Naomi dismissed her words with a wave. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be other threats. There’s still work to be done. For instance, we don’t know what the rift’s closing means. We need to do research, conduct experiments and stuff.”
Pao smiled. “You know how to sweet-talk a girl.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not that hard to tempt.”
For a minute, like she was holding the pearl again, the future spooled out in front of Pao. She could live here, wear the black patchwork uniform of Los Niños, study the rift and the effect of its closing on the cactus field, the Gila, and herself.
She could stay almost thirteen forever, and train, and fight, and be around people who understood what she’d been through, who had felt the rift pulling on them and decided not to run from it.
Naomi watched her like she could read the thoughts swirling behind her eyes.
“I went home once,” Naomi said, her voice sounding ancient and weary. “Or I tried to, anyway.”
“What happened?” Pao asked.
Naomi shrugged. “Didn’t take. After everything that had happened to me here, sitting in science class felt like I was living a life that didn’t fit anymore.”
“What about your family?”
Was it Pao’s imagination, or did a shadow flit across Naomi’s face at the question? In any case, it was gone before she answered. “They were better off without me,” she said simply. “Even if I’d stayed, I wasn’t the daughter they’d lost. I wasn’t the daughter they wanted back.”
Pao didn’t know what to say to that, and Naomi didn’t seem to expect a response. But her words wormed their way somewhere deep into Pao, and she knew she wouldn’t forget them anytime soon, no matter what she decided.
She had more questions for Naomi, but Dante and Emma returned then, the club mercifully returned to its foldable chancla form and stowed in Dante’s back pocket. Some of its shine was still in his smile, though, and Pao thought it probably always would be.
They had all changed. But what would they do about it now? Could they resume their ordinary lives at the Riverside Palace and the country club?
“Ready to go home?” Dante asked, slinging an arm around Pao’s shoulders, unconsciously mirroring Marisa’s and Franco’s poses across the fire.
She almost shrugged him off, embarrassed in front of Emma, but there was no need. Emma’s smile at both of them was so bright, it blasted away Pao’s worries. Pao had chosen the right future—the one full of friends and family. And no matter what else it held, there would definitely be more comic-book and junk-food fests. That was enough certainty for now.
“I’ve never been more ready,” Emma said. She would be the daughter her parents wanted back, of that Pao had no doubt. “Pao?” she asked. “You ready?”
“No way!” Dante yelled, dropping his arm.
Pao followed his gaze, wondering what could possibly be more important to him than going home, and seeing nothing at first.
Then a black bundle of fur and teeth and too-large paws barreled lopsidedly toward her through the desert dust.
“BRUTO!” Pao shouted, tears springing to her eyes.
She ran toward him, taking in the way he was limping on his injured leg, and the way his black tongue lolled out of his mouth as he beamed at her. “Good boy!” she mumbled when they reached each other, letting him lick her face all over, not even minding the slobber.
He looked different, she realized when he finally settled down. The green protrusions on his back were gone, and his eyes were black instead of green, but there were still patches of scales among his fur, and something vaguely reptilian about his face.
She couldn’t scientifically explain why he had transformed, or how he had escaped the rift to reunite with her, but Pao, for once, didn’t care what science had to say about it. All she knew was that, for the first time since the river had coughed her out, she felt whole again.
Marisa offered to accompany them to the border of the cactus field, though Pao could tell she was reluctant to let Franco out of her sight.
“I’ll be back,” Pao heard her whisper to him before kissing him on the cheek.
As they waited for her, Pao looked at Dante, remembering when he had kissed her cheek. Had that just been a Here you go, ’cause we might die kind of thing? Did he even remember doing it?
She shook herself mentally as Marisa joined them. Pao had much bigger problems than that. Like what she was going to say to her mom about Bruto.
Or, you know, any of this.
“Thank you,” Marisa said to Pao as they set off. “You were true to your word, and you went farther than any of us….”
