by Mia Garcia
Miles shields me as two grown men tussle over who knows what.
“Time to go?” I say. Somewhere a table falls, glass breaks.
“I know just the place,” he says.
The Saddest Story
“WE ARE NOT BREAKING AND ENTERING,” I SAY OUT INTO THE night, but only loud enough for Miles to hear. When we left the club I swore we’d continue our almost-kiss out on the cobblestone streets, but instead Miles tugs me along with the promise of someplace special. Something to wait for. I think of tossing the wings, frayed from all the excitement of the day, a gash on one side, ripped tape on the other. But still, I hold on tight, deciding against throwing them out; they too would survive the night with me, even if at the end all that remained was a bit of red cellophane and wire.
“Who said anything about breaking and entering? I said I know a place.”
“No, you said, ‘I know a place but no one might be home, not that it matters,’ to be exact. Hence breaking and entering and misdemeanor felony or whatever.”
“Okay . . . I phrased that incorrectly, I accept that, but how much Law & Order do you watch?”
“Not enough to get us out of trouble when we’re caught.” I lower my voice, afraid of attracting too much attention from the people around us, which is silly now that I think about it because everything attracts too much attention on Mid-Summer and so nothing does. You could scream “I am a golden god” from a rooftop and no one would notice. Someone might throw you a necklace, but that’s about it. I skip a few steps to land next to Miles. “And if it wasn’t very clear from my scintillating conversation with that bouncer, I am a terrible liar.”
“Oh, that was pretty clear—like, crystal clear—but I’m not asking you to lie or break and enter anywhere, Lila. Just trust me.”
He snags my hand again, bringing it to his lips, eyes so intent on mine. His kiss is electric, shock traveling across my skin. “I haven’t led you down the wrong path yet, have I?”
“No, I guess not.” But there’s a first time for everything.
We’re back in the Quarter, weaving through more costumes—it’s impressive how many people New Orleans attracts during a celebration. I wonder if during the regular February Mardi Gras you’re just confined to the same block for hours because you can’t move anywhere.
As we move I hear pockets of conversation around me. Miles is right, there are at least three midnight ghost tours happening at the same time. I leave the story of the Louisiana vampire on one corner and pick it up at the next. We pass an imposing white marble building that emanates light from every window; inside there’s a large group entering the lobby of what I now see is a hotel—historic from the looks of it. I pause by the entrance, trying to listen to the story, curious if the guide is any better at telling it than Miles.
“Now right above this lobby”—the tour guide is an older man, white hair and mustache, cap embroidered with Something-Something City Walk Tours; he motions with his thumb at the floor above him—“is a grand ballroom. Marble floors, chandeliers, grand piano. You can just imagine the parties they threw there, folks, real ragers.”
He laughs at his own joke even though no one else does. The tour guide is trying hard not to lose his audience, but he lacks the oratorical magic to keep them riveted. I feel Miles come up to stand behind me. “You cheating on me, Sunshine?”
I smirk but don’t turn to face him. “Just checking out the competition.”
A few people from the group have wandered away from the guide, touching the gleaming marble pillars.
“Do you think someone dusts all this or that it stays that blinding from people running their fingers over every surface—like bits of statues that shine brighter despite the time?”
“Little bit of both, I think.”
The marble pillars extend all the way up to the—what? Thirty-foot ceiling? God, I pity whoever has to climb up on that ladder to dust.
The guide wrangles back his people from where they’ve scattered around the lobby. How many times do tours come through here? There’s no gift shop to speak of, and a hotel this fancy must not be that happy with nonpaying customers traipsing around. Yet the people at the counters only offer smiles and the doorman has yet to send us on our way.
The guide starts up again. “Now you hear a lot of stories about haunted hotels, and New Orleans is home to over ten haunted hotels of note—this being one of them. As mentioned, above us stands a grand ballroom—which we can’t enter, sorry about that, folks, but the kindness of this hotel only goes so far—with a very sweet occupant: a lone girl. She always appears at night, dancing under the chandelier like the party never ends.”
The guide claps his hands together, making me jump and Miles snort. I swat at him without turning around. The guide points his shuffling audience to the bathrooms, asking them to meet back at the lobby in ten for the final stop.
“He didn’t say anything about how she died.”
“They don’t know,” Miles says, “or at least I’ve never heard the story.” He bumps me with his hip, motioning me to follow. As we head out into the night, I hug my arms around myself, the air much colder now than before. The breeze picks up as we go along. I think back to my earlier conversation with Taj and Danny and wonder how far the storm is and if our night will be cut short. I don’t bring it up, and maybe that means it won’t actually happen.
“Shall we make up a story?” Miles says.
“What?”
“For the chandelier girl. We should make her a story.”
“Yeah.” The wind tosses my hair around. I rearrange my ponytail and move closer to Miles as the street narrows. “We should give her a name—a name and a story. You’re the storyteller, what do you think?”
“Oh no, I’m taking a break. Union rules.” Miles tugs at my arms, signaling a turn. I still have no idea where we are going, but at this point it feels natural to trust him. “It’s your turn.”
“No fair!”
He lifts his hands and shrugs. “Life isn’t fair.”
