Kia and Gio

by Daniel José Older

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking of Giovanni today. I opened the botánica early, even though it’s Saturday, because I couldn’t go back to sleep, and lying in bed with the sunshine creeping over me just wasn’t cutting it. Now that I’m here, it’s like there’s a tiny Gio hiding behind all the little potion vials and sacred pots on the shelves around me.

  Yes, I have homework to do. And Baba Eddie doesn’t have any readings till noon, which means he’ll waddle in at 11:58, sipping his coffee. But here I am. The sunlight finds its way through the saint statues in the window display, lands on me, and warms my skin. I feel old even though I’m not. Giovanni.

  I should probably give up and admit he’s dead. Everyone else has. A boy like that, that bright a fire, they figure it’s too much to ask to have him around for more than a decade or two. Instead I make up stories about where he ended up: Giovanni in Amsterdam, whoring around gleefully with poets and painters, smoking hash and making fun of American tourists. Giovanni in India, writing plays while riding elephants. Giovanni in Tunisia, fermenting a lusty new remix of the Arab Spring.

  When I was ten and he was—what? Sixteen?—I was still plotting how to get him to marry me. I’d done all the math, checked and rechecked it: he would be twenty-three when I made seventeen, the legal age to marry in New York. That seemed doable: seventeen and twenty-three. Shit, Uncle Freddie got married when he was fifteen and Aunt Bea was twenty-eight and they’re still going strong. Then again, Uncle Freddie’s been known to swallow his own teeth on purpose. Anyway, I scratched the equations out on my little Powerpuff Girls notepad and arrived triumphantly at the conclusion that it was doable, mathematically at least. The other concerns—that he obviously had no interest whatsoever in girls and that we’re first cousins—those all seemed like secondary problems. Sex was gross anyway, right? Who wanted all that?

  I’m gonna be seventeen next week, and Giovanni is … nowhere.

  * * *

  A woman comes in, ignoring the CLOSED sign on the door. I can’t tell if she’s white or Puerto Rican or … white and Puerto Rican? She’s got loud purple lipstick on and she’s almost perfectly round. Maybe she’s been here before—Gina? Louisa? Then she opens her mouth. She’s definitely Puerto Rican. “Hola, mi niña. Lissen, you have those collares for Babalu I asked about before? It was maybe two weeks ago, yes?”

  Oh yeah, she was here before, but it wasn’t no two weeks ago. Two months, maybe. “We already sold ‘em out, Iya.” I use the respectful term for an elder santera, even though I don’t know if she’s initiated or not. Whatever, one way or the other, she’s older than me.

  “Ay, mi madre, but I put in the order and everything.” A sing-songy whine enters her voice. I want nothing to do with it so I end the conversation quick and she finds her way to the door. And then: Giovanni. Giovanni dressed in a hundred shades of violet, fro unruly. We’re on our way home from school. He’s rolling his eyes because he got cast as the swan again in the ballet school’s version of Swan Lake. “Gayest role ever,” he said, sipping a cup of milk and sugar with a splash of coffee in it. “So stupid. Why can’t we do a ballet based on Ishigu?”

  I jumped up and down and did little pirouettes around him. “Ishigu! Ishigu!” That’s the manga we both loved. Well, I loved it because he loved it, and everything he loved was a holy relic to me. Plus, Ishigu was half-boydemon, half-android, and surrounded by the hottest anime chicks in the Robot City. Gio could be Ishigu and I could be Maiya, who carried a staff with a talking ram head on top that she used to disembowel all the tentacle-bots that came at them from the Red Death Chambers.

  * * *

  “I’m coming in late,” Baba Eddie says when I pick up the landline. I hear him pull on his cigarette. “Something came up.”

  “I’m so sure.” For no reason at all, I’m annoyed.

  “Hold things down for me, okay? Why are you there so early anyway?”

  “I dunno.” I shrug as if he could see it over the phone, but really: it’s Baba Eddie, he probably can.