Pao could tell the older girl was still reeling from the fact that her world had been turned upside down and right side up again within a matter of days.
“A friend once told me I was relentless,” said Pao, remembering Ondina with a pang.
“In some people,” said Marisa, “that’s a good quality. Franco’s the same way.”
Man, this girl has it BAD, Pao thought.
“Will he be the leader now?” she asked.
“He says we’ll share the responsibility, which will make things easier on both of us,” Marisa said. “Life will be better all around, thanks to you.” And then, to Pao’s total shock, the former terror of the school lunchroom stopped and gave her a hug.
After that, it was time to part ways. Pao remembered the haunted look on Marisa’s face when she’d spoken of wishing she could forget her family, and it stopped Pao from asking if she’d return home. Maybe homecoming looked different for everyone. Maybe Franco and the Niños were Marisa’s home now.
Pao, Dante, and Emma walked the rest of the way to the boundary in contemplative silence, and Pao realized that each of them, in their own way, was getting ready to reenter a world they’d left behind.
“What do I tell my parents?” Emma asked quietly, coming up beside Pao.
“What do we tell any of them?”
“You get to tell them you were a hero,” Emma said, her voice small. “That you saved me. I have to explain that I went willingly to meet a stranger who turned out to be…”
“A snarky, slightly psychopathic ghost?”
Emma giggled, covering her mouth. “A reformed slightly psychopathic ghost.”
Dante overheard only part of the conversation. “Oh, is Pao finally admitting to being psychopathic? I’ve been waiting for this moment.”
“Dante!” Emma and Pao said in unison, but they all laughed.
“I’m just saying, putting food coloring in my fishbowl? Only a psychopath would have done that.”
“I was seven!” Pao said, her cheeks flushing. “And it was just an experiment! I didn’t know it would kill Bubbles, okay?”
This time, even Bruto—trotting obediently along at Pao’s heels—seemed to laugh.
The sun was setting when the Riverside Palace came into view, and Pao, despite how much she’d always hated the apartment complex, felt her heart leap at the sight.
Next to her, Dante stiffened, as though afraid of once again encountering the green mist that had forced them to leave. But it was gone, along with the ghost woman who had wielded it. Nothing was going to stop them from getting back home.
“So remember,” Pao coached Emma, “you got lost in the cactus field, it got dark, and you got tired, and you’d heard that you were supposed to stay in one place when you were lost. Dante and I idiotically decided to go looking for you, and we got lost, too. We finally found our way out, and we’re very, very sorry for being so reckless and irresponsible.”
Emma nodded, her lips a flat line.
Dante looked pale, but determined.
“It’s not a bad story,” came a heavily accented voice from behind them. “But I bet the real one’s more interesting.”
The four of them, a little jumpy from the past few days, whirled around as one, Bruto growling and Dante’s hand already on the chancla in his back pocket.
Señora Mata�
�s wheezing cackle told them all they needed to know about how ridiculous that looked.
“¡Abuela!” Dante went from weapon-wielding hero to relieved grandson faster than La Llorona had transformed. He threw himself into her arms despite being a head taller, and she clung to him for dear life.
For about a second.
Then she said, “Okay, okay, heroes, get inside, rápido, before anyone sees you.” She looked down at Bruto with thinly veiled disgust. “La criatura stays out on the fire escape.”
Bewildered, exhausted, and utterly out of fight, Pao did as she was told.
Inside Dante’s apartment, things had returned to normal. No green light, no weird candles, no corporeal mist. Señora Mata ushered them onto the sofa and brought out a plate of empanadas—still warm, as though she’d known they were coming.
Pao was far more curious than hungry, but the look on Señora Mata’s face told her, in no uncertain terms, to shut up and eat. So Pao bit into one, glowering. When she did, she groaned out loud—it was that good.
“You did me proud,” said the old woman, beaming from ear to ear. “I knew that maldita fantasma was no match for my chancla. But now give it back.”
