A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,60
figure in a hoodie. Then, streaks of black spray paint on a small section of brick—an infinity symbol. I’ve got them! I’ve caught Roth or one of his buddies in their graffiti game, something Orion has been trying to do forever.
The figure turns, sucking in a noisy, startled breath.
I see the face clearly. But… “You?”
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Flora.
“It’s you,” I repeat unnecessarily. For months, Flora Maxwell’s had her brother and half the town merchants on a useless chase. Roth and his gang and their bullying, my ass. The town vandal and graffiti artist, if you could call it that, has been eating the same breakfast cereal as Orion the whole time.
I swear I can hear Flora’s heart drum. Her gaze fidgets left to right, like a rabbit about to bolt. But then she sighs, her shoulders drooping in defeat. I’m a fast runner with a working cell phone camera. I’ve got her.
“Why?” I ask.
She flinches. “You’re always right there, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
Flora drops the spray paint can, shoves her hands into her kangaroo pocket. “Every time I turn around lately, you’re there like a bloody shadow. At the club with Will. By the inn.”
Is she actually trying to deflect? “Don’t put this on me. Now, I asked you a question.” Will I wait until tomorrow or should I drag her back home myself? “You hurt your town. Real people with businesses like yours. Orion was out there scrubbing walls and—”
“Oh, God, please don’t tell him,” she begs and steps toward me. “Please, Lila.”
Whoa. Okay. Was there a shift in some time-space continuum? Orion would know about those. I only recognize the look of Winchester-cold fear.
“Please. I’ll stop. Just don’t tell Orion.” She trembles, her blue eyes wide and wolf-like in the filtered dark. “You don’t understand what it’s like. There’s so much. So much they’re dealing with already.” So much she’s dealing with.
“I actually do know what it’s like. You have no idea what I’m coming from.” I exhale in slow motion and point to the obscure shape on the shoulder-high wall. “Can you just tell me why?”
She stares at the ground, telling her shoelaces, “My dad and brother mean well, but they are always on me. Way more than my friends’ families.” She frees a hand, dashing it aimlessly. “All my steps, checked so carefully. Because of Mum.”
The ice in my veins cracks.
“I feel like a little kid sometimes. Like my wishes get lost and forgotten.”
“So this is you outsmarting them?” I gesture at the wall. “Showing them they can’t control everything?”
She shrugs. “It’s like… on the train into London, you can see all these stately buildings. But pass one that’s been tagged, and that’s the first thing your eye goes to, right? You see the building, but you really see the paint. The letters or symbols. I found the can in the tea shop storeroom and I remembered that… the being seen and known.” She approaches the wall and rubs. Still wet, the paint smears black on her fingertips. “Not forgotten.”
Dios, the dementia. I reach for the thought of Orion, peacefully accepting all that life gives and not disturbing the universe, demanding more. Flora, with the same root of pain, lives the opposite. Her disturbance is the streak of paint over walls. Controlling it, changing it. See me. She fights a universe that denies her—one that brings a disease so cruel it makes her own mother forget her. I’m still here, the paint says.
But Flora is still hurting herself, and others. I know this because I’ve done the same. I understand what it means to be on the grass, dehydrated, filthy, and tear-spent. I ran so far and hard into the loss that had run me over, because I could.
Oh. I look over Flora and for the first time, I see Pilar looking over me at the park. My belly heaves with it, nausea swirling fast. I see myself through my sister’s eyes. I’d run so far. How much further and deeper would I go, hurting myself trying to outsmart my own universe of loss? Pilar had no answer that night, only fear. But she and Mami and Papi had England, a chance at a new place for me with a new purpose. Flora needs one too.
“Please. Please don’t tell Orion.”
He is not a person I want to keep anything from. But I study the weak and strong and resolute and destroyed face of a girl, begging me. Flora. Sneaking out, aching to be seen and remembered, marking walls and fences.