i. "It's not about having a good time. You want to fill the void left by Marina." "Nadia, please, don't bring that up now." "Guzmán, listen to me."
The day Polo returned to Las Encinas Guzmán beat him bloody. He'd already slammed Polo into a wall and kicked him repeatedly before three teachers were able to wrestle him back. They held him by the arms, by the neck, were shouting in his ear for him to stop, and still he surged against them, snarling.
When Principal Muñoz came, phone in her hand and school nurse rushing up behind her, she suspended Guzmán for a week. He threw a string of expletives at her, both for her and for Ander, words so denigrating it was like he'd had them tailor made for the fury in him. He wrenched himself from the grip of the teachers holding him back and pointed his finger in her face. "You're a fucking failure. My sister was murdered under your watch, and what did you do? What have you done? What the fuck are you still doing here?" He opened his arms wide, stepping back from her, turning in a circle and staring at the ring of people who'd gathered to watch him. His eyes were wide, like he was on a drug, and ringed red, and Polo's blood stained his knuckles and his white school shirt. "Why the hell is this motherfucker here?" He screamed this at Principal Muñoz. But all she did was stand calmly with her arms crossed over her chest. "Two weeks," she said. "Continue and you will not return to this school."
Guzmán spit in her face.
Nadia watched this from the edge of the students who circled the scene. She hadn't called anyone to come stop Guzmán this time, not because she thought he was right, but because she'd already told him what she thought of his using violence wherever Marina was concerned. She knew stopping him this once wouldn't stop him in the future. Even before Marina's murder he'd beaten a classmate to within an inch of his life. Marina'd thought of her HIV status as unfortunate, an accident, but Guzmán had thought of it as an act of violence directed against her, and he'd answered with one of his own.
There was something between him and Marina, a line like some kind of live wire that made him feel the only way he could answer for her was with his fists and a show of power. Nadia could see the way he answered every other frustration he had — his father using drugs, Lu making a public performance out of their relationship — with sarcasm or resignation or intimidation; it was only with Marina that it turned into something more. She wasn't sure what it was, didn't think that if someone hurt her, or if someone hurt Omar, that either of them would react like Guzmán, but it made her want to ask him about Marina. In the eight months since her death they'd only just brushed up against her absence. Nadia had never seen him cry, had never heard him say he missed Marina, and she herself had never told him that Marina was the first friend she'd made at Las Encinas, a person she'd told things to that she hadn't shared with anyone else.
When the crowd parted to let Guzmán through, Nadia caught sight of his face. Everything was so stark on it — there, mixed in with his freckles and his widow's peak, his grief; there, his rage; there, the emptiness he felt in the face of a dead sister. Nadia didn't look away, but held his gaze so that he knew she saw past the spectacle he put on.
The next day, as news of Guzmán's suspension wound its way through Las Encinas, through group chats and whispers at desks, Nadia went to Muñoz's office. She felt a sense of trepidation standing there. The last time she'd been there Muñoz had told her she couldn't wear her hijab on school grounds. Nadia held her notebook close to her chest and when Muñoz asked how she could be of help she had to clear her throat twice before her voice came out even.
"I'm wondering if you intend to expel Guzmán."
A look of confusion passed over Muñoz's face. "Excuse me?"
"I think it would be a mistake," Nadia said. "I think you should show him leniency, as he's a student here. The stated principle of the school is a commitment to a liberal education, and the board of directors makes a point of avoiding shaping students through punishment and discipline." She'd prepared these words the night before in her room, writing them down and practicing them in front of the mirror. She was so used to agreeing with her professors and other authority figures, to trusting their judgment, used to pleasing them and being praised by them; it felt strange to be questioning one.
Muñoz folded her hands together and considered Nadia with a furrowed brow. "Am I to understand you're here to ask me to allow Mr. Osuna to remain at Las Encinas?"
"Yes," Nadia said.
Muñoz laughed. "Ms. Shanaa, I've known Guzmán since he was a child. His family has donated to this school since its inception, and in fact are the reason for your enrollment. He hardly needs his case plead by you."
