But don’t go far. And don’t stay out long.”
Cel slipped on shoes, grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen junk drawer, went to the backyard, found her cricket stick among the others leaning against the side of the house, and started hunting. The night air was warm and dry, the crescent moon bright, the crickets plenty.
She circled the house first. Angling her head sideways, her cricket ear down, she tried not to think. Just hunt. Allow her senses to guide her. She focused on the sound of the chirps, the feel of the stick in her hand, the smell of fresh pine riding the wind, the slight, shadowy movements in the grass and shrubbery. She paused as long as needed when the crickets quieted, held the flashlight steady as she lowered her stick over their bodies, and drove the tip through them in a swift stealthy motion. She killed five crickets hiding in the gap between the foundation and the soil, and then made her way along the backyard fence line.
The more she hunted, the better she felt. Her legs no longer felt uncomfortably restless. Her skull no longer rattled from her mind’s relentless pursuit of answers. She didn’t feel anger or heartache, guilt or fear. She didn’t talk to imaginary Parker or Abby. She didn’t miss Tia Dillo. She didn’t worry about Jose or Maria or Yesenia’s well-being.
She hunted.
In a little less than an hour, as she crept through the backyard, the field beyond that, and the outer rim of Hunter’s Haven, she killed sixteen more crickets. As she emerged from the woods, headed for home, tired and eager for a shower, the hurricane fence gate opened and a dark silhouette walked into the field.
At first, she thought it was her abuela, but as the person approached, she knew it wasn’t. The person walked too fast, was too thin.
She waited. “Parker? Is that you?” she eventually called out.
No reply.
She flicked on her flashlight and aimed it at the person who was now ten yards away.
A yellow and blue su
mmer dress.
Not Parker.
Arms crossed over her chest. Angry eyes and a taut, set mouth.
“Abby? What are you doing here?”
Abby slapped the flashlight out of Cel’s hand, and when it hit the ground, the light blinked out. “Why did you do it?”
Shocked, Cel stepped back. “What the hell?”
“I know it was you. Parker says it wasn’t, but I know it was.”
“What are you talking about?” Cel’s voice quaked, the question coming off feeble and insincere. Because it was. She knew exactly what Abby was talking about.
“The cops just left my house.” Abby dropped her chin and angled her eyes up. “Thanks to you, they think I carved the word TITS on Jose’s car last night.”
“I didn’t tell them you did it.” These words came out stronger. “I told them I didn’t know who did.”
“Just admit it. I want you to admit it. You want me to get in trouble. You want to hurt me.”
Cel didn’t respond. An anger bubble was forming in her chest. How dare Abby tell her what to do. The cords in her neck tightened along with her grip on her cricket stick.
“Only a few people even know Jose called me that.” Abby thrust a finger in Cel’s face. “And you’re the only one stupid enough to write it on his car.”
Cel slapped Abby’s hand away. “Don’t call me stupid.”
That brought a smirk to Abby’s face. “Why not?” She jutted out her chin. “You are. It was your stupid ass that got us all in this mess with Jose. You and your stupid magic and stupid aunt and stupid cursed crickets and stupid cat stealing.”
“I told you that you didn’t have to help that night. And I know you really didn’t want to. You just didn’t want Parker to be alone with me. You can’t stand that he likes me more than you.”
Abby guffawed. “What a joke. He doesn’t like you. He feels sorry for you. He thinks it’s sad you’ve had a little school girl crush on him for so long. He pities you. He thinks you’re a flat-chested, crazy-ass tomboy.”
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