“I’m not a bad person.” She starts to speak, then is silent again. I wait. I’m good at waiting.
With a heavy sigh, she tries again. “I went to the detention center looking for someone for the experiment,” Indranie says. I push into the soft leather of the passenger seat. I am here again, in Indranie’s car, like I was at the beginning.
“Dr. Deng’s animal trials on the CTS device were successful. He told Scott he needed human participants to begin clinical trials.” It takes me a moment to remember that Mr. Warner’s name is Scott. “As CEO, Scott uses lobbyists to get Congressional funding and fast-tracking from the FDA.” Indranie isn’t talking to me, not really. She’s confessing.
“But he couldn’t get any of that without clinical trials. We tried to get other test subjects. Homeless people. Psych patients. People who might try anything as a last resort. But no one would agree. It was too dangerous.” Her beautiful hands, nails perfectly painted, grip the steering wheel, but she keeps her eyes on the road. I know I must listen. But I’m afraid of what she will say. Afraid to hear any more grief.
“When Riley died, Scott wanted to scrap the whole project. He just wanted to concentrate on helping Rey.” Outside, I watch the faces in other cars—blurred, white, and searching. At this moment, I wish I could switch my life with theirs.
“But I convinced him that the CTS device could help Rey. More than help her. If it worked, it would erase her grief. Like magic.”
I turn to look at Indranie. Can she really have been so crédula? To believe it would be like magic? Magic is power without consequences. That’s why it isn’t real. Everything has consequences.
“We found an army vet who agreed to a one-time test as a favor to Scott. Dr. Deng said we needed someone close to Rey’s age—that would work best for the monthlong trial. I remembered the Immigrant Family Center in Pennsylvania from when I worked at USCIS.” She shakes her head slowly. “Believe me, I feel sick when I think about it.”
I don’t think I’ll ever believe Indranie again.
“I told myself we’d be giving some kid a chance of a lifetime. We’d be saving two people if it worked. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if it didn’t work. And Dr. Deng told me it couldn’t fail.” She bares her teeth, and I know it cannot be a smile.
“I told the director I wanted to talk to someone who spoke a little English. He said he knew the perfect candidate, a bright, polite girl with excellent English.”
Her words strike me, I know they do, but I can’t feel it. It’s like watching a knife slip and cut your finger, before your brain tells you it hurts. I am stuck in that moment.
“I waited in the hallway. I looked into dormitories—all those terrified faces, mothers and children, little babies, all crammed into rooms, rows and rows of metal beds, piles of clothes. I wasn’t sure I could do it.”
Indranie pauses for so long that I think she has forgotten me. I search for my anger and my rage, but I can’t find them. I can’t feel anything but heaviness. The faces in other cars seem to turn toward us, as if they too can’t help but listen to Indranie’s words. When she speaks again, her voice is thick.
“It was nearly twenty minutes before the director told me they couldn’t find you, or your sister. I knew it was time for me to leave. I couldn’t get mixed up in a scandal of missing immigrant children,” she says bitterly. “I told myself that was it. We needed to find another way for the experiment to work, another way to make Rey want to live.”
Indranie turns her face to me, and I can’t look away. Her words are like a hook in me. I think of everything that must have happened on the day Gabi and I escaped the detention center. Every small flick of La Suerte’s hands, tightening around our future.
Indranie blinks, her attention back on the road. Tears escape down her face. “Then I drove past you and Gabi. Two brown girls walking on a dirt road less than a mile from the detention center? No bags, no coats? I circled around and stopped. My heart was racing in my chest, and I thought, If they come with me, I can help them. If they come with me, it will be better than staying in that awful detention center.” Her eyes find mine again. “I told myself it was safe. I told myself you were better off.” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Once you were in the car, I convinced myself that it was the right choice. It was going to work with you, I knew it.”
“You were right,” I say, because even if I’d known all this, known how dangerous the cuff could be, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. “It does work.”
I realize with surprise that we are stopped at the front gates of the Warner house. It’s completely dark outside. Indranie cries, covering her face with her hands.
“I lied to you. Your asylum request wasn’t denied. There’s every chance it would have been approved. It would have taken time, but the chances were good. Luck was on your side. I’m so sorry.”
I was numb when I walked out of the house. I stayed numb as Indranie drove around in circles, loosening her story, string by string. Now I want to feel something—anger, blistering rage, disgust—all the emotions that I have earned the right to feel. But the only emotion that seeps through me is sorrow.
“It’s my fault. And my responsibility,” she gasps, wiping at her eyes again. Her hand comes away with a streak of black makeup. “You have to take the cuff off, Marisol.”
“I can’t.”
She turns to me angrily. I almost don’t recognize her face—it’s folded into itself, hateful. But the hate on her face isn’t for me. “You were this close to killing yourself! You think I can live with that? I can’t. I won’t. You’re going to take that cuff off.”
“I can’t,” I say again. And although I know I can’t take it off, I don’t know why.
¿Por qué? I ask myself. Why can’t I take the cuff off if I don’t have to suffer to keep Gabi safe? Why do I dread taking it off instead of feeling relief at the thought?