  “What’s wrong, Kia?” That touch of charismatic condescension he always gets away with because he knows I love him like a father. Uncle. Fatherly uncle. Whatever. I let it slide. Again.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good.” He ignores my blatant lie. “See you at one … ish.”

  “You have a noon reading with Eliades.”

  “Oh fuck, he’s always coming with some bullshit. Keep him entertained till I get there.”

  “I’m not entertaining.”

  “Just tell him I’ll be a little late.”

  “But…”

  The line goes dead.

  * * *

  Ishigu was a third degree master of Shumanjo Levitating Robot fighting style, but P.S. 143 in Sunnyside didn’t have that as an afterschool option, so Giovanni took Kenpo instead. Gio also was a lead alto in glee club, treasurer of the debate team, assistant-editor at the school newspaper, and president/founding member of the Amiri Baraka Drama Club. Each met on a different day of the week, which I always took to be a special scheduling miracle devised solely to please my overachieving extra-curricular cousin, but it was really just a coincidence.

  “Why you still wearing your tutu?” Gio narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Because I’m a ballerina,” I informed him.

  “Ballet is so girly.”

  I matched his sneer with one of my own. “You do ballet, and you’re a boy.”

  “I’m not just a boy.” Gio’s hands extended to either side, palms out, like Ishigu’s do when he’s getting ready to levitate. “I’m the baddest boy in town, bitches.”

  I was laughing, but then I stopped. “Don’t call me a bitch.” Both my fists found my hips and I frowned, creasing my brow to show I wasn’t kidding.

  “I didn’t mean you.” The apology was sincere. “I meant it universally. All the bitches in the universe! Anyway, it’s not a bad word if you say it right.”

  “It’s not?” We’re walking again, all through the quiet suburbs of eastern Queens. When Gio’s with me I can ignore the creeping sensation that I don’t belong, I don’t belong, no matter where I am I don’t belong.

  “Shh … we on a mission.”

  “Where we going?” I’d never been to this neighborhood before. Maybe driven past once or twice with dad, but it was all white folks and the feeling of don’t belong don’t belong hung heavy in the air, like all the molecules wanted me to leave too. But I knew I was safe. Gio’d been studying Kenpo since he was my age; he was a brown belt and not to be trifled with.

  “It’s a secret mission.”

  “But where we going?”

  “If I tell you it won’t be a…” I made the face that I knew gets him, the one that I used to make right before I cried. He caved. “Fine. But don’t tell anyone.” He lowered his voice to such a shrill whisper on the word anyone that a little spittle escaped and he had to wipe his mouth. “We’re going to see if Jeremy’s okay.”

  I rolled my eyes. For three weeks, all I’d heard about was Jeremy. Would Jeremy like this red leather jacket? Doe
s he read Ishigu too? What kind of cigarettes would Jeremy smoke? If Jeremy was a crayon, what color would he be? (Yes, No, Virginia Slims, and Plain Ol’ White, respectively, but who was listening?) The angle of Jeremy’s chin: divine architecture; the perfection of his frown when he was thinking about a math problem; the timbre of his voice: angelic. Jeremy the Brave, bringing in articles about oil drilling in Antarctica for Social Studies. Jeremy the Agile, bounding effortlessly across the gym in tights for his solo in Swan Lake. Jeremy the Cryptic, explaining in depth his theory of how all six Star Wars movies were really one eight-million hour rewrite of the Book Of Job. Or whatever. If the boy had the slightest hint of self-awareness and looked out from the curtains of his thin blond hair once in a while, I’d actually feel like he was a threat to my impending marriage. But as it was, he displayed zero interest in anything more than a platonic friendship with Gio. Which baffled and relieved me at he same time.

  So now we were off to see Jeremy the Clueless for some dumb “mission.” Great.

