I chucked the CDs in the recycle pile. “More like an only child. I was born in a totally different decade.”
“Me too. Thank God my bros are out of the house, tell you right now. If your sister’s a wrecking ball, those guys are like . . .” Emilio puffed out his cheeks and made an exploding sound. “Nuclear bombs.”
Yeah, hence all the crying at Casa de Hernandez, inspired by V-boy badasses Johnny and Miguel.
“So this is Valeria?” Mari snuffed out the last of her cigarette in an old coffee can and approached the bike. Guess Papi got tired of hearing about her book deals.
“Valentina,” I said. “Where’s Papi?”
“Asleep on the couch. What year is this clunker, anyway?”
“Sixty-one,” Emilio said. “Classic. She looks a little rough now, but once we’re done . . .” He trailed off, eyes alight with imagined possibilities. Mari circled Valentina, and he kept a close eye on her, shifting his body in front of the bike when Mari got too close.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, and I realized I was smiling.
“Probably high from all the fumes,” Mari said. “It’s like sniffing gasoline in here.”
“I’m surprised you still have a sense of smell,” I said. “Cigarettes can kill that, you know.”
“So they say.”
“You should quit,” I said. Emilio had gone back to work on the bike, but Mari wasn’t going anywhere.
“This again?” she said. “Juju, honestly.”
“I don’t want you to get cancer.”
Mari put her arm around me. “Enough about me. What’s going on with Zoe? Mom said you guys are having problems?” She eyed up Emilio as if he had everything to do with it.
“We’re . . . kind of doing our own thing this summer.” Zoe had finally texted me this morning about missing her rehearsal, all no worries, no biggie, but it was big to her, just like the bike restore was big to me, and all that big stuff was slowly building up between us, and soon we wouldn’t be able to cross it.
“You guys used to be inseparable.” Mari glared at Emilio again.
“Key words: used to be.”
Mari must’ve heard the tightness in my voice, because she shut her mouth and shook another smoke from her pack. She cupped her hands and lit it, the end crackling behind her Zippo.
“Chain-smoke much?”
“Not too much, since I’m still alive and everything.” She exhaled through a smirk and leaned against the wall, seemingly content to watch Emilio work. I knew the feeling, but I also knew better than to joke with her about it. Mari would step in front of a charging bull for any of us, but her loyalty was blinding. Right now, that loyalty lay with Araceli, and I was the charging bull. Or maybe Emilio was the bull, which would make me . . . the pasture? No, the china shop. Ugh. Thank God SATs were over. I seriously sucked at analogies.
“He’s just here for the summer,” I whispered. “Mom doesn’t even know he’s a Vargas.”
Mari regarded me a moment, smoke rising from the cigarette between her fingers. “Why did you let Papi hire him?”
“I didn’t let him.” I picked up one of the dessert books and fanned the pages. “Papi can hire anyone he wants.”
Mari sucked in another drag. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have to lie to Mom about him being a Vargas.”
She was right, of course, and guilt sat heavy on my shoulders. Devil-Jude was playing in it, actually. Mom never came out to the barn—the piles of boxes stressed her out—but eventually she’d start asking about Emilio’s family, especially if she thought we were becoming friends.
“You’re telling on me, then?”
Mari shook her head, mouth twisting as she stamped out her cigarette. I bent down to retrieve it and toss it in the coffee can, and in that moment she stalked off toward Emilio.
“So, Emilio Vargas. Tell me about yourself. Your familia.” She stretched out that last word until it stung like a poison.
A slow and painful death, that’s how Mari would kill. I ached for her future ex-husband.
Emilio gave her the super-short highlights version of his life, ending with the job at Duchess and how he’d snagged the Valentina gig. He kept shifting around her to get to the bike, clearly in the middle of some important diagnostic, but Mari was undeterred.
“You’re what, twenty-one?” she asked.
“Nineteen,” he said.
Mari ran her finger down Valentina’s spine, and I swear the bike shivered at her touch. “Are you even qualified to work on this? Don’t you need special training?”
“This is the training right here.” He wouldn’t look at her, just wiped the bike with a soft rag where Mari had touched the engine.
