Imaginary friends and imaginary readers, in this chapter I will need your opinions:

You see, this work will have a few complete dialogues and single words in Spanish... this is so because I thought it would serve to make the difference between before and after even more obvious... my question is the following: do you prefer to keep the dialogues in Spanish or to translate those few dialogues into English and just highlight them with italics?

02-. Near Fire

"Hey, what was that for?!" Lincoln didn't remember having done anything that made him deserve the punch, since he hadn't even missed a single comment about the lousy telenovela she was forcing him to watch, "Has anyone ever told you that you act like a cat at times?"

Frowning, Lincoln continued rubbing his arm. He looked quite annoyed, this, instead of putting a stop to the latin girl's attitude only managed to put a bigger smile on her face.

"I'm sorry Lincoln, it's just that something triggered me to punch you but I don't know what, I swear it wasn't on purpose!" And she wasn't lying, every time the two of them were alone, Ronnie Anne suffered a kind of nervous impulse that forced her to hurt the albino. "Here, let me help you with your poor wittle arm."

Neither the smile that remained glued to the girl's lips, nor the mocking voice with which she had said the last thing, helped much to improve the atmosphere between the two friends. Turning down the volume of the television and trying to sound as motherly as possible, Ronalda began to sing a song that her grandmother had taught her years ago.

"Sana, sana, culito de rana" Lincoln's face lit up when he felt his friend's lips touch his right arm just above the place where she had punch him, " sí no sanas hoy, será mañana…"

"Hey... What are you doing?" The boy didn't know how to react, the few times Ronnie was affectionate with him, she managed to stun him in every possible way. Feeling a second kiss on his arm, Lincoln was about to relax and let himself be pampered when he suddenly felt a cold row of teeth close just below his shoulder.

Again with a gesture on his face that clearly denoted annoyance, Lincoln turned to the right, only to find his friend with her mouth open and glued to his arm as she stared at him with a nervous expression. Despite knowing she'd been discovered, Ronnie Anne continued to bite playfully.

"All right! God knows I wanted to be good to you," Lincoln quickly and nimbly wrapped Ronnie in a hug making it impossible for her to move freely, "but he knows better than anyone that you brought this on yourself."

The girl didn't understand what all the dialogue or the spontaneous hug was about until she felt Lincoln's hands enter under her hoodie, a light squeeze just under her ribs made her back curl backwards like a piece of chewing gum as she let out a loud laugh that surely could be heard in the whole apartment.

"I always suspected you were a very ticklish girl," a creepy grin was beginning to form on the albino's haggard face. "The toughest girl in the whole state has a weakness in her costilithas."

"Come on, lame-o," Anne loved listening to Lincoln 'speak' Spanish, he got all the words so wrong that it was kind of adorable. She probably would have made some comment 'praising' Lincoln's ability to say costillitas if she hadn't had her mind on another priority, "let's act like the mature people we are and stop playing these games, shall we?"

"I don't remember you being very mature about punching or biting me," Ronnie could feel her pupils shrink in pure terror. "Oh yeah, I'm going to enjoy this."

The Latina tried to break free of the embrace and run, but Lincoln didn't loosen his grip one bit before squeezing her sides again causing Ronnie Anne to squirm again wrapped in nervous giggles.

"All right, all right! You win" After trying for a few minutes to return the tickle attack without much success and failing equally in her attempts to free herself from Lincoln's grip, the Latina girl had no choice but to give up. "Stop it or I'll pee!"

After a few minutes of forced breaths, in which both friends tried to catch their breaths, it was that Ronnie Anne realized how close their faces and bodies actually were: Lincoln was still on top of her, giggling softly, his hands still inside Ronnie's sweatshirt barely and sporadically rubbing her stomach.

Ronnie was frozen, held in the same spot by unseen forces, mesmerized by the smiling, pale-skinned, blemish-free face –except for his adorable freckles or the stubborn dark circles under his eyes that struggled to stay the same size and in the same place– that stood mere inches above hers.

In the last unconscious impulse of the evening, Anne closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his. Lincoln, in a state of surprise and nervousness, barely moved at first, limiting the first few moments to only touching his mouth to hers. After those awkward first seconds without changing position, it was he who began to slowly move his lower lip in small circles until he managed to slightly separate her relaxed lips. After making eye contact for a second, Lincoln slowly slid his tongue into the cinnamon-skinned girl's mouth, meeting it with his partner's to explore her taste. Though the move surprised her, it didn't bother Ronnie in the least who immediately began to mimic the albino. Suddenly they both began to feel very warm.

