I wake up with a yelp on Saturday morning, running my hands quickly through my hair. I dreamed of spiny cockroaches and squirming worms making their home on my scalp, the bugs creeping down my neck and into the collar of my pajamas. I can still feel them, and I shiver as goose bumps rise on my arms.
I’m thankful it’s Saturday and I don’t have to plan for anything going wrong at school. Or for seeing anything that’s not really there in the halls of Port Ballí Primary School. I don’t want to even think about the possible minefield of ghost relatives popping up in bathrooms, sabotaged violins, and lizards pouring out of my backpack. Or Mocosa Mykenzye seeing me freak out when a phantom snake crawls up my nose.
But dealing with everything at home is just as dangerous.
With narrowed eyes I inspect the huevo con arroz y plátano that Abuelita made for breakfast, hoping the Luck Eater won’t glue my mouth shut with the mushy banana or turn the rice into maggots. I look inside my shoes to make sure there aren’t any spiders waiting to nibble on my toes. I carefully run a comb through my hair, hoping it won’t fall out in tangled clumps.
It’s exhausting. The permanent stomachache I have from worrying makes Mami take my temperature. Abuelita tries to slather my hands with Vivaporu when I won’t stop biting my nails. At the breakfast table, Abuelito asks me if I’m tapping out the rhythm of a new song with my nervously bouncing leg.
Where’s Pipo when I need him? Did that diary thing really work or not?
As I walk to Zaragoza Park in the middle of Port Ballí to meet Keisha, my diary clutched in my arms, I make sure not to scuff my feet, in case the sidewalk decides to roll like the gulf waves and trip me. I give myself a headache shifting my gaze from the ground to the sky to check if any of the terns or kingfishers I love watching at the beach are going to dive-bomb me or use my hair as a toilet.
I take a deep breath and think of the game Mami taught me in third grade when I was upset about Connor McKinney making fun of the leftover pork tamales I’d brought for lunch. For each letter of the alphabet, Mami and I brainstormed a silly phrase to describe what was stressing me out. Mami told me she had come up with her own Insult Dictionary when she had to deal with ignorant comments from people who didn’t like her students.
I purse my lips and think as I walk along past the shops on the beach. I pass the Ballí T-Shirt Emporium, with its large plaster great white shark whose sharp-toothed mouth you have to walk through to get inside. Dulcita Paleta Shop has a sign declaring one free Popsicle for each bag of beach trash you turn in.
“This Luck Eater is an absolutely awful alpaca . . . a boiling bloody blister . . . a crusty cheese cough drop,” I mutter to myself.
I’m in the middle of thinking up insults starting with the letter D when a man steps out from the alley next to Dulcita Paleta Shop and onto the sidewalk. He stands in my path before I can change course. I wince, expecting to collide with him, but instead I walk right through him and tumble forward.
Catching myself, I turn around and see the same brown pants and khaki shirt that appeared in my yard yesterday. “What the frijoles? Pipo, you scared me!”
He smiles. “I’m sorry! I’m still getting used to people being able to see me.”
I scan Pipo’s appearance. He’s more solid now, and I can’t see the palm trees lining the sidewalk behind him. But if I stare long enough, I notice that his shape is wavy, like the surface of water that’s been broken by a thrown rock. Every so often, a faint red splotch grows on the fabric of his khaki shirt and then fades away just as quickly. To someone not really paying attention, he looks like the guys who take fishing charters out on the gulf, not a Cuban exile from sixty years ago.
“It worked!” I tell him. “I wrote about you in the diary again, and you showed up!”
He smiles and winks at me. “It’s a pretty great ability, isn’t it?”
My mind flashes to Andaluz’s wet form standing over me in the bathroom. “Sometimes.”
Pipo shoves his hands into the pockets of his pants. “So did you talk about me yesterday?”
I nod. “Abuelito told me that Caramelo used to steal his food. He said your dog was a noise tornado and that he really wanted a cat.”
Pipo raises his head and laughs, his voice filling the air. I smile as my heart warms at the sound, just like Abuelito’s deep laugh.
