“How did you find me?” I whisper again, struggling to keep my voice even, knowing that there’s only one way she could’ve found out where I’d gone. And I wouldn’t put it past her to hurt him too. “What did you do to Mikey?”
She scoffs. “Nothing. He told me where you went, and I told him to stay home,” she spits back, seemingly offended at my implication. “I would never hurt either of you.” She holds her hand against her heart, eyes softening for a fraction of a second, but I don’t let that brief slip change my mind.
Because it’s not true. She hurts us every day. Has for years. The strict rules. The curfews. Punishing us for trying to find a life outside of the confines of our house. Making sure she was the only person we could ever trust. Just because she’s never laid a hand on us, doesn’t mean she hasn’t hurt us in ways that have irrevocably shaped us.
“It was just a stupid prank,” I mutter, not as strong as I’d like to be. The thought of Carla and Timothy bragging about their plans for me stings, but nothing hurts as badly as knowing that they’re gone because of me. I didn’t deserve their wrath, but they didn’t deserve hers either.
“You don’t even know these people,” Mami continues, completely ignoring what I just said. As usual. It’s alwaysbeen about what she thinks. What she believes. She hasn’t listened to us—any of us—for years. Maybe not ever. “Or that boy.” She points her finger at where Kai is trembling over my shoulder, frozen in place from the shock of what he’s witnessing.
“Don’t,” I shout. I can only hold back my rage for so long—the anger bubbling inside of me, simmering hotter and hotter with every passing second. Burning brighter with every new horrifying detail I discover on her: Blood staining her gloved hands. Claw marks etched across her cheek. One of Carla’s ruby red nails clinging to the ends of Mami’s braid.
I step directly between her view of Kai, shielding him from her. For now, at least.
“He’s my friend,” I say, the words so low they’re practically a growl.
Mami lets out a cold, humorless bark of a laugh, shaking her head like I’m some naive little kid. “These aren’t your friends.”
She’s right, but I’d never admit it. Especially not now when she could use it as justification for the twisted crusade she’s on.
“Where’s Timothy?” I ask, refusing to let her think she has the upper hand here.
“He looked at you like you were an animal,” she says with a snarl, tightening her grip on the axe’s handle, her leather gloves squelching in a way that makes me sick. “Like something he wanted to tame. And he wouldn’t even own up to it when I told him to apologize for what he did to you.”
Timothy wasn’t just wandering around in the middle of a storm.Shefound him. The thought of the two of them going head-to-head in the middle of the woods makes me sick. She’s the reason he didn’t come back. I thought Timothy was the only thing I had to be afraid of out here, but I was so, so wrong.
“He got what he deserved,” Mami says through gritted teeth.
“None of themdeservethis.” I don’t realize I’m crying until I feel the warmth of the tears slipping down my cheeks—hear the tremble in my voice. The image of Mami begins to blur as I give myself over to the pain. The sadness. Reality weighs a thousand tons as it slowly settles over me.
Mami has always held us close. Too close. Both before Joel and after we lost him. Hurt from her own childhood bled into ours, made her fear what the world would do to us to the point where she became the very thing she was trying to protect us from.
Our already tight leash only got shorter when we lost Papi—when he took the fall for her.We were all being punished for whatshedid. None of what happened was ever fair, but that was one part I could never understand. Why were we held tighter whenshewas the one who hurt someone, who hurt us? This time, the outside world wasn’t to blame—she was.
Despite all her efforts, it’s not the world I’m afraid of. I’m not afraid of Kai or Kiki or Carla, even after they were cruel to me. I’m not even afraid of Timothy. The thing I’m most afraid of isher.
I knew when I saw the blood on her hands that night a year ago that our lives would never be the same. Our nightmare had just begun. And now here we are, living it out again.
“They hurt you!” Mami repeats, a shout this time, and I can tell from the way her voice cracks that she does it through tears. But I don’t have the same sympathy for her now that I had then, so soon after we lost Joel. When she spent all her nights curled up in a messy bed he’d never make again. When she buried her face in his pillow until all she could smell was herself.
Papi told me to go easy on her. Her grief was all-consuming, she didn’t know what she was doing, wasn’t in her right mind. She was already suffering so much—but why did that give her the right to make us suffer, too?
“That doesn’t mean they should die!” I yell back, resisting the urge to push her.
Papi said he would take the blame because he was stronger. Because Mami only did what she did because the world kept letting her down. First, her mother, who would sooner punish her than show her any kind of love. Then, her school. For not seeing the way the other kids tortured her or the marks her mom left on her body. Then, the police. Failing to do anything about those boys who tortured Joel the same way her classmates had done to her all those years ago. My mother has been through a lot. But that doesn’t mean she’s blameless.
Looking at her now, covered in multiple people’s blood, carrying the same type of weapon that she’s used twice now to take four lives, I realize I hate her. I’ve hated her for months. Longer. A feeling that blossomed when we first lost Joel and bloomed into full-on hatred when the judge sentenced Papi to life. I didn’t want to face it then. Maybe because she was all I had left. Maybe because I was afraid of not having a mother or a father. Maybe because I was afraid of what it meant to lash out against the one person who claimed she loved me more than anything—to pull apart everything I’ve been raised to believe piece by piece. But I’m able to embrace that feeling fully now, can feel it rushing through me until it consumes every part of me. She ruined everything—our lives, our reputations, any hope we had of being normal kids in this too-small town. She took everything I loved away from me and still has the nerve to stand here and try to take more. Until she’s the only thing left.
For the first time since he agreed to take the fall for her, I’m angry at Papi too. Hate him just as much as I hate her. Because if he had let the police find out the truth—take Mami instead of him—we wouldn’t be here right now. Carla. Timothy. They’d both still be alive.
She wouldn’t have been able to hurt anyone else.
“You have no idea what they could’ve done to you!” Mami screams at me, gesturing toward the deck—where Carla’s lifeless body is still slumped on the ground, where we last saw Timothy before he disappeared into the dark. “That boy touched you even though you told him no. And that girl. All those things she said about you. How she treated you like you were subhuman during that game. And now…” Mami glares at me with enough disdain it would make my knees tremble if I cared what she thought anymore. “Look at what they did to you.”
I know how I must seem to her. Bloody and bruised. But I’m not broken—not because of them, at least. They can knock me down as many times as they want, pour as much animal blood on me as they can, but it’ll never hurt the way Mami has hurt me. Not when she’s the reason they wanted to hurt me in the first place.
The person standing on the doorstep isn’t the same person who braided my hair growing up. Who used to watch telenovelas with me in the living room on rainy nights. That person has been gone for years—ever since Joel started high school and she realized the world hadn’t gotten any kinder since she was our age. People were still as cruel as she remembered. So, she kept us close. Held us so tight it made us want to burst.
“Dina—”
