Paz
6:31 p.m.
I can’t believe I’m about to finally go inside Alano’s home, but then I can fully believe it when Shield-Cast agents are searching
me as if I’ve picked up secret cameras or guns during our supervised day out. Even Alano thinks this is ridiculous, but honestly,
I get it, they gotta treat me like a criminal to keep him and his family safe. I relax once I’m cleared, knowing they got
no reason to suspect me of trying to harm anyone.
Waiting for us at the front door is Bucky, the best boy ever. Both Bucky and Alano are hyped to see each other, like they
weren’t together hours ago. Bucky’s even happy to see me after our cuddles on the jet, but he quickly runs back to Alano,
who grabs Bucky’s paws and stands him up like they’re dancing. I still don’t know why Alano tried killing himself, but I can
see how hard it is to be so suicidal when you got a dog that loves you this much. I should look into adopting a dog.
“Come on in,” Alano says.
Any penthouse this close to Central Park was gonna be crazy, especially if owned by a family that flies in the kinda jet they
do, but I’m still blown away.
The floor-to-ceiling windows are so damn high and the living space is so damn wide. There are two couches, a chaise, a big-ass TV, so many plants and flowers, a grand piano that belonged to Alano’s grandma, Naya’s rosewood guitar, a fireplace. And while there are many framed pictures on the walls, mantels, entertainment center, and coffee table, the oil-painted family portrait of the Rosas steals the show. They’re only in suits, but they don’t need crowns to look royal.
“My father’s idea after I turned eighteen,” Alano says. “He wanted to celebrate our legacy.”
He seems embarrassed, so he takes me through the gourmet kitchen, where I meet Chef Lily while marveling at the marble islands,
the empty wine fridge, brick pizza oven, and all the other standard equipment except not standard in the slightest because
my toaster doesn’t have a touchscreen display so I know how toasted I want my toast and my fridge sure as shit doesn’t have
a camera inside to see what’s stocked remotely. The pantry is hooked up with enough organic food and sweets if the Rosas ever
had to wait out an apocalypse.
I shouldn’t have stepped foot inside this dining room, it’s just got me feeling bad that last night I had these mega millionaires
sitting on mismatched chairs that we bought at a flea market while they’re used to this long-ass dining table with a dozen
matching chairs, a crystal chandelier, and a six-foot hourglass that Naya had custom-made for family dinners because she felt
like she wasn’t getting enough time with Joaquin and Alano as everyone got older and busier. Family dinner with Dad used to
mean sitting on the couch with him while we ate our food and watched TV.
Alano continues the tour through all the other rooms on the lower level: the gym where he works out and practices Muay Thai with Dane; the gift-wrapping room that’s also stocked with quality gifts for last-minute presents; the game room with old-school pinball machines, a pool table, and every gaming console; the library where Alano likes to read and study languages, complete with a ladder that I play on because I’m still secretly nine years old; and the wellness center for spa treatments, meditation, massages, cold plunges, and yoga.
As Bucky leads the way upstairs where all the bedrooms are, Alano explains that there used to be a wing for employees, but
because Joaquin wanted more privacy, he instead bought apartments within the building for his most trusted staff, including
Shield-Cast agents, house managers, housekeepers, cooks, chauffeurs, and his and Naya’s personal trainers. This way everyone
is on call if the Rosas need something, but the staff can also live their own private lives with their families.
This wing is just for guests now, which these days has only really meant Alano’s friends. My chest tightens over how unlikely
it was that Rio was staying in any of these rooms when he and Alano were hooking up as much as they were. But there’s no point
letting Rio get to me when he’s not in the picture anymore and I am.
