Because of the Sun

by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Jenny Torres Sanchez

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Torres Sanchez, Jenny, author.

  Title: Because of the sun / Jenny Torres Sanchez.

  Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2017] | Summary: Seventeen-year-old Dani struggles with how to process the ambiguous grief she feels in the aftermath of her mother’s death after moving to New Mexico with an aunt she never met.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015050826 (print) | LCCN 2016024855 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-399-55145-1 (trade hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-399-55146-8 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-399-55148-2 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1913-5 (intl. tr. pbk.)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Grief—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Family Problems—Fiction. | Aunts—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T6457245 Bec 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.T6457245 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780399551482

  Book design by Trish Parcell, adapted for ebook.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Para mis queridos padres,

  Miriam y David

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  What I remember is the shell-pink nail polish. Even as I looked at it, her pinky finger dangling with that frosty color, I wondered, Why this? Why am I noticing this?

  It’s strange how your mind can split into so many different bits and pieces, slivers of it sending a thousand different messages. Scream. Run. Or Careful, careful, don’t startle the bear. Other parts recall a television show about worst-case scenarios that tell you Don’t make eye contact, play dead, even as your lungs send a distress signal and your brain reminds you to Breathe.

  Now a part insists She’s dead. Look at the blood. Another insists She can’t be. Another laughs at the absurdity and assures you Don’t worry, none of this is real.

  And then there’s the part that registers shell-pink nail polish. Delicate and pretty and coating her nails perfectly, making them look like seashells. You can hardly take your eyes off it, even as another part takes in

  her dangling pinky,

  the look on her face,

  how her body is sprawled out,

  the pink of the pool water,

  and the bear…

  She asked me if I wanted to sit out near the pool with her and I didn’t. I told her it was too hot, and besides it was the last two weeks of school and I had end-of-year exams to study for. But she didn’t even let me finish before she started shaking her head and talking over me. God, Dani. Have some fucking fun for once, would you? she said as she splashed some vodka into her lemonade.

  But I did have exams. And it was too hot. It was always too hot. And even if it wasn’t officially summer yet, it was always summer in Florida, the sun was always blinding, and we, me and her, we were always like this. I couldn’t think of a worse way to spend the afternoon than with my mother, telling me all the ways I was stunted or terrible or not like her.

  I looked at her from the corner of my eye, taking in another of her barely there bikinis and too-tan skin.

  “You’re going to get skin cancer,” I told her because I couldn’t help myself.

  She laughed, shook her head. “Well, we all die of something, Dani. Who the hell cares if it’s skin cancer or something else.” She took a sip of her drink, then flipped her long blond hair with hardly a glance in my direction, the way she always did when she was done with me. When she couldn’t care less what I said next.

  I don’t know why I hated her. Or I do know, but the reasons, they don’t translate to words. All I know is she made it hard to breathe, and a tightness would shoot across my chest, from one shoulder to another, and press down on me. And somehow I hated myself. Just because I was her daughter. Her terrible daughter, as she liked to remind me.

  I watched her open the sliding glass door that led to the pool and the patio and then close it behind her. I watched her untie her top and lie down on her stomach, taking her time to get comfortable even though the yard wasn’t fenced in. Even though the neighbors on either side could look out and see her and often did. She knew it, too. She reveled in it.

  I watched her. I watched every move she made. And I thought, I’ll never be like you.

  I waited to see if you would look at me. But you closed your eyes.

  One of my tests she always failed.

  So I went to my room, that empty, self-satisfied feeling enveloping me in a cloud of self-hatred. Because, oh, how you made me hate myself. You made me want to cover up from head to toe, wish to be anything but your daughter. I flopped on my bed, pulling out from under me notes and study guides that were now useless because my head was too full with you. With anger and rage for you. With how you shoved your way into my every thought when all I wanted was to get away from you.

  I plugged in my headphones. Turned the music up so loud it hurt my head and left no room for you. Turned it up so I could be anywhere but there. Turned it up so I’d forget about school and you half-dressed in the backyard for all the world to see.

  I guess that’s why I didn’t hear you screaming.

  I stay with our neighbor Helen. Helen is odd but nice. She’s maybe forty and lives alone. Her eyes are small, impossible to read, and her face is so pale and doughy that her expressions seem to melt into each other until there’s just one—a mixture of complacency and boredom.

  She tried to be Mom’s friend, but Mom didn’t pay much attention to her. Helen doesn’t wear bikinis or attract men.

  Helen told the child services lady that I can stay with her until they figure out what to do with me. I told the child services lady I can take care of myself. I’ve always taken care of myself. I’m almost eighteen, but she looked at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. So I finally said Yeah, I’ll stay with Helen. In fact, I told her, I always stayed with Helen because Helen and Mom were best friends. I don’t know why I said that. But Helen just nodded and the lady agreed.

