by Aiden Thomas
Julian rubbed his stomach, as if remembering the taste of the pan de muerto.
“Then at midnight, the bell tolls, officially starting the celebration and signaling the arrival of the spirits. They get to stay until it ends at sunset on November second. It’s like a two-day-long party and you get to see everybody.”
“Like your mom?” Julian asked, his gaze shifting back over to the picture.
Yadriel’s stomach twisted. “Yeah.” He was both excited and anxious to see his mom again in just a matter of days. There was a lot he needed to accomplish before then.
Julian studied the altar with an intense expression. “Is it like … for anybody?” He didn’t look at Yadriel when he spoke.
“How do you mean?” Yadriel asked, not understanding the question. It was hard to keep up with Julian’s constantly shifting train of thought.
Julian’s hand went to his neck, his fingers searching at the dip of his throat. “Like do normal people come back, too?” A frown pressed deep lines into his forehead. “Non-brujx?”
“Oh—no.” Yadriel shifted uneasily. “It’s just brujx.” Was there someone he wanted to see?
Julian nodded. “When you raised me from the dead—”
“Summoned your spirit, you’re not a zombie—”
Julian rolled his eyes. “Right, that. You thought I was someone else. Miguel?”
Yadriel’s heart clenched. “Yeah, my cousin,” he said.
“How’d he die?” Julian asked.
“We don’t know,” Yadriel confessed, lifting his shoulders in a shrug.
“Wait,” Julian shook his head. “Then how do you know he’s even dead?”
“It’s a brujx thing. If one of us dies, we can all feel it.”
Julian still looked confused. “But you don’t know what happened?”
Yadriel shook his head. “Only that it was … bad.” He remembered the sharp pain he’d felt. How it’d ripped through his chest. Goose bumps skittered down his arms at the thought. Yadriel frowned at himself. He felt helpless and frustrated. He was supposed to be helping the brujx find Miguel. “Hopefully they find him. We need to find him,” he corrected himself. “He could be anywhere, for all we know. If we’re wrong and his spirit didn’t get tethered, and he managed to cross over to the afterlife, at least his spirit will return during Día de Muertos, so he’ll be able to just tell us himself,” Yadriel said. “But still, the sooner we find him, the better. It’s not good for a spirit to be wandering around alone.”
Julian sat up straighter. “Why not?”
“Spirits can go maligno—turn dark and evil—if they stay in the land of the living for too long.” The thought of that happening to Miguel made him feel queasy all over again.
“How long?” Julian asked with an edge to his voice.
“It varies,” he said, knowing it wasn’t very helpful. He’d never seen it happen up close. The brujos kept on top of it, and it wasn’t like Yadriel was allowed to perform the releasing ritual, anyway. “Sometimes it happens quick—the spirit loses themselves and they turn violent,” he said with a shrug.
Julian had a strange look on his face, and, at first, Yadriel couldn’t place it. His jaw was flexed and his body rigid; his mouth in a hard line, nostrils flared as he stared at Yadriel.
Then it hit him—Julian was scared.
“But that won’t happen to you!” he said quickly, trying to backpedal. “I mean, sometimes it takes years and years for that to happen!”
Julian didn’t look reassured.
“That’s why we’ve got to find your friends tomorrow,” Yadriel rushed. “The sooner we do, the sooner I can release your spirit before anything goes sideways.”
Julian’s expression was doubtful. “Yeah, well, you be sure to use that knife of yours on me before I go full Exorcist,” he said gruffly, cocking an eyebrow. “Deal?”
Yadriel exhaled a laugh, but he agreed. “Deal.”
Julian’s shoulders relaxed a little. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything and Yadriel felt like a real asshole for being so insensitive.
Yadriel cleared his throat. “Nothing more we can do tonight, though. Everyone else is out looking for Miguel.” Hell, maybe they’ve even already found him and by morning the mystery would be all cleared up. “I’ll get you something to sleep on.” Yadriel went to his closet and dug around for his old sleeping bag.
“Why aren’t you out looking with them? With the other brujos?” Julian asked. He was back in the chair, knees bouncing.