Nadia took in a sharp breath. She remembered how powerless she'd felt that first day at Las Encinas, when Muñoz had called her in and told her to remove her hijab. Nadia couldn't understand her. Muñoz had fabricated a rule that only affected her, and yet she'd taken Omar in. She covered up an innocent student who Guzmán and her own son had assaulted, but wanted to punish Guzmán for doing the same to the person who'd murdered Marina. She'd been the one to out Omar to their father, a blunder that had meant closer watch and more restrictions for Omar; all summer long he and Ander had only been able to see each other for a few minutes a day, and his every move had been watched and accounted for. But now Muñoz, someone Nadia thought of as a stranger, saw her brother more often than she did. All summer Nadia had watched the tension in her family and had been able to do nothing to ease it, a feeling of uselessness she hadn't been familiar with because she'd always thought that every problem had a solution, if only you worked hard enough for it.
"You don't act like you've known Guzmán all his life," Nadia said. "You don't even act like you know he's a student under your care. He's right. Marina was killed here. She was sixteen years old. I'm older than she was now, and so is Guzmán, and so is Ander. I think, considering the circumstances, you can excuse his behavior."
"Excuse his spitting in my face?"
"No, excuse his grieving in public."
Principal Muñoz nodded slowly. "I can see your intelligence, Nadia, and your compassion. We value those traits here. But it is not your place to defend a student who has broken near every rule of this school, who has personally insulted me, and done so flauntingly, and it's certainly not your place to tell me how to do my job. Do you understand?"
Nadia understood that if she weren't a scholarship student, if her parents had enough money to lend their complaints power, she would not have been given a lecture about the limits of what she was allowed. She'd fought to stay at the school, argued with her father for it. She didn't need anyone to tell her what her place at Las Encinas was because she earned it every day with her work and her grades, protected it when someone tried to take it from her. Maybe Muñoz was right to say that Guzmán didn't need her to defend him. But Nadia had more than Guzmán on her mind. She had what she felt for him, and what she owed both him and herself because of those feelings.
"I do," she said finally. She made her voice purposefully soft, lowered her head so she wouldn't seem uncooperative or argumentative. "But I hope you'll still consider what I've said."
On his first day back at Las Encinas Guzmán walked straight up to Polo where he stood at his locker. He placed a hand on Polo's shoulder, gentle almost, a gesture asking him to step aside. Then he punched a dent into his locker. He looked Polo straight in the eye, not saying a word, and started punching the wall next to it, one, two, three times, kept punching until his blood smeared the brick. He stopped only when Principal Muñoz arrived. No teachers held him back. The ring of students this time was wider, as if they were afraid if they came too close he'd turn on them. Principal Muñoz simply said, "That's enough," and Guzmán stopped. He let his hand drop to his side, and Nadia saw it hanging there, limp, skin and flesh peeling off to show tender pink and white underneath. Polo was ashen and shaking.
At the emergency room, doctors told Guzmán's parents he'd broken his hand in three places and that he'd need two operations. Six weeks in the hospital, long enough for a confession from Ander, for Cayetana's mother to come forward with the trophy that had been used to murder Marina, and for Polo to be put under house arrest while awaiting trial. For those six weeks Guzmán's seat remained empty in the classes Nadia shared with him shared, and she heard little from him. She missed him. She wasn't surprised that she did, but she was surprised by how much. It wasn't a feeling that could be put aside while she focused on studying or counting down the drawer in the shop at night. It inched into even the smallest moments of her days. She missed him when she brushed her teeth in the morning and realized she wouldn't see him that day, missed him when she sat at the edge of the pool during Phys Ed, missed him when she opened her notebook and found random notes and scribbles he'd made in it. She was so full of longing for him it felt like an ache. She carried it around like a sack of water tied to her chest.