Pipo puts his hands on his hips, his shoulders still bouncing with laughter. “You should ask him how he got the scar over his left eyebrow. I’ll give you a hint. It involves a race up a coconut tree.”
I look at Pipo, his dark brown hair swept across his forehead, his thin fingers tapping on his thigh. As we continue walking down the sidewalk toward Zaragoza Park, I tell him, “The bad luck got worse last night, you know. Keisha had a horrible fencing practice. And I keep seeing things that aren’t really there. At least I hope they’re not.”
My foot catches on a raised piece of pavement in the sidewalk, and I stumble forward, biting my lip. “There’s no chance that this will spread to my abuelitos or anyone else in my family, is there? I wouldn’t want anything bad happening to them. This is terrible enough for me and Keisha.”
Pipo shrugs. “The Luck Eater wouldn’t be mad at your abuelitos.”
Eyebrows raised, I glance at Pipo. “Why not?”
He purses his lips. “Well, other than the fact that they actually burned their effigies, they have enough sadness to satisfy him.”
I pause at the entrance of Zaragoza Park and put my hand on the low stone wall, its rocks bleached by the sun and weathered by the salty wind. Several people stand on the pier stretching out from the park as waves beat against the pilings, sending foamy spray into the air.
“Are they really that sad?” I ask Pipo, thinking of Abuelita’s face as she rested her head on Abuelito’s shoulder when the effigies burned. My voice gets carried away by the breeze playing in the branches of the live oak trees.
The wind flips my hair in my face, but it has no effect on Pipo’s. “There’s sadness that sits high in your throat,” he says. “It comes out in everything you say and pushes tears out of your eyes. Then there’s sadness that sits low in your belly. It makes itself comfortable. Sometimes you even forget it’s there. But if you move just right, your muscles ache and the pain burns in your chest. Your abuelitos may not always show their sadness. But it’s there.”
I bite my lip. “Are you . . .” I pause, unsure what I really want to ask. Scuffing my foot in the grass as a sandpiper scurries away, I take a deep breath. “Are you the reason why my abuelito is sad?”
Pipo motions for me to sit on the stone wall. I hop up and tuck my hands in the pocket of my hoodie. The mark on my arm tingles like a colony of fire ants are crawling across it.
“Your abuelito was fifteen when I left. The day before I flew to the United States, we spent the morning on the beach in Matanzas. We fished from this little wooden boat I had and cooked tarpon right on the shore. I told him I was going to ask Eugenia to marry me once I got back, and he said he’d rather kiss a fish on the lips.”
I smile. I’ve never heard anything about what Abuelito was like when he was around my age.
“I was gone for a year, training and thinking about our mami’s arroz con leche the entire time. I couldn’t write to Nano, because no one could know where we were or what we were doing. The next time I set foot on my island, I had a rifle in my hand and sand in my boots. I never got to see Nano again.”
I want to put my hand on Pipo’s shoulder. I notice tears glistening like diamonds and pooling in the corners of his eyes.
“Are you sorry you did it? I mean, are you sorry you tried to fight?”
Pipo shakes his head. “I’m not sorry for trying to keep my family safe or for trying to make my country better. But I am sorry I didn’t get to watch Nano grow up. He was my best friend.”
I smile and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “He’s pretty much the best abuelito ever, if that helps. He sings songs with me, he has pastelito-eating contests with me, and he likes to annoy Liset as much as I do.”
Pipo wipes his eyes as he smiles. Sitting down next to me, he says, “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
We sit for a moment, watching the people in the park. Two kids stand next to the water, tossing nets into the waves to catch bait. I hear music, a swirl of violins and trumpets, and search for whoever brought a speaker. But there are only a few men playing basketball, a handful of kids riding scooters, and a group of old people sitting in lawn chairs, watching the waves. No speaker in sight. I look down and see Pipo tap his fingers on his leg to the rhythm of the music. He swirls his fingers in the air, and the trumpets run a fast scale. He grips his fingers into a fist, and the music stops.
My eyes grow wide. “Were you doing that? Making the music?”
Pipo chuckles. “Being dead has its advantages. I get to play music anytime I want.”
