“Pheus. You told me yourself, you saw a boy with curly hair. You saw him rattle the windows. You heard the babies screaming out like an alarm, alerting us. Ato was there, and then a second later he vanished,” I say. “I’m asking you to believe me. Believe me. Please.”
I can’t stop the tears from falling. I’m begging him. Pheus, a boy I barely know, to truly see me. I didn’t make this whole thing up. Our connection is real. The moment in the stairwell happened. The time he sang to me on the beach. Something unexplainable connects me to Pheus and Pheus to me. He can’t allow fear to sever this tie. Pheus can’t abandon me, not now.
He gets up again. He’s scared. I’m losing him because of it. I get up, too, and face him. I seek any kind of bridge. I search deep in his eyes, and for a long moment we stare at each other. My heart pounds loudly. He must hear it. Feel it.
Pheus, believe me. Please.
But soon he averts his eyes.
I was wrong. I thought I was enough to change his mind. I’m proven once again to be utterly alone. But this embarrassment will not bury me into a sense of complacency. I can’t afford that. I will stop Ato. If Pheus and Penelope are unable to join me in this battle, so be it. I rub away the tears. Disappointment will only weaken me. I let anger fuel me forward instead of despair.
I turn to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Pheus says. “Where are you going?”
I don’t answer him. I wish I could take back what I said, all of it. Pheus and his stupid songs. His saccharine declarations meant to charm. Worthless in the face of horror.
“Eury, you got to understand. This is new to me. I am trying to figure this out. To process it.” He pleads for me not to leave. “What you are telling me is … wild.”
Pheus stops himself from using the word “crazy.” Of course. The word follows me like a scarlet letter.
“I’ll give you as much time as you need,” I say.
He is reluctant to let me pass, but eventually he does.
My family sees only a broken girl and now Pheus will see this as well. I don’t slam the door behind me. To do so would be too much of a cliché. Instead, I close it softly.
“How was mass?”
I try my best to not let Titi Sylvia see my red face. My long hair aids in concealing me.
“Fine,” I say and quickly walk to the bathroom.
People will eventually fail you. This is inevitable. This was true with my father, with Ato, and now with Pheus. Even with the allure of notes played on his guitar, Pheus floundered.
Why did I trust him? I fell for Pheus like every dumb girl in this neighborhood must have fallen countless times before.
“Eury, are you okay?”
My aunt softly raps on the bathroom door. I have to present myself. She can’t see me upset.
“My stomach hurts. I must be getting my period.”
“Oh,” she says. “There’s Motrin in the medicine cabinet. Take two. You want me to make you soup?”
“No, Titi. I should be okay.”
I splash more cold water. I can’t get Pheus’s look of pity out of my head. He saw Ato. He did! For someone who says he believes only what’s in front of him, surely that was more than enough proof. For the first time ever I had an anchor, a token connecting me to another. Ato wasn’t all in my head—he was real, and Pheus saw him. Despite that, Pheus rejected me because he wanted a logical explanation that doesn’t exist.
Relationships are finite. Every single one of them. It’s what I’ve learned. I have to safeguard my heart. Protect this body from those who want to harm it. Even Pheus.
CHAPTER 13
Pheus
Let’s be real. Eury is asking too much. She’s talking about spirits. What the hell do I know about that stuff? Nothing. Nada.
And yet.
And yet, I saw what I saw. I heard the door and windows shake as if something was trying to get into the basement. I saw the boy. I saw him with my own eyes. This trigueñito dude. He looked a little out of place. He gave the impression of someone who had just arrived from the island. A little green. His halo of curly hair and the clothes he had on seemed out of date. I saw him long enough to get a sense homeboy wasn’t from the neighborhood; long enough to get the feeling he wasn’t down. The anger I felt was real. I was about to bash his head in. Rough him up and get to the bottom of why he’s terrorizing Eury. There was no plan really. I was making decisions straight from the gut.
