It had been a while since I’d felt like this. It was a strange feeling, a paradox, an emptiness so heavy it pinned you to the floor. It was as if I was trapped in a fragile shell I couldn’t break out of. As if I’d locked my soul in a box and thrown away the key, tortured it a little more to save it from the horrors around me.

I didn’t know if it was the drugs that made me feel this shitty, or if they’d just stopped working, but life hadn’t felt this awful in a few years. Not even when I was locked in a room and starved of food and human interaction, had I fallen this low. Not even when Pablo and his men ripped me away from everything I knew and thrust me into a world full of ruthless criminals.

There had always seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel, something to look forward to, a daydream I could try and make come true. Now the only thing I ever thought of was how to get high again, how many pills I would have to take the same day to feel like I did the first time I took them.

The last time I’d felt this way, I was seventeen, sitting on my mother’s stained couch, wondering how the hell I would ever afford to move out. My mother was laying in her ugly armchair, a hideous green thing with purple pinstripes, staring at the TV with empty eyes.

The VHS had ended a while ago, leaving behind a screen of static and a high-pitched buzz. Neither of us stood up or even leaned over to grab the TV remote, we just sat there with our mouths agape and eyes wide open, like two corpses left to rot in the living room.

After what might have been an hour, she turned to me, curling her upper lip like a snarling beast. Words spilled out of her mouth in a voice that wasn’t her own:

“Gordita, have you packed your bags?”

I blinked twice, and focused my eyes. I was out of my mother’s living room, and back in Pablo’s garden, unsure of whether I should be thankful for it or not. Pablo insisted, raising his eyebrows. The atmosphere was painfully awkward, and Oscar coughed.

“What?” I murmured.

“Have you even been listening to me?” huffed Pablo.

“No,” I admitted. “Not really.”

He stared at me with a deadpan look in his brown eyes, took a long sip of his coffee, and winced at the bitter taste.

“We’re leaving in half an hour,” he muttered.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the capital, Gordita,” he sighed. “There’s a gala tomorrow for the PJFC.”

“What’s the PJFC?” I mumbled.

Pablo slumped in his chair and rolled his eyes.

“It’s the only thing we’ve been talking about today,” he groaned. “And you were here the whole time.”

“The PJFC is the Pajama Football Club,” Juan snickered.

“Why are we going to a Pajama Football Club?” I frowned.

“The PJFC is the Pablo Juaréz Foundation for Children. It’s a charity, not a fucking football club,” spat Pablo. “Juan’s being a moron.”

“Oh, I knew that,” I murmured.

“You knew about the charity or about Juan being a moron?” chuckled Oscar.

“Both.”

Juan jokingly wound up his middle finger, and I was about to flip him off too when Pablo slapped the back of my chair with the palm of his hand.

“Go pack your bags,” he grumbled. “I don’t want to be late.”

“Could you call Mafer to come and help me?” I asked.

Pablo frowned. “Who?”

I held back a huff as I stood up from my chair and scuttled back into the house.

I didn’t even have bags to pack my clothes in. The first thing I did was crouch down by the bedside table and look for my pills. I didn’t know for how long we’d be gone, or if I could even survive without them.

Someone had searched through the drawer – probably Pablo, looking for his own poison. Mine was stashed all the way at the bottom, buried beneath dozens of bags of capsules and powders. I had to dig through them, clawing at the mess like a rabid dog, until I finally found my little pink salvation.

“Hi Emilia,” said a high-pitched voice behind me.

I jumped up to my feet, and hid the pills behind my back as I turned around. Mafer walked into the room, pulling two suitcases behind her.

“Oh, uh, hey Mafer,” I stammered.

I tried to wipe the sweat off of my forehead. My right hand twitched up before I remembered I was clutching a bag of pills in that palm. I tightened my fist a little more, and the plastic crunched between my fingers.

“Are you okay?” Mafer frowned.

“Doing great,” I blurted out, kicking the drawer shut with the back of my heel.

“What’s that thing in your hand?” she frowned.

“A bag.”

“A bag of what?”

“No idea,” I lied, shrugging three times in a row. “Pills. I was just looking, I swear.”

“Emilia,” she whispered.

Her face slowly decomposed, and her shoulders sagged.