I tap my fingers on my leg and wiggle my fingers in the air, but the only sound we hear is the squawk of a brown pelican as it soars above us.
“That’s so cool,” I say. “Is speaking fluent English another advantage, or did you learn that before you died?”
Pipo raises an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“Your English. It’s way better than Abuelito’s.”
He slaps his leg and laughs. “I couldn’t speak a word of English before. What’s funny is that in my head, I’m speaking Spanish when I talk to you.”
“That’s weird.”
“But not the weirdest thing out of all of this, no?”
Thinking for a moment, I consider Pipo’s ability—how he can make music appear out of nowhere. I heard violin music last night, and music filled the yard right before Pipo appeared when I tried to burn the effigy. The music had been the sign that he was coming all along.
All the drips I heard in school led up to Andaluz appearing in the bathroom, but thinking about that makes me shudder.
I nod at Pipo and wipe my glasses on the bottom of my hoodie. Ramming them back on my face, I square my shoulders and hop down from the wall. “Okay,” I say to Pipo. “Let’s convince my friends that this Luck Eater nonsense is real and figure out a way to stop it.”
Pipo smiles. “Deal.”
My tío abuelo and I head into the park and look for Keisha. She’d texted before I left my house to tell me she’d be practicing there, her coach not so quietly asking her to leave training after her metal fencing foil went inexplicably as limp as a spaghetti noodle.
I quickly spot her under an enormous live oak tree, lunging forward, no foil in her hand. She’s wearing her white fencing jacket and her mask, a white raven head on the black mesh, painted by her mom.
And she’s with Syed.
I groan. I don’t want to deal with that on top of Keisha’s being mad at me for her terrible fencing practices.
Before I reach Keisha and Syed, a voice calls out behind me. I turn as Juan Carlos jogs up to me and Pipo. I shift my weight from foot to foot, realizing I hadn’t planned on explaining why I’m hanging out with a strange man in a city park.
“Hey,” Juan Carlos says, eyeing Pipo warily.
I give him a weak wave.
Juan Carlos looks Pipo up and down and takes in his weathered boots, brown pants, and khaki shirt. “Who are you?”
I shove my hands into the pocket of my hoodie, pulling on the loose threads inside with my fingers. “So, this is Pipo Feijoo, my tío abuelo. He’s my abuelito’s brother.”
Juan Carlos stares at Pipo’s face, noticing the absence of wrinkles around his eyes, his straight posture, and his dark hair that’s free of gray streaks.
“This guy is your seventy-year-old abuelo’s brother?”
Pipo looks at me, and I nod. Clearing his throat, he says, “I died in 1961. You’d look young too if you were frozen as a twenty-two-year-old.”
I watch as Juan Carlos chews on his lips, adjusting his glasses on his face. “When’s your birthday?”
“November fourth, 1939.”
“What’s Mari’s abuelito’s favorite food?”
“Guava and cream cheese on water crackers.”
“How’d you die?”
“I was executed in a Cuban prison.”
Juan Carlos swallows hard. “Are you going to try to possess me?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
Juan Carlos nods. “Okay. Nice to meet you,” he says, sticking out his hand.
Pipo reaches out to return the greeting, his fingers passing though Juan Carlos’s hand. Juan Carlos’s eyes grow wide. “Awesome.”
“You’re really okay with this, Juanito?” I ask.
He shrugs. “With everything that’s been going on, all the bad luck you and Keisha are having because of some psycho possessed doll . . . this seems pretty normal.”
“We’ll figure out how to fix that,” Pipo says.
When we reach Keisha and Syed, she stares at Pipo curiously.
“Um, this is something just the Super Ojos should talk about,” I tell her, glancing at Syed. He looks at me with raised eyebrows and runs his fingers through his black hair.
Keisha presses her mouth in a tight line. “That’s rude.”
“Well, there’s a lot going on that would be hard to explain,” I shoot back, clenching my fists in my hoodie pocket.
Syed clears his throat. “No. She’s right. It does seem like the Super Ojos have a lot to deal with right now,” he says. “I hope y’all figure it out.”
