But then came the day when, as the kitchen filled with the smell of arroz con pollo, Dante held out a die-cast metal spaceship for Pao to play with, keeping the astronaut action figure for himself. The shag carpet had turned into the terrain of an alien planet, and they’d been inseparable ever since.
Well, at least until the beginning of sixth grade, when Dante had joined the soccer team and started putting gel in his hair. All this past year he’d felt half-in, half-out to Pao, like he was always thinking about being somewhere else when they were together.
Pao had been grateful for the end of soccer and school and, with the start of summer, the return of the Dante she’d always known. But she couldn’t help worrying about what seventh grade would bring for the three of them.
“It’s getting late,” Pao said, cutting off her own space-out for once and shifting gears, picking up the candy wrappers and chip bags. She was (probably unsurprisingly) a stickler about litter. When you had researched the effect of trash on the world’s bodies of water, it felt criminal to leave plastic behind.
Dante grabbed the last empty M&M’s bag as the sun began to sink in the sky, signaling the approach of the when-the-streetlights-come-on curfew they’d all been given. “Hand ’em over,” he said to Pao. “I’ll go to the trash can.”
Pao could see it in silhouette, up near the graffitied sign that marked the beginning of the river hiking trail. The city rarely emptied the can, but using it was better than littering.
“Hurry,” Emma said, and Dante saluted again.
They were always careful to get back home on time. No one wanted their parents to come looking for them because then they’d have to explain where they’d been. They’d all been expressly prohibited from going anywhere near the river after Marisa Martínez had drowned last year, sending all the middle school parents into a panic.
Pao was deeply offended by the restriction. She was a scientist. She knew about cold pockets in rivers that could cause hypothermia even when the air temperature was shattering thermometers, and currents that could grab you in water six inches deep, and other invisible traps and hazards beneath the surface that were a one-way ticket to drowning.
Not that she was afraid of the water or anything.
Not at all.
And even if she was understandably wary of it, there was no way she would admit that to her mom. Because Pao had already heard more than enough lectures in her young life about the dumbest reason ever to be afraid of anything:
A ghost.
That’s right. Pao’s mom had forbidden her from going anywhere near the Gila years ago, well before Marisa’s tragic accident. The reason Pao had missed out on birthday parties, riverside barbecues, and anything else water-related had a different name: La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman—the spirit of a mother who, according to a centuries-old legend, had murdered her own children. And who was also supposedly super active in this region.
And no, her mom’s belief in the story was not a joke, or an exaggeration. Just a complete and total embarrassment.
La Llorona is the most terrifying of all our ghosts, her mom would say. She drowned her children in a fit of rage and was cursed to wander the riverbank forever, calling their names…and looking for her next young victim.
Her mom was a gifted storyteller. Pao didn’t like to admit it, but back when she was eight years old, the stories had given her nightmares. Nightmares she’d erased with good old-fashioned research. The ghosts and wailing and disembodied hands had been replaced with sneaky currents, hypothermia, sunken tree branches that could snag an ankle…. Those things were legitimately scary.
But ghosts? There was no scientific basis for them. No evidence at all that their existence was even possible, let alone likely. An old folktale was definitely not a valid reason to change one’s plans.
Especially when the plans happened to be the first boy-girl river-tubing party one had ever been invited to.
Not that Pao was still bitter about that or anything.
Dante took off for the trash can, but not before stuffing the last half of a Snickers in his mouth, his cheeks bulging around it.
“Gross, Dante,” Emma said. As he jogged toward the trailhead, she turned to pull one of Pao’s shoulder-length braids. They hadn’t talked about it, but Pao wondered if Emma was as glad as she was to have the old Dante back.
“Seriously, though,” Emma said to Pao, “you’re extra out-there today. What are we obsessing about?” Her blue eyes were bright and curious, like she was brainstorming a list of topics for a group project at school. “The potential habitability of Europa?” she guessed first. “Or why they don’t make whole sleeves of pink Starbursts? Ooh, is it the dog thing again? What’s this week’s breed?”
Pao smiled back, grateful that her mom’s fixation on all things supernatural hadn’t made the list.
Emma Lockwood was more interested in comics than the solar system, and she liked cats more than dogs (the horror!), but she was the kind of person who took the time to learn about what you loved. She cared about what you cared about. Pao had moved on from thinking about Europa months ago, but she didn’t mind the question—she knew she was lucky to have a friend like Emma.
Plus, seriously, why didn’t they make whole sleeves of pink Starbursts? They were by far the best flavor.
Even though Emma’s family lived on the golf-course side of town, far from the sagging roofs and peeling walls of Dante and Pao’s apartment complex, their twosome had effortlessly become a threesome the day Emma had pulled out her America Chavez comic in homeroom.
“I’m not allowed to talk about today’s obsession anymore,” Pao said under her breath with a resigned look at Dante, who had just reached the can and was tossing their junk-food detritus into it.
“Oh, right,” Emma whispered, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Dante doesn’t like algae.”
Pao giggled, but Emma wasn’t done. As Dante turned to make his way back, Emma pulled Pao to the river’s edge and scooped up a handful of the forbidden green stuff.
That was another thing Pao loved about Emma. Even with her sparkly purple nail polish (she went for manicures with her mom every two weeks), she was still willing to get her hands messy for the sake of a good prank.
Pao scooped a satisfying blob of algae for herself as Emma hid behind the scrub bushes near their blanket. Pao was just about to follow, when a splash at the center of the river drew her eye.
It had been too large to be one of the fish that leaped up for water striders, but strangely, the surface of the river was now still. No ripples. You didn’t even have to be a scientist to know that ripples formed in water at any point of disturbance.
Had Pao’s ghost ruminations caused her imagination to kick into overdrive?
Goose bumps erupted across her arms.
“Pao! He’s coming back!” Emma whisper-shouted from the bushes, and Pao shook her silly fears out of her head. She had imagined it. Or it had just been a trick of the light. There was an explanation for everything, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious.
She slid in beside Emma, the scrub hiding them from Dante, who approached looking confused.
“Guys?” he asked, and Pao suppressed a giggle, algae still dripping from her hands.
“Now!” Emma shouted, exploding out of the bush and running toward Dante, Pao right behind her.