by Ali Merci
“Hi,” her father responded with an uncertain smile. “I thought you’d be walking home as usual.”
“It was cold,” Asa spoke up then. “I didn’t want her to walk all the way in this weather. Despite telling her last week, she still won’t wear a sweater.”
“Thank you,” her father nodded courteously, “for looking after her.”
Asa shrugged awkwardly. “It was no problem.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “She’s actually quite entertaining.”
Carmen’s eyes snapped to Asa’s whose cheeks seemed to grow slightly pink when he realised what he’d just said.
“Yes,” her father replied dryly. “I figured as much considering you’ve been parked outside my house for a total of forty-five minutes now.”
“Dad.” Carmen chuckled uneasily. “Relax, we were just talking.”
“Of course.” He smiled, turning away his calculating eyes from Asa and looking at her with fondness. “Was just stating a fact, that’s all.”
“Of course, you were,” Carmen replied, shaking her head slightly as she gathered her things and got out of the truck. “Bye, Asa. See you tomorrow?”
Asa looked away from watching her father cautiously, and something in his expression instantly softened the second his eyes landed on Carmen. “Of course, wouldn’t want you to miss my first go at being a tour guide.”
“You’ll do great, wise one.” She grinned, slamming the door shut and waving as he rolled his eyes and drove off.
“Tour guide?” her father’s voice interrupted the almost giddy bubble that had begun to envelope her. “So, he’s the one you’ll be hanging out with tomorrow? Along with the new kid?”
Carmen turned around to squint at her dad. “Yeah. That’s not a problem, is it?” she asked quietly, pulling in her bottom lip and chewing on the rightmost corner of it.
Her father sighed, placing a hand on the back of her shoulders and urging her forward as they walked back to their home. “No, it’s not a problem. I’m just worried, that’s all. It’s a dad thing, honey. Don’t think too much about it.”
“You’re sure, right?” she asked hesitantly.
“Pretty sure.” He smiled down at her, opening the door and leading her in before entering the house himself and letting the door shut close after them. “He just seems like one of those jock types. I don’t want you to end up hurt. Or worse.”
Carmen froze in her tracks on the way to her room.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered, her voice trembling and her eyes blinking back angry tears. “That is so not fair, Dad. You of all people should know not to jump to conclusions.”
“Keeping you safe is my priority,” he said, unfazed. “I don’t care about the rest.”
“I don’t want to be kept safe at the cost of putting someone else down,” she said slowly. “If we ourselves won’t adapt an understanding mind, how can we expect for anything to change with our world, Dad?”
“I owe this world nothing,” he told her, his sea-green eyes boring into her own with so much pain in them. Carmen never wanted to die more than she did in that moment. “All it has done is take. And take. And ta—” His voice cracked, and his eyes immediately fell to the floor.
It was one of those nights again, when everything was falling apart. When the ground beneath her feet was shaking so violently like it was going to spit back out all the horrifying secrets this house had to bury along with her mother’s coffin into the ground.
Her mother remained dead, but the terrible things that led to her demise didn’t. It was alive in the hibiscus bushes that her mother had planted along the edges of their front lawn. It was alive in the absence of her face in any of the family photographs that sat on the mantelpiece in the living room.
It was alive in the way the look in her father’s eyes held the remnants of a heart that was broken forever. It was alive in Carmen’s existence itself, in the way she was never born whole but with a fractured soul that she was always trying to fill up with something that would take the horrors away.
It never worked, though. Nothing ever filled her up.
It was just one of those times again, when she thought this world was indeed a cruel place. She wanted to just set it on fire and watch it burn to ashes and dust. But she recalled her conversation with Asa and continued towards her room, where she stood in front of the mirror and looked at her reflection.
But it didn’t work. She saw herself breathing, living, existing. And it had the complete opposite effect on her. She might’ve told Asa that he needed to use his own self as an anchor when things got too much, to remind himself that his existence was something that made this world seem less cruel, and she’d meant every single word. She did.
But looking into the mirror never worked when the problem wasn’t with the rest of the world but with you.
She looked into that mirror, and she loathed what she saw there.
When the rest of the world was asleep, she would find herself on the floor, lying helplessly as everything around her crumbled to dust yet again, with her heart dying again along with her mother.
She’d been the wings of too many broken people who were weighed down by burdens that weren’t theirs to carry, but she’d never learn to grow a pair herself.
Her wings had been clipped off long before she could even fathom the concept of flying, and it’d always remain that way.
32.
What Falling In Love Feels Like
All the way back home, Asa couldn’t help but think about how much Carmen’s dad’s sand-coloured hair and sea-green eyes contrasted with Carmen’s midnight hair and stormy grey eyes.
They looked nothing alike. Even their facial features were completely different that there was no way, really, to tell that those two shared the same blood, let alone be parent and child.
Was she adopted? Asa didn’t really know, and despite sharing a few emotionally intimate moments and blurring the lines of their friendship recently, he still thought it was too soon for him to ask her something deeply personal like that. Hell, he didn’t think it would even be acceptable to ask such a question, regardless of what the relationship between two people were.
