CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Penn.
Had he expected a statue when he came here?
That’s what he found—an eighteen-year-old, petite, golden-brown-haired Cuban girl carved into the center of the room. The cold metal stool was a bonus. Even Tía Viv couldn’t have made her this way.
Penn made me this way.
The moment played out like traveling back in time. To a small room and a gold watch and the crown on the side. To scruff and soft flannel. He looked the same and different. That much I was able to form into a coherent thought. Clean-shaven, tamed hair. A shadow that stood a hundred feet tall.
“Hello?” he said, like the word, the statue girl, the workshop was some great mystery to him too. Because this time, it was.
Words tripped over my tongue. My limbs refused to budge for so long, I was convinced he was about to bolt. But then statue-me grew marionette strings. My legs unfolded. My mouth connected to some voice box in my soft, plushy center. “Hello,” I said. Finally.
Penn ventured forward a few steps. He wore gray shorts and an indie band tee I’d never seen. A shopping bag was clutched in one hand. “Sorry for showing up like this. Did this place use to belong to Vivian Rojas, the artist?”
“Yes,” I told him. The past tense of it still stung.
His stance loosened a bit. “Okay, good. Um. My grandfather died last week. Yesterday was his funeral, and my mom brought over some of his things, like mementos.”
Recuerdos.
“Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.” He jiggled his head sheepishly.
“It’s okay,” I told him, the word “liar” flashing like neon. I couldn’t let him know the reason this meeting was everything but okay. More than real talk stood between us. This was real life, where he was alive and I was alive, but I wasn’t burrowed inside his arms. Or anywhere inside his head.
His soft, closed smile tugged harder at my edges.
“The other day, I was working a night shift at the hospital—Sacred Heart. And a call came in about Vivian Rojas and an accident.” Penn stepped forward, eyes narrowing as if he’d just noticed the battered state of my body. “You were the one in the car with her.”
I nodded. “I’m her niece.” It was useless to stop the tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. I arced my arm. “This was my tía’s workshop. It’s mine now, and the cabin,” I said, noticing the way I kept adding details as if this were the old Penn. My Penn.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “For your loss and for having to go through what looks like a painful recovery.”
Bruises inside and out. “Thank you. I’m sorry too. For your grandfather.”
“Thanks. He was an amazing guy.” A shroud settled over his face.
“I normally don’t work in the emergency room, but I was there on a break visiting a buddy when the call came over the radio.
I’d gone back up to my floor when your ambulance arrived.
I didn’t help with your treatment or anything.
” Piercing blue was everywhere I could see. “I would have remembered you.”
Would have. But didn’t.
A tear slipped through before I could stop it.
I dashed it away, but the sudden jump of his brows said he caught all the evidence.
This was unfair. We were totally off-balance.
This was not me catching feelings for a new boy too fast. I had time in—we did.
But he didn’t remember any of it. I loved this boy, and he didn’t know he’d loved me back.
At once, all my resolutions crumbled, even though I wasn’t supposed to do this, to seek this. I had given him up to live. But now . . . seeing him? I would’ve given the world for only a few moments of having him for real.
Penn took two steps forward. “I feel like I should know you, though.”
A tiny flare shot through my chest. “Sylvie. My name is Sylvie.”
My name is Penn, he’d said that first day, and disappeared.
“Sylvie.” The sound, the shape of me across his mouth, was the same as before.
His brows furrowed, then he rattled his head slightly, as if shaking a thought away.
He lifted the handle bag. “Listen, I’m sorry to bother you like this.
But my grandfather had this piece forever, and my mom said it was one of Vivian’s.
After she read about the accident, she asked around and found out that your aunt owned this cabin, and we thought your family might like to have this. ”
Realization came a microsecond before Penn handed over a wooden box, but not just any wooden box.
A caja de suenos. My whole body trembled as I looked closer.
The mosaic scene covering the lid hit me with as much enchantment as anything had this summer.
Against a pale blue sky, three cascara sagrada trees stood in a triangle formation.
Other plant matter filled the scene. To an untrained eye, it would look like a simple forest scape.
