i.
It was difficult for Nadia to learn at which hospital Marina was being treated in the immediate aftermath of the assault. It took Nadia a whole month afterwards to track her down, and even Samuel and Nano hadn't known where her family had been keeping her. She hadn't been at the general teaching hospital downtown, but at a private Catholic hospital, one with guards that followed Nadia as she walked through the doors and staff that stared at her hijab for a long while before answering her questions with ones of their own.
She would have simply asked Guzmán where Marina was, would have asked him to take her to see her, but he'd been avoiding her calls and texts. Her father had said, "If you want to go back next year, you can. But I don't want to hear about that boy again. I don't want you to go near him." It hadn't taken much imagination on Nadia's part to figure out that Guzmán had made some kind of deal with him to stay clear of her, in exchange for his allowing her to return to Las Encinas. Always a deal with Guzmán, always a bet. Always so focused on getting what he wanted that he let go of what he had, like the dog in the fable.
Marina was alone in her private room. It was pristine and bright with fluorescent light. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, her nails of polish, and it made her look younger than Nadia had ever seen her. Unanimated, without the bravado she carried with her, without the rich-girl rebelliousness and petulance, what Nadia noticed most about her was how soft her features were. It was another thing about Marina that reminded Nadia of her sister. She didn't like to imagine where her sister was then or what kind of life she was leading, but Nadia hoped that she'd been able to find what she hadn't at home. If she needed kindness, Nadia hoped she would find it freely and without reservation, the way she was offering it to Marina; if she needed friendship, that she'd find it in someone who gave it more easily than Nadia did herself.
That was how Guzmán found her, holding one of Marina's hands between her own and thinking again of how well she'd treat her sister if she ever came back to their family.
"What are you doing here?"
The first words he'd spoken to her in over a month. He sounded almost hostile.
Nadia took him in, his hair in its customary neat part even though there were dark circles under his eyes. They looked like bruises. "I thought you weren't speaking to me," she said.
If Marina looked vulnerable, Guzmán looked wrecked. Nadia guessed that what she'd heard about him was true, that he'd taken up drinking and cut ties with his oldest friends. It was probably true that he was back with Lu again, too. They are a habit, Nadia thought, the way wishing I'd been better to May is a habit. But right then he was in the hospital room with her, visiting his sister.
Instead of answering her, Guzmán made his way to Marina's side, opposite Nadia. He didn't tell her to leave. He brushed Marina's hair from her face and lay his hand against her forehead. He rubbed his thumb across the space between her brows. It was such an intimate gesture, but Nadia didn't look away. Watching him, she realized that she'd missed him in the few weeks they hadn't seen each other—his kinetic energy, and the way he felt each emotion so intensely even as he flit from one to the other, and the pleasure he took in saying something just to watch for her reaction. She'd been so scared for Marina, so busy helping Omar hide himself from their parents, and so worried about where she would go come the new school term, that she hadn't realized she'd grown used to Guzmán, looked forward to seeing him, even. Another habit for her.
Minutes passed before Guzmán spoke, so long that Nadia thought he really wouldn't say another word to her. But then, without looking away from his sister, he said, "I didn't know you two were such good friends."
"We were," Nadia said. "We are."
His face had grown splotchy in the time since he'd entered the room, and Nadia wondered if he was going to cry. Abruptly, he turned and flung himself into a chair by the door. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and scrubbed his hands over his face, then stayed very still.
The polite thing to do would be to leave him to grieve alone, so he could display whatever his pride kept him from showing her right then, but she and Guzmán had never pretended at politesse. And she wasn't the one who'd made a promise of silence. That was the flaw in his and her father's little arrangement—they'd left her completely out of it, as though she was just some piece of furniture they could move around as they pleased and she couldn't simply open her mouth and ruin their plan in an instant.
"Do you think she really would have left?" she asked.
Guzmán shrugged. "I don't know," he said. He kept his face buried in his hands and his voice came out muffled. "I have no fucking idea what she would have done, to be honest."
