Not plain, normal people with a million lies on which they’d built their lives.
I was going to play myself a sad little violin.
“…among outcry from the families of those who were injured during the fire that left dozens hospitalized. Newly recovered security footage shows The Defender arriving ten minutes after….”
And here I’d literally just been thinking about that fire. I couldn’t believe they were still going on about it. It was a miracle he had even been able to help in the first place. He’d saved so many people. I rolled my eyes and switched the channel one more time before freezing.
There was a man with rich, brown skin surrounded by at least four heavily armored police officers moving toward one of those vehicles that SWAT teams used.“The trial for Camilo Beltran began today. Otherwise known as El Cerebro, the former drug lord and leader of the Arenas gang is finally being brought to justice on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and bribery….”
Swallowing back the anger and the little bit of fear that suddenly built up in my throat, I pressed the button on the remote again and decided I might as well eat now and watch a movie. That would be good. I had some time to kill before my lesson with my newest student, a twenty-three-year-old named Jo Ji-Wook who was moving to Toronto in a few months. His English was improving every week, and I was really proud of how far he’d come. What Ishoulddo was fold laundry while I sat there, but suddenly I felt extra tired and bummed out.
I’d spent half the day trying to replace the garbage disposal that had stopped working. The online manual I found claimed it would only take thirty minutes, but that hadn’t been the case. One of the screws had arrived stripped, and it had gone to shit from there.
Which was basically the story of my life.When You Think Things Can’t Go Any More Wrong, Hold Your Horses: The Gracie Castro Story. Coming to theaters never. Shinto Studios would shoot the screenplay down before they even finished reading the title.Gracie Castro: The Sorceress of Secretsmight work, I thought glumly. Except I didn’t have any powers, if you didn’t count my rare but epic stomachaches.
Like the one I had right then, that I hoped was actually gas or just uneasiness about moving.
I cast a long look around the living room of the mostly bare single-wide trailer that had been home for years. Then I probably sighed for the tenth time in the last ten minutes and settled deeper into the couch for comfort. It was the closest thing to a hug I was going to get anytime soon, after all.
I missed hugs. I missed them a lot. Hugging yourself didn’t release any oxytocin in your body, so it didn’t have the same effect as getting one from another person.
I knew that from experience.
Squeezing the remote, I eyed the atlas on the coffee table one more time and sighedagain. If I followed the instructions my grandma had left me, I should have relocated a year ago. For a while there, during high school, we had bounced around every semester. After I’d graduated, we had milked our stays for a year. Then we’d upped it a little more after that.Twoyears maximum, mi corazón.As long as you keep your head down and tell no one, you should be okay.
That was another rule:keep your head down.
I had. It was a lot of work to keep it that way, but I was alive, and that was the point. That had been the point of all this shit.
But this place was the closest thing to home I’d known in forever. I’d settled in. I had found peace and, honestly, part of myself too while being on my own. It wasn’t exactly at the top of the list of places I would want to live, but I still didn’t want to leave. I was comfortable. I didn’t want to start overfor the twentieth time. But….
There was always the chance one day I wouldn’t have to. That’s what I kept hoping for. It was just another miracle I could dream of.
And maybe, eventually, someday, things might change. Maybe I would be able to get a passport and travel and meet someone awesome who didn’t ask too many questions. Find a companion… a friend. More than a friend would be great.
If I had to pick, that would be at the top of the list of things I’d want—someone.
He’d have to be okay with me being… me. Just shy of thirty. Mostly nice. I had a mostly steady job, even if I was never going to be rich. I could have done worse in the face department, I thought. I could have done a lot better, but I could have been unluckier. There was plenty of other stuff I could complain about, so facial features and the size of my waist weren’t worth worrying about.
And that was part of my problem. The source of all my problems actually. There wasn’t a plastic surgeon in the world who could fix my problems with a surgical knife.
I needed a whole new life, new DNA, for that shit.
I was in the middle of thinking that depressing shit when I saw it out of the corner of my eye.
A flash of pure purple light through the blinds that had me flinching it was so damn bright.
And it was a split second after that, that I felt it—the rumble. The frame of the single-wide shook. My cup rattled. The walls trembled.
What in thehellwas that?
WHAT THE HELL WAS HAPPENING?
The interview on the TV suddenly popped up in my head.
Was it… an angel?
No,no. It wasn’t.
