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"Mom, you want any help?" Vee asks, peering around the kitchen doorway. Camila has a week of evening shifts coming up, which means tonight is when she cooks meals for the full week because she doesn't trust the girls not to burn the house down. There's what looks like a whole chicken in the oven, that they'll cut pieces off of and reheat for dinners later, but tonight it'll be fresh out of the oven, hot enough that Luz will burn her mouth on it but keep eating.
"Sure, honey." Camila throws a smile at the doorway, but she's distracted and checking her phone. Maybe it's an emergency at her job, maybe Luz or Lucia got in trouble again. "I was thinking tostones for tonight, and you can pack some of the leftovers for lunch tomorrow."
Vee nods and rushes to get the plantains and a knife. She likes helping out in the kitchen; it's better than homework, at least. It's not really a big enough kitchen for two people, but Mom's had a long day and she deserves to be able to relax a little.
"How's school going?" Camila asks, pouring oil into a frying pan and checking her phone again.
"Pretty good," Vee says, trying to sound casual. "I made a friend, kind of."
Vee is a little (okay, a lot) proud of how it happened, that she just walked straight up to a girl and introduced herself and nothing bad even happened, and they're going to eat lunch together tomorrow, even. And now she has a friend who isn't her sisters or her sisters' friends who kind of tolerate her, and that's a new thing.
Vee knows she's not usually all that good at making friends, but the surprise on Camila's face when she turns to look at Vee makes her stomach crumple up.
"Wow, Vee, that's amazing! What's she like?"
"Her name is Grey, and she's in my English class. She likes reading Edgar Allen Poe, and she makes jokes about the other kids who don't pay attention in class, and she gave me a – what's it called – a Tarot reading." Vee trails off, aware that she's been talking too fast. In truth, she's been thinking about Grey all afternoon, paying less attention than she should to her classes, humming the little fragment of the song that Grey kept singing under her breath in class, and just obsessing over what happened.
She made a friend. A friend who's interesting, who dresses all goth and says her parents want her to wear less eyeliner and pay more attention to school, but really she's doing fine, and the cards said she'll be successful without a fancy education. A friend who is everything that Vee isn't, and Vee isn't sure what she herself has to offer. She's someone small and timid who does as she's told.
Vee realizes she's been pushing the knife down on the same spot for a while, and starts chopping the plantains properly again, but she's worried now. Camila says something about how Grey sounds nice, and Vee nods, but now there's a lump in her throat and she has to say something.
"Do you think she's still going to be my friend when she realizes how – how boring I am?" She chokes a little on the words, and Camila frowns at her.
"Mija, you're not boring. You don't have your head up in the clouds like some people, but that doesn't make you boring."
"You have to say that, you're my mom," Vee says, and something like a sniffle comes out afterwards. She puts the knife down. "What if my whole life I'm boring, and Luz and Lucia grow up and have adventures and travel the world and I just become an accountant or something and die alone?"
Camila sighs, and it's not her standard you girls are going to be the death of me sigh, but something sadder. She picks up Vee's abandoned cutting board and starts cutting up the rest of the plantains.
"Vee, I know it seems right now like there's nothing worse than being boring, but being boring is okay. Interesting people, a lot of the time, they're not so good at existing in the real world. Normal, boring people are the ones who keep the world running, and make sure the interesting people do okay."
Vee knows she's right, and that hurts a little.
"So I should just take care of the interesting people? That's it? Let them have their adventures and accept it because at some point I'll be better than they are?"
Camila sets down the cutting board and scrapes the peels into the trash, more violently than usual.
"Isn't that enough? I'm boring, and look where I ended up. I have a good job, I have three daughters I love, and I'm happy with that."
The oil on the stove is spitting and hissing, and Vee turns down the burner. She didn't mean to upset her mom that way, and she knows it's a sore subject.
She's heard Camila and Lucia fight sometimes, when Lucia comes home after midnight with lipstick marks on her neck, and Lucia will throw around those kinds of accusations when she's really upset. That Mom wasted her life, and now she's trying to make her daughters waste theirs. To conform. It's the only time Vee's ever seen Camila cry.
"I didn't mean it like that," Vee tries. "I was just frustrated. Sorry."
Lucia would have doubled down, thrown things and slammed doors. Luz probably would have, too, even if she doesn't really fight with Camila the way Lucia does. But all Vee does is apologize, because even when she's upset she's sensible.
"It's okay," Camila says, but her voice sounds a little rough and she faces away from Vee when she starts putting the plantain slices into the oil. "You didn't mean to."
Vee shouldn't really stay in the kitchen, after all that. She should go finish that book they're reading for history, or see if Luz wants someone else to bounce ideas off of.
"Why don't interesting people do well in the real world?" she asks, instead. Camila drops a slice of plantain into the oil too quickly and it splashes up.
"Mierda!" Camila hisses, then adds, "You didn't hear that."
"Why don't they?" Vee prompts again, and there's that sad sigh.
"Let me tell you a story," Camila says. "Your abuela, she's an interesting person, right?"
Vee nods. Abuela doesn't visit that often, she's too busy with Greenpeace rallies, but when she does visit she drives Camila mental. She tells them stories about all those times she got put in jail for protesting, and tells her granddaughters how to slash someone's tires and not get caught, and chain-smokes even though she's seventy and the doctors are telling her that her lungs are wrecked because it hasn't killed her yet.