But to me, to my tía, the stained glass marked a legend she’d lived for real.
I lifted the lid; the inside of the box glowed with a golden tint and charcoal-gray striations. On the outside, the stain was deep like mulled wine. Cascara wood, like she said. Cascara berries from this part of Oregon that she’d said had turned her skin purple for days.
I was holding the last original dream box.
The same caja de suenos my tía had grieved over, then let go of in Oregon, had ended up with Penn’s grandfather?
Too many questions and unformed realizations crashed through me. It was as if it were that first bewildering day of Penn and me in my cabin bedroom all over again.
“Heirlooms are everything,” Penn said, drawing me back.
“At least to me. I think they’re more than just objects.
They have power, like they hold memory. So as much as Grandpa Patrick loved that piece, your tía created it, and I think it should stay here with you.
” He stole a glance at the cherrywood dream box on the workbench.
“Although it looks like you may already have one?”
“Her last creation.” I was somehow still able to form words. My hands curled around the wooden edges of the nearly identical caja in my hands. “How did your grandpa end up with this? Do you know?”
“Kind of? My grandma died before I was born, and my mom said Grandpa was devastated. One day he visited an artisan craft fair. This box was there, and he said he felt this pull to it. And he had to have it, no matter the cost.”
Grief. A box made from the three fabled cascara trees. Even in their new form, they’d found someone who needed them.
Penn dashed out a hand, his features clouding.
“Grandpa used the box to store another heirloom—this rare gold watch.” I nearly sputtered.
Could’ve toppled over like a chess piece.
“But the watch is missing. It wasn’t in the box or anywhere else when we cleaned out his house.
Probably for the best, though. Grandpa always said it was cursed. ” Penn let out an unconvincing laugh.
Dizzy and daydreamed, I thought I’d lose my footing. Still, I’d heard every word. I’d understood every unsaid thought. The gold Vacheron Constantin had been stored in this box. Penn—my Penn—had said the heirloom watch had changed. Transformed.
And I finally saw. The missing piece linking the watch to Tía’s red Camaro and our accident and limbo. The caja de suenos. The dream box. The treasure Vivian had crafted from the same cascara wood and deep berry stain that appeared inside a legend. Materials she had taken.
In the silence, I rewound to what my tía had told me about the three trees.
The magical force in this legend wanted to be good and restorative, but dark outliers did exist. Accounts of hallucinations and projections, rumors of people hearing voices, were mixed into the lore as it passed through generations.
A broken heart. A reckless act. These had twined with enchanted materials to form a dream box that would eventually hold a watch. And that watch would eventually absorb the power upon power to harness and manipulate dreams for real. Penn’s dreams. Then to wield the force of time itself. My time.
My head rose slowly. The watch I’d destroyed, my tenuous link to Penn, was enchanted. And Tía’s old caja de suenos was the reason.
“Are you okay?” Penn asked. “I mean, besides those bruises?”
“I—yeah.”
No, not in the slightest.
I breathed deeply, cinching myself together as much as I could manage. One, two, set.
He stepped aside, darting his gaze onto various points throughout the workshop. “This place is really cool. I feel privileged to see it up close.”
His curiosity. All I wanted to do was enable it. To let him be . . . him. “You can poke around a little if you want.”
Penn grinned, and as he reverently explored my tía’s most precious space, I pinched my eyes shut, moisture leaking through.
This invisible string between me and Penn had been carved decades ago.
It still pulled at me, but to him this was nothing more than a coincidence.
Of course I wanted Penn to remember everything.
But I’d already given him up. I’d bargained away this boy.
It hadn’t been my time to die.
But not dying was no longer enough. It was my time to live.
Right then, I no longer wanted to make a better plan or move on without him.
I wanted to wish. I wanted to dream something a million times more unreachable than a perfect summer, or a perfect family.
I wanted him. For the first time, I opened the cascara dream box and trusted it with the wish I had already set free.
Remember me.
It was all I needed. This one wish coming true would grant a thousand more.
Remember me.