Ysenia scrunches up her nose. “Too far. That is seriously disgusting, Lizette.”
Angel flushes. “You’re not being fair.”
“What the fuck is fair? She’s not fair. Just because she thinks you’re so great, Angel. What makes you so much better than any of us?”
“I’m not better,” Angel says, stung. The argument is moving too swiftly, she can’t grasp it. She stands before Lizette, but now Lizette is glaring stubbornly at her lap. Angel longs to touch her, but doesn’t know if she’s allowed to touch her at this stage of their relationship or whatever it is, and plus they’re in public, and she’s lost track of the distinction between what’s a normal gesture and what could give them away. “We need this program.”
Angel is about to put an arm around her, to draw her close, but then Ysenia is kneeling before Lizette on the carpet, both arms encircling her. “It’s okay, Liz.” Lizette drops her head onto Ysenia’s shoulder and shuts her eyes. Her expression releases in a way it never has with Angel.
“She’s not a bad person, and when we leave we’ll have options.” Angel is panicky. “Like, we could go to college. We could move away.”
From the knot of Ysenia’s arms, Lizette raises her green eyes to Angel as if she’s the only one in the room. Between the heavy swaths of hair, her face is open, needing, and the sight of it guts Angel. Lizette is asking her for help.
If only they could be alone. If only everything keeping them apart—school and Brianna and illness and their babies—could be swept aside, and they could be pressed against each other. Then they could talk properly.
She moves toward Lizette, arms out. “Just go along with it, Lizette.”
What was open in Lizette’s face now snaps shut. She narrows those eyes and Angel freezes. Her mouth—that beautiful mouth—lifts in a sneer. “Go along with it. Right.” She seems to come to a decision. “Fuck this.” Lizette doesn’t even sound mad anymore, just resigned. She extracts herself from Ysenia’s clasp and stands, sweeps her belongings from her desk—papers, lip gloss, journal, hand sanitizer, pacifier, pens—dumps them into her purse, swings the purse onto her shoulder, and then she’s out the door and down the hall toward the nursery.
“Wait,” says Jen, and several of the girls call, too, but only Angel follows her.
“Lizette!”
She wheels around. “Fuck you, Angel.”
Angel jerks back. Her face pulses with heat.
Lizette will run into Brianna in the hall, Angel thinks. Brianna will apologize, and they’ll make up, and both of them will return to the classroom. The class will push the desks back to how they should be at ten thirty on a Wednesday morning, and they’ll all go on with their workbooks. Later, Lizette and Angel will stand together somewhere quiet, and Lizette will pull her in, and this hurt will be worth it.
But no, a few minutes later, as the girls sit in silence, some with their eyes fixed on the classroom door, some fixed on the window, which overlooks the Family Foundations entrance, Lizette steps outside, Mercedes in her arms. The girls cluster at the window, but in a moment she’s disappeared around the corner of the building.
Trinity is the first to speak. “You guys, what just happened?”
Amadeo hasn’t been to the morada in months, not since Good Friday. He’s almost surprised when he finds the key still on his dresser, behind a tissue box and among a clutter of loose vitamins and scratched CDs and the certificate of completion from his DWI class. He didn’t expect he’d need to come back here, not after getting the nails.
He doesn’t switch on the light. The morada remains largely empty until the next Ash Wednesday. Lemony sun filters weakly through the beige-painted window, illuminating the chaotic brushstrokes. The sealed air is hushed and smells faintly of dirt. Amadeo kneels before the statue of the suffering Christ and bows his head. He didn’t bring his Rosary, which is just as well, because he’s never prayed it alone and he doesn’t know all the Mysteries, doesn’t even know whether it’s the day or the season or whatever for the Sorrowful or the Glorious or the Luminous. He clamps shut his eyes and tries to focus on the shifting red-black behind his eyelids. Our Father, who art in heaven, he begins, then loses track: Please, God, let my mother be all right. A stupid prayer, because his mother is most emphatically not going to be all right. Almost instantly, he’s slipped back into thinking about Brianna, his sadness at how things ended, and then he’s running through the conversation again, heart thudding, and then he’s crying out in his mind to Brianna or God or to whomever, justifying himself, and before he knows it, he’s not praying at all, but ranting.