Wild Beauty

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Estrella said. “We’ll have help. There’s a saying in my family. The meaner the girl, the bigger the sweet tooth.”

  He thought of Azalea showing him how she made her favorite potatoes from those strange flakes that looked like snow. He remembered the sternest of the grandmothers putting him under the spray of warm water and telling him he was not lost, only misplaced.

  “I don’t think anyone in your family’s mean,” he said.

  He felt her glance slide over him, picking up the worry he didn’t want her to catch.

  “It’s not my money anyway,” she said. “It’s Reid’s.”

  “You stole money from Reid?” he asked.

  A hand fluttered to her chest. “I’m wounded that you think I’m a girl of such low moral character.”

  He drew back, worried he’d offended her. But then her smile glinted, first in her eyes before curving the corner of her mouth.

  She was making fun of him. She liked making fun of him. Of how the colors of things shocked him. Of how his face always showed his wonder at the grandmothers turning tortillas over blue flames, fingers so close the fire almost touched them. Of how he did not understand the cousins running barefoot over wet grass when they all had shoes.

  He didn’t mind. It didn’t bother him to be something Estrella batted at to see what he would do, like a cat at a feather. She was more curious than cruel.

  “I might have told Reid we all needed more money to look pretty for his little party,” Estrella said.

  That let Fel laugh. “I don’t think you said it like that.”

  “You’re right. I was much more persuasive.”

  Her pride was so sure he could almost taste it on the air, like sugar mixed with the bite of chili powder. She was both shameless and soft, openhearted and vicious. He wondered how she remembered to be all these things at once, how there was any space left in her to lure flowers from the earth.

  Estrella handed the man money. Fel didn’t want to know where she’d hidden it, if she’d slipped it out of the band of her underwear or from between her breasts when both his and the cashier’s backs were turned.

  The man at the counter gave her back two paper bags. She thanked him and handed one to Fel.

  “Let your education begin,” she said.

  Even through the paper, he could feel the soft fluff of the spun sugar, the thing she called cotton candy. It gave under his hands like gathered cloth.

  He thought of how he would pass these things to the Nomeolvides women, grandmothers and mothers and daughters, like a bright communion.

  At night, with Estrella, this town was all lights and water-slicked cobblestone. Lampposts lined the sidewalks. White lights wrapped the trees, making everything look covered in snow.

  They passed a bulb-signed theater and a tall-windowed hotel.

  A man’s voice spilled out of the space between buildings. “You out here looking for a new boyfriend, Nancy?”

  Fel heard the hard taunting in the man’s voice.

  The words struck Fel hard enough that for a second he thought the man was talking to him.

  Fel looked down the brick-lined alley, the ground wet with runoff.

  A boy who looked younger than Fel leaned against a wall, the brim of a dark felt hat shading his face. Suspenders showed against his pin-striped shirt. Two men stood across from him, trying to needle him into looking up.

  The boy did not speak.

  “Hey,” the other man said, and kicked at the wall close to the boy’s knee. “You’re too good to talk to us, Nancy?”

  Nancy. That one word, said as an insult not a name, made others rush back to Fel.

  Uphill gardener.

  Molly.

  Backgammon player.

  Fel’s thoughts caught on each of those words, and the memory, the cutting pain of how he’d heard them thrown at someone he loved.

  His body acted for him. He threw the man who’d kicked at the boy up against the damp brick. Then he was hitting him, and when the other man went at him he hit him next.

  He was hitting them because a long time ago, in the gray world he had lived in, he had heard someone he loved called these kinds of names and he had been too small to do anything. The memory of the rage and the helpless feeling, the sense that he had been too young to stop it, charged his hands.

  The one who took care of him. The one who kept them both from freezing or starving. He had been a man who liked men, and so everyone felt it was their right to judge him, to call him names.

  His brother.

  Fel had had an older brother. The man he had hunted mushrooms with, picked dandelion greens with, the man who had bargained for manteca and day-old bread, this man had been his brother.