All the guest rooms are themed after nature, but before I can choose between the tropical room, the mountain room, the winter room, or somewhere else, Alano takes me straight to the rainforest room, where I’ve already been set up because he knows I miss the rain. The room is wallpapered like a forest, and the diffuser sticks on the nightstands make it smell like spring rain. There’s a white-noise machine that ranges from gentle rain to heavy thunderstorms to bring it all to life. The bedframe is wooden and the comforter is a sage green with plush brown pillows. Some house fairy has already hung my backpack in the closet alongside my three shirts, jeans, and basketball shorts, and put my underwear and socks in a drawer. The private bathroom is decked out in bamboo—bamboo trays if I wanna read in the bath, bamboo plates for jewelry, bamboo soap dispenser, and bamboo mirror frame.
“What do you think?” Alano asks as I step out of the bathroom.
“It’s so relaxing.”
“Does it make you want to add more color to your bedroom?”
“Oh, definitely.” The black-and-white vibe is too sterile now.
“Sounds like we’ll have to return to the Melrose Market,” he says with a smile.
I’m so happy we’re confronting our pasts and fighting for our future.
“You owe me a tour of your room,” I say.
“I do. I hope I can live up to your five-star tour of your room.”
“I mean, I’m sure your Siri or Alexa can take over for you if you suck.”
“We actually don’t have AI assistants in the house since those devices are always eavesdropping.”
“Then I guess you gotta crush this tour on your own.”
Alano leads me down the hall, and once he opens his door, I’m expecting to find something futuristic and tech-heavy with all
the best consoles and tablets and TVs that money can buy, but there isn’t a single screen in here. It’s actually super minimalistic.
“Welcome to my sanctuary,” Alano says.
That’s the perfect way to describe this peaceful room. The walls are all a solid light cream except for one that has a geometric
sunrise painted onto it. Natural light filters in through the linen curtains that are burnt orange, just like the bedsheets.
A door leads out to the terrace. It smells like sweet earth thanks to the sage diffuser sticks. There are stones, rocks, and
crystals of all shapes and sizes and colors scattered across the room. A desk with notebooks. A small fountain shaped like
a boy drinking water. Bonsai plants and peace lilies on the floor and wood stools. Himalayan salt lamps. Plush meditation
cushions. A dove statue wearing Alano’s necklaces while his rings, bracelets, and earrings live in the nest. Polaroids strung
across one corner like a smile. The steel clock with a rose gold face stands out when everything else is so natural, but I’m
honestly more thrown off by the platform bamboo bed in the very center of Alano’s room.
“Why there?” I ask.
“I’ve been told to watch my back ever since I was nine,” Alano says, sitting on the bed with Bucky. “I took that very seriously during the early years of Death-Cast. In school I always kept close to walls and corners so no one could sneak up and hurt me. Then I started bringing that behavior home around the staff. I hated feeling so paranoid, especially in my own home. I needed a psychological reset, so I created this sanctuary where no enemies could ever harm me. I centered the bed so it felt like my own personal island where I felt so free that I wasn’t concerned about watching my back. Instead I surrounded myself with my plants and flowers and rocks and woods. I feel safe in this dangerous world.”
I would happily get stranded on an island with Alano and no one else. Actually, we’ll take Bucky, since he would never try
to ruin our lives and happiness, unlike strangers on the street and the internet. “Is the island vibe also why you don’t have
any electronics?”
“My brain is overactive enough.” Alano gets up from the bed and puts his phone inside a small box on his desk and picks up
a notebook. “Instead of absorbing more heavy news before bed, I try journaling to offload my thoughts.”
I really should’ve journaled instead of self-harming. “Does it help?”
“Sometimes. It’s easy to obsess over the negative moments, so I do my best to focus on the good memories. It’s almost like
building a dam in my mind. But at the end of the day, there are some words that never leave you, no matter how many times
you write them down,” Alano says, freezing as if he’s reliving some harsh words now. I wonder if it’s from the night Ariana
rejected him, or the day he rejected Rio.
Or how I scarred Alano by telling him he’s stuck in the past.
“It’s gotta be hard living like this,” I say.
“That’s why I have this sanctuary to help me find some peace.”
“You killed it in here. You got that cozy bed, your fountain, your pictures—wait, why do you even have pictures? Your brain
is kinda your own personal camera, right?”
