Archive of Our Own

Camilo feels like he shouldn’t understand Bruno. 

But then, he sees how Bruno observes like a mouse. Bruno creeps and peeks and feels the atmosphere with his imaginary whiskers. He smells the air—is Pepa frustrated today? What about Abuela? His imaginary whiskers twitch; he fades back into the shadows of the table. Back where the rat belongs. Shoo.

Camilo understands. Bruno is similar, though not in the same way because the way Camilo feels the pulse of the room is different. Camilo strums the heartstrings of the room. Feels the tension of laughter building up on one side. He knows the game. He grins, then pop. Another transformation. Large nose, small lips. “No way,” one of the little kids shrieks. “Is that Isabela?” 

“But,” another kid announces dramatically and waves a tiny arm to Camilo. “This Isabela has a fat nose,” she screeches loudly and Camilo gives a mock gasp as if he is personally offended by the whole ordeal, and there is a collective intake of breath around the table before everyone bursts into giggles.

Camilo drinks the attention. Sips it like a bowl of warm soup. When he was younger, Mami used to read him a story about a little mouse with big ears who once sought out a quest to rediscover music. The mouse poked his little head with its big ears out of the wall. He listened to the music. Like soup. The little mouse had murmured. Like liquid light, and all of his larger siblings with smaller ears laughed and laughed at him.

Like liquid light, Camilo thinks as he sips the laughter that surrounds him, and he feels like drowning and floating at the same time, feeling the wave of delight that washes over him at the attention from everyone else in the room, pulling him down, down, under.

Camilo meets Tío Bruno alone for the first time. It’s an odd meeting. It’s at 3 AM when everyone else is sleeping. Even Casita sways gently from its own soft breathing.

He does not want to sleep. Sleeping is remembering. He remembers. When he was younger, he learned how to make himself bigger. He remembers long, burly arms. Remembers the exhilarating feeling of exacting justice as a child. He pushed and grew taller and watched as she stumbled and fell. But even more importantly, he remembers the words. Their sharpness as they caught on his tongue and bled. His spit turned red. Camilo spat on Mirabel’s face once.

He does not go back to sleep.

He tiptoes into the kitchen. He just has to be quiet as a mouse, and he can do that. It’s not too hard to be silent when there’s no one around to hear him. The porcelain tiles slap against his bare feet, cold and smooth. He’s rummaging in the refrigerator for Tía Julieta’s famous gazpacho when he hears someone’s slight cough behind him. 

Camilo whirls around. Bruno stares at him from the darkness of the kitchen. The glow from the open refrigerator door trickles down his face and drips onto the ground, like water melting from an icicle. In the darkness, Bruno’s pale face looks ghost-like. Mystical even. His green eyes flicker, shifting from light to dark to light again.

“Midnight snack?” Bruno asks wryly. “You get that from Pepa.”

Camilo wordlessly steps aside with his bowl filled with gazpacho. He watches as Bruno scans the refrigerator, before grabbing a small loaf of bread. “Why are you here?” Camilo summons the courage to ask.

Tío Bruno tilts his head. With the piece of bread sticking from between his teeth like a dog with a bone, his flickering green eyes don’t seem as less threatening. He takes out the bread from his mouth and smiles, not unkindly.

“For the same reason as you,” Bruno says before he disappears again.

Camilo wonders how much Bruno knows. How much future he has seen to see what the past was like. He wonders if Bruno can read between the lines. Notice the days when Mirabel avoids Camilo. The days when Camilo also avoids Mirabel.

Dolores certainly is observant enough to know, though she doesn’t need to be observant to know. She has heard bits of pieces when she was younger. Not the whole thing, because Dolores’s powers were awful when she was younger. She would walk around town with her small hands clutching her ears, trying to block out the whispers of villagers from miles away, and thank Dios that Dolores never heard everything. But she heard enough. Enough that whenever Camilo and Mirabel were matched up to do chores together, Dolores would raise her hand. 

