Following their rules about boys.
I looked down at my body, clothed in an old tank top from Celi’s closet, faded olive cargo shorts from Mari’s summer stash. Even the flip-flops were hand-me-downs, some faded old pair with missing sequins I’d found in an unlabeled box of toys.
Emilio thought I let Mari make my decisions, tell me how to live. And maybe he was right.
Maybe I didn’t know how to do it myself.
“You let your pops think this meant something to you,” he said. “I seen him watchin’ you. His face lights up like Christmas when you’re around. Now you’re gonna let your sister sell it out from under him? Before I’m even done? I thought we had a deal.”
A deal. He was more concerned about the bike than anything else. About his job. His money. Heat boiled inside, sputtering into my throat. “Worried you won’t have enough cash for your trip now? Relax, Emilio Vargas. I’m sure my father will pay you in full.”
Emilio’s eyes widened, lips curling into a pained smirk. There was no more laughter in his eyes. Only disappointment, the dull ache of it spreading and blooming in my chest as he left without another word, half his tools still scattered on the floor.
Chapter 19
“Another lovers’ quarrel?” Mari held a cigarette to the electric burner and sucked until it caught fire. It was a miracle the girl still had eyebrows.
“It’s not a lovers’ quarrel,” I said. Emilio had been working with Papi every day since our fight, five and counting, and so far we’d managed to totally avoid each other. Mari’s biker friend had stopped by yesterday, but other than eavesdropping on his enthusiastic visit, I’d spent my time indoors, putting the finishing touches on a scrapbook I was supposed to make months ago for Zoe’s birthday. “I just don’t want to talk to him.”
“So your big plan is to stare at him out the window all week?”
I backed away from the screen door and sat at the kitchen table. “I was looking for Pancake.”
Who, me? Me? Was it me, Jude? Me? Or do you have actual pancakes to share? The dog, who’d been in the kitchen the whole time, trotted over and nuzzled my hand.
“Juju . . .” Mari leveled me with one of her no-nonsense stares. “Are you falling for him?”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, first of all, you need to go on the patch. Second of all, you’re crazy.”
She blew a dragon plume out the window over the sink. “I read enough books about teenagers in love to recognize the signs.”
“Yeah, well. Emilio and I aren’t werewolves or fallen angels, so there’s that.”
“I’m just saying—”
“And where’s the other guy? Shouldn’t there be a love triangle of impossibly hot boys or vampires pining after me?”
“I’m worried about you, that’s all.” Her voice was soft, almost protective. “This is what Vargas boys do, Jujube. Things get heated, they bail.”
Emilio’s words echoed in my skull. She gets to make the decisions, tell you what to do? How to live? Who to be with?
“Things aren’t heated,” I said. “He’s not bailing. He’s working.”
“You need to stop this before—”
“You smell like an ashtray from all the way over here. Papi’s gonna bust you.”
Mari narrowed her eyes, a warning shot that grazed my head. She crushed the butt in the sink, blowing out a last puff of smoke, and ransacked the cupboards and drawers like a psycho.
She emerged with matches and one of Mom’s old Virgin Mary candles and sat down across from me, flame sputtering as she lit the dusty wick. I hadn’t seen the knife at first, but now she held it out over the fire. “Give me your palm.”
I sat on my hands. “I’m not getting stabbed again.”
“No one stabbed you. It was a blood oath. And obviously it didn’t work the first time. Palm.”
“I never should’ve signed that thing. It’s a relic, Mari. Nothing to do with me or Emilio. He’s not like Johnny.” I hated that I was crying in front of her, five years old again.
“What do you think will happen when things get bad with Papi? I don’t mean mood swings. I’m talking when he can’t go to the bathroom by himself. When he can’t remember your name. When he freaks because he thinks we’re strangers, that we’re trying to hurt him.”
I rubbed my hands on my shorts, my fingers tightening. Sadness rose inside me like bubbling tar. It coated my thoughts, my words, my heart, made them all heavy and black. “I don’t know.”
