Sage:I’m picking her up. I can come too
Me:Good, swing by and pick me up after please? I sprained my ankle and can’t drive rn.
Nadia:How did you hurt your ankle TEAL?
I can’t even begin to make sense of why only my name is in all caps, so I am going to assume that’s a weird elder boomer thing. I wonder if I should tell them everything in response. Well, not everything. I’ll definitely leave out last night’s tongue situation.
Should I say how Carter’s grandmother thinks I’m working directly for el diablo to ruin her grandson? How Carter sided with her, so I ran directly into a lightning storm in which human figures made of electricity were conjured out of thin air? And that’s the reason why my ankle is fucked now—because I’m an idiot who can’t control her gift and thinks climbing rocks in the rain is a fantastic hobby?
Old Teal—Selfish Teal—would have just laid it all out, expecting lots of attention and advice and maybe some kind of witchy limpia, because that people-made-of-lightning shit is damn creepy as hell and Nadia would surely want to pull it out of me with candles and eggs and an offering to the old gods.
But nowIwant to be the one to help. I want to be the one who is generous and soft and sweet.
So I don’t answer Nadia’s question. Instead, I type:
Me:After lunch I’m going to buy you a car, Sky.
And then, because I decided to be nice—not a saint—I add:
Me:And Nadia, why didn’t you ever tell us that you banged Eugenio Velasquez?
And then I put my vibrating phone aside and begin to get ready for lunch.
23
My sisters and I decideon lunch at Moonshine Pizza, where they’ll give us three free garlic breadsticks with our order. I don’t typically indulge in simple carbs this many times in a week, but with everything that’s happened in the last forty-eight hours, I order not one, but two Sicilian squares topped with extra Parmesan cheese, and I eat my garlic breadstick first, while waiting in line to pay, dipping it in the complimentary garlic butter they offer by the plastic forks and knives. Because who cares what I smell like when I’m never going to touch Carter, or any man for that matter, again?
“Tell me about your job,” I say to Sky as we wait for them to heat up our slices.
Sky’s face breaks into the biggest smile I’ve seen on her in a long time. “Oh, my gosh, Teal. It’s so fun. The basement is dark and creepy, like in a horror film, and it’sdusty. There are little windows at the tops of the walls and you can see the dust motes dancing in them like magic fairy dust!”
I huff out a startled laugh. “No offense, Sky, but literally nothing you’ve just said I would describe asfun.”
She grins even bigger in response, and seeing her so happy…damn. It makes my chest feel warm and fuzzy, like that one scene in the Grinch film when his heart just about busts out of his chest. “Seriously. It’s fun. The books are so old that I have to wear dainty white gloves when I handle them. Right now I am documenting the most damaged ones so we have digital copies of everything before they basically disintegrate.”
“Are any of the books cool?” Sage asks between texting Tenn.
“They’re okay. Kind of hard to read, ’cause a lot of them have been eaten by little book bugs.”
“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose. “Well, I suppose dainty little white gloves matches your sexy librarian aesthetic.” I nod to her outfit. She’s got on a gray button-down tucked into what I’m pretty sure is the tweed Chanel pencil skirt Amá Sonya and I found for her when we had that all-damn-day shopping excursion. Her stockings are black and lacy, and her shoes are adorable-yet-hot Mary Janes.
“I guess,” she says, her face turning pink. When we walked in here, nearly every person turned their head to check her out, regardless of their gender. And it wasn’t that she’s the “town freak.” Trust me. I know lusty gazes when I see them, and people arestillgiving her bedroom eyes. She still has no idea how beautiful she is, but my guess is that will come with time.
“So Nadia and Abuelo Gene?” Sage says when we’re settled at a table with our food. “Are you for serious about that?”
I raise an eyebrow. “It came from the elder bitch’s lips herself.”
“Who, Amá?” Sky asks.
I snort. Fair assumption, I suppose. “No, the other elder bitch. Abuela Erika.”
“So she still hates you, huh,” Sky says.
I shake my head with a sarcastic smile. “The word ‘hate’ doesn’t even begin to touch it. If we were in this same scenario a couple hundred years ago, she’d frame me for witchcraft and toss me in a river herself.”
My sisters laugh, but my laugh isn’t as robust. It was something in Erika’s last words to me. How much even truer they ring now.You are broken, just like her. Just like your mother, and your sisters. Broken.
I don’t think my sisters are broken. But there sure was something off about Mama…and no one can deny my own brand of fucked-up-ness.