  I’m glad. Especially with so many television cameras outside, and trappers looking for the black bear that came for Mom. They search for him like he’s a serial killer. People are told to stay inside. Nobody lies out in the sun like she did. Nobody ever did, anyway. The night is filled with the flashing lights of police cars and black trucks roaming the streets.

  But I am safe in Helen’s stuffy little house. I like the way it closes in around me, holding me down. I like being somewhere unfamiliar, under so many thick blankets and pillows that smell like dust, where no one can find me. I pretend I’m a bug that can go unnoticed. I almost wish I’d wake up as an insect, with no memory of my human self.

>   But my brain betrays me. It keeps flashing, short-circuiting. It keeps zapping me with electricity.

  I see myself coming downstairs and looking out the sliding glass door. I didn’t even scream. But the bear saw me anyway, and for a moment, I thought he would charge. Instead he just turned and walked off.

  There were a few neighbors who came out, trying to distract him. Old and frail Mr. Sterling, banging on a pot, half his body out the door, the other half inside, guarding Mrs. Sterling, who watched with her hand to her mouth, ready to retreat and slam the door if necessary. And the man who lived two houses down from us, who washed his car when you did, and his son, home from college, I guess. They both ran to you when the bear finally turned and left. They yelled something at me and I tried to understand but I couldn’t make sense of the sounds coming from their mouths. I just stood there, because of that part of my brain telling me none of it was real anyway.

  Not your exposed breasts.

  Not the blood.

  None of it.

  If you hadn’t just been mauled, you would have enjoyed the attention.

  My brain zaps. And now I see how you smile at a man standing over you. You touch his cheek; your nails against his skin. And you wrap your arms around his neck and tell him you love him. Then you kiss him.

  Electricity fills my body and mind and I wonder if this is what it feels like to be struck by lightning. I wonder if I can be zapped enough to burn all the memories.

  Then there you are again, standing by the pool.

  This time there is no bear.

  No neighbors.

  Nothing.

  Just you. Looking at the sky. Your throat throbbing with a silent scream.

  Why are you screaming?

  I see my reflection in the glass door and I think, That girl doesn’t exist. And I’m zapped again and it is dark and I am the girl in Helen’s house trying to piece her brain back together. Choosing which parts I will keep. Which parts I can do without.

  The part that tells me it never happened is the part I like best.

  It was some other mother. Some other girl. Not you. You’ve never had a mother. You’ve always been on your own. Big deal. There are so many orphans in the world.

  Right.

  That’s all. I’m just another orphan who has no idea who her parents were.

  That’s the best way to think about it. I don’t even feel sorry for myself.

  What makes me so special anyway?

  The cameras leave in the morning but return two days later, in the blazing-hot afternoon, because the black bear has been captured. I watch the reporters and cameras from Helen’s living room, from behind sheer white curtains. One reporter’s shirt is damp, stained with wet spots on the back.

  Two hours later, I see that reporter on the television, the house we lived in and Helen’s house in the background. His face is glistening as he announces that the bear will be euthanized.

  I focus on the window behind him. I watch the white curtains I was standing behind move ever so slightly. I am there. And I laugh because I am everywhere.

  On the couch.

  Behind the curtains.

  In the television.

  Then the reporter is wearing different clothes. I wonder how he changed so quickly, but realize I’m in another day, watching another report, a follow-up to that horrific story we brought you earlier this week about the black bear that killed a woman in her own backyard.

  The camera pans our front yard, showing animal rights activists who are picketing and holding up signs that read SAVE THE BEAR! IT’S NOT HIS FAULT!

  I study their hot, angry faces.

  Whose fault is it? I ask them.

  But the activists just hold their signs up higher.

  Not his! they say.

  I get up and look out the front window but nobody is there. I click off the television and settle back on the couch, where I stare at the black screen until darkness fills my head and sleep takes over. I feel far away, but I see myself right there on Helen’s couch. I see the television buzz to life again.

  This time the bear is on the screen, with handcuffs and chains around his paws. I see guards leading him down a long hall to a room.

  Dead bear walking!

  He could overpower both guards in seconds, disembowel them with a swipe of one paw. But he is calm. He allows them to strap him to a white cot. They watch the clock. No phones ring.

  He turns his head and looks at me with his two great glistening eyes.

  But I won’t look in his eyes. I look at his paws, bristly and leathery.

  They administer the first injection. Then a second one. And then he closes his eyes and lets out a low groan as they push in the third.

