Darkest Fear

  The hot sun was making me drowsy, and I was just dozing off when I heard Mimi say, “The equinox is coming up soon.”

  “I know,” said Aly, next to me. “I can’t believe it’s September already.”

  “We should have a party,” said Matéo, and voices chorused, “Yes! You should! A party at your house!”

  Aly laughed. “That would be fun. We’ll do a service inside; then the party can be inside and outside.”

  I lay very still on the blanket, trying to control my breathing. I knew what Aly meant by “do a service.” My parents had held services in their house on the seven major haguari holy days throughout the year, to worship Tzechura and Tzechuro, the jaguar goddess and god. I had hated, hated, hated it. It had seemed like the final embarrassing symbol of their weirdness, and by the time I was fifteen, I had thrown so many fits about it that they finally let me quit participating. Deep inside I felt so disloyal to the Tzechuri, but I just wanted my parents to be normal, to go to a regular church on Sundays or a regular synagogue on Saturdays.

  It kept getting thrown in my face, the haguari thing. It was still shocking to find out how widespread haguari were—I had known it wasn’t only my parents and my relatives, but I hadn’t experienced the reality of that. Even when we went to an actual temple of the Tzechuri in the little Brazilian town my tia Juliana lived in, it seemed like something only about my family. But there were lots of us—people I wasn’t related to and would never know.

  Here were all these otherwise normal young people—they were in college or had graduated, they had jobs or were getting grad degrees, they had families and siblings and other friends. It was a whole world of haguari that wasn’t about me or my parents. Listening to them talk, it sounded as if their growing up had been so different from mine, with haguari friends, a wider community where everyone shared similar experiences, the same religion, the same genetic mutation. With just me and my family I’d felt so incredibly abnormal. So other.

  “I’m about ready,” said Dana, standing up and brushing sand off her bottom.

  “Me too,” Aly said, drinking the last of her diet soda.

  I opened my eyes and sat up. “Ready for what?” I asked Aly softly.

  “Time to change,” Aly said. “You ready for your first lesson?”

  My heart sank. The big question: whether peer pressure and a fear of looking like an uncool prude would convince me to do what my parents hadn’t been able to convince me to do in five long years.

  Feeling like a complete wuss, I shook my head. “I just can’t,” I whispered.

  Aly stopped stowing things in the picnic basket. I was trying not to look at the others, who had gone to the edge of the woods and were slipping out of their bathing suits. As much as I would hate to go skinny-dipping with a bunch of people I’d just met, it would be easy-peasy compared to what they actually wanted me to do with them.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Miguel start the horribly identifiable hunching over. I shifted on the blanket so my back was to them. Behind me laughter changed to a deep rumble.

  “Really?” Aly asked at last.

  “You guys coming, babe?” Matéo asked from the top of the little hill.

  “One sec,” she called back.

  “I’ve never changed on purpose,” I reminded her. “It was awful when I did it accidentally, last night and the night before. I have no idea how to change back. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t. I hate it. It’s scary. I can’t control it.”

  “That’s why you need to learn,” Aly said.

  “I can’t. I know I have to, just so I know how to not ever change again, but I don’t want to learn in front of all these people.”

  “It’s so weird that your parents didn’t teach you,” Aly said.

  I didn’t want to talk about all their useless attempts.

  “Look,” I said, “you go on with Matéo. I’ll stay here and load up the car. Do you think you’ll be back by like three thirty?”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “I’ll load the car and take a nap in the backseat. Just remember that I have to be at work at five.”

  I didn’t watch Aly and Matéo change. Something in me still found it grotesque. I had no idea how I had changed the last two nights. I knew why—big emotion—but not how. It had hurt the very first time, and it had hurt the day my parents died. It had taken a lot longer. These last two times had been fast, and I’d hardly been aware of it. Was that what it was supposed to be like? Before I finished putting the blanket in the car trunk, Aly and Matéo were gone, running through the woods with their friends, a pack of jaguars.

