Chapter 1
I’m a better liar than you’d think just by looking at me. Everyone in my family is.
I don’t like having to lie, but sometimes it’s worth it. Like now, as I run my finger along the skirt of my dress, the fabric soft and delicate as a cloud. I can’t find it in me to regret what I had to do to get it. Not yet.
When we first saw it at the mall, Mami had eyed the neckline warily, shaking her head when I lingered in front of the shop window for too long.
“Too much,” was all she muttered under her breath before tugging me toward the secondhand store to search for new pants for my little brother, Mikey.
New clothes—really new—have never been an option, and especially not now.
Mami often tells me how grateful I should be that we’re the same size so we can share.
Pants. Blouses. Even shoes. But it’s hard to find silver linings when you wake up to half your closet missing because your mom didn’t do her laundry again.
After that, the dress was all I could think about. How I’d look in it. What it would be like to wear something clean and fresh and new with no patched holes or permanent stains. How it would feel to have something that was truly and completely mine.
Thoughts of ripping the dress off the hanger and hurrying away as fast as I could had come in frequent flashes.
I’d thought trying it on would shake the bug out of my system, that once it was on, I’d see it wasn’t as perfect as it seemed in my daydreams. Scratchy against my sensitive skin or too loose where it should’ve hugged my meager curves.
But it was just as perfect in reality as it was in my fantasies. Soft, crepelike fabric. The perfect shade of olive green to bring out the barely noticeable glow of my skin. Molded to my body like it was custom made to my measurements.
No one would blame you for taking it, I told myself as I shoved the dress into my backpack before I could talk myself out of it. You deserve good things too.
Guess I’m pretty good at lying to myself, too.
All I could hear was my heartbeat as I crept out of the dressing room, weaving between the other girls and their friends and mothers and boyfriends as quickly as I could.
I didn’t let myself breathe until I made it to the bus stop.
Kept looking over my shoulder all the way home, waiting for someone to come screaming at me to stop.
Every night I opened my bag and looked at the dress, just to convince myself it was real.
That I’d actually done what I’d spent so many nights dreaming about.
That the dress was mine. I hadn’t thought twice when Mami asked me what I was smiling about at dinner that night, replying, “I got an A on a test.” So fast my brain hadn’t even registered that it was a lie, responding like I would to any of her other prying questions.
Maybe that’s what makes us such good liars—we’re able to convince ourselves it’s the truth.
This morning, part of me still hoped I would wake up to find a wrapped box sitting on the kitchen table—the dress perfectly folded between layers of tissue paper and tied up with a ribbon—but the table was empty.
Not a note from Mami or a card with a generic message or even the bills we always leave scattered around the house.
No acknowledgment that today was different from any of the others.
But I can make it different.
After smoothing the few wrinkles out of the dress, I pull my hair forward over my shoulder, my dark brown hair soft and wavy thanks to the braid I just unwound.
Even hours later my scalp still aches from the way Mami tugged my hair into submission this morning, weaving the braid together as quickly as she could before rushing out the door without a goodbye.
Beyond the bathroom door I can hear the buzz of voices slowly gathering in the cafeteria for dinner.
And, finally, him. His voice. That laugh.
You don’t hear laughs like that often, not here at least. Sunny Hills Assisted Living isn’t as cheerful as its name promises.
The residents are quiet, the building even quieter.
My first week volunteering here over the summer, three days passed before I heard something that wasn’t The Price Is Right on the TV in the community room.
It was a boisterous thunderbolt of a laugh.
Loud and carefree and joyous. From the moment I heard it, my fingers frozen around a dented bedpan, I knew it was him.
Kai Thompson. The new boy at school with the charming smile. Who cracked jokes at lunch like he was holding court and was voted homecoming king without even campaigning.
Peeking through the supply room doorway, I saw him. Curled up next to his grandma, Mrs. Thompson, on her bed, leaning on her shoulder while they scrolled through TikTok on her iPad.
