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The thing about America is, you can’t get your fucking hands on good liquor. Not even decent liquor, really. Not when you’re eighteen.
Lu never bothered caring about the drinking age at home, of course. When you’re rich, such things don’t matter, and there are certain liberalities expected, even, to keep up with appearances. But she’s in America, now, and she’s not rich anymore. The drinking age is, frankly, insane. Of course there are ways to get around it, but she’s not going to mess around with fake IDs with her visa and scholarship on the line, and sweet-talking men into buying her drinks takes a patience she rarely indulges, these days.
So she’s kind of, mostly, sober. For now. It’s not bad, necessarily. But it’s taken some getting used to.
The thing about America is, the men are boring.
On second thought, maybe that’s not an exclusive-to-America thing. Maybe it’s just a the-type-of-men-Lu-was-taught-to-be-with thing.
In any case. There are venture capitalists, and pre-law WASPs who will one day be lobbyists. There are "poets" who mostly smoke pot and regurgitate internalized misogyny under the fervent belief that they are revolutionizing the world of literature. There are tech bros.
It’s like having dozens of square-jawed carbon-copies of Guzmán lined up before her, the men she meets in America. (She purposefully, resolutely avoids any that would instead be carbon-copies of Val). Except they are less interesting, less fun. She didn’t even realize until now that Guzmán could be interesting and fun: he was always her staid, boring safety net. Her anti-Val. But she supposes, when you’ve known someone since before the both of you even had all of your permanent teeth, there will always be affection there, the good points will always shine through the grime. Interlopers will always suffer by comparison.
She goes to charity dinners with these faux-Guzmáns, Broadway shows, underground pop-up restaurants, fundraising galas. All they ever want eye candy, arm candy. A feisty, exotic Latina to fit whatever stereotype they need her to fit.
She never bothers to remember their names.
Under bright party lights, when she is an ornament to these men, she always gets the urge to pull them close, to whisper in their ears: You would not believe what I am capable of. You would not believe the blood that has stained my hands. I killed a man, broke through his skin and touched his heart, and it was mostly a mistake, and I am mostly sorry for it, but I still did it, and there is a part of me that’s proud.
She bites her tongue. She holds her silence.
The thing about America is, she’s lonely.
It’s a great big country full of millions of people, and she feels like a small pebble in a vast, wide sea. She unfollowed everyone she ever knew in Spain. They all could be dead for all that she knows. Those ties, she felt at the time, were best broken, and that’s not a decision you can easily go back on.
She barely even speaks with Nadia, anymore. Turns out being friends with your ex’s girlfriend is shockingly easy compared to being friends with your ex’s ex. Nadia has become unrecognizable…or perhaps Lu is the unrecognizable one. It’s hard to tell, from the inside. Either way, they don’t get along, and not in the old way of frenemies with mutual interests to push each other towards.
They were something to each other, once, and now they are not, and that’s ok, mostly. But she misses having someone who can see her. She misses Carla, most of all. Omar, who should be here with here right now. Hell, she misses Marina fucking Nunier Osuna, a kind of delayed mourning that falls like a brick from the sky and sometimes, every once in a while, unexpectedly crushes her.
She misses the way they all used to be, before everything.
The thing about America is, everything is new. Nothing has a history. Buildings are razed, old streets are paved and expanded, everything pushing out of its boundaries. She visits Miami over winter break. It’s a city is falling into the sea, and everyone just dances and ignores the sinking.
The past of this country is full of horrible things that no one will talk about, like history is a place full of black holes. And it turns out it is the same with people. You can just…erase yourself, rebuild yourself, and no one ever seems to mind.
Wherever you go, you take yourself. That’s true. But what’s also true, Lu’s come to realize, is that she has many selves. And in America, she discovers some new ones.
She is Lucrecia Montesinos Hendrich, and one day she will make herself again. One day she’ll get back on her game, make friends and influence people, be a #GirlBoss, the bitch in charge. But for now, she is in hibernation. Or in a cocoon. Preparing for the next, best version of herself.
She was always rather naturally smart without needing to be all studious about it. But now it’s like she’s cosplaying Co-Ed Barbie; she spends more time in library than anywhere else. She sits in coffee shops, nursing a single latte for hours at a time, trying to outpace her classes. She doubles the credits on her schedule. She networks with professors, thinking of future recommendation letters, internships. She has a headache all the fucking time.
She sold most of her clothes to bolster her diminished scholarship—now she wears fast fashion and fucking yoga pants—but there’s no one who knows her old self, and so no one who cares. She looks like any other girl on this campus, young and hungry.
The thing about America is, it’s horrible and she hates it. It’s full of Puritans and hicks and fascists and racist xenophobes.
The thing about America is, she adores it. There’s so much of it, so many versions of it. This wasn’t in her plans, but still her plans can adapt.
The thing about America is, it’s both. Good and bad, black and white and gray, an eternal contradiction.
The thing about Lu is, she’s exactly the same way, and so that suits her just fine.