Light of Day

  “Twenty bucks?” That was steep. I still had some money saved up from my two years at Target, but I had to be careful. My internship at WKTU was unpaid.

  Our table shook, jostling our lunch trays and spilling our drinks. I looked up. Ellie, Karina, and Bree were quickly walking away, giggling. My former friends. JC’s entourage.

  Oh no you didn’t. This wasn’t just an insult to me, it was an insult to my new friends too. JC admitted he thought of us as freaks.

  I would’ve expected this from Ellie and Karina, but not Bree. I thought we were cool.

  I stood up. “Excuse you.”

  The girls glanced back. Ellie and Karina’s eyes were smug. Bree mouthed awkwardly, Sorry, Gabby.

  Fine. Maybe I could give Bree a pass, but not Ellie and Karina. I stared them down. They were muttering to each other, and I could imagine what they were saying.

  JC’s right. She’s such a bitch.

  Of course, JC and Liam were watching the whole thing, laughing.

  This wasn’t the JC I used to know. He’d never been the take pleasure in another person’s pain type. He’d never been the type to kick someone when they were down.

  Maybe I never knew him at all.

  Breakfast these days was a very quick thing. I avoided spending time in my parents’ presence as much as possible. I was sick of that look from my mom. Sick of her talking at me between tight, angry lips.

  As I was eating some toast, Mom came into the kitchen, already dressed for work. She loomed over me, freshly coiffed and teacherly. “It’s time you got a job, Gabby.”

  “I have a job.” WKTU was my job. She knew that. That was why I’d quit Target.

  “Technically, you’re volunteering.”

  “Interning,” I corrected her. “Most people would kill for this opportunity. I can’t ask to be paid—the operating budget’s too small to pay anyone else. The receptionists are making minimum wage as it is, and the DJs don’t make that much.”

  “Exactly my point.” Mom’s eyes lit with satisfaction. “If you want to earn a good living one day, you should train for something more practical. That doesn’t mean you can’t DJ as a side job.”

  “I don’t have to make a lot of money, Mom. I’ll settle for a decent living. And I could always branch out into TV broadcasting if I want.”

  I knew she had more respect for TV than radio. Maybe that could help bring her around.

  “If you ever want a career in TV, you’d better watch yourself, Gabby. I hear they have you talking about prostitution and pimps now. It could come back to haunt you.”

  I glanced at her, trying to gauge what she knew. “How would you know what I’ve been talking about? Have your students been talking about the show, then?”

  “They have,” she admitted. “And I wasn’t too happy about your choice of topic.”

  It sounded like she hadn’t heard specifics about what had happened that night at the club, which was a small mercy. The last thing I needed was to be grounded right now.

  “It’s a timely topic, Mom. I was trying to warn people about the dangers out there.”

  “I understand that. And believe it or not, I’m not asking you to quit your show. But you should get another job as well. And yes, it would mean spending less time at WKTU.”

  How could she ask me to spend less time at WKTU when she knew how much that place meant to me? “You’re just mad at me about the party.”

  She glared at me. She hated when I did that—when I talked about what was really going on.

  “You never made David get a real-world job. He never had any job at all.”

  Mom took a breath. “Don’t compare yourself to David.”

  “Right, David got straight As, so he had a different set of rules.” I raised a finger. “But don’t forget, David has an unhealthy sense of entitlement. I don’t have that. I’ll settle for fairness.”

  Mom was exasperated. I saw Dad creeping by the kitchen. I waved him in. “You want me to get a second job too?”

  He came in reluctantly, clearly not wanting to get in the middle of this. “We think it’s a good idea,” he said gently. “College tuition is going up every year.”

  “I’m going to Miami-Dade for radio and TV. It’ll be super cheap compared to what you’re paying for David.”

  “We’re helping David because he has a lot of schooling ahead of him and he couldn’t do it without our help,” Mom said.

  Wow, that was a blindside. I’d assumed that because they were paying for David, they’d pay for me. Guess I’d been wrong.

