notice the mad-dogging because his eyes were all over Brenda. But Smiley was that way anyway, always putting himself in places where he could get messed up and not even think about it, like crossing train tracks without looking both ways.
Rey and Eddie were both shorter than me or Ángel but were almost as big as Ángel in the shoulders. They were probably eighteen or nineteen, maybe even twenty. Now that we knew Rey was cousins with Brenda, we gave our qué ondas, the kind of looks where you just raise your chin a little, don’t smile at all, and wait for the other to look away first. If I had kept just looking down at him, it still could have started us going a couple of rounds. Brenda put her arms through mine and Ángel’s, pulled us away from Rey and asked, “So, how do you all like my new clothes?” Eddie didn’t seem to like that too much, the way she turned around in circles for us. Get over the feeling, I thought.
The question that kept going off in my head like a firecracker was this: where’s Llorona? And as if she knew what I was asking, the dressing room door opened and out she walked. Llorona wore a white shirt that showed her tight brown stomach with the HCP tattoo, her belly button ring and these white pants. She had the blue make up tears on the inner corners of her black eyes, the only tears she cried now. Llorona’s hair was pulled back, but with two dagger thin horns of hair, cuernitos pointing to her demonia smile, her small lips shaded a brown so dark it was almost black. Her naked throat was so long and pretty, her collarbone so thin and delicate like a bird’s. I remembered holding onto Llorona’s neck when I used to walk her to all her classes, which always made me tardy. At first she didn’t like me to do this because she said it looked like I owned her. What I had said was that I was proud of her, how beautiful she was, but that I could never own her. Llorona would never belong to anyone. How do you own a ghost?
But Rey was the one who was proud of her today, and with the way he was looking at me, it all started to make sense. For a second Llorona gave me this look like she was going to smile and hug and kiss me, as if these months of us being apart had never really happened. This was the way it was with us. Because we had been together since seventh grade, off and on for almost four years, whenever we saw each other now, it always took a second to remember we weren’t together anymore. We were habits to each other. As soon as we did remember we weren’t together anymore, the ghost game began, where we pretended to see right through each other. I never told Ángel or Smiley, but I always hoped one of us would stop playing the ghost game, that those seconds of forgetting our not going around would go on and on and turn into minutes and hours and longer, that our apparitions would take shape, becoming flesh and blood and bone, our hands reaching out to one another to make sure we were real.
Llorona smiled and I felt something in my chest, down the back of my neck I had not felt in a long time.
But Llorona wasn’t looking at me, and she sure wasn’t smiling for me.
She was smiling for Rey.
Qué gacha. This was what his looks were all about.
Rey was looking at her with his player smile, the one that says, I own you. Rey had no idea who Llorona was, the kinds of things she could do to people. Did he think we called her Llorona for nothing? Would she be named for the ghost-woman who drowned her babies in the Río Grande River if she was just some pichona you could control, some trained little pigeon who would always come back to you?
Llorona was no harmless little pigeon. She was the lechuza, the owl you see just before someone is about to die, the one that haunts you in your dreams and you never want to see in real life because it means you are about to lose someone you love.
“Te gusta?” He was talking about the clothes. “I like. Come on, throw those old rags away and let me pay for these new clothes.” He pulled out a thick roll, giving everybody a chance to see. I looked at his hands. Tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand was El Rey. Family or not, I wanted to take that roll and stick it in his mouth, to make him cry like a vieja. Who’d he think he was? Coming from Pharr, tattooing the King on his hand, buying clothes for a Dennett girl, and then looking to throw me a challenge? Who did this guy think he was? I mean we had hood in Dennett, but not like his neighborhood, where you heard all the rumors about the shootings, the drive-bys, the grandmas getting robbed, that security guard at El Centro Mall getting stabbed with a pencil when there was a fight outside the movies.
If he thought he was moving up in the world just because of some ink that said he was made-up royalty, and being with one of our girls, he was crazy. Here I maybe should’ve thrown it right back. I should’ve thrown up my chin and arms, told him, Qué onda, this way. But I did nothing, because if I showed any emotion, Llorona would win the game we had been playing. Llorona would get me to admit she still mattered to me. I wanted the game to end, but that didn’t mean I was going to lose to make it happen. I wasn’t playing that. And besides, he wasn’t worth my time and effort.
Llorona laughed like the sweet stupid pichona she never was. Why was she playing this game with him? Even in these months we had been apart, she had never tried to make me jealous. The only game she played was the ghost game, where she pretended not to see me, so I knew that wasn’t it. Llorona was putting on a pichona play for something else, but I didn’t know why. She walked over with Rey to the counter, tiptoeing with her bare feet on the white tiles. They were talking and laughing and Rey kept looking at me to make sure I knew what was up. His eyes said, El Rey y Llorona y qué, güey? What are you going to do?
Our other friend Gladis came from the back of Rave where she’d also been trying on clothes and gave us her saludos in Spanish, which was all she really spoke because she’d only been here a few years. Brenda and Llorona had made friends with her right away, protecting her from the other girls in PE, the ones who called her a mojada and asked her for her green card and all that. And this coming from girls just as brown as Gladis, the only difference being they were Mexicans born on this side of the border. Llorona and Brenda had jumped some girls one time for talking like that to her and that was all it took. They left Gladis alone after that, even during those days when Llorona and Brenda were suspended for fighting.
Gladis still had this straight, long pretty hair like girls from Mexico wear it, without lots of hairspray and not colored at all. Gladis was pretty the way she was and she didn’t need to change, but she was wearing Rave clothes now, a long sleeve blouse with only two buttons, opened wide at the stomach. Brenda’s dad had probably given her some money and she was buying Gladis a little something. Like me, Brenda didn’t live in the South Side of Dennett and had a father with money. Our pops even knew each other from both being in the construction business.
Brenda said, “Mira no más. Look at you, girl. Mamasota!” Gladis hid her face in her hair. “Ángel, don’t you think she looks good?”
“The young lady is beautiful, noble and true. But you Brenda, you’re going to get arrested. Just make sure the chotas don’t see you walking down 17th Street in McAllen.” Brenda just rolled her eyes. All the time Ángel had known Gladis, he had never said anything like this to her, like he said to Brenda. We never would either. She wasn’t that kind of girl.
Gladis parted her hair to find my eyes. She glanced towards Llorona and gave me her smile with no teeth, and I knew what she meant. For some reason, Gladis was always checking on me, seeing how I was when it came to Llorona. Her eyes said, Sorry, I know how you must feel right now, and I’m sorry.
Gladis was the only one who knew or cared what was happening in me, so if I kept up the show, I would lose nothing. The best thing to do was to continue to ignore it all, come back to the land of the living, adding Rey to the ghost world where Llorona roamed. But the thing about fantasmas is they don’t always stay in their world where they should, and they intrude on the land of flesh and blood. The only thing to do now was to act bored and walk away now that Llorona and Rey were on display, so I wouldn’t lose and look weak. Ángel and Brenda asked me where I was going,
