“We’ve had some, let’s just say, interesting times these past two days, Dr. V,” Indranie says with a grim laugh. “Rey and Marisol have already met.”
Rey gives her a disdainful look before turning to face me.
“Sorry I thought you were a Bible-thumper,” she mutters.
I try to keep my eyes on the rug, light pink and prickly like grass. Then, as if they are acting on their own, my eyes go back to Rey. She is in the same pretty white nightgown from yesterday, but it’s torn and the edge is dirty. Her short hair makes her look like un diente de león blown too hard by the wind.
We’ve been here for a while, waiting for Rey to be ready. First, she lay on her bed, Indranie trying to wake her with promises of chocolate and coffee. When Dr. Vizzachero arrived, Rey hid in the bathroom. As Dr. Vizzachero, Indranie, and I sat without talking, we listened to Rey turn on the water, turn off the water. Flush the toilet. Flush it again. I check the time on the phone that Indranie gave me. Gabi has been in her new school for three hours, and we have been trying to talk to Rey for over an hour.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Dr. V.”
If the doctor is insulted, her face doesn’t show it. “You don’t have to talk, Reyanne. You can just listen.”
“No, sorry, wasn’t clear. I mean, I don’t want you here at all. I know you say honesty is best. So, I hope you don’t mind.” Rey opens her mouth wide, showing all her teeth.
Dr. Vizzachero gets up from the bag of beans and gathers her things. “All right. Come and take your medicine before I leave, Reyanne.”
Rey doesn’t move from her bed.
“I can’t leave until I see you take it,” Dr. Vizzachero says, holding out her hand. In her palm is a collection of small pills.
Slowly, as if she is moving through water, Rey slides off the bed to stand in front of the doctor. She looks so defenseless with her bare head and enormous nightgown. But I also feel her violence and anger, and I think she will slap the doctor’s hand away, scream at her until someone makes her stop.
Instead, Rey takes the pills and puts them into her mouth. Then we watch, Dr. Vizzachero, Indranie, and I, as Rey swallows the pills. We watch her as if we could see through her skin, into her body, and watch the little pills make their way into her stomach.
“Let me see,” Dr. Vizzachero says. Rey doesn’t say a word, but her body tightens, her eyes narrow.
“Open your mouth, Reyanne,” Dr. Vizzachero says, as if it’s a normal thing to ask of someone.
Rey’s face becomes a mask of anger, but she opens her mouth and lifts her tongue, showing Dr. Vizzachero that it’s empty. When the doctor is satisfied, Rey closes her mouth with a snap.
“I’ll leave you to it, Agent Patel,” the doctor says on her way out.
“Thanks, Dr. V. Thank you for all your work.”
I feel embarrassed by Rey, as if her rudeness is somehow my fault. I want this part of the day to be over so I can be ready when Gabi comes back from school and tells me all about her day.
“Can I go back to sleep? Please?” Rey complains like a child.
“Not yet, Rey. Your father says no more sleep until you talk to Marisol.”
“Just talk, right?” Rey asks Indranie. She doesn’t look at me. I sit on the floor of her bedroom as if I am an invisible thing.
“Just talk. Just give it a chance.” Indranie stretches out a hand to Rey, but Rey turns away from her.
“Okay. Then can you leave too?”
A flash of hurt crosses Indranie’s face before it smooths back into its usual calm. She looks at me hesitantly.
“I’m not going to murder her,” Rey says testily.
Indranie considers me for many moments. “All right, Marisol. Do your best, okay?”
I nod, even though I don’t know how I will get Rey to look at me, never mind agree to put on the cuff.
“I’ll send Olga for you after lunch.” When the door closes behind Indranie, Rey’s dark eyes finally find mine. I wait for her to speak, to move or do something. But she is slumped against the wall like a rag doll thrown by an angry child.
“I stink,” she says. “And I’m fucking sick of it.” In a quick motion—so quick I don’t have time to shut my eyes—Rey pulls the nightgown over her head and throws it at me.
