Darkest Fear

  Rafael came back the next day, and I was glad I’d made the effort to wear a short, pine-green fluffy skirt and a slim-fitting black T-shirt cut for a girl. I was getting more used to how I looked in clothes that fit me, but I pretended to ignore how Rafael’s eyes seemed to linger on my legs and my face. Actually, his eyes lingered on the middle parts too. Since I was at about an eighth-grade level of dating experience, I went with my eighth-grade instinct of acting distant.

  When Hayley, Talia, and I were all there, Rafael told us that he’d hired two new people, who would start the next day: Kathy, working on the day shift with Hayley, and a guy named Joey who would pinch-hit for whoever needed a sub.

  “Yay!” said Hayley. “I mean, I miss Annie, but I’m so glad to have someone to help me full-time. Annie used to work here,” she added for my benefit.

  “I think they’ll work out,” said Rafael. “Vivi, could I see you in the office for a sec?”

  Here we go. I followed him stiffly back to the manager’s office and was bummed when he shut the door. If he tried to fire me because of that kiss, I was going to break something over his head. And then sue his ass.

  In this small room I was even more aware of his scent, the freshness of sandalwood and cypress. Was it maybe his shampoo? Today he was wearing a pale gray linen button-down shirt that had been washed so many times it was about the thickness and strength of Kleenex. I wanted to bury my face against his chest and inhale deeply.

  “I wanted to tell you again that I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I told you, it was no big deal.” I tried to look bored.

  “It was a big deal to me. I don’t go around kissing everyone. Or anyone, really.”

  Hm. I bit the inside of my cheek so I couldn’t blurt, “Me either!”

  Rafael let out a breath. “If things were different—I mean—” He stopped, looking frustrated. “Anyway. I didn’t want you to think I was playing you, and I wanted to apologize. I wish things were different.” He paused, looking at the floor, and muttered, “Really do wish.”

  “You’re not firing me?” I asked meanly.

  His head jerked up. “Oh, no. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Just making sure.” In truth, his apology had been good. It helped to know that it wasn’t me. But I was still irritated.

  “No. Obviously.” Now he looked irritated too. “Unless you don’t want to work here anymore, because of me.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said coolly. “Are we done here?”

  “Vivi, don’t—” he began, then just nodded. I opened the door and left, feeling a little better somehow.

  The new people worked out well. I didn’t see much of Kathy—she worked days with Hayley. Joey worked with Talia on my nights off, and then with me on Talia’s nights off. He was a couple of inches shorter than me and totally muscle-bound. He was another student at Tulane, studying law with an art history minor, which was how Rafael had met him. His hobby was bodybuilding, and he competed in amateur events all over the U.S. He was dark and intense, with a strong New York accent. He thought the heat in New Orleans was going to kill him. He had been here three years. In his own way he was as gossipy as Talia, so it was fun to work with him. I wondered how well he knew Rafael but didn’t want to ask.

  And about Rafael: We were both acting like nothing had happened. He was in the coffee shop almost every day, reservedly friendly with everyone. Usually he spent at least an hour working on the huge mural, which was becoming more mesmerizing by the day. I still thought he was one of the most gorgeous guys I’d ever met, but he was making it easy to let go of the crush I’d had on him.

  In the afternoons I looked forward to going to work, and in the early morning I looked forward to going home. Matéo’s house felt a lot like my home now—not like my house in Florida, but like I was home when I was there. We hadn’t had any more weird incidents, and without speaking about it had adjusted our schedules so no one was ever home alone. Around one in the morning I’d turn in off the side street and would breathe a sigh of relief when I saw Tink’s SUV, Coco’s van, Aly’s Camry.

  Matéo had finally gotten around to showing me his family’s book. It was a lot like a scrapbook. Like a cross between a scrapbook and an illuminated manuscript.

  “Jeez, how old is it?” I asked.

