LIGHTNING STRUCK, and a brilliant white light bloomed, illuminating the night sky outside Lucely Luna’s bedroom window.
Four hours had passed since her bedtime, but the thunderstorm outside kept her wide-awake.
She’d tried every one of her abuela’s tricks—including taking slow, deep breaths while focusing on the warm glow of the fireflies coming from outside her bedroom window—but nothing had worked.
Lucely hugged her knees to her chest, gazing out the window. She counted the seconds between the flash of lightning and clap of thunder, praying that it was still too far away to strike her home.
“One, two, three …”
BOOM!
Lucely threw the covers over her head with a shriek.
“Niña,” a voice whispered.
Lucely slid the blanket slowly from her face so only her eyes were exposed. The soft glow of one of her firefly family members filled the room.
“Mamá?” Lucely asked.
Like water sparkling in the sun’s rays, the firefly transformed before her. The translucent form rippled before becoming whole, solid.
Lucely’s grandmother, Mamá Teresa, settled onto the bed beside her. Well, her ghost did.
“¿Qué te pasa, mi niña?” Mamá reached for Lucely’s hand. Her touch was soft and warm, just like it had been when she was alive. Her voice always comforted Lucely like fuzzy socks and Dominican hot chocolate.
“I’m scared,” Lucely whispered to her abuela.
Mamá brushed Lucely’s curls out of her eyes and kissed her forehead before beginning to sing softly, her accent thick yet clear as the sound of rain on a metal roof.
“Duérmase, mi niña,
“Duérmase, mi amor,
“Duérmase, pedazo de mi corazón …”
Mamá’s voice wrapped around Lucely like a wool blanket, and before the song had ended, Lucely was drifting away from the storm outside and to a place that was quiet, safe.
Lucely woke the next morning to the smell of white cheese frying in the kitchen downstairs. It was still early enough that the sun was beginning to flood the sky with warm orange and yellow hues, as if erasing the dark and stormy night before.
She stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom, which was covered with hundreds of stars. In the daytime, they just looked like beige stickers on a white ceiling, all running together into a big blob of nothing. But when night fell and the lights were off, an intricate galaxy of constellations extended to every corner of the room. It was like having her own little universe all to herself.
Lucely’s father, Simon, had helped her paint the walls of her room a seafoam blue, the color of her abuela’s house in the Dominican Republic. Above her desk, Lucely had a corkboard with all her certificates from school on it, a calendar where she meticulously kept track of her homework assignments, and a pamphlet for the Luna Ghost Tour. Beside the corkboard hung a periodic table poster that had all hip-hop artists on it and a portrait of the Taíno rebel Enriquillo.
Simon Luna was what Lucely liked to call an “enormous history geek.” He even started his own ghost tour company in town, and people actually paid to hear him tell stories about the history of St. Augustine, Florida. He had insisted on hanging pictures of his favorite historical figures in every room of the house. Enriquillo wasn’t the worst to get stuck with, but she would’ve preferred the portrait of the Mirabal sisters that was in their living room. At least it wasn’t Blackbeard. Now that dude was scary looking.
Though it was early, Lucely could already hear noise coming from downstairs. At first, she thought it was just the sound of her dad cooking in the kitchen, but as it got louder, she realized it was … oh no … merengue music.
Lucely tried to pull the blanket over her head, but an invisible hand stopped her, flinging the comforter to the other side of the room.
“Que linda.” Tía Milagros’s voice was steeped in sarcasm as she surveyed Lucely’s room. She wore the same curlers, face mask, nightgown, and slippers that she had died in. Everyone thinks dying in your sleep is the most peaceful way to go, but no one ever thinks about being stuck in their pajamas for the rest of their afterlife.
“Up, up. It’s time to clean. This house is filthy! Look at this!” She pointed at a small pile of clothes near Lucely’s hamper and a solitary gum wrapper in her wastebasket.
“Tía, no, it’s Saturday. Don’t dead people get tired?”
“Nobody can get as tired as you, sin verguenza. Imagine being so young and having so little energy! At your age, I would’ve already been up for three hours. Fold that colcha.” Tía Milagros pointed at the quilt she’d thrown, and she walked out of the room.
Lucely snorted and put her chanclas on before going downstairs. She’d help clean up after breakfast. If it were up to Tía Milagros, she’d be cleaning from sunrise to sunset.
Plates of hot and fluffy banana pancakes were set out on the long kitchen table. Extra crispy bacon, fried cheese, salchichón, and platters of fresh fruit sat next to pitchers of freshly squeezed juice and morir soñando. The Luna family sat around the table chatting loudly and excitedly. Well … most of them were talking. Simon was still making pancakes at their stove with one hand and dipping rectangles of cheese in flour with the other.
“Good morning, mamá.” He smiled at Lucely.
“Cion, Papi.” Lucely took her place at the table and took turns greeting each of her cousins, asking for blessings from each of her older relatives before digging into her plate of food.
It made Lucely happy to know that even after you died—but only if you were good when you were alive—you still got to eat delicious food. If Lucely hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’d think it was some sick way to keep her from misbehaving, but for the Lunas it was all true.
Anybody looking in through the window would see only Lucely and her father, the two living beings in the Luna household. But there were a lot more of them there; they just happened to be ghosts.
“Lucely’s hogging all the queso again,” whined Prima Macarena. She winked at Lucely before piling cheese onto her own plate. Even though Macarena had survived a life of being asked if she could do the dance, she still loved to tease Lucely any chance she was given.
The five tías at the table shot her matching death stares. Tía Milagros reached for her chancla under the table. Lucely opened her mouth to protest just as her dad placed another mountain of freshly fried cheese on the table.
“That enough food for everyone?” he asked Lucely, and she nodded in response.
Simon smiled, but Lucely could see the small tug of pain on her father’s face.
There was a time when her father could also see the family spirits in their human form. But now all he saw were fireflies. “Sometimes, when your heart is too heavy and sad,” he had told her, “you lose that part of you—that connection.” It hurt Lucely to imagine the kind of heartbreak her father had been going through ever since her mom left them, four years ago.
The spirits of your dead loved ones living on as fireflies, or cocuyos as they were called in the Dominican Republic—where Lucely’s family was from—was supposed to be a myth, a story people told to ease the sadness of loss. But for Lucely, it was very real. When they weren’t in their human forms gossiping about the neighbors or fussing over her, their firefly spirits inhabited the ancient willow tree in their backyard.