“Burn that,” she says.
Because my eyes aren’t closed, I catch it. I also see her completely naked. That is the image I see behind my closed eyes as I sit, holding her discarded nightgown, listening to her start the shower.
When Rey comes out of the shower wrapped in a too-big white bathrobe, I’m afraid she will get naked again and I won’t be able to look away fast enough. But she is dressed underneath. She wears a big gray T-shirt and black jeans. Her feet are bare. I look at my sneakers and wonder if I was supposed to take them off.
“You didn’t burn it,” she says, nodding toward the pile of dirty clothes where I put her nightgown. Her room is so messy, it’s an explosion of things—clothes and books and empty bottles of soda.
“I don’t have any matches,” I say, surprising myself.
“Ha!” she laughs, rubbing a towel in her short hair. “All right. At least you’re not a zombie.”
“Should I take off my shoes?” I ask.
“I don’t care what you do. I only agreed to the damn implant so Dad wouldn’t commit me. We just have to talk for a few minutes and then you leave. You tell Indranie you couldn’t convince me to be a lab rat—no offense—and you go save someone else.”
It takes me a moment to figure out what she means by lab rat—not an actual rat at all, but me. I’m the rat. It would be easier not to take offense if Rey didn’t try so hard to be offensive.
“What do you like to do?” I ask. She is balanced on the edge of her bed, looking for something on a shelf.
“What?” Rey mumbles.
“What do you do when you are not . . .” What is it that this girl does when her life isn’t falling apart? “When you’re not studying?”
Rey takes a book from her shelf, then jumps to the floor. In a moment, she’s sitting in front of me, legs crossed like me, her knees touching mine. She leans forward. “Why are you really doing this? What’s in it for you?”
“I’m helping my sister.”
Rey pulls her head back a little. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing is wrong with her!”
Rey sighs. “I mean, does she need a kidney? Does she have cancer? How did they rope you into this mess?” She leans closer. I can smell her shampoo, a mix of honey and mint.
“We are from another country,” I begin.
Rey snorts. “No shit.”
“Why do you say that? No shit?”
“Because, duh, we already established that. You are so not from around here.”
My mouth opens, ready to spill angry words, just as soon as I can make sure they’re the right ones. I don’t want to say something stupid. But I don’t get a chance to reply.
“I’m sorry, but you, your face is just—” She hiccups with laughter. I don’t understand what is so funny, but I know she’s laughing at me.
“Are you going to kill yourself?” I blurt out. She pulls back, moving her knees away from mine, and leans against her bed.
“Not now.” She looks away. “Maybe later.”
Now I move in close. “What if this could make you feel a bit better?”
“It can’t.”
“But you don’t know.”
“I know wishful fucking thinking when I see it.”
“But what if—”
“Stop! Just stop.” Rey’s shoulders are pushed up to her ears and there are tears in her eyes. I didn’t realize. I was listening to her words instead of watching her body.
I look around her room, hoping to find something to inspire my words. Her room is s
o different from the one Gabi and I shared. But some things are the same. There are dolls, not played with in years. Books—so many more than we had. Drawings, like the ones we made, hung up as reminders of how we used to be. But this is different: she has a wall of movies. A whole wall of just discos, big movies that I saw years ago at the Cinépolis and movies I’ve never heard of. And there, on the bottom shelf, is a box of discos all in different colors like thin books. Cedar Hollow: The Complete Collection.
“You watch Cedar Hollow?” I can’t keep the excitement out of my voice.
Rey passes a hand under each eye, clearing away tears. “Yeah. I loved that stupid show.”
“It isn’t stupid! It’s amazing.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s amazing and stupid.”
“Are these all the shows? I thought it would be on TV, but I couldn’t find it.”
“That show is ancient. You can’t even find it streaming anywhere. That’s the only reason I still have the DVDs.”
