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lies.
“It could be the pills are delaying your sickness. Even without any pills, it could be you
just haven’t met any of your triggers yet.”
“Or it could be that the pills are working,” Olly says. He’s moved beyond hope. As far as
he’s concerned these pills are a miracle.
Carla pats Olly’s hand from across the table. “You’re a good egg,” she tells him.
She avoids looking at me and takes our plates and goes to the kitchen.
I follow behind her, shame making me slow. “Thank you.”
She dries her hands on a towel. “I understand you. I understand why you’re out here.”
“I might die, Carla.”
She wets a dishcloth and wipes down an already clean spot on the counter. “I left
Mexico in the middle of the night with nothing. I didn’t think I was going to survive. A lot
of people don’t make it, but I left anyway. I left my father and my mother and my sister
and my brother.”
She rinses the cloth, continues. “They tried to stop me. They said it wasn’t worth my
life, but I said that it was my life, and it was up to me to decide what it was worth. I said I
was going to go and either I was going to die or I was going to get a better life.”
Now she rinses the cloth again and wrings it tight. “I tell you, when I left my house that
night I never felt more free. Even now, in all the time that I’ve been here, I never felt as
free as that night.”
“And you don’t regret it?”
“Of course I regret it. A lot of bad things happened on that trip. And when my mother
and father died, I couldn’t go back for the funerals. Rosa doesn’t know anything about
where she’s from.” She sighs. “You’re not living if you’re not regretting.”
What am I going to regret? My mind cycles through visions: my mom alone in my
white room wondering where everyone she’s ever loved went. My mom alone in a green
field staring down at my grave and my dad’s grave and my brother’s grave. My mom dying
all alone in that house.
Carla touches my arm and I force all the images ruthlessly from my head. I cannot bear
to think about these things. If I do, I won’t be able to live.
“Maybe I won’t get sick,” I whisper.
“That’s right,” she says, and hope spreads through me like a virus.