Right. Alma. His scapegoat for his late-night debauchery. I know for a fact he isn’t with her because I’m watching her climb onto the bus. She’s always the last one on, but her seat is always left untouched. I make sure of it.
She slides in four rows ahead of me, right side, second window. Her spot. The one where she scratched “Foolz Die 4 Love” into the faded brown seat in front of her. She did that last week when Esteban started distancing himself from her.
Maybe I should put some distance between us too, but I don’t. I do this every day, watch her get on and off the bus. Alma Gutierrez is taking up too much of my time these days. But I have so many questions about her that need answering. Questions that make my skin itch. Not in a bad way. In a way that makes me want to peel it off and figure out what’s underneath. What goes on in her mind? How is she so quiet and self-contained?
At the top of my list of questions is what the hell she was doing with Esteban. My brother is fucked up, and that’s coming from me. The kid whose parents had him evaluated at ten years old for setting his older brother’s bed on fire. In my defense, he’d cheated at Monopoly, and I hated losing, especially to my brother, who’d convinced everyone he was the perfect son while I was some charity case in the making.
Our entire fucking family dynamic is like the 90’s horror film,The Good Son, and Esteban is Macaulay Culkin. Only unlike the movie, I didn’t try to be the good son when I was younger. I let the doctors put whatever labels on me that would satisfy Bud and Angela, and continued to live in the shadow of their biological son.
But Alma is the one thing I won’t fuck around with. Somewhere in my attempts to stalk her, I didn’t realize Esteban was watching me. He must have caught on to my interest in her and pulled us both into his twisted game.Letting me have anything would be a loss to him, but I’m not going to let him hurt her. She belongs to me.
My jaw clenches at the thought of them together. I hate it. Looking ahead, I watch as Alma wipes a tear from her face. She leans her head against the window and pops in her earbuds. She’s upset, and it’s my fault. I’d ripped her little note to Esteban into shreds and spread them across the hall.
Was it necessary for me to humiliate her? No, but I don’t give a fuck. Sometimes God uses a demon to scream over angels when he needs to make a point. And I don’t mind being a demon in her story if it means keeping her away from the real fucking threat. Esteban is spiraling again, and it won’t be long before he turns on her.
There’s no more remorse for the way I feel about her. Even as my attention is fixated on the tears running down her face, I wonder what her mouth would taste like after crying. Or what her soft voice would sound like whispering my name. I look away before she notices me. The bus stops outside her trailer park, and she’s the first one out.
Once everyone leaves, I follow behind her from a distance. My heart steadies when I watch her walk safely inside the trailer. I hate that I can’t stop this obsessive behavior. Even worse, that I don’t want to.
Chapter 3
Alma
Present
Houston, Texas
I’m officially at war with my new roommate. The list of pros and cons my therapist encouraged me to write has now been placed in the trash can. The same trash can overflowing adjacent to the sink that’s full of dishes.
Refusing to clean up after Larix has become a silent protest. I’m too fucking nice to say anything, but on the surface, I’m screaming. Just because I work at Calavera Hotels doesn’t mean I’m her personal maid. Every day feels like I’m on the edge of having my very own Selena moment. The one where she bitch slaps Chris for trashing the hotel room.
But I don’t. I remain the calm and collective Alma who never challenges conflict. If I let my anger have its way, then I’d likely end up in jail. And the last thing I need is to catch the attention of anyone in law enforcement.
I could throw her out, but the whole finding-a-roommate-process was hard. When I was interviewing new roommateapplicants, I thought a musician would be the best fit. She’d be gone most of the nights and weekends, which meant she wouldn’t ask me about my late-night extracurricular activities on the weekends. My previous roommate, Mireya, had quickly become my best friend, and while we lived in peace together, I hated having to lie to her. Even now that she’s moved out with her fiancé Adrian, she thinks I’m a devout fairy cosplayer who stays out too late at book club.
I wish.
Larix doesn’t ask questions though, and that was the first thing I wrote down under the list of pros. But she also doesn’t pick up after herself, lacks basic hygiene skills, serial dates men who I’m sure she picks up at the local psych ward, eats jars of bacteria she grows in our fridge, and the part that really pisses me off—last week, she asked to borrow one of my books and returned it with coffee stains on it.
Who does that? I can let some of the other things slide, but I will always judge a person based on how they treat a paperback. And spilling coffee on my special edition vampire romance is not how you treat a book!
Aggressively, I rip off a piece of duct tape at the thought and place it diagonally across my right nipple. I rip off another piece and place it across the first to make an X over my nipple. I repeat the same thing on my other nipple, then tuck a stray brown curl back into my wig cap.
I hate how itchy these things are, but Claudi, my manager here at La Cuevita, was adamant about me wearing the long black wig. I’d worn others: blonde, pink, and even tried my natural curly hair, but nothing brings in the money like the long black wig. Money I need to help me afford another private investigator since the last three had ghosted me after taking all my money.
La Cuevita is far from an elite club, but it has its regulars. I prefer the little hole-in-the-wall because it’s hidden, tuckedaway in the outskirts of Houston. There’s less room for error here, and a slim chance that anyone I know on the outside will recognize me. This place has been a clue to figuring out who the woman who raised me really was.
Missy had worked here in the early 2000s before I was born. Turns out, the woman I thought I knew, I didn’t know at all. When Esteban was murdered, I found myself in a whole world of trouble. Identity issues didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Alma! You’re up!” Cloudi shouts from the hall into the dressing room.
I take a final look at my outfit, the x-shaped black duct tape covering both nipples, a tight-laced black corset, leather thong, matching patent leather boots that hit my upper thigh, and the must have accessories: my long black wig, fairy ears, and wings.
La Hada Mala. Everyone’s favorite naughty fairy.
That’s who I need to be at night. Far from the woman my day life presents. Far from the woman my friends know, the simple and sweet Alma. That’s who I want to be, but this is who I have to be. This is the only way I will find answers about Missy.
“La Hada Mala,” the DJ growls through the mic, dragging out the last syllable.
