Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “Morning, Paola!” her mom said when Pao entered the kitchen. Her voice was bright and happy. “Look who just dropped by!”

  Aaron was standing beside her, giving Pao that grin again.

  Pao’s first impulse was to yell at them for being so loud, but she didn’t want to get in trouble. Instead, she stood sleepily in the kitchen doorway, knowing the evidence of her nightmare was all over her face. She didn’t try to hide it like she had so many times before. Now her mom would ask what was wrong, try to get her to take some weird tincture . . .

  Maybe she would even send Aaron away for the day.

  And then, if Pao did it carefully enough, she could ask Maria about César. . . . Instead, it was Aaron who spoke, leaning over her mom’s shoulder, fingers intertwined with hers beside the blender. “We were just making smoothies—can we whip up one for you?”

  Her mom didn’t wait for an answer, just smiled even brighter and said, “After that, Aaron wants to go for a hike! I told him you wouldn’t be up until close to noon, but since you’re here, why don’t you get dressed and join us!”

  Smoothies? A hike? Who was this woman and what had she done with the moody, tarot-card-reading mom Pao was used to? The one who slept until her bar shift started in the afternoon and said people who engaged in the “outdoor industrial complex” led “mundane, internal lives.”

  The one who cared if Pao had a nightmare and was always eager to tell her what it meant.

  But she’s happy, said another voice in her head as Aaron and her mom waited for a response. And you said you would try. . . .

  “I’ll pass,” Pao said as politely as she could with all those thoughts swirling around her brain. “Not much of a . . . hiker.”

  Mom recovered quickly. “That’s fine, mija. You’re on vacation. Why don’t you see if one of your friends wants to go to a movie?” She reached into her purse hanging on the hook by the fridge and fished a ten-dollar bill from her wallet.

  She had never given Pao money voluntarily before. Not once in her entire life. And rarely if Pao asked, which she almost never did.

  As Pao took the cash (deciding not to mention that there wasn’t a single person she wanted to see a movie with right now), she felt like she was reaching into another dimension. One where the curtains were open to let the sunlight in, and there was no incense choking her with its smoke, and some jolly blond man was offering her a smoothie.

  It wasn’t the worst place to be, but it wasn’t home. And with Aaron here, it was difficult not to think of the shadowy face of her dad from her dream. She couldn’t help but wonder why she was being forced to get acquainted with this stranger when she’d never been allowed to know her actual father.

  It was difficult, despite her promise, not to blame her mom for all of it.

  “Sure,” Pao said, but her own voice sounded far away to her ears, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath. She went back to her room and sat on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. Bruto whined from the doorway, his big green eyes concerned.

  Pao stayed there until she heard the faucet run and the giggling move to the front room. Then it was shoes, keys, and the door. The quiet after they left, which she’d thought she’d wanted, just made her feel worse.

  She wished she could go upstairs, tell Dante about her dream, and ask him if his abuela was all right. But Dante wasn’t talking to her. She thought longingly about sitting down with her mom, getting answers to all the questions about César that Pao had never been brave enough to ask.

  But her mom had gone on a hike with Aaron. She obviously didn’t care if Pao was having nightmares, or about anything else she was going through.

  Her dreams, Dante’s abuela, her mom’s new bizarro personality . . . All these puzzles were too big for Pao to solve by herself. So she did what she often did when she felt overwhelmed and out of control—she looked for a problem she could solve.

  Unfortunately for her mom, the only one coming to mind was that big blue backpack, the one that the dimpled dental model had left behind in the bedroom.

  “Come on, Bruto,” Pao said, manic energy coursing through her. “Let’s go find out what Aaron’s hiding.”

  Bruto, to his credit, remained where he was, lying in her doorway, looking up at her balefully. If he could’ve talked, he definitely would have said, This isn’t a good idea. We should do something else, like go for a walk or play fetch. His big puppy-dog eyes tried their best to remind her that just last night she’d promised to be good.

