Chapter Twenty-Four: The Smile Has Left Your Eyes
"We have to send her away," Amada insisted.
"I know," said Javier. "I don't know what has happened to our daughter. But she has to go."
"It's too late to send her to my mother," Amada replied, her voice tired.
"I know," he sighed.
Manny was locked in her bedroom. Her mirror had been dragged out of her room. So had her bed. Everything was gone. Her walls were blank, all her posters gone. It looked like no one lived here. She knew it had happened before she arrived in her room. Most of her things were in the hallway.
Are we moving? Manny asked.
No, baby, we're not moving, her mother replied.
Am I going away?
Yes. I'm sorry.
Where am I going?
Manny had begun to fall back into herself. She remembered what had happened, but it felt like a distant dream. Like someone else had taken over her. She couldn't fathom what she had done, couldn't accept it as a reality.
She had broken down. She had broken down and terrified everyone around her. Mr. Raditch, of course, composed himself and called her home. But it was after she had already arrived to all her furniture, pictures, posters—all her everything—was in the hallway.
Slowly she began to arrive back into her own mind. Whatever had snapped inside her was fading away.
She knew she had to go, she knew there was no getting out of it. They'd send her away. To somewhere that was probably worse than twenty Viviana's combined.
Manny didn't understand what was happening to her. Sure, she had been depressed, and sure, she was confused, but she didn't understand just how she could act like that. How she could have a nervous breakdown like she so obviously did.
Her mother had come into her room half an hour ago with a pair of scissors. She thought maybe if she fixed Manny's hair, it would fix Manny faster. She had parted Manny's hair down the side so as to cover the spots where it was ripped out, and cut the rest of it to her ears. There were still spots where it didn't work, but it looked almost intentional for style rather than Manny's mental collapse.
Manny knew her mother had read her diary. Read her life's story, how quickly it all seemed that Manny had changed.
She knew the truth, that her "Blue Eyes" was a girl, and that Manny wasn't interested in the opposite gender.
That alone was a mortal sin to her mother. She was strictly anti-homosexuality, but it seemed to no longer be the top on her list of things to chastise Manny about.
Manny realized her mother was sort of afraid of her.
She felt her neck, tears sliding down her face, and hoped it had worked, and this was all some weird post-mortem dream.
"Her principal called again. Have you checked her stomach, Amada?"
"I couldn't bare to," Amada said, choking back a sob.
Javier put his arms around his wife. "I understand."
Amada wept. She wept for her lost daughter, her lost cause of a daughter. Javier felt his heart breaking, but he couldn't allow himself to cry. Even now, he refused himself the privilege of letting out his emotions. Even with Manny so far gone, he couldn't do it.
Upstairs, they heard a window smashing. Amada looked at her husband in horror, and both began the race upstairs. Stumbling over Manny's belongings in the hallway, Javier made it first and burst through the door.
But they were wrong, very wrong.
Manny hadn't broken the window to slit her wrists.
She was gone.