Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Tiffany ambushes me once I’m home.
“Well, it’s about time her highness made an appearance,” she croons the minute I walk through the door. She loops an arm around my shoulders once I’ve finished unlacing my boots, blowing a puff of cherry-scented smoke against my cheek. Today’s ensemble matches her choice of vape flavor—pink bell-bottoms with a matching knit crop top adorned with bright red hearts. “What did we say about observing the holiness of your day off?”
“Wasn’t working,” I grumble under my breath.
“Mm-hmm,” she hums, unconvinced. In Tiffany’s eyes, anything outside of sprawling out on the couch counts as work. She lets go of my shoulder, tossing her vape pen onto the dining table. “You coming out with us tonight?”
I shake my head. Besides not being in a celebratory mood, I’d never be able to keep up with Tiffany and Dede’s nights out, especially not on New Year’s Eve. Together, the two of them can polish off a bottle of vodka within half an hour and still have room for a couple of shots before they start to lose their balance. Whenever they can, they pile into Tiffany’s sticker-plastered, soccer-mom minivan and drive out to towns that are both more exciting than Luster and that will forget their names by morning.
Tiffany’s done what she can to keep things afloat—keeping me fed and the house clean while I fall deeper and deeper into the hole Solina left behind. It’s what she’s good at, picking up the pieces. Without her, Solina and I would probably be back at that shitty group home. Or stuck at a halfway house for runaways without any prospects. After all she’s done for us, the least I can do is not crash her one night out.
Tiffany pouts, then wipes it away with a wave of her hand. “Your loss.” She nods her head toward my room. “Didn’t stop me from leaving you a little New Year’s present in your room, though,” she sings with a flourish and a wink.
Tiffany’s present is sitting on the least messy section of my half of the unmade bed. She knows better than to leave something on the side that belonged to Solina. It was only hers when she was home. Summers and winters and the occasional spring break, when we had the extra pocket money for the train ticket home. Solina never had much, but I’ve held on to all of it. Her clothes, still hung up in the closet, her hairbrush on the nightstand. Even the glass of water she never got around to finishing. Our room has always been cramped. Clothes stuffed into every drawer and books stacked in corners or beneath wobbly nightstand legs. The thought of extra space would’ve once felt like a luxury.
But I’ve already buried Solina in one box. I can’t put her in another.
I pick up the bottle of tequila, complete with a red silk bow and a card that reads, For auld lang syne bitch in hot-pink Sharpie.
Beneath the bottle is a less exciting present. A stack of mail—past-due bills and threatening notices. A neon-green Post-it reads, Say the word and I’ll burn the whole stack. After almost four years of living together, Tiffany and I are pros at dodging deadlines. Nothing is ever as time sensitive as people want you to think it is. Still, I’ve put off facing the outside world long enough. Resolutions are bullshit, but I might as well try to start the new year off on a somewhat clean slate.
A credit card bill I’ve put off dealing with until payday, an electric bill I paid last week, and finally, a tuition bill.
Kingswood Academy—ATTN: Solina Grace Flores
My stomach tightens at the sight of the all-too-familiar maroon-and-royal-blue crest in the corner of the thick envelope, the way it does every time one of these shows up in our mailbox. Every three months, like clockwork, for the past four years. The bastards at the financial aid office never answer the phone during their supposed business hours, but they’ll sure as hell send you a bill on time.
There was a time when Kingswood was our one good thing. The best school in Washington State, and one of the best in the country. The type of boarding school we heard about on TV, with a sprawling campus hidden away in the Washington mountains. Solina had applied on a whim with help from one of the halfway decent guidance counselors at the group home. She told us to keep our expectations low, that Kingswood Academy—home to senators’ sons and diplomats’ daughters—wasn’t the kind of school that let in kids like us. Kids like me, sure. But Solina was always extraordinary. Smarter than everyone in the room, including most of the teachers, and so kind even the pettiest kids couldn’t find it in them to hate her.
