AFTER MOM DIED, I took a ride on the school counselor carousel. Didn’t do much good. Mostly because they all started by telling me how sorry they were for my loss, like I’d put my abusive shitbag of an egg donor down and forgotten where I’d left her. Or like they expected me to have a grief-induced aneurysm and forget every reason why I wasn’t actually sorry in the slightest.
Not that she was gone, at least. Just about the nightmares she left me with.
Still, one of the counselors—Mrs. Palmer-or-Parker; the one with the macramé necklaces and the double-stacked shelf of self-help books—told me something that stuck. There are five stages to overcoming the loss of a loved one. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. I hit number two for Mom, then remembered what an ass she was and skipped the rest.
For Hernando, I speed run all five in under an hour.
First, I tell myself there must be another explanation. Hernando works for another shipping company. The Hench warehouse just happened to be low on numbers tonight. His boss struck a deal, shuffling men like the little pieces on a chessboard. Hernando had no choice. When the foreman says jump, you jump; and when he tells you to go work for a criminal organization, you … Well, I guess you don’t argue.
Hernando knows his way around, though. He breaks away from our group to retrieve a forklift. Either this has happened before, or … he works for Hench, like I do. And he’s been lying to his family, like I’ve been, too.
Next up: anger.
It claws my belly as we unload the car. How dare he lie to us. To me!
But that’s not fair. For every reason I’m pissed at him, he has a reason to be mad, too. We’re both neck-deep in the villains’ business. We’re both risking everything—our freedom, our lives. The only difference is that I wear a mask.
I’ll stop, I plead, in the echoing cavern of my head. I’ll quit if you quit, too.
What would I do if the Super Squad tracked the laser back to its source? If Hernando got hurt?
Nothing. Just like with Amelia. That’s all us Normies ever do.
I feel lost as we haul the last packaged piece of laser out of the Captain’s trunk. Like I’m scooping parts of myself from one life and dropping them into another. All these secrets are hollowing out what makes me me. Lying to Jav is awful enough. I don’t want to—not about Hench, or the way my heart barrel-rolls whenever she brushes my bare skin. But having to look into Hernando’s familiar, yawn-lined face, and pretend I don’t know he’s lying, too?
Drama’s the only class I ever scored higher than a C in, but I’m not that good an actor. I don’t want to be.
I know I’m not really his daughter. Hell, I only met him after Lyssa was born. I never got past calling him by his first name. I’ll even accept, grudgingly, that he won’t win dad of the year. Especially not this year, since we’ve barely seen him. When he’s there, though, he’s there. It’s hard to explain. But whether he’s dozing on the sectional or scarfing his leftovers at ass o’clock in the morning, I know I can tell him anything in the whole wide world, and he’ll smile his sleepy smile and nod.
Except, y’know, that I like girls.
And that I work for Hench.
It never occurred to me that Hernando might have an “except,” too.
The Captain slams his trunk. Hernando steers his forklift off into the towers of crates. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t know who I am. I watch until my blurring eyes can’t distinguish him from the stacks. We both made this choice. I can’t judge Hernando for it any more than I can judge myself.
That doesn’t stop this hurting, though. Somehow, that last state of grief—the acceptance—aches worst of all.