"I know she breaks the law a lot, but she seems happy that way, and she's still around," Vee says tentatively.
"She's happy as long as she's fighting," Camila says, shaking her head. "Back when she was young, barely older than you, she was part of all those youth resistance groups, leading la revolución. And when that failed and Balaguer took power, she was fighting to get to America, and then when I was born she was fighting for me. Fighting to make sure I got a good education so I had a chance at a good life."
Camila turns to look at Vee properly for the first time, and there's a few tears in her eyes.
"If she hadn't fought, I would never have made it here, and I'll always be grateful to her. But she wasn't much good at anything that wasn't about fighting. Sometimes, there was no food on the table because she'd given her whole paycheck to some friend who said he was running for Congress, and she'd say that when he won there'd be free college and steak every night." Camila gives a sad little smile. "Obviously, that never worked. But she was always a dreamer. And that's where the trouble came from."
The plantains are sizzling, but not quite golden, so Vee goes to flip them over since Camila seems lost in the story.
"Once I made it, graduated vet school and got a good job, and she realized that I didn't need her to fight for me, she just shut down. She'd spent so long fighting for me that she didn't have anything left to do. I spent six months going to her apartment every night, cleaning and cooking and making her eat something just so she'd keep surviving. But I think by then she didn't even want to survive."
"What happened after that?" Vee asks.
"One day, I brought home a stack of National Geographic magazines from the library, just so she'd have something to do. She picked one up and read the whole thing through, then the next one. I don't think she slept that night. And that was all it took. She had something to fight for, and that something was the whole planet, the bees and the whales and the rainforests. She got up and she started organizing and marching and fighting again."
The plantains are ready, and Vee dumps them out onto a plate and gets a glass out of the cabinet. She starts flattening them, carefully, so they don't cook unevenly.
"I didn't realize that she had to fight like that," she says, and Camila nods.
"There's nothing wrong with fighting for a cause, but your abuela keeps on worrying me. And I worry about Lucia, too. I want her to know that there's more to life than just fighting because you can."
"I think when she grows up she'll realize that," Vee offers. "She's sixteen, of course she's rebellious."
Camila nods and wipes her eyes.
"I know people say it's normal, but when I was her age, all I was worried about was being normal. Getting a part-time job so we could pay the bills, getting good grades, making sure my mom didn't embarrass me." She laughs a little. "That might be universal."
"You're not embarrassing," Vee says loyally, and she means it.
"Your sisters might disagree with you."
"What about Dad?" Vee blurts out, and realizes too late that it might not be the best time to bring it up. "Was he an interesting person, too?"
Camila nods, then makes a show of checking on the chicken in the oven, avoiding Vee's gaze. Eventually, she speaks.
"Yes. He was interesting. That's why I fell in love with him, you know. He could tell stories, incredible stories about magic and witches and demons, that felt so real you'd think they were true. Luz takes after him, maybe too much."
Vee puts the plantains back into the oil and half-heartedly flips one around. Camila doesn't talk about Dad very often, and Vee wants to hear the rest of the story, but pressuring her will just make her sigh and say that it's a story for when they're older.
"Most people didn't listen to his stories, that's the trouble. He wrote books – I think I still have a manuscript in a closet somewhere – but the publishers all said it was too wild. They said people wanted romances with vampires or something, and they said the witches and demons and titans wouldn't sell. That's what killed him, I think, that nobody cared about his stories. You girls were still too young to pay attention to long stories, and I was too busy with my job to listen to fairy tales. Nobody really listened to him, towards the end."
Vee remembers all the times Luz has come up to her, begging for an audience so she can tell stories, and all the times Vee turned her down with a vague excuse. It isn't her job to listen to Luz no matter what, and it can be exhausting to deal with her, but Luz is her twin. They're supposed to be closer than anyone else, no matter how different they are, and suddenly Vee feels a whole lot like she's letting down her entire family.
"It wasn't your fault, Mami," Vee says, and Camila sniffles and nods.
"I know. But it's my job to take care of my children, even if I don't know what they need. I'm scared that I'll go too far and flatten everything out of them, and I'm scared that I'll leave them alone and they'll never be prepared for the real world."
Vee hugs her, and she's getting too tall to bury her face in Camila's neck but she does it anyway.
"At least you have one boring kid who's easy to deal with," she says, and Camila shakes her head firmly.
"No. Just because you took after me more than your sisters doesn't mean you can handle everything yourself. If you need something, you tell me, okay? Even if it's not convenient. Hell, if you want something that you don't really need, you tell me. I don't want you thinking your whole life has to be taking care of your sisters."
Vee nods and hugs Camila harder. After a moment, she pulls away.
"Can I invite Grey to dinner with us tomorrow? I promise she doesn't eat much, you don't have to cook anything extra for her."
"Invite her to dinner tomorrow," Camila says. "I'll make some cheesecake and put it in the fridge, just for you and your friend. Don't let Luz have any."
She's going to give Luz cheesecake anyway, Vee thinks. It's the least she can do, even if Luz starts talking about Harry Potter with her mouth full and Grey gets scared off. Sisters are more important than school friends, no matter how interesting they are.