Chapter ThirteenKami
A text message coming through woke me up. I opened one eye and felt around for my iPhone. But since I couldn’t find it, I sat up and turned on the light.
“Fuck!” I threw aside the covers, looked under the pillows. “Where are you?”
When I looked under the bed, I saw it had fallen through the crack between the bed and the wall while I was asleep, meaning I’d have to get on my hands and knees and reach under the bed as far as I could through the accumulated dust to grab it.
Once I was up again, I started coughing. Now that Prue no longer came to clean, the house had become a disaster. Between work and school, I barely had time for anything else, and domestic duties were the last thing my mother cared about. Did she think dirt and grime just magically disappeared? I grunted and sat on the bed. The message was from Mrs. Mill.
Honey, I need you here at eight. We’ve got to prepare for the Bonfire Fest. I’ll pay you overtime.
No surprises there.
Before tossing my phone on the bed and hopping into the shower, I had to open my Instagram one more time. I wished I could resist, but it’s just a fact of life for anyone born after 2000. Ever since my account was hacked, I had changed all my passwords: email, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok…
In my friends’ stories, I was surprised to find out there had been a party at Kate’s house the night before. Her parents were usually insanely strict, but what hurt the most was how everyone I knew, almost our entire class, had been at that spontaneous party. And I hadn’t heard a word about it.
I saw Ellie in the crowd, dancing and drinking. Of course it broke my heart. Still worse, Julian had to have known about it because he lived there too. But he’d kept the whole thing from me. As I flicked through the images, there was a knock at my door.
“Kami, can I come in?” my brother asked.
When I opened the door, he was standing there very still, clutching his iguana. His eyes were teary, and he threw himself into my arms.
“Kami, I don’t want her to die,” he said, squeezing the poor lizard so tightly, I was worried he’d kill it himself.
“Cam, Juana’s not going to die,” I said, pulling him inside and shutting the door.
“But she is…” he said, wiping away his tears and trembling.
“Buddy, I promise you Juana’s going to be fine. Take a deep breath, OK? Come here.” I picked him up and set him down on the bed, then put the giant lizard next to us, trying to keep my mind off the fact that Juana was splayed out across the very sheets where I slept. My brother now broke into sobs. “What makes you think she’s going to die?” I asked.
“She said she was going to kill him,” he whispered, almost as if he were afraid someone would hear him. A shiver ran down my spine.
“Who, Cam? Who said that?” I grabbed him and shook him.
He looked around—I couldn’t imagine why he was so paranoid. “She’ll hurt me if I tell you.” He was trying as hard as he could to be brave, but he just couldn’t handle it. I could see pure panic in his eyes.
I grabbed his face and held it and looked him straight in the eye as calmly as I could. “Listen to me, OK? No one, and I mean no one, is ever going to hurt you. Not you, and not your iguana.”
“But she said…”
“She? Who is she?” I asked, thinking maybe at last I’d learn who was bullying my brother.
Cameron leaned in toward my ear and whispered so softly I could barely hear him, making clear to me at last that what had been happening to me at school was related to everything my little brother had been going through.
“Momo,” he said, hugging me as if even uttering that name aloud made him want to run away and hide.
I shivered and visualized that terrifying face, but I kept my cool. This was ridiculous, after all.
“Cameron, Momo isn’t real.”
“She is real, Kami. She exists. She said that Mom and Dad would get divorced if I didn’t do what she said. But I don’t want to do what she says. I don’t want to hurt anyone!”
Jesus. “Cameron, what did she ask you to do?”
He shook his head and started crying again. “I can’t tell you.”
“Cam, at school, Thiago and your teacher told me George Walker was bothering you…”
