Twenty-Three Home

I tiptoe down the hall, careful to avoid the floorboards in the middle that squeak. Ease my bedroom doorknob all the way to the side so the door doesn’t make even the tiniest click when it opens, then shut it all the way behind me before turning on the light.

The sudden brightness startles us both.

Joanna sits up on the side of my bed with the folds of my pillowcase embedded in her cheek and my grandfather’s Adelita statue clutched against her chest. I want to grab it away. But I can’t. All I can do is stand against the door and stare at her.

Her question pierces the air between us.

“Where were you?”

If I thought it would change anything, I’d answer.

“They were about to file a missing person’s report on you, Daya.”

“You were worried?” I ask.

She flinches like I slapped her. “Of course I was worried.”

“Then how come you weren’t down at the church this morning with all the other parents, making sure I was okay?”

Joanna slides off the bed.

“Because I’ve been sitting here all night. Worried for you. Waiting for you. Praying I was wrong.”

She wrings the Adelita between her hands.

“Wrong about what?” I ask.

I track her movements, the way she tosses the Adelita on the bed, the way she bends down, picks up my sketchbook off the floor, flips through the pages. That’s when I notice the mess that wasn’t here when I left yesterday. Like my room has been ransacked.

“You went through my stuff?”

She doesn’t answer, she just holds the sketchbook open to the page where I drew images of Beckett’s face on repeat.

I dip forward, swipe it out of her hands.

“What gives you the right to go through my stuff?”

“You sat there in that kitchen,” she says. “Knowing what you were going to do. And you lied to my face.”

It takes a beat to realize what she’s accusing me of.

“Wait, you think I planned it?”

“What did I say to you? You’ve never given me a reason to doubt you, Daya. You’ve never snuck out. You sat there—”

“I didn’t plan it.”

“You... the drug dealer—”

What ...?

“—and your girlfriend.”

Oh my God.

Joanna’s eyes dart around my room. At my broken desk chair, at my dresser, at my photo collage, my artwork on the walls. At my bedspread. Maybe she thinks the answers to what went wrong with me are hidden in those things and maybe she doesn’t. But at least by looking at them, she doesn’t have to look at me.

“It was one of the ladies from SHIMMER who called me first,” she says. “Some kids were missing from prom, she said. I got in the car. I was ready to race up to that church.”

Memories of those last days with my dad click through my head. The fighting. The pleading. The sudden emptiness of our house, filled with nothing but Joanna’s guttural pleas to God to fix it back to how it was.

“Pastor Mike called just as I was leaving. Told me that three kids were missing, and that one of them was you. I just sat there... in the driveway. For hours. Praying I was wrong.”

She finally turns to me, and her eyes spill over with tears.

So do mine.

“I knew you weren’t missing, Daya. I knew you were with her.”

I know you were with her, Jon; that’s why you took the job in Memphis, isn’t it? To be with her. Tell me... please. Just tell me how long you’ve been planning this.

I was only seven. I didn’t fully understand, but I felt the weight of it. I remember.

“I’m not him,” I tell her.

She doesn’t hear me.

“This isn’t the same,” I say even louder. “I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing this because it’s who I am. Me. Your daughter.”

“If you only knew the ugly things people are saying about my daughter. About my daughter and that girl.”

“That girl has a name. And me and Beckett are not him and her—”

The slap of her open hand against the side of my face registers as a sound before I ever feel it. My arm goes up in case she decides to do it again, as the sound waves echo to infinity inside my room.

The sting of that slap spreads through my entire body.

“Dad didn’t just leave you,” I say, still holding my face. “He left us. I lost him too. And then I lost you. I’ve done everything you wanted, everything I could think of to keep things peaceful. So you’d be okay. I want you to be okay. But I can’t keep pretending just to make you happy. Why can’t you love me for who I am?”

“God doesn’t accept this,” she whispers.

Her words echo around us, exactly the way I remember her saying them to my father.

“You’re wrong,” I say.

“I don’t accept this.”

“But you have a choice—”

“Not when He commands us to bring those who stray to the truth.”