“Just because I can remember everything doesn’t mean I don’t benefit from reminders of favorite memories. Besides, it might
not always be this way.”
“What do you mean? You’re gonna take the pics down?”
“No, I might forget these moments one day,” Alano says, which is a dizzying flip from a few hours ago when he told me he remembers
everything. “My grandfather, Jacinto, had early-onset Alzheimer’s. It started developing four months after I was born when
he was only fifty. He kept calling me Joaquin while not recognizing my father. His brain gradually deteriorated over the next
three years before he died, sooner than the doctors had anticipated.” It’s wild to think about the Death-Cast family being
caught off guard about someone dying. “Every couple years my father and I go to top clinics for comprehensive genetic testing.
Between my father turning fifty and his blackouts, he was especially concerned during our screenings in February, but we’re
not showing any signs of the disease as of yet.”
“But you think it might be a good thing if you get Alzheimer’s one day?”
Alano shakes his head. “I would never say good. I don’t wish Alzheimer’s on anyone, myself included. I do accept that it might be inevitable given my family history. I’m simply taking solace in knowing I might be able to forget one day, since I don’t know what that’s like. Hyperthymesia can be so unbearable, especially during states of distress. It’s as if the dam I painstakingly built can come undone in a moment and flood me with terrible memories and the feelings they bring. Do I really want to die remembering an entire lifetime of memories? It seems more merciful to forget life’s most heartbreaking moments.”
For all our talks about living to one hundred, I never knew that Alano carries more life with him than anyone else at any
given moment. He reminds me of the Immortal in Golden Heart . Vale sometimes regretted getting so attached to the dying, knowing that he would be shackled to that grief forever. I totally
get why Alano doesn’t wanna be on his deathbed reliving his assassination attempt as he’s actually dying, just like I don’t
wanna think about shooting Dad or all the harm I’ve ever caused with a gun and knife and fist and words. But our lives are
not just the bad moments.
“I would hate for you to lose your good memories,” I say while dreaming up memories of events that haven’t even happened yet,
like our first kiss and becoming boyfriends and getting married and starting a family and dying old together.
“I’m not going to have any control over which memories I forget, but after observing how my father was with my grandfather, I decided to prepare my family with the necessary tools to help me find my way back onto memory lane,” Alano says, as if it’s not totally wild that he learned lessons on how to get ready for a life with Alzheimer’s from things he witnessed at three years old. “Jacinto wasn’t a particularly sentimental person. He didn’t keep infant clothes or locks of hair or even a baby book for old photographs. My father gathered household objects from Jacinto’s apartment to try and jog his memory. He found this rock in the closet that had a date written on it in my grandmother’s handwriting: August 18, 1969. Their wedding day. They got married young because Pilar was pregnant, and every time Jacinto held that rock, he kept remembering the happiest day of his life. My father buried him with the rock.”
That legit gives me chills. I’m sure Joaquin must’ve been so damn happy to get his dad talking about how his family got started
instead of being treated like a stranger.
“So are all these rocks special?” I ask, looking around.
“I personally collected all these rocks, stones, and crystals from around the world, but they’re not so special that I think
I’ll be buried with any of them,” Alano says. He points at his Polaroids. “If I ever start forgetting, those are the memories
I’d love to remember.”
I go over to this smiling string of Polaroids, and without moving from the bed, Alano tells me about them: the first is Alano in a cap and gown because even though he was homeschooled through high school, his parents still celebrated him with his very own graduation here at home; Alano with binoculars as he embarked on a wildlife safari in the Serengeti; Alano on what looks like a beach but is actually the Skeleton Coast, which is apparently a real place in Namibia even though it sounds like a setting in the Scorpius Hawthorne books; Alano shirtless in the Blue Lagoon without a single scar on his body; and then I freeze up when I see a picture of Alano, Ariana, and Rio dressed up as Spider-Man, Black Cat, and Venom.
“Halloween 2017,” Alano says.