Because of Rey.
Because she knows how it feels to lose a part of herself. Because despite her pain she paints her toenails sunshine yellow. Because I can’t abandon her to her grief. I can’t leave her there alone.
I don’t have anything else to say. As I open the car door to get out, Indranie grabs my shoulder. “You can’t absorb all her grief, Marisol. You can’t withstand so much.”
Withstand. I have been withstanding for a week, and it has been agony. Today, I was close to giving up. If Indranie hadn’t stopped me from crossing the road, maybe a car would have hit me. That would have been an accident. Or if I had made it to the lake, how far would I have walked into the water? All the way to the bottom? I don’t know. But I know I cannot stop.
I leave Indranie sobbing in her car. I walk past the gates, freely entering a world that wants to destroy me.
Chapter 26
What did you do?” Olga demands when I trudge into her kitchen, sitting gratefully at her table. There is no sign of Rey’s friends, or of Gabi and Juliette.
“Nada.”
“Mentira.”
I am so tired, I don’t know how I keep my eyes open. “I yelled at Gabi. Then I went for a walk to calm down. Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Gabi, of course.”
“I thought you’d like to know where Rey is, since she has been looking for you in every place.”
“No. I need to talk to Gabi.”
“She went to sleep.”
“So early?”
“She took a bag of those papitas and said she wanted to be by herself. I made her eat a supper first, por supuesto.”
I know I should go to Gabi and apologize. But it’s a relief not to have to talk to her right now.
Indranie rushes into the kitchen, stopping when she sees me. A look passes between her and Olga that I don’t completely understand.
“Marisol, I need to talk to you.”
“No. I
’m too tired. I don’t want to talk now.”
Indranie walks toward me, but Olga gets between us.
“Can I get you something to eat, Indranie?”
“What? No, not now.” She looks around Olga, practically over her head since Olga is so short.
“Marisol, please listen,” Indranie begins. I turn away. She’s said too much already. I won’t listen to another word.
“No, no,” Olga says pleasantly like she’s commenting on the weather. “It’s not good now. She’s too tired, ¿no es así, amor?”
I nod.
“Talk tomorrow,” Olga says with a smile that anyone can see is a challenge. “All things are better in the morning.” Indranie, helpless in the face of Olga’s protection, promises we’ll talk in the morning.
When she leaves, Olga lets go of the back of my chair and levels a long look at me. I brace myself for a cascade of questions.
“Rey is still looking for you.”
“All right. I’ll go find her,” I say, even though I have no intention of doing that.
“No, primero you eat.”
* * *
I eat with Manny and Olga in the kitchen, the only sound the scrape of forks on plates. I force myself to eat because Olga is watching me, but shame sits next to grief in my stomach, fighting over which is the bigger monster until I am full. I excuse myself and thank Olga for the delicious dinner. They are going out again tonight, and I am glad I can be alone.
I hide in the big, comfortable room with the large TV and soft cushions. I switch channels for a while, looking for Cedar Hollow, until I find an old movie—black and white, the kind that Mrs. Rosen would have liked. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she’d say, drinking Martini & Rossi over ice. “They don’t talk like that anymore, honey. It’s all fast talk and gibberish now. It’s a goddamn shame.” The women and the men in those old movies were beautiful. They looked like they were lit with candles, and they moved like dancers. I watch the old movie without seeing it.
When Rey finds me, a different kind of movie is on the TV, one with a car chase and explosions. I rub away the dried salt of old tears. Sometimes I cry without realizing it.
“Hey,” Rey says.
“Hi,” I say.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
There’s nothing to say to that except what I’m thinking. Please don’t ask me to hold your hand tonight. Just not tonight. But I can’t say those things.
Rey sits next to me, turning off the TV. There’s a thin hum, then silence. She’s still wearing her sunshine yellow dress, but the flower headband is gone. There are tears dried on her face too.
“I’m going to sleep down here for tonight,” I say quickly, desperately.
“Why?”
“Because I need—rest.”
“What if you need me? What if something happens to you? No one will be there to help you. If you get bad.” She curls her fingers over her ear, still not used to her hair being so short. I’ve seen her do that more times than I can count.
“I won’t get bad tonight.”
“Is what Gabi said true?” she asks.
“No.”
Rey’s expression is carefully blank. “No? So, you aren’t absorbing all my grief? Is she just confused?”
I grab on to that explanation greedily. “Yes, she’s just confused. She doesn’t know anything. You know how kids are, saying stupid things sometimes.” I just need her to leave. If I can rest for one night, I can be stronger tomorrow.
She looks at me, nodding slightly. “See, that’s how I know you’re lying.”
“What?”
“You’re lying. You’d never talk about Gabi like that. Like she didn’t matter.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes her sentence. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I know what you’re saying. And I’m calling bullshit. Remember bullshit? It’s when what you’re saying isn’t true. Bullshit.” She leans into me when she says it, like she is taunting me with her words.
Finally, I find my anger, so quickly that it turns into useless tears.
