“So you want me to, what, kill her?” Dani asked, her mouth getting the best of her in a way it hadn’t since before her training. With Sota, she felt like that little girl from Polvo again. The one who could beat all the boys in races and leave her fingertips longest on a hot stone.
“Observe her,” Sota said with an eye roll. “Listen in on any conversations she has with her señora or mama, especially in private. Then remember the details and be ready to pass them along at a time of our choosing.”
Dani was silent again, but Sota was the more patient one. He didn’t have a house full of people who would skewer him for speaking to her waiting just up the hill.
He looked into her eyes, not in the searching way Carmen was so fond of, but in a way that reminded her of still water or colored glass. This was a staring contest she couldn’t win.
“I can’t,” she finally said, though the twinge of disappointment was back. “You don’t understand. If anyone finds out I’m helping you . . .”
“It’ll be the end of life as you know it,” said Sota, not looking away. “It’ll be arrest. Prison. Interrogation. It’ll be the endangerment of your family and friends back home. Of people across the border you don’t even remember.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Dani said. “I’m the one with something to lose here.”
For a second that might have been a trick of the light, Sota’s eyes looked almost sad. “Then I guess you’d better not fail.”
“And if I refuse?” Dani asked, though she already knew the answer.
“It would just be a shame if everyone in that house found out how you got through the checkpoint,” he said, like he resented being forced to spell it out. “Or how you got into school. Or how your parents got you across the border to that adorable little town in the first place.”
“Blackmail,” Dani said, spitting the word on the ground at their feet. “After all that inspiring talk about the Median government being the real criminals, this is your big play? Intimidate me? Blackmail me with a gift you gave me and the fear of a situation I can’t control?” She couldn’t help it; she had expected more. Wanted more, even. But this was just intimidation. Manipulation. The same kind perpetrated by all boys who thought they were stronger than girls.
Sota only shrugged. “Regrettable. But here we are.”
“Let me tell you something,” said Dani, stepping closer without noticing, suddenly not caring who heard or saw. “I grew up just inside that wall, in a place full of other people just like me. Scared people. Beaten people. The kids up here got ghost stories, myths, and legends, a lady with long hair searching the waves for lost children.”
For his part, Sota stood, listening without impatience as she picked up steam. Around them, the bugs had gone quiet. The only sound was the water, carrying all their words away.
“Do you know what I heard instead? I heard about men with big boots and helmets who would come in the night, step on your garden and steal your food, and make your parents disappear. I heard about a dark room with no windows where they’d take you if you didn’t behave. Where they’d ask you questions until you forgot what the sun felt like on your skin.” Dani drew a shuddering breath. “I heard about a wall so tall and so wide that if you woke up on the wrong side of it you’d never find your way home again.”
Sota nodded, just once, like he knew where she was going next.
“You know what the difference was between the scary stories they told my husband, and the ones they told me?” Dani asked, jerking her head up the lawn toward the massive rose house, filled with people who would never know her fears.
“Yours were true,” Sota said.
“They were true,” Dani agreed. “The night my best friend’s papa was taken, her mama sent her to my house and she screamed and cried all night in my bed. The day my neighbor was dragged out after having lunch with his family, beaten and cuffed and taken away, never to be seen again. They weren’t just stories. It was my life. The life I escaped. And now you want to come here and make those bad dreams real again, just to get what you want.”
“Yes,” said Sota simply, and Dani couldn’t tell if she hated him more or less for the admission.
“You’re not the good guys,” she said, swatting at a mosquito buzzing curiously around her head. “I just want you to know that. I don’t have a choice here. You don’t get to pretend you’re freeing me. You’re a bully and a monster. Just like them.”
“Understood.”
“Who’s the girl?” Dani asked, anger keeping her hands still for the moment.
“Jasmín Flores,” he said. “She’s a—” But Dani cut him off.
“I know who she is,” she said, her chest tightening. “She was my roommate,” she continued, softer now, like she was talking to herself. “Until she graduated last year and became a Flores. Jasmín Reyes.”
Sota’s eyes narrowed, like he was surprised by this news.
“You didn’t know?” she asked in a hollow voice. “Maybe you should find better intel.”
“What do you think I’m doing here?” said Sota, cracking half a smile.
“She was my friend,” Dani said, ignoring his joke. “How can I spy on her?”
“She was your friend?” Sota asked, going cold as quick as he’d smiled. “You must have a pretty low bar for friendship. What does she know about you? And I mean the real you? What does anyone? This world has made it so you can never have a friend, Dani; doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you hate them for it?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Dani said, finally breaking, just a hairline crack. “It doesn’t matter if I like them or I don’t. If I want this life or I don’t. This is what I have. This is how I survive.”
Sota was quiet for a minute. “I understand that better than you think.”
“So let me go,” Dani said, using the unprecedented emotion in her voice, looking right into his eyes. “Walk away. Find someone else.”
But he was already shaking his head. “You can do this,” he said. “That training of yours . . . The way you slip into a lie like it’s a whole new person. You’re a hundred shades of a girl. You hold those shadows and bring them to life when you need them, and they’re flawless. Look how far you’ve risen, how many people you’ve fooled.”