I pull an Alano, doing some life math in my head because I’m pretty sure Alano said that the first time he hooked up with
Rio after getting his heart broken was that Halloween. My chest tightens as I look at their smiles and wonder if Alano getting
to have sex with his first love again is why he always wants to relive this memory. I gotta walk away because I don’t wanna
make a scene in Alano’s special sanctuary, I’ve already done enough mental and physical harm. But walking away is only gonna
make a scene too. So what do I do, stay here and get mad because Alano has a past with someone I don’t like? If I’m gonna
keep Alano in my life, I can’t pull a . I gotta keep growing; I gotta keep facing my ghosts.
“Do you miss them?” I ask. He pauses like he knows his answer could set me off. “You can be honest.”
“I miss them,” Alano says.
It twists my insides even though I knew the truth.
I’ve never had best friends before. I don’t know if Alano counts me as one of his, but he’s definitely mine. If our friendship
was able to survive some shit, I’m betting he’s gonna make things right with Ariana and Rio at some point, and if Alano and
I become boyfriends, I’m not trying to be at war with his best friends.
“Maybe you should hit them up,” I say, hoping that I’m not digging my own grave.
Alano gets up from the bed and looks at the Halloween picture, as if it’s not stored away in his perfect memory. “How many times do I have to reach out to Ariana, who didn’t call when I almost got killed? Or Rio, who was perfectly okay keeping me around when he knew I was in love with him but now that the tables are reversed he wants nothing to do with me?”
Judging by the tears building in Alano’s eyes, I know he wants his best friends back in his life. “If today were your End
Day, would you hit up Ariana and Rio?”
No one knows Alano’s End Day. He could die right now from an asthma attack or crack open his skull on his fountain or—ugh,
I don’t wanna think up more deaths for him. The point is that it’s on Alano to live like he might die at any moment.
“I would call them,” Alano says, keeping the picture on the smiling string. “We’ve had more good times than bad, but I’m scared
that even if we rectify everything our friendship won’t ever be the same.”
“Maybe it’ll be stronger. Like I think we are after everything?”
Alano nods. “We’re definitely stronger. In fact, I have to add your picture to this wall. I haven’t really been inspired to
add new pictures. Things have been so hard, especially these past few months, but you’re someone I always want to remember.”
My heart races, and I kinda wanna happy-cry too. I never thought someone who wasn’t my mom or stepdad could be this nice to
me. Could show me this much love.
Alano gasps and breaks out in a smile. “I know the perfect thing for you to take a picture with,” he says, skipping over a wood stool and rushing to his closet. He comes out with the brown ceramic skull vase I got him at the Melrose Market along with the 3D flower bouquet he bought. “My vanitas vase!”
I wish I had Alano’s power to replay the memory of giving him this gift in high-def, but I’ll settle for being in this moment
where he’s happy planting his paper flowers inside the vase.
I pose in front of the sunset wall, hugging the vanitas vase to my chest.
Alano aims his Polaroid camera. “Say ‘Remember you must die!’?” And as I’m staring in confusion over why he’s bringing up
memento mori instead of just asking me to smile, he snaps the picture. He busts out laughing. “The look... on your...
face.”
“I’m gonna burn that photo.”
Alano taps his head. “Go ahead. I still have it stored here.”
“Then I’ll burn your brain too.”
“Please don’t. I promise the picture is not bad. It’s just funny.”
Alano shows me the developed Polaroid and okay, I look stupid, but watching Alano laugh all over again makes me not give a
shit. This picture could one day have the power to unlock Alano’s memory if he ever starts forgetting and I wanna be remembered
for making him happy instead of holding a gun to my head or showing self-harm wounds or almost punching him.
He pins the Polaroid to the wall. “There. You’ve added peace to my sanctuary.”
“Gotta live up to my name.”
I hope to only bring peace to Alano’s life and keep finding it in mine.
11:39 p.m.
The rest of the night flies by.