The look on Solina’s face when her acceptance letter came was priceless. I always wished I’d taken a picture of that moment, so I could pin it to the fridge for whenever Solina doubted herself. Finally, the world was seeing what I knew all along: she was brilliant.
But an acceptance letter was just the first hurdle. We had dozens more to go.
In the end Kingswood is what brought us to Luster, and by default to Tiffany. From the second that acceptance letter came, we knew the group home was a dead end. There was no easy way for Solina to get to Kingswood unless one of the counselors wanted to cough up the gas money and spend twelve hours round trip driving up to the mountains to drop her off every semester.
Two weeks after the acceptance letter came, we snuck out after curfew and took three buses to a town we didn’t know, looking for a person we’d only heard about in the stories Papi told at the dinner table. All we had was an address and a photo, one of the last pieces of our old life that we’d held on to, of Papi and his cousin, Angel, on the front steps of the house they grew up in. On the back was an address, a phone number, and a message telling Papi to come visit Luster sometime. Luster wasn’t the perfect solution. It was still hundreds of miles away from Kingswood but was at least within an hour of a train that could take her there. Luster gave us the possibility of something we hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.
Angel had been in prison for six months by the time we got to the address scribbled on the back of the photo. Some asshole at a bar had said something under his breath about Tiffany, still loud enough for both of them to hear. She’d insisted on leaving, trying to drag Angel back out to the car, but he wouldn’t let it go. Fueled by four Fireball shots and a line of coke, Angel whaled on the piece of shit until the bar was sticky with blood and liquor. Judge called it battery, until the guy died in the hospital two weeks into the trial and the charge got bumped up to manslaughter. Maybe another judge would’ve been more understanding, considered that Angel wasn’t unprovoked. But the one he got took one look at his name, the tiger tattoo stretched across his neck, the girlfriend he was trying to protect, and gave him life.
When Tiffany opened the door for us, her eyes were red-rimmed, a tissue clutched in her hand. Half a year had gone by and she still hadn’t processed that he wasn’t coming home. Part of her will always feel guilty about what happened, as if she could’ve changed a bigot’s mind. But maybe she could’ve pulled Angel harder, or picked a different bar, or stopped him at two shots instead of four. She was haunted by a thousand what-ifs until we showed up on her doorstep looking for the only family we had left.
Tiffany has always been a mother hen, the caring friend who made sure everyone got home safe, fed, and watered. The friend with meals to share and an open invitation to crash on her couch. She was made of the exact type of kindness we needed, and we were the opportunity to make it up to Angel she’d been looking for.
Taking us in was a fresh start, for all of us.
“Want me to call those assholes and tell them to fuck off?” Tiffany leans up against the doorframe, jutting her chin toward the bill in my hand.
Scholarships covered most of Solina’s expenses, but Kingswood came with fine print and hidden fees. Somehow, they always managed to send a bill at the end of every semester, even if it was for something as pointless as a “snack refill charge.” If I hadn’t dropped out of Luster’s mediocre public school my sophomore year to work at the diner full-time, these bullshit charges would’ve sunk us by now. Solina was always the one with a future, anyway. Not me.
I let out a humorless snort. “Like they’d answer.”
Now that I can cross Cartagena off my never-ending list of loose ends to tie up, Kingswood can take the top slot. What would’ve been Solina’s last semester starts in less than a week, and as far as they know, she’ll be back on campus by Thursday. There are plenty of handbooks for dealing with grief, but none about the logistics. How to pay for a funeral. How to close accounts. How to contact a school to let them know one of their students is dead. Part of me hoped they’d find out on their own somehow, but other than a five-line article in the Luster Sun about a “local teen found dead” that I had them take down, since they couldn’t even bother to say her name, there’s no proof of what happened.
No one but us knows that she’s gone.
“Seriously, though,” Tiffany insists, nudging her shoulder against mine. “If you need me to call them, I will.”
