For now, they were parked a couple of streets over from Jessica’s house, across from the high school. They weren’t making out. Or talking. They were just sitting. It was three-something in the morning. Thunderclouds were rolling in, and Jessica was waiting for John to tell her to drive him home.
It had only been a little over two hours since she’d run out of the pharmacy and plunked down with a contented sigh into the front seat of her car. She didn’t feel content anymore.
“Aren’t you tired?” Jessica asked.
John shifted, angling in. “You’re trying to get rid of me?”
John usually smelled like his house, which smelled like his kitchen, which smelled like the yeasty bread his grandmother liked to bake. Tonight, he didn’t smell like that. He smelled sour. Not sour like yeast, but sour like sweat, like he’d been out under the sun for hours, sweating then cooling, sweating then cooling.
“Of course I’m not trying to get rid of you.” Jessica slouched in her seat. “I’m just tired. I was at the store forever, and I have to get up early tomorrow and go back again. Hey, speaking of that . . . I’ve been thinking about asking my manager about transferring.”
What Jessica said next came out in a rush.
“It wouldn’t be for a while. I’d have to make sure my family was set up alright, and I wouldn’t go anywhere too far, just like to Austin or Galveston. It’s a good time for a new start, you know? You and I—we can get a cheap little place together, but still be close enough to visit home when we wanted.”
It took a while for John to respond. “The last time you tried to run away it didn’t work so well.”
Jessica scoffed. “It’s not running away if I’m sitting here telling you about it. I’m asking you to come with me.”
“I love you, Jess,” John said. “But I’m not leaving San Antonio.”
“But do you want to?” Jessica urged.
“It’s not about wanting to or not. I won’t leave. My family needs me.”
Jessica held in a snicker. John’s family needed him for what, exactly? He’d never had a job. His mom spoiled him rotten, and since his car broke down in the spring, all he’d been able to say he’d done this summer was stay home and fix his little cousin grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch every day.
What did John know about a family that needed him? Jessica’s dad had turned from a man into a puddle the other day and would’ve stayed there, sobbing on the street, for God knows how long, if Jessica hadn’t literally hauled him off the ground and begged him to walk. When he wasn’t having a public meltdown, Rafe required nonstop words of love and loyalty. He also required food, so Jessica had to carve out money from her paycheck each month to keep the fridge stocked. She also had to make sure Iridian didn’t fossilize under the covers of her bed and that Rosa didn’t do something weird like sprout wings and fly off into the sky.
Speaking of Rosa.
Up ahead, a familiar form wearing a long dress and rubber boots was crossing the street. As Rosa passed under a streetlight, Jessica noticed she was eating something. Beef jerky? A candy bar?
“Is that . . . ?” John asked.
Jessica honked her horn.
Rosa stopped and turned. She waved and then waited as Jessica started her car and drove up the block.
“What are you doing?” Jessica called out the open window as she pulled up alongside her sister. “It’s about to start raining.”
Rosa turned toward the black sky pulsing behind her, and as Jessica stuck her hand out the window, she could feel the humidity breaking and giving way to cool, pre-storm winds.
“I know,” Rosa replied, taking a bite of what Jessica could now see was a granola bar. She stepped closer to the car, and Jessica saw blades of grass sticking to the fabric of her sister’s dress, and mud caking her boots. Rosa was also, for some reason, wearing a backpack. “I was on my way home.”
“On your way home from where?” Jessica demanded.
“The river,” Rosa said, simply. “I was looking for the hyena.”
John barked out a laugh.
“Of course you were,” Jessica replied. “Just get in the car.”
The Day Jessica Torres Attacked a Priest
Hector’s parents, being good Catholics, opened their home after Ana’s funeral so that the neighbors could gather, pick at potluck dishes, and express their condolences to the thoroughly distraught Torres family. The girls were there, of course. Rosa was wandering around in a somber daze. Iridian was wide-eyed and stunned, and Jessica was looking . . . lost. It was so unlike her. She just shuffled from room to room, her gaze pinned to the floor. She was wearing Ana’s lipstick, a dangerous shade of near-hot pink, as well as a bluebonnet-blue sundress that used to belong to her older sister. It was several sizes too big and it swallowed her up.
We were there, too, of course—forced by our parents to wear our church clothes and to stay downstairs with everyone else and not hide up in Hector’s room. That was okay because we were on a mission. We started out in a cluster at the base of the stairs and then fanned out from there. We hovered, eavesdropping, seeking more details about Ana.
On the night she died, we’d all fallen asleep watching television in Hector’s room and had woken up to a sound—at first, Jimmy thought it was a gunshot; Calvin said it was more like the hard, sharp beat of a snare drum—followed by a girl’s strangled cry. That cry was followed by the hard snap of a tree limb breaking, which was followed by the squeal of tires against the asphalt as a car tore down the street. We tumbled over one another to get to the window. The first thing we saw were Ana’s curtains, flapping gently in the summer wind. Her window was open—no, not open, broken. Someone must’ve thrown something through it. We watched a piece of glass the size of a hubcap dangle from the frame, then fall. Then, Ana’s sisters appeared in the window. They were screaming.
They were screaming because there, facedown in the yard, at the base of the oak tree, was Ana. Her body was not twisted, her legs and neck not kinked at strange angles, but her long dark hair was fanned out across the dried-out patches of grass, and she wasn’t moving. A flip-flop was on her right foot. Its mate was on top of a nearby bush. Clutched in Ana’s right hand was a branch from the oak tree, as if she’d tried, at the very last second, to reach out, take hold, and break her fall.
After that, everything happened so fast: Ana’s sisters kept screaming, but now they were out in the yard. The ambulance came; the cops came. Rafe was sitting on the porch step with his head in his hands. The neighbors had to run into the yard to console the Torres sisters because it was clear Rafe wasn’t going to do it himself.