chapter one
BEATRIZ
I’m unnaturally talented at pretending to be asleep.
Generally, it’s a pretty useless skill to have. But when the nightmares and subsequent insomnia took the reins a few years back, I began wasting nights away watching the stars instead of the insides of my eyelids. Usually, I slipped back into my room by the time Mom was up. As was inevitable with her work schedule, she finally caught me one morning.
Her on the ground. Me on the roof. The look on her face that said she thought my gaze was set in a different direction than the sky. After that, I knew something had to change.
From then on, she woke me up. Or at least believed she did. It didn’t matter if I spent the night whispering to the stars, sketching constellations, or toying with the unusable key dangling around my neck. By the time sunrise rolled around, I made sure my ass was in bed. Eyes shut, breathing heavy, limbs askew, the picture of safe and sound.
Today is no exception.
Mom raps lightly on the door. “Abejita? Time to get up.”
I force myself to yawn as she pokes her head in. “Morning.”
Lottie scampers through the cracked door, a chipper bad omen despite her old age. The black cat leaps onto my bed with ease and receives my pets more enthusiastically than Mom’s. I thank my long nails for that.
“So what’ll it be today? We’ve got toast with that strawberry jam from the farmer’s market, huevos con frijoles, or cinnamon granola.” Mom pulls her thick, dark hair into a ponytail and tries to smile. First-day breakfasts are a staple of hers even if domesticity isn’t.
“I can just grab a banana on my way out.” I free myself from the sheets, and Lottie curls up in the warm impression my body left behind.
“Are you sure?” Mom asks. “I could make pancakes! We’ve got plenty of maple syrup and probably some chocolate chips lying around somewhere.” Try as I might, I can’t ignore the way her hands shake at her sides.
Dammit. “Actually, I’d love some eggs.”
“Con frijoles?”
“Just eggs. Thanks.”
She’s already humming as she goes downstairs. I wait for the click of the stovetop flame before I lock myself in the bathroom.
Avoiding my reflection, I splash my face with water. Gentle cleanser to wash. Toner applied with a reusable pad. Moisturizer with SPF 50. Pea-sized squirt of each of my dermatologist-prescribed creams. It’s only when my face is glistening that I can bear to meet my eyes in the mirror.
Acne scars line my cheeks and jaw, dotting a few spaces on my forehead. I run a hand over my scalp, the light fuzz of hair growing back too quickly. I’ll have to buzz it again soon. And re-shave the ends of my brows while I’m at it. I categorize the things I see objectively: the bags under my eyes, the bump on the side of my chapped mouth, the pores around the dorsal hump making up most of my nose. I repeat them in my head as I apply makeup. I repeat them until I forget what my face looks like as a whole, remembering it only in parts.
Eye shadow primer, base color, blend the crease contour, pack that shade beneath my lower lash line, pick a shimmery lid pigment. Clean up the fallout.
Eyeliner, falsies, two coats of mascara. Face primer, foundation, concealer. Light powder, contour, highlight. Sharp brow pencil in a color three shades darker than my natural ones. Line and fill my lips with black, add gloss on top. I consider blush but decide against it. Five spritzes of setting spray. And I’m done.
Mom hears me before she sees me, the thick platforms of my boots echoing against the aged wood floors. I tuck my necklace under my shirt as she slides a plate of eggs onto the counter. “So,” she starts. “Candace called.”
She and Mom still talk on occasion when they run into each other at the store or during parent-teacher conferences. Mom always invites her for dinner to chat over enough wine to lubricate their minds, but the goal seems vague. Bonding over broken children and dead first loves only gets you so far. Their first and only big talk did enough, so it’s a relief Candace never takes up the offer. “That’s nice.”
“She asked if you could drive Whitney and Olive to school today.”
“Whitney has a car,” I reply between steaming bites.
“Something’s wrong with the engine. Tomorrow she’ll ride with the Richards kids.” Mom plays with the new bracelet on her wrist. It’s dainty and silver and sports small circular charms that tinkle when she moves her hands, which she does about as often as she blinks. She’s worn nothing but long sleeves since she got it last week, but fabric can’t muffle the fairylike sound.
I don’t drive Whitney around anymore, not since last fall. But explaining that to Mom is actually less appealing than just doing the favor. My fork whines against my now empty plate. I wasn’t even hungry. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” She stands and kisses my forehead, laughing a little as my spiky layer of hair tickles her mouth. I leave with her smile impressed on my mind.
Whitney and Olive are waiting on the porch when I pull up to their house, just two streets down from mine. Whitney already texted me five times this morning, but I put my phone on Do Not Disturb before she could send a sixth.
“At this rate, we’re going to miss graduation,” Whitney groans as she climbs into the passenger seat. Olive slips into the back and flinches at their sister’s tone as they buckle in. I’d flinch if Whitney spoke to me any other way.