“Do you really think Emilio will stick around for that? And what about after that? After Papi’s gone and—”
“Don’t say that.”
“Juju . . .” Mari’s voice finally broke. “This is bigger than the oath, okay? And it’s not just about Papi and the next few months or years. There’s stuff we haven’t even considered yet.”
Her face held its familiar stubbornness, the know-it-all confidence that had settled into her eyes in childhood. But there was something new there too, hiding in the shadows. Something powerful and dangerous that left in its wake a girl even younger than me.
Fear.
“What stuff?” I asked.
Mari held my gaze for only a moment, then it was gone, the fear I’d seen no more than a ghost in her watery eyes. “I’m just saying we can’t predict the future, and getting tangled up with a Vargas now will only make things harder later.” She scraped an old splotch of oatmeal on the place mat like it was no big deal, but her voice had betrayed her, cracked and uncertain. The Virgin candle fizzled out, smoke coiling like a serpent between us, and in that moment the fear I’d seen in her eyes filled my chest.
What stuff? She hadn’t said, and I couldn’t cough out the words to ask again.
Mari returned the unused knife to the drawer. She filled a glass with ice water, and once she’d chugged it, everything bad was erased, and she turned to me with a bright smile.
“The guy e-mailed about the bike. His wife is cool with it. He’s interested in making an offer. Papi doesn’t really know what it’s worth, but I checked around. I think we can get a nice chunk of change.”
She stood there with her jutting hip and her smoky “essence of Mari” and rambled on about the specs and collectors’ editions and Blue Book values until the bubbling black tar inside me finally boiled over.
“A nice chunk of change? Are you serious?” I shouted. “I’ve been here all summer, all year, and you swoop in for a few weeks and suddenly you know what’s best, right? Did you even ask Papi if he wanted to sell Valentina?”
Her eyes widened, but I plowed on. “Your way or no way. My whole life it’s been like that. You’re—”
“I can’t believe you.” She slammed her glass on the counter. “You act like you know something, but you’re a spoiled little—”
“At least I’m not—”
“Mariposa y Jude Hernandez!” Papi’s voice boomed through the kitchen. He pushed open the screen door and loomed in the doorway, filling up the space in a way he hadn’t since the diagnosis. He towered over everything in sight. Even Pancake scampered under the table.
“Enough is enough is enough!” Papi let the door slam behind him and squinted at the Virgin candle. “I don’t know what kind of séance you’re doing in here, mi brujitas, but this bickering has to stop. And don’t let your mother catch you using her church candles. Dios mío.”
“Sí, Papi,” we said simultaneously.
“Emilio is done for the day. I’m going upstairs,” Papi said. “And you two will work this out like adults. Ay, it’s like the Wild West in here. You’re sisters, queriditas. No more fighting.”
“Sí, Papi,” Mari said again.
“And another thing.” He looked from Mari to me and back to Mari again, the air as thick as gravy. This was usually the part in the conversation where the demon woke up and gave him a good zap, reminding him he had no business having a rational adult discussion, playing the authority figure.
But Papi’s eyes were clear, his directive focused
. “E-mail your friend and tell him thanks but no thanks on the bike. I’ve made my decision. Until I start wearing diapers and drooling, Valentina is not for sale.”
“Don’t talk like that, Papi.” Mari’s voice was faint and frail.
Papi swatted her words out of the air. “Don’t be so sensitive, little butterfly. Just remember, soy tu padre todavía.”
I’m still your father.
“We need to talk.” Mom swept the hair away from my face and frowned, her body sagging next to mine on the bed. Behind her, Mari stood in the doorway, eyes red and exhausted.
I’d been hiding out for the past two hours, paging through the black book, and I didn’t hear Mom come in from work. Mari probably ratted me out for refusing to accept her apologies, a stance that took epic willpower because her last round of I’m so super sorry involved peanut butter cookie dough. The warm sweetness of it still wafted through the hallway.