"What do you think makes a person leave their family?"
Guzmán's voice sounded raw when he spoke. "She hated us. For a long time, I think. I think we just…weren't the people she wanted to come from."
Nadia dropped Marina's hand. The thought that May had left not just because she wanted to be something other than what was expected of her, but because of disgust, made Nadia angry. She'd felt frustrated with her family before, had felt sheltered and unheard, but she'd never hated her family. She'd always wanted to belong to them. She didn't like to think that May was somewhere in the world acting out the life of someone who didn't have a younger sister, that she never thought about her because she didn't want to remember her. But then Nadia remembered her first day at Las Encinas, and how begrudgingly playful she'd seen Marina be with Guzmán. She remembered how angry he'd been when her HIV status had been revealed.
"I don't know about your parents," Nadia said slowly. She was trying to figure out what she was thinking as she spoke. "But I don't think Marina hated you. Maybe…maybe she wanted to be different from you. But different doesn't mean hatred."
Guzmán didn't answer, didn't give any indication that he'd heard her. Nadia straightened Marina's fingers on the bedsheet where her hand had fallen when she'd dropped it, then made her way to the door. She stopped by Guzmán's side, placed a hand on his shoulder. She felt a tremor run through him. She said nothing. Nadia turned to leave, but in one swift motion Guzmán grabbed her hand and held on to her. "Wait," he said, "Can't you stay? Please?"
He gazed up at her with an open expression, eyes wide and lashes clumped together, but as Nadia looked into his face she couldn't make sense of it. There was despair and there was anger, but there was yearning, too.
Growing up with someone, being raised with them, was a special kind of relationship, unique in a way Nadia felt no one ever managed to articulate well. It was an intimacy you didn't have with anyone else, because it's only a sibling who can know exactly where you come from—the secrets and idiosyncrasies of your family, the inheritances both good and bad, all the unspoken things that separate you from a neighbor just a door away. Nadia knew that to lose a person like that, a person who could share your eyes, there was no comparison.
She pressed her lips together and gave Guzmán a small nod. He didn't let go of her hand until she settled in the seat next to him, and then he hunched over and hid his face again. Cautiously, Nadia laid a hand against his back. She rubbed him there in slow, small circles. She looked at Marina lying still in her bed and promised her silently that she'd visit until she woke.
ii.
Nadia kept her promise. When she wasn't tending the store, when she wasn't helping her parents with housework or checking the bookkeeping, when she wasn't prodding Omar late into the night about what he liked so much about Ander, she was with Marina. After that first evening together with Guzmán her visits became remarkably free of obstacles. She didn't even have to ask to be let in to see Marina. A nurse glided up to her the minute she stepped off the elevator onto the floor and guided her to Marina's room, even asked her to call if there was anything she needed. Nadia figured Guzmán had probably spoken to the staff there.
Some visits she spent with Marina by herself, and others she spent with Guzmán. They were oftentimes quiet, and it seemed to Nadia that all the sleep he wasn't getting in his bed at home he tried to make up for on the couch in Marina's room. As he slept, she read, getting a head start on the literature she'd have to read for the new term, and for herself, an English translation of her father's favorite collection of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish. Guzmán liked to sleep on his side, and she only sometimes closed her book to stare at his back. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep and she didn't want to read, Guzmán would take out his phone and hand her an earbud, and together they'd listen to music. He liked moody British singers. She wasn't surprised anymore by how comfortable she felt with him.
When the new term started, Nadia returned to Las Encinas. She noticed all the changes that were made in the wake of Marina's assault. She noticed the silence. She noticed the disappearance of the miniature Nike of Samothrace statue. Polo, who Nadia thought should have been put in prison but wasn't surprised only had to do attend anger management sessions, was not placed in any classes with Guzmán. Neither was Carla. Their clique broke apart. Lu and Ander still ate lunch off-campus with Guzmán, but with all of them, the confidence, the air of ownership that had used to surround them as they walked down the halls and expected the world to part before them was gone. All it had taken was almost murderous violence. Nadia couldn't understand it, why Christian still wanted so badly to be with them, and why she herself didn't turn Guzmán away every time he broke away from Lu and headed over to her locker.