  But sometimes a certain feeling welled up in Pao. The same unignorable urge that had caused her to rebel after Ms. Jenkins had canceled their third-grade class trip to the planetarium. Or had made her intentionally add too much baking soda to the science-class volcano, knowing it would make a gigantic mess.

  Then there was the time the landlord, Mr. Shaw, had raised the rent, and Pao had convinced Dante to help her cover the driver’s seat of his very expensive car in honey. . . .

  This same instinct had caused Pao to set off on an incredibly dangerous adventure last summer, when the police wouldn’t help them search for Emma.

  That was the thing about Pao—maybe the main thing about her. When something was wrong, she couldn’t sit still.

  So that’s why, with Bruto now trotting reluctantly after her, Pao went into her mom’s totally off-limits bedroom, praying that real-life hikes took as long as they seemed to in movies.

  There’s something a little liminal about a grown-up’s room, Pao thought as she tiptoed across her mom’s carpet.

  Every object in here screamed at her to leave. Told her that whatever she found, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble it would cause.

  But then there was Aaron’s backpack. Too big for a day hike. It had at least twelve pockets, any of which could be hiding damning information. Pao didn’t know which to choose first.

  The reckless thrill running through her made her feel like herself for the first time in a long time. Maybe that’s why she dug right in. She decided to start with the small pocket in the front. Bruto whined as she unzipped it.

  She ignored him.

  Gum wrappers, hotel key cards, and a weird amount of unused toothpicks still in their cellophane wrappers. A little odd, but nothing resembling a deal breaker. Pao moved on.

  The side pockets were empty save for a few interesting desert rocks. Probably picked up on his hikes, Pao thought. The middle zipper pocket held receipts, two spare phone chargers, and an empty wallet.

  Maybe Aaron’s secret was that he was the most boring person in the world.

  Although that’s hardly a secret, Pao thought.

  The main section had a drawstring closure, and Pao pulled it open slowly. Bruto turned his back on her and flopped down in the threshold with a disgusted snort. She’d make it up to him later with Starbursts—she always saved the yellow ones for him. He didn’t have to know that giving up the worst flavor in the pack wasn’t much of a sacrifice.

  Inside the backpack, she found a pile of neatly folded clothes. Like, a lot of them. Apparently, the few times Pao had seen him hadn’t been flukes. He really did only wear blue in varying shades. Annoying, but again, being boring wasn’t a crime.

  The real question was . . . why so many clothes?

  Pao told herself there could be lots of reasons, but deep down in the pit of her stomach she knew there was only one. She might not have entered the school science fair this year, but her powers of deduction were still unrivaled.

  Aaron had been living in a hotel (hence the keycards), and now that a pizza bonding night hadn’t resulted in death or dismemberment, he was moving in. And Pao and her mom hadn’t had even one conversation about it.

  The reckless, electric thrill that had brought Pao into this room morphed into something like that out-of-control science-class volcano. Her hands were shaking as the feeling spread through her.

  Pao had come in here to find incriminating facts about Aaron so her home life could go back to normal. Another woman’s phon
e number on a lipstick-stained napkin, evidence that he’d voted for a Republican, something her mom would never forgive. Pao had never expected this.

  Last night, Pao had opened up to her mom. Told her she didn’t want things to change too fast. She’d trusted her mom to understand. But she hadn’t. The very next morning, there had been smoothies and hikes and backpacks full of blue clothes, and it made Pao want to scream.

  And throw things.

  She wanted to, at the very least, leave a mark on this room she wasn’t supposed to be in.

  So she did.

  Pao grabbed the comforter off her mom’s bed and tossed it on the floor. She swept a pile of folded laundry off the top of the dresser into a heap beside it.

  Chest heaving, eyes prickling in a way she was determined to ignore, Pao approached her mom’s night table—the most private place in the house. She opened the top drawer first. It was where her mom kept her tarot cards bound up in scarves and ribbons.

  Pao’s tears spilled over.

  She scattered the cards across the room, throwing them by the handful until the drawer was empty. But the tears kept coming. The big, helpless feeling Pao had been fighting ever since she returned from the rift had overtaken her, and stopping seemed impossible.

