Days of the Dead Read online

  “Maria, I’m scared,” he said as I picked him up. Lilith glared at me like I was the one who had made him cry.

  “She’s not Maria, honey.” Alice told him. “That’s Glory Davis, your new sister. Remember I told you about her on the phone? And there’s not one thing to be scared of here, sweetie.”

  Alice had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a little bit of Texas in her voice. She’d grown up in Houston, but she’d been a waitress in L.A. long enough to have two kids and an ex-husband who wouldn’t give her custody because he didn’t want to pay alimony but could hire maids to clean his house and take care of his kids.

  “Glory Davis?” Dutch Wilder had studied me, then looked at Papi’s thin brown hair and blue eyes. “Your girl? Huh.”

  “Glorieta Davis Espinosa,” I’d said, even though it wasn’t any of his business. Latina women don’t have to give up their families or their names when they marry. My mamá never had. She’d kept Espinosa when she married my Papi, and she’d passed it on to me. I belong to two families. And I was proud of looking like Mamá.

  “Dutch, you should have called so we could get ready. I didn’t think I was going to get to see the kids until Christmas!” Alice pulled Angus from my arms.

  Dutch hesitated. “You don’t want them?”

  “You know I want them! For gosh sakes, they’re my kids.”

  “Well good, because we have to turn around and head straight home.” Dutch pulled Lilith into a hug. She was too cool to hug him back.

  “Okay,” he said, letting her go, “You mind Alice. And remember—not a word about the new show. I don’t want to have to leave the shoot to rescue you from another reporter.”

  The blonde rolled her eyes and shook her head at Alice. “The paparazzi will grill the kids if they can find them. You’ve got to keep them away.”

  Dutch patted Lilith’s cheek. “Not a word.”

  She gave a tiny nod. Dutch let his eyes wander over the trailer, then papi. He took a roll of money out of his pocket, peeled off ten twenties, and tucked them into Lilith’s hand. I’d never seen so much money. “You do whatever you want with that.”

  Papi’s face flushed, and Alice pressed her lips into a hard, straight line.

  “We’ve really got to go,” Dutch said. “The show won’t wait!”

  “You were in his new show?” Alice asked Lilith as Dutch climbed back into the SUV. “Is that why he didn’t put you in school? Because he didn’t want the paparazzi sniffing around? That man’s a piece of work.”

  Lilith didn’t answer. She just turned her head and watched her father drive away, too goth-girl cool to show emotion.

  “He’s coming back at the end of November?” Papi asked.

  “I hope not.” Alice patted Angus’s back. Alice had been talking about getting custody of her kids since the first day Papi met her. “Lord, I hope not. But he could be back tomorrow. Every other word that comes out of that man’s mouth is a lie.”

  Lilith was still staring after the Hummer.

  “Honey, aren’t you even going to say hi to your momma?”

  “Hi, Alice.”

  Alice reached out and touched Lilith’s spiked hair, gently, like she was petting a porcupine. “Honey, what happened to your hair? Who said you could wear makeup? That bimbo with her ginormous bee-zooms hanging out?”

  Alice calls chi-chis bee-zooms. It’s a Texas thing.

  “I’m not your honey,” Lilith said. “And Danica bought it for me. She showed me how to put it on.”

  “Who is Danica?” Papi asked.

  Alice shook her head. “Dutch’s last bimbo. The one that was young enough to be his daugher.”

  “I liked her.” Lilith drew herself up. “‘When the eye makes a statement, the lips should be quiet.’ Danica taught me that.”

  Alice’s eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together. “Should be quiet about what?”

  “It’s a beauty tip. From François Nars?” Lilith finally looked at her mother’s face. “You could learn a thing or two from the bimbos, Alice.”

  Papi put his hand on Alice’s shoulder to calm her down, but she stepped away.

  “Danica’s not your momma, honey,” she said. “I am. And you can just put that makeup away as long as you’re in my house.”

  “Won’t be long, then,” Lilith said. “Will it, Alice?”

