back of his head on the edge of the window. In his panic, he’d accidentally kicked Purrcaso off the foot of the bed. As his alarm continued to blare, Purrcaso cried from the floor.
“FINALLY!” Julian burst out, annoyed but smiling as he leaped to his feet. “I’ve been—dude, stop screaming—I’ve been waiting for FOREVER!”
Yadriel’s heartbeat hammered painfully in his chest, unable to comprehend anything Julian was saying. He snatched his phone and killed the alarm. Purrcaso stopped her indignant meowing and sat on the dresser, cleaning her paw. Yadriel squeezed his eyes shut, willing the throbbing in his head to stop.
He strained to listen for any signs from his family, wondering if someone had heard his shout, but there was only the distant bumping of his abuelita’s Tejano music from the kitchen.
“Are you even listening to me?” Julian demanded.
“No.” Yadriel squinted an eye open to look up at him. In his sleepy daze, it took a moment for Yadriel to remember he was a spirit. Standing there in the middle of his room, arms crossed and frowning, Julian looked very real and alive. But then Yadriel blinked, refocusing his vision enough to spot the telltale signs: blurry edges and the cool draft in the air around him.
“I said, I’ve been practicing!” Julian huffed. The amount of energy he had this early in the morning was obscene.
Yadriel sat upright, pushing back the mass of dark hair that had flopped into his eyes. “Practicing?” he croaked.
Julian’s scowl was quickly replaced with a sharp smile.
He swung back and forth between his emotions so quickly, Yadriel was bound to get whiplash.
“Look!” Falling into the chair, Julian hunched over the desk and pinched his fingers around a crumpled-up ball of paper. It was one of Yadriel’s failed attempts at math homework from the day before.
“Look, look, look!” Face screwed up in concentration, slowly, he lifted the ball of paper. Julian turned to Yadriel, a triumphant grin splitting his face. “See?”
Julian’s eyes burned with wild energy. Yadriel was starting to think it was less up-all-night delirium and more just, well, Julian.
“Good job,” Yadriel grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at his temples, warding off a headache.
The ball of paper dropped back to the desk. Julian scowled. “I worked on that all night, man!”
“What? I said, ‘good job,’” Yadriel replied, thumbing through the notifications on his phone to make sure he hadn’t gotten any important messages. Nothing about Miguel. Worry dug into his headache. Had they really not found him yet?
“Tch,” Julian hissed between his teeth. He slumped moodily in the chair, propping his shoes up on the mattress. The white rubber of his Converse were dirty and cracked, and there was a large hole torn in the bottom of one.
When Yadriel moved to the edge of his bed and put his feet on the floor, he stepped on something sharp. “Ouch—what the—?” Yadriel’s eyes bulged when he finally took in the state of his room.
Well, now he was awake.
It looked like a bomb had gone off. Or maybe just a human hurricane named Julian Diaz.
“What the hell happened in here?” Yadriel demanded, picking up the unfolded paper clip stuck to the bottom of his foot. It was just one of maybe two dozen that lay scattered across the carpet.
“Got bored,” Julian said simply.
Yadriel shifted through the debris. Had he really been tired enough to sleep through all this? “Right.” His room was a little messy, sure, but it was organized chaos. The mess Julian had made was just … chaos.
“You got shitty taste in music, by the way,” Julian told him, his tone matter-of-fact as he nodded to Yadriel’s ancient iPhone that lay on the rumpled sleeping bag. The earbuds were dirty, and they crackled if he turned the volume up too loud. It had been a hand-me-down from his brother, and Yadriel used it to store his music, since there wasn’t enough space on his newer phone.
“No I don’t!” he said, feeling oddly defensive as he picked it up and stuffed it back into a drawer. His yearbook and old notebooks were on his unmade bed next to a Sharpie and more balls of paper.
Yadriel held up the tattered notebooks and glared at Julian. “Did you go through my stuff?”
Julian blinked. “Uh … what?” His ears burned red.
It was the guiltiest face Yadriel had ever seen.
“Don’t go through my stuff!”
“I didn’t!” Julian spluttered.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Yadriel growled and stuffed the notebooks back in their place on the shelf.
“It’s not like I had anything else to