“Please don’t tell anybody,” I breathed.

A lump bobbed down her neck, and she looked down at her own feet.

“How long have you been–” she started to say, words stumbling in her throat before she could finish.

“No more than a week,” I mumbled. “Or two.”

"Ay, Jesus,” she murmured. “I knew something wasn’t right. I’m so sorry, Emilia, I shouldn’t have left you on your own.”

She looked up at me with teary eyes, and her brown cheeks turned a dark shade of red.

“It’s not your fault,” I stuttered, rushing to embrace her. “It’s– it’s everything. It’s just hard. But it’s not your fault, and I’m not on my own. I’ve made friends, like Juan, and Andrea, and– that’s it. Juan and Andrea. But I’m not alone.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she sniffed, wiping her nose with a corner of her apron.

“You don’t have to do anything. I’ll stop, I promise,” I whispered. “And besides, they barely do anything for me anymore. It’s just a temporary solution.”

To a very permanent problem, I couldn’t help but think, but I kept my mouth shut. She didn’t need more reasons to worry. Mafer shook her head, and swallowed back a few muffled sobs.

“Just promise me you won’t tell anyone,” I pleaded.

She nodded, albeit reluctantly, and knelt down to open one of the suitcases.

“We should start packing,” she sniffled. “I think they’re already waiting for you.”

I wished there was a way in which Mafer could have helped me, but I could hardly figure out how to help myself. I wished I could have stayed in her arms a little longer, and that she could hug me so hard all the broken pieces of me would fall back into place, but I was shattered, I was dust, ashes scattered in a storm.

Not even one of her warm, radiant smiles could have fixed me, and even if it did, all she did was side-eye me as I threw the pills in a corner of the suitcase.

Once we were done packing, two bodyguards came to carry the luggage away, and Mafer walked me to the car.

“Please be careful, Emilia,” she whispered, right before one of the guards slammed the car door shut.

I didn’t know whether it was the car ride that was making me nauseous, or if it was everything else. I had to roll down my window before we even reached the end of the driveway.

Oso was driving, but he kept throwing quick glances towards the backseat, where Pablo and I were sitting, as if he was waiting for something to happen. I flashed an awkward smile whenever our eyes met in the rearview mirror, and every single time, he’d turn away and stare at the road, pretending he wasn’t looking.

Pablo had a face like he was having a bad day. He was leaning against the window, lips sealed and slightly pursed, a tight web of wrinkles spreading from his nose to his forehead. His arms were crossed and pressed against his chest, and he tugged at the loose collar of his shirt as if it was squeezing his neck.

“Oso, why are you driving so slow?” he muttered.

“Baby Dog likes the window open,” answered Oso.

“I don’t care. Close the window and drive faster,” Pablo groaned. “We’re already late, and Hernan is going to get on my nerves if we make him wait.”

“The Sandovals were still here half an hour ago,” I mumbled.

“Well, the Sandovals are probably already in the Capital, because they took their helicopter,” he retorted, in a tone so dry that it sucked all the life out of the air.

“Don’t we have a helicopter?” I frowned.

Pablo didn’t answer. Instead, his jaw clenched even more. Oso’s eyes widened as they began to desperately search for mine in the rearview mirror.

“Do you like Spice Girls?” asked my bodyguard, as he fiddled with the radio.

“Why don’t we have a helicopter?” I asked Pablo.

“Oscar took the helicopter,” he replied, turning his head away from me to look out the window.

“I like Spice Girls,” shrugged Oso.

The car’s speakers started to blast Wannabe at full volume. I cringed at the noise, and Pablo sucked on his teeth while Oso frantically clicked at all the radio’s buttons to lower the sound a little.

“Oscar can get his own helicopter,” I mumbled. “I want to ride a helicopter.”

“Oso, turn off the fucking Spice Girls,” snapped Pablo. “No one likes the Spice Girls.”

The music cut off abruptly, Pablo let out a loud sigh, and his cheeks turned a concerning shade of red. He was annoyed, I was annoyed, and Oso had thick drops of sweat rolling down his temples.

A fuse blew in my head, and a ball of fire grew in my chest, and pushed by some sort of morbid curiosity, I felt the need to bother him a little more. I felt like a kid, poking a dead, bloated toad with a stick, to see how much it can take before it explodes.