  “I just want to get this straight,” I said. “If I don’t study what you want, you won’t pay.”

  “Oh, Gabby, don’t make it sound like a punishment,” Dad said, patting my hand. “We’re not saying we won’t help you out with expenses. But if we invest in your education, we want to make sure we’re investing in a viable career for you.”

  “Sarita went to Miami-Dade. She’s doing great.”

  It was the surest way to get an eye roll from them. “If she’s doing so well, why don’t you ask her for a loan?” Mom said. “Think she could afford it?”

  “Maybe not, but she supports me in the ways that count.” I got up. “Have a happy day.”

  THE PSYCHIC FAIR

  WHAT THE HELL AM I doing here?

  I kept asking myself that as I walked around the psychic fair with the Paranormal Twins and Alistair on Friday night.

  Maria had called me last-minute to see if I’d go to a Rivera party with her, but I’d had to say no. I was already regretting that decision. I loved Rivera parties. They were a chance to see old friends and catch up on new gossip. The Rivera crew knew about my radio show and actually thought it was cool. The best part was that they didn’t worship JC Suarez or give a shit what he said about me.

  But instead of partying with Rivera kids, I was at a psychic fair, my nostrils assailed by a thousand dizzying scents.

  We were in a massive room at the Miami Convention Center. There had to be five hundred people here. We’d been inside all of ten seconds when we joined a group crowding around a black woman with gaudy makeup.

  “What’s she—” I started to ask, but Adriana shushed me.

  “She’s a voodoo priestess!” Adriana whispered. “She’s channeling a restless spirit.”

  Everybody gasped as the woman started seizing violently, shouting that she was reliving death by electrocution. But when it was over, I wasn’t sold.

  “I want my twenty bucks back,” I muttered to Alistair, who stifled a laugh.

  For girls who claimed to have psychic tendencies, the Paranormal Twins were oblivious to my boredom. They walked around excitedly, stopping at almost every booth.

  “Hey, this lady sees auras!” Adriana said, yanking us over to see a little old lady with long white braids and a heavily wrinkled face. “What color is mine?”

  The woman looked past Adriana, beside her, then above her. “Pink.”

  Adriana’s mouth fell open. “Pink? Seriously?”

  Caro stepped forward, as if coming to her friend’s defense. “What shade of pink are we talking about?”

  “Pink, you know, like bubblegum,” the lady said with an Eastern European accent. “Don’t worry, it’s sign of a nice person. Loving person. Is good thing.” She turned to Caro. “Yours is yellow. Bright and happy like sunshine.”

  Alistair and I looked at each other. So the Paranormal Twins with their dark clothes and dark interests actually had pink and yellow auras. Classic.

  “And you, young man, are dark—a blue. Very serious man.” She smiled at him. “All business, as they say.”

  Alistair seemed satisfied with that. I was hoping to slink away before she saw me, but the woman’s eyes landed on me. “Purple. Yours is purple.”

  “Doesn’t that represent sexual frustration?” I asked, only half kidding. With the amount I was thinking about X, it would be true.

  But she wasn’t laughing. “No. It’s a . . . how you say . . . wise co
lor. Intuitive person. Artist maybe. Very sensitive.”

  I couldn’t disagree with any of that. We stuffed dollars into the jar on her table, and moved on.

  “Where’s that music coming from?” Alistair asked, scanning the crowd.

  We followed the drumbeats to the far corner of the room. A large cardboard sign said “Soul Dance” and a group of alternative-looking people were dancing around, shaking their bodies with abandon.

  To my shock, Alistair jumped into the mix. His body was like a wiggly worm, and he closed his eyes and gave himself up to the music, his arms flowing around him like he was shadowboxing with the wind. It was a beautiful thing to see him letting go like that. In fact, soon we were all dancing, jumping, and jiggling, like kids bouncing on a bed.

  When it was over, we bought some ice-cold passionflower drinks and sat down on the carpeted floor, tired but happy.

  “The dancing alone was worth my twenty bucks,” I said. “Got my cardio for the day.”