Their tongues met repeatedly in the midst of the endless kiss. Ronnie pressed as hard as she could against his 'not-boyfriend's' body with a moan caught in her throat. The heat increased drastically but instead of annoying the albino, it incentivized him to settle his hips between his just-friend's' legs.

The boy's hands had never left the warm atmosphere that formed between the girl's naked torso and her cotton hoodie. Since the whole tickling thing had started, he'd been holding her by the sides of her belly, but now, excited and emboldened, he slowly slid one hand down to her lower back, just above the place where the waist loses that name, and the other hand moved up even more slowly until his bare palm gently imprisoned the flesh that was just beginning to develop just above her heart.

"Stop it, Lincoln," Ronalda whispered in the middle of a moan without ever opening her eyes and without ever stopping kissing him. Instead of pushing him away with both hands on his face or kicking him in his family jewels as she thought she would do when the time came, the girl settled a little better under the boy and spoke again while breathing in the breath that Lincoln had left impregnated in her. "We can't... my family... Bobby, he's at Grandma's apartment."

Gone were the dull telenovela dialogue and the annoying noises coming through the open window from the street. All that occupied Ronnie Anne's attention was Lincoln's pleading gaze.

"We can't keep doing this in the middle of the living room... let's go to my room," She didn't understand why she felt like she was failing her mother and brother, but she knew this wasn't the time to think about 'good and bad' things, "… and there we can make more... more noise."

Lincoln stood up with a flushed face, allowing Ronnie Anne the freedom she needed to comb his hair back into its traditional ponytail. Both of their eyes slowly lowered to the albino's crotch «Wow! so that's what they call a 'circus tent'» thought the flushed girl.

"Lincoln... you... do you think... would you let me see it...?"

Lincoln's face lit up in a much deeper red than before. Dazed, he was about to answer hurriedly when a pair of feet kicked at the front door of the department at the same time, Bobby and Carl rushing in, obviously annoyed.

"SEE WHAT?!" shouted the older of the two.

-o-

The choking did the trick; the ten-year-old backed up a couple of steps, just enough to allow Ronnie Anne to unleash a straight punch right to his nose.

Carl spun uncontrollably on his heels and fell on his face without being able to reach in, his nose the first thing to smash cleanly against the wooden floor. The result was a small stream of blood that began to flow copiously, staining the boy's face red all over.

In a state of hysterical rage, the boy gave an almost animalistic scream before leaping to his feet and charging back at his cousin.

Ronnie Anne, anticipating the move, braced her right leg against the fridge to withstand the tackle, then, taking advantage of the blind momentum and applying a Judo technique that Lynn had taught her, she managed to reverse the situation by using the momentum of Carl's lunge to throw him back against the floor. Knowing she had the upper hand, Ronalda jumped to get on top of her cousin's body and pinned his arms using her legs. Once she managed to pin him to the ground, Ronnie began to launch a series of punches aimed exclusively at his face.

But with almost superhuman strength, Carl managed to lift his cousin off of him before slamming her against the refrigerator once more.

From the impact, Ronnie was about to lose consciousness and certainly had lost all desire to continue fighting. But the barrage of blows that Carl was throwing at her wouldn't stop. On the verge of panic, the latina started punching with all the strength she had left, not caring about having to restrain herself to avoid seriously hurting her little cousin. But the boy's body seemed so sinewy that for a moment she thought she was actually hitting rock. After the first few exchanges of punches Ronnie began to feel his knuckles sore from banging them so hard against his cousin's chest, but luckily for the Santiago girl, Carl had never bothered to learn how to fight properly.

Ronnie managed to plant her right foot on the crazed little junkie's torso before grabbing him by one of his wrists and spinning him around like a hammer thrower, thanks to the momentum gained Ronnie managed to throw Carl as far as she could straight into the living room. Wasting no time, the Latina smashed the little boy to the floor again and wrapping both hands around his neck she began to whip his head against the carpeted floor, seeing that the constant attack seemed to have no effect on the boy, Ronnie let out a scream of helplessness and panic before being silenced by a punch directed at her right temple.

-o-

The three o'clock alarm woke María up, prey to the bewilderment that accompanies all of us moments after waking up, the woman threw her hand towards where she thought the electronic alarm clock was. Her hand hit the void and the clock continued to ring.

"Ronnie, turn that crap off," she said in a half-voice, hoping that thanks to a miracle her daughter had heard her whisper, "I'm on night shift today and I won't be back until late..."