  Aaron was moving in. Emma was living her own separate life. It was only a matter of time before Dante would acknowledge the weirdness between them, and then he’d be gone, too.

  There was no room for Pao anywhere. Not after everything she’d been through, not with everyone pretending it had never happened.

  The second drawer contained journals and notebooks, the most secret of her mom’s possessions. Even on days when she had felt extremely bored, lonely, or curious, Pao had never dared to read them. Today, with shaking hands, she pulled a few out and opened the covers to see her mom’s familiar handwriting on every page.

  Pao was so tired of being the adult when she was still constantly treated like a kid. Tired of always having to remind her mom when it was time to pay the bills or blow out the candles before they burned down the house. Sick of never being listened to when she knew—knew without a doubt—that moving in with your boyfriend a month and a half after meeting him was just plain stupid.

  With the Niños last summer, Pao had found out what it felt like to be appreciated for who you were. To be on your own and accountable without having to fade into the background and act like it was someone else’s idea.

  Pao could have handled her old life with her mom, and Emma, and Dante, and there’s no question she would have chosen it over hunting monsters and ghosts with the Niños. But this wasn’t her old life. And whatever this life was, she didn’t want it.

  She didn’t want to read her mom’s private thoughts, either. She didn’t want to know how Maria felt or who she was when she wasn’t playing the part of Pao’s mom. Right now, Pao just wanted to be angry at her forever.

  The first journal hit the ground with a satisfying thud, its cover splayed, pages folding and falling out of the binding. The second one landed half in and half out of an open dresser drawer. The third hit the wall behind her mom’s bed and slid down to land with all the lost socks and hair ties.

  Pao took out the final notebook, planning to aim it at the vanity mirror above the dresser, but something stopped her cold.

  Beneath the journal, stuck to the bottom of the now-empty drawer, was a Post-it Note.

  César Santiago, it read, and below it was a PO box address.

  In Pine Glade, Oregon.

  Pao wasn’t proud of it, but she waited until she knew Dante would be at soccer practice before she snuck upstairs to speak to Señora Mata.

  She’d wanted to do it a hundred times since they’d returned from their adventures, but she hadn’t been ready to openly disregard Dante’s wishes. To put any more strain on their already-awkward relationship.

  Now she was.

  Pao’s dreams were telling her something was wrong. She felt, all the time, like she was being watched. Like something was about to happen . . .

  Unfortunately, she was running very low on adults she could trust. And not just adults, she realized, thinking of Dante and Emma, but people in general.

  Pao knocked twice, looking around furtively to make sure Dante wasn’t coming home early.

  The coast was clear.

  Señora Mata opened the door, looking a little disheveled, her eyes staring somewhere over Pao’s left shoulder.

  “Hi, Señora Mata,” Pao said. “Can I come in?”

  “Maria!” said Dante’s abuela, smiling widely though her gaze still didn’t quite meet Pao’s. “Finally here for that cooking lesson, hmm? ¡Adelante!”

  By now, Pao really should have been used to her dreams coming to life. But Señora Mata’s behavior was freaking her out even more than the green shapes she’d seen floating around in her room first thing this morning.

  Knowing it probably wasn’t the best idea, and that Dante would be furious if he found out, she had decided to play along with Señora Mata. At least until she could figure out what was going on, and how to help.

  “Thanks so much for the lessons,” Pao said, following Señora Mata into the kitchen. “You were . . . so right about cooking being the best way to find a man.”

  If Señora Mata thought it odd that Pao was mentioning a conversation they’d had in a dream, she didn’t mention it. But that doesn’t necessarily prove anything, said the more scientific part of Pao’s brain. More data was definitely required.

  She would just have to collect it as quickly as possible, because with the state her apartment was in right now, she didn’t know who would be angrier when they returned to the Riverside Palace—Dante or her mom.

  “And I’m through with Beto,” Pao said to Señora Mata, leaning on the counter and trying to channel her mother—if her mother was, in fact, the same Maria—as much as possible. “You were right about him, too. Bad news.”