“You’re more addicted than me,” he’d teased her, earning him a nudge in the ribs that made him giggle.
Something about this place has always made him feel even more beautiful—so vibrant and alive in a place that feels determined to drain the last dregs of life its residents have left.
The only reason I’m still volunteering here is because it’s the only chance I have to get out of the house.
Though, to be honest, I’m lucky they let me stay at all. After everything.
After Papi.
The trial was over a year ago and most of the residents don’t remember it, or at least not the details. The ones who do remember—who recognize me—have kept their distance, mumbling under their breath about letting girls like me into a place like this. The murderer’s daughter.
But none of the staff have said anything—not to my face anyway. They need all the help they can get, and I’m free labor.
I didn’t stay just because of Kai, though.
Residents like Mrs. Thompson make the after-school volunteer shifts worth it.
She either didn’t know about Papi or didn’t care—always welcoming me to her room to try out the empanadas her daughter-in-law had just dropped off or asking me to fix the Wi-Fi on her iPad again even though I told her all she needs to do is switch it on and off.
I don’t mind, though. I’d gladly trade a dozen favors for one of her stories.
In this life Mrs. Thompson was an accountant, but in another one she must’ve been an actress or a storyteller.
Some kind of performer. She has a way of capturing your attention, making you want to sit and listen to her for hours.
Stories about growing up as a young Black girl in the South during the civil rights movement, about raising three kids under five alone after her husband was killed in a factory accident, about watching her grandchildren grow into the people she always knew they could be.
Kai inherited that from her—charisma like gravity.
But he’s never needed to tell stories to pull me in.
“Hey,” Kai had called out that afternoon when I first spotted him at Sunny Hills, before I could hide in the supply closet, hoping he wouldn’t catch me staring. “You’re Dina, right?”
“You know each other?” Mrs. Thompson asked, looking between the two of us.
“We were in the same Spanish class last year, right?” Kai asked with a raised brow.
“Y-yeah,” I replied, still hidden behind the half-open door.
I’d spent an entire semester lingering on the details of his profile from the last row of Ms. Martinez’s Spanish class. The full curve of his lips, the slope of his nose, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.
Sitting in the back row made my life easier.
If you’re in the back, no one can gawk at you, not bothering to keep their voice to a whisper because they know you won’t turn around and shut them up.
Being in the back made studying him easier, too.
I could watch him laugh and joke and tease his friends as the hour ticked by without notice.
No one ever turned around. Especially not to see me.
But maybe he had.
“You taking AP Spanish this year?” he continued.
I nodded quickly, worried my voice might crack.
“Guess I’ll see you there,” he said with a wink I was sure I’d imagined before turning back to Mrs. Thompson’s iPad.
I brushed it off as good manners. A boy raised right by his grandma—who played nice, even with girls like me. A girl the world doesn’t owe any kindness.
Summer came and went and that moment with Kai started to feel more and more like a daydream the closer we got to the school year. The first day of junior year, I kept my expectations low and head down. The way I have since the trial, and even before, if I’m honest.
But then he sat down beside me.
“Qué pensaste?” he asked, gesturing to the weathered copy of Don Quixote we had to read half of over break, following the “Spanish Only” rule written on the board.
My heart hammered so loud I was sure he could hear it. Glancing over my shoulder, I double-checked that he wasn’t talking to someone else. When I turned back to face him, his eyes were bright as stars, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Estaba bien,” I replied, using what little confidence I had in me to keep my voice from trembling. “Un poco aburrido.”
“Muy aburrido,” he replied, rolling his eyes and slapping his own copy onto his desk with a thunk.
His accent was stilted, but it had that natural lilt only people who spoke the language at home—heard it from native tongues—could capture.
So much like my own that it felt impossible.
Spanish had always felt like such a private thing in our family.
Reserved for when Mami whispered warnings under her breath at the grocery store, the post office, the mall—the few public spaces we can’t avoid—to stay close or look the other way.
A language spoken by billions, that somehow felt like it was made just for us.
And now, him.