  He knew this. He knew this the way he knew the weight of the wooden horses. And because he could not weep for this true thing, not here, it fed the rage in his hands. He could not defend his brother from the words, from the names Nancy and Molly.

  But he could quiet these men. If he could not protect his brother, he could protect the boy in this alley. He could hit these men hard enough that fine cuts split open the backs of his hands.

  Estrella dug her fingers into Fel’s upper arm, pulling on him, yelling at him to stop.

  The boy cut between them all, trying to block the men from hitting Fel or Estrella.

  “Hey,” another unknown voice sliced through the air. “What’s the problem here?”

  They all broke away from one another, turning toward the mouth of the alley.

  A man stood at the edge, wearing the fine suit and bearing of someone who worked for the hotel and could throw anyone out of it. Or out of the alley next to it.

  He wasn’t looking at the men, or Fel, or even Estrella.

  He was looking at the boy. But not with the hard-jawed judgment of deciding he’d been the start of the trouble. He was looking at the boy with the deference he might give a wealthy man.

  The boy stepped back, holding out his hands. “Everyone’s okay here, right?”

  Fel still didn’t recognize the boy. Not his shape. Not his face, still shadowed by his hat brim.

  But that voice stilled Fel. He knew it, even though it was lower now, dropped with effort. That voice was the only one he had heard at the long wooden table that was not the similar, braiding sounds of the Nomeolvides women.

  “Nobody’s hurt here,” the boy said. “We’re all gonna go home, okay?” He patted the air with flat palms, calming them all.

  The men backed toward the street, stunned either by the fine-suited man or the unexpected power of a boy they had thought nothing of.

  The suited man followed them, nodding at the boy as he left the mouth of the alley. The boy nodded back, the last sign Fel needed that they knew each other.

  The men’s shadows faded, Fel’s knuckles sore and throbbing.

  Estrella’s fingers shielded her mouth, her gasp so soft it sounded like a breath in. Fel wondered if she was short enough to see the boy’s face, or if that same voice had caught her.

  Estrella and the boy in the felt hat passed a startled look between them, like they were two mirrors reflecting it back over and over.

  The boy’s hair was darker, shorter. But Fel recognized the features.

  “Bay,” Estrella said.

  Bay shook her head, jaw held tight. “Not here.”

  “Fine.” Estrella went around to the other side of the building.

  They followed her. Of course they followed her, Fel because he had learned to follow the Nomeolvides women when they told him to, and Bay out of a worry so heavy it struck Fel like hot air.

  The brick sill of a first-floor window gave Estrella enough height to pull on a rusted fire escape ladder. Her steps rattled the metal frame as she climbed to the first landing.

  She stared down at both of them with a look partway between invitation and threat. “Then how about up here?”

  NINETEEN

  Estrella tore open a bag of cotton candy. She
would wait until Bay started talking. She twirled off a piece of spun sugar, and then handed the cotton candy to Fel. She hoped he’d join her, both of them giving off the sense that they had all night. They would stay until the silence wore Bay down.

  Fel did the same thing she’d done, pulling away a scrap, and then passed it to Bay. He looked at the fluff sticking to his fingers. He seemed unsure if it was candy or fabric, and for a minute she wondered if he saw it like she had the first time her mother bought it for her, like blush-colored clouds whirled onto a paper cone.

  Most of the time, Fel’s wonder made her protective. It made her slow and careful with him. But now it frustrated her. Right now, everything frustrated her.

  “You eat it, Fel,” she said. “You just put it in your mouth.”

  He did it, his eyes on her as he swallowed it. That startled look made her a little guilty, but she caught the glint of something else. His interest maybe. His amusement at her getting this worked up over spun sugar.

  Bay tore off a piece of cotton candy but didn’t eat it. She set the bag between the three of them, the puff leaning to one side on the rusted landing.

  Bay. Alive. Hair dyed auburn, cut short, the longest pieces now free from her hat and brushing her cheekbones. Bay had forgone her satin coats in favor of slacks and collared shirts that made her the same as a hundred men.

