We Set the Dark on Fire (We Set the Dark on Fire, #1)(18)

Se?ora Garcia looked them each in the eye before turning away. “See that you don’t disappoint us,” she said on her way out. “The Garcia family isn’t fond of failure.”

And then, with a wave, Mama Garcia followed her Primera out the front door, leaving Dani alone with Carmen for the first time since they’d shared a seat on that fateful bus ride so many years ago.

Carmen flipped her hair in typical fashion, but for once, she looked determined instead of bored.

For a strange moment, Dani felt that same dangerous kinship flare to life again. Like she was looking once more at twelve-year-old Carmen, her straight shoulders and her careful braid, her eyes fixed on an unknowable horizon.

Carmen met her eyes, and all the air seemed to hang still. A constellation of possibility.

“I hope you read faster than you pick up on upper-class mannerisms,” Carmen said at last, breaking their eye contact and the moment. “I’m not carrying you through this just because you’ve never lived in a house with a floor before.”

Dani’s posture stayed straight, of course, her face impassive, but everything inside her seemed to fold in on itself at Carmen’s words. Would she never learn that there was nothing but misery waiting for her behind those eyes?

“I’m perfectly capable of reading a list,” Dani said, too tired to fight back.

“Good,” Carmen said, turning on her heel. “I’ll start in the west wing and you start in the east. If we do this right, we should never have to see each other.”

“Spoken like someone who can’t see past her own irrational feelings,” Dani said. Carmen, for once, didn’t engage, and Dani wished she hadn’t said anything at all.

Retreating for a moment to her new rooms, Dani took a rare unobserved moment to let herself slump back onto her bed. The relaxation was short-lived. Something crinkled beneath her, and without sitting up, she pulled a piece of paper from beneath her head.

Welcome home, Primera, it read, its edges worn and smudged. A single letter was all the signature he needed.

S.

Dani was no longer exhausted; she felt electric. He had been here. The fox-faced boy who had been both torment and savior.

Suddenly this room, which only an hour ago had seemed awe-inspiring, seemed like too much. Gaudy and over the top. With this smudged, honest sheet of paper in her hands, Dani felt the ache of Polvo stronger than ever in her chest. But not only Polvo. Stirring with Sota’s handwriting was another whisper. A quieter one. Of the place across the wall where she had been born. A place that made Polvo seem like a paradise. A place her parents had risked everything to leave behind.

What right did the Garcias have to live like this when so many others went without?

What right did Dani have?

She was shaken from her thoughts by the faint trembling of the note in her hand. Was it an earthquake? A breeze from an open window? But no. For the first time since she was thirteen years old, Dani’s body was visibly acting without her permission. She was angry, and her fingers had betrayed it.

She was angry with Carmen, for nearly luring her in again; with the Garcias, for having so much and appreciating it so little; with Sota, for soiling what should have been a satisfying if not joyful moment.

And yes, even with her parents, who had been so sure this life was better than the one they had fought so hard to earn.

Just as it had on graduation night—had it only been yesterday?—Dani felt her legs buzz with the urge to run. To take what was left of her self-respect back home, consequences be damned.

But what would that really change? This house would still be here. There would still be suffering out there. The world would still be the same. Just as unfair. Just as maddening.

“Se?ora?” came a voice from the hallway. “Will you be supervising the arrangement of se?or’s newspapers?”

Dani wanted to snap that Roberta probably knew the newspaper protocol better than she did, but she swallowed the words. She’d have a new staff to supervise after this week, after all, and she’d need the practice.

The trembling in her fingers had stopped as soon as it started. Dani checked that the room was secure and slid the note beneath the plump mattress. “Of course,” she said when she’d answered the door, her voice reflective as metal. “Please, follow me.”

Unfortunately, the questions followed, too.





6


Family harmony is based on four successful working relationships: the Primera with her husband, the Segunda with her husband, the Primera with the Segunda, and—perhaps most importantly—the three of them together.

—Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition


THE NEXT MORNING, DESPITE SLEEPING fitfully, Dani was up at the first lightening of the horizon. Section two of the pleasing-Mateo-Garcia handbook had stated explicitly that she join her husband for breakfast at sunrise.

If he bothered to show up this time.

Dani and Carmen had waited until the moon began its descent in the sky the night before—separately, of course—but Mateo had either not come home at all, or he’d returned long after Dani had given up and gone to bed.

This morning, however, she had left all revolutionary thoughts and sentiments beneath her mattress with Sota’s note. She was determined to make a better impression on her new husband than she had on the night of their commitment ceremony.