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“I know, my chiquita. I know.”
Then the trigger is pulled. The bullet explodes. I’m too far away to protect her. I can only watch as the bullet rips through my mamita’s pale white throat.
Except suddenly she is no longer my mamita.
It is the blond lady detective, pitching forward into the red, red earth. It is Hélène, it is Stacey, it is girl after girl after girl.
And the Bad Man is not snarling anymore; he is laughing darkly.
“It will be your turn next,” he tells me. “There’s no one to save you anymore.”
“I will save myself,” I tell him.
Which only makes him laugh harder.
“I am Bonita and I have my mother’s love and my sisters’ pain and we will burn you to the ground!” I try to sound fierce.
He doubles over with mirth. “You know what outruns even fire, Stupid Girl?” he says as he straightens.
I shake my head.
“A bullet.”
Then he reloads the gun and very calmly aims it at my head.
“Chiquita, run,” my mother whispers in my ear. And I feel her again, wrapped around me like a warm embrace. Chiquita and mamita, our pack of two. She is mine and I am hers, always.
Which makes it all the more agonizing when the bullet slams into my temple and tears me away from her again.
—
I WAKE UP SHARPLY. THE clock reads six A.M. Dawn still an hour away. I’m surprised I slept that long, especially on a bed that feels so soft and foreign. I take a moment to get my bearings. The strange room with a sharp chemical smell. A sound of gentle snoring across the way. The lady detective, who has appointed herself my new protector.
I listen for the sound of footsteps in the hall. The Bad Man coming. Then I close my eyes and simply feel for him. My mother is right: For everything lost, something is gained.
This motel is not like the house. It does not sigh with pain, shift restlessly in discontent. It is just a building. Maybe it’s too young to know any better. Maybe it hasn’t encountered enough human horror to know how to mourn.
I do not feel the Bad Man. I don’t feel anything at all.
I climb out of bed, cross to the console. I have two pieces of paper left. I snap on the lamp. I pick up my crayons, and with the image of my beautiful mamita in my mind, I draw and I draw.
Red earth. Black hair like a river. Brown eyes soft as an embrace. I draw my mother’s love. Then, I draw her pain.
“No, chiquita,” she whispers at my shoulder.
But I keep on going. Pouring our story onto the page. No longer dreaming. Now completely wide awake.
Which is why I’m the one who hears the screaming first.
—
THE BLOND DETECTIVE BOLTSOUT of bed. One moment she is snuffling in her sleep, the next she is upright, yanking on her clothes, grabbing her gun from the bedside table.
“Stay here,” she orders me. Then she’s gone.
I hear more noise now. Footsteps, hammering down the hall.
“What is it?” The FBI lady’s voice.