“Well, they won’t let me,” Yadriel said, pushing a box of old clothes out of his way.
Julian spun himself in a circle. “Why?”
“Because they don’t think I’m a real brujo.”
He spun himself faster. “Why?”
Yadriel was glad Julian couldn’t see his face. His cheeks burned hot.
“Because I’m trans.”
Julian planted his feet and came to an abrupt stop, swaying slightly in the chair. “Oh.” He paused. Blinked. “Ohhh.”
Yadriel’s hand finally closed around the slick material of his sleeping bag and he yanked it out. He hugged it to his chest and faced Julian, waiting for some kind of judgment. Maybe laughter.
Instead, Julian frowned at Yadriel, his lip curled in an annoyed sort of way. “That sucks, dude.”
The words were matter-of-fact. Straight to the point. Holding no pretense.
Yadriel hadn’t expected it. He exhaled, shoulders slumping. “It does,” he agreed. “It sucks a lot.” He spent so much time holding his tongue and only having Maritza to vent to, it felt nice to just say it out loud to someone else. “Since they don’t think I’m a real boy, they wouldn’t give me my own portaje or let me have the brujo’s quinces—”
Julian scowled. “The fuck?”
“Right?” Yadriel huffed. “They’re so stuck in their ways and traditions, they wouldn’t even let me try.” He undid the sleeping bag and shook it out with a snap. “So, Maritza made me a portaje and I did the binding ceremony myself.”
Julian grinned approvingly. “Badass.”
Yadriel found himself smiling back. He hadn’t really had the time to process everything that had happened, what with Miguel dying as soon as he’d completed the ritual. It was badass, even if he was going against his dad and the other brujx.
“So I’m gonna help you find your friends,” Yadriel went on, laying the sleeping bag out on the floor. “And you’re gonna help me by letting me release you to the afterlife, then they’ll have to accept that I’m a brujo.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees. “On the second night of Día de Muertos, we have an aquelarre where the brujx who had their quinces that year are presented. This year, they’re going to have to let me be part of it,” Yadriel said with fierce determination.
Julian’s expression was suddenly pinched. “Back up a sec—are you trying to prove to them that you’re a brujo, or that you’re a boy?”
The bluntness of the question caught Yadriel off guard. It took some of the wind out of his self-satisfied sails. “It’s the same thing,” he said, prickling with annoyance.
“’Cause, if it’s to prove you’re a brujo, didn’t summoning me already do that?” Julian asked.
Yadriel huffed a laugh. “You just don’t get how it works,” he said, crossing his arms. “That’s not enough.”
“Not enough for who, though?” Julian questioned. He wasn’t being pushy about it, not on purpose, anyway. He just seemed curious, which only irritated Yadriel further. “Not enough for them, or not enough for you?”
Yadriel froze. The question stuck in his chest. “It’s the same thing,” he repeated, but was it? Yadriel shook his head. He was tired, and Julian’s incessant questions were just confusing him.
“You just don’t get it because you’re not one of us,” he insisted. “Here.” He tossed Julian a pillow from his bed.
Julian easily caught it out of the air. “Hey!” He flashed his teeth in a triu
mphant smile, giving the pillow a shake. “I caught it!”
Yadriel threw himself onto his bed. “Good job. Now go to sleep. I have to get up for school in”—he checked his phone and groaned—“three hours.”
SIX
Yadriel went into the bathroom to change out of his clothes and binder and into an oversize sleep shirt and pajama pants. When he got back to his room, he awkwardly dove under the covers of his bed. He didn’t like being seen without his binder on, and that was especially true with Julian.
Luckily, Julian seemed unfazed, or, at the very least, uninterested.
“Do ghosts even sleep?” he asked, lounging comfortably on the floor with his hands tucked behind his head.
“I have no idea,” Yadriel said, pulling his blankets up to his chin.
Julian refused to settle down. As Yadriel stared up at his ceiling in the pitch-black room, Julian’s sighs and huffs floated from the floor. They were quickly followed up by the most asinine questions Yadriel ever had to endure at three in the morning.
