I slowly stretch out my hand, thinking that maybe he will let me pet him, now that we have established a friendship of sorts. But before I can reach the silk of his wet fur, a drop of blood materializes in the center of my palm.
Shocked, I pull my hand back—Did I cut it on lava? Was it the penguin?—just as a second drop splats into the water, diffusing like dye.
I glance up and realize it’s coming from above the dock.
Scrambling up the slippery steps I see a girl sitting with her back to the post that forms a corner of the dock. She is young, on the cusp of being a teenager. She seems just as surprised to see me as I am to see her, and she immediately yanks down the sleeve of her sweatshirt, but not before I get a glimpse of the ladder rungs of cuts, one still bleeding.
“Are you okay?” I ask, moving toward her, but she hunches up her knees and slips her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt.
I never self-harmed, but I remember a girl from my high school who did. Her mother was dying of ovarian cancer and once, we were both waiting for the guidance counselor on a bench outside her office. I looked over and saw the girl picking at scars on her forearm that reminded me of the height marks my father made on my bedroom doorframe every year on my birthday to chart my growth. She stopped when she saw me staring. What? she said.
This girl has black hair in a messy braid, and she isn’t crying. In fact, she looks pissed off to have had her hiding spot trespassed upon. “What are you doing here?” she accuses.
“Swimming,” I say, and my cheeks burn as I remember what I’m wearing, and what I’m not. I grab my borrowed T-shirt from where it sits, under the bench, and pull it over my head.
“It’s closed,” the girl says, and suddenly I realize why she looks familiar: she was the third passenger on the ferry yesterday. The one who was crying.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I ask.
She continues as if I haven’t spoken at all. “The whole island is closed,” she says. “Because of the virus there’s a curfew after two P.M.”
I look at the sun, slung low in the sky. I begin to understand why the island feels like a ghost town. “I didn’t know,” I say honestly. Then my brows draw together. “If there’s a curfew, what are you doing here?”
She stands up, her hands still buried in her pockets. “I didn’t care,” she says, and she runs down the wooden walkway.
“Wait!” I cry, trying to follow her, but the wood burns the bare soles of my feet and, wincing, I have to stop in a puddle of shadow. By the time I limp back to the dock to put on my jeans and sneakers, the sea lion has disappeared, too.
I am halfway back home before I realize that this mystery girl spoke English.
I hear the shouting before I even reach Abuela’s house. She is standing on the front porch, trying to placate a man who is arguing with her. Every time she touches his arm, trying to calm him down, he releases a torrent of Spanish. “Hey!” I yell, jogging faster as I watch Abuela bend like a willow under his frustration. “Leave her alone!”
They both turn at the sound of my voice, surprised.
It’s that same guy … ?again. “You?” I say.
“This is not your business—” he says.
“I think it is,” I interrupt. “What gives you the right to scream at a woman who’s—”
“My grandmother,” he says.
Abuela’s face creases into the soft lines of a thousand wrinkles. “Mijo,” she says, patting his arm. “Gabriel.”
I shake my head. “I’m Diana. Your grandmother very kindly offered me an apartment when my hotel closed down.”
“It’s my apartment,” he says.
Is he kicking me out? Is that why they’re arguing?
“My apartment,” he repeats, as if I am too slow to understand. “The one you’re currently squatting in.”
“I can pay you,” I say, scrabbling in my jeans pocket for money. I peel off most of what’s left.
Abuela sees the money in my hand and shakes her head, pushing back at my fist. Her grandson—Gabriel—turns slightly, speaking quietly to her. “Tómalo; no sabes por cuánto tiempo serán las cosas así.”
She nods and flattens her mouth into a thin line. She takes the money from my hand, folding it and tucking it inside her dress pocket.
Abuela responds to Gabriel, her eyes flashing, and for a moment, he has the grace to look embarrassed. “My grandmother,” he says, “wants me to tell you that I moved out a month ago and that she can give the space to anyone she wants.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Why aren’t you in the apartment?”