“You don’t know anything about bulls’ shit. You are surrounded by it. Your house. Do you know what your house is? It’s a house for things, not people. And you. You are not even a real person. You are just—”
Do you like to kiss girls, hermanita? I have tried so hard, for so long, to keep Pablo’s voice out of my head. Are you one of those twisted girls? Tortillera? I don’t have the strength to do it anymore. You love English words, don’t you? Dyke. That’s what you are. That’s the word for you.
He spits at me, a spray of shame across my face. It is too long before I can move my hand to wipe my face of his spit, but my face is dry. I am in the carriage house living room, and Rey is sitting so close to me that I can see the pecas scattered across her nose. She has pecas, I think. Like me.
“Are you okay?” Rey asks. I curl into a ball, pushing myself into the corner of the sofa as far as I can go. I want to disappear.
“Please,” I beg her. “Just give me one night on my own.” I wish I had more to give.
“When I touch you, it’s worse for you? The way it’s better for me?” She reaches her hand out to my shoulder.
I press my mouth closed so I do not speak, telling myself to withstand it, not to move, but I have no control over my body. I pull away, further into a ball. Just get through this now. And tomorrow I will do better.
“Tomorrow I will do better.” I shut my eyes tightly against the pounding in my head, the pounding of my heart. What does Rey see when she looks at me? A small brown girl of no importance? A twisted girl infected with the wrong kind of love? A dog, a donkey, a broken bird? Every thought is like a shovel digging out my chest, making me hollow.
I open my eyes when she touches my leg, feather-light. Rey kneels on the carpet in front of me, her eyes on mine. I think of the way you watch an angry dog, keeping your eyes on its eyes so it does not surprise you.
“Don’t,” I whisper hoarsely. But I don’t stop her when her fingers scratch at my ankle, finding the release button on the cuff.
“I never thought the cuff would work.” I don’t move when she opens the cuff and slides it off my leg. “The only reason I put it on was because of you. You said I wasn’t alone anymore and I believed you.” The cuff clatters loudly when she places it on the glass table. A moment later, her cuff is next to mine.
“Now you have to believe me.” Rey sits next to me again. “Can I?” she asks. I am confused until I see that she holds her arms open. She holds them for me. I don’t trust myself to speak, only nod.
I tense as she pulls me into her arms, waiting for the wave of pain, the memory of terrors. Slowly, with her breath in my ear, and the warmth of her body surrounding me, I relax. She pulls me closer, putting my head on her shoulder. In the center of my body, I know I am still waiting for La Mala Suerte, for the bad luck to come.
“Is this all right?” she asks.
I don’t know if it is. I am afraid for both of us. But I don’t want anything to change. The house is asleep around us; I can feel each room, each person sleeping deeply in the night. My breathing slows down. I let myself be held, then reach my arms around her and hold her too. This is the most dangerous thing I have ever done.
“We’ll work it out tomorrow,” she says. “Try to sleep.”
And I do.
Chapter 27
The sunlight wakes me. I’m under a blanket I don’t recognize and my neck hurts from being curled into Rey’s side. I sit up quickly, taking most of the blanket with me.
“You’re a blanket hog, you know that?” Rey says sleepily.
We’re in the living room where we fell asleep last night. I hear Olga in the kitchen, making breakfast, listening to Celia Cruz on the radio.
I don’t feel anything. No rise of anguish, no f
all of despair. No tears. And then I feel something that is almost sweet. Relief.
Rey is wearing a sweatshirt and pants with Mickey Mouse on them. She must have changed last night, and covered us with a blanket. She must have taken care of me.
“You have a look on your face,” she says, studying me. “Are you freaking out?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Okay, because you have this kind of funny thing going on with your eyebrows.”
My hand covers half my face automatically. I want to hide whatever the funny thing is.
She laughs. “No, I mean, it’s cute. It’s like your eyebrows are trying to talk, but they’re only saying ‘surprise!’” She laughs harder.
“I can’t raise one eyebrow like Gabi,” I say.
She raises her left eyebrow, sharp as a bird’s wing.
“Or you.”
“How are you feeling?”
Her face makes me want to cry, but in a pure, hopeful way. Esperanza. It is so fragile.
“I don’t want to die today,” I say.
“Me either.” She pulls the blanket back from me so we are both under it, huddled like little children. Under the covers, she reaches for my hand.
“Is this okay? Does it hurt?”
I’m too overwhelmed to speak. Her long fingers are bony and thin, but her grip is strong. She holds me like she means it.
“This isn’t bulls’ shit. Right? You and me?” I have to ask, even though I’m inviting disaster by putting it into words. She could drop my hand and turn away. She could tell me we’re just good friends.
Rey shakes her head gravely. “No bullshit,” she replies.
* * *
Olga sets a tray of breakfast on the glass table. When she sees the two cuffs sitting side by side, she looks at me sharply.
“¿Qué pasó aquí?”
Rey rolls her eyes. “Why the hell did I take German?” she mutters, reaching for the plate of eggs and bacon. At the first bite of bacon, a blissful smile spreads across her face.
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