Chapter 3 Ana
Ana
“Hey, neighbor.”
Ana froze. This was not good. She glanced up to see Alex unlocking the door next to hers. What were the odds he’d be in the room next door? She’d waited until the others had chosen their rooms before grabbing a random key. Mentally she kicked herself for not paying more attention.
“Destined to always be neighbors, right?” Alex said. He seemed nervous.
“Looks like it.” Ana bit her lip, avoiding eye contact.
This was going to be awkward. She had spent the better part of a year listening at her door every time she went out, just to be sure she wouldn’t run into Alex in the hallway between their apartments.
Now here he was, front and center, for three whole days. Unavoidable.
“Want help with that?” Alex nodded to the key. She was violently jamming it into the lock. Damn thing wouldn’t budge.
“No, er…I’m good.” This was the closest she’d been to him in months. He was taller than he used to be. She hadn’t noticed from a distance, but standing here, she could sense the change. The angles were all wrong. She had to crane her neck to look up at him.
That wasn’t the only thing that had changed.
After a year of hanging out with the beautiful people, he’d started to look like one of them.
His chest and arms had filled out, his Lakers T-shirt was stretched tight in all the right places, his face was squarer, and there were still traces of the boy she knew, but they were impermanent, brief flashes. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
Ana blushed.
“Hey, um, I won’t keep you,” Alex said. “I just…I wanted to ask how Carmen’s doing? I haven’t seen her about much these days.”
“Er…good. Fine. Mom’s fine. Yes. Thanks for asking.”
Ana used the term “fine” loosely, as in “still functioning, despite the death of her only son, loss of her job, and an over-reliance on antidepressants.” Her mom wasn’t the same person that Alex used to know. But then, who was?
“Okay, sure. That’s good.” Alex’s voice was quiet.
He knew Ana wanted to get away from him, it was obvious.
The hurt registered in his eyes. His eyes—the only thing that hadn’t changed about him.
The same soft brown, gentle eyes. God, everything about him hurt.
Everything stirred up stuff she couldn’t face.
The stupid lock wouldn’t open. She yanked hard on the door, pulling it towards the jamb, and tried the key again and again.
It was starting the way it always started.
A noise, a roar was beginning somewhere in her head behind her ears.
With all the drama—the bus exploding and the creepy card—she could feel how close she was to the edge.
At least a year of therapy with the incompetent school psychologist, Mr. Dankman, had taught her one useful thing: she knew when she was hitting her limits.
It would be okay. She could handle this, she told herself. She’d done it before, too many times to count. She just really needed to be alone, now.
“Hey, some of the guys were thinking of meeting up by the pool later,” Alex said, nodding in the direction of the fenced area in the middle of the parking lot.
“You know, blow off some steam, make the most of this whole situation. I thought I’d go for a bit.
I don’t really want to be sitting alone in my room tonight, tomorrow being the anniversary and all.
I thought you might want to come…if you wanted company or something? ”
Alex had managed to say the entire thing without looking up at her. If he’d seen her face, he might have noticed it in her eyes. The memories.
Danny and Alex.
They used to be inseparable, the scholarship kids who rode the bus for an hour every day from Receida to the posh suburb of La Cholla.
Always hanging out after school in the kitchen, Danny goofing off, Alex writing songs for their band, Trash Dogs.
Laughing, easy, together. All that ended the day Danny died.
The roar was getting louder. It was now or never. If she hurt his feelings, she’d have to make up for it later. Better than letting him see her have a full-blown panic attack.
“Okay, sure. Yeah, I’ll come, thanks,” she mumbled. With immense relief, the key finally clicked, and she swung open the door, pointedly stepping inside.
“Great.” Alex smiled.
“Sure.” Ana nodded.
“See you.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, bye.”
“Bye.”
Oh, god. Ana pushed the door firmly shut and stood for a long moment, her back to the jamb, listening to her heart beating fast and hard, willing it to slow down.
The room was dark; strips of faint light from the road sign flashed through the crooked blinds, alternating red and yellow lights catching the edges of the bed, the nightstand, a single chair backed against the wall.
It was basic, utilitarian stuff, dated and unbearably stuffy but private, nonetheless.
Grateful for the space, Ana switched on the lamp and pulled the blinds shut.
Flinging her bag onto the floral bedspread, she headed for the bathroom. A blisteringly hot shower should fix her right up. She just had to keep busy. She could do that. She was an expert at keeping busy.
Turning on the shower, she adjusted it to the hottest setting she could bear. Then she flung her clothes in a pile and stepped into the steaming water, gasping with shock as it singed her skin. It was good; it was what she needed.
Ana tilted her whole head back under the water and let it form rivulets down her face, along the sides of her nose, her chin.
She stood like that for a long time, until the heat made her body protest weakly, tempting her to slump down and melt onto the tiled floor.
But she wouldn’t. She had spent enough time curled up on the floor this past year.
She was stronger now. The grief had forced her to grow up.
Leaves, broken glass, a can of green paint. The vivid images caught her, flashing before her eyes. She pushed them away.
Keep busy, her head warned her.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped up in a stiff pink towel. Wiping the steam off the mirror, she looked at herself. Her distinctive hazel eyes stared back.
In all ways but one, the twins took after their mother.
Carmen Reyes had grown up in the Dominican Republic, moving to California the day she turned eighteen, in search of new adventures.
She got one more than she planned when shortly after arriving, she got pregnant and began her brand-new life as a single mom.
The twins had inherited their mother’s easy nature and good looks with thick, wavy hair and a wide smile.
But their eyes were the one thing they got from their father.
Every time Ana looked in a mirror, she saw a piece of him.
A reflection of the stranger from a lost night seventeen years ago.
Unlike their mother’s warm brown eyes, his legacy was absorbing and ever-changing—brilliant hazel eyes that took on the myriad colors of the world around them, blue, green, gold. Danny’s eyes.
Ana looked away.
Turning on the faucet, she filled her cupped hands with refreshingly cool water.
The hot shower had irritated the burn scars on her palms, turning them a brilliant red.
They appeared raw and angry, the way they’d looked in the hospital when the bandages had first come off.
She held her hands under the running water for a few long moments, turning them around and around until the painful itching subsided.
The mirror had misted up again, making her reflection a blurry haze of pinks and browns. Something dark caught Ana’s attention at the top of the reflection. She turned around and checked for the source.
There it was, in the top corner of the bathroom wall. A small black dot, no bigger than a pencil eraser. Whoever had put it there wasn’t very subtle. Against some trim or behind the shower, it would have been impossible to see, but in the corner between the pastel walls, it stood out easily.
A bad feeling in her stomach, Ana walked up to the corner, clambering onto the rim of the tub for a better look.
Light reflected off the small round object recessed in a tidy hole.
Its black mesh surface was shiny and, unlike everything else in the motel, appeared to be new.
It wasn’t a camera—maybe some kind of tiny microphone?
It was carefully embedded in the wall, silently listening to everything she was doing, to every sound she made.
She recoiled, almost losing her balance, instinctively pulling the towel up tight around her.
This was not good, not good at all. It could only mean one thing.
Someone was spying on them.