  “‘Soul Dancing, trademark, is a form of meditation aimed at reducing stress and freeing us from our inner captivity,’” Caro said, reading from a pamphlet. “It says ‘patent pending.’ I didn’t know you could patent dancing.” She checked her phone. “It’s almost nine! Who wants to watch my reading with Miss Lisa?”

  The “Miss Lisa” Caro and Adriana had been talking about wasn’t what I’d pictured—she looked like a forty-year-old soccer mom with good highlights. She wore white linen pants, a white blouse, and gold-rimmed Dolce and Gabbana glasses.

  “That’s her?” I muttered to Alistair.

  “Indeed,” he said, obviously thinking the same thing.

  Caro marched right up to her. “I’m Caroline Hanlon, nine o’clock.”

  Miss Lisa shook her hand. “Nice to meet you. Come back here and we’ll get started.” Miss Lisa indicated a small curtained-off area behind her booth.

  “Can my friends watch?”

  “That’s up to you. I’ll be getting very personal. If other people come in, I have to warn you—their energies can sometimes interfere with a reading.”

  “No worries,” Caro said cheerfully. “Come on, guys.”

  We followed them into the space between the curtains. As we stood on the sidelines, Caro and Lisa sat down. Lisa’s feet were flat on the floor, and she sat up straight, palms facing upward. I glanced at the others. We were all holding our breath, waiting for her to begin.

  “One of your spirit guides is stepping forward,” Miss Lisa said, closing her eyes. “I ask that this guide provide information that is in highest good. And so it is.”

  In the next fifteen minutes, I learned more about Caro than I ever knew before. Everything from the death of her grandmother when she was five, to the shock of her parents’ divorce, to her search for love.

  “Will I find love?” Caro asked, her voice full of hope.

  Lisa paused, then said, “In the twilight of the apocalypse, you will find true love.”

  Huh? Up until that point, I’d been ready to say Lisa was legit. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “But when’ll that be?” Caro pressed.

  “If it’s going to happen after the apocalypse, hopefully not soon,” I whispered to the others.

  “I can’t say when.” Lisa splayed her hands. “That is all the angels were willing to tell me.”

  When the reading was over, we left the curtained-off room. Caro seemed mystified by the last question, and I was eager to get more of that passionflower punch. That’s when Miss Lisa touched my arm. “Excuse me, dear. I’m compelled to tell you something.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “Someone needs your help. This person . . . they’re in a place of darkness, but they don’t know it. You can help them break free.”

  I swallowed. Before I could ask a question, Miss Lisa’s next client came up and introduced herself. Lisa simply smiled and said to me, “Angels be with you.”

  I left the area with my friends. My stomach was in knots.

  Someone needed my help. But who?

  Maria. The psychic must have been talking about Maria.

  She texted me the next morning, asking to meet at the mall. That was my first clue that something was wrong—she’d been avoiding the mall lately, not wanting to get into any more debt. But the faded mascara streaks beneath her eyes were a dead giveaway.

  I hugged her and sat down. We were on a bench in the middle of the mall, our favorite guy-watching spot. It was surprising our butt prints weren’t carved into the bench after how much time we’d spent here this past summer.

  “You’re not pregnant, are you?” I blurted out.

  “Pregnant? God, no.”

  What a relief. Maria had had several scares over the two years she’d been with Renaldo. If she were to find out she was pregnant now that they’d broken up, it would be horrible.

  “Then why so low?”

  Maria struggled to get the words out. “I’m not pregnant but . . . Elisa is.”

  Elisa. Maria’s cousin, the one who’d “stolen” her boyfriend. I preferred to think of her as having done Maria a favor by taking him off her hands.

  I wasn’t going to react the way Maria wanted me to. “Be glad it isn’t you carrying his baby.”

  “It was supposed to be me,” she said tearfully.

  I sighed. When I’d seen Maria last, the night of the roofies incident, she’d been in the fuck him, I’m moving on phase. But she’d regressed. Today it was the Maria who kept asking herself what she’d done to make her man stray.