But, goddamn, Carmen was everything, and he wanted to take his time peeling back layers after layers of her soul and memorising every single curve, edge and vertex of her existence.
Existence.
She’d said that his existence was proof enough that this world wasn’t too terrible a place.
Something exploded in his chest and seeped into his veins, running through his bloodstream like its sole purpose was to flush out the poison Hunter and the others like him had poured into Asa’s being. As if it was on a mission to wash out the venom that had manifested itself in him as Isla’s words—and others’—had pierced into his flesh and his bones.
Carmen believed he made this world seem less cruel. Carmen believed that.
Asa wondered if she also believed that she turned everything she looked at and touched into magic, because he swore she’d left her imprint on his skin where her palm had made contact with his cheek in the gentlest of gestures. For the first time in forever, he was looking at his reflection through the rear-view mirror like there was something worth looking back at.
If Asa’s existence dimmed the world’s ugliness, then he was pretty sure it was Carmen’s presence that lit it up in all its beautiful places.
She lit it up with the touch of galaxies she carried in her veins, and the constellations she weaved with her fingertips whenever they brushed against something that nobody else would spare a second glance to.
Just as he pulled his truck into his driveway, his eyes snuck a glance at the empty passenger seat next to him.
She wasn’t seated there right now, but there were loose threads hanging from the edge of the seat where her fingers had been picking at it without her being aware of her actions. Asa’s eyes had drunk it all in though.
She wasn’t by his side right then, but she still left traces
of her in his truck. Whether it was a strand of her dark hair that was lying on the headrest, or the belt buckle she’d tucked further into the seat, or even a few pieces that’d fallen off one of her shoes’ peeling logo.
Asa had been completely oblivious to her existence before he’d taken the journal, thinking it belonged to Willa, but now that she’d planted herself in his world, there was just no going back.
Carmen had built herself a home in his very being and he didn’t know how to burn it down without setting his own heart on fire.
She was everywhere: a few seats down in his AP Lit class, right behind him in AP Cal, the ghost of her touch in the vacant spot in the passenger seat of his truck, the table at the leftmost corner of the cafeteria that his eyes always found against his permission, in the paint stains he’d find on the bottom edges of the school walls and even in all the scattered autumn leaves that decorated the city’s streets and pavements.
She was everywhere without needing to be physically present; she just left pieces of herself in every nook and corner of Asa’s world. There was no going back, not unless Carmen herself plucked her presence out of Asa’s life and left without another glance back.
•••
“Ma!” Asa called out as he let the front door slam shut to announce his arrival. “I’m home!”
“Great!” he heard her yell back from the living room. “You can see yourself out!”
Asa’s grin slipped off his face, and he quickly kicked off his shoes, taking huge strides towards the direction of her voice.
“Why on earth would I do that?” he asked, staring at her in bewilderment. His mind raced through the past few days, trying to pinpoint any particular incident that he must’ve taken part in to annoy his mother.
“Oh, hey,” a familiar voice reached his ears and Asa looked past his mother’s shoulders to see his father descend the stairs and come into view. “You’re finally here. I had to listen to your mother go on about how you don’t want to come home anymore.” His father rolled his eyes and gestured towards her. Obviously he only had the guts to do so because he was standing behind her and not in her line of sight.
Asa bit back a smile and averted his gaze back to his mum.
“That’s not true,” he defended himself, scoffing. “I always come home directly after school.”
“Look at the time, tonto,” she snapped, “wh—”
“No swearing in this house,” both Asa and his father chanted in unison, an identical gleam of mischief in their eyes.
His mother’s head whipped around to fix her steely gaze on his father, and Asa saw the grin freeze on his face.
“Don’t take his side,” she chided. “It makes me look like the bad guy.”
“I’m just an hour late, Ma.” Asa sighed. “Papá’s not even making a fuss.”
“Papá wouldn’t bat an eye if you said you wanted to go skydiving,” she shot back. “He doesn’t worry about anything.”
“But…” Asa grinned. “What if I did want to go skydiving?”
“Not while I’m still breathing.” His mother narrowed her eyes. “So, why have you been coming late these days?”
“Relax,” his father said lazily as he walked forwards and dropped down on the couch. “He’s a boy. It’s normal.”
“And if it was a daughter instead of a son, you’d be the one firing a hundred and one questions and getting your shotgun ready in case there were boys involved,” his mother retorted. “He’s still my kid, and I want to know what he’s been doing after school lets out. Por Dios, it’s a very simple question. I don’t know what you’re making such a huge fuss about.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Asa chuckled. “Okay, calm down, Ma. It’s honestly nothing to worry about, I—” He stopped mid-speech abruptly.
He was blushing.
Well, at least, he thought he was. Because he was going to say that there was this girl who wore no sweater in this chilly weather, and he didn’t like the idea of her walking home in it.
