“I was followed to the Davila home.”
She stared and then brightened. “Your bitch cousin?”
“And Christian Taylor.”
“What did they say?”
“I didn’t speak with them. When I came out of the house, I saw they were there and they had followed. When I started away, I saw Sophia get out to talk to Ignacio’s brother, Santos. I’m sure she’ll run home to tell mi tía.”
“You did well to confide in me, Delia,” Fani said after a moment. “I can help you.”
“You can? How?”
She smiled, stood up, and went to a closet. I waited as she opened a box on the floor and sifted through some files. She pulled out something and returned to hand me a picture.
“This should help,” she said.
I looked at the picture. It was Sophia, maybe a year or so younger, naked on someone’s sofa with a boy named Gregory Potter. He was in our class, but I didn’t see him spend any time with Sophia or give any attention to her.
“How did you get such a picture?”
“It was about a year and a half ago, a wild party. Another boy in our class, Danny Rosen, has all this equipment. He took secret pictures. I found out and bought some from him.”
“Why?”
“First for my own amusement and then to have something on Sophia as well as some other girls.”
“Do they know?”
“Some suspect, but Sophia doesn’t. I haven’t had any reason to tell her yet, but now there’s a reason. She tells on you, you’ll tell on her, and what’s worse for her is that you can prove it. If Isabela Dallas thinks people can get pictures of her daughter in such a compromising way, she’ll not only be furious, she’ll have a nervous breakdown and probably ship Sophia off to some behavioral modification camp, maybe as far away as Europe or South America.”
“What is this camp?”
“A behavioral modification camp is one of these places they send very, very bad children, children whose parents can’t control them, and the children are basically imprisoned with no way out and no way to contact anyone. There was a boy in our school, Philip Deutch. He ended up in one of those places.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I never heard, and he’s never been back. His family acts as if he never existed. I’m sure that would be the way Isabela would feel or want to feel. You have a lot of power there, Delia,” Fani said, nodding at the photograph in my hand. “Sophia doesn’t know if there are other pictures or where the negative is for that picture. It was actually taken with a digital camera, and it’s on a computer file. I don’t have the file, but I could get it for a price, I’m sure.”
“Is this why so many of the girls in our class are afraid of you, Fani?”
“Some. Others are just…frightened rabbits. Go ‘boo,’ and they’ll jump out of their shoes.” She sat.
I looked at the picture again and shook my head. “How terrible.”
“Disgusting, isn’t it? She’s a good fifteen pounds overweight, and the boy she’s with is a zero. Put it in your purse, Delia. As soon as you get home, you confront her. She might try to confront you first with a threat or some blackmail, I’m sure. Then you whip that out and tell her to fade into the woodwork, or else you’ll show the picture immediately to your aunt. If she wants to know where you got it, you can tell her it was from me. That will be more convincing and make her even more afraid, because she knows I don’t like her. It might be the end of all your troubles with her.”
I shook my head sadly and looked again at the picture. Tía Isabela would definitely have this nervous breakdown Fani described.
“It’s sad to have to live with your own cousin like this,” I said.
“How about living like this with your own daughter? If Sophia could blackmail her mother, do you think she would hesitate?”
I looked again at the picture. How could Sophia be caught this way? She was surely borracha, probably from vodka.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You’ll know you can do it the minute she threatens you. You want to protect the Davila family, too, don’t you? Stop being so weak. Put it away. Forget it for now. Let’s talk about Adan,” she said, pulling her legs up and under her. “He is a handsome man and quite a catch. I’ve played with the idea myself from time to time. We’re only third cousins or something, but he’s not for me.”