She found herself thinking of how Guzmán walked down the hallways, with long strides and shoulders squared, and then of how when she kissed him he bent his head to her, how the back of his neck felt under her fingers, and how when he was turned on even the tips of his ears flushed red. She thought of her first impression of him, that he was loud and arrogant and too assured of his place in the world. She hadn't been wrong, she knew those things about him were true; but now she also knew that he was loyal to a fault, and that he didn't adhere to ideologies but instead centered himself around people, and that allowed him a pliancy, an ability to accept people when they changed, when they were different from what he knew of them, and not turn away from them. She thought of what he was like with her when they were alone, of her favorite things about him — his teasing, his flirting, how intensely earnest he could be — and of what people thought when they heard the name Guzmán Nunier Osuna. She realized there was a difference. It wasn't that one was more real than the other, or that he showed her something more authentic. It was that he chose who he wanted to be with different people. Nadia wasn't sure if even he knew he did this. And even when he was hard and ice cold, on the edge of rage, he could slip into vulnerability so easily. Each emotion was so easy for him to access and express, and it made Nadia realize how deeply she kept whatever she felt, how she had to search inside herself to bring it to the surface. He operated as though he would destroy anyone who hurt the people he loved, and it was true that he would try. But Nadia noticed that when the people he loved got hurt, he ended up getting himself hurt, too. The drinking, the drugging, even the fighting; it was like he was looking to be punished.
When Guzmán was let out of the hospital, Nadia wanted to soak him up. She wanted make up for all the time he'd been away from her, be greedy and save up in case she ever had to be without him again, but she wasn't sure how to do this. He was so much better than she was at showing her he wanted her, at acting on it. She wanted to tell him how stupid he'd been, to hurt himself so badly for no reason, but she didn't know how to say it without it sounding like reproach.
He was given leave to miss class and attend physical therapy thrice weekly. Nadia lent him her notes to help him catch up. She didn't always have time in the afternoons after school because she had to head straight back to the shop, so some days she woke up earlier and got to school before it officially opened. Guzmán would wait for her there, a cup of tea he'd brought for her from home in his hand, and together they'd head to the library, where they'd sit across from each other at a table, Nadia explaining her notes as they went along. He couldn't write very well and had to type his notes on his laptop. It was a slow process, made slower by how he kept trying to play footsie with her, and Nadia watched him closely as his fingers moved across the keyboard. Every few minutes he'd flex his hand and shake out his wrist.
One morning he said to her, "You're always so serious when we study."
Nadia could tell Guzmán knew she was upset, but she didn't know if he could tell that it wasn't at him. Instead of answering, she reached across the table and took his hand. It was larger than hers, his fingers long, his nails cut short. The scarring over his knuckles had healed, but Nadia remembered the mess he'd made of his skin, how the brick had scrubbed through it almost to the bone underneath. Delicate scars showed across the back where the doctors had cut and made incisions for his operations. They stood up from his skin, red and thin. Nadia traced them with her forefinger, turned his hand over and traced the lines on his palm.
Guzmán stayed still as she studied his hand. His voice was soft when he said, "I'm okay. Look." He held his hand up and touched his thumb to his forefinger, his middle finger, his ring finger, his pinky, repeated the process in the other direction. "I just learned that this week. Genius, huh?" He gave her a grin.
"That's not funny," Nadia said.
Guzmán looked own, chastised. "It doesn't hurt," he said. "Honest."
Nadia reached for his hand again. "Can you promise me something?" she asked.
"What?"
"Promise me you won't do this anymore."
Guzmán gave a humorless laugh. "I didn't do anything. I should have bashed his skull in like he did to Marina and instead all I did was fuck up my hand. I can't even make a fist anymore."
Nadia curled his fingers into his palm and rubbed her thumb across his knuckles. Then, with just a second of thought, she brought her lips to the back of his hand and placed a soft kiss there. She nuzzled her nose against it, spread his palm against her cheek and held it there with her own hand covering his. Guzmán's eyes went wide as he looked at her. She rarely ever showed such tactile affection in public, didn't even like it when he brushed at the strands of hair at her temple.
"Promise me?" she said again. "Promise you won't hurt yourself just because you're angry."
"Nadia—" he said pleadingly.
"It scares me. This is just your hand, but what's next? What if you hurt yourself in a way that can't be fixed? What'll you leave for me? Promise me."
Guzmán looked at her for a long moment before answering her. His face was stony. Nadia knew how seriously he took promises, and that what she was asking of him wasn't as simple as just saying the words. But she needed this from him, needed him to know she cared, and that she wanted him to care, too, about himself as much as anyone else.