“Tía Julieta,” she would call out, years ago. “Can I do chores with Mirabel?” and Tía Julieta would laugh and say, “Again?” and Dolores would shoot a look at Camilo and say, “Por favor. ”

Mami never knew. Everyone kept secrets from Mami, and in some ways, it was a blessing. If Tía Julieta caught Camilo skipping school, she frowned and wagged her finger, and brought Camilo back herself. “Now, mi chico,” Tía Julieta said sternly. “Be glad I’m not telling your mami Pepa,” and Camilo would nod and blink innocently and tried to plan for another way to skip school. 

People didn’t tell Mami things because of the storms and rain and clouds. In a way, Mami was always wrapped in a shielded bubble; a protective layer that kept the rain from falling inside of the house. No one wanted to be drenched when Mami got angry.

But Dolores almost told Mami once. “Why did you do that?” she hissed, as she slammed the door shut to Camilo’s room. Dolores was never angry, so Camilo stopped practicing growing and shrinking his nose, and looked up at her.

“I did nothing,” he said quietly, and that was the response that broke her.

“Dios mío,” she breathed out, her eyes flashing. “I cannot believe I am a sister to a monster,” and something in her voice cracked. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and opened the door again. “I’m telling Mami. This cannot go on.”

Camilo pulled her sleeve. “Dolores,” he begged. Mami’s anger filled the world with dark, angry clouds, large and heavy and dripping with big, fat raindrops. He does not want to see Mami angry. He tugged on Dolores’s sleeve again. “What happened? What did I do?”

She looked back at him. “Apologize to Mirabel,” she said coldly, more coldly than he had ever seen her before. She shut the door and left him blinking.

Nowadays, Dolores sometimes lingers in front of his door. She doesn’t storm inside his room. She doesn’t need to. “Camilo? Is it the dreams again?” she asks gently, but as always, he doesn’t respond. He sits in front of the door and buries his face into his knees and sucks in breath after breath, and he can hear Dolores on the other side breathing with him.

Nowadays, he imagines how he would turn back time to redo his apology to Mirabel. Because instead of awkwardly standing in front of her bed and muttering an unwilling, “Sorry,” he would have walked up to Mirabel and sat next to her curled figure. He would have stayed there the rest of the night. And when the morning would come, he would finally whisper, “You are special just the way you are. Please, don’t ever listen to me.”

Camilo is sure that Bruno doesn’t know. He doesn’t look at Camilo any differently than the rest of the family. He nods hello to Camilo when he passes. He passes the plates to Camilo. “Gracias,” he mumbles when Camilo passes him the salt and pepper. Tío Bruno mumbles with everyone.

Some days though, Camilo wonders. Maybe Mirabel would tell Bruno one day, and Tío Bruno would nod gravely and say, “I knew it. I knew there was something off with that sobrino.” 

Or maybe he would sit there and gape at Mirabel for a little while. “Camilo? Him?” he would ask, and Mirabel would nod, and Tío Bruno would just sit there and shake his head. 

Or maybe it would be nothing. Mirabel would tell Bruno and Tío Bruno would sit there for a few seconds before quietly saying, “I hardly even noticed Camilo in the first place. He is not that important.”

Camilo isn’t sure which one would feel worse. Some days, he sits in his bed and stares at the ceiling and wonders if hiding in his room would be easier because he doesn’t think he can look at Tío Bruno from across the dinner table.

But even so, Camilo decides he likes Bruno. The quiet way he lingers in the corners of the room. The odd moments when he tosses salt over his shoulder. The faint smile he has when someone does a nice thing for him. Isabela once left him flowers on his bedroom table, and he spent the rest of the day beaming. Mirabel doesn’t even have to do anything nice. Tío Bruno glows whenever she’s in the room.

Tío Bruno is easy to adopt into the family. He isn’t one to make trouble, and it’s easy to see that he knows this family as well as his little nook behind the kitchen walls. Bruno knows the days to avoid Mami, knows to run to Tía Julieta when someone scrapes a bleeding knee. But he doesn’t seem to know the stable hierarchy within the family: Abuela first, of course, the tíos and padres next, and the kids, in order—Isabela, Luisa, Dolores, Camilo, Mirabel. 

