the things that escape me in the daylight

“Ay, mamí! You’d think I’d been gone for twenty years. Ey, ey, off, off, off.” 

Scrunching her nose over her daughter’s shoulder, Anahí’s mother kept her grip steady on her baby girl. “Niña, who do you think I am? I’m your mother, respect me. I can hug you and hold you whenever I want.” Turning her nose into Anahí’s silky black hair, Anahí’s mother sniffed. 

Rolling her eyes, Anahí relented under her mother’s affections. “How’s Horacio?” 

“Mm…he’s fine? Tell me about you! What have you been up to? How have you been? When can I meet your new foreign friend?” Anahí’s mother spoke, breathlessly. 

At last drifting away, Anahí threw herself over the sofa’s armrest to lie comfortably against the velvety covering. “Meh, I’ve also been fine” Anahí lifted an eyebrow, throwing her mother a look. “I died, was born again, died again, was born again, you know, the yuzh.” Kicking a stray leg into the air from her reclining position, Anahí remarked, “Hmm, you’ll meet Sará when I die.” In the air was an ‘again’ left unsaid. 

Anahí’s mother pursed her lips. “Don’t be macabre.” 

“She’s coming by in a few weeks. She’ll only be here a day or two since she’s in the middle of her tour but you can meet her then. Happy?” 

“Mm.” 

A swish of the front door, soft footsteps over the hardwood floor, and then a stranger’s face popped into the living room. “Ah, hello. I’m here for Horacio.” 

In a grimace too instinctive for Anahí to miss, Anahí’s mother reacted. “Yes, dear, he should be up in his room. You know the way?” 

A quick nod and then the Horacio’s pretty guest was off. Anahí side-eyed her mother at their visitor’s presence. Although she didn’t know her step-brother very well, Horacio had always been of the quiet and reclusive sort. He was a cute enough fellow but generally too anxious to make any genuine friends. 

“Apparently, your step-brother gave her a key and everything,” Anahí’s mother shrugged at the unspoken inquisition. 

Before Anahí could ask more, her mother was off, sweeping away into her own world of glam and diamonds. 

Eventually, Anahí crossed paths with Horacio’s ‘friend’ once again. 

For different reasons, Anahí and her step-brother both attended the local but not unimpressive university. Anahí herself was only biding her time as an Art & Design major to appease her mother with a semblance of an education before she fucked off to some obscure corner of the world. The actual son, the last that she had heard, was studying an engineering of some kind. He must’ve been quite good for all the time he spent locked up in his bedroom. 

Usually, they didn’t much cross paths for all that they lived in the same house on the select weekends away from school. Yet, there, walking side-by-side the pretty brunette from all those weeks ago was their own little introvert. 

Filled with a bout of curiosity, Anahí quickly pushed her textbooks into a friend’s unsuspecting arms before running off to catch up to the unlikely pair. 

“Ey, niño!” 

Faced with twin looks of surprise, Anahí smiled her best welcoming and gracious smile, cheeks pink and baby hairs floating around her face. 

“Ah, you’re Horacio’s sister, right?” If Anahí was reading her right, the girl seemed slightly disgusted. 

“Uh huh. Sorry, sorry. Uh… I was just wondering if you guys wanted to join my friends and I for lunch? Horacio?” 

Anahí’s normally high levels of confidence quickly floundered under the oppressive stare of Horacio’s apparent protector. 

Although she didn’t catch Horacio respond, he must have for the girl continued on a thread of conversation, “I’m not in a nostalgic mood. I can’t, I have to go.” 

With that, the girl took Horacio’s hand and they both walked away, leaving Anahí slightly wide-eyed in the middle of the busy walkway.

After their brisk interaction on campus, Anahí found herself becoming somewhat obsessed with the girl with the accusing eyes. It was senseless, idiotic, and pathetic, and, yet, before Anahí realized it, she would find full-body renderings of the girl in the margins of her textbooks, text and diagrams obfuscated beneath. 

The girl would be drawn as a mother with a small child at her knees. She would be a deity with a sun’s halo at her back, golden skin glittering. She would be floating at the bottom of the ocean, not dead, just searching. 

Anywhere she looked, Anahí saw this girl. She couldn’t escape her. 

Anahí was sharing a quiet dinner with her mother when her body suddenly tensed. 

“Mom,” Anahí abruptly spoke, catching her mother’s attention. 

Everything had been fine not one second ago. Everything had made sense. It didn’t anymore. 

“Mom.” 

Anahí had met a fantastic girl in her trip to Spain some months ago. She was beautiful. She was confident, loyal, ambitious, kind, and carefree. A nice girl. 

They had had plans for her to come visit Anahí here at home. But the girl hadn’t been able to make it after all. 

Anahí’s hands shook. Her eyes burned. “Mom, I-“ She could feel wetness at the corners of her eyes. 

“Ey, ey. What’s wrong?” Anahí’s mother hurried to her daughter’s side, kneeling at her feet. 

Why did her friend from Spain look a lot like Horacio’s new companion? 

“Mom, I can’t remember. I can’t-I can’t remember.” This was not Anahí. Anahí was powerful in everything that she did. She was not this uncertain, lost person who occupied her body now. 

“You can’t remember what?” Anahí’s mother asked, voice as soft as silk. 

“I can’t remember…” Anahí tried to breathe, huge gasping breaths too loud in the cavernous room. “Mom, I-“ 

“Yeah?” 

“I started thinking about the girl who came by to visit Horacio.” 

“What girl?” 

“Mom, I know, I know. There was no girl. I-“ Anahí tried to breathe again. “I-I was thinking and then it came to me. Her name was Sará.” 

“From your trip?” 

“Mamí, there was no way they could have met,” Anahí was full out sobbing now. Assaulting, monstrous noises filled the night’s landscape. “Was Horacio alone? Was Horacio alone? Was Horacio alone?” 

Anahí woke. 

Fuck. 

As cool air – she’d forgotten to turn off the AC – chilled the remaining tears on her cheeks, Anahí’s hands anxiously searched for her phone amongst the folds of the duvet. 

Found it. 

It was ringing. Then… 

“I fucking hate you. Do you know how much I worry about you?” Anahí took a deep breath. “Just die already.” Angrily, she hung up before the boy on the other side had a chance to respond. 

Oh, wait. 

She called back. 

“Wh–“ 

“I know you think my mom doesn’t care about you. And, if we’re being honest, she doesn’t. Not as much as she cares about me at least. But guess fucking what?” 

“What?” 

“I do. I care about you and what happens to you. So, call, yeah. Go out, have fun, live life, and call me once in a while” A pause. “I know we’re just too different and it’s been too long but…let’s try, ok. To be siblings, I mean.” 

“Ana–“ 

“K, bye.” 

Not able to go back to sleep, Anahí picked herself up from bed and prepared herself for a new day.