Tigers, Not Daughters - Samantha Mabry Page 0,42
shaking. Her hair was tied back, and we could see pink splotches on her cheeks. She was about to pop. We’d seen her look that way, at Hector’s house, right before she attacked Father Canty. If Jessica had come in through the front door, she would have seen what we’d seen: John Chavez swallowing Evalin’s face like a desperate fish.
“Hey, Jessica,” Calvin said, trying to sound cool and casual. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
Jessica’s gaze flashed up, and Calvin winced. He actually cowered a little, as if the rage on Jessica’s face caused him real pain.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Jessica snapped.
“He just wanted to know if you’re okay,” Jimmy chimed in. He waited a couple seconds before adding, “Are you?”
For a few terrible moments, Jessica studied us, and we waited for whatever insults she would spear our way. We braced ourselves. We were ready. It would be okay. We’d welcome those insults because we knew whatever pain they would cause us would be temporary and would pale in comparison to the pain that constantly tumbled and boiled through Jessica’s organs.
The insults never came, though. After a moment, Jessica let out a sound—like a breath or a grunt, a noise that indicated we weren’t even worth the effort of forming a word—and then she tipped her head back to expose the length of her throat, chugged her drink, and reached back to the bottles perched on the kitchen counter to pour herself another. She took great care to fill her cup up to the very tip-top, and then walked out.
We followed Jessica through the crowd of people, and, to her credit, she managed not to spill more than a couple of drops of her drink. She was headed to the entryway, to where John and Evalin were still doing their thing and John still had his hand squashed against Evalin’s boob.
Jessica was mad, and when she was mad she created something like a force field of anger. People stopped talking and turned in her direction. They made space for her as she slid by. We heard someone whisper, “Oh shit,” and just as Evalin tore her swollen lips away from John’s mouth, Jessica threw—overhand threw like a baseball—her cup straight at Evalin’s face. The plastic and ice and clear liquid exploded against Evalin’s nose. The cup bounced off John’s shoulder.
“What the fuck, bitch?” Evalin screeched, as John just backed off, eyes wide, shaking himself dry and lifting the edge of his shirt to wipe the side of his face.
We tensed, waiting. All around us, others did the same. Jessica was going to do something. She was going to either say something brutal or strike out violently, like the way she’d done with the priest or the way she’d done with Muriel Contreras and the pencil. We watched, not caring anymore about being cool, but wanting to know how Jessica was going to avenge her dead sister. We silently cheered her on.
Evalin wiped her face with her hand. She lunged off the wall and shoved Jessica in the shoulder.
“I said, What the fuck?”
Do it, Jessica, we urged. Make things right.
Jessica drew in a sharp breath, and then she did . . . nothing. More like, she shrunk. All of a sudden, her body seemed to get much, much smaller. Her eyes stopped glowing with rage and went dull, out like a light—click. We’d always known Jessica Torres as a fighter, but that night we watched her lose that fight. Something in her just gave up. Evalin shoved Jessica again on the shoulder, and Jessica lazily swiped Evalin’s hand away. Evalin, obviously embarrassed, screamed in Jessica’s face about Jessica being pathetic, about Jessica’s family being pathetic, and that new version of blank Jessica stood there, staring first at the wall just over Evalin’s shoulder and then over to John Chavez.
It was one of the many times we could have said or done something and, instead, we said and did nothing. One of Evalin’s friends eventually came over, straightened Evalin’s shirt that was still all bunched from having John’s hand up it, and started to pull Evalin into the other room.
Jessica was still staring at John, with that cold dullness in