When the Moon was Ours(26)

“I’m sorry,” Miel said.

“Great,” Aracely said. “You’re sorry. Well, that solves everything, doesn’t it?”

Miel felt the aftertaste of her own apology turning, growing sharp on her tongue. “Look, if you’re so mad at me, why don’t you call Sam?” she asked. “He’s better at helping you anyway, right?”

“Sam.” Aracely’s laugh was a sharp inhale, almost a gasp. “You wanna talk about Sam? How do you think he and his mother have kept that secret this whole time?”

“What are you talking about?” Miel asked.

Aracely grabbed a handful of Miel’s sweater and tugged her close, more like she didn’t want anyone to hear than to shake Miel.

“Emma Owens is the only one who’s seen his real paperwork,” Aracely said, her teeth half-clenched. “She’s the reason he’s registered as Samir and not Samira.”

The grass under Miel felt soft, like it would turn to water and pull them both under.

“What?” she asked.

“Did you think we got lucky this whole time?” Aracely asked. “That the school just took his mother’s word about his name and his date of birth? Sam’s mother got away with saying she didn’t have the papers for grade school or middle school, but they wouldn’t let it go for high school. They wouldn’t register him without official documents. So I called in a favor, to the one woman who’s on that table more than anyone else. She owed me. She’s the only one who knows his birth name. And she’s kept quiet because of everything I’ve done for her, but now…” Aracely’s words trailed off, and she looked down the road Ms. Owens had left by.

Now Aracely had failed. So many flawless cures, as much mercy as medicine, and now she had failed. It hadn’t just been Aracely’s good name resting on her giving a remedio so skilled it felt like a soft, shimmering dream.

It had been the secret name Sam didn’t want anyone knowing. And it was Miel’s fault.

Dread billowed through her.

Aracely went back inside.

“Can you fix this?” Miel asked, going after her.

Aracely slid into her coat and lifted her hair out from under the green velvet of the collar. “I don’t know.” She grabbed her car keys. “But you better hope so.”





marsh of sleep

Pain sparked through Miel’s wrist, startling her awake. She shuddered at the feeling that there were words she’d just heard, but that she’d been too asleep to hear them, and their echo had become too weak for her to catch now.

She scrambled from where she was curled on the sofa, waiting for Aracely to come home, and she sat up.

“Aracely?” she called toward the door.

She was still breaking through the feeling of being half-asleep. But through the blur she saw the deep red of Ivy’s hair.

Ivy was standing over Miel, staring at her wrist. Her eyes looked gray as the pumpkin Peyton had held that night by the water tower. Her expression hovered between satisfied and relieved, like she’d just checked a door or a stove and found that yes, it was locked, yes, the blue gas flame had been turned off.

Without meaning to, Miel followed Ivy’s stare. She looked down at her own wrist. Two new leaves lay bright green against her skin. They were young and soft, not yet showing the hard stem of the coming rose.

To Ivy and the rest of the Bonner sisters, those two leaves were evidence that a new rose was growing, that Miel hadn’t destroyed another one of the blooms they’d decided was theirs.

Miel looked up, but the copper sweep of Ivy’s hair and the gray of her eyes was gone.

She shook off the feeling of sleep, and ran to the back door.

It was a little open, a few inches left between the door and the frame.

The smell of the grass outside, clean and a little sour, filled the hall and the kitchen. But cutting through it was a scent that did not belong in this house. Not the tart fruit smell of the soap she and Aracely used. Not the heavy amber of the glass bottle that sat on Aracely’s dresser.

It was a smell like almonds and Easter lilies, the kind of perfume Mrs. Bonner might have bought her daughters, and that the four of them would have passed between them. It held the undertone of Ivy’s camellia-scented soap.

Miel left the door open, letting in more of the night air so the perfume would fade. She stood there, waiting for it to become so faint she could tell herself that Aracely, rushing out to Emma Owens’ house, had just forgotten to close the door.





serpent sea

It took more nerve than Sam had expected. He’d been so sure, looking between Aracely and Miel. But in the morning, that certainty had vanished, the sun and its white-gray light washing it out. Then, at night, it came back, deepening with the sky. By the time he got home from the Bonners’ farm, it was spinning inside him, its weight wearing him down.

Later that night, after his mother had gone to sleep, he stepped out into the cold air, filled with the dull spice of falling leaves. He followed the trail of moons toward the wisteria-colored house.

Most nights, he stood outside where Miel could see him, the moon in his hands calling her out into the dark. But tonight he stood in the house’s shadow, hands in his pockets, waiting for Miel’s light to go off.

Her window went dark, and he knew she was asleep. His fingers brushed the metal in his pocket. His mother and Aracely both kept spare copies of each other’s house keys in their kitchen drawers. He’d taken theirs with him in case Aracely was locking her doors earlier now that it was getting dark faster. But she hadn’t.