“Can’t you get more experience at the dealership?” Mari asked. “I’ve seen all the tourists around here with their big fat Harleys.”
Emilio looked up at me and raised his eyebrows, like, Get this loca off my back already, but when I shrugged helplessly, he gave up and came out from behind the bike. He rubbed his fingers with an old bandanna from the toolbox, but they were permanently smudged, tattoos from the thing he most loved.
“Duke’s a solid guy,” he said. “Throws us extra work like this and doesn’t take a huge cut. I need all the cash I can get.”
“College?” Mari said.
“Road trip. Grand Canyon to start, soon as I’m done.”
“With your girlfriend here?” Mari asked.
“I’m not his girlfriend. And I’m going with Zoe,” I said defensively. “To the Dunes.”
Emilio caught my eye and smiled. “Road’s no place for a girlfriend, anyway. Might not come back. Just gonna go until I run outta gas, see where I end up.”
He winked at me, and before I could respond, he took a step closer and brushed the hair from my forehead, traced his finger along my eyebrow. It was such a small gesture, familiar and intimate. My cheeks flamed as if he’d pulled me into a passionate kiss.
I swatted him away.
Emilio leaned toward Mari and put his hand over his mouth, pretending to whisper. “She plays hard to get, but I know what this girl’s all about.”
“Seriously? Shut up!” I gave him a halfhearted shove, and he stumbled backward.
“I’m going to check on Papi,” Mari said. “You two have fun with your lovers’ quarrel.”
“We’re not quarreling,” I said.
Emilio laced his fingers through my hair, right on the back of my neck, and leaned in close. His breath tickled my ear, soft and sharp, all at once comforting and dangerous. “Does that mean we’re lovers?”
Emilio—probably just like his brothers—had the kind of voice that could give a girl goose bumps, and hours later his playful words still hung in the air. Even after he’d cleaned up the tools and said his good-byes, they lingered. They echoed in my head when Mom got home and opened their second-best bottle of Malbec to celebrate Mari’s arrival. And finally, after I’d taken a hundred pictures and begged off dessert and crept into my room for some privacy, I’d just about stopped shivering, just about gotten him out of my system.
But then I pulled back the fleece blanket on my bed, and there it was, black and obvious on my bright orange sheets.
The Book of Broken Hearts.
Chapter 11
I hefted the tome into my lap and traced the edges with my fingertips. Celi was the last to have it, and I’d long thought it lost, buried somewhere in the barn’s aging repository of boxes with her ballet slippers and Veronica Mars DVDs.
I’d given up looking for it a few years ago.
Yet here it was, pulling me back to the night of the oath, the words we’d uttered in the flickering candlelight like a spell. Nostalgia and regret emanated from the cover, straight through my fingers and into my heart. The effect was dizzying. I’d longed for this book for so many years that now, holding it against my bare legs, there was no way I wouldn’t open it, nothing I’d do to stop myself from traveling back in time.
. . .
I’m twelve years old, and Araceli’s midnight tears are unmistakable; I hear them splashing onto her bedroom floor like raindrops through a leaky roof.
I flip over on the bed, shuffle the owls out of the way, and press my ear to the wall: nothing but Celi’s muffled sobs and the murmurs of the other two. I can’t imagine why she’s upset. Tomorrow’s her engagement party, and Johnny’s bringing his whole family. Ours is here too—first time in seven years that all four Hernandez sisters are together under the same roof.
Why is she crying?
Next to my room, Celi’s door is open a hand’s width, enough to peek inside. The light from her night table glows orange-yellow, casting long shadows on the walls.
“That miserable bastard!” Mari paces at the foot of Celi’s bed in gray cutoff sweats and a dark-blue cami, hands flitting around like wild birds. “I say we kill him. Him and every last one of his rotten brothers.”
“Mari? Please. Shut. Up! No one’s killing anyone.” Lourdes strokes Celi’s long auburn hair and gently removes a bright orange flower from behind her ear; she went out with Johnny tonight and must’ve worn it to look special. It does look special. My sister is beautiful.