  Alice ran the hand that wasn’t holding Angus through her hair. “You know I’m trying. But lawyers cost money. I don’t have rolls of it like your daddy …”

  “Whatever.” Lilith folded the twenties up and shoved them in her pocket.

  “Baby …”

  “I’m not a baby.” Lilith said. “I can take care of myself. But why don’t you try that one on Angus? He’s the baby you left.”

  Alice wrapped both arms around Angus, who was sniffling against her shoulder, and shook her head.

  “I hate you,” Lilith said.

  I’d heard that a lot for the last eight days. The truth was, I’d be happy if Lilith bought herself a Greyhound ticket and went back to Dutch Wilder’s house in Hollywood Hills. But I wasn’t going to let her take my friends’ money for it. Because whatever “favor” she was promising them would be as fake as the blonde’s bee-zooms.

  As I finished the last of my cereal-milk sludge, Angus burped loudly under the table, and I leaned over to look. He was up to his elbows in the cereal bowl. At least his sleeves were pulled up.

  “Lilith, your brother’s making a mess.”

  “So?”

  “So … don’t you think you should clean it up?”

  “Let Alice take care of it.”

  “Take care of what?” As my stepmother walked into the kitchen, Lilith ducked past me and headed down the hall to our room. It isn’t easy to avoid someone in a ten-by-fifty, but Lilith had somehow managed to dodge her mother all morning.

  Papi and Alice’s bedroom was at the north end of the trailer. Angus slept in the wide hall outside their room, by the bathroom. The kitchen-slash-living-room was in the middle, and then a short hall to the south-end room that I had to share with Lilith until her dad decided to come back for her.

  “Take care of what?” Alice said again.

  I pointed under the table.

  “Angus honey, come on out of there.” Angus scooted as far into the corner as he could. Alice got down on her hands and knees, grabbed his foot, and dragged him out. He left a slug’s trail of milk across the floor behind him. “Baby, Momma doesn’t have time for this!”

  Papi came out of the bedroom as Alice headed down the hall toward the bathroom, Angus squirming in her arms. Angus wiggled loose, dropped to the floor, and ran down the hall. Alice tried to go after him, but Papi wrapped his arms around her and didn’t let her go.

  “I’ll take care of the big guy,” he said. “You get ready for work.”

  “But your interview!” Alice wiped at the milk and Alpha-Bits on her panty hose. “Why does everything have to happen on a Monday!”

  Papi gave her a kiss instead of an answer. When he saw me watching, he wiggled his eyebrows and made loud smoochy noises before letting her go. I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Glorieta, will you clean up that mess while I take care of Angus?” he asked, heading for the bedroom again. I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Papi had asked me to “bear with” Lilith and Angus for just a little while, for Alice’s sake. I’d said I would, but not for Alice. I was doing this for Papi. He’d had enough to worry about even before the Wilders had shown up. Papi’s unemployment had run out.

  Alice’s paycheck covered the lot rental for Las Palomas Park, and the EBT card was supposed to be enough to feed us while he looked for a new job. There were no engineering jobs, so Papi was looking for any job at all, even the one he’d seen listed at Winthrope’s Repo Depot.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, and do you still have that dress-up tie?” he called. “I could use it for my interview.”

  “I’ll check.” I didn’t know repo men wore ties. I set the mixing bowl on the table, scooped up the soggy cereal with a dustpan and dumped it in the sink, then wiped up the milk trail with paper towels. I had just finished when Lilith reappeared and headed for the phone again.

  “Did you find that tie?” Papi called.

  “Not yet,” I yelled back as I started down the hall to my room.

  I nearly gagged when I opened the door. The smell of the pine lumber Papi had used to make our new bunk beds was almost lost in a fog of perfume and hair spray. Alice had persuaded him to build them, just in case Dutch forgot to come get Lilith and Angus.

  I kicked at a candy bar wrapper on the floor beside her bunk. Lilith only pretended to eat during the day. Like el Chupacabra, who sucks the blood of goats and wicked children, Lilith fed at night.

  There were magazines on her bed. Lots and lots of magazines. People, Today, Us Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone. I’d seen Lilith imitating the stars’ smiles in front of the mirror. Since she didn’t have one of her own, I guess she was trying to find one that fit.