I recognize the words. From last Sunday at church. Not her words. Pastor Mike’s words. Words she’s just regurgitating from his sermon and trying to force-feed down my throat like a faithful mama bird.

“Do you believe God loves me?” I ask.

“You couldn’t even stay at that dance and give your life back to Him!” she screams. The words fall around us like broken bits of glass.

She takes a few breaths to restore her calm and self-control.

“You refuse to see His truth, and you refuse to repent your sin... but that’s the price of living in this house. Now you have a choice.”

She leaves me, shock-frozen and alone, in the middle of my room. I swallow over and over again to stop crying, rubbing my face to tame the burn she left with the full force of her open hand.

My duffel bag from last night is still strapped across my shoulder. I grab a nearby T-shirt to wipe tears and snot off my face, then pull a few clean shirts and some underwear out of the dresser and stuff those inside too. I kick through the clothes and books and junk on the floor, snatch up my sketchbooks and pens. I grab the Adelita from where she dropped it on the bed, wrap it in a hoodie, close the zipper on my bag to protect what’s inside. To protect everything I have in this world.

I don’t know what else to do... except leave.

At the end of the block, I drop to the curb and pull my phone out. I can barely see through my swollen eyelids, but I open my messages and try writing to Beckett, if my hands would stop shaking long enough. I send it to her burner, so I know she’ll see it.

hey r u ok?

i know things are bad, but can you call me when you get a chance?

or text

we need to talk

i don’t want to wait till monday to see you

i don’t care about you and lucy right now

i only care about you

can we talk?

please?

i hate this

By the time I send my last text to Beckett, my battery is almost dead—enough charge left to ask someone to come get me, but maybe not enough to hear back if they can.

I’m just getting ready to hit Stella up when a text pings through from Beckett, and my hands shake so hard, I almost can’t get it open.

This is Beckett’s father. Do not attempt to contact her again.

I stare at the message, read it over and over again like it’s written in some other language, like my brain can’t make these lines and shapes fit together.

Her father has her burner phone.

He read my messages.

About me and Beckett.

About Beckett and Lucy.

He knows everything.

I lean over, throw up into the gutter, then text Stella to tell her where I am and beg her to come get me.

Her brt comes back a nanosecond later.

I’m still sitting on the curb when she and Valentina roll up.

“Hey,” she says, hopping out of the car.

“Hey,” I sniff.

She goes, “Girl, you look rough,” and waves at Valentina, who comes around the other side to open the door for me. She helps me into the back seat, and I wrap my arms around my duffel bag like it’s a life raft.

The ride to Stella’s blurs out completely.

When we pull up in front of her place, she gives Valentina a quick kiss before helping me out of the car.

“Seriously, Daya,” she says as we head up the walk. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

She opens the door, and we freeze for a beat at the sight of Ms. Avila and Mr. Zapata standing in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.

“Good morning, m’ija,” she says, giving Stella a hug. “How was the party?”

“Y’know. Cool,” Stella says. I catch her throwing her eye-line in my direction.

Ms. Avila comes over to me. “You look like you can use a hug too, m’ija. Is that okay?”

I nod, and Ms. Avila pulls me in the same way she just did to Stella. “I don’t know all the details of what’s going on,” she whispers in my ear. “But you can stay as long as you need to.”

“You girls hungry?” Mr. Zapata asks. “I’ve got pancakes going, and some chorizo and eggs. And coffee. Stella, your mom tells me you like coffee. How ’bout you, Daya?”

I’m swallowed into a black hole in one of Beckett’s coffee-cup galaxies, but Mr. Zapata takes my shaking head to mean no.

Stella goes, “We’re gonna go put our stuff down. We’ll be out in a few.”

Her mom and Mr. Zapata go about their business like every part of this morning is situation-normal, while Stella ushers me down the hall into her room. She closes the door behind us, slides the duffel bag up over my head, eases me onto the bed. She plops down next to me, and I sink against her and ugly-cry. She doesn’t try to talk me out of it, doesn’t seem triggered or even upset by any of it.

She starts to ask, “You want me to—?” but I nod because I already know what she’s going to say. I did it for her after Duke crushed her heart.