“I like the Spice Girls,” I argued. “I also like helicopters.”

“Stop talking about your motherfucking helicopters,” groaned Pablo. “You’re getting on my nerves.”

“What’s wrong with helicopters?” I muttered.

“Mr. Juaréz is scared of helicopters,” Oso blurted out.

“I’m not scared, I’m smart,” Pablo spat back. “Helicopters are death machines.”

“Oh my God,” I snickered. “The All-Mighty Pablo has a weakness.”

“It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength,” he muttered. “Because when everyone else crashes and burns and gets chopped up by a rotor blade, I’ll be the only one alive.”

His lips sealed shut as soon as he was done talking, and he gulped as if he wished he could take them back.

“Are you nervous because you think the others are going to die in a helicopter crash?” I murmured.

“No,” Pablo replied curtly.

“Always,” Oso answered at the same time.

“Shut up, Oso,” muttered Pablo.

“Is that why you’re acting like such an asshole?” I asked. “Because you’re scared?”

Once again, Pablo stayed silent.

“Pablo, they’re going to be fine,” I whispered.

I slowly reached across the back seat of the car, and stroked the back of his hand. His lips curled up and inwards into a faint, shameful smile.

“It really sucks for you to be scared of helicopters, though,” I whispered as I laced his fingers with mine.

“Why?” he frowned.

“Imagine how cool it would be if you showed up to a party in a helicopter,” I chuckled.

“And end up like ground meat?” he scoffed. “No thank you.”

“You’d be slowly lowered down on a rope, Mission Impossible style,” I teased him, “and then Oso and I would be in the helicopter, and throw confetti so it rains from the sky.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he smirked.

“So bringing a leopard to a party is fine, but helicopters are where you draw the line?” I snickered.

“Stop it,” groaned Pablo as he playfully tugged on a strand of my hair.

The tension in the air faded as Pablo calmed down, and Oso turned the Spice Girls back on. From then on, it was a smooth ride all the way to the capital.

We drove past a few landscapes, some of which I’d seen before. The mountains were still there, so was that big boulder on the side of the road. The same boy played with the same dog on the doorstep of the same home, and it seemed like nothing had changed at all.

The lush hills we called home slowly disappeared, turning into a dry wasteland, where pieces of trash hung by the hundreds from the branches of every soot-coated bush, piled up in gutters. The rivers trickling under the bridges were filled with more garbage than water, and the old cars driving on the road looked no better than the broken-down wrecks in the ditches.

“I fucking hate this place,” Pablo mumbled.

He said it a few times, once when we were stuck in traffic, another as he stared at the massive maze-like shantytowns climbing up mountains and cliffs. He said it again, but in other words, when a bus almost crashed into us at the intersection between two bustling, dusty streets, something along the lines of ”fucking shithole of a city“, and only calmed down once we were sheltered in the shadows of towering skyscrapers in the Capital’s business district.

“Alright, Gordita,” he sighed as the car pulled up to the doors of a luxurious hotel. “Keep your head down until we get in the elevator.”

He placed a hand between my shoulders as I stepped out of the car. Beto Arias had been waiting for us in the lobby, and quickly joined us, proudly clutching a file filled with printed documents.

“Beto, did you run the background checks on every guest?” muttered Pablo, ignoring Beto’s pile of papers. “If you find any red flags, you should immediately report them to me.”

Beto once again tried to hand him the file, but Pablo was too busy rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck like he was warming up to run a marathon.

After what seemed like an eternity, the elevator reached the last floor, and we entered a luxurious penthouse with a stunning view over the city. The other men were already there, gathered around a conference table big enough to host a feast for kings, while Manée and Andrea lounged on big leather couches, scrolling on their phones and sipping on wine. looking bored and uninterested.

“Pablo! You’re finally here,” Hernan sarcastically cheered. “Only took you six hours, which is more than enough for me to Google that you’re seven times more likely to die in a car crash than in a helicopter.”

“I told you he’d be fucking annoying,” Pablo muttered under his breath.

“Don’t let him get to you,” I whispered.

He smiled softly as he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“Go sit down at the table,” he said.