A quick turn of my head and he was gone. Nowhere to be found. I’ve seen shorties book. We each have innate skills when it comes to living in the city. Pops taught me how to enter a room, place your back to the wall, and count the exits. This boy could have the same type of skills. Someone who can blend in and out, cause Eury to second-guess herself.
Eury said his name was Ato. She knew him from Puerto Rico. A spirit.
This can’t be happening. I don’t know anything about anything about spectral stuff. Moms didn’t bring me up that way. She raised me to see the world as it is: I have to work harder than everyone else. Strangers will build a false narrative based solely on hearing my last name or seeing me. Real, tangible obstacles meant to keep me down. Ato is a spirit. How do I respond to that? There are no such things as ghosts.
I’m taken right back to North Carolina when we were visiting Grandma Lynn, way before she became ill. The memory hits me raw.
One Thanksgiving, when I was ten years old, we visited Moms’s family. I spent most of my time with my cousins Jay and Rudy. Jay was my age, his sister a year older. Thanksgiving in their home meant a different type of freedom. BBQs and green grass. Their upbringing was so different from mine. Nature was always just outside their door. Even then, I knew what envy felt like.
That year Jay and Rudy were going on about how the tree outside their house was haunted. “Bad things happened there,” they said. Jay told me to never climb the branches. If I stared too long, I could see them staring back. He didn’t say who “they” were.
One night the cousins and I decided to explore. We armed ourselves with flashlights. I was determined to find out more about the tree. What were they talking about? As their stories became more and more sensational, my curiosity intensified. Why did they get strange beings living in trees? There was nothing like that in the city. What made Rudy and Jay so special? Even back then I thought they were a little dumb. Jay was held back a year. Rudy was smarter, but she was a girl, and so I thought she probably didn’t know any better.
“Go on.” Rudy kept pushing me toward the big oak tree, daring me. In the darkness the leaves on the tree made ominous shadows. Even the night noises seemed heightened.
“I’m not scared,” I said.
My father’s from the Bronx. What could a tree hold on my long lineage of resistance? Nothing, I thought.
When I stood under the branches and took the slowest look up, coldness covered my back, and I had trouble breathing. I squinted. Really tried to see. Something was staring down at me. Two glowing eyes, fluorescent red. Glaring.
I ran. Let my scrawny legs drag me as far away as possible from those devil eyes.
Behind me, my cousins cracked up. They rolled on the floor, hiccupping and punching each other. They called me country. I was the backward one, not my cousins.
“I thought people from the city were smart,” they said.
Back then I swore I saw something up in that tree. The eyes haunted me for days until Moms reprimanded my cousins for putting notions in my head.
“Stop this foolishness,” she said. And that was that. My cousins and I went on playing, but I avoided the tree the whole time.
Eury wants me to look up into them branches again. I can’t. I’m scared, straight up. I don’t have it in me, so it’s easier to dismiss her.
Damn. I’m some real-ass punk. But it’s my father’s voice that’s telling me to be safe, don’t be stupid. Isn’t that what I’m doing?
The sound of the doorknob turning trips me out. I jolt up and grab my guitar, ready
to strike whatever comes through the door.
“What the hell?” Pops yells. “What kind of games you playing?”
He’s pissed, tired from working and now having to deal with his paranoid son.
“Jesus. I can’t come to my own place without getting accosted.” Pops stomps to the bathroom and turns the shower on.
What kind of man am I if I can’t even face the opening of a door? I ain’t shit. Eury deserves better than my weak self. Music—including performing like a programmed robot onstage—is what I can offer. Not much else.
“What’s wrong with you?” Pops still sounds annoyed, even after the shower. He opens the refrigerator, grabs butter and the carton of eggs.
“Nothing.”
I can tell Pops anything, but I can’t formulate what Eury told me. The stuff that happened at church. I’m still processing it in my head. I wouldn’t know where to begin even if I tried.
He lifts the mug Eury held on to earlier but never took a sip from.
