Rosario was well aware she'd never really fit in the world the way she should. She'd never liked the stuff she was supposed to like or understood the stuff that seemed to come easy to everyone else, like how to make casual conversation. She'd put people off with the intensity of her interests and the bluntness of her thoughts, till she'd learned (somewhat) to keep both to herself. She knew there were plenty of people who thought of her as weird.
But there was a difference between being called a thing by people you didn't even like and finding out that you were fundamentally, genetically, metaphysically weird.
Then you started to wonder what else your jerk grandmother had seen in you whenever she'd started on those insinuations about the darkness of your skin or the texture of your hair; if the reason she'd been so convinced you weren't her flesh and blood wasn't just that she was an asshole, but some other underlying wrongness.
You started to wonder if the kids in middle school had seen it, too: Alyssa Bradford and her friends calling you alien, like they'd known a part of you hadn't belonged to the real world. And more: Every clash with Camino. Every flash of hurt confusion from Dad. Every time Abuela looked at you in askance.
And here was Apollo telling her this weird, alien thing that was a part of her was only gonna get bigger and worse and she couldn't cut it off, she couldn't stop it. Her only options were go to crazy, or... or go crazy in the opposite direction.
Oh god. Oh god.
He was saying this was gonna be her life now. Creepy coincidences and confusing visions and never knowing if she was seeing an omen or if, this time, she'd just cracked for real.
She wished last night's dream had been an omen. She wished the Sun would slam into the Earth right now and incinerate them both amid the screeching of horses. (Except she guessed if it'd been an omen, it wouldn't be literal, it'd be some kinda bullshit metaphor, like Apollo was the Sun and she was the planet and the horses were who the fuck knows, Rosario hated metaphors and she hated woo-woo crap and she hated this.)
She wished she'd asked to meet somewhere private so she could scream at him.
Her nails bit into her palms and her heart thudded heavy in her ears. "You gave it to me, why can't you just take it back?"