Though the hierarchy has started crumbling. Antonio is new, yet Camilo can’t seem to place him. Isabela no longer tries to be pretty. Luisa takes naps in the afternoon, her body sprawled over an entire couch that Casita has conjured out of pity. Dolores is louder, Mirabel is louder. Camilo is quieter, but all in the ways he would prefer to be. He doesn’t even need to change his ears anymore. The first trick he learned with his shapeshifting skills was to grow and shrink his ears, and he remembers using it every week at the dinner table just to lighten the atmosphere.

Now, he sits at the dinner table with his normal-sized ears and smooths out a finger to feel the heartbeat of the family, and he always finds it beating steadily. Thump, thump. Their veins are unraveling, but still. Thump.

It is this family that Bruno slips into as easily as sinking into water. On the surface, Bruno hardly makes a splash. But something is different with Bruno. Bruno awkwardly helps Luisa pick up things, even if Luisa is carrying six goats and he is carrying the empty goat feed. He picks flowers with Isabela. He listens to Dolores sing. He rides tigers with Antonio. 

“Why?” Camilo once asked Tío Bruno, when he catches Bruno washing dishes alone. Dolores or Mirabel always wash the dishes. Camilo always dries. But today, Bruno is scrubbing the plates, elbow high in bubbles.

“Hmm?” Tío Bruno says and turns. He looks confused. Camilo feels confused. He doesn’t understand why Bruno is at the sink, with a dirty plate in his hand.

“You’re washing the dishes.”

Bruno looks at the dishes. “Yes. Yes, I am,” he says, tilting his head. Do you want to say anything else? he seems to say. There is a curious expression on his face.

Camilo stands there with a dishtowel in his hand and feels like an idiot. He opens his mouth, then closes it. “Well. That’s cool, I guess,” he says, shrugging. He joins Bruno at the sink, and they finish washing and drying the dishes in comfortable silence.

But most importantly, Tío Bruno sits with Mirabel and listens to her like she is the center of the family. Listens to her with a soft smile on his face when she rambles with her animated hands and crinkled eyes behind her glasses. It doesn’t make up for the years of silence that surrounded Mirabel, but regardless. It is still nice to see them smile.

Mirabel keeps her door cracked open, and Camilo hears their soft laughter sometimes. He peeks in, and their heads are hunched together like they’re sharing a secret. He leaves before they notice him.

He likes Tío Bruno, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time with him.

Mirabel knocks on Camilo’s door. “Tío Bruno thinks you hate him,” he hears her say.

“I do not,” he protests, his voice muffled by his pillow. He is lying flat on his bed, and he does not want to get up.

Mirabel doesn’t sound impressed. “Then you should stop avoiding him.” When Camilo doesn’t respond, she sighs. “It better not be for a stupid reason,” she threatens. “Or else I’ll march in your room right now and bang your tiny head across the door.”

“Don’t you always say that I had a big head?”

He hears Mirabel laugh. “Isabela has a big head,” she corrects, and Camilo rolls his eyes and pushes. He feels his hair uncurling, lengthening. His limbs stretch.

“Well,” he says in Isabela’s voice, and outside the door, Mirabel snorts. Very loudly. “I suppose I do have a very big head,” he says, a little snootily. “Bigger than yours.”

“You got me,” Mirabel says, and Camilo can hear her grinning, and he feels himself smiling as well. “I’ll threaten you some other day,” he hears her say. Her footsteps fade away into the distance, and he is left wearing Isabela’s body, still grinning like an idiot.

So he tries.

“Hi,” Camilo tells Bruno’s hunched back.

Bruno nearly hits his head across the ceiling. He twists around and Camilo sees that he is trying to teach a rat how to shake hands. The rat’s paw is out expectantly as Bruno gapes at Camilo.

“Um. Hi,” Bruno splutters. In bright daylight, he looks scrawnier almost. Mouse-like. His posture mimics the rat sitting across from him.

Camilo looks at the rat, who stares back at him. The rat’s bulging eyes remind Camilo of Luisa when she is given too much to carry. Or when Mami is feeling carsick, which is every single time she has to drive in a car. “Your rat has… interesting eyes,” he says lamely.

