The First to Die at the End (Death-Cast #0)(93)

I know my block isn’t much, but I love it. There are flags for Jamaica, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico in windows doing double duty as country pride and curtains. There’s a no parking!!! sign graffitied on a wooden fence, and there are always cars in that driveway; that disrespect has become a running joke with Team Young. I haven’t stepped foot inside the Congregational church right by this little park, but I like the castle vibes.

Then there’s our brownstone in a row of others, all similar in brick and build but distinct by upkeep, decorations, and door colors. This brownstone has been in Dalma’s family for generations, and its outsides could use some love but the inside is bursting with it. I’m so relieved when Valentino and I go up the stairs and make it to the front door that’s as red as the Times Square glass benches. I pull out the key that I used to scratch Valentino’s name into the bench at the Brooklyn Bridge and unlock the door.

We made it.

We’re safe.

And I’ve brought home a guy for the first time.

He might even be the last.

“I’m here,” I shout up the stairs.

There are three levels to the brownstone. Dalma and I have our bedrooms on the ground floor where we also have access to a small backyard plus our own private entrance, though we don’t really use it because that hallway is practically a storage unit with bins and boxes and furniture that Dalma plans on refreshing for her room but hasn’t gotten around to it. The whole thing is a fire hazard, honestly, and something we should correct ASAP. Dayana, Floyd, and Dahlia have their bedrooms upstairs, and there’s also a ladder that leads to the rooftop, where I do my tanning and sunburning.

I lead Valentino through the middle floor and into our living room.

“This place is so nice,” Valentino says.

He stops by the wall that has all our family pictures. I love all the casual ones, but I don’t really get involved with the professional photo shoots at JCPenney because I always feel like an add-on. Almost like they know they have to invite me so I don’t feel weird even though there’s no evidence that they’re thinking shit like that, I get nothing but love from my guardians. I just know that if I weren’t living here, I wouldn’t be invited to the studios. So why should I go just because they were forced to take me in? This is something I’m going to be working through for years if I get years to work through things.

Valentino taps my school picture from fifth grade where I wasn’t smiling. “Bad day?”

“First school picture without my parents,” I say.

“That’ll do it.”

I had missed picture day in fourth grade because I was out grieving. My mom really loved dressing me up those mornings. Ironing my shirts and making me look grown with ties and spritzing my curls with a personal remedy to give them extra shine. When the samples arrived for my fifth-grade pictures, I sat down with Dayana and let her choose her favorite out of all the different poses—fist under chin, arms crossed, a forced smile, and straight-faced.

“This one feels honest,” Dayana had said, choosing the picture up on the wall.

I liked that we weren’t bullshitting, especially since that particular picture day was a week after the one-year-anniversary of my parents’ death.

There are footsteps coming from upstairs, and I immediately know it’s Floyd, who walks around the house as if he’s got brick feet. Floyd is in a polo and jeans that are buckled up with the same black belt he uses for all his baggy pants. His brown hair is gelled like usual, even though Dalma woke up everyone in the middle of the night to drive back home before my surgery.

“Hey, garrochón,” Floyd says as he shakes my hand. He’s got that old-school Puerto Rican vibe where men don’t hug that much. My dad was like that a little too. “Glad you’re back in one piece.”

“You too. Floyd, this is Valentino.”

Floyd looks at Valentino a little skeptically. It could come off a little homophobic, not going to lie, but I know it’s probably more caution over having a living, breathing Decker in the house. He overcomes it with a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Valentino. I’m sorry for . . . you know.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Call me Floyd, please. Come on downstairs.”

Before I can ask why everyone’s downstairs, Valentino turns to me. “What’s a garrochón?”

“Tall and lanky, basically.”

“Been calling him that since he was a kid,” Floyd says as he goes down the stairs. “By the time he was twelve he was taller than me.”

“Not that hard,” I say.

Floyd laughs, and he’s about to raise his hand like he wants to play-hit me, but we’ve been beating that habit out of him. Yeah, poor choice of words, my bad. Correction: we’ve been getting him to cut that shit out because Dayana is extra sensitive to domestic abuse after witnessing her father mistreat her mother. She doesn’t want her girls being raised in a home where that shit is a joke, or me picking up on that in my own adulthood.

We get to the ground level, and I tell Valentino not to mind all the furniture, boxes, and bins. That shit has us looking so sloppy, so I rush him into our living area, where Dalma and I have laid out a rainbow rug that’s got footprints tracked all over it. I expected to find the fam on the couch watching a movie or something because why else would they be down here, but there’s nothing but blankets and throw pillows there.