“Sorry. It’s . . . I hate that family.” Mari crosses the room and opens the window. She leans on the sill and lights a cigarette, exhales through the screen.
“Why is this happening? I should’ve listened to you.” Celi moans into Lourdes’s shoulder, and I catch a glimpse of her face, cheeks muddy with mascara tears.
“No, honey. You and Johnny were in love.” Lourdes pulls a tissue from a box on the desk and blots Celi’s face. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Mari is still hissing, her rampage resurfacing in a smoke-scratchy whisper that reminds me of the teakettle, all steam and whistle until someone turns off the stove.
“New mission,” Mari says. She smashes her cigarette into the sill. “Let’s rid the Vargas boys of their ability to reproduce.”
“Mari!” Lourdes covers Celi’s ears.
“This is more than Johnny and Miguel,” Mari says. “We’d be doing the world a favor. That family is cursed. Dark hearts, every one.” Mari nods when no one objects. She’s made up her mind. “Celi needs—”
“Celi needs our support,” Lourdes says. “Not violence.”
“Celi needs a drink,” the brokenhearted girl herself says. She untangles from Lourdes’s embrace and makes for the door, but stops short when she spots me in the shadows. “Jujube?”
I slip inside and lean against the wall, all three sisters looking at me with a mixture of surprise and concern. My cheeks burn under their collective stare, so hot and piercing I have to look away. I focus on the flower from Celi’s hair, cast to the ground, shining like a living thing against the weathered oak floor.
“It’s okay,” Lourdes says. “Go back to bed. Celi isn’t feeling well, but she’ll be okay.”
“Once I get that drink.” Celi tries to leave again, but Lourdes grabs her hand and she flops down on the bed, heartache resettling in her face. “I hate him!”
“Oh, honey.” Mari sits next to Celi and rubs her back. “I know, I know. I hate them too.” She looks up at Lourdes. “For both of you. How could they do this to us?”
My skin prickles and I rub my arms. Hazy images flicker behind my eyes from years past. Lourdes in a lemon-yellow prom dress with spaghetti straps and white roses pinned to the shoulder. A boy at the door, dark and handsome, a smile like a wolf’s. “This is my boyfriend, Miguel,” she said. Mom and Papi taking pictures. A limo full of girls like pastel flowers and boys in tuxedos, zooming off to the dance.
And then the yellow dress tossed on the bathroom floor, white roses smashed in the trash compactor the next morning. Late-night murmurs for weeks after. Miguel Vargas—horrible, awful, dark hearted—tried to hook up with Lourdes’s best friend, right there at the dance while Lourdes was touching up her lip gloss in the bathroom. I was only five or six at the time, but even I knew what that meant.
They’d been together for months, and then it was done. Over. Terminado.
I approach Celi’s bed slowly. “What happened with John—”
“Shh!” Mari holds up her index finger. “Don’t utter that name. Filthy, vile beast!” She pretends to spit three times. Celi sits up again and copies the spitting gesture. She tries to smile but instead unleashes a storm of fresh tears that twist my heart. Celi’s always crying about something—losing an earring, burning Mom and Papi’s anniversary cake, watching the Lifetime movie of the week. But I’ve never seen her so distraught, so completely wrecked.
Lourdes and Mari slip their arms around Celi on the bed, propping her up, and I squeeze my sister’s bare foot, a comparatively inadequate gesture that makes me feel like a little gray mouse.
“He broke my heart,” Celi whispers. “I’ll never love anyone again.”
“Oh, hush,” Mari says. “You need to cleanse your soul of his filthy, vile evilness. A ritual. We need to swear off that family forever.”
Lourdes rolls her eyes, but when Mari is on one of her self-appointed missions, there’s no stopping her.
“Go get one of Mom’s candles, Juju,” Mari says. “The Archangel Michael one. I need a paring knife, too.”
Celi shakes her head. “This is crazy.”
“It’s totally not! Michael is the one for severing bad ties,” Mari says. “Especially cheating bastard ties. That’s why he has a sword. And we’ll have a paring knife.”
“A sword and a knife? Really?” Lourdes throws her hands up. “You’re so dramatic, Wrecking Ball. God.”