Bruno nods and sweeps the rat up into his cupped hands. “This is Estelle,” he says. The rat bounces up and down in his palms, looking dizzy. “Estelle, say hi to Camilo.”

The rat doesn’t say anything. Bruno reaches down and grabs a tiny paw. “Hi, Camilo,” he says in a squeaky high voice. The rat is shaken around a little more. “My name is Estelle.”

“Uh.” Camilo blinks. He swears that the rat looks a little green. Can rats even look green? Maybe Bruno just really liked green things. “Hello,” he says hesitantly.

The rat burps, then throws up in Bruno’s hands.

“Mierda,” Bruno curses.

They both stare at the pile of yellow chucks in Bruno’s hands as Estelle the Rat smoothly jumps to the ground and flees her scene of crime. Camilo tries not to laugh. “Erm. Do you want to wash your hands?”

“That’s rat vomit.”

“Yup.”

“I have rat vomit on me.”

“Yup.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Bruno says, looking queasy, and races off to find the bathroom, mumbling a string of curses under his breath that would even make Mami horrified.

Another knock on Camilo’s door. Mirabel’s annoyed voice comes through. “Tío Bruno wants me to tell you that he apologizes for Estelle the Rat, and that he blames the entire thing on Estelle the Rat. Who Estelle the Rat is, I have no idea. Am I a little curious? Yes. But Tío Bruno is too embarrassed to tell me, and I have been delegated to messenger,” she says, all in one breath.

Camilo snorts. “Tell Tío Bruno that it’s completely fine. I’ve already blamed the entire thing on Estelle the Rat.”

“Mirabel also wants to tell you that she is not just the messenger buddy and that you have legs. That you can use to walk. Preferably to Bruno’s room. And also she wants to know about Estelle the Rat.”

“... Estelle the Rat is a rat.”

“I really couldn’t tell,” Mirabel says sarcastically.

Camilo snorts again. He walks over and opens the door, and finds himself face to face with Mirabel. Her arms are folded over her chest and she is tapping her foot against the ground like she was waiting for him all along.

“Finally,” she says, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. But her eyes behind her round glasses are smiling. “I was going to march inside and drag you out.”

“Imagine what that would look like. Big, strong Mirabel dragging poor, old Camilo around,” Camilo jokes, then inwardly winces. But Mirabel doesn’t react. Instead, she raises an eyebrow and grabs his arm.

“And that’s what it’s going to be if you don’t hurry up,” she threatens, and Camilo breathes out in relief and sticks out his tongue. And just for fun, he pushes, and out comes Tío Bruno, complete with a set of green clothes and ratty sandals. Not the one Camilo had based on portraits and bedtime stories from Mami. The real Bruno’s appearance.

“Oh, he’s going to be so freaked out by that.” Mirabel snickers. “You’ve never transformed into Tío Bruno yet, have you?”

Camilo brushes off the dust on his now-green sleeves. “Nah.”

She studies him. “You even got the eyebags down,” she says, sounding impressed. 

Camilo preens. “I’m a genius, aren’t I?” he says and Mirabel rolls her eyes and gently whacks him on the back of his head.

They discover that Bruno screams like a little girl. Tía Julieta runs upstairs with a basket of bread rolls and finds Mirabel and Bruno hysterically giggling at the real Bruno, who is on the ground, wide-eyed and pointing to his clone.

“That’s me,” the real Bruno gapes. “What- how–”

Tía Julieta smacks the giggling Bruno’s head, then Mirabel’s head, with the bread. “Stop scaring your poor uncle to death,” she says sternly, but her eyes are amused as she helps Bruno climb back to his feet.

There is always the question of how much Tía Julieta knows.

Tía Julieta is unmistakably the kindest, most angelic one in the family. Luisa scraped her knee? Julieta would be there, pushing a loaf of bread into Luisa’s mouth. Isabela accidentally tumbled into a field of poison ivy? Julieta again, with a bowl of soup in her hands. 

