Chapter Two
According to image quotes on the internet that are probably wrong, Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. With my car’s headlights beaming up the street, I drove past dark houses. The familiar jealously over their pitch-black front windows crept in. As did the stubborn hope of ours being unlit, too.
But when I pulled up to our house, lights flickered through the slats in the blinds.
All that excitement that swelled my chest like helium balloons less than an hour ago? Popped and deflated by Dad still playing video games well past midnight.
I turned off the ignition. Hung my head heavy against the steering wheel for a minute before trudging up the driveway and into our house.
I slammed the door. Hard.
The pew-pew-pews of blaster shots drowned it out. So did the chorus of electric twangs from a lightsaber. The only thing loud enough to cut through this noise was the voice of the world’s most famous theoretical physicist ringing inside my head: Youknow that spot on your vision board where your papá’s acting more like a father and less like a Jedi?
“Shut it, Einstein,” I muttered on the way to the living room.
In the good ol’ days, a baby-blue love seat with sunshine-yellow pillows took center stage here. After Mom, Dad stashed it inside the garage. Replaced it with a gaming chair equipped with thick, black leather pads and curved armrests he alleged were designed for “ergonomic support.”
Four wheels supported the monstrosity, complete with a 360-degree swivel. He didn’t bother to use that feature, though. Not even when I stopped a few feet behind it and said, “Dad, I’m home.” I cleared my throat to correct myself. “I mean, I’m back.”
Because After Mom, this place flipped from “home” to “house.”
A few blaster shots later and still no answer. The wireless headset squashing down a spray of curls stayed glued in the direction of the screen.
Something acidic danced on my tongue, stronger than the shots of espresso we’d handed out to Angie’s departing guests. Mandy’s Insta grid flashed inside my mind. Especially the candid photos of fathers doting on their daughters.
Once upon a time, he’d showered Po and me with attention. That version of him only lived inside my HEA board now. I didn’t know how exactly I’d get him to kiss gaming adiós, transforming him from frog to princely Dad again.
If Mandy Whitmore could train swans to perform synchronized routines for Taylor Swift’s last Christmas party, and make Selena Gomez’s wedding gown shift from blue to pink à la Princess Aurora as she sashayed down the aisle, surely she’d have some ideas.
Until then, I stepped in front of the TV and waved my arms. “Dad! I’m back.”
He tilted his head to the left and kept playing. Apparently, my scrawny frame hardly did anything to block out the onscreen action. “It’s past curfew, kiddo. Should I ground you?” he teased.
My arms flapped at my sides. “It’s not curfew if it’s an event, remember?”
“You’re always working school events, kiddo.” He groaned. Whether from me putting the extra back into extracurricular or his avatar getting zapped by a stormtrooper, I couldn’t tell. “Can’t you take the summer off and have some fun for a change?”
“Dad, you know I can’t. I’ve told you I need more experience before applying to Mandy Whit—” I threw my head up.
With the tall ceilings, exposed beams, and ocean-blue and sand-colored decor, our living room fit perfectly inside a “modern beach farmhouse” mood board. Airy vibes for days. On top of the huge glass doors propped open, letting a salt breeze in.
The atmosphere pressed down on my shoulders anyway, firm and heavy.
What was the point of reminding him about the fairy godmother internship? Or that Angie’s quince was my first time planning a party outside of school?
Either he was incapable of paying attention to anything or he was intent on forgetting everything. Both options forced out a sigh like an air horn on its last leg.
“Okay, okay.” The lights of the game bounced off his dark hair. “No need to get all riled up. I’m proud of you, event chair.”
The Monday after Po’s quince-gone-wrong, I’d beelined to SBA’s event-planning meeting. Every member who’d witnessed the banner debacle firsthand—or heard about it from Gianna’s gossip-girl-wannabe TikTok, HotGoss—turned to stare when I asked if it was too late to join. “I just want to make sure disasters like Po’s never happen again, okay?”
The event chair back then reddened, slowly nodding her head. She tasked Callie, one of the only other freshmen in the committee, to get me up to speed. And soon, I was hooked. Turned out creating events that people remembered for the right reasons beat them being memorable for the wrong ones.
Dad’s voice pulled me back into the room. “Youngest chair in Matteo High’s history, eh?”
