leaves, looking down on lakes and trees, until she was nothing more than a rush of air, instead of a girl who everyone thought they knew. Usually, though, Bea preferred to stay with her sisters—not that she’d tell them that.
It was a weakness, this love for her sisters, as her mamá often reminded her. She mustn’t get too attached, given the likelihood that they would meet the same fate as Bea’s aunts. Or, if they went dark, Bea would need to watch herself.
“Especially Goldie,” her mamá warned. “She sits high in your father’s regard. Should he pit you against each other, you want to be sure of—”
“¿Pero por qué?” Bea frowned. “Why would he do that?”
Cleo gave her daughter a look then, both knowing and incredulous, that clearly said Wilhelm Grimm was capable of anything.
“When did you last see a papito?”
Her mamá’s smile was like a flower blooming. “I see him often enough.”
“When will I meet him?”
“Your father comes and goes as he pleases,” Cleo said. “But it’s when you meet him on your eighteenth birthday that matters most of all. ¿Entiendes?”
When her mamá revealed her own coming-of-age story, she omitted certain moments, particularly the murderous and incestuous parts, but Bea was made to understand that she needed to keep her distance. Bea knew that her sisters would probably have preferred her to leave altogether, let them enjoy Everwhere without her. She didn’t blame them. She said cruel things, though she couldn’t seem to help it; the words slipped out before she could stop them.
Sometimes Bea thought it’d be better for everyone if she passed the rest of her days gliding above the trees, soaring up into the moonlight within touching distance of the stars, never speaking to or seeing another soul. It’d probably be safer that way; in her absence she’d be far more loved. And she could be with her father, feel his breath on the winds, his whisper on the air. Just the two of them up there. She could do it. She’d have to stop now and then to eat, it wouldn’t matter what. She’d become a forager, eating whatever she could find: mushrooms, berries, acorns—was moss edible? It seemed like it might be. Bea had never cared much for food anyway, had always been skinny as a sparrow, despite her abuela’s best efforts to fatten her up. Lately, though, Bea had been purposely eschewing food, skipping lunch at school, pushing her dinner around her plate until her mamá finally gave up trying to force her. Because, Bea reasoned, the thinner she was the higher she’d be able to fly. If only she had hollow bones like birds she might be able to fly right up to the moon.
Goldie
Sometimes I caught my stepfather watching me. Always from the corner of his eye or the edge of a room, but I felt it as surely as if he were shining a spotlight on me. I’d shrink when I felt his stare, like a tree losing its leaves. Sometimes I was sure I felt his thoughts, long tendrils of longing that tugged at my skirt like a toddler trying to get my attention.
He was a child, my stepfather, a sicky, icky baby with an elongated body, thin and stringy as a weed. He was always seeking the nearest chair to flop into, limbs folded, too lazy to stand. Fingers insidious as ivy, clinging to whatever didn’t want him. He’d sit on the sofa gobbling oversized bags of sweets, scattering sugar all over his clothes, leaving fallen sweets for me to roll over in bed, like a tacky version of “The Princess and the Pea.”
He’d been like that ever since Ma brought him home. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. She wanted him too much, God knows why, insisting that he was a good one, unlike my unspeakable father, and ignored all the warning signs to the contrary. Including the fact that he was a filthy excuse for a human being. Sometimes I’d look at him and think that if Ma thought him an improvement, then my father must have been the Devil.
My stepfather grew worse after he lost the baby fight with Ma, from the moment she started waddling around the flat smiling to herself. I’d never seen her so happy. I wondered if she’d been that happy while pregnant with me. I doubted it, since this baby was the product of so-called love, while I was the product of bright-white wishing and black-edged desire,