“You entertaining people here?”
Pops usually doesn’t mind having Jaysen or the other guys in the apartment. As for girls, there’s an unspoken rule: I’m not allowed to bring them here. Mom doesn’t want it and neither does Pops. I’ve never once broken this rule. Not with Melaina, not with anyone, except Eury. It didn’t cross my mind how I was disrespecting my father’s apartment. Eury needed solace and the apartment offered that. Well, it did until the moment she asked for true help and I bailed.
“Eury was here, she’s Penelope’s cousin.”
“You know how I feel about that.” The butter sizzles on the pan.
“She needed help.” My voice raises way too many levels. I’m angrier over my own crap than breaking Pops’s rule, but I am still foolish enough to try it with him.
“First, you are swinging a guitar to my face. Second, you bring a girl here when you are not allowed to have friends over without me knowing.” He smashes the egg hard. Anger is simmering inside him too. Pops turns the heat down on the pan.
“Living here for the summer means you abide by the rules. If you are not feeling them for some reason, we talk it out,” he says. “But the options are plain. You abide by them or we got a problem.”
“I got a problem.”
Pops gives me a hard stare. He thinks this is about having a girl over. It’s not. I am struggling, and I don’t know who to turn to or what to do.
“It’s not that. I mean. Forget it,” I say, defeated. “I’m sorry. I’ll never bring a person here unless you know about it.”
I go to the sofa. It’s at this moment that I wish I had my very own room instead of the living room. There is no door for me to close and block out everyone. I want to hide the shame I’m feeling as I go over how I treated Eury when she asked for help. Deep guilt for not being strong. Denying her straight to her face.
The spoon slams down on the plate. Pops is the only man I know who likes to eat his food with a spoon. He says he can get more bang for the buck, scoop food up like a shovel. I grew up thinking this is how men eat until Mom’s boyfriend pointed out my errors when he took me to a fancy Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. He made a joke. It never once bothered Mom how I used to eat with a spoon just like my father. The way Mom laughed along with her boyfriend, I knew I was wrong. I was country. Somewhere my cousins were still laughing at me.
It takes a while for Pops to talk to me, but I knew he would. Pops is not the type of person to stay angry.
“Let’s start over, son.” The strong aroma of ginger fills the air. He grates his own into a tea. When I have an upset stomach, he makes me drink a cup. The smell of ginger is the smell of healing.
“Sorry I violated your trust,” I say.
“I accept your apology. What else is weighing on you?”
I’m not sure how to answer him. I would have to admit how I failed Eury, how I will probably continue to flounder. And does it really matter? I’m probably dead to Eury now. She will never talk to me, and I don’t blame her.
“A friend asked me to believe in something outside of my scope,” I say. “I don’t know.”
Pops lets the heat of the mug warm his fingers. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer and a hundred degrees, Pops will forever sip tea.
“Eury?”
“Yeah. She’s going through things. I thought I could help her, but now I’m not sure I can.”
“What makes you so certain? Why are you saying no before you even try?”
Because she’s talking about ghosts. Because I’m afraid. But I don’t say these things.
“What if I don’t know how? What if she’s asking me to believe in things not based on logic?”
He shakes his head. Pops is so disappointed.
“I never thought I raised you to quit before even beginning,” he says. “This world is filled with things outside of what is deemed reality. The horrors we are meant to take in every single day. Microaggressions. Blatant aggressions. Violence. Surviving the streets every day is a miracle. How does logic play into the everyday terrors we are meant to overcome?”
He talks slow, draws out each word as if he’s living every moment he’s had to deal with bullshit. The burden weighs.
“Find compassion. If your friend is in need and you can help, then you are meant to do so,” he says. “I’m not saying put your life in danger, but act with intelligence. You’re the historian. Books are your weapons. Use them. Arm yourself with knowledge.”
He’s right. I dismissed Eury before even trying to do some research. I could have asked her questions, tried to get into the history of what’s been going on. Created a timeline. All those things. Instead I built up a wall made of fear.