"I promise," he said finally.
"Can you still do this?" Nadia said, and he gave her a curious look. She hooked her pinky finger around his, then brought her thumb up. Guzmán's face broke into a grin, genuine this time, and not just meant to placate her, and he brought his own thumb up to touch hers.
The first time she found the courage to hold Guzmán's hand as they walked down a school hallway together, his grip was light. Nadia knew it was because he couldn't flex his hand any closer, but it was all right. She could hold on tight enough for the both of them.
88
Between studying for exams, working at the shop, earning extra cash by tutoring, and finishing her applications to college, Nadia didn't have much free time; but she tried her best to find time for just her and Guzmán alone. He liked inviting her over to his place, and on days when his parents weren't home Nadia would push him back onto his bed, climb over him, and kiss him to her heart's content. They didn't always have sex. Sometimes they just talked and kissed and pet each other, and Guzmán, even when he snuck his hands under her shirt or whispered something outrageous in her ear, never pushed her.
They were sprawled out together on his bed with the TV on mute. Guzmán lay with an arm behind his head, one leg bent at the knee. He was in his underwear, and his chest was bare. He'd put music on and had his eyes closed, but Nadia was looking around his room. It was a little messy, but not dirty. In her own room she had her bed piled up with pillows, and on her shelves were books she'd had since she was young, things her mother and May had read to her. She had three lamps that varied in brightness because she liked choosing which to use based on her mood, and her furniture was all wood, sturdy, heavy things her parents had brought over with them years ago from Palestine. But Guzmán's room just had a bed and a desk and chair in it. It'd surprised her the first time she'd seen it because it clashed so strongly with how she thought of him—fussy and overprotective. She'd expected to find something like a coin collection or model ships, something she could tease him about, but instead it looked like all he did in it was sleep. The only thing that told her it was his room were the boxes stacked up in a corner, all marked with Marina's name.
"You want it?" Guzmán asked, interrupting her thoughts.
"Hmm?"
He looked down. Without noticing, Nadia had been playing with the bracelet he wore. "Oh, sorry," she said, but he just shook his head. He sat up and took the bracelet off.
"Here," he said, and clasped it on her. It was warm with his heat, and lighter than she'd expected. He did this often, gifted her pretty things without her asking. In her room she had flowers he'd gotten her just the other day, and a copy of The Little Prince he'd found on a cart outside a bookstore, an edition from when it'd first been translated into Spanish. She wriggled her wrist and let his bracelet drop down her arm, then back down to her hand.
"Looks good on you," Guzmán said. He lay down again, pulled her by the waist so she was close to him, and started mouthing at her neck. Nadia smiled and scratched her nails through the hair at the back of his head, cradling him to her. He was letting his hair grow out agin.
"Guzmán," she said.
"Yeah?" he nuzzled closer to her.
"Why do you still have Marina's stuff in here?"
He stilled.
"It's been over a year," Nadia said quietly.
Guzmán shrugged out of their embrace. She caught sight of his face before he turned from her. He looked annoyed, but Nadia knew it was his default face for when he was distressed. He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. He did this every time she tried to talk to him about Marina; he ignored her and tried to change the subject, and if she wouldn't let him he'd point blank tell her to drop it. Nadia sat up, folded her legs underneath her. In front of her, Guzmán had his shoulders curled in on himself. "It's getting late," he said. "I can drive you home."
He was right. If she didn't leave soon she'd hear an earful from her father when she got home. But instead of moving off the bed Nadia inched closer to him. She first lay a hand against his back and let it rest there, then she pressed herself up against him, brought her arms around him, hugging him from the back, her legs folded on either side of him.
"Don't tell me to go," she said. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder.
Guzmán made no notice of her at first, but then he brought a hand up and held on to her arm. They stayed that way for a long time, quiet, unmoving, their breathing syncing up, until Guzmán said, "I'm not throwing all her shit away."
"Of course not," Nadia said. "That's not what I'm asking you. But maybe…" she let her words trail off. She wasn't sure exactly what she wanted, just knew that she missed Marina and wanted to talk to Guzmán about her.