Before I could even walk across the room, the men had returned to their conversation. Being a criminal must be a hard job, I thought. One day, you’re wondering what to do with a dozen beheaded corpses of your former foot soldiers, and the next, while families are still mourning their sons, you’re back to debating on whether the tablecloths at your party should be navy or royal blue.

“What’s this on the agenda? Emilia’s speech?" said Pablo, squinting at a sheet of paper between his hands. “Since when is she supposed to give a speech?”

“Oh, we discussed it before you got here,” answered Hernan. “Juan thinks she should get up on stage and have a little word for the audience.”

“I told them she probably wouldn’t want to,” Oscar muttered.

“I think it’s a really cool idea!” chirped Andrea, who’d stood up to top up her glass of wine twice since we’d gotten here.

“No it isn’t,” hissed Pablo. “What the fuck would she talk about? She doesn’t know anything about the charity.”

“She doesn’t have to talk about the charity,” Juan shrugged. “She could talk about you, you know, the founder, all the great work you do for society, and how good of a person you are.”

Juan threw me a quick glance and a sly grin, and I resisted the urge to kick him underneath the table.

“No,” replied Pablo. “She’s not doing that. No way. Strike that off the agenda.”

“Emilia, don’t you want to give a speech?” asked Hernan.

“I– uh, I wouldn’t know what to say,” I stuttered as I felt Pablo squeezing my knee.

“We can help you write it,” Juan suggested.

“Please, Em, do it!” cheered Andrea from the couch, excitedly clicking her nails together. “It’s going to be so fun.”

“She’s not doing a fucking speech,” spat Pablo.

“Why not?” said Juan.

My fingers curled around the edge of the table, and my foot slid across the floor to go squish Juan’s toes. I hoped to God those were indeed Juan’s toes.

“I told them she’d probably be too nervous,” Oscar intervened.

“Yeah,” I stammered. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I, uh, kind of suck at public speaking. I would just make a fool of myself.”

“Don’t say that, I’m sure you’ll be great,” cooed Andrea.

“I don’t want to do it,” I insisted. “Take it off the agenda.”

Andrea let out a disappointed sigh, and Juan’s smile disappeared from his face. Pablo’s jaw stayed clenched until the end of the meeting, and I didn’t dare to look up until everyone had stopped talking.

As soon as the conversation was over, and everyone stayed to mingle in the suite, I fled to the balcony. I desperately tried to make eye contact with Juan through the large bay windows, and once I caught his attention, it still took countless amounts of eyebrow-raising, head-cocking and aggressive hand-flicking to get him to understand that I needed to talk to him.

“A speech, really?” I whispered once he came outside to meet me. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he muttered back. “It was the perfect occasion.”

“Perfect occasion for what?” I spat. “Getting us both killed?”

“You never know who could be in that audience, Em,” he murmured. “Maybe someone could have recognized you.”

“Yeah, and Pablo knows that,” I seethed. “You knew he’d never let it happen. Just the fact that you suggested it is fucking stupid. He’ll know you know about the secret.”

“If he’s so afraid of someone finding you, why did he even bring you here?” he asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I retorted. “I just want you to stop being a dumbass and making my life worse than it already is.”

“Em, you could at least be grateful that someone is trying to help you,” he mumbled.

“For the one-hundred-and-sixty-fourth time, Juan,” I hissed. “I don’t need your fucking help.”

“That’s the thing I don’t understand, Em, why do you–”

The door to the balcony opened, and every single muscle in my body froze. It took all the self-control I had left in store not to let panic show up on my face.

“Change the subject,” I whispered. “Pablo’s coming.”

“What?”

“Just say something. Anything else.”

“And, uh, the fact that Cobb wakes up on a beach at the beginning of Inception,” Juan improvised, “is basically concrete proof that the movie is a sequel to Titanic.”

“Gordita,” said Pablo, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Mind if I talk to Juan for a minute?”

He pulled him aside and I quickly went back inside the hotel suite. I hid in the bedroom, where Oso had left our luggage, and began to frantically empty both of my suitcases. I didn’t know why I’d packed so many outfits. I didn’t need so many clothes, since we were only staying a few days. All I needed, all I wanted, were my damn pills.