My stomach grumbled. Traitor.
“Come in, mi amor,” Mom said to Mari. “Close the door.”
I shoved the book under my pillow as Mari collapsed into my desk chair, facing me and Mom on the bed. The slump of their shoulders was identical, the air around them heavy and sad.
I bolted up straight. “Did something happen with Papi?”
Mom shook her head. “Just some things . . . We need to get things out in the open.”
Vargas. She knows.
“Emilio’s just . . . he’s helping us. You know, to get the bike running,” I stammered. “He’s not—”
“It’s not about the bike.” Mari flashed a warning look, a silent signal meant for me alone: Don’t say another word. I exhaled with temporary relief.
What is this about?
“We need to start making some decisions about your father’s care, mi querida. Long term.”
“For when you’re back in Argentina?”
Mom bit her lower lip, tears welling in her eyes.
Mari scooted the desk chair close to the bed and rested her hand on my knee. “Papi could get really disoriented if we interrupt his routine now. The doctors agree it’s better for them to stay. Permanently.”
“The doctors just want our insurance money. We’re practically putting their kids through college.” I said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but even I heard the desperation in my words.
“It’s not that simple,” Mom said.
“What about Transitions?” I’d meant it as a challenge, but my voice was so small, it came out sounding like a good idea, like, Hey! Have you guys thought of this awesome place, Transitions? I think Papi would capital-L Love it.
Mom didn’t flinch. Maybe she’d meant to tell me about it all along. Maybe she thought she already had. Obviously Mari was in the loop—she didn’t ask any questions.
“That’s one option for the table, yes,” Mom said.
“On the table,” I said.
“Sí. But there are other considerations. Things you and your sisters have to . . . more decisions.” Mom shook her head and mumbled something under her breath. I barely understood her through the accent. “The doctors . . . you explain, Mariposa.”
“I don’t know how much you know about the illness,” Mari said, “but early onset isn’t exactly the same as regular Alzheimer’s. There’s often a genetic component.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They can test EOA patients to see if they have these gene mutations.” She clenched her fist, then opened it, traced her fingers over my knee. “Papi has them.”
“So . . . they can fix the genes? Like, alter them? Radiate them or something?” The questions tasted stupid on my tongue, but if there was a fraction of a chance . . .
“It’s just to help them look for the probable cause,” Mari said. “The doctors said that with the mutations, Papi likely has familial early onset Alzheimer’s. Inherited.”
My brain struggled to put the pieces together. “Papi’s parents had it, then?”
“One of them most likely did,” Mari said.
We didn’t know much about our paternal grandparents. Papi’s mother left when he was in preschool, and his father died in his forties from lung cancer. Papi was already out of the house by then, and when they tried to locate his mother to tell her about her husband’s death, they found out she’d died early too. Something to do with alcohol. Liver failure maybe?
When I’d first heard the story as a kid, I thought they were so stupid, so selfish. Smoked and drank themselves to death, leaving my father and uncle before their time, depriving us of ever knowing our grandparents. But now, as I watched Mom fidget with my fleece blanket, felt Mari’s hand on my knee, I wondered if my grandparents somehow knew what their future held. If they’d gotten a glimpse and taken another way out before the demon could get a foothold, set up his evil lair.
I shivered at the thought. “What about Uncle Sebastian?”
“He’s getting tested,” Mom said.
Last I’d heard, they hadn’t told Papi’s brother about the diagnosis. He lived in Buenos Aires, and they spoke only every four or five months, if that. We weren’t close with my uncle, and neither was Papi. They hadn’t wanted to bother him with it before.
“Querida, you and your sisters . . . the way the disease works . . .” Mom pulled at a thread on my blanket. “I’m sorry. I feel like it’s our fault. Like I should’ve been able to . . . I didn’t understand how it worked.”