She didn't think anyone knew how close she and Marina had been, and it wasn't until her sudden, brutal absence that Nadia realized how much a part of her life Mariana had become. She missed how playful Marina was, how gentle, how unafraid she was of other people and how that made it easy for her to reach out in friendship. Nadia even missed how selfish she was, the way she followed what she wanted without much regard to how it would affect someone else. She'd been so different from Nadia, with her anger at her parents, how unbeholden to them she felt, and how she'd always chosen herself, even when that had meant hurting people she cared about.
Nadia had never found it easy to make friends, but Marina had reached past her defenses with her kindness and her brashness, and it had changed her. How easily she fell in with Rebeca and Val, it was only because with Marina she'd seen that friendship didn't have to be based on similarities, that sharing a real closeness with someone didn't mean you had to share the same values. With Marina friendship had meant seeing someone for who they are and allowing them to be that person. For most of her life Nadia had felt that what she wanted for herself separated her from the people around her. That was what Lu hated so much about her, wasn't it? That being true to something she believed in was more important to her than being accepted? Lu confused the certainty with which she held on to her faith and what it asked of her for a pretense of moral superiority, and for the longest time Nadia had taken that reaction to her and internalized it. But with Marina she'd seen that any good relationship, anything real, could handle differences without turning sour or collapsing. She'd told Marina her recklessness made her scared she'd be lost like her sister, and Marina had told her that she needed to live a little. They hadn't met in the middle, exactly, but it had brought them closer.
Marina hadn't been her sister, her death couldn't mean the same thing to her as it did to Guzmán, but there had to be something they could share of her, something that could ease the pain they both felt. "…Maybe even just—just unpacking them?" Nadia said.
Guzmán stayed silent beneath her. "I could help you," she offered quietly. Her voice was very, very soft. She didn't know if he'd heard her.
Carefully, so much so that she didn't even jostle the bed, Nadia pulled herself from Guzmán and made her way over to one of Marina's boxes. Guzmán's boxes, really. She lifted one off the top of a pile and placed it on the floor. The flaps were creased, like the box had been opened and closed regularly. She opened it delicately and peered inside. It wasn't packed very well. The things in it looked like they'd been rifled through and then put back in without any thought. Nadia started pulling them out, one by one. She held each item in her hand, inspecting it closely, trying to place where it would have fit into Marina's life. She took a snow globe out. It had two little figures inside of it in ice skates holding hands, and across the base it read, 'Holding you in my heart.'
"Our grandmother gave that to her," came Guzmán's voice.
Nadia looked back at him. He'd been quiet the entire time she'd been unpacking the box. He was just watching her, one elbow on his knee, his jaw in his hand. His face was red and splotchy, but he hadn't been crying. "Turn it over," he said.
On the bottom was a little winding key. Nadia turned it, and a wistful little tune came out. "Back when we were little, my parents used to take us to visit our grandparents on my mother's side," Guzmán said. His voice was only just louder than the song from the snow globe. "They liked to travel a lot, so we never met them in the same place. And Marina was always confused because she thought they didn't have a home. Like, she thought the reason why we never stayed with them at their house was because they didn't have one." Guzmán swallowed and ran a hand through his short hair. Nadia could tell it was difficult for him to say any of this to her, but she didn't stop him.
"And then this one time, I remember we were visiting them in France, in Brittany or something, and we were leaving to come back home, and Marina started crying and wouldn't stop. She thought we were abandoning them, our grandparents. She was convinced we wouldn't be able to find them the next time we wanted to see them, and she didn't want to leave them, especially our grandmother. They were really close. And then a few weeks after we got back this came in the mail. Our grandma had it custom made."
Guzmán stood, came over and crouched down next to Nadia. He pointed at the smaller figure. "Look," he said. Nadia did, and saw that it had curly red hair. "Marina," she breathed.
"Yeah," Guzmán said. "And that's our grandmother." The other figure had grey curls tucked under a winter hat. "Marina actually had that scarf and coat the figure's wearing. They're in here somewhere, in one of these boxes. She never threw them out cause of this thing."
