“Nothing,” I said. “Slept like shit.”
He was quiet. I don’t think he believed me, but he didn’t say anything else.
Cri cri minal had ended, and I decided I didn’t want to listen to music. I felt bad for Hernán, but I just couldn’t. I went to the PlayStation and switched it off.
“I can leave if you want,” he said with wide eyes.
I bit my lip. I browsed the stack my brother kept by the PlayStation, grabbed a sleeve, picked it up.
“Why don’t you teach me how to game instead?”
Round 1 Fight flashed onscreen, and I started.
Hernán insisted I couldn’t fight if I kept laughing, and since I wanted to win I tried not to laugh. At first, I pressed the buttons as fast as I could. But instead of taking cover, my character kept leaping back, and Hernán cracked up.
“Check out the moves list,” he said.
Huh.
“What moves list?”
“Finish this round and I’ll show you.”
I was up against Sheeva. Her body was dark, and she had six brawny arms to fuck me up with. Her bra, like every female character in Mortal Kombat, showed her tits. I’d gone for Sub-Zero, a dude. I liked not needing to worry about having a huge rack, even in a videogame. I’m a twig.
“Hand it over,” Hernán said once I beat Sheeva. “Check this out.”
He pressed a button and a list of special moves popped up on the screen. Forward—Forward—Punch. Forward—Forward—Kick. That sort of thing. And all the way at the bottom, fatalities.
I returned to combat. This time, against Raiden. I got in a few kicks and he immediately poured down on me. I tried out a few special moves. I felt happy for the five seconds it took Sub-Zero’s hands to fill with ice before he hurled that deadly chill at his opponent, freezing him stiff. Then, I hit Raiden from up close and his body shot backward and smashed on the ground.
Raiden sprung up to retaliate and I pressed start.
“It doesn’t count if you pause the game all the time,” Hernán said. I reminded him he had insisted I use the moves list.
“I haven’t figured even half of it out yet,” I retorted, pressing start again and pausing the game.
“You’re such a cheat,” he said, and we laughed.
“Last time, I’m ready now,” I promised, even though it was a lie.
“I can see that,” said Hernán and he laughed. “You’re so bent on winning, you’re not learning how to play.”
I feigned anger so as not to admit he was right. But I kept going back to the list of moves. I practiced one on the joystick and felt like I was finally getting it. I was ready, I pressed start. I went up to Raiden and tried the combo. This time, it worked. The slugging he took drained his health and the words FINISH HIM! flashed onscreen. Raiden wobbled centerstage and I ended him.
For a time after Mamá died, I was convinced Tía and Walter would die too. I didn’t really care about Tía but it fucked me up to picture my brother dead. I would hide away and cry for hours. Then, I started to think of how I could die too, and hard as I might try I couldn’t picture it. Instead, I imagined a dog dragging one of its legs. The dog got sicker and sicker from a tumor in her spine, and I imagined her limping with her leg towed behind her, down the highway, around the neighborhood, and through our front door, her leg progressively mangled by the ground. The tumor grew, like tits on a girl. Thinner and thinner, the dog lost both her appetite and the desire to move. I pictured her wasting away against the property gate and, in her flesh, glimpsed my own death.
Raiden was dead and I was jumping around like a nutso. Hernán too. We hugged. Just as he was about to kiss me on the lips, Walter walked in.
I’d been at the PlayStation for two weeks. At first, I had a hard time choosing between music and games. Then, I figured it out: games at night and music when I went to bed.
It was Sunday and Walter didn’t have work. I was happy ’cause it was the first time he was letting me play with everyone. I ran through the moves in my head. I had a pretty good grasp on the ones for Sub-Zero, Sonya, and Raiden. The others, hardly at all.
Whenever somebody came through, they would start at the fridge, where they left a couple of beers. Everybody did the same. Then, they headed into the room for a spot. There wasn’t space for another soul. There were kids on the bed, the floor, on my brother’s bench, kids standing around clutching beers—the room was slammed.
“Sit your ass on my pillow and that’s the last thing you’ll do,” Walter said.
Hernán hadn’t arrived yet. Though at first I pretended not to mind, I really wanted him to show already. Two weeks of practicing together and today was the day he decided to skip out?
But there he was. He said hi to everybody and held something up for us to see.
“It was at the entrance,” he said. “It’s heavy as fuck.”
“It’s probably the Iglesia Universal paper,” my brother said from the floor where he sat by the door.
Hernán headed to the bed. He wound his way through several people to get to me.
“Look,” he said, handing it over.
Everybody stared at me, and I, surrounded by all those boys, took the package and pretended it was nothing.
“What’s up?” Walter asked.
I didn’t answer. I got off the bed and tiptoed through the legs of the folks on the floor on my way out the door. Hernán took my seat. There were people in every room, so I headed to the bathroom. My brother slipped in behind me, then looked at me. I lifted the package so he could see how fat it was. Walter told me to open it. He shut the door, pressing his weight against it to stop people coming in.
I held the package. I could tell they had weighted the bottom, carefully fastening the package so it wouldn’t come open. As I cut the thread with my teeth, I couldn’t help catching my reflection in the mirror, biting and baring my teeth. I didn’t like it at all. I sealed my lips. Tried to fix my hair, to look more like myself. I tugged at the thread and eyed my reflection again.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a newspaper. I scanned the pages till I came across one with the words “thank you” scrawled in red marker pen and, circled in the same color, a news article: “Runaway Veterinarian Sole Suspect in Murder of Special Needs Teen.” It was the man I’d seen. Except he wasn’t wearing his green coveralls. He looked much younger in the paper, like the photo was taken before he had become Ian’s father.
Inside the newspaper was a load of cash. I didn’t want to count it, so my brother took it from me.
I stared at the man’s photo. I knew they’d probably published his name in the paper, but I didn’t want to read it. I looked at the photo from up close, searched for something in his eyes, but they were only that: two eyes that expressed nothing. Would anyone remember what he had been like before he became a father? I had only seen him after.
Walter slowly counted the money. When he finished, he said:
“Damn . . . It’s a shitload. Enough for a PlayStation 4.” Neither of us laughed.
In the paper was also a black-and-white photo of Ian. He wasn’t smiling either, his eyes angled upward. If I could’ve been beside him and followed his gaze, I thought, I would most likely have found that he was staring at nothing, at least nothing I could see. Beneath the photo: “His body was discovered in . . .” but I didn’t want to read on.