I know I’m supposed to be convincing Rey to agree to put on the cuff. I know that the longer I take to do that, the less chance we’ll have of succeeding. But talking is not working, and I feel so homesick. Watching Cedar Hollow would almost be like being home.
“Can we watch? Just a little?”
“You are weird, you know that?” Rey says, but she says it with a smile—a real one, not a nasty one.
She takes the disco out of the box and taps it against her lips.
“I guess it might play on the Xbox?” She cleans the disco on her sleeve and puts it into the machine.
“What are you waiting for?” Rey asks, patting the bed next to her.
I sit on the bed, but not too near. The familiar music from Cedar Hollow begins, Amber’s and Aimee’s smiling faces flashing on the screen during the opening credits. I know it’s strange, but I haven’t felt this happy in a long time.
Chapter 12
The lunch Olga brought us—sándwiches calientes with cheese, ham, and pickles, and a bowl of popcorn—sits half eaten on Rey’s bed. Half eaten by me. Rey hasn’t eaten anything. We have watched three episodes of Cedar Hollow, only I have spent some of the time watching Rey. I look at her to see if she finds the same things funny or exciting as I do. We’re watching the episode where Aimee keeps her boyfriend from getting into a car with drunk friends—and then the friends in that car die in a crash—including Amber’s boyfriend. I bury my face into Rey’s pillow, afraid to look, even though I have seen this episode many times before. But Rey watches with glassy eyes. I nudge her at the beginning of each episode to see if she has fallen asleep.
“I’m still here,” she responds wearily.
As much as I love seeing Cedar Hollow again, I find myself more preocupada with Rey—sitting next to me, seeing but not watching—than I am about Amber and Duke and their fighting.
When the third episode ends, I get up. Rey startles as if from a sleep.
“You’re leaving?” she asks dazedly.
“Yes. Gabi will be home from school soon. I want to hear how her day was.”
“What time is it?”
I look at the alarm clock on Rey’s shelf. “It is almost two.”
“In the morning?”
“In the afternoon.”
She looks around her bed, then her room, searching for something. “No one else is here, right?”
I look at her with a question in my eyes.
“Sometimes they sneak back in,” she says.
If someone were to sneak into my room, I would lock the door. “No one else came in. So, it is just me.”
“Good. That’s good. Oh. There’s food,” she says, noticing the tray for the first time. I feel bad that I ate all of the popcorn.
“Do you want me to ask Olga to heat it?”
“No.” She sniffs the cold sandwich, then puts it down uneaten.
“You can take it,” she says, pushing the tray away, as if I am a servant.
I don’t take the tray at first, I just watch her, trying to think of a way to speak about the cuff, to convince her to try it, since that’s what I’m supposed to do. But I don’t know how.
“Okay,” I say. “Goodbye.” I balance the tray in one hand and open her door with the other.
“See you later, Aimee,” Rey says.
For a moment, I wonder if she has forgotten who I am, but then I see her smile, funny and sly.
I say, “See you later, Amber,” and close the door behind me.
* * *
Gabi is eating like she has never seen food before.
“Slow down, or you’ll choke.” I put the tray from Rey’s room into the sink. Olga pours a glass of juice for me and gives me a plate of cookies to go with it. I don’t like the way chocolate and orange juice taste together, though I feel bad asking for something else. When I would tell Mrs. Rosen about it, how I didn’t like that Gabi’s school served juice with cookies, she said, “That’s because you’re a proper American. You like your cookies with milk.” Pablo called me creída—stuck up—and worse, but I was secretly happy to have American tastes.
“Olga, can I have a glass of milk, please?”
Olga looks at me from above her glasses. “You don’t like jugo?” she asks.
“It’s fine,” I say, sitting next to Gabi. “I just like the way milk and chocolate go together.”
“It’s no problem to me,” Olga says, pouring a glass of milk and putting it next to my glass of orange juice.
Gabi laughs and whispers, “Two drinks! Just like I hop.” I return her smile and dunk the cookie into the milk.