After classes Nadia often took her homework over to Marina's hospital room. She and Guzmán would walk over together, and sometimes Ander came with them. One evening when she and Guzmán were alone with Marina he asked her, "Why don't you wear that at school?" He nodded at her head.
Nadia rolled her eyes. "Why do you think?"
Though her parents knew she wasn't allowed to wear her hijab at Las Encinas, Nadia still wore it on her way out of the house. She took it off in the girls' bathroom before first period, and once her last class was over she put it back on. She didn't like that she had to take it off, and she didn't want to go into it with Guzmán. She placed an elbow on the textbook open on her lap, leaned her chin on her fist, and asked him, "What do the doctors say about Marina? She's improving, isn't she? She'll wake soon?"
Guzmán's gaze remained steady on her. He smiled, blinked slowly like she'd just insulted him, and shook his head. "Don't try to change the subject."
"There is no subject."
"So what? You wear your hijab everywhere except at school just because?"
Nadia shrugged and turned her attention back to her homework.
"You know what I think, Nadia?"
"Mmm?"
"I think I told you about my father, I think I told you about Polo, I think I told you about Omar and Ander, and I think you won't tell me anything."
Nadia stiffened beside him. She'd heard words like this before, from Omar and from May. What had Omar said? I'm not an ice cube like you. She knew what was coming next. Still, she said, "And?"
Guzmán shifted beside her, pulled one leg up on the couch and placed an arm along the back. "And I want to know why. Do you not trust me?"
"You and your friends made a bet that you could take my virginity and I'm supposed to trust you?"
Guzmán's face hardened. He never liked it when she pointed out his mistakes. He liked even less when she reminded him the kind of friendships he'd kept before Marina's assault. "That was a year ago."
"And time heals all wounds?"
"No. But I've apologized. I thought you'd forgiven me. I thought we were friends."
Nadia took a deep breath. "I think I'll finish this at home." She closed her book and reached for her backpack.
"If you want to leave, fine." Guzmán said. "But I wasn't accusing you of anything. We've been coming here together for months, and you listened to me when I needed it. I just want to do the same."
"I'm not coming here so you'll be indebted to me, Guzmán," Nadia said. "I'm coming here because I care about Marina." She didn't say she cared about him.
"You shouldn't feel like you owe me just because—" Nadia stopped herself.
"Just because you're kind to me?" Guzmán offered. Nadia said nothing. Guzmán held up both his hands. "Nevermind then, forget it."
88
Some days later, Nadia was called into the principal's office. "You can wear it."
"Excuse me?" Nadia said, uncomprehending.
"Your scarf—excuse me—your headwear, you can wear it."
"My hijab?"
"Yes," Principal Muñoz said impatiently. Nadia couldn't really believe she was Ander's mother.
"May I ask," Nadia said cautiously, "if there has been a change in school policy, and if there has, why?"
Principal Muñoz looked surprised. "Are you unhappy with this development?"
"No," Nadia said.
"Then no, you may not ask. Please return to your class."
Nadia nodded and gave a soft "Thank you," but before she returned to class, she stopped by the girls' bathroom and put on the hijab she'd folded into her backpack earlier that morning.
Guzmán was already looking at the door when she walked back into class. He gave her a huge grin and mouthed "Nice hijab." Of course. It was just like him, wasn't it? A wave of his hand and the problem is gone. A policy that had targeted her specifically each and every day she had attended Las Encinas, that had regulated and punished who she was, how she presented herself to the world and practiced her faith, and with just a few words from Guzmán it was gone. Nadia did not return his smile.
That afternoon she headed to her family's grocery store. "Hey!" she heard behind her.
"Hey, wait up!" Nadia didn't change her pace, and Guzmán ran up next to her. "Aren't you going to see Marina?"