  Whatever thrill Estrella felt to see her turned damp and heavy. She should have thrown her arms around her, shrieked with the joy of knowing her heart and her cousins’ hearts had not killed her.

  But the only words in her were bitter.

  “Nice haircut,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Bay took off her hat and ran a hand through her cropped hair. “I miss the braid a little, to tell you the truth. This keeps getting in my face. But I don’t miss being called Miss Briar, I’ll tell you that.”

  A faint laugh turned in Estrella’s throat, but she didn’t let it become sound. In all the time Estrella had watched her, Bay had never been bothered either by being called a girl or a boy. But that word, Miss, engraved on invitations or written in calligraphy on envelopes, had made Bay shudder. To Bay, Miss spoke of what the rest of the Briars would expect her to be. A proper young woman in neutral, pearled pumps, diamond drop earrings, a knee-length lace dress.

  The kind of woman everyone except Marjorie expected her to be.

  “Which part?” Estrella asked. “Just the miss or the Briar, too?”

  “Both,” Bay said.

  “What do we call you?” Fel asked.

  It was such a genuine question, his voice so open, that it made Estrella cross her arms just to remind Bay she was not forgiven.

  “On the street, don’t call me anything.” Bay’s eyes flashed from the fire escape landing to the wet ground below. “Down there, you don’t know me. But right now, up here, call me Bay. I’m the same girl.”

  The word girl prickled against the back of Estrella’s neck, her skin hot with the rush of being near Bay. This version of Bay had abandoned her French braid. She wore the understated colors of men’s clothes. She was beautiful either way, and it was a sharp, stinging reminder of what Estrella and her cousins all shared.

  “You’re not the same,” Estrella said. “You let us think you were dead. The Bay I knew would never do that.”

  “I know,” Bay said. “But I had reasons, Estrella. I would never do this to your family if I didn’t have a good reason.”

  “Everyone is mourning you,” Estrella said. “Do you understand that?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bay said, her head down, voice low, looking so guilty that Estrella almost declared her forgiven. “But this is important. I can’t explain it right now, but I have to do this.”

  “What’s important enough to let everyone think you’re dead?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You did this for something that doesn’t matter?”

  The cotton candy bag listed a little further. Fel righted it, but it leaned again. And that small defeat, the forlorn puff in a crumpled bag, seemed to open Bay.

  Bay sighed, and then she spoke. She told them how she had known Reid wanted more than he was saying. How he had reminded her that she was no Briar heir, and that it was only by Reid’s gracious generosity that he let Bay stay. How he had tried to threaten her with the fate of the Nomeolvides women, how with the twist of the right rumor, they would be hunted as witches.

  How about you help me, or I force them off this land and they die?

  Estrella shivered, wondering how much Reid knew about La Pradera’s hold on them, if he had heard any stories of runaway girls coughing up pollen until the breath left them.

  “But La Pradera is yours,” Estrella said, hoping Bay would refute everything Calla had said. The problem with Marjorie’s will. The mistakes the lawyers had made. The words—fee tail, devise—that Estrella still did not understand. “Marjorie left it to you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Bay said. “But I’m not giving up. That’s why I’m here. I needed Reid to stop watching me.”

  “What will you do while he’s not watching you?” Fel asked.

  Bay offered her surest smile. “Gather ammunition.”

  Estrella scooted a little closer. “What do you have?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Before Estrella’s shoulders slumped, Bay held up a hand.

  “I’m working on it,” she said. “The Briars have secrets. Everybody does.”

  “You know Reid’s, don’t you?” Estrella asked.

  Bay shook her head. “Not big enough. I need more. And I’ll find it.”

  Estrella watched the flickering of Bay’s eyes, even brighter with her hair dyed dark. Next to Fel, with his skin the color of wet brush, his eyes as deep brown as the rusted fire escape’s metal, Bay’s face looked even paler, her freckles as delicate as spilled cinnamon. They were both a kind of family to her, one she and her cousins had grown up next to, the other found in her family’s garden and taken into their home like a lost son.

