Pao tried to quash a feeling of irritation. Had her mom really been so wrapped up in the cards that she didn’t notice the time? It wasn’t like the whole sky-changing-colors thing was easy to miss.
But of course, her mom didn’t allow clocks anywhere she did divination work. She always said, along with cell phones and microwaves, clocks “messed with the vibe.” Apparently, the ancestors couldn’t get to her through all that “noise.”
And the ancestors, among other things, protected them from the ghosts.
Too bad they can’t also protect us from the rent going up, Pao thought. Her mom tried to hide that kind of stuff from her, but Pao trained her observational powers constantly. She didn’t miss the notices with red rectangles around the past-due amounts.
Pao never would have admitted it out loud, but her mind went immediately to Emma, who was probably sitting down to a meal consisting of multiple food groups right now. Meat and potatoes and something green that her parents would bribe her with ice cream to finish. At Emma’s house, they didn’t have to joke about fire hazards, or who the real adult was.
As quickly as the thought landed, Pao swatted it away. It wasn’t fair. Mom’s doing the best she can. Plus, they were a team, and Pao didn’t want to know what would happen if either of them believed otherwise. Even for a minute.
Pao’s mom got up and rummaged in the freezer until she found a Ziploc bag full of Señora Mata’s cheese-and-jalapeño tamales. “I forgot we had these!” she said, turning around and preheating the oven before Pao could check the leftovers closely for freezer burn. “It’ll only be forty-five minutes, okay? Some brain food for your experiments!”
On her way back to her seat in front of the tarot cards, her mom kissed her on the forehead, which only made Pao feel worse.
“You know, I’m actually not that hungry anymore,” Pao said, even though she was. Right then, the urge to get out of the incense-filled kitchen and be alone with her guilty thoughts was stronger than the urge to eat.
Plus, leftover tamales always got all dry and rubbery when they were reheated in the oven, and the cheese ones were her least favorite kind.
“We ate a lot of junk food this afternoon—I think I feel a stomachache coming on.”
“Let me get you some peppermint tincture!” her mom offered, turning too fast. Two tarot cards fluttered down like dry leaves in a wind gust.
“It’s okay, really,” Pao said quickly. “I’m just gonna go lie down.”
“You sure?” her mom asked. “You know, El Cuco can hear a growling stomach from miles away…. And I’m working late at the bar—I won’t be here to chase him out of your room tonight.”
Her mom’s face was somber, but the bogeyman story was so juvenile it only made Pao more eager to escape. She hated pitying her own mother—it felt like wearing a shirt that didn’t fit right.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Pao said. “What kind of monster would want to eat a skinny kid?”
Pao didn’t know why she had posed that question. It wasn’t like she wanted to hear her mom’s rebuttal….
But none came. Her mom’s eyes were glued to the floor, probably already drawing some significance from the way the cards had landed under the table.
On another day, Pao might have jokingly asked if the Tower and the Fool cards meant they could get a dog. But today, for a reason she didn’t fully understand, she just left the room without saying good night.
Emma’s mom would follow her daughter into the hallway at a time like this. Pao would’ve bet her Celestron beginner’s microscope kit on it. And not just because the microscope was totally inadequate for someone at her skill level.
But Pao sat on her bed alone, surrounded by the pictures of the SpaceX and Blue Origin launches she’d printed out at the library, the colored ink streaky and dull. Taped to the wall above her desk (which was her grandma’s old sewing table, so it didn’t have any drawers) was last year’s science project on algae farming. She’d won first place without even mentioning the organism’s potential to power rockets.
Meanwhile, her mom burned candles in search of money to pay bills and thought the right card layout could keep ghosts and monsters away.
Maybe, Pao thought sleepily, if she had enough algae, she could blast herself right out of this place….
In her dream that night, Pao walked along the river, and above her was a darkness so absolute it made her shudder.
A green glow emanated from the water, and as she made her way toward it, she saw silhouetted shapes beneath, passing back and forth in a haunting kind of dance.
She knelt on the bank, sensing the fabric of the dream bending and shimmering around her. But even as she recognized the surreality, she was excited about finding bioluminescent creatures this close to home. Would they stay still long enough to let her get a good look?
One of the creatures broke the surface, and Pao leaned closer, mesmerized by the pale grace of it, the long, fingerlike tentacles reaching for the sky.
But was one of those tentacles wearing Emma’s ring? Heart-shaped and set with a real ruby, it was kind of hard to mistake, even from a distance….
That’s when Pao realized they weren’t tentacles. It was a hand. A human hand. With fingernails painted a sparkly purple.
She tried to scramble back from the river’s edge, but the hand grabbed her by the wrist, the ruby ring glinting in the green glow from the water. Pao screamed, a high, hollow sound drowned out almost instantly by an unearthly wailing that kicked up all around her like a gust of wind.
Pao was pulled farther toward the water’s terrifying depths, her shoes and socks getting soaked as she fought futilely against the hand’s inexorable grip. The crying grew louder.
It grew louder still as she stumbled and fell to her knees.
But somehow it was loudest of all when the hand pulled her under the water’s surface.
Pao woke in a panic, half off her mattress, a scream lodged in her throat.
It was a dream, she told herself. Just a dream.
The weird splash she’d seen yesterday—and its weirder lack of ripples—came to mind. It must have seeped into her subconscious.
Pao pulled out the clandestine, taped-together alarm clock that she kept under her bed. It read 1:15 a.m. A grumble erupted from her stomach, making her think of El Cuco and her mother’s warning. She’d fallen asleep in her clothes—even her shoes.
Pao breathed deeply, trying to calm her racing heart, focusing on the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling as the dream’s images slowly faded.
It had been a long time since she’d dreamed of drowning.
She’d had her first riverbank dream when she was nine. Nothing much had happened in it. But for third-grade Pao, that terrible, utterly dark sky had been enough to make her wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, and send her running to her mother’s room for comfort.
Throughout the rest of elementary school, she’d had the dreams at least once a week. Her mom had been at a loss. She’d invited curandera friends and other healers to try to purge whatever was haunting Pao, but nothing worked.
After that, they’d gone to a real doctor’s office, where nurses attached things to Pao’s head and screened her for all kinds of conditions she didn’t have.