  What would happen if they came upon a person? Those kinds of questions freaked me out. I didn’t know how they dealt with it.

  I rolled down all the windows on Aly’s car, grateful it was parked in the shade, at least. Opening the cooler, I took one more icy soda and then lay down on the backseat, the seat indentations making my back arch uncomfortably.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who I was. Since I was thirteen, I’d formed my whole persona as opposite to my parents. Opposite to my mom. Somehow cutting out the haguara part of me had seemed okay then. Now, around all these haguari, I was only half a person. Trying to be opposite of Matéo and Aly seemed ludicrous—even scary. Without them, who did I have? Jennifer in New York. Who I couldn’t even tell the truth to.

  It was really, really hot, even in the shade. The fabric of the car seat smelled hot. The trees overhead were oppressive—stolid witnesses to my fears and uncertainties. I pressed the cold can against my forehead and started to cry.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AFTER THE CATACLYSMIC, SCREECHING HALT of my life in May, I had entered a stasis where I had spent weeks wandering numbly around my parents’ house. Then I’d found the picture of Donella, and my life had jolted forward again.

  Now, as a sweltering New Orleans September went on, I felt my life stabilize, in a way. Matéo and Aly offered several more times to teach me how to change at will, and though I knew I needed to learn, I chickened out each time. Instead, to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally change, I tried to avoid any upsetting situation, which wasn’t that hard. My days acquired a pattern, and it was becoming almost as familiar as the get up, go to school, go home, eat dinner, do homework pattern of my former life. Now it was sleep in, eat breakfast, hang out, go to work, come home, hang out some more, go to bed around two. Repeat. I was getting to know all my roommates more, including my cousin. More important, I felt . . . accepted. Even though I never changed with them. No one ever teased me about that, and I wondered if Matéo or Aly had told them to lay off me. Although there was so much I apparently didn’t know, because of my heritage and the little I had absorbed from my parents, I was still one of them.

  And it felt really good. After refusing to belong to my own family, not really fitting in at school, not having a boyfriend—now I was one of a group. When they made inside jokes, I got them. When Coco and Aly spoke in Spanish, I understood most of it. Matéo and I found that our families had used a lot of the same idioms—one day he’d planned to make dinner and had food out, pots ready, and then decided he didn’t want to bother. Without thinking, I’d said, “Ajoelhou, tem que rezar,” like my dad had always said to me. Basically it meant, “You’re kneeling, so you’re going to pray.” Kind of like “Finish what you started.” Matéo had laughed because his mom had said the same thing to him. He was my family.

  About a week after the river picnic, Mrs. Peachtree called me. Back in August we had talked about things, because it looked like I wouldn’t be back for a while. We had agreed that she would take any houseplant still alive from the house, and that once a week she would take any mail, drop it into a big manila envelope, and mail it to me. I kept the water and electricity turned on, but canceled the Internet and cable TV service. It would be easy enough to get it back once I returned home.

  In return for all this, plus Mr. Peachtree cutti
ng the lawn and making the house look lived in, I sent them a check every week. At first she hadn’t wanted to accept it, but I’d pointed out that she and her husband were essentially acting as management agents. At the start of September we’d gone to monthly checks, because I had no idea when I’d be back. Every so often Mrs. Peachtree and I would call each other to check in, so I wasn’t really surprised when I saw her name on the caller ID of my cell phone.

  “Hi, Mrs. Peachtree,” I said.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine. Still working in the coffee shop. So everything’s okay.”

  “Good. Listen, did your friend find you?”

  “What friend? Jennifer? She knows I’m here.”

  “No, not Jennifer, I know her. This was a man. He said he was a friend of your parents, and he had something of theirs for you?”

  I stopped sorting laundry and sat down hard. “When was this?”

  “A couple of days ago,” Mrs. Peachtree said. “When Phil saw him looking in the window at your house, we went over there real quick.”

