Chapter 30 All Bad
All Bad
Marín
I stumble back to the campsite, my eyes practically glued shut.
It’s the only way I can contain my rage.
My heart is racing, I’m panting, I don’t even notice I’m clenching my fists, and…
I’m running. I’m walking so fast that within five strides I’m jumping the fence.
I’m not thinking. If I thought a little, I would contain myself, I would walk it off, I would get lost, go get the car, and get out of here.
But I’m going back to where everyone is…
I need heat. A heat that isn’t the result of rage.
I spot the camper’s outside light, and I hurry over to it.
Loren and Blanca are smoking in their camping chairs.
Her cheeks are stained with dried rivers of mascara, her eyes are vacant, and the cigarette she’s pinching between two fingers is eating itself without her even taking a drag.
Perched next to her, Loren is rubbing her back.
When they see me, she throws the cigarette away and buries her head in her hands.
“I think I’m gonna have to sleep here,” I say.
I’m surprised by the defeated voice coming out of my mouth. This can’t be happening. It’s just…just a misunderstanding.
Blanca lets out a sob.
“Blanca, please, you can’t let yourself get like this,” Loren begs. “For better or worse, you were already used to this ugliness, this shit. What you have to do is—”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do, please,” she whimpers. “I’m doing the best I can. I can’t force myself anymore.”
“I know. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. It was just a turn of phrase. A bad one. But take care of yourself. Close your life to those who cause you pain.”
“We’re friends. We’re all friends. What am I supposed to do? End up completely alone?”
I kneel in front of her and pull her hands apart to make her look at me. “You can’t keep going like this, Blanca. This is toxic, and you know it.”
She nods, holding back her tears.
“I don’t want to know anything.” She closes her eyes. “Not a single thing, please.”
I slump into the seat across from them and rub my face. “Where’s Aroa?”
“Sleeping,” Loren replies. “Aroa doesn’t give a shit about any of us.”
I want to say that Aroa has never given a shit about anything besides her desires, but it took me three years to figure that out. What right do I have to act like a smart-ass now? And I don’t want to get in any more shit.
In the distance, a few rapid footsteps coming closer break the silence enveloping us. I close my eyes. Shit. They hear it too; it’s obvious who the person running over is, and I know what she’ll say when she gets here. This conversation, in spite of everything, it’s just for two. The two of us.
“Let’s go inside,” Blanca says, wiping tears and snot on the back of her arm.
“Classy,” Loren quips.
“Go fuck yourself.”
They both stand up.
“Good night,” I say.
“Marín.” Blanca lingers, clinging to the doorframe, hesitant.
“What?”
“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s going to feel awful when she finds out.”
I hear her panting, both from exhaustion and fear. She’s getting closer.
“Blanca…I’m not going to tell her anything. You’re going to have to talk to her yourself,” I say before she disappears inside the RV.
“Tomorrow.”
I don’t argue with her. Tomorrow will be another day. What I don’t know is whether I’ll be here tomorrow. Tomorrow…I promised my sister I’d watch the Perseids with Coco.
“And make a wish for me. And another for you two because you need it.”
Right now my only wish is to disappear. I want to get out of here.
The door closes at the exact moment she appears, disheveled, her shoes in her hand and panting. She looks at me, somewhere between horrified and relieved to see me here. I stand up and walk toward her…but I go straight past her.
“Let’s get away from the camper,” I say gruffly. “Everyone’s sleeping.”
She throws her shoes down right there and follows me without a word.
We sit on the wall that borders the more remote sites, next to an empty one.
Above our heads, the pines (I think they’re pine trees) are shaking, making music with their needles.
It’s like they’re playing a song called summer.
A dog barks in the distance. Some happy voices drift across the street, heading the other way.
I look at her. She looks at me. Coco always cries silently.
I think she got used to having to do that in a house full of brothers who always found ways to laugh at her pain.
I picture her as a proud child, the kind who doesn’t cry in public when she falls down and gets hurt but finds a solitary spot to do it in.
Like now, when fat, shiny tears are streaming down her face and she’s not making a sound.
It’s not like I’m nobody, but we’ve always been at home, and at home, in your den where you feel protected, you’re allowed to cry.
“Marín…”
“I don’t understand any of this,” I admit.
“Me either,” she shoots back.
I furrow my brow.
“You said you would call me.” She says through clenched teeth. “You told me it’d be ten minutes. And you left with her.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Coco?”
