“That was not a fucking compliment, you sexist piece of shit.”
“Whatever,” he says. He looks Rosina up and down one last time, like a wolf eyeing meat. “You’re not worth the trouble.” Then he walks away, laughing to himself as if the rest of the world is in on the joke.
Rosina is shaking with anger, her face red, her hands fists. “I feel homicidal right now,” she says between clenched teeth. “This is why people shouldn’t have guns.”
“Oh my God,” Grace says. She can’t think of anything else to say, so she says “Oh my God” again.
“We have to get that fucking bastard,” Rosina says. “We’re getting together after school today, right? To figure out what to do next?”
“Absolutely,” Grace says. “Erin, what about you?”
But Erin is hunched over, rocking back and forth. She is somewhere inside herself, trapped. She is not with them.
“Oh, shit,” Rosina says.
“Erin, are you okay?” says Grace.
“I have to go,” Erin says with a tight voice. She starts gathering her lunch from the table.
“Wait,” Grace says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I want to be alone,” Erin says, standing up. Her shoulders are so tense they’re practically touching her ears.
“But we can go with you—” Grace protests, but Rosina touches her arm gently and shakes her head.
“No,” Erin says, then turns around and shuffles away, her hip bumping hard into the edge of the table. They watch her make her way quickly through the hall, her shoulder against the wall, as if she doesn’t trust herself to walk without the support.
Grace stands up. “Shouldn’t we go with her?”
“Erin is one of those rare people who actually mean it when they say they want to be alone,” Rosina says.
“But what if she’s not okay?” Grace says. “What if something happens?”
“She can get to the library just fine on her own. The librarian, Mrs. Trumble, is good to her. I think she’s a little on the spectrum herself.”
Grace is not satisfied with that answer. Something about Eric scared Erin so badly she shut down. She had to run away. That’s not something to ignore. That’s not something going to the library and being alone will fix.
“She’s not helpless, you know,” Rosina says.
“I know,” Grace says. But just because she’s not helpless doesn’t mean she doesn’t need help.
*
“Erin went home after lunch,” Rosina tells Grace as they walk to her aunt and uncle’s house in the afternoon drizzle.
“And you think I shouldn’t be worried about her?” Grace says.
Rosina sighs. “You can worry if you want, but I’m not sure it’s going to do any good. This just happens with Erin sometimes. Things set her off and she gets overwhelmed, then she needs to recharge for a little while. She’ll probably be back at school tomorrow. She just needs things to be quiet and go back to normal for a while.”
But for Grace, going back to normal is unacceptable. Normal is where she gets lost. Normal is where she is nobody. Normal is where nothing happens. How can something be so different for two people?
“But I keep thinking about her being all alone,” Grace says. “It seems like we should go check on her or something.”
“Honestly,” Rosina says, “I think that would stress her out even more. If you need to do something, why don’t you text her? Let her know you’re thinking about her. That’d make her feel good.”
“You two have a fascinating relationship.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You really care about her, don’t you?”
“Yeah, so?” Rosina says. “She’s my friend.”
Grace chuckles a little.
“What?” Rosina says.
“You act like you’re such a badass.”
“I am a badass.”
They walk the rest of the way in silence, which allows Grace’s thoughts to wander back to herself. “Are you sure it’s okay that I’m coming over?” she asks. She half hopes Rosina will change her mind. Grace is suddenly so nervous that even her leaking bedroom seems more comfortable than a first visit to a new friend’s house.
Rosina is her friend. Going to her house (really her aunt and uncle’s house) after school makes it official.
“I’m telling you,” Rosina says. “I don’t even need to be there. Those kids can totally survive without me.”
Rosina wasn’t kidding when she said she had a whole army of cousins. They are everywhere, underneath the tables, bouncing on the furniture, climbing up the walls. The open living/dining room is stuffed with mismatched furniture; toys, clothes, dishes, and papers cover every surface.
A tween girl sits close to the television, watching a reality show. “That’s the one I’m trying to groom to take my position,” Rosina says. “All she has to do is sit there like she always does. Lola!” The girl doesn’t move. “Where’s Abuelita?”
“At your house,” Lola says without taking her eyes off the screen. It’s the show about people who have strange addictions to eating weird things. On-screen, a woman is drinking dish soap out of a champagne glass.
“You know she’s not supposed to be there by herself,” Rosina says.
Lola shrugs. “She’s sleeping.” The woman on the TV burps and a bubble comes out of her mouth.
“Where’s Erwin?” Rosina says.
“In the bathroom.”
Rosina shakes her head. “These people,” she mutters.
“Does Erin come over a lot?” Grace asks.
“She’s not really into hanging out outside of school,” Rosina says, throwing her backpack on the floor. “She’s only come over a couple of times, and both times she had to leave after, like, ten minutes because she said the smells hurt her.”
“What smells?” Grace says. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Food smells. She says she can smell the hot peppers my mom and aunt use in their cooking. Which is especially weird at my house because my mom hardly ever even cooks there. Erin was smelling, like, leftover smells from the restaurant. It’s like she has superhuman senses or something.”
A boy around two years old hands Grace a naked Barbie with no head. “Thank you?” Grace says as he toddles away.
“Over here,” Rosina says as she opens a laptop sitting on the dining table. She moves a laundry basket off a chair and motions to Grace to sit down. They stare at the screen as Rosina signs into the e-mail account they created for the Nowhere Girls, with no real names or identifying information attached to it.
“Hey, look,” Rosina says. “We got new e-mails!”
A fight breaks out on the other side of the room. “Mine!” says one of the kids.
“No, mine!” says another.
“Give me that,” Lola says, grabs the toy from the dueling cousins, sits on top of it, and goes back to watching her show.
“See,” Rosina says. “She’s totally ready.”
“What do the e-mails say?” Grace says. “Do you recognize any of the addresses?” All the school e-mail addresses are the same format: [email protected], but none of the names look familiar to Grace.