  “Oh, good,” I said faintly, my heart in my throat. “Did he say who he was?”

  “Said his name was Felix Winston, and that he worked with your dad. He said he’d found something of your dad’s at the office and wanted to return it to you.”

  “Hm. Yeah, my dad did work with someone named that. I think I met him once. What did he look like?”

  “Indian,” said Mrs. Peachtree, who was from south Texas. “Like Mexican Indian, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I remembered Felix Winston as being tall and light-haired. “Did he leave anything with you?”

  “No. He said he’d come back later. I said it was hard to know when you’d be here—with work and all. I made it sound like you still lived here but were unpredictable.”

  “Thank you. This was just a few days ago?”

  “Yes. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Did you mention New Orleans?”

  “No. Didn’t give him your cell number, either. But he seemed to think he could look you up or something. So I was curious if he’d found you.”

  “No,” I said. “But could you do me a favor and let me know if you or Mr. Peachtree ever see him again?”

  “Sure, honey. Everything else okay?”

  “Yes, I’m still enjoying being here. I’ll probably be back before too much longer, though.”

  “Okay. You let me know if you need anything, okay?”

  “I will. Thanks, Mrs. Peachtree.”

  Of course I told Matéo and Aly about it right away. Since it had been just a few days before, it wasn’t the person who had attacked Tink. But it definitely hadn’t been Felix Winston.

  “We were already on guard,” said Matéo. “Now we’ll be extra on guard.”

  “Hey, should we maybe get an alarm system?” I asked. “I know a lot of houses have them.”

  Matéo looked at me. “We’re a bunch of haguari. What’s an alarm going to do that’s better than anything we can do ourselves?”

  He had a point. I pictured the alarm contacting the police and them showing up in time to see a bunch of large jungle animals fighting.

  “Oh, you know, I wanted to show you this.” Matéo took out a photo album, one of his mother’s from before she was married. It was amazing, looking at it. I saw so many familiar pictures, except these had Donella in them. She had been cut out of the pictures we had at home. Other albums showed Matéo as a little kid, in Mardi Gras costumes, school uniforms, with friends. His school photos. It was still hard to believe that both our families had lived in America, not all that far apart, and yet had never met, never gotten together for holidays, never exchanged birthday cards. What could have caused that?

  Matéo was closing the album when a picture fell out. I picked it up and looked at it, an odd feeling going down my spine.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  Matéo gave a sad smile. “That’s my mom with one of her old boyfriends. Actually, they were engaged, and then like two days before the wedding, she ran off with my father. It was a big scandal. Her parents had loved her fiancé. But she said she knew my father was the love of her life, and she had to be with him.” He shrugged. Then he saw my face and frowned. “What?”

  I let out a breath. “Matéo . . . this is my father.”

  We stared at each other, then at the picture again. It was definitely my dad: young, handsome, smiling, in horrible eighties clothes. He had his arm around Donella’s waist and was gazing at her adoringly. She was laughing at the camera, her face so much like mine.

  “Are you sure?” I asked Matéo. “Sure that this was who she was engaged to? It wasn’t someone else?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “She told me the story a bunch of times. She thought she was in love with him, but then she met my dad and was crazy for him, even though he wasn’t Brazilian. He was American, and his parents are Irish. Mami told me that her parents didn’t speak to her for two years, and when they finally met my dad, they couldn’t stand him.”

  “Did she ever tell you her fiancé’s name?” I asked in a tiny voice.

  “Victor. Victor somebody. I don’t remember.”

  Victor was my dad’s name. My dad had been engaged to another woman, and not just any woman. To my mom’s sister.

  “Maybe this is why the big split happened,” I said. “Why there were no pictures of Donella, no mention of her anywhere.”

  “I can’t believe this is your dad,” said Matéo. “That he was who Mom was engaged to. This could definitely be why the sisters quit speaking to each other.”