  * * *

  Eliades shows up right on time, of course. I’m sipping some bodega tea, no milk, no sugar, staring off into nothing like some asshole in a nursing home when the guy busts in with a loud jingle-jangle from the door chimes. He’s always well dressed, but today his green striped tie lies half-undone around his neck like a noose, and the top of his shirt is open, revealing pallid, moist flesh and a hint of chest hair. It’s February but he’s sweating, like he ran all the way here from his Manhattan office.

  “Hey Eliades.” I’m grateful for the company; all these memories crowding my head can’t be healthy.

  Eliades wipes a hand over his thinning hairline. “It’s back.” No Hi Kia, no How’s school? Just, It’s back. Okay. I hate small talk, anyway. I don’t even wanna know who’s back.

  “Baba Eddie’s running a little late.”

  “But…”

  “You can have a seat and wait for him.”

  Eliades may be self-absorbed, but he knows me well enough to know not to argue when I use my have-a-seat voice. He makes his way through the aisles, pouting softly, and settles in one of the big easy chairs we got half-price from the vintage spot on Myrtle.

  * * *

  “You wouldn’t make much of a spy,” Giovanni informed me as we sat in some bushes on a little hill behind Jeremy’s house. It’s just like all the other ones on this block: three stories, faded off-white shingles, all the decaying decadence of a middle-aged dad in a rumpled suit. “Too much chatter.”

  It hurt, but with some effort I kept the whine out of my voice. “Well, how am I sposta spy when I don’t even know what we’re doing here?”

  Gio sighed and adjusted his position a little. “Because Jeremy said some strange men had been showing up around his house.”

  “How do you know he didn’t mean you?”

  “Kia!”

  “Keep your voice down, you’re gonna give us away.”

  “What I’m gonna do is take you right home and then come back all by myself.”

  The idea was so offensive to me I actually squealed a little when I said, “No!” This time, when I made the pre-cry face, it wasn’t a ruse.

  Gio knew it too and he softened. “Then shut the fuck up, Kia.”

  “Fine. But don’t swear at me.”

  After a few moments, Giovanni sighed. “He said they were white men and that they would whisper through his window late at night, all kinds of things about how he was destined for greatness and he was the chosen one. All kindsa shit. They wanted him to come with them, but would never say where, and when he’d ask they’d just vanish into the night.”

  I didn’t know what to say. My eyes were open so wide they felt like they were gonna pop out. “And you gonna stop them?”

  “I just want to make sure he’s alright, is all.”

  It was getting dark; the bush we were in was already swamped in shadows and the sky turned turquoise through the trees above us. Gio fumbled in his pockets and then produced a black cigarette. I gasped. He rolled his eyes, fumbled again, took out a lighter. The sugary scent of cloves filled the air; it was sweet and perfect, Giovanni’s magic pixie powder.

  “How you gonna be all mad that I’m loud,” I hissed, “and then light a great big beacon of flame and send all that smoke out? You know he gonna see it.”

  “He’s not even home yet—look the lights are out. Anyway, you can’t really stake out a house and not smoke. It’s like, the rules.”

  “I guess. If by ‘stake out’ you mean ‘stalk.’”

  “Shhh!”

  I was about to remind him he’d just said no one was home when a light went on. Jeremy appeared, pulling curtains out of the way and then lifting the window. He stuck his head out, smelled the summer breeze (the cloves too probably) and then disappeared back into his room. I elbowed Gio, for no real reason but to indicate that I’d told him so. He nudged me back, but kept smoking.

  “You’re an asshole,” I whispered. It felt good to swear, mature.

  “Shh!”

  Music swirled out of Jeremy’s room. It was trancelike: a gush of strings and then a heavy beat. Jeremy sailed past his window, arms over his head, a perfectly executed grande jeté. He emerged, pirouetting, in the next window just as a pleading, luscious voice came in over the beat.

  I tugged on Gio’s sleeve. “What’s this music?”

  “It’s Björk.”

  “What’s a Björk?”