Dani let him continue, but the heat that had flared to life in her chest went cold.
“And then those teachers at that school,” he began, like solstice had come early and brought him everything he asked for. “They took all your history, your raw talent for deception, and they handed you the kind of training that gave you perfect control and restraint, taught you to ruthlessly value yourself and your potential above all. The way you can turn your face to stone. Use an expression like a weapon. The way you see everything around you . . . Dani.” He shook his head, disbelieving. “They couldn’t have made you a better spy if they’d been trying to.”
By the time he stopped for breath, his eyes shining, Dani was all ice.
“Are you finished?” she asked, enunciating every word with perfect precision.
“I—”
“Good,” Dani said. “Because you have a lot of nerve.” She took a step toward him, the frost in her veins remaking her. “You think you can come in here and tell me what I am? What I know? What I can do? You think after a few weeks of voyeurism you’re better equipped to judge my potential than I am?”
“I—” he began again, but Dani took another step forward.
“I’m talking now,” she said, and he closed his mouth. “I don’t need you to tell me how impressive I am, or how well-suited to your task. I’m well aware of my own skills. You think you can see something in me first? Give a purpose-starved girl a compliment and turn her to putty in your hands? Think again. I know I’d be good at what you’re asking. But you said it yourself: I value myself and my potential above all. So what you’ve failed to tell me, besides some run-of-the-mill attempt at blackmail, is why I’d want to risk my life for you.”
The ice had melted. Electricity buzzed through Dani’s veins. Was this the grown-up version of the take-no-nonsense girl she’d been in Polvo? Someone who spoke her mind and never let anyone tell her what to do?
Sota was still silent, looking slightly dazed by her outburst.
“You can talk now,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m . . . trying,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. It took a moment for him to look up again, but when he did his face was more open. Honest. “Look, you’re right. And I’m sorry. It was an insult to think I could bully you or flatter you, so I’ll just tell you the truth. The reason you should help me is that people are suffering.” He spread his hands helplessly in front of him. “They’re starving. They’re sick. They’re dying just because of where they were born. And that’s what we do. We try to stop that. Sometimes we don’t succeed, but sometimes we do. And we need your help.”
“Speaking to a girl like an equal,” Dani said. “Was that really so hard?”
He smiled. She didn’t smile back.
“So, if I do it, it’ll be to help all those people. The sick, dying, starving ones. But if I don’t do it, you’ll still blackmail me?”
Sota shrugged, though this time he at least had the grace to look apologetic. “That’s basically the deal, yes.”
“I’m not saying I agree with you, or that you’re half the savior you seem to think you are. But it looks like I don’t have much of a choice.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she answered.
When he turned to leave, he saluted her.
It took Dani a moment to turn to stone this time. A hundred shades of a girl, he’d called her, and though she hadn’t appreciated the delivery, he’d been right. Dani slid into her lies like a second skin. It was part of survival. She had no doubt she could do what he was asking her to do. The only question was, what would she be setting in motion when she did?
She thought about it as she wandered up the path, only shaken from her reverie by a rustling in the leaves to her right. From the bushes emerged Carmen, the smirk on her face and the sticks in her hair telling Dani she had just seen way too much.
8
While the Segunda’s life revolves around the home, the Primera’s domain is public. Social functions must become her second home, and her command of social graces may be the deciding factor in her husband’s success.
—Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition
“ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?” DANI asked, pulling disdain on over her fear, drawing the shadow’s threads tight around her. “I know they don’t trust Segundas with anything too interesting, but I’m sure you can come up with something better than this.”
Carmen’s smirk only widened. “Nice try, Primera,” she said. “But you’re not gonna convince me you’re just out for a stroll. Not when I just saw your handsome companion leaving before you.”
It was proof of everything she’d just told Sota that Dani kept her face impassive. She waited, hearing her maestra’s voice: Silence is a weapon; don’t let anyone disarm you before you’re ready.
“He didn’t look very happy,” Carmen continued. “Though I can’t say I blame him. I imagine there are more interesting girls than you to emerge from the bushes with. Maybe he just liked the scent of the salt on your skin.” She smirked at her own insult, but she had just given Dani the key to her next lie.
The shadow wasn’t a hard one to slip into. A besotted Primera with an innocent yet unrequited crush on the gardener. Leave it to a Segunda to reduce espionage to something as mundane as kissing among the leaves. Dani would have yawned if the situation weren’t so dire.
She bit her lip, casting her eyes down. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she said. “I know you hate me, but I couldn’t stand the embarrassment.”
“Sun and skies, what did you do to him?” Carmen asked, the upper-class curse transitioning to laughter. “Did you recite the tenants of Primera restraint? Because I could have told you boys don’t like that.”
A tiny heat threatened to bloom in her cheeks, and Dani fed it, letting herself flush beneath her amber complexion. The blushing virgin. Whatever it took.
“It was nothing,” she said to Carmen’s shoes. Like it was an admission and not a denial. “Not that I didn’t . . . well . . . oh, why am I telling you this anyway? You’ll just laugh.”