“Am I fucking kidding you? I saw you! I saw you holding each other, hiding away, and then you didn’t call and—”
“You know the whole thing about the best defense being a good offense is bullshit? I have to ask you that before you end up fucking everything up so much there won’t be any way back.”
“You’re hiding stuff from me,” she says in a whisper. “This isn’t an attack, Marín. I’m explaining myself to you. I’m explaining why I ended up with Gus in your room. I wish I could say something else, okay? But humans are like this sometimes.”
“Like this? What does ‘like this’ mean?”
“Unfair and despicable.”
“You said it.”
“Don’t play with me, Marín. If you’re mad, show it. Don’t put on some mask of indifference.”
“If I’m mad?” I look at her, surprised. “How do you expect me to be? I’m angry, I’m enraged, I don’t understand any of it, I feel like shit, and on top of it all, you’re attacking me. What does that sound like to you?”
“It sounds like you’re not understanding me, Marín. I was convinced that you and Aroa—”
“So you went and fucked Gus?” I ask, stunned.
“I didn’t fuck Gus.” She wipes her tears gracefully and leaves a smudge of mascara on her cheek. “We were going to, but we didn’t. Not all the way. I’m not going to lie to you.”
“Was he too drunk to get it up?”
She shoots me a disdainful look that I don’t deserve, but I understand it.
This isn’t a fair fight. She’s drunk, rattled, confused.
Still, I don’t feel much empathy for her right now, I have to admit.
She should have thought about it before.
I’m fed up. I’ve spent half my life excusing people for their handicaps, but not Coco. I’ve never been so disappointed.
“You left with her. I was all alone. I freaked out. I couldn’t find anyone, and when I did, Blanca was crying, Loren was consoling her. You and Aroa looked like you were about to kiss and…”
I raise my eyebrows and swallow. “That didn’t mean anything,” I clarify.
She side-eyes me. “Ah, so, like, you did, right? You kissed?”
“She kissed me. She… I don’t know… I just wanted to… It’s just that…”
“Right,” she says calmly. “The tables have turned, huh? What’s the deal? You thought eyes can’t see…?”
“That’s not it,” I answer. “But I thought you hadn’t seen it so you weren’t going to make a big deal out of something that meant nothing to me.”
“Your ex, the one who desperately wants to get back together with you, kisses you in a corner and I see you hiding there, all…intimate. What do you expect me to think?”
“What did you think?”
“I called you,” she says. “I thought you were playing me, you were just spending a little time with me while you decided whether you wanted to get back with Aroa, and that’s what you were hiding from me.
I felt like shit, and…I tried to convince myself that it was just typical drunken paranoia.
That’s why I called you. An hour after you told me you’d be back in ten minutes. ”
“I thought it was just gonna be ten minutes.” I defend myself.
“I let it ring until I felt like a total loser. I was sure you two were together. What other explanation can you think of?”
“The reality.”
“And what is the reality, Marín, and how would I possibly know it?”
I grabbed Aroa’s hand so I wouldn’t lose her in the crowd. Then I saw something. Something I didn’t want her to see, so I pulled her into a corner.
Then she said to me, “You don’t need to hide it from me. I saw it.”
And she took advantage. She always does.
She hugged me. She asked me why we were hiding stuff. She confessed that she felt lonely, that she felt like we were all breaking up, that she didn’t fit into the group anymore, that out of the two of us I was the one who mattered. I was trying to convince her that wasn’t true when she kissed me.
Can I tell Coco all that without revealing secrets that aren’t mine?
“There’s no way you could know,” I say finally. “You weren’t there and I understand that what you saw led you to make a mistake, but…running off with Gus and sleeping with him… What kind of solution is that?”
“Not one at all. I wasn’t looking for a solution. Is getting drunk when you feel shitty a solution? Eating a doughnut? Smoking a joint? Is ‘going out and having fun’ a solution when you get dumped? Or taking a bath? Or a vacation?”
“Okay,” I cut in brusquely. “I get it. You just wanted—”
“To forget you.”
I look at her. The words were filled with rage…a rage that I don’t think I deserve.
“What have I done to make you want to forget me? Just console my ex and not answer your call!”
“I’m not saying it was logical, Marín. I’m just telling you what went through my head. We were both there, we were sad—it wasn’t premeditated. It was just…a bad idea.”