In the mirror, I watch Carla stop filing her nails, interest piqued.
I bite my tongue, weighing whether it’s worth telling them about what happened to Joel. Carla already knows pieces of the story—but maybe not the full thing. And probably not the truth. Being Jose’s girlfriend, I’m sure he had his own version of events to tell her. Sanitized and watered down until he looked like the type of harmless bully you laugh about once you’ve been out of high school long enough.
After Papi, the lines between fact and fiction faded completely. The story of what happened between Papi and those boys has always started with Joel, but that chapter has faded away over time, replaced by a new beginning. A more sensational one—about a coach driven by rage to murder his players. Everyone chooses to forget we’d already gone through one loss before losing everything.
“My brother Joel came out as gay his freshman year,” I say carefully, testing the weight of the words on my tongue. “Mostly just to our family. It wasn’t a secret or anything, but my mom is strict. We had trouble making friends, and keeping them,” I say with a hint of bitterness. “Joel was especially shy—most people didn’t even know him, let alone that he’d come out. But my dad always thought he’d find his place at Millcreek eventually. Make friends that weren’t me and my little brother.”
I can see Carla and Kiki stiffen at the mention of Papi. I resist the urge to scoff or roll my eyes. He’s locked up in a maximum-security prison hundreds of miles away from us. They have no reason to be afraid of him.
I continue on. “My dad was coaching the soccer team, and he thought if Joel joined he’d have an easier time making friends, but…” I pause, inhaling sharply. “There were these two guys on the team. They… they made things really hard for Joel. Cornered him in the locker room, said awful stuff about him to the rest of the team. Tried to get him removed because they said they didn’t want to play on a team with a…” I swallow hard at the thought of all the horrible things they called him, names I can’t dwell on because they still hurt like a punch to the gut. “You can fill in the blank,” I mutter bitterly.
“Jose said they got probation for what they did,” Carla says suddenly, earning her a glare from Kiki—either for interrupting me, or for daring to protest.
“They did,” I reply, fingers clenching into a fist. “But that was all the school did. Just because they weren’t on the team anymore didn’t mean they stopped. It only got worse after that. They found Joel in the halls. Cafeteria. After school.”
My throat tightens, knowing what comes next. Words I haven’t had to say out loud because everyone already knew.
“We lost Joel two weeks after those guys got kicked off the team.”
“They killed him?” Kiki asks with wide eyes, likely wondering how it was possible she’d missed that detail in the infamous Millcreek Murder case.
I shake my head bitterly, eyes stinging as I lose control and let the tears roll down my cheeks. Globs of the face mask fall away from my skin, dripping down onto my hands, but I don’t bother to clean up the mess. “He killed himself.” The words scratch and claw their way out of my throat, leaving me as raw and aching as the day Papi told me what happened. When I realized I’d never get to hug my brother again. Never challengehim to another race down the block or argue with him over the remote. Never watch him paint another sunset or sing along to another ballad with so much force his cheeks would turn red as apples. Never get to say goodbye.
Kiki inhales sharply. Carla flinches, her attention shifting back to her cup as she swirls her half-finished drink. But I won’t let their discomfort stop me from telling the truth. She can ignore the truth about what her ex-boyfriend did, but I can’t. I’ll never be able to forget.
“The school didn’t do anything, even then. The only punishment those guys got was a week-long suspension.” My fists tremble in my lap, knuckles as pale as the cream slathered across my face. “They were back at school before we even had a chance to bury Joel. I had to see themevery day. Walk down the same halls and sit in the same cafeteria as the two assholes who took my brother away from me. And no one cared. No one did a single fucking thing about it.”
I swipe quickly at my cheek, not caring if I smudge the face mask. Sniffling and struggling to keep a full-on wave of tears at bay, I compose myself before turning to face Kiki directly, eyes locked with hers. “So, I get it. You don’t want history to repeat itself. And that means staying away from people like me.”
Because I’m the closest thing Millcreek has to a plague. No matter what Kai thinks of me, how much he might like me, I’m a danger to Kiki’s plan. Tohim. No one wants to get too close to the girl with the murderer for a dad. And anyone who does is just as ripe for the chopping block as I am. If I were Kiki, I’d hate me too. But even if I can understand it—can feel deep in my gut why she’d want to push me as far away from Kai as possible—I can’t let her think that, of all the people Kai could’ve found, that he’d chosen the one who was willing to hurt him.
“I promise you, I’m not the problem.” I lean in as close as I dare. “I’m not who you have to worry about.”
We hold each other’s gazes, neither of us blinking or willing to give in for what feels like hours.
“Well, time for another drink,” Carla announces, snapping Kiki and I out of our locked stare. “This place is depressing enough already.”
With our bubble now popped, Kiki and I turn away from one another again. I turn in my seat to face away from both her and the mirror, not wanting to catch her eyes in the reflection. I steady my shaking hands by wiping at the globs of cream dripping down my face. Carla is as red as her bikini, sneering down at her cup as she pours herself another drink. She holds the cup out toward me, and I take it numbly despite the fact that I’ve barely taken a sip of my first one yet. The pain of pulling open the wound Joel left behind is too all-consuming for me to protest. There’s no burn as I swallow more than half the drink in two gulps—either because gin goes down smoother, or I’m too numb to notice.
Carla clears her throat to get my attention, and I turn to find her holding something else out toward me. Another pastelcolored packet. She’s wearing a smile as plastic as her acrylic nails. “For your eyes,” she explains, pointing to the illustration on the side of the packet of a woman with two orbs covering her eyes. Before I can protest that I already have eyepatches on, she continues, “You’ll want to close them while you have it on—this could burn the shit out of your retinas.”
Behind me, I can hear Kiki stand up quickly. “Carla—”
“I’m just warning her,” she snaps through her teeth before Kiki can finish, her smile too sweet. Her tone too nice. Like just one wrong move will break her.
My gut tells me to run. To find Kai and hold him close for the rest of the night. But when Carla shoots me that fake, sinister smile, I snatch the packet from her. After all the shit they’ve put me through tonight—all the shit people like her have put my family through the past couple of years—I won’t give her the satisfaction of running away. No matter what they have in store for me tonight.
They don’t scare me.
Whispers break out behind me while I apply the slimy cucumber-scented patches to my eyes. I do my best to make out the tidbits of their conversation, Kiki’s voice urgent while Carla’s is more casual. They must move to the opposite end of the room, their voices too muffled by the music for me to make out what they’re saying. Still, I straighten my back and prepare myself for what they have in store for me. Telling my story was a much-needed reminder of everything my family has been through—everything I’ve survived. A stupid little prank is nothing.
If Kiki doesn’t want me to date her brother, fine. If Carla hates me because of who my father is, fine. I don’t need girls like Kiki or Carla to accept me as one of them, even if it means giving up Kai in the process. As good as it feels to have found someone who sees me as a person and not just a small-town mystery, it’s not worth all of this. If they’re not willing to see me as a person after I poured my heart out, that’s their problem.
I’m done caring what other people think.
“Carla,” Kiki snaps, almost a shout.
Whatever she’s protesting, Carla doesn’t seem to listen. She stomps across the room, so heavily I can feel the vibration even through the carpeted floor—her footsteps getting louder and louder the closer she gets to me. Before I can brace myself forwhat might come, something comes crashing over me. Wet and hot and putrid. It knocks the masks off my eyes and embeds itself in every part of me—my eyelashes, my mouth, my nose. Thick clumps of it drip off me, chunks of something fleshy and soft mixed into the thick, dark liquid. Something awful. Something familiar.