“So? How was it?” I ask nervously.
“How was what?” she says, looking innocent.
“Ha ha. School, babosa,” I say.
“Oh,” Gabi says. “Was that today?”
“I’m going to hit you with a cookie.”
“Okay! It was uh-mazing. It was maaaaa-gical.” She draws the word out and rolls her eyes at me.
“How was it really?”
“It was incredible, obviously.” She speaks fast, too excited to slow down. “I had computer classes, and there was this amazing cafeteria with all the kinds of food you could want, and, do you know what 4-H is?”
“You don’t mean the number and the letter, right?”
“No! It’s a club for animals.”
“A club for animals?” I sound doubtful, but I guess such a thing could be true in America.
“It’s for students who want to raise animals, you know, like animals from a farm?”
I wrinkle my nose. “So, we come to America so you can learn to be una granjera? You could have been a farmer at home.”
“I get to hold bunnies and guinea pigs and chickens.”
“Again, all things you could have done at Abuela’s, but you never wanted to.”
Gabi tries to look dignified while shoving another cookie into her mouth. It’s a miracle she can talk at all. “This is different. There’s a lot of science too.”
“All right. That’s good, then. Do you need to pay to join the club?”
I’m thinking of the hundred-dollar bill I still wear on the belt around my waist. Paying for a club to take care of animals seems like a dumb idea, though I wouldn’t tell Gabi that. Especially if we don’t get to stay the whole month.
Gabi’s mouth is full. She takes a big gulp of jugo and swallows. “The teacher said it’s all taken care of.” There’s barely a pause for breath. “Can I go swimming? I don’t have any homework.”
I look at Olga, but she shrugs.
“Okay. Go put your school clothes away. And don’t swim for too long. You always lose track of time.”
“You aren’t coming?”
“No. I have my own stuff to do.”
“Please, Sol?”
&
nbsp; “Why? You love swimming.” I’m distracted, thinking of Rey, of what I can do to get her to put on the cuff. I don’t think watching TV with her will convince her of anything. But I can’t think of anything else to do.
Gabi touches my arm, pulling my attention back to her.
“I don’t feel good in the pool house by myself,” she whispers, looking over her shoulder to make sure Olga can’t hear. “What if someone comes in?”
Of course I go with her. Gabi can ask me to do anything. But I don’t swim, just sit watching Gabi cut through the water like a dolphin, smooth and elegant. And anyway, when I’m in the water, I can’t have my cuff on. I cannot let anyone think I am lazy and not doing my job.
I think about how I wasted a day watching TV with Rey. It’s too easy here, in this house. Everything happens without having to work for it. After Gabi finishes swimming, she asks me to paint her nails, because everyone in her class has manicures every week.
“Everyone?” I say. “Even the boys?”
Olga has lent us her collection of nail polish. We sit on our bed, and I paint Gabi’s nails a pale pink color—the least crazy color I could find.
“Now who is being silly?” She scowls.
“Vos, babosa,” I say with a smirk. Smirk is another really good word in English. It sounds like what it is, as if saying the word turns your mouth into a smirk. When she reaches for a pillow to throw at me, I remind her that her nails are still wet and my smirk gets bigger.
“What’s she like?”
“Who?” I dip the brush back into the nail polish bottle.
“La loca. Who else?” Gabi says.
I stop, the brush frozen in my hand. “Don’t call her that. It’s not nice.” I finish painting Gabi’s pinky and put away the polish.
“That’s what they call her at school,” Gabi says defensively.
“They do?” I shouldn’t sound interested. I should tell her not to listen to what they say in her school. “How do they even know who Rey is?”
Gabi settles herself against the pillows, fanning her hands so her nails dry. She’s enjoying this. “Well, it’s a very small school. And it’s exclusive—did you know that?” I shake my head. “It’s only for rich people. And the Warner family is the richest. That’s what Juliette says.”
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