When I get home, I’m itching to go upstairs and have a look in Graham’s office. But Camila won’t leave me alone. We have lunch together, then she plops down next to me on the sofa and picks up the remote control.
“What do you feel like watching?” she asks.
I frown at the TV. I didn’t bring up to Camila the possibility that she saw me talking to Harry, and neither did she. But it’s all I can think about. “What are my options?”
“Basically, anything. We can rent any movie you want. And most TV shows are available streaming.”
“Really?” It’s an interesting concept but slightly overwhelming. How can you decide on anything if your options are everything? “So say I wanted to watch The Princess Bride? I could just do it?”
Camila snickers. “Unfortunately, yes. We have watched that movie five billion times. Ballpark estimate.”
When I was a kid, my mother and I used to watch The Princess Bride at least once a month. It was our favorite movie to watch together. My father started teasingly calling me Princess Buttercup （or Princess for short）。 My greatest fear used to be of six-fingered men—until I found out my mother had cancer, and I found out there were a lot of things to be afraid of beyond men with the wrong number of fingers. After she was gone, my father never called me Princess again.
But I still love the movie. It always makes me think of the before time with my mother. It’s my favorite way to remember her.
“Five billion is a lot,” I say. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“Liar,” Camila says.
“Fine. Let me make it up to you. What do you want to watch?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I’m not much of a TV person.”
“Even when you were a kid?” I think back to my childhood. When I was little, my mother would only let me watch Sesame Street. As I got to be older, I was allowed more television privileges, but she was still pretty strict about my screen time. Of course, after she was gone, my father let me watch whatever I wanted. “I spent most of my non-school hours in front of the television when I was a teenager.”
She taps a finger against her chin. “After school every day, I would go to my grandmother’s house and we would watch telenovelas. She had two of them she was really into, and I would get into them too. I couldn’t wait to get home and see if, like, Luisa would go through with killing Alberto.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Did she?”
“Of course she did. It’s a telenovela!” Camila gives that throaty laugh. “God, I haven’t thought about that in years. I used to go to my grandmother’s house every day. And then I remember one day my mother said I couldn’t go anymore. She said Abuelita wasn’t feeling well. She didn’t tell me until two months later that she had died.”
“Oh no! They didn’t tell you for two months?”
“I know, can you imagine?” She scowls. “I don’t know what they thought would happen. Maybe I would forget her and stop asking? I even missed the funeral because of them. They should have just told me the truth. I… I’ll never forgive them for that.”
Camila is looking down at her hands. I’m not sure what to say. I want to comfort her, but at the same time, I hardly know her. Even though she knows me very well.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
She takes a moment to respond. “It’s fine. Like I said, it was many years ago. I haven’t thought about it in so long.” She lifts her eyes. “So what would you like to watch? A movie? A TV show?”
Somehow, I have lost all my enthusiasm for television. “Actually,” I say, “I’d sort of like to read. Where are my books?”
She nods at the corner of the room, where there’s a five-shelf wooden bookcase overflowing with paperbacks. “Over there. But you don’t read often. I mean, usually.”
I used to like to read, so that sounds strange. “How come?”
“You said it’s frustrating. If you don’t finish the book in one day, you’ve forgotten everything that happened and you have to start all over again. For a while, you would write yourself notes on what had already happened in the book, but then you stopped doing it.”
“Oh.” It makes sense. And it’s a depressing thought. “I don’t feel like watching any TV right now though.”
Camila gives me a long look. Finally, she gets to her feet. “I’m going to go to the kitchen. Give me a yell if you need anything.”