  My mind was reeling. It was one thing to find out that your parent had once been engaged to, or even married to, someone else. But to find out your dad had been engaged to your mom’s sister? A sister you’d never even known existed? It hinted at a much more complicated story. Would Tia Juliana tell me anything, if I asked her? Would she just get mad? Surely she had to know the whole story.

  “Is there any way this could be related to the attacks?” I asked.

  “How?” Matéo said. “It’s bizarre, but who would be upset about it after all this time, except the four of them? And they didn’t kill each other.”

  “So this could be why the sisters split up, but probably doesn’t have anything to do with their murders.” I was having trouble taking this all in.

  “I guess so,” said Matéo.

  I pushed the album away. “I better go get ready for work.” I still had an hour but wanted some time alone. Matéo nodded and put the albums away—he seemed as freaked out as I was. Upstairs, that picture kept popping into my mind. My dad. He and my mom had seemed so perfect for each other, so happy. Victor and Aracita. I’d seen their wedding pictures a million times. The eighties had a lot to answer for, stylewise, but still. My grandparents had been in those pictures, looking happy. So had Tia Juliana, who’d been barely twenty. I’d always thought my parents had been destined to be together. They were so affectionate. How had Papi ended up with my mom after being dumped by Donella? Obviously my mom had known all about it. How many more secrets was I going to stumble onto?

  Aly and I had gone shopping last week, and now I pawed through my clothes trying to find something to wear. I decided on a new vintage bowling shirt, more my size, instead of my usual huge. I’d become a convert of the skirt club, and today’s was short and pleated, with an inexplicable printed border of kittens going around the bottom. I was even wearing sandals instead of my black high-tops. Okay, so they were Birkenstocks and not platforms, but they were sandals. And comfy.

  My long, thick hair was defeating my attempts to subdue it when I heard my computer ping. I lunged for it and flipped it open.

  “Jen! I tried calling you last night.”

  She sighed. “I was at a dorm party.”

  “That sounds fun.” I leaned over the bed, untangling a knot in my hair. Would I tell Jen about my parents? I tried to think it through.

&nbsp
; “What are you doing?”

  “I have work in a little bit.” Once again I held a hair elastic in my teeth as I swooped up handfuls of hair.

  “Still doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I pretty much know how to do everything now, so I don’t feel so stupid.” I shrugged. “It gives me something to do, a place to go. I like the people there.”

  What else could I talk about? My parents? About accidentally changing into a monster at the drop of a hat? About somebody snooping around, trying to kill us? I considered for a moment while I managed to braid my hair, pulling it around in front to get the last bit. Then I snapped on an elastic and sat down on the bed.

  “How’s the hot boss?” she asked.

  I made myself grin. It was a relief to have something normalish that I could tell her.

  “Still hot. Still apparently completely uninterested in a social misfit with no fashion sense and poor social skills. Go figure. Did you get the latest pictures of the mural?” I’d been sending her progress shots from my phone.

  “Yeah. It’s incredible, and he’s not even finished. A brilliant artist,” Jennifer mused, looking at the ceiling. “Misunderstood . . . needing love and understanding . . .”

  I howled with laughter and threw my socks at my computer. “Anyway, how about you?” I asked. “How’s rooming with Lucy going?”

  “She’s fine,” said Jennifer, but I read between the lines. “She’s not awful or anything. I just . . . have nothing in common with her. Not a thing. Not a single thing.”

  I gave her a sympathetic smile. “That’s a bummer. Can you get a different roommate next year?”

  “Oh god, I’ll still be here next year,” Jennifer moaned, dropping her head into her hands.

  “How about your classes?” I asked quickly. “You said you were liking your public policy class.”

  “Yeah.” Jennifer raised her head a little bit. “The one I’m finding super interesting, actually, is the social services one—like, social work.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. So that’s my highlight. Out of endless hours of misery.”