was the Wolf in Peter and the Wolf.
She asked me what Texas was like and if I’d been to any of the big cities like Los Angeles and New York. I told her I had, but when I said I thought they were too big, too noisy, and too full of people, she seemed disappointed.
“Ruben was right, you know,” she said, hooking her pinky finger with mine. “I haven’t been around San Juan very long. My mom and I and my sister Celia moved up from Ponce just over a year ago.” She’d said that last night, almost word-for-word, but I didn’t remind her of it. “I like it here better. There’s more to do. The rest of my family’s here, and my mom has a better job.”
We turned onto Calle Sol. In the middle of a large circle of light cast by a street lamp, an orange cat was grooming himself on the sidewalk.
Marisol saw it and smiled a close-mouthed smile.
“Celia wants to take home every cat she sees. Even though they all hiss when she runs up to them, she calls them her babies. Are you taking me back to the same place you took me last night? By the water?” She paused, but not long enough for me to get a word in. “It’s not that it matters. I just can’t be out as late as I was last night. My mom’ll kill me. She’s been worried ever since that American girl went missing over in Condado . . . Sara Something.”
“Fikes,” I replied.
According to the news, sixteen-year-old Sara Fikes went out a couple of nights ago to take pictures of the sunset and never made it back to the beachfront hotel room where she was staying with her parents. When the police began searching for her the next morning, they found her flip-flops and her Nikon placed neatly on the sand half a mile down the coast, as if she’d set them there before going out for a quick swim.
“Where’s your mom?” Marisol asked. “All I ever hear anyone talk about is your dad. Did you know they call him el patrón?”
Yes, I knew that.
“Does el patrón have una patrona?” she urged.
“My mom’s not around.” I paused. “I haven’t seen her in years.”
“En serio?” Marisol clasped my hand and forced me to stop. “I’m sorry, Lucas. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have asked. No one told me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I forced the side of my mouth up into a half-smile. “It is what it is, I guess. She’s been gone for so long, I barely remember her.”
That wasn’t quite true, but I wished it were. My mood tended to sour when I talked about my mom, which isn’t what I wanted to happen while I was with Marisol. She was different than I was: full of optimism and hope and brightness.
We walked on. For a while it was so quiet, I could hear Mari’s sundress swish around her legs. I had the sense she thought that by bringing up my mom she’d tread unknowingly into a minefield and was searching for a way to retrace her steps. Eventually, she stopped. Her gaze had landed on something down the dark street, and I watched as a small smile spread across her face.
“What?” I asked.
Marisol pointed to the scientist’s house. I’d brought us straight to it without even realizing it.
“The other day my grandma told me that house is cursed,” she said, again repeating herself from last night. “It was some stupid story that another old lady at the market told her—about how anyone who goes into the house never comes out and that maybe the man who lives there eats them or something.”
I laughed. “Eats them?”
“Yes, eats them.” Marisol nodded soberly. “He puts them in a big pot with carrots, onions, and potatoes, and lets them simmer overnight. Have you not heard that?”
“I haven’t heard that,” I said. “But I heard that the house was cursed, yeah.”
I told Mari the señoras’ story about the scientist who kept his wife trapped with his bird and his plants, and also about how when we were kids my friends and I would make up our own stories.
“Rico said that a witch lived there and if you wrote a wish on a piece of paper and threw it to her, she would grant it.”
“Did you throw a wish?” Marisol asked. I tried to hide the truth but the strained expression on my face apparently gave me away. “You