“How do you know they’ll be here tomorrow?”
She’s finished braiding her hair. She wraps it around her head a couple of times, pinning it into place. “Porque tu abuela me dijo.”
Despite all the times I’ve found Abuela’s meddlesome ways annoying as hell, I’m impressed. We’ve got the dead on our side. That’s gotta mean something.
130
THE SAFE HOUSE IS OLD. It creaks like a cranky elderly man all around me as I stretch in the pullout bed we set up in the office. I pull a knit emerald throw blanket up to my chin. There’s a light rap at the door.
“Come in,” I say. Noah pushes through.
“So, you must not be that scared of my dad,” I say. “After that stern talking-to about keeping your skinny culo on the couch.”
Noah smiles sheepishly. “Not really. I’m freakin’ terrified, actually. But.” He glances back and lowers his voice. “I think your parents are, like, catching up.” He raises his eyebrows, turning back to me.
I grimace. “Ew. God. Disgusting.”
“And they’re getting loud.”
“Shit, Noah! I don’t need any more details, okay?” I sigh. “Fine, come in. It’s early, anyway.”
We sit on the edge of the crappy cot. I’ve got the blanket wrapped around my legs. “You know,” Noah says. “It’s totally normal, and expected, even, for your mom and dad to be eager to—”
“Noah! No! We’re not talking about that anymore. Or ever again, okay? Jesus.”
“Right. Sorry.” He claps his hands on his knees, the beat dulled by his flannel pajama bottoms. And then he smiles at me so big, my stomach flutters a little. “Have you read that poem yet?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t felt the need to. Sorry.”
He nods.
More silence ensues.
I turn to him. “Why do you like to write poetry, anyway?”
He stops tapping his legs. “Hmm.” Then he shifts his whole body to face me. “Well, it’s hard to say. Well, no, it’s not that hard. But you’re going to think I’m, like, ridiculous or something.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.”
He bites both his lips, and when he releases them, they’re a pretty shade of pink. “There are some things you can’t just explain normally, with normal words. Like, you know how sage smells really strong when it gets wet? But what I just said now, that description of it, doesn’t even begin to cover that experience of smelling wet desert sage.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Here.” He leaves the room and returns with a notebook, shutting the door gently behind him. “Sounds like they’re still… you know.”
“Noah,” I warn.
“Okay, okay,” he says, flipping open the book. He begins to read. “Sage after rain is a woman, rising in smoke, draped in ice green, warm and sweet to touch.” He shrugs. “It’s a first draft and totally crappy but—”
“No,” I say, touching his arm. He looks down at my fingers. “I like that. That’s—that’s exactly what it’s like. Smelling wet sage. I didn’t realize it until now.”
Then he smiles, eyes crinkled, dimples all out. His lips still pretty pink.
131
I BEND MY LEGS, ONE over each side of his waist, as I kiss him. He puts his hands on my hips, his fingers in the elastic waistband of my black boyshorts.
I bite his bottom lip as I pull back. “Noah.” I gesture to his hands. “There’s no way you’re as scared of my father as you act.”
He smiles. “I am. I just. I just want to touch you more.” He drops his hands to my thighs. “Is it okay?”
I look at his eyes, at the bits of green and gold and bronze in them. “Yes.”
He kisses me again, slipping his hand into my boyshorts.
132
PEOPLE CALL THIS COMING AND I think it works. It feels like I dissolve into a new creation, one I don’t get a good enough look at before I come back, here, on my bed, where I collapse on Noah. It seems to take forever to get me there, but he doesn’t care at all, and he happily threads his fingers through my hair afterward.
After I catch my breath, I run my hand over him, over the pajamas. He stiffens.
“Is this okay?” I say softly.
He nods and groans when I do it again. He puts his hand on mine. “Sia, I don’t want you to do this just because I—I mean, you don’t have to, okay? I won’t be mad at all.”