Dante’s mouth, still full of empanada, fell open. “¿Cómo?”
“Give it back, hijo! You think you get to walk around Silver Springs with an Arma del Alma?” She laughed, a short, barking thing. “When I wouldn’t even let you have a pocket knife?” She muttered, “Tontito.”
When she snatched it out of his pocket, Dante looked mutinous.
Emma giggled, a bell-like sound that momentarily cleared Pao’s empanada-clouded brain.
“Where did you get it, señora?” Pao asked. “And the flashlight?” Just then, it dawned on Pao that she’d arrived home empty-handed. “Uh, sorry about losing your shopping bag. The Florida Water came in handy, too. How did you know?”
Dante’s abuela rolled her eyes, a gesture Pao was very familiar with after a lifetime of asking too many questions.
“Impatient girl. You think you’re the only one who ever met Los Niños de la Luz?”
“But…when?” Pao asked. “How?”
“To you I’ve always been an old lady,” she said, shaking her head. “But I was young once, too. For a hundred years, I was young. And then it was time to come home.”
“A hundred years?” Dante asked. Like Pao, he was shell-shocked, and Emma didn’t look much better off.
“Wait. You’re saying you—”
“No more questions, niña.” Señora Mata cut her off, perhaps sensing the eight billion more of them that were percolating behind Pao’s eyes. “Not for now. For now you have worried mothers and empty beds.”
“This isn’t over,” Pao said.
“Por supuesto. This is just the beginning,” the señora assured her.
When the doorbell rang, with just twenty minutes to go before the SpaceX launch, Pao let her mom answer it.
It had been three days since they’d returned home. Pao didn’t think she would ever forget the look on Mrs. Lockwood’s face when she’d arrived at Dante’s apartment to pick up Emma. The blood had left her cheeks, and she’d nearly collapsed. (For the record, her reaction had nothing to do with Bruto—he was still out on the fire escape.) Emma had rushed to give her mom a hug, propping her up in the process. And then Pao’s mom had come in, and nothing else in Pao’s world had mattered.
Their story about getting lost in the cactus field had passed muster without much examination. It didn’t hurt that it was corroborated by Señora Mata, who told of her own girlhood mishap in the same field, winking at Pao when the two moms weren’t looking.
Pao hadn’t seen her friends since that night. Their guardians (especially Emma’s) wanted to keep them close, even though all three kids had gone stir-crazy by halfway through the first day and sworn up and down they’d never go near the cactus field—or even any cactus—ever again.
After many phone calls, the trio had been given furlough for today, because it was a special occasion. Pao was hopeful the parental paranoia would wear off completely by August.
Today, Pao’s mom opened the front door, ushering Emma inside, hugging her as she whispered a few words over her head that Pao knew were supposed to be for protection. Mercifully, no candles or incense had been lit that morning.
The moment Emma sat down on the couch next to Pao, Bruto curled up at her feet. To Pao’s enormous surprise, her mom had loved the creature, scales and all. Maybe miracles were real. Pao had certainly seen enough evidence this week to believe there was more to life than met the eye.
“The launch starts in five minutes!” Emma said, bouncing up and down on the cushion. “Where’s Dante?”
Pao smirked. “Probably putting gel in his hair or something.”
Emma giggled, but secretly, Pao was eager for him to get here, too. She’d missed him more than she cared to admit.
On the news broadcast before the launch, the anchors were still talking about the incredible return of Emma Lockwood. “Warning signs about the danger of wandering in the cactus field have been posted in the public parks along the Gila,” the anchorwoman said.
Apparently, getting turned around in the desert was a real hazard.
Pao tried not to roll her eyes.
When photos of the kids who were still missing scrolled on the screen—Marisa’s and Naomi’s included—Pao grew more somber. Her mom was at her altar, picking up tiny pieces of dried rosemary with her fingertips.
“Maybe we could…light a candle for them?” Pao asked, trying to ignore the way her mom’s eyes got wide, her mouth soft around the corners. “For the kids who haven’t come home.”