  Two of the magazines had pictures of Danica in them. Not on the cover. Inside, standing beside someone famous. She’d autographed the covers, though. One said, LUV 4EVR and the other U R AWESOME! Lilith kept those on her pillow.

  I held my breath and sprinted for the closet, stepping on a pink blouse and tripping over a pair of jeans on the way.

  I opened the closet, jumped inside, and slid the door almost shut behind me, leaving a crack just wide enough to let the light in. It was almost too cramped to move, but it didn’t matter. I could breathe in the tobacco smell of Papi’s old suit, the sourness of my summer tennis shoes, chlorine fumes from the swimming suit I’d forgotten to wash, and for some reason, the faint smell of vanilla.

  Life withou
t Alice, Lilith, or Angus still existed here. It had been compressed into one tiny space that was still mine.

  The tie was right on top of my old dress up box in the back corner. I took one more breath of closet air before I stepped out.

  “Kzzzzow! You’re toast, bad guy!” Angus stood straddle-legged in the middle of the room, his blaster pointed at me.

  “I’m not a bad guy, Angus,” I said.

  “I’m not Angus!” He pointed to the truck on the front of his clean pajamas. “I’m Mecha-T!”

  I sighed. Angus’s world was full of monsters and bad guys. If the monsters were really bad he hid. But most of the time he turned into Mecha-T, a truck with super bad guy fighting powers.

  The suitcase Dutch had dropped off for him had held four pairs of Mecha-T pajamas, six trucks, the Mecha DVDs, and the blaster he was holding now. Nothing else. Not even underwear. Lilith had packed clothes, makeup, and snacks.

  “Pew, pew!” Angus whirled, shooting imaginary bullets in all directions.

  If he hadn’t kicked Lilith’s jeans as he spun, I might not have noticed the unplugged night-light in the middle of her mess.

  I bit my lip. “Can Mecha-T fly?”

  “No!” he struck another pose. “Mecha-T is a Racer Truck!”

  “Race this down the hall to my Papi really fast, okay, Racer Truck?”

  “Okay!”

  I held out the tie. He tucked his blaster into his waistband, gripped the tie in one hand, shifted air gears with the other, and then raced away making engine noises.

  I picked up the night-light. It had been stepped on, and the prongs were bent together. I didn’t let my breath out until I had pried them apart.

  Cereal boxes don’t just disappear in Epoch. But people do. That wasn’t magic. It was just a fact.

  Mamá had gotten in her car one day to go to the market, but she ended up at the lava tubes instead—the caves that snake through miles of malpaís, the badlands, up to the throat of Cebolleta, the dormant volcano north of town.

  People got lost in the lava tubes all of the time. Turned around, hurt and confused, unable to find their way back out.

  Tía Diosonita had brought me this night-light when they found her car by the lava tubes and began the search.

  A star to shine for Mamá until she comes home. Tía had been so sure that they would find Mamá safe and bring her home.

  When they finally found her six months later, it was too late, of course. It had always been too late. My mamá had died by suicide, alone in a dark lava tube.

  Papi had held me tight and told me Mamá’s depression was a sickness. We aren’t ashamed when people die of cancer or pneumonia. We can talk about it and cry. He said Mamá had been too sick to understand how much her leaving would hurt us. He said that she was special and that we would love her forever.

  He hadn’t told me that the hurting would settle in deep and go on and on right alongside the love. Or that it could break things other than hearts. Like families.

  My tía Diosonita didn’t believed suicide was a sickness. She thought it was an unforgivable sin. Suicide was the reason La Patrona would not let me speak my mamá’s name.

  I kicked Lilith’s bag out of the way, then pushed the tines of the night-light into the outlet. The tiny bulb flickered to life.

  Four more weeks until los Días de los Muertos. Just four weeks to convince La Patrona to let Mamá come home.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lilith turned around when I walked back into the kitchen, but before I could say a word about my night-light, Alice came down the hall from the other end of the trailer. She looked Lilith over and her lips pressed into a thin red line.