I tug his pants low, staring at his face as his breathing gets even more labored. “I want to,” I say. “I’m not going to look at it, okay? But—” I grab him and he’s so hot and so hard.
His eyes roll back and he snaps them back on me. “You’re sure? I mean. You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes.” I grip even tighter and his whole body twitches. “Tell me how you like this. Okay?”
But thirty seconds in, my body freezes and I want to scream. Not at Noah, not at his arms or hips or heat, but at myself for being such a fuck-up, and at Justin, wherever the flip he is now, for fucking me up to start with.
Before I can say anything about it, Noah tugs my hand away.
“It’s okay,” he says, pulling me to his chest. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
133
I PUT MY HAND ON Noah’s ribs to push myself up, and he winces. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “What happened to your—”
“It’s from when Jeremy hit me,” Noah says quickly. Too quickly.
He lets me lift his shirt and I gasp. A constellation of bruises are gathered on his torso. Fresh ones. “These aren’t from Jeremy. I was there. He only hit your face.”
Noah says nothing. He’s trembling.
“It was your dad, wasn’t it?”
Noah doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to.
“Does your mom know?”
He shakes his head.
“Let me take photos. For her lawyer. For her case, Noah.”
Noah nods slowly. We make short work of it. The getting his shirt off, the lighting. I kind of want to vomit when I get close-ups of the purple and blue and black. There’s even a handprint. I want to wipe it all away. Like it’s paint.
I’m tearing up when we’re done. “Shit, Noah.”
He shrugs and lies back down. “You know, it’s so weird, but I don’t hate him. Because while he was doing it, he was saying things like, You think this is bad? You should’ve seen my daddy on a Tuesday night. You think this is bad? You’re not going to the hospital over this. And I just felt bad for him. Afterward, he cried, Sia. And went in his room, slammed the door. And I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.” Noah looks right in my eyes. “How shitty, you know, to become the person you hate? And then have no idea how to stop.”
“He could stop,” I say. “We all have choices in who we are.”
“Yeah,” Noah says. “I know. And I’m not saying he’s been a great dad afterward or anything. I mean, I’ve been living in my car pretty much since.” Noah closes his eyes. “I just wish he would change. Because you’re right. He could. But he won’t.” And then Noah wipes his cheeks where they’re all wet now.
And now I’m the one holding him. I hold him and I kiss him. I kiss every bruise on his chest and belly and hips until he’s shivering. I want to make him feel good, like he’s done for me a thousand times, so I run my hands all over, and after whispering are you sure a dozen times, he holds my hand still where he’s the hardest, over his clothes, and I run my fist up and down and down and up. And afterward, when he’s cleaned up and so relaxed, almost boneless, really, I hold him some more. My arms are still tight around him when I fall asleep.
134
WHEN I WAKE UP, NOAH’S gone, back on the living room sofa, I guess. The light reaching through the window is so deep it’s purple, and the edges of it are soft like fur. I throw my arm down, picking up yesterday’s jeans off the floor. I pluck a piece of paper from the back pocket. Noah’s handwriting is blocky and small, but I can read it alright, even in these shadow
s.
135
Sia,
I know I said I’d find you a poem, but I hope it’s okay that I wrote you one instead.
Noah
Blue
You told me the universe came from a woman
who longed for touch. And I think that beginning
was blue. Blue like the wild violet of an ocean
filled with the most mysterious things. Blue
because blue was the color of the whole desert
when we touched that night. Blue
because that night felt like another beginning,
like the sea became a desert and the desert
became a sea. Blue because a new blue
universe came from me falling for you.
136
I WISH NOAH WERE HERE now so I could kiss and kiss and kiss him. Instead I reread the poem until I feel like he is here, in my arms again, my head on his shoulder.… the sea became a desert and the desert / became a sea. The words lull me back to a rainstorm sleep.
137
ROSE COMES INTO THE ROOM when the light is bright, singing something about Sleeping Beauty.
“No,” I grumble, putting a pillow on my head.