First, Alano made me feel like an A-list actor the way he was styling me for the gala with all the super fancy clothes he
has in his big walk-in closet. He pulled some outfits and made me promise to speak up if I wasn’t feeling something. So I
did. The classic tuxedo didn’t feel special enough. The glittering gold suit was maybe too special. The red cloak that was
supposed to be a nod to my Scorpius Hawthorne days had more of a Little Red Riding Hood vibe. After several more pulls and
combos, I fell in love with this black velvet shirt with shimmering sequin stripes and its scarf that drops down like a tie,
paired with some fitted black pants and penny loafers with extra comfortable insoles to protect my wound.
Then Chef Lily served us ginger sesame noodles with tofu, which we ate alone outside Alano’s bedroom in the rooftop garden,
since his parents are still busy at Death-Cast. Over dinner, Alano shared more about his hyperthymesia—the story of his diagnosis,
how he navigated school, more highs and lows—and he got self-conscious from talking too much, but I honestly loved every second
because not only was the spotlight off me, I was getting to learn more about him.
After dinner, Alano drew me a warm bath because he wanted me to experience what it’s like to really luxuriate in a tub big enough to fit me and my long-ass legs. He lit one of the reusable candles he bought at the Melrose Market and hooked me up with a body scrub and chamomile oil to show my body some love.
I could get used to this life. It’s not even about the fancy clothes or fancy meals or fancy baths. I just love spending all
day with Alano.
Now, we’re back in Alano’s bedroom, lit up only by his Himalayan salt lamps, and we’re not just in his bedroom but on his
bed, fighting back yawns and losing every time.
“Sorry,” I say after another yawn breaks free, interrupting Alano as he’s telling me about the day his parents surprised him
with Bucky, who’s already fast asleep at our feet. “I swear I’m not bored.”
“I trust you’re not. Today was draining.”
I honestly don’t know what time my body thinks it is. I rub my eyes open, trying to stay awake. “Okay, so some kids were being
dickheads and your parents got you a dog to cheer you up.”
Alano laughs. “You can go to sleep, .”
I really should sleep because I gotta film the promotion in the morning, but I wanna keep learning about Alano. “So, some
kids were being dickheads and...”
“My extremely difficult life got easier once I had Bucky. Not easy, of course, but easier,” Alano says, smiling at Bucky, who’s running in his sleep as he dreams. “I didn’t know how hard making friends would be as society adjusted to Death-Cast, but my parents did. I’m starting to suspect that I can read a hundred books about parenting and I still won’t know any better than my parents who never got to read up on how to raise a son in the age of Death-Cast.”
I’m only just now realizing that yeah, parenting must be hard, but for the past ten years, Mom, Rolando, Naya, and Joaquin
definitely had challenges that other parents won’t ever know. How do you raise a son who killed his dad? How do you raise
a son whose dad rewrote the rules of death? How do you raise sons who’ve tried taking their lives because life got too hard?
Not that Naya and Joaquin even know that shit got that dark for Alano. I don’t even know what went down that got Alano to
that place, but however you’re supposed to raise a suicidal kid, I doubt a parent should ever threaten their own life as a
way to trap their kid into theirs.
“Are you asleep?” Alano asks.
I didn’t even realize my eyes were closed. “Sorry, I’m awake. Just thinking about how hard it must’ve been raising me and
how I’m still putting Mom through it.”
“You’re not the reason raising you was hard. That was society’s fault.”
“And Death-Cast’s, no offense.”
“And Death-Cast’s fault,” he whispers. Now Alano is so quiet that I think he’s fallen asleep, but he’s staring up at the ceiling.
“If today was your End Day, would you call your mother?”
I threw this question at Alano hours ago about his friends, and now he’s throwing it back my way.
If Death-Cast called right now, there’s this voice in my head telling me to get revenge on Mom by not telling her I’m about to die, but no matter how angry I am, I love Mom too much to ever do something so cruel. “She would be my first call,” I say. That’s the truth, but it also doesn’t mean I have to talk to her right now, or that she even wants to talk to me.
Life is hard when your biggest crime is loving someone too much.
“What about you?” I ask Alano. “If today was your End Day, would you call your dad?”