Page 97 of The Crush
“Isabel, breathe.” Quick steady hands check my head, my arms, my ribs, my stomach. “Need you to tell me what’s wrong.”
“You,” I get out between jagged cries. “You—what are you—what are you evendoingout here?”
“I couldn’t sleep on the couch,” he explains, sounding on the brink of tears himself now. “I couldn’t stop thinking of you in our room by yourself and upset, and I—”
“Well whose fault is that?” I snap at him, sitting up now and angrily swiping tears away from my face. “If it bothers you so much that I’m upset, then how about you don’t upset me?”
“I don’twantto upset you,“ he says, fingers digging into and pulling at his hair again as he sits back on his heels. “I just wanted to not fuck up your life!”
I shift to kneeling, too, leaning toward him. “You weren’t fucking up my life until you startedworryingabout fucking up my life! Youleavingisreallyfucking it up!”
“Startedworrying about it?” Daniel asks, his tone incredulous. “I’m alwaysworryingabout it. I’m nevernotworrying about it.”
“Well…stop it.” I’m floundering a bit as I try to control my crying. “I know what I’m doing! You think I don’t know what I want?”
“No, I never said that,” he says quickly. “I—fuck, I just…I want to do the right thing for you. I want you to be happy. I couldn’t fucking handle it. I couldn’t deal with it if years from now you looked at me and all you saw was—”
“Waswhat?” I push closer to him, hands cupping his face, but he still keeps his eyes on the floor. “Whatdo you think I’ll see?”
He sighs, pressing his face into my palm. “A curse.”
“A curse?” I repeat, thinking I must have misheard him. “I don’t understand. Help me understand.”
“Your father told me about your grandfather.” When he at last meets my eyes, I’m certain that all he finds there is confusion while I try to think of what my father would have even said regarding a man about whom he’s always said so little.
“I don’t understand,” I admit again, hoping he will keep talking. “What about him?”
“That he was a curse on his family,” he says flatly. “On him and on your grandmother. That he never really came back.”
I close my eyes, everything clicking into place as I realize immediately what Daniel would have heard in those words. What my father would havewantedhim to hear, what he had even told me…Let him go back there and not curse you with it. It’s better.
“Danny,” I say softly as my heart breaks all over again. “No, you’re not. I’m so sorry. Danny, I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t,”he says as if he didn’t hear me. “I can’t stand the idea of being that for you. Of being someone who would hurt you. Who would become someone you would regret.”
He seems shocked when I erase the remaining distance between us, climbing into his lap, burying my face in the crook of his neck and wrapping my arms tight around him. He only hesitates for a second before doing the same.
“You won’t be,” I murmur to him over and over again. “You won’t.”
The Ribbon
I used to fall asleep to the sound of crickets chirping.
A synchronized chorus that rose and receded like a wave through my open window, accompanied by the rhythmic creaking of my overworked ceiling fan as I tried to stay cool enough to sleep through a hot summer night. A book in my hand while I pictured being someplace else, while I waited for another morning that would be exactly the same.
Then I woke to an explosive ribbon of bullets.
The rapid eruption of sound on the street outside ricocheted between buildings before it barreled into my apartment, the volume only magnified by the blank walls and empty rooms. A police radio in my hand while I thought about finding something to help buffer the sound, while I waited for the blare of sirens that rarely came.
I used to recognize everyone.
The same faces I’d seen since childhood looked up to greet me whenever I made my way through town, long hellos and extensive goodbyes on every street corner and in every store as I repeated the same story they all already knew. I grinned at the thought of planting a piece of gossip just to see how far it went, to see if my mamá or Eva would get windof it first.
Then everyone was a stranger.
My neighbors kept their heads down in doorways and alleyways as I made my way through the city, quick nods and short dismissals between new orders that always amounted to the same. I frowned as I thought about planting a piece of information just to see who I could trust, to see how alone I really was.
I used to want to make a difference.
