Epilogue: Papi

It was the first day of summer vacation and her mother and Mr. Arellano brought MJ to finally visit her father’s grave.

She was wearing a dress, a black one with a white stripe around the middle that her abuelita had made for her. MJ hated dresses, but both her mother and Mr. Arellano agreed it was appropriate for the occasion. He’d also given her a small bouquet of colorful flowers with ruffled petals that were red, white, and green. Their stems were tied together with a white ribbon.

She kept her mouth closed for almost the entire drive, because when she opened it, MJ found her breathing was loud and shaky. Surprisingly, that painful knot in her stomach wasn’t there. Instead she felt little pinprick sensations all up and down her arms and legs. She expected to be sad, even angry, but she didn’t know why she felt so anxious about going. MJ knew what was waiting for them. They’d driven here several times before. It wasn’t like it was going to be a surprise.

Still, she felt more anxious than she could remember feeling, maybe ever, even all the other times she’d tried to make this trip.

The cemetery was green and beautifully kept, like the park MJ always tried to imagine it was. It didn’t look like a depressing place, but it definitely made her feel sad.

Her mother pulled the car over a few minutes after they drove through the cemetery gates. Even though MJ had been here before, on the day of the funeral and the times after that when she couldn’t get out of the car, none of it looked familiar to her.

She was staring through the window, thinking about how strange and new it all seemed, when Mr. Arellano opened the door for her. He smiled down at MJ softly. He was wearing the same suit he’d had on the day they first met, and he’d yelled at her in his backyard. Thinking about it actually made MJ feel a little better, but it only lasted until she got out of the car.

She could see it, the headstone; and MJ suddenly remembered exactly where she was and how it had looked on that day, the day they buried her father. The memory didn’t make her sadder, oddly, but it did make her even more nervous for some reason.

“Do you want us to go with you?” her mother asked, smiling even though her eyes were sad.

“I’m okay,” MJ assured them.

She wasn’t sure that was true.

They let her walk across the grass alone. Her father’s grave was marked with a big, shiny marble stone that had his name, Victor Gabriel Medina, chiseled on it, along with the date he was born and the date he died, more than a year ago now. Below that, a picture of Saint Faustina was painted on the marble. She had a kind face and soft eyes that looked down, as if she was watching over Victor.

Underneath the image of the saint, there was a quote, something Faustina had said before she passed away and was made a saint: “Love endures everything, love is stronger than death, love fears nothing.”

MJ knelt in the grass in front of the stone, her fists closed tight around the bound stems of the flowers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, because that seemed like the right thing to say, and nothing else came to her in that moment.

Then MJ really thought about the words she’d just spoken, and the words of Saint Faustina, and she realized she was sorry. Suddenly, she was filled with guilt. This was such a lonely place, and he’d been stuck here without his family this whole time because she’d been angry and selfish and afraid to come here. She hadn’t thought at all about him being alone. She’d just been so mad, not even about her father dying, but about him leaving them, as if it were a choice he’d made. She knew how wrong that was now.

She read Saint Faustina’s quote again.

MJ started to cry.

“I’m so sorry, Papi,” she said again, the words drowning in the tears that poured down her face.

It had happened so suddenly. Her father hadn’t been sick, not at all. They thought he was perfectly healthy. He played baseball for his company team every year. He went to the gym several times a week. He ran marathons to help raise money for their church.

Then one day he’d dropped dead, with no warning. His heart just stopped beating.

It wasn’t fair and it didn’t make any sense. It took so long for MJ to even be able to understand and accept that it had happened, and then all she could feel was anger.

“You were my only friend,” she whispered, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the headstone.

It felt so cold, and that only made MJ cry harder.

“You were the only friend I had. Mom tries, and I love her, but you were always the one—”

She couldn’t finish, and she didn’t need to. Her father knew how close they were, and how much MJ needed him, needed someone who understood her and liked the things she liked and encouraged her to do the things she wanted to do. He loved being that for her. He devoted so much of his time to her. She knew he never would have left them if he had a choice.

MJ wasn’t angry anymore, but all that anger was replaced by something worse in that moment, the grief she hadn’t wanted to deal with. Being mad was always easier for her than feeling sad, and without holding onto that anger MJ suddenly couldn’t feel anything except that sadness.

She cried without trying to speak again for a long time, like letting a fire burn itself out. There was nothing else she could do, and a part of her knew she needed this, needed to let it all out.

It felt like being sick and throwing up. It was awful while it was happening, but when it was finally over you felt better, even if you were still sick. You felt lighter and freer, like you could finally rest and start healing.

MJ took a deep breath, and then another.

By her fifth deep breath she felt well enough to speak again.

“I have some new friends now,” she said, louder and with less hurt in her voice. “It’s not the same. Nothing could be the same. But it’s . . . better? It’s a little better, I guess. I just wish you could come and watch me, the things I’m doing. You’d love it so much. It’s just like we used to watch on TV. I mean, I’m not good like that, not yet, but still. I will be some day. You’ll see. At least I hope you’ll see, in some way.”

Thinking about wrestling helped, and about all the people at Victory Academy: Tika and Zina and Creepshow and Corrina. She thought about how it was almost like the horrible fight she’d had with Zina never happened, and how weird and amazing a thing that was. She’d never had a friend like Zina before, let alone had to figure out how to fix that kind of friendship after it took such a hard hit. MJ felt like the two of them were actually closer now because of it, and that was even more amazing to her.

She thought about all of that and nodded as if she were trying to tell herself that it was okay, or at least that it was going to be okay.

For the first time, she was glad she’d finally decided to come here.

“I’m going to Mexico with Mom and Mr. Arellano this summer. We’re going to visit his son and his grandson, like I’m visiting you now. It’ll be sad, but I’m excited, too. Mr. Arellano is going to take us to see the real lucha; at least that’s what he says. Mom and I are going to see some of the family, too. Abuelita and the others. Mom says we’re going to do that more. I think that was the hard thing for her, you know? Seeing Abuelita and Tío Kevin and all of them from your side. It made her sad. But I think we’re both ready to start doing the things that make us sad again, so they get easier.”

MJ swallowed, hard.

“Everyone calls Mr. Arellano ‘Papi,’ you know, because he’s kind of a dad to all of us at the school. I call him that too sometimes. I just want you to know, though . . . it’s not the same. It won’t ever be the same. I’m really lucky to have him, but I’ll always miss you. You’ll always be my papi. Always.”

She laid the flowers in her hands down gently on the grass in front of the headstone.

“I promise from now on I’ll come visit you every weekend when we’re home. I love you, Papi.”

MJ kissed the palm of her hand and pressed it against the marble. It didn’t feel as cold the second time. She felt like she might start crying again, so she took her hand away and stood up, sucking back her wet breath.

Standing up quickly like that started her thinking about something. She thought about everything that had happened in the past few months. She thought about bump training. She thought about Corto and how he’d let his sadness and anger turn him into a monster. She thought about the fight they’d had in the ring when he tried to burn Victory Academy to the ground.

MJ realized that the answer to every hard thing she’d faced over the past year was getting back up again after you’d been knocked down. If you stayed down, that’s when all those bad feelings took control of you, and that’s when you lost. Corto had stayed down after his wrestling career ended. He’d stopped fighting for what he wanted and started hating and blaming everyone else instead.

You had to get back up. You always had to get back up, no matter how hard it was.

MJ looked over and saw her mother and Mr. Arellano waiting patiently for her by the car, watching her with warm smiles, ready to do or give her whatever she needed to help her through this. Seeing them there like that made her think about something else.

It was a lot easier to get back up when you had help.