  “Don’t wish it were you. Think of it: Elisa’s going to be bogged down with a baby while you’re out partying. Odds are he’s going to leave her before the baby’s two. I’m telling you.”

  I could never understand why some girls thought that having a baby was the best way to keep a guy, when it was actually the best way to lose him. My radio callers complained about absentee dads constantly. Guys who didn’t want to be tied down. And yet so many girls believed that pregnancy would lead to marriage and a picture-perfect little family.

  Yeah, right.

  “I bet my mom will expect me to go to her baby shower,” Maria said, sipping whipped cream off her latte. “I can’t. I don’t ever want to see that bitch again.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Your mom’s probably doing a happy dance that it’s Elisa and not you. Am I right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Maria. I’m doing a happy dance too. See?” I grooved on the bench, waving my hands in the air. “I’m dancing, girl.”

  Maria managed a smile.

  One thing never changed when it came to me and Maria. In our friendship, I was the counselor. I was the one who tried to boost her confidence. The one who gave her the good advice she never followed. I was the one who’d seen her through three pregnancy scares, took her to a clinic to get the Pill, then put an app on her phone to remind her to take it.

  Hell, I’d even discouraged her from dating Renaldo in the first place. The guy was in his early twenties, jobless, goalless, and living with his mama. But somehow his lazy grin and wannabe gangster persona had sucked her in.

  “I called him last night.” Maria glanced at me, biting her lip. Before I could open my mouth, she raised a hand to shut me down. “I know you said not to call him, but I had to. I have the right to know how it started with Elisa, don’t I?”

  “And? Did he give you any answers?”

  “Not really. He said he’ll always love me and that there’s a part of his heart she can never have.”

  I gagged. “You’re fucking kidding me. Did you tell him to stick it up his ass?”

  “I told him it was bullshit.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And that if he really loved me, he wouldn’t still be with her.”

  My eyes bulged. “That makes it sound like you want him back!”

  “I don’t. But it’s obvious she got pregnant so he wouldn’t go back to me.”

  Crap. I felt sor
ry for Maria. Not because Renaldo had cheated and dumped her—that was the universe smiling on her, even if she couldn’t see it yet—but because the situation had brought out all her insecurities. I thought of the parallel with JC. Was he upset because he’d lost me, because I was so damned special? Or was it because he couldn’t handle the thought that someone didn’t want him?

  “Look at that guy over there, outside Mexx,” I said. “In the blue T-shirt.”

  “He’s cute. But he’s with a girl.”

  “Exactly. And he’s holding her shopping bags. Isn’t that what you want? A cute sweetie who’ll hold your bags? And it wouldn’t hurt to have a guy who actually has a job so he doesn’t have to mooch off you all the time, wouldn’t it?”

  “Great guys are an urban myth, like that charmer with the roofies.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Seriously. Name one great guy.”

  I thought about saying my dad, but that would be weird. “DJ Caballero. He adores his wife and kids. Girls flirt with him all the time, but he doesn’t flirt back.”

  “Caballero’s like forty-five, isn’t he? He’s too old and tired to play around. Look at JC. He was supposedly one of the good ones, right? But when you broke up with him he went all bitchy on you. Made everybody shun you like you were an Amish girl or something. Is that a nice guy?”

  She’d hit the mark. “All I’m saying is, don’t give up hope. Don’t imagine every guy’s like Renaldo because if that’s what you believe, that’s what you’ll attract.” Hearing myself, I realized the Paranormal Twins must’ve had an impact on me. They were always talking about the laws of attraction. Visualize it, and it will come to you.

  Oh, I was visualizing what I wanted, all right. I was visualizing a gorgeous, six-foot-tall undercover cop named X. A bad boy who was working for good. What I wouldn’t do to have him walk by us right now.

  Sigh.

  “Remember one thing, Gabby. You can’t ever trust a guy. Ever.” She downed her latte, a glob of whipped cream sticking to her upper lip. “Put that in your radio show.”