WHO: Andrea Rojas and her third ghost ... or well, second ghost, third night. WHEN: This late afternoon/evening. WHAT: This one was different. Both different bad and different good. WHERE: On the way to a gym, at a gym, and on her way back. Rating: PG STATUS: Closed/Complete
For the first two nights she had seen him. It was enough to make a person violent. She’d been much more snappish than she’d ever been because it really tended to great on the nerves when a murderer, and so many other things in a list that was sky high, liked to tell you that you were … Just. Like. Him.
She had spent most of the previous evening at the gym. Not even bothering to check the boards to see if this was on going for anyone else. Her initial plan for this one was to head out there before he came over tonight. She’d try her best to drown him out with ear drum shattering, brain splitting music. It had worked most of last night, since he’d decided to stay until the crack of dawn that time around.
However, tonight, half way there to a near-by gym. Something different happened. It was a good different and a bad different and quite honestly, at least it wasn’t her. At least it wasn’t her mother. Because she wouldn’t have been able to take that so soon after … But it was still something else because when she’d heard that voice after not hearing to close to her ear for over thirteen years it was this kind of hurtful joy. Because she really missed her. She really missed her abuela. Who’d been a constant for eleven fucking years of her life. Who’d been what she and her mother had depended on in her formative years.
For a second, she would have wished Snake back. In fact, for much longer than that because it was the cruelest thing to see her looking so alive, to be nearly brought down by having her so close, and not being able to hug her. To touch her.
That was the bad different. The further bad different was having to listen in explicit detail every. Single. Thing. She had done wrong since her grandmother had last seen her. Everything. Really. Andrea was pretty sure that she hadn’t missed anything. In fact, she would have been surprised that she had. Because her grandmother was a detailed, observant, shrewd old bat. Always had been in life, not surprising that she still was in death.
She didn’t dare put her headphones on with her. Dead or not. Tangible or not. Thirteen years later or not. The Angel of Vengeance? Yeah. She was scared of a seventy-three year old woman. It’s just how it rolled. The woman quite literally had put the fear of God in her for the first few years in her life. Not in a bad way but she never crossed her grandmother once until she started figuring out ways around it. And even then. So as Andrea worked out her aggression on a punching bag she heard every single word.
And even though her eyes burned, she didn’t cry. She never really cried, so she didn’t. Even with that suffocating ache in her chest. Not even when she finished and worked up a sweat and she’d turned to find her abuela just looking at her. In the way she’d become familiar with at age nine. The look she’d give her after she’d told her how ashamed of her she was and how disappointed and may the Lord and Jesus save her soul … and … a few hours later, she’d just look at her. And the look said it all.
That there was nothing in this green earth that she could ever really do that would stop that woman from always being on her side at the end of the day. That would stop her from wanting more and the best for her. That would stop her from ever loving her.
She didn’t cry then but on her way back to the Welcome Center she thought of a trillion different ways she’d love to pound whoever responsible into the ground. Even as her mouth curved slightly, listening to her grandmother tell her to-in Spanish-stop slouching.