The alarm continued to sound unperturbed and ignored for a full minute. At the end of its sixty-second lapse the device turned itself off, allowing the nurse to sigh in relief and curl up again. She was about to go back to sleep when the device beeped again. The tired woman's eyes instantly widened, she had never set a second alarm before, she really didn't know if setting two consecutive alarms was possible. Wide awake and a little irritated, she reached out a hand to grab the device from her bedside table to turn it off for good by removing the batteries. «Surely Ronalda grabbed it again without permission» she thought.

Finally silencing the device, the nurse pulled the covers over her face, obviously it would be impossible for her to go back to sleep and as she remembered, her mother was serving lunch at four in the afternoon, just in time to watch the premiere episode of the series at the moment and barely leaving her enough time to wolf down the food and rush off to work. The clock showed that it was just over thirty minutes before CJ came into her room to let her know, ten minutes early as usual, that the table was already set.

"And I know how I'm going to use those thirty minutes," said María with a frown. "I hope that girl likes scrubbing floors and cleaning vases, because that's what she'll be doing for the rest of the week..."

Although she wasn't used to doing it and constantly scolded Bobby for always checking his cell phone, as she got out of bed María decided to check her phone for new messages, for the first time since Lori had given her the device she had a good reason to check the little screen every ten minutes.

The round, green Wassup symbol stood out from the rest of the apps with a small, bright red number one.

A.S: "Hi beautiful Will you be free this afternoon? I miss you."

The remaining grumpiness and drowsiness of her premature awakening vanished in an instant. Not bothering to feign indifference, as she did every time when the long-awaited message came at less than opportune moments, María let out a high-pitched squeak before rushing to reply with a silly grin in the middle of her burning face.

M.C: "Not until after my shift is over, I do have a job in a real hospital...I hope this time you do keep our date, I don't plan on ever waiting for you for two hours in a restaurant again."

Surprisingly, the answer didn't even take thirty seconds to arrive:

A.S: "Never again, you're my priority, rest easy cariño."

Never before had she been so glad that none of her children were inside the house, with an even bigger smile María closed the messaging app before mustering up the courage to send some cheesy or silly reply, she knew that if she kept messaging him that was something she would surely do and it was still too early to give up that much ground, she would have to make him try a little harder before she fell for his game… again.

She stood up with a jump and keeping her smile, instead of putting on her stiff white hospital uniform shoes, she chose a pair of slippers in the shape of a monkey's paw; although she had said to the four winds and to everyone she knew that she hated those slippers, the truth was that the furry pair was fun for her, of course, in normal conditions she wouldn't have bought them herself, but being a gift from him they acquired a unique charm and value.

She left her room wearing her comfortable pajamas, determined to ask her chief, the head nurse, for a day off, the first one she'd taken since she'd moved in with her parents, so she could tell her family about her 'secret' relationship.

«I just hope Frida didn't tattle anything by mistake,» the nurse thought mischievously, «or I'll make sure that the next time she has to get carpal tunnel treatment she's treated by a newbie intern.»

First she would break the news to her parents along with her daughter, that would undoubtedly be the hardest and scariest part for her. «God! It's ridiculous that at my age I'm nervous about telling my dad I'm dating someone.»

It was then, as she began to plan the perfect scenario to break the news to his son and daughter-in-law, just as she was crossing the living room of the apartment, that she felt the vibrations of a thud on the hardwood floor. Was it CJ tap dancing again? The last time he'd done it inside the apartment was months ago and then they'd received complaints from practically the entire building. Since that day the poor guy had been forbidden to practice anywhere but the rooftop and he'd never disobeyed... of course, until now.

But now María was in such a good mood that she didn't even feel like scolding her own daughter for messing with her alarm clock, much less did she want to scold her nephew for practicing an activity he was so good at in an inappropriate place. But she wouldn't let both teenagers go unpunished either; for little Carlos Junior a wake-up call would suffice and as for Ronalda, her daughter would still have to clean the floor... of her room at least.

That first thud was followed by two more, each one much louder than the last, before she heard one of her mother's vases crash to the floor.

With her heart pumping a thousand miles per second, María stood still as she held the doorknob of the door of her brother's apartment, had someone broken into her mother's house to steal? That made sense, everyone in the neighborhood knew that Rosa was the building manager. And if that was the case, would it be a good idea to break into the apartment? What had happened to CJ and her mother?