But that also makes her the hardest one to read. Camilo can’t tell how much Mirabel has told Tía Julieta. He can’t tell how much Tía Julieta has seen. He knows that there was a time when Mirabel stole bread from the kitchen for an entire week, and for months afterward, Tía Julieta would side-eye him when she thought he wasn’t looking.

But he had never seen her truly angry. Not like Mami. While Mami’s emotions shone and drizzled with the weather, Julieta’s face was as smooth as the surface of the porcelain plates she served food in. When Camilo would try to read her eyes, he would only see his reflection peering back, pale and anxious.

He has a feeling that she knew though. Tía Julieta was smart like that. She had the same way of observing people as Tío Bruno did, hovering in the shadows. She was always listening. She never interrupted. Just watching. Waiting.

There was one day that Tía Julieta had pulled him aside, after dinner, when everyone was off doing their own things. He had spent the whole dinner messing around with his ears though, and they had gotten stuck. He stayed in the kitchen a little longer, trying to shift his too-large ears back to their normal size, and she bent down and tugged his shoulder. “Camilo?” she said gently, and Camilo stopped trying to fix his ears and obediently looked at her. “Can I talk to you?” she asked, and he shrugged and nodded.

But curiously enough, she didn’t say anything. She just gently gripped his shoulders and looked at him, and he just stared back at her tired face and counted the stress lines on her forehead that were forming. His oversized ears flapped.

After five minutes, Tía Julieta sighed and released him. “I wish you would listen to your heart more, Camilo,” she said quietly.

Camilo tilted his head. He had counted six stress lines on Julieta’s forehead. “Okay, Tía Julieta,” he said politely. For some reason, his response seemed to make her unhappier, and when she finally left the darkening kitchen, he spent the rest of the night trying to shrink his ears to the right size. It had taken him two hours.

One day, Bruno makes dinner. It is a disaster.

“Bruno!” Abuela says disparagingly.

“Bruno?” Mami blinks.

“Oh, Bruno,” Julieta says softly. “You really didn’t need to.”

The entire family stares at the kitchen. On the stove, there are the leftover charred bits of chicken and rice. Smoke billows from the pot, as Casita frantically flaps her shutters back and forth as the curtains billow and the table creaks uneasily. In the center of it all, Bruno’s ash-covered face peers back sheepishly.

“I wanted to give cooking a try,” Bruno says, and shrugs. “You make it look easy, Julieta.”

Tía Julieta looks embarrassed, but Camilo sees the little pleased expression drift across her face. She waves Bruno’s compliments away. “Come on. Let’s clean this mess up, and I’ll teach you how to cook something. Give us una hora,” she says to the rest of the family, before she helps Bruno dump the smoking ruins of the arroz con pollo into the trash can. Casita pouts before the lid opens and swallows the burnt food.

Dolores giggles a little. Isabela and Luisa trade looks. Mirabel snickers and leaves. Antonio already has left. Only Camilo is left lingering near the back of the kitchen.

In the background, Abuela opens her mouth, but Mami shushes her. Abuela frowns. “He should be doing something useful,” she hisses. “Julieta already cooks very well.”

“Mama,” Mami says, uncharacteristically gentle. “Doing something well doesn’t mean that Julieta enjoys cooking for the family every day. Bruno helping her is the best gift he could give.”

Abuela frowns even deeper. Her graying eyebrows draw close together. “I don’t understand,” she says, and Mami rolls her eyes.

“Give them another month,” Mami says.

In another month, Mirabel teaches Tía Julieta how to stitch little designs on her clothing. Julieta is delighted. She shows Camilo one day, pointing to a tiny stitched dragon on her cloth purse. Lopsided red flames come out of its green mouth.

“How long did it take?” Camilo asks curiously. He notices that her forehead is smoother. The stress lines have faded.

Tía Julieta grins. “An entire week,” she admits. “Mi hija is talented, isn’t she? She could do this all in a few hours.” She shrugs. “But I don’t mind spending the extra days. After your tío started helping out in the kitchen, I’ve had some more time on my hands.”

Camilo studies the dragon. Even though the head is a little crooked, and one of the eyes is bigger than the other, the stitchwork is small and neat. “I like it, Tía Julieta,” he tells her honestly, and the smile on her face brightens.

