For a minute, Pao was worried that too-cool Dante would return. That he’d roll his eyes or do that weird new hair-flip thing and say they were being dumb.
But he screamed, turning on his heel and running like the swamp creature was behind him. “Oh, no you don’t!” he shrieked, his recently lower voice jumping three octaves.
They chased him until they were breathless and cracking up, then finally dropped the offensive substance before rinsing their slimy hands in the shallows.
Emma’s cell phone rang while she was shaking her hands dry. She always turned away when she answered it, Pao had noticed, covering as much of the Wonder Woman case as she could, like it might offend her and Dante by being so shiny and expensive-looking.
Pao didn’t have a phone of her own. It was just sort of understood that her mom couldn’t afford anything but the army-green landline that hung on the kitchen wall, and Pao didn’t dare ask—even though there was a constellation-tracking app she would have loved to try….
At least Dante could relate. His abuela probably didn’t even know what a smartphone was, much less appreciate the benefits of having one. And it wasn’t like she was rolling in money either.
“Dinnertime,” Emma said with a grimace when she hung up. She swung her leg over her purple mountain bike that, according to Dante, “screamed Colorado.”
“See you tomorrow?” Pao asked her. “You’re bringing the telescope, right?”
“And you’re bringing the snacks,” Emma replied. “Don’t eat all the pink Starbursts this time.” She pedaled off, kicking up dust on her way west, away from the swampy smell of the summer-low river.
Pao tried not to envy her too much.
She and Dante walked away from the lingering glow of the sunset that gilded Emma’s side of town like a blessing. After a mile or so, their own dilapidated apartment complex loomed ahead in silhouette.
The sun always bails on us first, Pao thought. And wasn’t that fitting?
The fifteen units of the Riverside Palace apartments (the irony of the name was not lost on Pao) looked like the kind of motel people drove right by. There were two stories, with one sagging staircase right in the middle.
At one point, there had been sixteen units, but apartment F’s roof had caved in three summers ago and no one had bothered to fix it. F was unoccupied now, of course, but sometimes high schoolers smoked cigarettes in it at night. Whenever Dante’s abuela caught those kids there, she chased them off with her house slipper, yelling curses in Spanish while they sped away laughing on those low-to-the-ground bikes Pao secretly coveted.
Unit B was empty, too, its dark windows drawing Pao’s eye as always. A boy and his parents had lived there until six months ago, when uniformed men had come in a van and arrested them. Pao, Emma, and Dante had witnessed the whole thing while taking turns on Emma’s bike in the parking lot.
Pao had tried to ask her mom about it, but she had only hugged her tightly and said something about “privilege” that Pao didn’t quite understand.
No one had rented the apartment since, and Pao often wondered what had happened to the people who had been taken from it.
The Palace’s stairs, with their peeling sea-green paint and warped railing, were where Pao and Dante always said good night, before he went up and she stayed down. Their apartments, C and K, were stacked on top of each other, separated only by Pao’s ceiling and Dante’s floor.
Tonight, when they reached the stairs, Pao lifted her hand for their usual high five. Dante slapped it automatically, but he didn’t go up right away. Instead he lingered, gazing down at Pao’s feet until she was all too aware of the mud on her Kmart Converse knockoffs and the chocolate smudge on his chin.
He’s taller than me, Pao realized. When had that happened?
“Hey, so I wanted to say…” he began, still looking at her scuffed sneaker toes.
“Yeah?”
“Well, your algae and stuff? I know I give you crap, but I actually think it’s pretty cool. I mean, not the algae,” he clarified quickly. “But, like, just how much you know about it and stuff. That’s cool. So.”
“Okay,” she said, her cheeks heating up. “Um. Thanks.” Dante had never acted this way with her before. She wasn’t entirely sure she hated it.
“But seriously, if you ever try to put that gross stuff in my hair again”—he met her eyes, sounding more like his usual self—“I’ll think of something way worse than a gummy worm to stick up your nose.”
When he smiled, his teeth were bright white against his summer-browned skin. He bumped her shoulder with his as he headed for the stairs, acting all casual and laid-back.
But the tops of his ears were flushed purple—she could see it as the parking-lot lights flared to life.
Pao’s curiosity crackled in the wake of Dante’s blush. She wished she could stay outside to mull it over while the evening air cooled around her. But her mom was waiting. As always, Pao lifted her chin and steeled herself before she went inside.
Time to face the ghost stories.
When Pao opened the door to apartment C, the smell of incense was overwhelming. That meant her mom was reading tarot. Pao’s steeliness started to buckle. Her mother only consulted the cards when things weren’t going well.
“Mom! I’m home!” Pao called, dropping her backpack on the living room floor. There had to be fifteen candles burning on the shelf above the serape-covered couch. Green candles, Pao noted. She only burned those when they needed money.
Well, more than usual, anyway.
“In here, mijita!” her mom called from the dining room/kitchen, which only took about five steps to reach in their tiny apartment. Pao pasted on a smile as she crossed the threshold, hoping not to notice any other signs of bad news.
Her mom sat cross-legged in the paisley-upholstered dining chair, her dark hair in a messy bun held with a single chopstick. Her eyes were narrowed at a tarot spread on the weathered kitchen table, incense smoke swirling around her.
“You know,” Pao said, “if we had a dog, he could bark for help when you pass out from all this incense and one of the candles sets the house on fire.”
The smoke alarm had stopped working a year ago, but the manager of the Riverside Palace hadn’t responded to multiple requests (from Pao, of course) to replace it.
Pao’s mom smiled back from the tiny table, but her eyes were tired. “My old-souled baby,” she said, reaching out to squeeze Pao’s hand. “You’ve always been the adult around here.”
A sadness settled in Pao’s chest. Mom had said it lightly, like a joke, but Pao didn’t think it was funny. They were always speaking to each other in a kind of code, disguising important facts. Pao wished that, for once, they could just talk. That not everything had to be signs and candles and old souls and too-real jokes.
“Do those cards say anything about what’s for dinner?” Pao asked, trying to hold on to her smile even though the incense smoke was giving her a headache.
“Oh no,” her mom said. “Is it that time already?” She pushed aside her too-long bangs and looked in disbelief out the glass door to the patio. Twilight was settling over the crowded terra-cotta pots where Pao’s mom grew herbs and flowers.