I found them laying in a corner of the room, hidden in the folds of a pretty dress I’d probably never wear, after a minute or two of crawling in desperate half-circles around the bed. I swallowed one dry.

I sat on the floor, clutching my knees with my elbows and my skull with my hands, pinching my lips and humming to stop myself from barfing all over the carpet, and pulling tufts of my hair as if it would uproot the anxious thoughts in my head.

I was desperate for relief, even just a drop of it. A few seconds of peace, a fraction of the high I got the first time I took one of those pills. I never got it. I never felt anything. Even the pills, a pile of inanimate pieces of pressed powder, had ended up betraying me.

In the end, the panic still receded, just like it always did. It came in waves that threw me to the ground, coughing up my lungs as the tide retreated, and I’d hardly have time to catch a breath before a bigger wave came to wipe me out again.

By the time I left the bedroom, the hotel room was empty. Only Pablo had stayed, and was waiting on the balcony, leaning on the handrail, staring at the horizon.

I stood beside him, silent, and watched as the sun set behind the distant mountains. The pointiest hill turned out to be a volcano, or so I figured since Pablo made explosion sounds every time it spat out a puff of black smoke.

“Pablo, why did you bring me here, if it’s so dangerous?” I asked him.

“You’ve picked up on that?” he scoffed, and his fingers tightened around the railings.

“Of course,” I muttered. “I’m not that stupid.”

“It’s just easier,” he shrugged. “I like to have you close by.”

“Why?” I mumbled. “So you can keep an eye on me?”

“That, and it’s also nice to have you around.”

“Is it really?”

“Of course,” he answered. “No matter what you might think, you still aren’t a burden.”

I let out an unconvinced sigh. Perhaps Pablo didn’t see me as a burden yet, but everyone else did. Especially Juan. He was being crushed by the weight of the secret I’d made him keep, and it was slowly driving him mad. When Juan would crack, then I would fall, and we would take everyone down with us, like dominoes.

“I ordered some pizza for dinner, hope you don’t mind,” said Pablo as he let himself fall down onto one of the sunbeds on the balcony. “I’m just too fucking tired to cook anything.”

“Pizza is fine,” I murmured.

“Are you not too cold?” he asked, noticing the goosebumps on my arm as I reached to grab a slice. “Do you want to go back inside?”

“It’s fine, I like the view,” I answered.

He took off the blazer on his back, and threw it at me.

“I said I’m not cold,” I mumbled.

“No you didn’t, you said you liked the view. Put it on, I don’t want you to get sick,” he insisted.

I reluctantly put on the jacket, and tried to eat my pizza, but Pablo wouldn’t stop staring at me. He snickered every time I struggled with a piece of stringy, melted cheese. It was weird, and awkward, and it reminded me of that time he watched me eat fried chicken. Maybe he did have a fetish for watching chicks eat greasy food with their fingers.

“Stop looking at me while I eat,” I muttered. “It’s fucking weird, dude.”

“Why are you calling me dude?” he frowned.

“Because you’re a dude,” I shrugged.

“I don’t like it when you call me dude.”

“Alright, then,” I groaned, “Stop staring at me, fuckface.”

He laughed out loud, and I smiled, but only for a short while. I knew part of me still liked Pablo. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been so upset when I watched him dance with Cassie. But now the drugs had stopped working, whenever my heart softened for him, I’d remember all the fucked up things he did to me.

Pablo must have noticed something was wrong. He sat up on the sunbed, put down his slice of pizza, and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. I tried my best to ignore him, as he started staring at me again, but then he told me the words I had been dreading to hear.

“Gordita, there’s something we need to talk about.”

The soft breeze turned to cold gusts of wind turned cold, and the bustling town beneath us suddenly fell quiet. I gulped, and coughed up a piece of pepperoni.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been acting a little weird, lately,” he said.

“I haven’t–”

“Listen, Gordita,” he sighed. “There’s no point in lying.”

I looked down at my fingers. They were already trembling. I could feel it coming, like the rumble of a freight train barreling in my direction. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t jump, I couldn’t even step off of the rails.

After a brief moment of silence, Pablo confirmed my greatest fear.

“Juan told me everything.”

Kerning

Charity

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