My shoulders hunch, I tense. It isn’t fair. I know this. I’m knee-deep in memories, wading through them.
“Sunshine?” Miles looks worried and walks back to me, which makes me realize I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Sorry.” I plaster on a smile so fake it hurts. “Just gathering my thoughts.”
Miles doesn’t buy it. “You sure? You looked like, like I hit a nerve or something.”
I shake my head, taking the lead and pulling him down the street. “I’m fine. Let’s talk ghosts. Every ghost needs a name, right?” I plunge right in. The name pops into my head. “Grace.”
“Grace?” Miles tilts his head.
“Yes.” I think of Grace—who was she? How old? Sixteen, I decide, like me, like Annalise. I invest in the story, let it invade my thoughts. She’s at a ballroom in a hotel, so perhaps her family is traveling or came to an event? She loved to dance—enough to repeat it forever.
I think of all the stories, the myths and legends, I’ve devoured over the years, bookmarked and tucked away ready to be savored. Greek, Irish, African, Native American. So many tales weave together, the annoyingly tragic surfacing first, latching onto my own tale.
A young girl hurt. A young man in pain.
Annalise and Adam tumbling together to form one person made of bits from each.
I can see her in my mind: small for sixteen, a curtain of black hair, olive skin, hands that fidgeted when she thought she wasn’t being watched.
“She had a heart condition,” I start. I can feel Miles looking at me, his gaze a pinpoint of heat on my skin. “She was born with the condition; she wasn’t supposed to dance, her heart wasn’t strong enough, but she did it anyway, always in secret. To her parents she was the dutiful child, but alone . . . alone she pliéd, she practiced her port de bras, she tilted and fell and mirrored the poses she saw in her books.” I twirl around on lampposts and plié on cobblestones to emphasize my point, imagining myself in my room, scanning
over books. When I lose my balance Miles’s hand settles on my hip until both my feet are on solid ground. “Always in secret . . . though sometimes she was wicked and when her mother or father were turned away from her she would pirouette or sway to the music in her head for a brief second before they turned around again.”
I take a moment to gather my thoughts. The night is much quieter now, still, as if it held its breath waiting for me to continue.
The wind picks up again, the sky painted with clouds. I wait for rain, ready to dart beneath the nearest awning for safety, but it doesn’t come. Not yet. The storm is getting closer, and I hope it doesn’t take the night away with it.
“We’re almost there—don’t leave me hanging.” Miles wraps one arm around me, banishing the cold like the day pushing away a nightmare.
“Her sixteenth birthday was a miracle. Her heart should’ve given out long before then, so her parents decided to throw her a lavish party. They rent the ballroom for the night and invite all of New Orleans to toast their daughter. Most important—they give her a gift.” I settle closer to Miles, my body thanking me. “A dark-blue box tied with a velvet ribbon. Inside was a pair of red dance shoes and a dress to match. When she entered the ballroom her father reached for her hand and led her out to the dance floor.”
Miles gathers me in his arms, and we dance down the block like in the old timey movies with curtsies and stuffy shirts. “And as her father gave her one final twirl”—Miles twirls and then dips me—“her heart gave out, and she died.”
It’s an odd thing, seeing the image so clearly, her father holding her in his arms, realization blooming on his face—I think suddenly of Annalise, of how her father must have held her, of Adam begging for help. I shake my head, releasing the memory, and let it fall away into the night.
Miles pulls me back up, silent, a frown across his brow.
“What?” I say.
“That is the saddest story.”
I clear my throat. “Life is sad,” I say.
“Not always,” he replies, his voice soft.
“Sometimes,” I say as he tucks a strand behind my ear. “Sometimes it is.”
Sleep No More
IT’S SO ODD WHENEVER YOU ARE SPEAKING ABOUT A PERSON how much one thing contradicts another. Adam was quiet, yes, different from the person we knew before, yes, but still I feel there was a sound I would use to describe him anyway, a static building over time.
I look back at my parents during this time and there was such a careful nature about them, each question, each action punctuated by a feeling of hope. Whenever my mother asked if Adam needed anything I felt like she was under the impression that any answer was a gift because he could disappear at any moment. Same with my dad. Before, my father and Adam used to spend days fixing old crap in the garage—though they never actually completed a single project. Now my father seemed content to sit quietly while they watched a TV show or ball game—the old projects left untouched, gathering dust in the garage.
I was late to the realization that I should be happy with whatever Adam I could get and not annoy or badger him as much as I did. I was told to “let your brother be” far too many times to count. I felt like an energetic puppy constantly swatting at my brother’s door, asking to be let in.
It was during this time that I would sit in church and pray to Abuela Julia, not God, who I missed every single day since she passed. I tried to channel her strength in those times, pulling whatever I could from Adam, failing as I lacked her authority. Abuela Julia would’ve cut through the bullshit and laid it all out for us: “Don’t pretend you don’t see it too, Julia.”
There was no Julie or Jules with my grandmother. I was Julia always, as she was Julia always.