  “Well, my pages are only three years old,” he said. “But this stuff here in the beginning . . . look, there’s a date.” He pointed at a date written in faded purple ink on the corner of a page that was brown with age.

  “Oh, my gods,” I said. “Sixteen sixty-seven.”

  “Everything’s in Gaelic until the early nineteen hundreds, of course. My father’s father went back and translated it all, writing a modern version of these pages so we’d be able to read them without all the old-fashioned stuff.”

  “Cool.”

  “So here’s our family tree. Most of it.” Matéo unfolded a sheet until it was about two feet by three feet. “This branch is my father’s family, my parents, and me. Then you can see my mom’s side—all our relatives.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, scanning names that I remembered. But everything earlier than my great-grandparents was new to me. Matéo had more information about my family than I did.

  “And then when Aly and I get married, I’ll have to copy her history onto new pages.” Like Aly, Matéo spoke casually about their future, taking it for granted that he’d found his life partner. I was envious, but couldn’t begin to imagine settling down with someone this young.

  It was fascinating, seeing Matéo’s family’s book, and it made me more determined to find mine the next time I went back to Florida. Matéo’s was thick—it would take hours to go through the whole thing. It had some general haguari history, sections on our religion—even a code of conduct written in 1811. (Basically, don’t kill your neighbors or their children or their animals or servants.) What I found really interesting were the very old descriptions of haguari clans: the Far clans,  Asians, and the Sun clan,  Africans, were seen as fascinatingly foreign, back in the sixteen hundreds. Then there was the North Clan, which encompassed all haguari from North America and the middle countries down to Panama. The South Clan, which Aly and I both belonged to, was all of South America. Patrick Garrison had belonged to what he called the Patch Clan.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “His family was from Ireland, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Matéo. “So, European. He explained that Europe was seen as a bunch of little patches of clans, compared to the larger clans of North America and South America, China, and Russia. Europe is a bunch of smaller countries all jammed together, but really different from each other. Like a patchwork quilt. So they called it the Patch Clan. But I’ve also seen really old books that called it something like the Puzzle Clan, because it was like a puzzle, made up of smaller pieces.”

  “Did each European country have its own clan? How did they get lumped together?” I asked.

  “It was more like, in the very beginning, the haguari spread, starting in South America,” Matéo explained. “First they were one clan, then two or three, then more and more as we expanded across the globe. I’m sure within the Patch Clan, or South Clan, or any other clan, there are smaller subclans. My dad always thought that the tradition of claiming a larger group was designed to help stop infighting. More to build a sense of community and brotherhood, so that we didn’t kill each other off.”

  “Could it be a rival clan trying to kill us?” I asked.

  Matéo looked thoughtful. “It could be. But if it is, why don’t they just kill us? Why take our hearts?”

  I had no idea. The idea of all of our separate clans was something I needed to explore—my parents hadn’t told me about it. Most of their friends had been Brazilian, but I didn’t know if that was coincidence or a deliberate choice to associate only with what I now knew were South Clan members. I wished I knew more, but I had only myself to blame. Still, a whole world of knowledge was opening up for me, and it was
fascinating, weird, and a little scary.

  “You know, look here.” Matéo pressed the book open wider. “I never noticed it before, but this should be much more filled in, with my mom’s family history. Instead there are just a few lines, and then boom, she married my dad. It was like she didn’t even have a family when they got married.” Matéo said.

  “That’s, weird. I’ll definitely look for my book, next time I go home,” I said. “But I bet there isn’t any more information there about your mom and my dad ever being together. The whole thing is so strange—but I remember my friend Jennifer telling me about two of her aunts who didn’t speak to each other for over twenty years because one of them kept their dad’s prayer shawl and the other one wanted it. That was just a shawl. Not a fiancé. So who knows?”

  I had hoped that Matéo and Aly would forget about having an equinox party, but they didn’t. One day I found them in the kitchen, making lists of party food and discussing how much ice to get.