“More than likely,” said Carmen, already chuckling again. “But do it anyway; I’m bored of caterpillar hunting.” She held out a golden-brown finger, and Dani noticed a green-and-violet caterpillar inching across it for the first time. It was just like the ones she’d pulled off the scrub trees in Polvo, and she was momentarily caught off guard. “Plus, I need something to do while I pick all this junk out of my hair. Here, hold him.”
Dani was shocked into stillness as Carmen extended her hand, surprised when she reached out her own to meet it. The snuffling insect made its many-footed way across Carmen’s index finger, pausing at the point where it made a bridge to Dani’s hand.
For a moment, despite the uncertain nature of her situation, Dani’s biggest worry was that the caterpillar would deem her unworthy of carrying it. That yet another piece of her childhood would be lost to her. But it acclimated to the scent of her in another moment, and its feet tickled as it traded Carmen’s scarlet-taloned finger for her own plain, short-nailed one.
“So,” said Carmen when it was settled, turning to the mess the bushes had made of her normally glossy hair. “You were going to tell me what to laugh at you for.” She paused, wincing as a thorny branch took several strands of hair with it. “Today, anyway.”
Dani sighed, every inch the girl whose beloved hadn’t returned her favor, though she’d never experienced the feeling herself. “I know it’s not . . . proper,” she began, pretending to watch the caterpillar but really watching Carmen’s face for cues. “But he was a gardener at school. He was always outside my window, and Primeras aren’t supposed to . . . well, I was curious, I guess.”
Carmen snorted. “You could have aimed a little higher.”
Dani felt anger twisting in her stomach; of course Carmen Santos would judge a man just by the uniform he wore or the money he made. “Anyway,” she said, “it was harmless. I never spoke to him. I never thought I’d see him again. But today I was having café with Señora Garcia and . . .”
“And there he was,” said Carmen after a shower of leaves fell to the ground at her feet. “The future head gardener of your dreams.”
“He . . . recognized me,” Dani said, the caterpillar exploring her other hand now, its long green hairs tickling her wrist. “He said hello. And I’d always wondered . . . Well, anyway, he offered to show me this place, and I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in it.”
“He didn’t try anything?” Carmen asked, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Come on, you really expect me to believe that?”
You mean besides trying to get me to spy on the Primera of the vice president’s son? “Carmen!” Dani said aloud, scandalized. “As if I could ever . . .” She spluttered herself into silence, not entirely fabricating her discomfort.
“You never know with boys, huh?”
Dani folded her arms, shoving out the unbidden thought that Mateo had been the reason for her comment. That he’d tried something more than Carmen had bargained for.
“Hey!” Carmen shouted. “Look out for Hermanito!”
“What?” Dani asked in a panic, unfolding her arms and spinning around.
“The caterpillar!” she said, stepping closer, pulling the wriggling creature off the front of Dani’s dress, Carmen’s hands brushing her collarbones as she pulled away.
This time, Dani didn’t have to fake her blush. She was exhausted. Things were starting to slip through the cracks. “When did you name him?” she muttered, trying to draw attention away from her glowing cheeks.
“Just now, obviously. Doesn’t he deserve a name?”
Dani didn’t say that apparently
the gardener hadn’t. “Listen, please promise you won’t say anything,” she said, pulling at the last vestiges of her patience, her feigned innocence. “It won’t happen again.”
“Sure, sure,” said Carmen, returning Hermanito to a safer leaf.
Dani exhaled for the first time in what felt like an hour. “Thanks,” she said, finding she meant it. She turned back toward the house before she could make any more messes, but Carmen wasn’t finished.
“Oh, Daniela?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re pretty good.” She winked. “But I still have my eye on you.” And Carmen meandered off toward the east side of the house, leaving Dani to walk the long way around, wondering what on earth she had meant.
She was back in her room, about to lie down and try to forget the world, when she realized she had only an hour to get ready for the Reyeses’ dinner party.
It was already time to don another one of those hundred shades.
This one was as simple as zipping up the floor-length black gown she’d found hanging in her closet. Sleeveless, high necked, it was fashionable without sacrificing modesty. That’s what Dani would have to be tonight. The green Primera at her first social event. The proud girl on the arm of the city’s most decorated former bachelor. The trusted ex-roommate of Jasmín Flores.
She needed something well-executed. Something that would paint a thick layer over the truth: that she was, as of an hour ago, a resistance spy being blackmailed by La Voz.
“Señora?” came a voice from the hallway. “The car has arrived.”
“I’ll be right down,” Dani replied, looking at herself in the mirror one last time. The cheeks that still hadn’t given up their roundness. The lower lip that was always fuller than the top—her mama said it was from worrying at it with her teeth so much.
She smiled at the memory, tucked her cropped hair behind her ears, and closed her eyes for a moment. The dutiful Primera, she told herself. Trying to contain her excitement at attending her first society party. Sharp-witted, but prone to a wandering gaze that took in the splendor around her and laughed self-deprecatingly at her own wonder.
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