“If you turned into a ghost, where would you wanna haunt?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m pretty sure the Jack in the Box on Whittier is haunted.”
“Mm.”
“One time, we were chillin’ in the parking lot, and there was definitely some haunted-ghosts stuff happening in the dumpster.”
“Mhmm.”
“But it turned out to just be a raccoon.”
“Cool.”
“It almost bit me.”
“Wow.”
“Damn, when’s the last time you cleaned under your bed?”
And on and on it went. When Yadriel refused to respond, Julian just went on talking to himself. Yadriel didn’t know it was possible for someone to have so little filter between their brain and their mouth. When Julian spoke, it was a constant stream of consciousness.
Even in the wee hours of the morning, Yadriel knew sleep wouldn’t come easy. His relationship with it was always tenuous at best. The events of the night buzzed through him restlessly.
In the span of a few hours, he’d gotten his own portaje and been blessed by Lady Death with the powers of the brujo. And he was still worried about Miguel. The grief of losing his cousin didn’t feel real yet. On top of all that, he’d summoned a spirit and was now harboring a dead boy in his room.
Yadriel didn’t manage to fall asleep until he put a pillow over his head with Julian’s muffled voice wondering whether ghosts got wet when it rained. A couple of times, rummaging sounds nearly pulled Yadriel back to consciousness, but then he always slipped back under.
When his alarm went off in the morning, Yadriel groaned into his arm. He felt even more exhausted than before he’d fallen asleep. He rolled over, hand blindly reaching to hit snooze on his phone. With effort, he forced his bleary eyes open.
To find a black pair staring back at him.
Yadriel thrashed and scrambled back, hitting the back of his head on the edge of the window. In his panic, he’d accidentally kicked Purrcaso off the foot of the bed. As his alarm continued to blare, Purrcaso cried from the floor.
“FINALLY!” Julian burst out, annoyed but smiling as he leaped to his feet. “I’ve been—dude, stop screaming—I’ve been waiting for FOREVER!”
Yadriel’s heartbeat hammered painfully in his chest, unable to comprehend anything Julian was saying. He snatched his phone and killed the alarm. Purrcaso stopped her indignant meowing and sat on the dresser, cleaning her paw. Yadriel squeezed his eyes shut, willing the throbbing in his head to stop.
He strained to listen for any signs from his family, wondering if someone had heard his shout, but there was only the distant bumping of his abuelita’s Tejano music from the kitchen.
“Are you even listening to me?” Julian demanded.
“No.” Yadriel squinted an eye open to look up at him. In his sleepy daze, it took a moment for Yadriel to remember he was a spirit. Standing there in the middle of his room, arms crossed and frowning, Julian looked very real and alive. But then Yadriel blinked, refocusing his vision enough to spot the telltale signs: blurry edges and the cool draft in the air around him.
“I said, I’ve been practicing!” Julian huffed. The amount of energy he had this early in the morning was obscene.
Yadriel sat upright, pushing back the mass of dark hair that had flopped into his eyes. “Practicing?” he croaked.
Julian’s scowl was quickly replaced with a sharp smile.
He swung back and forth between his emotions so quickly, Yadriel was bound to get whiplash.
“Look!” Falling into the chair, Julian hunched over the desk and pinched his fingers around a crumpled-up ball of paper. It was one of Yadriel’s failed attempts at math homework from the day before.
“Look, look, look!” Face screwed up in concentration, slowly, he lifted the ball of paper. Julian turned to Yadriel, a triumphant grin splitting his face. “See?”
Julian’s eyes burned with wild energy. Yadriel was starting to think it was less up-all-night delirium and more just, well, Julian.
“Good job,” Yadriel grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at his temples, warding off a headache.
The ball of paper dropped back to the desk. Julian scowled. “I worked on that all night, man!”
“What? I said, ‘good job,’” Yadriel replied, thumbing through the notifications on his phone to make sure he hadn’t gotten any important messages. Nothing about Miguel. Worry dug into his headache. Had they really not found him yet?
“Tch,” Julian hissed between his teeth. He slumped moodily in the chair, propping his shoes up on the mattress. The white rubber of his Converse were dirty and cracked, and there was a large hole torn in the bottom of one.