Pao still dreamed about them, the ahogados, their faces serene as they floated up toward the water’s surface. And of Ondina and her mother, the infamous La Llorona, finally letting go of their anger. Finally moving on.
Pao wondered if, one day, she would tell her mom what had happened to her in the cactus field and the river. All the things her mom had been right about. Señora Mata had advised against it, saying it was best to let people hold on to their illusions sometimes, but Pao had never been great at following orders.
Still, she wasn’t ready to recount it all, not yet. She wasn’t even sure how she felt about it yet. Or that she completely understood it. Maybe someday she would.
For now, she took the matchbook from her mom’s hand as Dante knocked too loudly on the door and Emma and Bruto got up to answer it.
“It’s a lovely idea, Paola,” her mom said, straightening the wick.
When the flame caught, Pao imagined it expanding into a protective bubble of light that surrounded the Niños and the ahogados. And Ondina and her two brothers as well. Even La Llorona, who Pao hoped was at peace and wailing no more.
She closed her eyes and held the vision for a few seconds, just like her mom had taught her when she was only a little girl.
Her concentration broke when Dante threw a piece of popcorn at her head.
Laughing, her mom ruffled her hair. “Go on,” she said, “I’ve got it from here.”
Pao kissed her mom on the cheek before turning back to her friends, thwacking Dante on the head with a cactus throw pillow before settling down a little closer than normal to him on the couch. When they bumped elbows by mistake, her stomach swooped a familiar swoop.
Pao reached out for Emma’s hand on her other side and squeezed it. “Good to have you back,” she said.
“Good to be back,” said Emma. “All thanks to you.”
“Hey, what about me?” Dante said.
“You did make a pretty good caveman,” said Pao, mimicking him wielding a club.
“Better than a stupid plastic flashlight,” he shot back.
“Don’t forget the stinky Florida Water,” Emma added.
“Does someone need Florida Water?” Pao’s mom asked from the kitchen.
“No, thanks!” all three kids chorused, then broke into peals of laughter. Even Bruto smiled.
/> The countdown began, the Falcon Heavy rocket pointing skyward, and Pao felt a rush of gratitude that was almost enough to blot out the memories of all she had experienced.
Maybe she hadn’t seen what her real future would bring—the one powered by her and not the void. Would she go into outer space someday, or make important discoveries and contributions to science? She didn’t know for sure. She’d just have to have faith in herself and be okay with not knowing.
At least for now.
Like most people in the world, I have been a fan of Percy Jackson and his gods and monsters and adventures for a long time. In so many ways, getting the chance to add to Rick Riordan’s enduring and hopeful canon with characters and stories that feel like home to me is an absolute dream come true.
With that in mind, I’d first like to thank absolutely everyone at Rick Riordan Presents:
Tío Rick himself, for building his beautiful sandbox of mythology and inviting other authors to play in it, for his hilarious and insightful contributions to this story, and for his unwavering support of Pao and me at every step.
My editor, Stephanie Lurie, who found things lurking in the shadows of this story that I didn’t even know were there and encouraged me to chase them. Without her help and guidance, this book would have been a shade of itself.
All the other authors at Rick Riordan Presents, who were so friendly and welcoming to me as the new kid on the block, and whose stories inspire me every day.
The unstoppable force that is the Percy/Riordan fandom, for receiving my ghosts and me and making us feel right at home.
Next, I want to thank my agent, Jim McCarthy, who never laughs at my dreams, no matter how big they are or how fast and furiously they come. He told me early and often that my stories were worth being told, and he has been steadfast in his encouragement.
I am so, so grateful to every single reader, teacher, librarian, and bookseller who has picked up one of my books and shared their thoughts and feelings with me or a friend or a patron or a customer. You are literally the reason I sit down at my computer (almost) every day. You make it all worth it.
Paola Santiago and the River of Tears Page 29