But his lips had curved into a stupid, stupid grin, and he could feel the slight tingling sensation in his cheeks. Goddamn, what was she doing to him? Couldn’t he even speak about her without feeling the ghost of her laughter pull at his heartstrings?
This was utter madness now. There simply was no other explanation to it.
When he snapped out of the trance and zoned back in to his surroundings, he found both his parents staring at him with an odd mixture of expectancy and confusion.
“You okay, mijito?” his father inquired, furrowing his eyebrows.
“Ye—” Asa cleared his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets, adapting a nonchalant demeanour. “Yeah, I’m great. Anyways, what I was saying was that I’m late because I had to give a ride to a friend.” He shrugged. “Gave her a ride past few days too, so that explains it.”
“‘Her’?” his mother raised her brows.
“Well, now that you’re satisfied he hasn’t been strolling the streets butchering people, maybe you can let him off the hook,” his dad suggested, earning a nasty look from his mother.
“So who’s this girl that’s been keeping you from coming home early and spending time with your poor mother?” she asked, smiling slightly to show that she was only teasing.
“I spend time with you,” his father muttered, making a face.
“It’s not like that, Ma,” Asa mumbled awkwardly, “she’s just a—” Don’t you dare say it, Asa San Román! Don’t you dare say she’s just a girl. Carmen was more than just a girl; she was more than just. She was more. “—a friend,” he said instead, smiling slightly.
“It normally takes you fifteen minutes to reach home once school is over.” His mother said. “Nowadays it takes you about forty minutes, and today you’re a whole hour late! I’m guessing that means her place is out of the way. And you’re telling me you go all that distance to drop off someone who’s just a friend?”
“What can I say, Ma?” Asa lifted his shoulders in an innocent shrug. “You and Papá raised a gentleman.”
“You keep those gentlemanly qualities in mind the next time I ask you to do the dishes and you start sulking,” she muttered, wiping the triumphant look clean off Asa’s face as she nestled into his father’s side on the couch and they got engrossed in a conversation of their own.
He watched them for a moment, wondering if his father viewed the moments spent with the woman beside him as infinites and not minutes or hours. He wondered if his mother’s smile planted seeds in his father’s ribcage and if her laugh made them bloom into flowers that filled the spaces between those bones.
He wondered if that was what falling in love felt like.
He also wondered if perhaps falling implied that there was a landing somewhere, and if it would hurt too much to hit it.
33.
Beacon of Light
The next morning, Asa was up bright and early.
In fact, it’d be pretty safe to say that he’d barely slept through the night because of the knowledge that today, once school was over, he’d be hanging out with Carmen.
Of course, Willa was going to be there, but he figured that was a blessing in disguise because Lord knew he’d be tongue-tied for the most part of the evening if it was just him and Carmen hanging out. He could almost picture himself just staring at her with awestruck eyes while she told him about probably another reason why autumn was beautiful.
Somehow, it was different than the one-on-one moments they shared during the rides back from school. Which meant that today would be marked as the first time he would be officially spending time with Carmen outside of anything related to school.
It sort of made him giddy. It also sort of put him in an unusually bright mood that he was up before his parents were and even went all the way and prepared breakfast for the three of them.
He’d just turned around to place the last plate on the table when his mother stepped into the kitchen with a baseball bat in her hand. Her jaw dropped open the exact moment Asa�
��s eyes widened in shock.
“Qué estás haciendo?!” both of them barked at each other in unison, looking at the other like they’d sprouted another head.
“What am I doing?” his mother asked, looking offended. “What are you doing?!”
“Geez, Ma.” Asa let the sarcasm thickly coat his words. “You tell me. What does it look like I’m doing?”
She narrowed her eyes, and wagged the bat at him. “You keep running that mouth of yours, and you’ll find out just how handy a baseball bat can be.”
Asa’s nose scrunched, and he frowned at the object in his mother’s hand. “Wait, why do we have a baseball bat? Nobody in this house even watches the damn sport.”
“Watch your mouth.” She glared, obviously sick of asking him to speak in a decent language.
“Do you know how innocent the word damn is compared to the words other teens speak?” he asked wearily.
“You are not those other teens,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And neither am I their mothers. Now, what is all this?” she gestured with the bat towards the breakfast table.
“Breakfast?” Asa answered.
His mother closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t deal with you sometimes.”
“He actually gets it from you,” his father piped up as he too entered the kitchen.
“The two of you are always teaming up against me,” she muttered. “But, what I meant was, why are you awake this early? And all this food—don’t tell me you prepared it!”
Now it was Asa’s turn to look offended. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I think of doing something nice for you guys.”
“Hell is freezing over,” his father declared, dropping down on one of the seats and serving himself. “But if we’re all going to die today, it might as well be on the one day that our mijito prepared breakfast for us.”
“Very funny, Dad.” Asa rolled his eyes, pulling out one of the chairs and sitting down too. “The sixties called. Apparently, they want their joke back.”