When Yadriel moved to the edge of his bed and put his feet on the floor, he stepped on something sharp. “Ouch—what the—?” Yadriel’s eyes bulged when he finally took in the state of his room.
Well, now he was awake.
It looked like a bomb had gone off. Or maybe just a human hurricane named Julian Diaz.
“What the hell happened in here?” Yadriel demanded, picking up the unfolded paper clip stuck to the bottom of his foot. It was just one of maybe two dozen that lay scattered across the carpet.
“Got bored,” Julian said simply.
Yadriel shifted through the debris. Had he really been tired enough to sleep through all this? “Right.” His room was a little messy, sure, but it was organized chaos. The mess Julian had made was just … chaos.
“You got shitty taste in music, by the way,” Julian told him, his tone matter-of-fact as he nodded to Yadriel’s ancient iPhone that lay on the rumpled sleeping bag. The earbuds were dirty, and they crackled if he turned the volume up too loud. It had been a hand-me-down from his brother, and Yadriel used it to store his music, since there wasn’t enough space on his newer phone.
“No I don’t!” he said, feeling oddly defensive as he picked it up and stuffed it back into a drawer. His yearbook and old notebooks were on his unmade bed next to a Sharpie and more balls of paper.
Yadriel held up the tattered notebooks and glared at Julian. “Did you go through my stuff?”
Julian blinked. “Uh … what?” His ears burned red.
It was the guiltiest face Yadriel had ever seen.
“Don’t go through my stuff!”
“I didn’t!” Julian spluttered.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Yadriel growled and stuffed the notebooks back in their place on the shelf.
“It’s not like I had anything else to do,” Julian groused, kicking his feet up onto the bed.
“Don’t put your shoes on my bed!” Yadriel snapped.
“They’re ghost shoes, they can’t get your bed dirty!” Julian pointed out.
If Yadriel could’ve shoved Julian’s legs, he would’ve. But he had to settle on a death glare instead.
“So, what’s the plan, patrón?” Julian asked, unbothered.
Yadriel stood and wen
t to the closet. “The plan is for me to go to school,” he said, digging around for a clean shirt. “And for you to stay here.”
“Wait, wait, wait—what?” Julian demanded, waving his hands. “Are you serious? Why are you going to school? We need to go find my friends!”
“I’ll look for them at school,” Yadriel said.
Julian gave him a withering look. “They’re not gonna be at school!”
Yadriel ignored him and tried to straighten up the mess. He grabbed his jeans off the floor and gave them a shake. There was some cemetery dust on them, but other than that, they were clean enough.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Julian stood up. “I will lose it if you try to keep me here all day!” He held up a finger. “You wanna be haunted? ’Cause, swear to God, you ditch me here I’ll haunt you for the rest of forever!”
“You are being so dramatic right now,” Yadriel told him, shaking his head.
Julian groaned and smacked his palm against his forehead. “Look at me! Begging to go to school!” He collapsed onto the bed, his arm thrown over his face.
“You know,” Yadriel said, kicking some shoes into the closet, “if you’d just let me release you, we could end this here and now.”
Julian snorted.
“I know you want to check on your friends, but we also can’t let you turn maligno, okay?” Yadriel warned, peering down at Julian, who pointedly ignored him. Yadriel frowned. “You won’t be you anymore, you’ll turn into a—a monster.”
Julian peeked up at him from under his arm. “Bold of you to assume I’m not one already.”
Yadriel stared at him, trying to gauge if he was being serious or not.
Julian met his gaze, unblinking.
Knock, knock.
Both their heads snapped to the door.
Yadriel’s eyes went wide. That had to be Lita. She knew. She could sense he had a spirit in his room. He was totally screwed. If Lita found Julian, she’d tell his dad, and Yadriel would get in deep trouble for disobeying him and going behind his back and—Oh God, would they kick him out for disrespecting the ways of the brujx?
Yadriel panicked. “Hold on!” he called, grabbing the sleeping bag and tossing it over Julian, but it fell right through him, landing in a heap on the chair.