Listing my accomplishments mollified me. Slightly. “Don’t you forget it.” Seriously, at the very least, remember that.
“All I’m saying is all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, Cas.”
“What about all play and no work?”
Dad winced. Uh-oh. Hit by the stormtrooper’s blaster again? Or by me shooting too much judgment into the joke?
Great. Besides frustration, now guilt joined the party. Dad never stopped working. Only now his gaming all-nighters never stopped either. With his candle burning at both ends, wouldn’t he eventually get scorched?
Mandy’s internship couldn’t come any sooner. She’d teach me how to manage—better yet, streamline—her client’s jam-packed schedules. Tricks I could hardly wait to use on Dad. Since I wasn’t a fairy godmother’s apprentice yet, I stepped closer and reached for the next best thing: the Xbox controller.
He slid away from me, clutching the wireless controller against his robed chest. Oh, so now he used the chair’s wheels. “A few more minutes, Castillo. I won’t stay up too late. Lo prometo.”
I shook my head at his empty vow. When he saw I wasn’t going to make another move to disrupt his gameplay, he sunk even deeper inside the well-worn crevices of his gaming chair and settled into the place he loved living in most: a galaxy far, far away.
Fine. If I couldn’t fix his gaming habit right now, the very least I could do was clean up the mess on the TV tray. I grabbed the two empty bottles of kombucha, a bitter and yeasty tea he started chugging After Mom for its “beneficial health properties.”
I didn’t have to lift one to my nose for the reek of fermented ginger to make me gag. After chucking the bottles into the kitchen recycling bin, I headed down the hallway.
Woven seagrass frames covered both sides of the walls. Special family events hung here. Per usual, I stopped at my favorite.
Mom, in all her gap-toothed glory, stood in front of Guantanamera, her first catering truck. Sunshine glimmered on skin a few shades darker than mine. Her corkscrew curls coiled instead of frizzed (unlike mine). Dad stood next to her, kissing the side of her round cheeks. I traced a fingertip over her dimples, moving over to Dad.
No bags heavier than my utility bag under his eyes. No stubble covering up the strong jaw he’d passed down to me.
Before my stomach twisted more than the thorny brambles surrounding every cursed fairy-tale castle, I tore myself away from the picture. Stepped to the photo of them bringing a newborn Po home from the hospital. Then me. The Christmases we spent in Hawaii. Every picture onward, our smiles shined brightly.
Until they didn’t.
I sped up. The only thing worse than the disappearance of our picture-perfect portraits was the snapshots hinting at the beginning of the end.
Photos tracking Mom’s hair thinning. Her curvy body following suit. And finally, the single photo without her in it: the one taken a mere month and a half After.
Surprisingly, the last-minute photographer Dad found on Facebook had done a nice job of making Po’s trying-on-the-tiara quince moment look natural. Minutes after the shot, the eleventh-hour DJ she’d hired off Insta announced her grand entrance. Her coming through the curtains was the cue for the confetti to rain over guests. For the huge banner to drop, proclaiming Po’s happy birthday for even those sitting at the back of the banquet hall to see.
The confetti went off without a hitch. Except the slapdash printer Po found forgot the tilde.
There was lots of laughter. Mortified, I didn’t take a poll to figure out if the “laughing at” guests outnumbered those “laughing with.” While Po shrugged off her happy fifteen buttholes, her blasé attitude didn’t stop the all-night muffled snickers or pitying looks. The latter stung a million times worse.
Surprise, surprise, Dad stopped hanging pictures after that.
I avoided eye contact with the blank sections of the walls, picturing Mandy Whitmore’s Insta grid instead. Color-coordinated photos impeccably arranged inside a symmetrical grid. I could scroll for hours and never reach the bottom of all the graduations… birthday parties… all sorts of happily ever afters. Visualizing them made it easier for me to pretend I was strolling past these walls instead of running from them.
The faster I moved away, the more my heartbeat mellowed. The Chewbacca roars and blaster shots receded—only to be replaced by the swell of the newest K-pop melodies spilling from my door. A side of cackles followed the chorus. Whiffs of palo santo trailed right behind.
Hurricane Po was in full force tonight. Lovely.