  “Let me know what I can do to help,” I said, trying to sound sincere. My love/revulsion relationship with haguariness was ongoing. I was making so little progress with my changing lessons that Matéo was mystified. I accepted and liked all my housemates, and was growing to truly love my cousin and Aly as family. But the idea of the rest of the haguari world still upset me, and the thought of being surrounded by a bunch of them at a party was stomach-churning. At the same time, I wanted to be a good cousin and a good friend, and I wouldn’t walk out on Matéo and Aly when they were looking forward to this.

  “Oh, we will,” Aly assured me. “You’re going to be chopping, decorating, you name it.”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “You got it.”

  The day before the party, my tia Juliana called to wish me a Feliz Fécinte, a happy equinox. She asked if I was going to observe it in any way and was surprised when I said yes. I still hadn’t told her that I was living in a completely different state with a cousin I’d never known about, and the more time that passed, the more I had no idea how to tell her. She knew I was working in a coffee shop, but she thought it was in Sugar Beach.

  “You sound better, Vivi,” she said in her accented English. Thankfully, she wasn’t speaking Portuguese to make sure I kept up.

  “I do?” Taking stock, I realized I did feel less crushed, my pain not as rawly searing. My days were busy with work, lessons with Matéo, and hanging out with everyone I lived with. I was hardly ever alone, didn’t have much time to dwell on anything.

  “It’s still . . . awful,” I said. “I still miss them, still can’t believe it happened.”

  “I know, darling. I feel the same way. My only sister is gone.”

  That would have been a good opening into asking about her other sister, but I couldn’t bring myself to go there. As far as Matéo and I could figure, the split between the sisters probably happened over Donella dumping my dad, and then my dad marrying my mom. But why had Juliana been part of it? I might not ever know.

  “But you’re eating?”  Tia Juliana went on. “Sleeping okay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve gained most of the weight back. I still have nightmares, but not as often.” I wanted to tell her that I was trying to learn how to control the change, but she would want to know who was teaching me. I was keeping secrets from even more people in my life—Jennifer, Rafael, my aunt. It was exhausting.

  “Tia, have you ever heard of anyone doing the same thing to other haguari? Cutting out their hearts?”

  Tia Juliana was quiet for a while, and I wondered if it hurt too much for her to think about.

  “You know,” she said slowly, “now that you ask, I do remember something about that many years ago, when I was a little girl. Horrified whispers at temple. Let me think about it. Maybe I’ll ask one of the temple elders.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’m just wondering if there’s a bigger picture.”

  “Have you heard of anyone else?” She sounded surprised.

  “No, uh-uh,” I lied. “It’s just that it was so strange, and it had to have been another haguari. I’m still trying to make sense of it.”

  “Of course, my dear. Have a good Fécinte—have you thought about coming here for Finados?”

  Finados was All Souls’ Day—November 2 in Brazil. In America it was the day after Halloween—All Saints’ Day—but most places didn’t observe it. Traditionally Catholic cities like New Orleans usually did: Kids had school off; many businesses were closed. Among haguari it was one of the more important observances because the boundary between living and dead, between human and jaguar, was the thinnest.

  “Um, I think I’m going to stay put,” I said.

  Tia Juliana sighed. “I won’t let you refuse to come for Christmas. You will be here.”

  “I’ll definitely think about it,” I promised.

  “I won’t take no for an answer,” she warned.

  “I have to see Jennifer, too. She’ll be home from college.”

  My tia went on to ask about Jennifer and her family and quit pestering me about coming to visit. Maybe I would go to Brazil for Christmas. I didn’t know. The thought of driving back to Sugar Beach to see Jennifer seemed so strange. I had a whole house there full of my things, full of my parents’ things. Of course I would have to go back someday. And I was dying to see Jennifer. I just . . . wasn’t sure if I could do it. If I stayed here I could pretend nothing bad had happened in Sugar Beach. Or like Sugar Beach didn’t exist.