Stella wraps her arms tight around me to keep me from shattering into a billion pieces, and we stay that way, not moving or talking, until it seems safe for her to unwrap herself just a little. I keep my head on her shoulder while she strokes my hair and dries my tears, the way you’d comfort a little kid who’s scared of the monster in their closet.

After a while, she goes, “Okay, bitch. Three deep breaths.”

I wipe my nose on my sleeve.

“You know I don’t believe in that Deepak Chopra, zen bullshit,” I say, struggling to stop the endless flow of my tears. But I do the three deep breaths anyway.

Lying there, face-to-face with Stella, I know I should tell her everything. But how do I do that when telling her everything would mean trying to fit the entire universe into the space of an atom?

“I messed everything up,” I whisper.

“Messed up how?”

“Joanna knows what I did last night—who I was with—”

“Oh shit.”

“Beckett got caught too.” Something about saying it out loud shatters me. I force the words out between sobs. “I kept texting her about it, but her dad had her phone. I didn’t know—”

“Breathe,” she says.

I stop for a minute, take a shaky breath, then another.

“I really fucked up, Stells.”

“Can I ask you something?” She brushes the hair away from my eyes. “Whose idea was it to leave prom?”

I don’t want to say it, but I have to.

I clear my throat and say, “Hers.”

“That’s right.”

“But I chose to go.”

“Daya, listen to me, I’m dead serious about this. You had every right to leave that dance. And so did Beckett. I don’t care if they made it look like Happy Fun Prom. That lock-you-in-at-church bullshit is so meta, it’s not even funny.”

I nod. Swallow to put out the flame in my throat.

“And I don’t even know what to say about Joanna. I hope she enjoys the Kool-Aid.”

“I can’t go home,” I tell her.

She wipes away a few of my tears. “I know.”

“No, I mean, I can’t. She kicked me out. And I’m not going to Tennessee, either, even if my dad and Cindy say I could.”

“Would you even want to?”

I shake my head.

“You know my mom doesn’t care how long you stay, right?”

“What about Valentina—won’t she feel weird about me being here?”

“Daya. Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. You deserve to be okay. Lay that shit down, let people take care of you for a minute. Fuck.”

I nod and it gets quiet between us, and Stella hates quiet, so she goes, “You know I texted my mom when we were coming down from Oviedo. In case you were wondering why they were scrambling eggs and shit when we got here.”

“I figured.”

“I just wanted to avoid the awkwardness of walking in on them doing it up against the entertainment center.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” I whisper, and she smiles, and I kind of smile back, but in that tilted way of someone who’s not sure she’s done crying yet.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” I add.

She goes, “I’m just saying, it was almost as awkward to walk in on them in the kitchen like some 1960s TV couple. Aprons on, flipping pancakes. Sweet baby Jesus.”

I go, “It could be worse.”

“Oh yeah?” Stella pushes away some hair that keeps falling into my eyes. “How?”

“They could’ve been squeezing fresh orange juice.”

“Gross!” She laughs, but the laughter dies out quick, and the room goes quiet again until Stella finally says, “Are you hungry?”

I shake my head no.

“Okay, but... even an ugly crier needs to eat, right? You can eat and cry at the same time.”

I shake my head again. “I think I’m done crying for now.”

“Bitch, lemme bring you some food. You don’t even have to eat it. You can just... smell it, or whatever.”

She stands up, makes it to the door, turns around. “Hey. We got this.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I’m just tired.”

“Then sleep. Those pancakes aren’t going anywhere.”

The door clicks shut behind Stella, and suddenly the room feels like a still-life painting. Everything so quiet, almost static. Window open, curtain fluttering softly. I try to imagine myself painted on to this canvas, but I’m not sure how I’d pose for it. Am I tragic, broken, emptied out from crying? Or sleeping peacefully against a nest of pillows with the breeze lifting my hair?

The soft sound of voices drifts in from down the hall.

Stella saying, “I think her mom’s having another breakdown.”

Mr. Zapata mumbling something too low to hear.

“I’ll call her mother,” Ms. Avila says. “We’ll work something out.”

I drift, never settling on how to exist in this still-life moment.

Because within seconds, I slip into the deepest sleep of my life.