“We have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it, Juju,” Mari said, and then her face crumpled. Fear was back in her eyes, and in that moment my big tough sister looked small and weak, shoulders hunched over her chest, sweater hanging on her frame like a shirt on a wire hanger. “There’s a test. They can tell us if we have the mutations too. If we do . . .”
Her words faded away, leaving a sharp black gash on my heart. Everything felt hot and sticky, breath rushing in and out in gulps. “Are you . . . and the . . . What did Papi say?”
“We agreed not to tell him,” Mom whispered. “Worrying about you . . . he’d blame himself. It would only make it harder on him.”
“We need to be prepared.” Mari’s eyelashes were dark with tears. “If we get early treatment, maybe . . .”
“Maybe what?” My hands shook. “We know about it sooner? So we can look forward to forgetting everything? No way. I’m not getting tested.”
“I get it,” Mari said. “You think I’m not scared shitless? But the benefits—”
“This is what Lourdes meant, right? On the call? She asked about a test, and then you guys got all quiet and weird and—”
“Not weird,” Mari said. “We’re trying to figure out the best way through this.”
“And?”
Any second now Mari would leap out of her chair, punch a pillow, come up with some way to beat the whole thing, and laugh about it later. And I’d go along with it. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this. . . .
“Celi and Lourdes are coordinating flights in a few weeks,” she said. “They want to be here so we can all get tested together. We can talk to the counselors first. It’s better if we’re together. We can . . . It’s just better.” She sank deeper into the desk chair. My knee went cold in the absence of her touch.
There was nothing left to say, and after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Mom kissed my forehead and they retreated to their separate bedrooms, leaving me alone with the big white elephant in the room sucking up all the air.
I slipped the Book of Broken Hearts from beneath my pillow and flipped through the pages again. There were the Vargas boys, and all the other breakups my sisters had endured, decades of collective heartache immortalized. Other stuff too—Duffer, the dog they’d had before I was born, buried behind the barn. A boy from Lourdes’s class who’d committed suicide. Mari’s best friend who moved to France their senior year. Other friends who’d graduated early or cut ties after some stupid girl fight.
My parents were barely mentioned though, not even in the background of the d
iary-style entries. It truly was a time capsule of the Hernandez Sisterhood; it was as if my parents never existed. Important back then was falling in love, passing a test, getting into college. It was unfulfilled crushes and secret dreams, first drinks, first kisses, the best way to the river in the dark, the sneaking out that had sparked some of the very entanglements that later ended in tears. They didn’t have to consider my parents in their possibilities of broken hearts. It never occurred to them that there might come a day when Papi wouldn’t remember them, a day when they’d long for a way back through the tangle of memories, back to all the little things, back before they’d ever thought about saying the long good-bye.
The long good-bye. That’s what they called Alzheimer’s on the message boards, the websites I’d scoured in the weeks after his diagnosis looking for a loophole, a way out for us. Maybe not today or tomorrow or even next month, but one day, they said, one day we’d wake up, and Papi wouldn’t know what day it was. He’d forget my name maybe, forget we had a dog, or maybe instead of Pancake he’d call him Waffles or Window or Shoelace. And every day it would start again, us scrutinizing the lines in his face, the arch of his brows, wondering if today was familiar or new.
Maybe it was the long good-bye, the longest one ever. But it was worse than that, too. Because in that good-bye were a hundred hellos, every day brand-new, as if we were meeting for the very first time.
The demon would ensure that. There wasn’t a cure. Only the destruction. The aftermath.
And now, a 50 percent chance it would live on in us.
Chapter 20
The sun wove pink-orange webs in the dawn sky, and Pancake yawned and smacked his jowls at my feet, like, Please can we go back to sleep now, puh-lease?
He’d stayed with me all night, and as he gazed longingly at my bed in the morning light, I wanted so badly to crawl under the blanket with him, to curl up and pretend everything Mari and Mom had told me was just another nightmare, some worse-than-worst-case scenario invented by my subconscious.
But every time I closed my eyes, the number flashed before them. The big five-oh. Fifty percent.