Page 71 of For The Record

I tug my wrap around my shoulders and don’t give him another glance before making my way to a seat near the back. Raina somehow sees the two of us coming in, her hand gesturing her brother toward the front as she mouths something that must be in Spanish toward her brother. Leo turns around as if to look for me, but I’ve already slipped into the crowd.It’s okay,I want to say.You can let me go.

After all, he’ll have to take care of his sixteen-year-old sister. His whole world will change. Forever. He couldn’t possibly have room in it for me. Whatever meagre parcel of space I might have carved out in his life before, next to his all-consuming work, will rapidly vanish. I’m not about to stick around and cling to him like a limpet. I’m not going to be just another thing for him to have to deal with.

A priest begins speaking, “We are gathered here today to commemorate the lives of Helena and Ricardo Aguilar.”

I’m here for Leo, who is all the way at the front of the room, his rightful place as family. And I’m at the back. Not family. I never met his

This isn’t about you, Skye,I scold myself.Shut up.

The priest continues talking, then steps off. An organ plays a mournful lament, before switching into Amazing Grace. Finally, Leo steps onto the podium—pulpit?—with a single page in his hands, one he’s gripping so tightly that it crinkles and he has to smooth it out again on the wooden stand. “Again, I would like to thank everyone for coming here today. Raina and I truly appreciate your support. When I first met my stepfather, Ricardo, I was twelve years old…”

He locks eyes with me, all the way at the back of the room, as though gathering strength from my gaze. Or that’s what I tell myself, as full of people as the room is. “I was a twelve-year-old boy and I was a very dramatic one at that. It was the day of my mother’s wedding, and I didn’t understand why our lives had to change. I didn’t know why I had to move houses, and move away from all my friends, or why I had to switch schools in the middle of the semester because the commute was too long. I didn’t know any of those things. But I knew this.”

Leo pauses, scanning the room. A born orator, a born liar? Then I realize he’s stopping because he has to take a sip of water and I feel dumb.

“Ricardo Aguilar made my mother happy. He made our lives better. He treated me like his son, and he…” Leo swallows thickly. “He never complained about having to parent a twelve-year-old boy who wasn’t even his own. He loved me and Raina equally and he treated my mother like a queen. Even though he would work twelve-hour shifts, I never saw him snap at any of us, though he must have wanted to sometimes, and he never grumbled if dinner wasn’t on the table when he got home. He was nothing but the best father that a boy could ask for. And I know my mother loved him with all her heart.”

A chorus of awws and sobs breaks out around me. I’m too entranced, too transfixed on Leo Perez, to tear my concentration away. I’m afraid. I’m afraid if I break eye contact, I’ll lose him forever.

“My mother didn’t have an easy life. But I know she had a fulfilling one. I know she always had faith that no matter how hard things got, God would always provide. We didn’t always agree on these things, because I was young and foolish and I couldn’t see how anyone but ourselves could provide for us. But He did. He gave us Ricardo, and that was enough. I know… I know they’re in a better place now.”

By the end of it, tears are streaking down his face and he walks off, to sit beside his sister.

The priest gives a few words, a benediction or a homily or something else that I don’t recognize. I haven’t been to a funeral in a long time, and definitely not a religious one. Leo gets up and shakes hands with people, clapping them on the back and saying a few words, but he doesn’t sit next to Raina again. Instead, he’s walking toward the back of the funeral home’s chapel. Towards me.

I freeze. My whole body seizes up, my heart going into overdrive. Around me, people are getting up and moving, congregating around him like planets or paparazzi around a star, but I don’t move. Even my fingers on my knees stop moving as he sits down, placing an arm around my shoulders, and kisses my temple. I feel the wetness on his face when he pulls away and instinctively, I reach for a tissue.

His voice is hoarse. “Hey, Skye.”

“Hey,” I say the first words that come to mind. “You again.”

The musicians start playing again, some classical piece that I don’t know, some piece I probably played before back when I still did piano. Why am I thinking about the piano when Leo Perez’s arm is around me?

“I’m the host of this thing, apparently,” he says, accepting the crumpled Kleenex that I offer him from the bottom of my purse without questioning its cleanliness, which I appreciate. Somehow, he manages to make dabbing at his eyes look completely normal in everyday conversation, although this is about ten steps deeper into the swimming pool of relationships than we’ve been before. “I have to check on the people who attend.”

“Well, I have to tell you, this is a terrible party, with great speeches.” I try to smile, squeezing his hand. “Are you doing the thing?”

“What thing?” he asks. From the corner of my eye, I see an impatient Raina talking to a wizened aunt, whose face reminds me of a prune.

“The thing, where you drive to the cemetery after and everyone throws flowers onto the co-the casket. That thing,” I say, tripping over my words in a rush to get them out.

He brushes his thumb over my knuckle, almost tender. “No, I’ve been informed by my sister that it’s environmentally unfriendly to just have everyone rip out a bunch of flowers just to throw them into the ground again, and so we are having everyone select a flowering plant to plant near their… near their graves.”

“Oh.” I understand her sentiment, and I can imagine that it’ll be lovely in the future, but for now… Now it’ll just be a pile of dirt, drying in the Los Angeles sun. “That sounds nice.”

He shakes his head, animation flooding him. “No. No, it’s not. It isn’t nice, my parents should have flowers at their… Sorry. I just… it’s hard. It’s hard to believe that it’s real, that I’m talking about headstones and funerals and gravestones. Because they’re not here anymore. They’re just bodies. And their souls are… I said they’re in a better place, but what do I know, Skye?”

I wouldn’t know any better than him. My stepmother, Heidi, is Buddhist and I think my dad is culturally Jewish. My mom calls herself a vegan, which in itself could be a religion, but also says she’s spiritual but not religious. It’s Hollywood. We’re all just carefully toned, sculpted, and tanned bodies until we turn thirty and then it’s a matter of trying to remain twenty-nine for the rest of our lives through a careful combination of plastic surgery, Botox, CrossFit, and green juice. Who pauses to think about death in sunny Los Angeles?

“You said your dad… You said Ricardo was a good person,” I say. “Well, from the short time that I talked to him at the auto shop, he seemed like an incredible man: loving, dedicated, utterly selfless.”Like you, I want to add.

Leo squeezes my hand. “You know what’s sick about this whole thing?”

“What?”

“I always took them for granted. The worst thing about losing them isn’t even that they’re gone. It’s that I never thought I would have to lose them. I never realized the simplest of things in life, like death. Some part of me always thought I would have them forever, that I’d never need to value them or cherish my time with them.” He laughs, a harsh, acrid sound that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

“We all learn lessons too late,” I say, thinking of my conversations with Isabelle. Thinking of all the times I thought that because she was the golden child, her life was perfect. How wrong I was. “Better than never.”

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