“I’ve got it,” I reply, tapping the bill against my hand before tossing it into the trash pile. Kingswood even sent along a copy of Solina’s schedule for next semester, printed on obnoxiously thick card stock, a wax seal of the Kingswood lion crest keeping the paper folded neatly.
With that sorted, Tiffany makes herself at home on the edge of my bed, holding up the bottle of tequila. “Figured you wouldn’t want to come tonight, but I’m not leaving your ass behind in a dry house on New Year’s Eve.”
We both know I don’t like drinking, but I can’t blame her for thinking I might want to start now.
“This is the part where you say, ‘Thank you, Tiffany. You’re such a good friend.’ ”
“Thank you,” I spit out to make her happy. Playing along with Tiffany’s games is practically baked into the lease. All this Kingswood bullshit just brings me back to Cartagena. The fucker has dug under my skin, his words echoing with every moment of silence . I wish it was better news.
Silence for more than two minutes when Tiffany’s in a room is a red flag. I’ve forgotten she’s still there until she’s standing back up and resting a hand on my shoulder. “Did something happen?”
Most touch makes my skin crawl, but Tiffany’s has a strange way of making you feel at home. Pokes in the ribs and piggyback rides to the kitchen. Slow dancing in front of the TV and licking strawberry juice off our fingers in the summer. It took over a year for us to shake off the fear that we were a burden to her, something she felt obligated to do because we were all she had left of Angel. But ever since the day she met us, soaking wet and fresh off the bus from a town we were trying to forget, she’s felt like family.
I shake my head. The truth sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it back down and give her a smile. If she knew, she’d cancel her plans, stay home, and make a night out of eating pizza and yelling “fuck the cops” at the TV until our throats were hoarse.
Luster isn’t kind to people like Tiffany—Black, trans, and unashamedly proud of who she is. Some days she leans into it, loving that she can enrage someone just by existing. Other days, I brace myself for her to finally leave. Pack up her mess of a room, take the rainy-day fund from the cereal box beneath the kitchen sink, and go to Los Angeles like she always says she will. And I wouldn’t blame her if she did. But Los Angeles is still too far away a dream, so she settles for the next town over instead.
Tonight, she’ll get to sip overpriced mixed drinks and laugh and dance and sparkle like the gem she is, and tomorrow she’ll be back here in this pit of a town. Getting ready to visit the love of her life like she does every first of the month. Hiding tears and telling herself that holding his hand from across a table feels the same as it did at home.
After everything we’ve been through these past two weeks, it feels strange to call a night out important, but who am I to judge people who know how to cope.
“I’m fine,” I say, and I almost believe it. “Have fun tonight.”
Her left brow quirks into a carefully sculpted arch. “You sure?”
This time I give her an even wider smile, pushing through the dull pain of pulling my chapped lips taut. “You deserve to have some fun.”
“You do too, you know.”
But I never had fun in the first place.
Instead, I shrug. “Maybe next year.”
Tiffany grins, holding up a hot-pink pinkie finger. “I’m holding you to that.”
My smile feels less forced when I slide my pinkie through hers. “Don’t have too much fun, though. I’m not cleaning up any messes for free.”
She crosses her index finger across her chest. “I wouldn’t dare.”
With a kiss to my cheek, she heads back to her room, humming a song under her breath and swaying her hips with every step. I don’t envy Tiffany often, but I wish I had her heart. If I were half as kind as her, maybe it’d be easier to find some happiness. Silver linings in the massive pile of shit that has been this year. But, for now, I have tequila.
Usually, I keep my distance from anything that could be considered a vice. A talk from a social worker at the group home has always stuck with me. About how kids like me and Solina were bound to be drawn to things that were bad for us. The chart with a dozen different statistics has stayed in the back of my mind, the numbers faded but the message holding strong. Addiction can run through a family like blood. Just because Papi was miles away didn’t mean he couldn’t still hold influence over us.
I turn the bottle around in my hand, let the weight of it ground me.
Fuck it. I deserve a bad decision.