  That was dumb. It would have to change someday. But not today. Today I had to help get ready for a party. Still, time kept passing, and though my life was acquiring patterns again, nothing truly felt solid or sure or predictable.

  And, of course, it wasn’t.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FÉCINTE FELL ON A SUNDAY that I had off from work. Of course I hadn’t participated in an equinox ceremony in years; now I was helping Aly and Matéo fix snacks, clean the house, and tidy the yard. It made me feel so disloyal to my parents, but what would be the point in refusing to take part in this now? Which led me to think, what had been the point of refusing to take part with my parents? It had made total sense to me then, had seemed like absolutely the only thing to do. My world was turned sideways. Before, I had thought of myself as the stalwart conscientious objector; I now looked back and saw myself as the tantrum-throwing four-year-old. It felt awful.

  To ramp up the contradictions, in some ways I was happier and more, I don’t know—comfortable?—than I’d ever been. Surrounded by people who were exactly what I’d hated and feared becoming, living a life that required me to lie to my nearest and dearest—I felt inexplicably more like myself.

  I needed a shrink.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Matéo. He’d locked up his workshop with its delicate and expensive tools, and had vacuumed the downstairs. Now he was tying a wide red ribbon across the bottom of the stairs.

  “The party is downstairs and in the yard,” he said firmly. “No couples sneaking upstairs.”

  “Oh. How many people are coming tonight?” We’d gotten mini pumpkins from the grocery store and cut branches of pyracantha from the tall shrub in the yard. Their red berries looked autumn-y and festive as I arranged them on the side table in the front hall.

  “I didn’t really keep track,” he said. “And people will probably bring friends. Maybe sixty altogether?”

  “Haguari or peladi?” It felt daring, using this word, as if I were swearing.

  “Haguari. About sixty or so.”

  “So does everyone keep it all secret all the time?”

  Matéo tacked the ribbon to the wooden chair molding on the wall, then stood back to survey his work. When I’d first met him, I’d thought he was kind of odd-looking, with his Johnny Depp face and Rupert Grint red hair, but now he was just Matéo, my cousin.

  “I think pretty much everyone keeps it a secret,” he said finally. “The few stories you hear about someone trying to live more openly all have a bad ending. End up being an urban myth.”


  I looked at him somberly. “So we always have to live two lives, pretending to be something we’re not.” It seemed like an unbearable burden.

  “Oh, Vivi!” said Aly, coming downstairs with a cardboard box. “Can you help me decorate the altar?” A few steps from the bottom she picked up on the tension in the air and looked from Matéo to me. “What?”

  “I just asked Matéo if everyone always kept being haguari hidden,” I told her. “And he said yes, and it just seems overwhelming. Looking ahead to keeping this to myself for the rest of my life. I mean, my best friend Jennifer doesn’t know anything about it, and she never will. So what kind of friends are we, really?”

  Aly ducked under the ribbon and sat down on the bottom step with the box next to her. “That’s a question we all wrestle with, obviously.”

  Actually, I’d been so preoccupied with me, me, me that it hadn’t occurred to me that, yes, duh, every haguari must have to deal with that. It was like I thought I was the only haguara with problems or issues—like it was simple and easy for everyone else.

  “How do you deal with it?” I asked.

  “Everyone handles it in a different way,” Matéo said. “At some point, almost every single haguari wants to live openly, and to hell with people who can’t accept them.”

  Aly smiled wistfully at Matéo. “And almost every single haguari comes to equate our special nature as a liability, making us vulnerable to being persecuted or discriminated against in society.”

  “That’s exactly what it feels like!” I said.

  “The five stages of being haguari,” Matéo intoned, holding up five fingers. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.”

  Those were the five stages of grief—they’d been explained in a pamphlet I’d gotten at the hospital. I started to argue about it, but then began recognizing almost all of my behavior as being one stage or another. Except for the acceptance part. Hadn’t gotten there.