But if awake, Adam was quiet static; asleep Adam was not, because at night came the nightmares—or perhaps they were there during the day too, held off by the light as most nightmares are. Though . . . that feels wrong, comparing them to dreams of being chased or monsters under your bed, silly things that vanish when you open your eyes rather than what they were: constant, horrific memories beating their way forward, waiting for Adam to let them through.
So they came at night as I was falling into my own sleep and long after my parents had drifted off; I’d hear the shouts, sharp staccato sounds that burst through the night or the thump of Adam falling off his bed. The lights would flick on—a sliver under his door cutting through the darkness until daylight took its place. Sometimes I would knock on Adam’s door and he’d murmur:
“Sorry, kid. Go back to sleep.”
And I would sometimes, or I would hover, unsure, counting how many bumps in the night it had been this week until Adam came to the door and chased me back to my room. I would keep my door open—staring at the crack below his door until I fell asleep. Each morning my dad would ask how we’d slept, I’d shrug and Adam would lift the corners of his mouth—the perfect imitation of a smile—and say, “Not bad, you?”
Each morning I would think of channeling Abuela Julia, of slamming my hand against the table and demanding the truth, whatever it was. But I never did, and it became a routine: the quiet, the sounds, the light, the “Sorry, kid.”
Until, well, until there was an until. Isn’t that how it always goes?
I’M NOT SURE what was different about that night, but I didn’t knock when I heard the bump, I just walked in like a fool, because what could happen? After all, this was my brother.
My Adam.
There was silence—the true silence where everything around you has hollowed out and the only thing felt is an absence. Maybe I’d woken him up, and it wouldn’t be long before the “Sorry, kid” would pop up and then we’d be back there in that damn routine, but no, there was nothing. I could see Adam still on his bed, sheets lying on the floor, twisted into a ball like he’d been punched in the gut. I froze. His muscles were taut, and I could see two scars on his upper arms that hadn’t been there before he left. Those scars made me pause—had I seen them before? Had my parents? I felt the urge to shake him awake and demand the story behind them.
“Adam,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, then again, louder.
He shifted—flinched, more like it—but didn’t wake.
“Adam.” I inched closer, my hand hovering in midair as I reached for him. “You okay?”
My hand was on his arm for a second, maybe more, before the air whooshed out of me as I slammed down to the floor. I registered the pain before I had any time to react to it; Adam’s forearm pressing down on my neck, forcing the air out of me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Words came out in small spurts. I pushed back on his chest, enough that I could speak. “STOP!” I tried to yell, but it came out as a croak, barely over a whisper. I could feel my eyes tearing up from the strain, closing, plunging me down farther into the darkness. Adam moved to shift more of his weight on top of mine, and at the back of my mind it registered that he wasn’t even using his full strength, not that he needed to. Adam was at least a foot taller than me and if he shifted to place any more of his weight on mine I wouldn’t be able to push him. I could tell his eyes were unfocused—he didn’t even see me.
Where are you?
I thought back to our sessions—quick little lessons Adam had taught me on self-defense—but none seemed to apply to this situation, so I did what I could. I moved one leg between us, locking my knee into place, making it harder for him to use his weight against me. It hurt like hell, and my muscles stretched against his strength as he pushed my knee against my chest. I buried my nails into his skin and turned into a madwoman. I swatted. I slapped. I punched and scratched at what was basically a stone wall. “Adam, stop, STOP, it’s Julie. IT’S JULIE.” He grabbed my hand, then he stilled, head falling just a bit before his eyes blinked back from wherever he was. Whenever he was.
“Adam,” I repeated, air finally filling my lungs. “It’s Jules. Adam, please, it’s Jules.”
So much blinking. He took in his room, his surroundings, h
is arm pressing on my neck. He snapped away from me. “Jules,” he said, and shifted off, slumping down by his bed, head in his hands.
“What happened?” I moved away from him and I know he saw, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t be that close to him in case . . .
“Nothing,” he spoke into his hands. “Nothing, I just . . . I just had a bad dream.”
“A bad dream?”
Bullshit—so much bullshit, but I didn’t have the strength to fight him on this, and I wasn’t sure the words would come out anyway.
“I get them sometimes. You shouldn’t wake me like that again.” He spoke to the floor, never looking up, never meeting my eyes. “It’s dangerous.”
“You scared me a bit.”
You scared me a lot.
“I’m sorry.” He looked up then, and my heart shattered. His eyes were wide and alert, filling with tears. He used the heel of his hand to wipe the tears. “I—” he started, and then cut himself off. “I’m fine. It was just a dream.”
We sat in silence, my neck throbbing, Adam holding himself like he would break. He stood up finally and sat at the edge of his bed, his back to me. He said nothing, but I could see it in the slump of his shoulders and the deep breaths, the “Sorry, kid. Go back to sleep.”
So I stood and left.
“Jules?”
I turned, but he still faced away from me.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t . . . don’t come in here when I’m like that, okay?”
“But—”
“I’ll be fine—just don’t come in, okay?”
I stared at Adam’s back, slumped over, waiting.
“Okay, Jules?” He reminded me of something just then, of Atlas, a myth we had learned in school. Atlas was a Titan who stood against the Olympians in a great war, and when his side lost, his punishment was to hold up the sky forever.