  She did not know what to do with them now, the boy she feared for the beautiful and frightening things he might mean, and the love she and her cousins shared. Even though Bay had told all these lies, even though her mother warned her that Fel was a boy who did not sleep, that protectiveness still lit up inside her, for both of them.

  “How has no one recognized you by now?” Estrella almost whispered it. “People here knew Marjorie. And they know you.”

  “I’m out of my Bay Briar costume,” Bay said, gesturing to her haircut, her suspenders, her plain polished shoes, the hat she’d set on the landing. “You’d be amazed how no one looks past that. Most of the time, people don’t look past what they think they know.”

  Estrella studied Bay.

  People so often knew each other by the ways they were not the same. It was why Estrella and her cousins, with their skin in close though not matching shades of brown, all looked alike to La Pradera’s guests. It was why no one recognized this dark-haired stranger as a Briar. Without her pale French braid, her flourishing gestures, her outfits that were a few ruched seams away from belonging in Marie Antoinette’s court, Bay was skimmed over as some unremarkable young man.

  “Why take the risk?” Estrella asked. “You could go anywhere.”

  “I’ve got to pay for everything somehow.” Her eyes flicked to the hotel windows. “The easiest way is to stay here.”

  “How?” Estrella asked.

  Bay’s smile held a wince. “You do know why Marjorie’s father was exiled to La Pradera, don’t you?”

  Estrella shook her head. That was one story Marjorie had never told, how she and her father had come to live in the place Briar failures were sent. If the grandmothers knew, and Estrella was sure they did, they never let it slip. At least not in front of her and her cousins.

  “Gambling debt,” Bay said. “Why do you think my grandmother taught me all those card games?”

  “So you could run up your own gambling d
ebt?” Estrella asked.

  “No,” Bay said. “So I’d have what she called a moderate relationship with gambling. She wanted me to take hold of it instead of it getting me one day like it got her father. It’s the same reason she taught me the right way to drink a glass of wine when I was sixteen, so I wouldn’t be a drunk when I was forty.”

  Estrella remembered the rising laughs from Marjorie’s guests when young Bay beat them at cards. All of them roared over the felt table and the winning hand so much they didn’t mind losing their money to eight-, or ten-, or thirteen-year-old Bay.

  “You’re gambling to cover your room every night?” Estrella asked.

  “It’s not gambling if you know you’ll win,” Bay said, and now she couldn’t help her grin.

  Estrella cringed.

  “I’m not playing like everyone else,” Bay said. “They’re not even my chips. I’m there to drive up the bets. That’s what I do. Every table I’m at is a high-stakes table when I’m done with it. None of the men down there want to get shown up by a kid, so they all raise until I fold. And you should see how satisfied they are when I do. Even if they lose, they feel like they’ve won. The house makes more, and the dealers give me a cut at the end of the night.”

  “And the dealers don’t know who you are?” Estrella asked.

  “They didn’t even recognize me until I started talking about my grandmother,” Bay said. “But sure, of course they do now. I know them the same way my grandmother knew their fathers.”

  It was so perfect Estrella couldn’t help laughing.

  But the shimmer of her own laugh wore off, tarnished by remembering every awful moment since Bay had gone.

  “How could you risk us like this?” Estrella asked. “With you gone, did you even think what would happen if Reid threw us off the land?”

  “He would never do that in a million years and you know it.”

  Estrella’s lips stilled, the truth leaving no room for her objections.

  Reid wanted to turn La Pradera into a place that made so much money, he could buy his way back from the damage done with a lit candelabra.

  Without the Nomeolvides women, the gardens would go feral, flowers withering or overgrowing their beds. Even under the most devoted hands Reid could hire, the gardens would be a weak imitation of what the Nomeolvides women had made them, and he would have to pay more to keep it up than the gardens would ever make him.