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I had to carry June back into the car, her legs too wobbly to stand straight. I ease her into the back seat, sliding in with her. I position her on top of me, resting against my chest as we both continue to fight to catch our breaths and acclimate to this new . . . existence. This existence where I could do that whenever I wanted. To feel her whenever I pleased. Fuck. I didn’t ever think I deserved such a life, but here I was.

“I—” she says, before huffing on another breath, “I didn’t bleed.”

I pat her hair before trailing my hand down her back and shrug. “A lot of women don’t.”

She scrunches her eyebrows. “I thought—”

“It’s not as black and white as that. Sometimes it breaks and bleeds from everyday activities. Sometimes it breaks with sex, but just doesn’t bleed. And sometimes it does.”

She bites her lip and nods.

“Does that bother you?”

“N—no. I just thought I would.”

I cup her cheek. “Well, do you feel okay? I’ve heard sometimes women feel—”

She leans up, folding her arms over my chest. “I feel better than okay. Maybe a little sore, but . . . I think that’s hot.”

I bark a laugh. “Well, then good.”

We stay in blissful silence for a while, her fingers tracing my tattoos and my hands rubbing her back. It’s so utterly peaceful, I’m half asleep when she asks, “Who are they?”

June traces the three faces lining my upper arm. I knew she’d ask about them one day, and . . . I think after what we just did, I finally feel ready to tell her.

I clear my throat and grab her hand, entwining my fingers with hers. I’m going to need them if I have to get through this.

“My parents and my sister.”

Her big doe eyes meet mine, her chin resting on my chest. “What happened to them?”

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, I cup her cheek. “They died when I was young. It’s . . . not a good story. But I’d like to tell you about it if you’d let me?”

She nods, already moving to sit up, but I hold her to me. I need her warmth, her soft skin against mine, the feeling of her body engulfing me. June settles back, curling on top of me as her fingers start to dance over my hand, tracing the lines and grooves, delicately outlining the scars on my knuckles, the calluses on my palms. Her touch grounds me, reminds me I’m here . In the car with her .

Not in my own personal Hell—the memories of that night—as I begin to finally tell her.

Friday nights were movie night in the Serrano household. It didn’t matter if we went out or stayed in, we’d gather every Friday and spend time together. Ana and I were never allowed to make plans with friends—though there had been multiple Fridays in which our friends joined movie night—but at its core, it was familia time. My mom always ordered us pizza from our favorite spot in town—the box always dripping grease by the time the acne-spotted teenager would deliver it to us; and my dad always made the popcorn—adding real butter and M&M’s to the microwave mix for the Serrano special.

Movie night started when I was in fourth grade. I remember because I had been a week away from my tenth birthday party at the roller skating rink, and a baby tooth, one of my canines, fell out, right into the bowl of popcorn. It’s weird how similar a tooth could look to a kernel of popcorn. Needless to say, no one touched the popcorn after that, and those birthday pictures all came out awesome.

Ana was in the sixth grade by then, and the teenage angst came early for her. My mom wanted us to do movie night as a way to “bring us together” or something like that, but what had started as more of a punishment, quickly became a fundamental tradition. So much so, that we never skipped movie night. Not once in the five years we did it.

I remember Ana’s eighth grade graduation landed on a Friday night. Instead of hanging out with her friends after, she decided to come home with us. That night, we watched The Thing for the first time, and it became her favorite horror movie.

“Carpenter can do no wrong,” she said after the credits began to roll.

“Yeah? What about the Halloween movie where Michael Myers was just a possessed cult puppet?” I laughed.

Ana then shrugged and rolled her eyes. “That one wasn’t Carpenter, dumbass.”

“Language,” Mom scolded.

And then Dad snickered, “I can’t even begin to fathom how much Carpenter hates that movie.”

For 272 Fridays, the Serranos came together and watched a movie. Sometimes my mom would choose her romantic comedies, Dad would pick horror, I’d always choose whatever was popular at the time, and Ana would pick some arthouse flick or a “cinematic masterpiece” that probably won Oscars or some shit.

For 272 Fridays, the Serranos were unbroken—even if Mom and Ana fought, even if I was grounded, even if Dad had to work a little overtime and come home late. We always did movie night.

So when Dad was too sick to join us one night, it felt like the earth had suddenly ended. Like all humanity had been zapped away, taken in the rapture, and only Ana and I were left, unaware and completely confused as Mom took care of Dad.

It was August, the hottest month in Miami. The sun had been blazing down on the black street all day, steaming the recent puddles from a midafternoon rainfall into more humidity that carried on deep into the night. Sweat in places you couldn’t even fathom accrued along our skin as the hair curling at our necks grew frizzier and frizzier with each passing moment. Drops of rain clung to the windows after the evening shower, and while the palm trees still dripped, the weather had all but cleared.

But it was always like this, every summer. Hollywood made it seem like Miami was the place to be during the summer, but for us natives, it was rather ungodly. We stayed inside, AC blasting as much as possible, readying ourselves for the approaching school year and end of another round of freedom.

Ana was about to be a junior in high school and was probably one of the smartest girls in her grade—and one of the most popular. Everyone loved Ana, and she adored me. I was her little baby she’d parade around, even when I started wearing all black and thinking I was too cool to hang out with her.

