Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful)

I think this is why they ignored me. A little girl in a white dress. What could be more innocent?

But Chek knew better. He knows I’m not really a little girl.

No one told me this, not until he came along, but I have always known that I was different. The other kids in the orphanage, they were so clueless. They never questioned anything. When the stupid sisters gave us food, it never even occurred to them that it might be drugged.

But I knew better.

And I didn’t eat it unless they made me. Mostly, I only ate what was on the sisters’ plates after they were finished. That’s why I liked working in the kitchen. It was the only way I didn’t starve.

Of course, that didn’t work all the time. The sisters were all bigger than me, so I spent plenty of nights in my own drugged-out stupor. But at least I was aware that I was being drugged and did my best to minimize it.

I saw the people who came to the orphanage. They were not good people. The kids who left never came back. I asked about them every once in a while. Well, not directly, of course. That’s dumb. I asked one of the other kids. “Hey, Rosa. Where did Isabel go? We were just playing with her yesterday, remember?” And sweet Rosa would get all upset. Her face would go crinkly. She would look around. And then, inevitably, she would reply, “Yo no sé.” She would look around again and call Isabel’s name a couple times. And then she would wander up to a sister and ask my question. “Sister. Where the fuck is Isabel? She was just here!” Curse-word embellishments are all my own in this retelling. And then the sister would say, “She’s been adopted, sweet Rosa. She has a new home with perfect parents who have lots of money and give her presents every night.”

I would read these lips from across the compound.

The sister would usually see me watching. But people have a hard time looking me in the eyes. They want to look at me, I can tell. But then it’s like they know better. Most of them make the sign of the cross and turn away quickly.

They have taken to calling me ‘espeluznante.’

At first, they would say my name first. Wendy Espeluznante. But then it just became ‘espeluznante.’

Creepy. They called me Creepy.

I would be lying if I said I was OK with this, but it kept them away from me. So. Whatever.

These guys on the boat, they saw it too.

They wanted to look at me. They wanted to know who the hell I was. They wanted to know why I was there. They wanted to ask all the questions. But they couldn’t look at me. And they couldn’t ask Chek, either. Wouldn’t dare ask Chek.

Because he’s espeluznante too.

This is why I love him.

Who was on the boat that day?

Nick Tate, of course.

That was the first time I met him.

But it would be a lot of years later before I fell in love with him.

THE CURE, PART 3

PRESENT DAY

The day before Chek took me to an airfield and dropped me off with Nick Tate so I could help him take care of his infant daughter, Lauren, I was seeing that doctor in Savannah, Georgia.

I was nine. I was done with the exam. Which wasn’t a take-your-clothes-off kind of exam. It was more of a what-do-these-ink-blots-mean-to-you kind of exam. In fact, it wasn’t an exam at all. Let’s just call it a test.

And I failed.

Chek and the doctor—a tall woman with dark brown hair and a white coat—were standing face to face in her office. Her office was made of glass. I was sitting in the hallway.

Chek had his back to me, but she was facing me the whole time, her eyes darting to me, then him, then back to me. Talking about me.

Lip-reading is my superpower. Well, I have a lot of superpowers, but lip-reading is my secret superpower. Not even Chek knows I can read lips. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. If I can see your mouth, I know what you’re saying even if you’re way across the room. So glass walls were never gonna be my Kryptonite.

She was telling him that I was not well.

She was telling him that she needs to report me to someone.

She was telling him that I should stay the night. The weekend. The week, the month, the year, the lifetime.

She was telling him I was never going to get better.

I didn’t have time to think about this in the moment, but later, I would realize that she was probably gonna report me to Santos. She was Company, obviously. You don’t just plop a little Zero girl down onto any old psychiatrist’s couch for sanity tests.