Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

2 MONTHS AGO

TODAY, I HAVEN'T LEFT MY BED.

Little by little, I'm managing to disappear. It's easier now, since everyone stopped paying attention.

"You have a message from Agent Navarro."

It's Nurse Leticia. I don't stir.

"They've managed to locate a family member of yours in Spain. You have an aunt!"

I barely register anything but the word aunt . My chin moves, just a fraction, and the nurse shows me an unsealed envelope. From within, she retrieves a folded-up letter.

"I'll read it to you," she offers when I don't reach for it.

Querida Estela:

Soy su tía Beatríz, la hermana de su madre. Vivo en Espa?a, en nuestra residencia familiar, el castillo Brálaga. Si le apetece, la invito a vivir aquí conmigo.

Con cari?o,

Dra. Beatríz Brálaga

Nurse Leticia waits, but I have no reaction to offer her.

"Do you speak Spanish?"

I stay silent.

"Well, she says she's your mom's sister, and she's inviting you to live with her in Spain at what she refers to as your family's castle . The FBI has already vetted her, and they say she's a small-town doctor who runs a local clinic. Agent Navarro believes this Beatríz is equipped to look after you, both medically and financially, but it's your choice what you want to do."

No matter how hard I try to silence the world, my past won't keep quiet.

"I told you, Estelita," whispers Nurse Leticia. "You're not alone."

Before she leaves, Lety places the envelope on the bedspread. I stare at the paper and am reminded of its weight. The way a page's gravity pulls one toward its words.

I hide the envelope under the mattress. I don't pull it out for days. Not until Lety asks me about it. She says I must make a choice.

I open the envelope in the bathroom. I pull out the letter and scan the text, even if I don't speak the language. Then I let the page fall into the toilet bowl.

But before I can drop the envelope, something slips out.

I catch the wisp of paper that's nearly disintegrated. A photograph.

BOOM.

I feel a punch to the chest and lean forward from the impact.

BOOM.

It sounds like my heart just awoke from hibernation.

BOOM.

And it desperately wants out of its cage.

It's been so long since I last heard my pulse that I relish the rush of blood, like a parched desert wanderer happening upon a fresh spring.

I recognize Mom's teenage face. The thick eyelashes and right-cheek dimple are her defining features, both of which I inherited. Beside her is another girl who looks to be her sister. She seems a handful of years younger, with the same heavy hair and hourglass frame.

But it's not the who affecting me. It's the where .

I can almost feel the purple-patterned wallpaper under my fingers and the icy stone floor beneath my feet. My heart's lashes intensify as a small spark ignites in my brain, a candle of what was once a wildfire—and I'm hit with an undeniable realization:

Something impossible happened to me in that purple room.

NOW

WE PULL OFF THE ROAD, but we haven't made it to the castle yet. We're at a gas station by a roadside motel with a restaurant/bar.

"Solo tardaré un momento."

I don't know what he said, but as soon as the driver opens his door, I swing mine, too. I wasn't expecting the pit stop, but it feels good to straighten my knees and arch my back.

There's a bite in the crisp air that indicates fall's imminent transformation into winter. I smell a medley of trees, including pine and oak and eucalyptus, and I hear the whispering of the woods in the distance ahead.

Yet a large part of me feels separate from the scene. As if this is all a dream, and the real me is back at the center, buried under the blissful blankness of medication.

I walk uphill and cut across a copse behind the station. When the thicket of trees thins, I get my first clear view of castillo Brálaga. Perched at the edge of a cliff and looming over the small village of Oscuro, the black stone castle monopolizes the horizon.

It looks straight out of a gothic storybook, the uneven landscape rising to meet its rocky walls. The highest point of la Sombra is its sole tower, and the asymmetry gives the construction an off-kilter feel. The whole thing looks like a strong gust of wind could send it tumbling down the cliff…

And even then, it would sprout bat wings and fly.

"Estela!"

The driver's voice calls out to me, but I ignore him. I consider not returning to the car and just walking into the fading sunlight, seeing how far my feet can take me, and assuming a new identity wherever I land.

But my face is a walking billboard. The world will never let me forget my past.

I study the Gothic construction a little longer, all thin columns and pointed arches. I've traveled the entire United States, and I've never seen anything like it.

After they started medicating me more heavily at the center, I stopped dreaming. Or if I had dreams, I didn't remember them the next morning. That changed with the photograph. After seeing it, I had a nightmare so vivid it felt more like a memory.

I was very young, five years old at most, standing in the purple room.

And I saw the same black smoke as on the subway.

When I awoke, my skin was slick with sweat and my heart raced. I thought I was dying. Only as I kept breathing, I realized it was the opposite.

I was feeling .

I wrote down the dream for the medical staff the next morning. They said my aunt's letter had likely surfaced a repressed memory, and the black smoke was a metaphor my childish mind conceived to cope with trauma I experienced at an early age. They even theorized that I must have seen it on the subway because that imagery is how my brain interprets danger.

They said I'd had a breakthrough.

It was then I decided to stop taking their medication. The numbness wasn't enough anymore. I wanted to hear my heart again.

Withdrawal symptoms like lack of appetite and fatigue are easier to handle; it's the amped-up volume of the world, of my thoughts, that's harder to hide.

A car's engine purrs closer, and the driver pops his head out the window. The sun's fiery final flames reflect against his sunglasses.

"?Lista?" he asks.

I sigh.

To move into a cursed castle, turn the page.