“My mom had me bring over breakfast, Sia, and if you’re not fast enough, Noah’s gonna finish off the plantains.”
I force my torso upright. “He wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Well, if he doesn’t, that UFO boy might.”
I lean back against the back of the sofa part of the cot. “Shit, I just got dizzy.” And then her words hit me. “Shit, Omar’s here?”
“Yep.” She hands me a coffee from our favorite shop. It’s wonderfully warm.
“Toasted coconut?” I ask.
“Always.” She smiles. “Omar’s weird, huh?”
I snort. “You’re telling me.”
“He totally hit on me when he walked in.”
“No!”
“Yes. He did. Asked me if I wanted to be taken out of this world.” She laughs and claps her hands.
“Really?” I grimace. “You shut that down, though, right?”
“Of course.”
She’s perched on the edge of the mattress, wearing a bronze jumpsuit, long-sleeved and tied with a sash.
“Is that one of your mom’s seventies outfits?”
“Nah. I made this while we were staying with Meena and the kids.”
“Holy cow, Rose. You’re amazing. And that looks amazing on you.”
“You like it?” She stands and twirls, her twists up in a ponytail and swinging along with her.
I nod and give her a half smile. “How’s Samara?”
She immediately plops down on the bed again. “She’s—” Rose breaks into a smile. “She’s, you know. Smart. Funny. Sweet.”
“She a good kisser?”
“Shh,” Rose hisses, looking around. “We’ve only done it once, okay? But God Almighty.” She leans back on the bed with her hand on her head. “Sia. I felt it in my heels, my toes, the tips of my fingers! It was so…” She sighs and angles her face my way. “Is that what it’s like with Noah?”
I take a sip of coffee and smile. “Yes. It’s just like that.”
138
MRS. DAMAS SENT SOME OUTFITS FOR me and Mom along with the food. Well, Dad, too, but he refuses to wear Cruz Damas’s casual wear of Hawaiian short-sleeved button downs and cargo shorts. I actually don’t mind such a dad-ish wardrobe for Dad, but Luis Martinez prefers to dress like a lumberjack on any given day. He insists he’s good with several sprays of Febreze on his flannels and jeans, which, ew, Dad, come on, but whatever.
When I finally sit down to breakfast, I’m wearing high-waisted, huge-belled gray corduroys and a burnt orange button-down that I tuck in. Mom’s in an olive dress, one that reaches her toes, with large pockets sewn at the chest and hips. She takes a long look at me and Rose with a grin. “We look like Charlie’s Angels.”
“Ugh,” Rose says. “I hate that show.”
“Really?” Mom asks. “Why?”
I make a face. “Uh, it’s the most sexist thing we’ve ever watched?”
Mom groans. “God, I haven’t seen one in forever. I don’t remember that.”
I roll my eyes. “Rose forced us to watch YouTube clips so she could sketch their outfits.”
“Well, in my defense, their style was always slammin’.”
At that moment, Dad walks in. “Ah,” he says, chuckling. “Charlie’s Angels, eh?”
“That’s what I said.” Mom laughs.
“You two need a better reference,” I say, rolling my eyes, when the scent of desert lavender and oak envelopes the room. It’s so fast and sharp it cuts into me, and from the looks of it, Mom’s freaked out, too.
“Mom?” I say, looking at her wide eyes.
“Kids, to la iglesia,” she says, grabbing a hammer. “Abuela says they’re here.”
139
ROSE, NOAH, AND I RUSH out the door, toward the church.
“Hold up,” Omar says right behind us. “Wait for me!”
People are pouring out the front, saying their farewells to the priest. We push through the side door.
Before I walk inside, I glance back at the safe house. The front driveway is filled with black vans. They look like beasts.
140
THE ACOUSTICS IN THE CHURCH amplify the sounds of our scamper. I glance around as we go. There’s only one old lady in a black mantilla praying up front. I turn and follow Rose and Noah to the staircase in the back, which leads to the sound room.