"No."
"Oh," he sounded disappointed. "Ok, then."
They continued walking in silence, and when they got to the part in the road where she had to turn left and he had to turn right, Guzmán asked her, "Will you come tomorrow?"
Nadia took a moment before she turned to face him. "You know, I don't think I can."
Guzmán frowned. "Nadia…are you mad at me?"
"No," Nadia said, "I'm furious."
Guzmán nodded slowly. "You're furious."
"Yes."
"With me."
"Yes."
"Because of this." He motioned towards her hijab.
Nadia slapped his hand and shouted, "Yes!"
"Why? I helped you!"
"Oh, please, you helped yourself." Nadia turned on her heel to leave.
"Hey," Guzmán took a hold of her arm and Nadia rounded on him. He held up both of his hands. "Tell me so that I understand. Why are you angry?"
But how could she explain it? She could barely think it clearly to herself.
"You wanted me to be able to wear my hijab, right?" she asked.
"Yes, of course," Guzmán said. He sounded like he was pleading.
"But what if you didn't?"
"What?"
"What if you didn't want me to wear it? Or what if you didn't care if I wore it or not?"
"But I do care. That's why I went to Muñoz."
"But Guzmán," and here Nadia took a step towards him. It was closer than she'd intended and she startled them both. She had to look up at him. "Guzmán," she said, her voice softer. She knew he could hear her, but she didn't move away when he leaned in closer to her. "Your caring or not is not the point. The point is you shouldn't get to decide whether or not I'm allowed to wear what I want and practice my faith as I see fit. And Muñoz or whomever else shouldn't get to, either. No one should."
"So what?" Guzmán said. His words were challenging her but his tone didn't match them. His voice was gentle. He didn't sound upset at all. His lids were low and his eyes kept flicking back and forth like he was trying to take in her whole face at once. "I shouldn't have gone? It would have been better if you still couldn't wear it?"
Nadia shook her head and took a step back. "You want me to be grateful for the power you have. You want me to be grateful that you felt like helping me. But what if you hadn't felt like it, Guzmán? It isn't fair."
Guzmán shoved his hands in his pockets and gave her a sullen look, one Nadia had seen before. It was almost a pout. She recognized it as one that came over him when he was hurt and frustrated but couldn't argue because he saw the truth in her words. She wondered if he understood everything she'd said, if he saw that when she told him they were different, this was part of it. He swallowed, stood still where he was, didn't move to close the distance she'd put between them. "I know you think I'm a bad person, Nadia, but I didn't do it to show off. I just wanted you to be comfortable. If I can do something for you, then I will."
Nadia took him in—his stubbornness equal to his loyalty, his vengefulness equal to his love. He always made such clear distinctions about who was his and who wasn't. And he looked after who he thought of as his. His sister. His father. His longtime friends. And what was she to him? His—what? But Nadia knew there was a fine line between belonging and control. She wouldn't accept the latter, just to have the former.
"Is that what you thought you were doing with my father? Something for me?" she asked him.
He didn't answer her.
"Would you really not have spoken to me? For how long? The whole term? Until we graduated?"
Guzmán didn't even look shamefaced. "I'd do it again if that's what I had to so you could stay at Las Encinas."
Nadia shook her head. Did he really not know? That part of the joy of Las Encinas for her was him? "Without even asking me?" she said.
At that Guzmán looked away. "Do you know?" he said quietly, "When I saw you at the hospital that first day I was actually happy. I felt so guilty but all I could think was how glad I was to be wrong. I wanted to thank your father for letting you see me."
"What does he have to do with it? You should thank me."
"Thank you." He said it easily, sincerely. He said it as though he were saying something else.
Nadia ducked her head. She held her books closer to her chest. She started walking again, this time in the direction of Marina's hospital. Guzmán fell in step with her. "Do you feel more comfortable now? At school?"
"I do," Nadia said. She didn't thank him, and Guzmán didn't ask her to.