I know Syed hasn’t said anything wrong—he’s even agreeing with me—but all I can think of is Liset abandoning her friends the second some pimply boy looked at her. I’m not going to let that happen to the Super Ojos.
“We will,” I say, crossing my arms.
Keisha rolls her eyes and starts to say something, but Syed swings his fencing bag over his shoulder. “I’ll let y’all plan,” he says. “I’ve gotta get home anyway.”
He waves goodbye and jogs away through a group of kids who are flying octopus-shaped kites.
When I introduce Keisha to Pipo, she isn’t as quick to believe me as Juan Carlos was. She hides behind the live oak tree, away from Pipo, after he shows her how he can pass his arm through my stomach. She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head.
“Nope. Not real. You guys are playing a trick,” she mutters to herself.
Pipo stands behind me as I hold my hands out and say, “Keisha, he’s here to help us. We figured out why everything is going wrong.”
Keisha peers sheepishly from behind the tree. “How is he here? How is this possible?”
I hold out the diary and flip through the pages, showing Keisha and Juan Carlos where I wrote about Pipo, the words looking more like sheet music than neat paragraphs.
“That’s actually because of me, too,” I say, scuffing my feet in the grass, hoping they’ll believe me. “It turns out I have a family . . . gift. I can . . . uh, make my dead relatives appear if I write about them.”
I look from Keisha to Juan Carlos and bite my lip, waiting for their reaction.
Juan Carlos raises an eyebrow and whispers, “Freaking awesome.”
I watch Keisha expectantly. She shoves her fencing blade into her bag and zips it up with more force than necessary.
Groaning, she says, “So not only are we dealing with a curse of bad luck, there are also ghosts now. Perfect.”
I start to defend myself, but Keisha waves a hand and interrupts. “So what are we going to do about this bad luck and whatever’s causing it? Because it needs to stop now.”
“Well, the solution is easy. I’ve got it,” Pipo says excitedly. “This is brilliant. We starve it.”
Keisha jumps at his voice. “Who is ‘it’?” she asks, looking at me instead of Pipo.
I clear my throat. “It’s a luck eater. He takes all the sadness from the effigies for his food. When I didn’t burn mine, we believe he decided to fill it up with as much bad stuff as possible. That’s really why we’re having bad luck. We think it’s to get back at me for starving him.”
Pipo puts his hands on his hips. “Exactly. So you can’t let the things he does bother you. If you’re not sad, there’s nothing to fill up the effigy. The Luck Eater won’t have anything to eat, and he’ll give up.”
Keisha, Juan Carlos, and I stand under the meandering branches of the live oak tree, thinking. Shorebirds circle over a group of women fishing from the pier, waiting to snap up their discarded bait. Finally, Juan Carlos speaks up.
“That’s not normal.”
“What?” Pipo asks.
“That’s not normal, to not feel sad when something bad happens to you. If my skateboard bursts into flames or the crabs at the wildlife center snap off my toes, you better believe I’m gonna be sad. I’m gonna cry like a baby. No shame.”
“But nothing is happening to you,” Keisha snaps.
Juan Carlos starts to speak, but I interrupt. “Juan Carlos is right. What if it takes forever for the Luck Eater to decide we’re not worth it? We’ve already had enough, with all this bad luck piling together, and it’s barely been a week. We need to come up with something else.”
Keisha clears her throat and finally looks at Pipo. “I have to practice. Things can’t keep messing up.”
Pipo shrugs. “Well, it seemed like a good idea.”
I give Pipo a weak smile. “It makes sense, and I think we could probably try to do it as much as we can, to prepare for whatever the Luck Eater might throw at us, but we need something more permanent.”
Pipo taps his fingers on his lower lip, deep in thought. “Like what?”
Keisha, Juan Carlos, and I stare at each other.
We’ve got nothing.
Feeling defeated, we walk away from the park, discussing the best ways to prepare for Luck Eater tricks. As I glance back, I see a shadow creep from behind the live oak tree. Maybe it’s just the strong Texas sun, but the figure looks like it has scales.
And maybe it’s just the gulf breeze, but I swear I hear laughing.