Luckily, the woman had her cell phone with her, she could feel the weight of the device in her pants pocket, even if a call to the police didn't assure that help would arrive in time, at least it would be enough to file a report with the public prosecutor and finally convince old man Scully, the owner of the building, to install an automatic gate... or at least hire a doorman.

«All right, María, first we'll call the police and then...» "¡Basta manito!" The hoarse voice of his eldest nephew sounded agitated and frightened in the apartment across the hall. "Stop it!"

As soon as her good mood, obtained thanks to the unexpected message from her ex-husband, turned to panic at the thought that she and her family were victims of an assault, the anger she woke up with took over again as she thought that all the fuss was because of another fight between children; «I'm sure that after this we'll get complaints again» María thought before opening the door of her mother's apartment.

There are many occasions when we wish we could have ignored a noise or avoided seeing a scene, and María Casagrande had just experienced, for the second time since her divorce, a similar situation: on one side of the large wooden dining room table, as if using it as a barrier between herself and the shocking scene, stood Mrs. Kernicky with her eyes wide open. To one side, just a few feet away from the kitchen, were the three middle grandchildren of the senile Casagrande couple engaged in a pitched battle of desperate kicking and blind pulling.

CJ was holding his little brother from behind in a futile attempt to pin his arms up, Carl was leaning down with all his weight, not paying much attention to the desperate cries of his older brother and Ronnie... the girl was writhing desperately with her face trapped between the floor and one of the cushions embroidered by Frida.

"Aunt!" CJ shrieked, his face flushed; he'd never found it so hard to contain Carl's tantrums. "The cushion! Help!"

María never liked physical punishment, especially if it was inflicted on a child, but she didn't have to think twice about approaching the little mob and putting her youngest nephew in a double-armed headlock, pinning his hands down while compressing his neck. Carl reacted strongly and violently as he felt himself being choked. His neck felt surprisingly stiff and muscular to the nurse's touch; a normal ten-year-old shouldn't have such developed musculature in that area. María had a good physical advantage, however, and as Carl found himself helpless and suspended in mid-air, he had to let go of the cushion and let Anne breathe, the girl collapsed coughing with her eyes closed amidst CJ's wails.

Carl struggled to free himself from his aunt's grip with a strength equal to that of a young adult, making it difficult for María to keep the lock tight enough around the boy's neck.

"¡Usted que mierdas ve Kernicky!" shouted the nurse in Spanish as she began to feel her strength weakening. "Do something, dammit!"

The white-haired woman finally snapped out of it, blinking a couple of times and moving forward to help her neighbor hold Carl as the boy's movements became more erratic... but halfway there she stopped. Kernicky was looking at Carl's face as if something was really wrong there, but because she had him pinned backwards María couldn't see what it was. CJ's similar reaction to seeing his little brother's face alarmed María, thinking that the boy was dying, and she loosened the pressure on her arms as soon as she felt the little body stop moving.

Carl fell to the ground with a crash and slowly rolled over until he was on his back, his face bathed in blood. In addition to the familiar red liquid gushing from his nose, there was also a small trail of phosphorescent green liquid coming out of his nose. The calling to be a nurse rose from the back of María's mind as she saw the strange substance beginning to stain the collar of the boy's shirt.

"Aunt... María…? Help me... make it stop, please," The Latina woman bent down to inspect the boy's beaten face in detail. «My baby put up a good fight against this crazy creep» María thought as she caught her breath and began to calm down... at least until the maniacal scream she suddenly heard paralyzed her.

Mrs. Kernicky had come over to help Ronnie up, yet she never got close enough to the girl to rest one of her bony hands on her shoulders. Before she was even two steps away, the girl stood up without touching the ground with her hands, her face distorted in a clenched-toothed grin, her skin redder than tan. As she stood fully upright, Ronnie gave another deafening, high-pitched scream. It reminded María of the sound of a kettle boiling.

The nurse watched as her daughter slipped one of her hands into the pocket of her hoodie while her eyes glowed mischievously like a pair of yellow embers.

Fearing the worst and completely nervous at what her daughter would be able to do in her state, María ran to Ronnie Anne before she could use the weapon she surely wanted to pull out and with her right hand, María firmly grasped the hand with which her daughter was looking for inside the pocket of her hoodie. As she touched her daughter, María felt the girl's skin burn before she felt the burning in her own body. Then she saw large, vivid flames gushing from between her clothes, but what shocked her the most before she lost consciousness was watching in terror as her daughter was being consumed by the fire.

As the pain of her burning skin ended what was left of her consciousness, María watched as CJ rushed into the bathroom while screaming in terror:

"¡EL DIABLO!"