  “Shh!” That was the moment I understood he would never marry me. The boy was entranced. I could see Jeremy dancing in Gio’s eyes, the glare from the bedroom lighting up his face, his mouth hanging slightly open. I might not’ve had the words for it at the time, but inside I knew: it was love. Not that bullshit TV love; not the corny love-song love either. True love. The kind that people get themselves killed for. The kind that makes you do really, really stupid things.

  “Gio?”

  “Girl, if I have to tell you to shush one more…”

  “What are we really doing here?”

  The music churned on. Gio kept his gaze fixed on the window.

  * * *

  Something is clogging up the air in the botánica. My eyes are watering, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m getting all emo from thinking about Giovanni or if some thickness has settled over the room. No, it’s definitely not me. I peek through the aisles, but Eliades is hidden behind a bookshelf. I can’t inhale fully; my breath stops at the top of my chest and makes me cough. I’m just thinking how strange it is that there’s no actual smoke when the smoke alarm goes off. My heart is in my ears, pounding away, before I can even leap into action. All these saints, all this spiritual power—and yes, let’s be honest, some of it is junk, but there’s plenty of sacred relics too—I can’t be the one that let it all go up in flames. I leap out from behind the counter, scanning the air around me for signs of smoke.

  But there’s nothing there. No smoke. No flames. I still have to fight to tug oxygen down my trachea though, and my vision is getting foggy. “Eliades!” I yell, but the bleating alarm blots it out. I stand up on a chair and a fiddle with the plastic thing till it shuts up. Then I look around.

  It’s back. Eliades’ words echo through my head over and over again. It’s back. I didn’t even bother asking what—it’s not my business and what could I do about it anyway? It’s back. He elongated the It in that way people do when they’re talking about something they don’t want to speak out loud, like just saying it was a punch in the gut. It’s back.

  “Eliades?”

  The room is so quiet now. I don’t even hear the traffic outside or the shoppers around the corner on Graham or the bachata that usually streams out of the music store across the street. “Eliades?” I sound like such a little girl—pathetic. I’m standing on this chair, looking like an arch idiot, gazing over a perfectly still room. Awesomely, I left my cell back on the desk. I could call Baba Eddie, but I don’t want to move from right here. Somehow I’m positive that if I move, it
’s all over. So I don’t. I wait.

  * * *

  I gasped when I realized we weren’t alone in the woods. The men standing around us—they didn’t walk there; we would’ve heard them. They just appeared out of the darkness. There were six of them. They had white, almost greenish skin, broad shoulders, bugged-out eyes, and smirking, deeply lined faces. They hunched over slightly, all of them the same way, but their arms were long, too long. I almost screamed when I noticed them, but I kept it in. They just stood there, staring at Jeremy’s entrancing performance much like Gio was. Ever so slowly, I wrapped my little hand around Gio’s wrist. He was about to shush me but I squeezed, squeezed so hard he shut up. When he finally saw the men, he let out just the tiniest of gasps. I thought it was too loud, but they didn’t look over, just kept those pushed-out eyes squinting straight ahead at Jeremy’s house. The air filled with whispers, a dissonant hissing and occasional mumbled words: come, one, master, breaker, only one, come.

  Then they started walking, all at the same time. They moved through the trees into the backyard. It was a slow, deliberate walk, each step careful and precise, long arms dangling by their sides. I couldn’t stop staring at them, but something else was tweaking my attention in the corner of my eye. Something was moving. I looked towards it, but it was so dark, the trees were just shadows against the night. Still, there was movement. The trees—the trees were moving. They were alive somehow, shifting, writhing in the darkness.

  No. I stepped closer to look at the nearest one to me. No, it was alive with insects. Shiny-backed cockroaches swarmed over the thing, the big kind. But they weren’t the normal dark orange color; they were pale, almost pink.

  I opened my mouth to scream and a hand wrapped around it. I was about to start fighting for my life when I smelled that shea butter/BO mix that I knew so well. Giovanni. He lifted me up and turned me around. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he hissed. “Don’t even fucking cry.”

  I nodded, tears streaming down my face. Giovanni would make everything all right. He always did. Giovanni would get me out of here.