  A vet enters, listens for a heartbeat. He nods and they pull a white sheet over the bear. Someone draws a curtain closed on one side of the television. Then the other. And there is only a black screen again.

  I go to sleep that night in the same room at Helen’s, the one that smells of old dust and salty skin and feels both strange and familiar. I dream I am the vet at the execution. But every time I listen for the bear’s heartbeat, I can still hear it, thumping loudly. They give him a fourth, a fifth, a sixth injection. Still it beats on.

  The straps on his limbs dissolve as I listen again.

  He reaches up and caresses my hair.

  Shhhhhhhh, he says. Shhhhhhhh.

  I almost believe he’s sorry.

  But then I’m scared. Because his soft whisper sounds like waking up in the middle of the night and realizing darkness has limbs and teeth; darkness breathes and is standing over you, ready to put his heavy paw over your mouth.

  Play dead, my brain commands.

  On one of these nights, as I lie in my room at Helen’s, I remember there are exams and bubbles and blank pages waiting to be filled with my No. 2 pencil. I decide I’m tired of the reporter and his sweat-stained shirt.

  The next morning, I wake up early and go to my house to get ready for school. The street is deserted and dark when I step outside, so I almost don’t see the guy sitting on his motorcycle until he calls out to me.

  “Hey, kid,” he says. I don’t think he knows my name. I’ve only really talked to him a few times, but he was Mom’s latest boyfriend. My brain does something funny with the word latest. Black marks slash out the middle t and e. Her last.

  I walk over to him because I don’t know what else to do. Maybe he forgot something here and came back to get it.

  He takes out a cigarette, offers me one. I shake my head.

  He stares at the house. “I was out, hanging with some buddies tonight, and then everyone went home. And I started this way, you know, before I remembered.” He looks at me like I should feel sorry for him. “I’d forgotten. Isn’t that crazy? Nearly ran off the road, into a tree, when I remembered. But I couldn’t turn back, something wouldn’t let me, so I just kept going. Anyway, here I am.” He looks at the house, then at me, like I should know what to do. Like I can go inside and tell her he’s here and watch her put on lipstick and rush about, only to lean against the front door the way she would, pretending she didn’t care.

  “Good woman…” He shakes his head, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

  I think he was the one who paid for the funeral. I think he was the one who arranged it all. I don’t know. He’s a pseudo biker, has an office day job; I know that much. Mom once said he wasn’t a “real” biker, but he would do for now. I almost feel like telling him She was just using you. And you were just using her, right? But at some point she would’ve thought she loved you and she would’ve begged you to stay. But you wouldn’t have. Because she can’t hide who she is forever.

  “You all right?” he asks, as if suddenly remembering she was my mother. Then he gives me a funny look. “Wait. Are you staying here?”

  I shake my head. “With a neighbor.” My voice sounds funny and I wonder when I last spoke.

  “Oh,” he says, nodding. He searches his pockets and takes
out some money. “Here,” he says, pressing a bunch of bills into my hand. “Take this. In case you need anything.”

  I stare at the money, a neat roll of bills, like the ones Mom had at the beginning of each month for the last few months. I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to be like her, but it sits in my palm as he starts up his bike with a roar and says, “Anyway, I gotta go. You take care of yourself.” He tips his head in my direction, revs the engine, and maneuvers the bike away from me. I watch him ride off, the red lights still bright in the dark before dawn.

  A part of me panics, wants to run after him and yell Wait, don’t go! I can’t stay with Helen forever! What do I do? But I force myself to stand still, silent, as I watch him speed down the road. And I laugh, reminding myself You don’t even know his name.

  Tom. I think his name was Tom.

  I go to my house and quickly get ready. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Get ready quickly. But my eyes notice the vodka bottle on the counter where she left it, and for a minute, I think maybe if she’d been sober, she would’ve known what to do.

  You play dead.

  I notice a pair of her shorts on the couch, flimsy, bright shorts she got in the teen section of Walmart. Shorts I’d never wear.

  I remember this movie I saw once, where some woman’s mother died. And the daughter goes to the closet and smells her clothes. Takes big, deep breaths of her mother’s scent.

  I zip up my jeans. I put on socks. I grab a sweater I don’t need.

  I won’t go in her room. I won’t go in there and take deep huffs of sex. Of vodka and thick perfume. I won’t go into her bathroom, where she kept a basket full of bright nail polish on the counter. I won’t search for the shell-pink she must have bought when? Why? I won’t carry it with me.

  I won’t think of her.

  If you took all that away, what would she have smelled like?

  In the movie, the daughter cries as she holds a piece of her mother’s clothing to her chest, like she’s bleeding and this shirt or blouse or something is stopping the blood from spilling all over the floor.