Whatever. One day this will be over. One day Rosina will graduate from high school and crawl out from under this layer of grease and run off to Portland to start her all-girl punk band, and she will never step foot in Prescott, or a Mexican restaurant, ever again.
There is at least some solace in arriving home. Abuelita is there, asleep on the couch in front of the television, her soft face illuminated by her constant stream of telenovelas. Rosina pulls the throw blanket up to Abuelita’s chin, then heads to the shower, where she peels off her sticky work clothes, turns on the shower as hot as is reasonable, and scrubs the evening off her skin, washes it out of her hair, watches the boredom and rude customers drain away in the soapy swirl. Her skin is hers again. She smells like herself.
She sits on her bed wrapped in a towel. She is at least grateful for her single bedroom, while all her cousins have to share. She can decorate it however she wants, paint the walls midnight blue and put up posters of her favorite bands, play her guitar and write her songs without anyone listening. But Rosina feels a twinge of shame at the thought that she benefits from the fact that her mother hasn’t had the chance to have any more children, that, as far as Rosina knows, Mami hasn’t even had sex since her father died seventeen years ago. Maybe that’s why she’s so grumpy all the time.
The house is silent. Mami is still at the restaurant, cleaning up the kitchen, prepping for tomorrow. Her uncles are probably in one of her neighbor’s backyards, all the men home from work in the restaurants and fields, sitting in plastic chairs and drinking cervezas while their wives tend to the children and houses and everything else. The solitude is a welcome change from the whining crowd of her cousins or the demands of customers, but it is also lonely. Rosina suspects there is a place between these extremes, something besides loneliness and hating everyone around you. She pulls on a pair of leggings and an old T-shirt, shoves her phone in her waistband, not that anyone will call her, not that she’ll call anyone. But there’s always hope, isn’t there?
Maybe that girl will actually call, the one she met at the all-ages show in Eugene she sneaked out of her house to go to last weekend. In a parallel universe, one that wasn’t so small and backward, she probably wouldn’t even care about that girl from the show. She wasn’t really Rosina’s type, and she wasn’t really that nice or cute or interesting. But she was a girl. A queer girl. And Rosina hasn’t hooked up with anyone since Gerte, her first and only real girlfriend, the German exchange student who left in June. Before her, there were a few tipsy make-out sessions with curious straight girls freshman year, but they fizzled out as soon as the girls sobered up. Those girls could just shrug and giggle, collect a story to tell later, and be proud of themselves for being open-minded and adventurous, but what Rosina got was heartbreak. After the third time that happened, she swore off school parties—and straight girls—altogether.
Rosina pads downstairs and sits on the couch next to her grandmother. Even though Abuelita’s asleep, the simple proximity of her body is a comfort. She is the only person in the world that Rosina doesn’t have to fight.
“Alicia,” Abuelita says in her sleep, calling Rosina by the name of her long-dead daughter.
Rosina squeezes her bony hand, breathes in the sour warmth of her breath. “Sí, Abuelita?” Rosina says. “Estoy aquí.”
Abuelita mumbles something that Rosina doesn’t understand but that she hopes means “I love you.”
Rosina’s phone rings. Erin rarely calls, but when she does it’s to rant about something, to tell her about some fish she read about or an episode of Star Trek she just watched. With Rosina’s luck, it’s probably Mami calling to tell her to come back to the restaurant. Definitely not the girl from the show, who told Rosina she was too young and only reluctantly accepted the slip of paper with Rosina’s phone number written on it in bloodred lipstick.
“Rosina?” the female voice says, from a number she does not recognize. Rosina’s heart opens, just a crack. The world is suddenly a place that might include her.
“This is Grace? From school? You gave me your number at lunch the other day?”
It’s just the plain girl who speaks in questions, Rosina and Erin’s puzzling new lunch buddy. The rusty mechanism inside Rosina’s chest closes back up again.
“Yeah?” Rosina says, running her fingers through her patchy wet hair. Maybe she should just chop it all off, shave her whole head like Erin, start over from scratch.
A pause, then: “I need you to tell me what happened to Lucy Moynihan.”
The girl’s voice—definitive, solid. The girl suddenly demanding, not asking permission.
Rosina sighs. If she could unknow the story of Lucy Moynihan, she would, in a heartbeat. Why this girl wants to know so badly, she has no idea.
Fine, she thinks. She’ll tell Grace the story of the disappearing girl. She’ll tell her the story no one says they believe.
LUCY.
She was not beautiful. She was small and mousy. Her hair was always frizzy and her clothes were always somehow wrong. She was a freshman at an upperclassman’s party, accompanied by the default friends she’d had since kindergarten, Prescott natives like her. They were nothing special. They grasped on to their red plastic cups for dear life and huddled in the corner where they would not be seen.
But then. Her friends were gone and she could not find them. The room was dark and loud and tilted. He found her. Spencer Klimpt. He looked at her from across the room and she was suddenly someone: a girl, wanted.
He refilled her red cup. One time. Two times. More. He looked into her eyes and smiled while her wet mouth formed nervous words. The music was so loud, she could not hear her own voice, but she knew she was flirting. She was giddy with it.
She was a windup toy and he was waiting for her time to run out. He was patient, so patient. He was such a good listener, so chivalrous, so good at getting her drinks, so good at watching her eyelids get heavy, at watching her power down, slowly, slowly, until she stopped speaking, until she was soft clay to be molded, perfectly malleable.
He took her hand and led her upstairs. He said things she could not hear to someone she could not see. Was there someone else in the room? She was laughing with her eyes closed. The world shook with her inside it. His strong arms kept her from falling. She thought: This is it.
When he laid her down on the bed, she was somewhere watching, narrating the shadowed events:
This is really happening. I’m fifteen and I’m about to make out with one of the most popular seniors in school. I should be so happy. I should be so proud. A little fear must be normal. I’m okay I’m okay everything is okay. Even though the bed is spinning even though I can’t keep my eyes open even though I’m not even sure he knows my name even though even though even though his body is so heavy on top of mine and I can’t move I can’t breathe I don’t want this I don’t want this anymore I want to push but my wrists are pinned down and my pants are off and it’s too late it’s too late it’s too late to say no.