“What’s the plan?” Omar asks before I can ascend.
I turn to tell him to shut up, but then someone calls my name. Noah stops mid-flight and looks at me. “Just go,” I whisper. “You, too, Omar. It’s probably Andreah Lopez.” She’s the only woman I know who wears a veil to church. “Let me tell her to get outta here before all hell breaks loose.” Noah and Omar nod and I turn around and walk through the threshold.
Shit. The woman is not Andreah Lopez. Shit, shit, shit. It’s the creeper lady from the diner.
This can’t be good.
“Sia?” the silver-haired woman repeats, walking toward me.
I feel my grandmother’s presence at my side. No la dejes que se acerque a ti. Don’t let her get close. I almost feel Abuela’s breath on my ear and I suppress a shiver at her words.
“Do I know you?” I take a step back.
She shakes her head. “No, no, I wouldn’t say so. But I know an awful lot about you.”
“From spying on me and my friends?”
She smiles. “Not quite.”
There’s something totally off about this woman and I can’t touch it yet. She stops, tilting her head slowly, assessing me. She wears a form-fitting pantsuit the color of champagne, which looks incredible with her cool umber complexion. On any other day, I’d be complimenting her style, bringing Rose out to see this lady’s outfit, but right now, I’m just creeped the shit out.
“You look exactly like your mother,” she says, smiling almost sadly. It’s something I’ve heard exactly one thousand times before, but there’s something deeper in her voice, like she’s talking about someone else, someone who’s brought her nothing but heartache.
But just like that, though, she’s left memory lane. Her eyes narrow and she walks toward me, her hips swinging.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the whole story by now.” Her voice is lovely, in all honesty. She’d be a soprano in the choir. “The big, bad government, abducting illegal residents, performing torturous experiments, all for some hateful end.” She sighs and has a seat in the pew, crossing a slim leg. “And I’m supposed to tell you, no, they’re not. They’re saving them from a gruesome desert death. They’re curing diseases.” She looks off into the distance. “Does it really matter, though?” She stares at me and waits.
“You’re asking me if it matters whether people are being tortured or cured?”
She gives me a smile. “Do you know how many people your mo
ther killed to get here?” She makes air quotations at the word mother. “To get to you? And all for nothing. Pity, really.”
“You don’t sound very sorry at all.” My hands clasp around the only weaponlike object that’s near me, the iron incense holder hung on the wall.
She shrugs. “Ah, you’re right. I stopped giving a damn a long time ago about your lot.” She pats her silvery waves with her hand as she pushes herself to standing. “Thousands,” she announces, arms stretched theatrically. “That’s how many people failed the experiment. One. That’s how many didn’t.”
“Zero,” I respond, swinging the metal in my hands. “That’s how many fucks I give about your shitty monologue.”
Before I can finish, before I can even blink, the woman is at my side, traveling all of thirty feet in a fraction of a second. The only indication of any movement at all is the wind that hits my hair. And her hand at my throat.
“I was so close,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes as I choke in her grasp. “I was so close to it being over. All of it. The waiting, the experiments. But then Magdalena Martinez had to come along. So strong. So pretty.” As she speaks, I grab her, chop at her, lunge, and kick. I try to swing the iron at her head, but she’s too fucking fast, and I’m wheezing, my eyes wide on her as I wave my arms like an octopus. “And that human out there? The one who looks just like her with her long, golden hair, her dreamy brown eyes?” She snarls as her grip tightens. “That’s not even your mother, Sia. That’s not even—”
There’s a clank as Rose snaps the woman in the head with a bronze crucifix. She goes flying, letting go of my neck, and I fall to the ground coughing, glancing up in time to see Rose drop-kick her into the pews. The woman’s unmoving. After a few seconds, Rose turns to me. “You good, Sia?”
I nod, clearing my throat. “Thanks, Rose,” I say. My voice sounds cracked open.
Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything Page 16