“Hey, Jessica,” Calvin said, trying to sound cool and casual. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
Jessica’s gaze flashed up, and Calvin winced. He actually cowered a little, as if the rage on Jessica’s face caused him real pain.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Jessica snapped.
“He just wanted to know if you’re okay,” Jimmy chimed in. He waited a couple seconds before adding, “Are you?”
For a few terrible moments, Jessica studied us, and we waited for whatever insults she would spear our way. We braced ourselves. We were ready. It would be okay. We’d welcome those insults because we knew whatever pain they would cause us would be temporary and would pale in comparison to the pain that constantly tumbled and boiled through Jessica’s organs.
The insults never came, though. After a moment, Jessica let out a sound—like a breath or a grunt, a noise that indicated we weren’t even worth the effort of forming a word—and then she tipped her head back to expose the length of her throat, chugged her drink, and reached back to the bottles perched on the kitchen counter to pour herself another. She took great care to fill her cup up to the very tip-top, and then walked out.
We followed Jessica through the crowd of people, and, to her credit, she managed not to spill more than a couple of drops of her drink. She was headed to the entryway, to where John and Evalin were still doing their thing and John still had his hand squashed against Evalin’s boob.
Jessica was mad, and when she was mad she created something like a force field of anger. People stopped talking and turned in her direction. They made space for her as she slid by. We heard someone whisper, “Oh shit,” and just as Evalin tore her swollen lips away from John’s mouth, Jessica threw—overhand threw like a baseball—her cup straight at Evalin’s face. The plastic and ice and clear liquid exploded against Evalin’s nose. The cup bounced off John’s shoulder.
“What the fuck, bitch?” Evalin screeched, as John just backed off, eyes wide, shaking himself dry and lifting the edge of his shirt to wipe the side of his face.
We tensed, waiting. All around us, others did the same. Jessica was going to do something. She was going to either say something brutal or strike out violently, like the way she’d done with the priest or the way she’d done with Muriel Contreras and the pencil. We watched, not caring anymore about being cool, but wanting to know how Jessica was going to avenge her dead sister. We silently cheered her on.
Evalin wiped her face with her hand. She lunged off the wall and shoved Jessica in the shoulder.
“I said, What the fuck?”
Do it, Jessica, we urged. Make things right.
Jessica drew in a sharp breath, and then she did . . . nothing. More like, she shrunk. All of a sudden, her body seemed to get much, much smaller. Her eyes stopped glowing with rage and went dull, out like a light—click. We’d always known Jessica Torres as a fighter, but that night we watched her lose that fight. Something in her just gave up. Evalin shoved Jessica again on the shoulder, and Jessica lazily swiped Evalin’s hand away. Evalin, obviously embarrassed, screamed in Jessica’s face about Jessica being pathetic, about Jessica’s family being pathetic, and that new version of blank Jessica stood there, staring first at the wall just over Evalin’s shoulder and then over to John Chavez.
It was one of the many times we could have said or done something and, instead, we said and did nothing. One of Evalin’s friends eventually came over, straightened Evalin’s shirt that was still all bunched from having John’s hand up it, and started to pull Evalin into the other room.
Jessica was still staring at John, with that cold dullness in her eyes, and John was now staring back. The side of his mouth quirked up. Jessica took a step forward. She then pressed herself flat against John’s chest and took hold of both sides of his face. From the other room, Evalin could see what was going on. She shouted out, enraged, as Jessica stood on the tips of her toes and crushed her lips against John’s.
She was the one who then pressed John back against the wall of the entryway, and she was the one who put her hand up his shirt. Their lips and tongues slid and smacked against each other.
“What the hell?” Hector whispered.
Jessica and John have been together ever since.
Jessica
(Saturday, June 15th)
A screechy laugh from across the street made Jessica flinch. That laugh, so piercing and distinct as to rise above a big crowd, belonged to Norma Galván, Rafe’s date to the block party. As Rafe flipped burgers at a portable grill set up in the Garcias’ front yard, Norma laughed at every single thing he said. And, as Norma laughed, she had to fight to keep her balance because the high heels of her strappy sandals kept sinking into the lawn. In between bursts of laughter and trying to stay upright, Norma took sips from a can of Tecate and picked at her flower-printed blouse in an attempt to separate the fabric from her moist skin. Jessica watched as Rafe leaned down toward Norma and nuzzled his nose at her temple. Norma gazed up, smiling all loopy.
Jessica was standing next to John in the shade of an oak tree, wondering if she’d ever looked at him all loopy like that. She also wondered why her father was hanging out with Norma Galván again. Possibly, it had to do with money, given that Rafe had asked Jessica the other day to “borrow” two hundred dollars. Norma was known to keep rolls of cash stashed all over her house, in places like coffee cans and hollow porcelain statues. Rafe had said he needed the money for a truck payment, but Jessica was pretty sure his truck had been paid off for years.
Jessica then heard a different laugh—gentle like skipping stones—and she knew exactly who that laugh belonged to because she’d heard it dozens of times from across the store, from aisles away. There, behind a couple of folding tables covered with foil-wrapped dishes, was Peter. He was helping Mrs. Garcia pour tea into red plastic cups and was grinning at a little boy who was not-so-sneakily trying to steal three cookies off a plate.
Next to Peter was Calvin Ortiz’s mom, who was fussing over things, making sure everything was all set, that there were enough paper plates, napkins, forks, and spoons. She smacked the boy’s hand away from the cookies, but laughed while she did it. In a nearby yard, Kitty Bolander and her friends were having a Hula-Hoop contest. The girls were laughing so loud, they sounded like they were screaming, like their joy took up so much space in their bodies it was physically painful.
It was a bright, beautiful, non-rainy day, and there was laughter everywhere. No one knew that the ghost of Ana Torres had caused Iridian to freeze in place on the downstairs couch, or that Jessica hadn’t slept any more than eight hours combined over the course of the last three days. Jessica was surprised no one could see how badly she was starting to warp. Everything—her vision, her attention span, her ability to sort change into the register—felt like pencil marks that had been half-heartedly rubbed out with an eraser. Like everything was as blurry as the letters on old, slumped tombstones or like the shadow outline of a hand against a shower curtain.