“I’m not leaving those behind!” I grabbed the box from her.
“We only have room for important stuff, Skye, and we have to be quick about it. We leave for the airport soon. I need you to help Abella, and get ready. Can you do that, Skye?”
“No! I won’t! I’m not going anywhere. I’m not packing anything.Yougo.”
“Skye—”
“You’re always gone anyways. I’m staying here, and when MaMaLu finds out, she’ll come back and we’ll—”
“Skye!”
I don’t know which of us was more surprised when he slapped me. It was hard and sharp, and it stung. The box fell out of my hands and we both stared at the paper animals lying at our feet.
“When are you going to understand that they’re just the help?” said my father. “They’re not blood, they’re notfamily.The only person you can count on is me.And the only person I can count on is you.Everything else and everyone else will come and go. If MaMaLu and Esteban want to see you, they will find a way. And you can write to them. As often as you like. But we have to leave now, Skye. We don’t have a choice.”
And so I’d gone, even though I kept turning back as we left Casa Paloma. I thought I heard Esteban calling my name, but all I saw through the rear window were plumes of dust as we drove down the dirt road. I turned back when we left Mexico. I turned back when we landed in the States. I turned back every time I saw a boy with skin like Esteban, and I turned back every time I caught a glimpse of long, dark hair adorned with flowers.
After a while, I stopped turning back because MaMaLu and Esteban never replied to the strawberry scented letters I sent, or the carefully glued photo collages I made:This is my new school. This is my new room. This is my new address. This is my new hair cut because my hair grew too long and there’s no one to brush it for me, now. I miss you, MaMaLu. Write back, Esteban. On five, okay?
Eventually, I buried the memories, along with the hurt. Our trip to San Diego turned out to be a permanent stay. When my father slapped me that day, he’d slammed the door shut—my world had turned wary and guarded. Family is family. Friends aren’t forever. Everything will break. People say goodbye. Get too close and you get hurt.
When Damian slapped me, he’d blown the same world apart, bringing down tiny little pieces that I was still trying to put together. There was more to the story than my father had told me. MaMaLu and Estebanhadn’tjust left without saying goodbye. Something had happened. Something that had turned Esteban into Damian.
I thought he’d chopped and dyed my hair black to keep people from recognizing me, but he’d done it for himself, so I bore no resemblance to the girl he used to know. Damian was set on revenge for whatever horrible, terrible thing he thought my father had done, and whatever associations he had of me were buried so deep in his psyche that he was able to do horrible, terrible things to me. He treated me like athingrather than apersonto safeguard himself. He hurt me, humiliated me, shut out my voice, my face, my tears. But once in a while, those memories came back, and they still meant something because they shook him out of the red haze of anger and hatred. The Esteban I knew was in there somewhere, and he’d heard me praying for him. He was the only reason I was still alive.
I didn’t know how long I had, but I knew there was no point asking Damian to explainwhyhe was doing this. He would never have come this far if he didn’t feel justified. There was only one person who could get through to him.
I had to find a way to get to MaMaLu before it was too late.
BREAKFAST WAS TIGHT-LIPPED AS DAMIAN and I stared into our plates. I wanted to look at him so badly in the daylight, to really,reallylook at him. It hurt to chew. My lip was swollen so I pushed the food around. Damian had covered the cut on his neck with a piece of gauze. The longer we stayed together, the longer our list of cuts and bruises grew—both inside and out.
“How is MaMaLu?” I asked, holding on to my coffee.
The sea was rough and things were sliding back and forth on the counter.
“I’d like to see her,” I said, when he didn’t reply.
He dumped his plate into the sink and turned to me. “That’s where we’re headed. If you can make it through the next fourteen days, you’ll get to see her.”
Damian had mentioned twenty-one days earlier. We had been on the boat for about a week, which meant that he had been counting down the days until he saw MaMaLu.
“Does she know . . . ?”That you planned to kill me?“Does she know to expect me?”
I caught a pained expression cross his eyes before he turned away. Of course she didn’t know. She would never stand for it. If I could just make it to her in one piece, MaMaLu would fix everything. MaMaLu knew how to fix things—lost things, hurt things, cracked things, cut and bruised things.
I watched through the porthole as we left Bahia Tortugas. A colony of sea lions surfed behind us, playing in our wake.
Ay, yai, yai, yai,
Sing and do not cry. . .
The thought of seeing MaMaLu comforted me and for the first time, I felt a glimmer of hope.
We sailed past rocky cliffs obscured by swirling clouds of haze. As the day progressed, the waves got choppier and the sky turned dark and ominous. I could hear the crackle of the radio from upstairs, but Damian’s voice was drowned out as the bar stools toppled over. Everything went crashing and rolling as the boat lurched and heaved.
I held on to the walls as I made my way upstairs. Sharp, cold needles of rain pelted down on me. The sky was a scene of high drama. Black clouds roiled towards us, dragging deep shadows across white-capped water. The wind whistled in the rigging and came at me in shrieking gusts. I couldn’t make out the horizon. Then I peered into the eerie darkness and realized why. Up ahead was a wall of water so high, that I had to tilt my head back.
HOLY FUCK.
