I shake my head. “Planning someone else’s whole life for them, you mean? Only her, really, and only when she feels like it’s going to make her look better, you know?”
Adam nods and frowns. “Yeah. I know all about that, actually.”
I turn to him and for some reason, it only just now hits me how close we are. How there are flecks of warm silver in the blue of his eyes that I’d never noticed before. The caramel-colored freckles on his nose are almost in the shape of a seven-pointed star, to thematically match the crescent of freckles on his cheek. I blink when I realize he’s watching me, too. But his focus is on my lips.
He clears his throat and tears his gaze away. “When is it safe to go inside?”
“I’d give it a few more minutes, honestly.” The old bat is nothing if not persistent.
“Okay. Well. Why don’t we start, then, since I had planned on asking you a few questions while we were out this evening.” He pulls out his phone and pulls up a recorder app. “You don’t mind?”
I shake my head. This whole thing with Amá Sonya has distracted me enough that I barely feel any of the nerves that were bothering me so badly earlier. Plus, there’s something easierabout being outside, curled up against elderberry bushes, instead of sitting at the kitchen table, Adam asking questions like I’m at a job interview or something.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Adam suggests.
I nod. “Okay.” I take a deep breath. The beginning. I can do this. “In the beginning, there were nothing but gods. Gods and this earth.”
Adam blinks. “Okay. I was thinking more like…when were you born, what was your childhood like…”
I frown. “You didn’t specify, though. How was I supposed to know what beginning you meant if you didn’t specify?” I shake my head. “Let me finish this beginning first.”
Adam holds up a hand to indicate surrender. “Okay. I’m listening.”
All around us, the earth settles into some kind of deep, almost-twilight golden peace. The sun is setting, lighting us up in goldenrod and marigold and native multibloom sunflowers. The pollinators feasting on elderberry blooms buzz all around us, making me feel like I’m about to shiver or something. I take another deep breath. “In the beginning, there were nothing but gods. Gods and this earth. This is the oldest world, by the way. The World of the Gods. Then the gods decided—I’m not sure why, maybe they were bored just hanging out by themselves, being mighty and powerful all the time—but the gods decided to make all kinds of worlds. Each of these worlds required a counterpart. So they made the World of the Living—our world—and then they also had to make the World of the Dead. They made the World of Spirits, so they had to make a world of ghosts. A world of shadows required a world of light.
“A long time ago, one of our ancestors—I meanmyancestors,not the universal ‘our’—made a deal with a god. She wanted to travel the worlds freely, but in return, she had to give an offering to the gods. The offering was a tiny sliver of community.”
“A sliver of community. So what did that look like?” Adam asks. He is riveted, and to be honest, so am I. I’ve never heard this tale like this before. Yes, Ihaveheard it in bits and pieces from Nadia my whole life, save eight years. But I am certain the ancestors are telling it through me now, with the fullness and details coming upon me as though they were being uploaded into my brainThe Matrix–style.
I shrug. “I’m not sure. Because we only know about the offering through its counterpart—what she got in return.”
“And what was that?”
I turned to Adam. “She was given a gift. We don’t know what the first gift of this Flores woman looked like, but each female descendant has a gift.” I swallow. “I haven’t gotten permission to share anyone’s gifts with you. But my gift is animals. Which you have already seen.” I turn away from the intensity of his gaze. It’s also making me want to shiver, as though his attention has become one thousand bumblebees, giving me goose bumps without touching me at all. “In exchange for our gifts, we give up community. Because we cannot tell anyone about the gifts. This is the rule elders have imposed on Flores women for generations. For us, it was Nadia who hammered that into us. We can’t tell. I realize I am breaking that agreement now, but…”
“I appreciate you sharing this with me,” Adam says. It’s a formal response but there is awe in his voice. I have a feeling like we are both surrounded by ancestors now, like maybe his have arrived to listen to mine. It’s making the words I’m saying weave a kind of magic around us, through us, as though each letter hasbecome an iridescent spider, weaving connections neither of us can see but both of us canfeel.
“My great-aunt Nadia says that white people always want to do bad things to brown girls with gifts, thus them needing to be hidden away. But because our gifts are an innate part of us, we also have to hide this essential part of who we are from everyone else. And so we can only truly trust each other to be our true selves.” I shake my head, looking at the distant sunset. The clouds are now a strange mix of red and gray, feeling almost foreboding. “And if we can’t trust each other, then we have no one.”
Adam lays his hand out, palm up. It’s an offering. Though I cannot understand why I would want to, I take it. His calluses are rough against my soft skin, his hand warm and big and enveloping mine completely.
“What made you decide to tell me about the gifts, Sky?” he asks, staring at our hands.
I turn toward him, looking at his star-freckled nose. I am as honest as I can be. “I don’t know.”
I don’t tell him this, but if I had to take a guess, it would be that I’m so fucking tired of being lonely all the time.
12
When I finally get homefrom Adam’s, Amá Sonya is long gone. She left one last text,You can’t hide forever, once again giving me the feeling that my grandmother is a creepy criminal rather than a snobby, luxe designer–wearing busybody.
I feel a mix between energized and unsettled after spending the entire evening with Adam. We’d gone inside and kept more of a distance from one another as we chatted more about the specific beginning he’d first wanted of me—when I was born, what my childhood was like, how it was growing up with Nadia, Sage, and Teal in Cranberry. But I feel like a part of me is still somehow hiding with him under the curved, white-blooming elderberry bushes—too close to him and yet not close enough. It’s the “not close enough” that’s bothering me. Why would I want to be closer to him than that—a step away from basically being pressed against his long, lean body? And yet the idea of it makesmybody hum as though Teal decided to toss a lightning bolt right into my spine.
What I do know is that these thoughts are dangerous. Theyare the strange-shaped, glittery footprints in the woods that seem intriguing but lead nowhere good. I need to cut it out and distract myself, fast.
I pull up Matchmakr and frown when I see there are no new messages from @tryingsomethingnew. I’ve gotten some new messages, in general—more of the usual perverted bullshit, but none from him.
“Well,” I tell myself. “He can’t start all the conversations, can he?”