“She probably won’t have anything to do with me now, not after how I reacted.”
Pops gets up and pats my shoulder.
“Then you know what you have to do next. Don’t you? Mend your ways.”
The work is before me. Pops takes his mug and heads toward his room.
“I raised you to be a fighter. To be smart. Don’t fall into doubt now. It’s not part of your DNA,” he says before entering his bedroom.
I grab my phone and send Eury a text. An apology. The phone rings, and I swear it’s her.
“Yo, they changed things up. The Dīs-traction owners want to move the concert up. We are slotted for this Friday instead,” Jaysen says on the other end. “Only five days to get ready.”
Jaysen rambles on and on about the club. Singing at a nightclub is the last thing I want to do. Eury doesn’t respond to my text. How do I make this right?
“Bro, are you listening to me? We got to impress the owner.”
“Yes. This Friday,” I say. “Gotta go. Check in later.”
I hit Eury with another text. I know she read it. Nothing. It’s early. I head downstairs and knock on Penelope’s door with the hope Eury answers it.
“Yes?”
Penelope’s mom eyes me through the door’s peephole.
“Hi. I’m Pheus. I live upstairs. Is Eury around?”
“What do you want with her?” She is not going to open this door.
“I just want to speak to her for a second.”
I can hear her step away. Imagine her walking over to Eury. There is mumbling I can’t make out. If only Penelope had answered the door. I would have bypassed her mother or at the very least got a message to Eury.
The door unexpectedly opens. Penelope’s mom glares back at me with a distrusting face.
“Eury’s not feeling well. She does not want to talk to you.”
She slams the door shut before I can respond. It’s definitely going down like that. No way around it. I got to take action and make this right. Eury reached out to me and I slapped her hand away. Now I have to rectify this situation.
CHAPTER 14
Eury
Penelope smells like the ocean. The familiar scent permeates the bedroom, and thoughts of home overwhelm me. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away or what new city I land
in, the island is never far from my thoughts. A scent, a familiar phrase uttered by someone, a song. Signs are presented to me on a daily or sometimes hourly basis, beckoning me back.
My cousin throws herself on the bed. Seconds later she grabs my shoulders and forces me to join. I allow myself to topple with her. I close my eyes and settle into pangs of homesickness mixed with the painful betrayal I’m trying to conceal.
“Aaron is so sweet,” Penelope says. “He gave me this.”
She shows me a heart-shaped gold necklace, the type of jewelry we would have wished for back when we were younger. I try my best to seem interested, to continue to pretend that everything between us is fine.
“I know. It’s not like we are in junior high. It’s mad corny. Still I think it’s cute,” she says. “Aaron’s definitely going to get some.”
Penelope places her head against mine. We stay like this for a while, a position we would hold for hours when she would come visit me.
“Prima, Mami mentioned Pheus came by asking for you.” She’s eager for Pheus and me to be something. Perhaps she thinks Pheus can save me, a distraction to lift me out of this darkness.
“Yes, he did,” I say. I move my head away from her. She notices.
“You don’t like Pheus like that?”
There’s a long pause. Pheus and my family think I’m losing it, and maybe I am. It’s impossible to explain what is unexplainable. Each time I open my heart and tell the truth, I am crushed. I can’t do it anymore. I will seal myself off from feeling anything. Lock myself up in my aunt’s apartment until the summer is over. These walls will keep me safe from Ato. For now.
“No. I don’t like him like that.”
Penelope sits up straight and stares at me. She waits for me to break from what I said. Penelope wasn’t there when Pheus doubted my story. Pheus heard the windows shaking. He was just as scared as I was. We witnessed it together, and yet it wasn’t enough.
My phone buzzes again, and I know it is Pheus leaving me another message. I’ve ignored every one of them. Seconds later, Penelope’s phone goes off. Pheus is trying to contact me. Penelope glances at her phone.
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