And they went on like that, Nadia pulling items out of the box and Guzmán telling her about them. A Strokes t-shirt, "She snuck out to see them once. Followed them for three tour stops before my dad went to get her"; tap shoes with ribbons as laces, "She liked ballet more, though"; a beautiful little jewelry case, but inside were just hair bands, "I gave that to her, she was always losing them and running out"; a trophy that read, 'Marina Nunier Osuna - First Place,' "She always won everything, there's a whole other box of her trophies somewhere here."
When the box was emptied and the floor around them covered with Marina's things, Nadia picked the snow globe up again. She stood up with it, walked around Guzmán's room. She stopped by his desk, then by his window, then finally stood before the shelf that ran behind his bed. She placed the snow globe there, turned it so that miniature Marina and her grandmother were facing toward the door. Nadia turned to Guzmán. "Help me," she said.
But Guzmán din't move. He just looked at her with grief and weariness on his face and weighing on his shoulders and arms, this time without any anger to hide it. Nadia went to him, bent down and reached for his hand. "Help me," she said again. She tugged on his arm. "Help me."
Together, silently, they walked around his room, finding places for Marina's things. Halfway through Guzmán pulled her into a hug, so that she had her back to his front. "Thank you," he said. He kissed her shoulder through the fabric of her shirt. A response to the earlier kiss she'd given him. "I love you."
A rush of feeling came over Nadia when he said it, and it mixed in with the longing she was feeling for Marina. Nadia turned in his arms and hid her face against him. They stood holding each other, and then they were kissing, and then they were sinking down to the floor together, where Guzmán let her rest her body against his.
The jewelry box with the hair ties was next to his leg. Nadia picked it up. "Can I have this?"
"It's yours." Guzmán kissed her forehead. "I can listen, too," he said.
Nadia took her time before she spoke. There was a mess of feeling inside her, and she wanted to step away from it, consider it from a distance and order them one by one. But it was hard to do when one flowed into the other, when some had the same shades and colorings.
"I just miss her," she said. That was the first thing, and it was simple. The next words came slowly, and it was almost like she was talking to herself, trying to figure out what it was she meant. "I feel like…she knew me in a way other people didn't…and she took that part of me with her. Or maybe it's that she changed me and now she's not here anymore, and I don't know what to do with it. I want to share things with her, but I can't. I want to ask her things, but I can't."
Nadia looked up to see Guzmán's reaction. If he looked uncomfortable or heartbroken, if from his face she could tell he couldn't take her talking about Marina this way, she would stop. But his gaze was gentle, and he waited for her to continue. Nadia took a deep breath. "I guess…I think maybe she was my best friend, and I didn't even realize it. I hadn't been so close to someone since my sister."
"Your sister?"
"Yeah. She was older than me. I told Marina about her."
"Did she—"
"No, no." Nadia's stomach swooped painfully even at the thought. "I—I don't know. She left us, my family I mean. And we don't know where she is now."
Guzmán tightened his arms around her and Nadia burrowed into his embrace. "Marina reminded me so much of her. She told me we were young, and we had to do everything to live our lives while we still could." Nadia's 'shes' were getting mixed up, and she didn't know if Guzmán could follow her, but he didn't interrupt her. "She wanted so much, and she wanted it without compromise. I didn't understand that back when she was with us."
"Is that what this is about?" Guzmán asked.
"This?"
"Your hijab," he said, "kissing me?"
Nadia shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. Sometimes I think Marina was right, but sometimes I think she was just lonely. This…it's—" she cut herself off, shook her head. "I'm sorry I'm so difficult."
Guzmán touched her arm with the tips of his fingers, a caress and a gesture of reassurance. "No," he said. "Tell me what you were gonna say."
Nadia turned to face him again, and he was looking at her in that way he did, intense, focused, as if everything in him were filled up only with her. Nadia reached up and touched fingers to his chin. Sometimes it was hard for her to believe she could have him like this.
"…This, between you and me, I want it. This is something I want." It wasn't 'I love you,' but it was the closest she'd come to telling him what she already knew.
"Tell me more about your sister," Guzmán said, and Nadia did.