Monster (Gone 7)

Maria Rojas was first-generation Mexican, having crossed the Rio Grande on her father’s back when she was eight. Manny Rojas was US-born, second generation, with parents from Chile. Cruz did not think her father ever spoke Spanish, and her mother rarely did, answering instead in heavily accented English.

“I can no take the steaks back,” Maria muttered under her breath.

“I can no take the steaks back, I can’t, I can’t, because I’m helpless!” Manny mocked her. Then he spotted Cruz. “Oh, good, now this.”

Cruz nodded at them both, tried to plaster on a bland smile, and kept moving, longing for the relative peace of her room. But her father followed, mincing behind her.

Cruz felt her heart beating hard, a beat heavy with dread and sadness. She knew the next move, and sure enough as she reached the door to her room, her father leaped ahead and ostentatiously opened her door, saying, “I’ll get that door for you, miss.”

Cruz stepped back and waited as he pushed the door open. She said not a word. Sometimes that worked; sometimes not. This was a “not” day.

“You know, Hugo, if you really want to cut your dick off, I’ve got a pair of wire cutters that should do the trick.”

He often said cruel things to her, laughing as if to say, It’s just a joke, lighten up, but this was a new low. Cruz knew she shouldn’t let it get to her, but it did. Of course it did. Her father, her father, despised her.

“Why not just use a knife?” Cruz asked, wishing she sounded nonchalant and defiant, but knowing she sounded pathetic and weak and everything the man before her despised. “I could kill myself with a knife, which is what you want.”

Shock registered on Manny’s face at that, though whether it was shock that she had spoken back, or shock at the realization that she was talking about suicide, she could not guess.

“Excuse me,” Cruz said, and closed the door on him.

She waited there, her room dark, hearing his breathing on the other side, half expecting him to push his way in and heap more abuse on her. Hoping that he would knock and say he was sorry. Fat chance. After a while he stomped off and she sagged in relief, tears filling her eyes, feeling the wave of shame that came from knowing that he would now be just that much harder on her mother.

It was in that moment of exquisite emotional agony, that moment of turmoil, that moment of slight and ineffectual resistance, that moment when the chasm of self-loathing once again opened beneath her, that it first occurred to Cruz:

If it worked for Shade . . .

Out came the notebook. Cruz wrote: If it works for Shade, why not me?

Until that moment that insidious thought had never, not even once, not even briefly, occurred to her. The rock—ASO whatever—was all about Shade, about her curiosity, her arrogant belief in herself, her desire to be more than she had been four years before, more than the thirteen-year-old girl blaming herself for her mother’s death.

So, does that make Shade the only person in the world who should have a power?

If it made sense for Shade to roll the dice without knowing what might come up, didn’t it make equal sense for Cruz? She flopped onto her bed and grabbed the stuffed elephant she’d had since childhood and hugged it to her chest.

I could have powers. And then let that bastard bully me. Let him try.

But that fantasy was short-lived. Cruz had never wanted to hurt anyone, not even people who hurt her. She wanted just one thing in life: to be left alone to ask herself questions about who and what she was, to be able to carry out the experimental, delicate, personal work inside her own mind without the world demanding concrete answers and condemning whatever answer she came up with.

It wasn’t that she hated her male body, but it had never felt entirely like it belonged to her. She was sure that she wanted to try hormone treatments, but was not at all sure about surgery, not sure if that was the final answer. She wanted to explore the idea. Why should that be hard? Why should that be a problem for other people? How was it even any of their business?

She pushed her stuffed animal aside and blocked out the sounds of the escalating parental argument by checking out new music on Reddit, thinking she’d find some things Shade might like.

When she tired of that, she went back to work on the story she’d been writing for months off and on, typing away on her laptop in fits and starts. The story was already too long and involved to be a short story, but she felt ridiculous thinking of herself writing a full-length novel. Anyway, the character she had created, the one who bore an almost embarrassing resemblance to herself, seemed dull compared to Shade.

Her still-new friendship with Shade Darby had warped her worldview. Shade’s determination was more interesting than Cruz’s ambivalence. Cruz admired Shade’s self-control, her ability to step back and look at the world through coldly analytical eyes. She knew that she herself should do just that: take a big step back and think through what she was getting herself into. But it was hard, Cruz reflected, to concentrate when you could almost feel the pillars of normalcy crumbling beneath you. It was very hard to put words on paper when your imagination was busy picturing an entirely different reality.

What powers had the kids inside the PBA acquired? She opened Wikipedia and found the list: killing light, telekinesis, teleportation, the power to heal with a touch, to move at speeds that would amaze a cheetah . . . and a body made of rock, an arm like a boa constrictor, the power to make others see your own nightmare visions. Powers for good, powers for evil.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The old quote floated through her mind, trailing the counterpoint behind it: Yes, but if power corrupts evil people, then surely good people must have power, too?

When the alarm clock on her phone went off, she grabbed her bag and set out to meet Shade, tiptoeing past her father, who was finally asleep in his chair with a football game on. Her mother asked in a weary voice where she was going and didn’t bother to pay attention to Cruz’s answering lie.

Cruz walked around the corner onto Chicago Avenue, and down the dark, cold street past the indifferent rushing cars of commuters to the bright lights of the Jewell-Osco. Cruz waited by the parked grocery carts, ignoring the sneering looks of a couple ushering their little girl past as if Cruz was a disease carrier. The Subaru pulled in, right on time.

“You finish your paper?” Shade asked as Cruz hopped in.

“Um . . . I’ll take an incomplete.”