  Pao was trying to remind the old woman of the dream, to get her talking. If Carmela had really known Pao’s mom when she was young, maybe she’d known Pao’s dad, too. And maybe whatever she knew could help Pao make sense of her dreams, and the way she’d been feeling lately. Like whatever had happened last summer wasn’t over—that it was now a part of Pao, whether anyone wanted to acknowledge it or not.

  At the mention of Beto, Señora Mata looked up from the counter, on which she had arranged chocolate chips, sour cream, a ball of masa, and a jar of whole bay leaves.

  Pao’s worry spiked. Señora Mata was the best cook she knew. Unless she was trying out a really unusual recipe, something was obviously very wrong.

  “That boy is trouble,” Señora Mata said. “Bad trouble. You stay clear of him, mijita.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pao said, taking a deep breath. “I met someone new, anyway. . . .” She hesitated as Señora Mata took a cookie sheet out of the cupboard above her. “César Santiago? He’s much better.”

  With a crash that startled Pao half out of her skin, Señora Mata dropped the cookie sheet. Her eyes were too wide now, and they seemed to meet Pao’s for the first time since she’d walked through the apartment door.

  “The names,” she said. “Paola, you must understand. The two names are one.”

  “What about them?” Pao asked, her heart racing like it had in her dream. “What names? Señora, are you all right?”

  “He calls,” Señora Mata moaned, clutching her ears as though blocking out the sound. “He will not stop. He knows it, and he will not rest until he has done it.” She stumbled toward Pao, her hands outstretched, until her palms were on each of Pao’s cheeks. “He knows the answer, Paola. . . .”

  “The answer to what?” Pao was really scared now. She wanted to get help, but Señora Mata was holding on to her face too tightly. “How can I help you, señora?”

  “The answer . . .” Señora Mata said, her voice weaker now. “You must find it first.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pao said. “The
answer to what’s wrong with you? Can finding him help?”

  Señora Mata relaxed a little, looking up at the ceiling as if in disbelief. “Of course,” she said. “Yes. Of course. It’s time, Maria. My boy is waiting for me. . . .”

  And then she collapsed on the ground.

  Pao screamed and knelt down next to Señora Mata, trying to rouse her, but she wouldn’t stir. “Wake up!” Pao said. “Come on, señora, wake up! I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be here, and I shouldn’t have upset you. . . . I’m sorry.”

  Leaning close to Señora Mata’s face, Pao held a hand in front of her mouth to make sure the woman was still breathing. The warm puff of air against Pao’s palm brought tears of relief to her eyes.

  This situation reminded Pao of how her adventure had started last summer—Señora Mata’s trance, the way she’d collapsed on the floor. The eerie wave of green mist that had forced Pao and Dante to leave her behind. By the time they’d returned home, Señora Mata had been her usual impish self again.

  Pao tried to find some comfort in that, even as she wondered if this was another paranormal problem. Even that would have been preferable to the alternative: that the old lady was sick. Maybe that’s why Dante hadn’t wanted Pao to come over. . . .

  Was it Alzheimer’s? Pao didn’t know much about the disease beyond what she’d seen when her mom watched Grey’s Anatomy. She feared she may have worsened the señora’s symptoms by upsetting her. As she got a pillow from the couch to put under Carmela’s head, Pao felt racked with guilt.

  “Stay here, señora.” Pao lay the old woman’s head down as gently as possible and dug her new phone out of her pocket. But once she had it in her hand, she hesitated.

  Of course, most people would have called 911 immediately. But Pao knew 911 would bring police, and the residents of the Riverside Palace were especially vulnerable to law enforcement. It was hard not to remember Sal, her younger friend from Los Niños de la Luz, who had been taken by ICE, along with his parents, from the apartment below.

  Or for that matter, Señora Mata’s own warnings about involving the authorities in their lives. Pao suddenly wondered, what did Señora Mata’s ID say? Was she a legal US citizen? Would the alleged hundred years she’d spent as an immortal monster hunter affect the information on her papers?