“School bus will be passing by in fifteen if you’d prefer that,” I reply as I pull away from the curb.
“Bite me.”
“Thanks for the ride,” Olive interjects. They fiddle with the strap of their baggy purple overalls when I meet their eyes in the rearview mirror.
It confuses me how Olive and Whitney can have such similar faces but still look nothing alike. Maybe it’s just the only child in me talking. They share brown skin, thick black hair, round faces with high cheekbones, and upturned eyes so richly brown that they’re basically black. Whitney’s hair falls in calculated curls over her exposed shoulders. Olive’s hair is bluntly cut at their chin.
“You don’t need to thank me,” I say, and adjust my mirror so they’re out of sight.
“Especially not when she’s late,” Whitney adds as she picks at the ends of her hair. I wish I could say it was heat-damaged, but she’s definitely still using the same protective spray I bought her in tenth grade. “Ignoring timely texts is rude.”
“You texted, and I quote, ‘Beatriz, if I’m late on the first day of school because you’re too busy applying your goth clown costume, I will sue you.’”
Olive stifles a laugh in the back seat. Whitney just touches up her lip gloss using her front camera. It’s also a brand I recommended. “Don’t be cute. You haven’t answered any of my texts for weeks.”
“My cuteness is out of my hands,” I say as we pull up to school. A perk of finally being seniors is getting to use this lot instead of parking on the street. Our student population of less than four hundred means fewer cars, but it also means a smaller campus to find parking.
Whitney shoos Olive away as we head through the front chain-link gates. The pair may be siblings, but Olive is a junior. It likely goes against some code of conduct in Whitney’s mind to be seen with them in public.
A few people cast uncomfortable looks our way when it’s just the two of us. If we were in any other town, it’d be because I, as she so gracefully put it, am in my goth clown costume, while she, as I’ll so gracefully put it, looks like an amalgamation of all of fast fashion’s greatest hits since last fall. But we’re not in any other town. So even though it unsettles people and reminds them of things no one likes to think about, nobody questions why Beatriz Dougherty and Whitney Ocampo are walking into school together.
“So are you waiting to tell me something or are you just looking for an excuse to hang out?” I finally ask Whitney once we reach the front office.
From behind her receptionist desk, Kim hands me my schedule. She doesn’t need to be reminded who I am. “How are we today, my dear?” she asks before Whitney can sass me.
“Just peachy,” I say.
“That’s good, that’s really good,” Kim says, like I just told her I cured cancer over the summer. “Oh, and Whitney, dear, here you go.” She hands over her schedule too.
“Thanks, Kim. How are your kids?” Whitney asks. I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“Oh, they’re doing just great now that Amy is settled at U of A,” she coos. Then her face shifts, because of course it does. “But truly, how are you, my dears? This has got to be rough for you two, being back here for your final year.”
She says this like we haven’t been back at school before. Like we haven’t been back for more than two years, haven’t hit milestones and celebrated birthdays and holidays. Didn’t already attend the funeral and every bullshit memorial service the school and neighborhood committee insisted on hosting. Like these halls are a unique reminder. Like just breathing isn’t enough of one.
“Feelin’ like a rock star,” I say.
Whitney kicks me where Kim can’t see. “We’re great, thank you. We’ll see you around.” She practically drags me out of the office, nails biting into the mesh of my sleeves.
“If you’re going to bruise me this badly, at least take me out to dinner first.”
“She was just being polite. You don’t have to be a bitch.”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Thanks, Kim. You’re right, this is shit. Let’s chat all about Bryce! Who should go first, me or Whitney? You want the girlfriend’s or the stepsister’s side of things—’”
Whitney puts a finger to my lips, a smudge of my black lipstick inking her. She has to stretch on her tiptoes to reach me, a reminder that there’s over a foot of height difference between us. “It’s me, okay? I get it.” Her eyes lower to my chest. A cocky remark is on the tip of my lips before I realize what she’s actually staring at.
The golden key is out from under my shirt. It normally hangs against my heart, hidden. In the spur of the moment, my hands must have reached for it.
Whitney’s eyes go soft. “You still wear it.”
I quickly conceal the key again. “Let’s go.”
We head to our new lockers, stopping at mine first because I’m closer to the front of the alphabet. I turn the dial as Whitney reads off the combination for me.
“Aren’t the Richards clones waiting for you?” I ask.
“You know, it’s pretty rude to refer to twins that way.”
As I pop open my locker, I’m hit with a wave of stale air. “The only time I hung out with y’all, Abby told me that I look like the type of corpse even a necrophiliac wouldn’t fuck.”
Whitney rolls her eyes. “That wasn’t the only time you hung out with us, and you can’t blame Dustin or even Abby for that. She was high for the first time and profusely apologized literally the next day.”
“By telling me any necrophiliac would gladly fuck me.”
“You’re missing the point.”
Copyright © 2024 by Racquel Marie
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