Jasmine looks back at me through the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth. She pulls the handle on the fridge, and we open it, we eat the cereal in my bowl, we don’t like the taste of it, we pinch my stomach when I lean back in the kitchen chair. We laugh until it hurts.
I wake winded and sore all over. But nothing’s missing from my room, nothing’s broken, there isn’t a ghost lying beside me. Not that the latter has happened, but every morning I expect it to. Sleep has been easier to come by, and I’m thankful I get to see Jasmine because it’s getting harder to be awake and alone with the spirits. But when I go downstairs, I’m still jittery from the dream. I wonder if Mili convinced her aunt. Maybe we’ll get to talk to Jas during the séance and I can ask what the dreams mean.
Victor passes me the phone without warning. “It’s Papi.” My stomach churns. I haven’t spoken to him since Mami found out about Aaron. I was sure he’d heard about my indiscretions and disowned me, but he says he’s happy he caught me while I was still home. We talk about his new job at an auto sales shop, and he goes on about my cousin Joselito’s new car.
“I miss you,” he says. “Mi niña, mi corazón, what’ve you been up to?”
Having sex and falling in love with a boy you wouldn’t like, waking people up from comas, interacting with ghosts.
“Nothing, Papi,” I say. Victor snorts from behind me, and my body tenses. “How about you?”
“I hope to be able to move out of Joselito’s and buy land, get my own house soon.”
My heart sinks. His own house? In DR?
“Te quiero, niña,” he says. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
When we hang up, I pray Papi misspoke. The government told him he wouldn’t be able to apply for another visa for twenty years after he was deported, but since then his immigration lawyer has been making headway in getting the waiting period lowered to only five years, which means he’d be able to reapply when I turn twenty-one. And Papi deserves it. My reasoning runs deeper than the fact he was deported to DR after spending twenty-eight years in the US, working hard jobs. When he finally got to hear our voices over the phone, from many miles away, across the ocean, he cried, telling us someone from work had snitched about him not being a citizen. The same someone he’d bring slices of Mami’s flan to. Papi told me to only trust myself then. Afterward, Mami told me he was wrong. I couldn’t even trust myself; the only one I could trust was God.
I want to ask Victor if he’s heard anything about the visa from Papi, but he packs his bag for his church program in silence and I know trying to start a conversation with him might leave me annoyed. I don’t understand why he’s still mad when he’s the one who sold me out to Mami. Papi should talk to him about snitches and trust too.
When Victor walks by me to catch his bus, something surges through me, and I wish, wish, wish he’d turn around and say something. Anything.
And then he does. “See you later, Inez.”
That’s all I needed to stand and follow him out. “Victor, can we talk tonight?”
He looks a little nervous, but he nods before he’s off, walking up the street. I lean against the doorframe. Unlike in church with Father John and Priscilla, this time I know it was me using magic on Victor. We’re growing. I’m growing, changing. I can feel it in my body. Maybe this is what Jas meant when she said it. I’m just not sure if it should feel this damn good.