Mari ignores them and ushers me into the hallway. “Hurry, Juju!”
When I return with the stuff, Mari lights the candle and directs us to sit around it on the floor. “Celi, get that filthy boy’s things. Any mementos you can find. And get the book.”
My hair tingles. I know what book she’s talking about.
The Book of Broken Hearts.
Celi shuffles a few shoes out of the way and drags the book out from under her bed. The pages are so stuffed that they curve and bend and squiggle, and my eyes go wide as Celi traces her fingertips over the cover, black and dull, scarred with silver hearts and stars and quotes from sad poems, all of it ominous in the flickering candlelight.
My sisters guard that book like a secret, using all sorts of spells and incantations to keep me in the dark. “Only those with multisyllabic names can know the secrets of the book,” Celi said more than once. “She who looks upon the book must first look upon herself in a bra,” Mari teased one summer when I’d been particularly desperate for a glimpse. The whole thing started with Lourdes her sophomore year—some kind of art class project about bringing emotion to creation, mining the depths of the soul. They were supposed to keep a journal and record their personal tragedies. Heartbreak, loss, death, fears, disappointments. She got really into it, and it became more of a scrapbook than a journal, an art project all its own. When Mari got the same assignment later, they called it a tradition, and Lourdes passed the book to her, and then it went to Celi.
I know all of this because I found Mari flipping through it one night and she told me. But when I begged for my own page? “Not until you’re sixteen,” Mari said. “Then you’ll be initiated and the book will be yours.”
Here’s the thing my sisters never remember: In four years, when I finally turn sixteen, no one will be left to initiate me.
Celi cracks the spine.
“When was the last time you opened this thing?” Mari asks as a few scraps flutter to the floor. “You’re supposed to be documenting stuff.”
Celi tucks the loose items back inside. “This is my first tragedy.” Her eyes well up again.
Lourdes takes the book and flips to a span of blank pages at the back. The rest is stuffed, writing swirled across pages, photos and postcards and stickers too. I hold my breath in reverence.
Mari shuffles through the pile of Johnny’s things Celi offered up
. Concert ticket stubs. A bouquet of dried and blackened roses. A birthday card. A handwritten letter on loose leaf. Doodles, names, hearts. One of their wedding invitations. A few printed photos. Mari eyes up the engagement ring on Celi’s finger, but Celi shakes her head, and Mari doesn’t push. “That’s it?”
Celi shrugs. “I have to dig up the other stuff. The rest of the pictures are digital.”
“Good. Delete them. Burn the rest of his stuff later too. Anything you can find.” Mari knifes deep Xs into Johnny’s eyes on the first photo.
I can’t believe Celi is letting Mari destroy this stuff. Broken heart or not, these are Celi’s memories. Proof that she existed, that she loved someone, even if it ended in betrayal.
Lourdes hands over the book, and on the first blank page, Mari tapes the defaced photos. She crushes some of the dried flowers, sticks on the blackened bits. At the bottom of the page, she scribbles the date with a Sharpie.
“You know what you can write in that stupid book?” Celi’s eyes are suddenly fiery. “Screw Johnny. Screw Blackfeather. I’m getting out of here. New York, maybe. I’m sick of mountains and sick of Johnny and his stupid caramel eyes and his stupid face and this whole stupid wedding. I’m never getting married. Write that down. And then you can take that book and burn it, because I don’t need it. No more love means no more heartbreak. Ever. Okay?”
“New York?” Mari says.
“New York.” Celi means it. She’s always wanted to go. The only reason she’s still here is Johnny. He wants to live in Telluride, build a stone house in the sky.
“Now I definitely need another smoke.” Mari tosses the book on the bed behind her and flips Celi’s stereo on low. As she puffs on her cigarette, her head bops to the music, and the shadows on the wall follow her dance.
Celi scissors her fingers, motioning for the cigarette. She takes a long, crackling drag, face creased and serious, eyes smudged with black makeup. In that moment, in the smoky haze, Celi looks grown up and wounded, and I realize how young I really am in my long pink nightgown.
My sisters have a whole collection of broken hearts in a book, and I haven’t even gotten my period yet.