  “Lilith May Wilder,” she said, “if you think you’re wearing that getup to school, you have another think coming. March your heinie back to your room and get something decent on.”

  Lilith blinked, then pulled her attitude together. “I love this outfit.” She lifted her chin. “I wear it all the time at home.”

  “This isn’t California.”

  “Like I hadn’t freakin’ noticed.”

  “Watch your language. And pick some different clothes, or I’ll pick them for you.”

  Lilith shoved past me just as Angus charged into the room—and ran straight into the table. He grabbed his head and howled.

  “Honey, how many times have I told you not to run without your glasses on?” Alice picked him up and kissed the bump which was already forming.

  “I can’t find my glasses!” Angus bellowed, kicking until she put him down.

  “You left them in the bathroom. Get them, and then go get in the truck. Greg will drop you at daycare.” She aimed him toward the bathroom. Angus ran ahead, missed the doorway by a nose, bounced off the wall, and ricocheted down the hall.

  “Glo?” The back door opened a crack and River Mahboub, my best friend, peeked in. “I knocked, but nobody answered.”

  “Hey, River,” I said. “Come in.”

  He leaned his skateboard against the wall beside the door. River smelled like sweet cedar smoke from the woodstove he used for cooking, and the corners of his hazel eyes crinkled when he smiled. River always smiled, even when he had no backpack, no notebooks, and no lunch to take to school with him. Everything the Mahboub’s own is handed down, mended, stitched, and fixed. Repurposed. Gee-Ma, the grandma River lives with, says most of the things she pulls out of dumpsters just need a second chance to be awesome.

  She’d pulled River out of a dump—the L.A. dump, on the other side of town from Lilith’s Hollywood Hills. He’d been in the closet, where her daughter, who’d decided she liked meth more than she liked her kid, had been keeping him. River and Gee-Ma sometimes rode the bus out to see her when she said she was clean, but River was never going to live with her again, and I was glad of that. River might be a hand-me-down, but he was born awesome. River was eleven months older than me, but we were in the same class this year. Epoch School had just one combined sixth- and seventh-grade class.

  He got a spoon from the sink, rinsed it off, then sat down and pulled Angus’s bowl full of soggy cereal toward him. Half the time, there was no food in the Mahboub trailer.

  He was gulping the cereal down when Papi came into the kitchen. The red tie lay like a gash against his lime green shirt.

  “Papi, maybe I could find another tie …”

  “No time, Pumpkin.” He wrapped me in a hug. “Hello, Mr. Mahboub,” he said after he let go of me. “Got to go, or I’ll be late.”

  “Bye, Mr. Davis,” River said to the door as it shut behind Papi.

  He swallowed six more spoonfuls before Alice came in, followed by Lilith, who had changed into tight jeans and a pink blouse.

  She gaped at River. “Where did you come up with that … look?”

  “Salvation Army,” River said.

  River could fix anything. He worked on small appliances at the local thrift shop in exchange for free clothes. Someone must have worn that black leather jacket and those skinny jeans before he did, but River wore them better. And his wild hair was pulled up in a samurai knot so it would stay out of his face. Mostly.

  I raised one eyebrow at Lilith. She turned to jerk her new backpack off the floor, and I could see a shoe print in the middle of her back. She turned back to stare at River again, like she just couldn’t help it. This time she noticed his breakfast.

  “You’re eating used cereal? That’s”—her eyes slid to me—”none of my business.”

  She stomped out the door, leaving it hanging open behind her.

  “I could give you guys a ride to school,” Alice said hopefully. “I’m taking Lilith, after all.”

  River looked at me, and I shook my head. He was the only one I had told about my promise to Mamá. Since Lilith arrived, we’d only talked about it on the way to school, when she couldn’t overhear. I didn’t want Lilith touching this part of my life, not ever.

  “Thanks anyway, Mrs. Davis,” he said.

  Alice sighed. “You two will lock up?” She followed Lilith out the door, pulling it shut behind her.

  River swallowed another bite, then asked, “Is your dad color-blind?”

  “Fashion challenged,” I suggested. River nodded.

  “Did your stepmom have Alpha-Bits stuck to her knees?”