We were already sitting in our respective seats, Ana on one end of the long couch, me on the other as my feet kicked into her leg to get her to move. Mom sat on the love seat, where she usually snuggled up under a blanket with Dad. The bowl for popcorn was already set out in the kitchen, the wrappers shed, the box of M&M’s opened.

But there was no Dad. Ana and I hadn’t seen him in four days.

We’d been under the same roof, breathing the same air, but he’d been locked away in his bedroom since Tuesday, before either of us got home from school. It was unlike Dad to be so . . . distant. He was always involved, always there. And his absence left a gaping hole every night he didn’t join us for dinner.

“Lemme go talk to him,” Mom sighed, sitting up and tossing the blanket off her. It was supposed to be Dad’s turn to pick a movie, but he hadn’t been feeling well for almost a week. None of us knew what was wrong with him, and he refused to go to the doctor’s.

As Mom went into the room, the door closing behind her, George Lopez droned on in the background. I remember Ana was painting her nails—the smell was so strong, I kept kicking her just to annoy her as much as that smell was annoying me.

“ Pendejo ,” she hissed, the red smudging onto her fingers. She smacked my leg, then immediately went back to what she was doing.

BANG!

The obnoxious laugh track from the TV was cut off by a heavy thud in the room behind us. The vibration moved through the house like a ghost, rocking the couch under us, rattling through my entire body with the force of it. The windows buzzed, the TV shook. Ana and I shifted to stare at the dark wooden door, closed, maybe even locked, with no way to know what happened on the other side. Something must have fallen , I thought—it couldn’t be more than that. But the more Ana and I stared at the closed door, the more the thud rang in my ears, the more it echoed over the TV, through the silence of the house, passing the frogs and crickets outside, muffling the last of the raindrops from the trees.

It was only a thud, but I knew—somewhere in my wretched soul—it was so much more.

“ Mami ?” Ana called out. “Are you okay?”

There was no answer.

The door became alive, breathing as my heartbeat rang in my ears. George Lopez became nothing more than a haunting thrum, the outside noises joining the void of sound.

I wanted to call out to my mom, my dad, but the words lodged in my throat, my voice caught like I swallowed a bite too big, took a gulp too large. I swallowed again, feeling my throat tighten.

“ Ma —” Ana started again, but as quickly as she began, her words were cut off as everything in the house surged. The volume on the TV blared, followed by the iPod plugged into a speaker in the garage and Ana’s CD player upstairs—blasting a cacophony of music we couldn’t pick out from each other. The lights blinded us, the TV satirized George Lopez to look more like a sleep-paralysis demon than an iconic late-night sitcom star. Clocks went off, electronic toys, the Furby my sister still kept in the den, the Tamagotchis resting between us, begging to be fed—all of it.

I covered my ears as Ana hopped to her feet, nail polish completely forgotten as it shattered to the ground, paint going everywhere. She was always the braver one, always the fighter.

“ Mami! ” she yelled again, taking a step toward my parents’ door.

And then everything went black. Silent. The surge ended, taking all the power and electricity with it. No more music blasting through the house, no more buzz from the lights ready to explode, no more George Lopez .

Nothing but a silent void, and then—

“Ah, fuck!” Ana hissed. Glass crunched under her foot as she shuffled another step forward, stepping directly on the fallen nail polish.

My eyes were still adjusting to the dark, I could just barely make out Ana’s silhouette, could just barely make out her heavy, ragged breathing.

“M—Marcelo?” she whispered, her voice small. “Is that you?”

Finally, her silhouette was visible. But . . . she wasn’t looking at me. And her voice—her voice wasn’t coming from where I heard the breathing.

I quickly turned my head, following her gaze, and my entire body froze. Another silhouette stood at the now-open doorway to my parents’ bedroom, a shape I’d recognize anywhere.

My dad was breathing hard, a piercing whistle following each time he exhaled.

Seeing him finally gave me strength. “Dad, what’s going on?” I said, sitting up on my knees and bracing myself on the back of the couch. His gaze jerked to me, but he didn’t move a step. All I saw were his shoulders, shifting up and down as his labored breathing continued. And all at once, the smell of nail polish was completely overpowered by a stench so potent, I gagged. A rotten mango sitting out in the sun, a trash bag leaking brown, muddy liquid, eggs overcooking in a hot kitchen—all these things assaulted my nose as our Dad stared at us.

“ Papi? ” Ana squeaked as his labored breathing became a growl. “Where’s Mami ?” Her voice was quivering, and I remember thinking, Is it the pain in her foot? Or is she just as scared as I am right now?

Suddenly, another silhouette appeared behind Dad, moving so fast, it broke the spell of stillness the last few moments forced on us. Dad didn’t have time to move before Mom lugged the electric-blue portable stereo at his head.

Ana and I screamed as bits and pieces of plastic broke around his skull, scattering to the floor. Mom rushed past Dad, running to Ana and tightly squeezing her into a bear hug.

“I’m right here, mi nina, right here,” she soothed.

But my eyes couldn’t break away from Dad. He’d slumped down, immediately, blood already dripping onto his shoulders, and—

Mom grabbed my arm, pulling me into the hug.

“That”—her voice was shaky, even more so than Ana’s—“is not your father.”