She pinches Camilo’s cheek. “Sweet as always,” Julieta says. “Just like a plate of galletas.”

On the other hand, Tío Bruno still is banned from using the stove. Even Casita has banned it. The final straw was when he nearly set the kitchen on fire by dropping an entire plate of beans onto the stovetop. Even if Bruno tried lighting the stove with a match, nothing would happen. 

But Bruno can use the rice cooker. He is also a surprisingly good baker. When Camilo sits down for dinner and realizes that he no longer can tell the difference between Tío Bruno and Tía Julieta’s pastries, he is impressed. The only reason Camilo knows that Bruno baked the empanadas is because of the unhealed scrape on his elbow.

Camilo brushes a finger on top of the empanada, and the puffed, golden top crumbles and leaves a trail of buttered flakiness on his finger.

Mirabel is arguing with Isabela again. Antonio is ripping his empanada into pieces to make an oddly-shaped smiley-face on his plate.“Your empanadas are really good,” Camilo suddenly tells Bruno, amid the chewing and chatter. 

Bruno blinks at him, surprised. Then, he smiles, and Camilo realizes that his smile looks the same as Julieta’s. Small, but bright.

“Muchas gracias,” Bruno says softly.

Abuela sits at the front of the table, and for once, she is silent. She is watching Julieta show Mami the little embroidered dragon on her purse and she slowly continues chewing on Bruno’s empanadas.

Once upon a time, Abuela simply did not care.

Abuela had favorites. Isabela was her perfect granddaughter. Luisa was her favorite helper. But Camilo, he knew how to read her best. He knew what made Abuela happy and how to avoid her anger. He sat at the dinner table and threw jokes and made fun of family and felt the weight of Abuela’s warm smile on his back. He knew what he was supposed to do, and he did it well. The family laughed and he laughed with them and glowed with the silent knowing that he was one of Abuela’s secret favorites.

At night, Abuela would join him in the living room. The fireplace would be flickering with dancing flames that Casita fed with wood. Sparks danced and threw shadows across the walls. “You know what you’re supposed to do, si?” Abuela would ask, and Camilo always smiled back.

“Yeah, Abuela,” he said. “You know me.”

Her usual stern eyes crinkled. She pulled on his ear and pressed a kiss to his head. “I’m proud of you,” she whispered and left him staring into the warm light of the fireplace.

Having favorites also meant that there was always the least favorite grandchild. And though Abuela never announced it, it was obvious who her least favorite was. 

She forgot to give Mirabel invitations to weddings. She forgot to hang Mirabel’s drawings on Casita’s walls. She forgot to include Mirabel on the list for Antonio’s ceremony all those months ago, and it was only from Julieta’s gentle prodding that Abuela remembered.

And Abuela had seen Camilo when it happened. She was the only one who caught him during all those months. That day, he stood in front of Mirabel’s huddled form on the ground. “Camilo?” he heard Abuela hiss, and he twisted around and saw Abuela’s surprised face peering into the room. At Mirabel’s broken glasses on the ground. “What are you doing?”

She did not ask Mirabel. Mirabel sucked in a quivering breath and went silent.

“We’re playing a game,” Camilo said. Him and Casita against Mirabel. He waited for Abuela to say something, but there was a basket of clothes in Abuela’s arms and a harried look on her face, and when she scanned the room again, her gaze bounced off Mirabel’s shaking figure. 

Abuela gave Camilo one last undiscernable look. “We’re talking later tonight,” she said. “Mirabel,” she added as she was leaving the room. “Broken glass on the floor is dangerous. Please pick it up, or you might get hurt.”

Later that night, Abuela was not happy. The fireplace was damp and cold, and outside, the streaks of red on the sunset bled through the house’s curtains and filled the room with dim light. Camilo sat there with his fingers curled into his fists and wondered why Abuela looked so disappointed.

“Why did you lie to me?” Abuela asked. 

Camilo stared down at his clenched fists. He did not lie. When he didn’t respond, Abuela’s voice grew hard. “There is no game. This family has taught you to be a bright, young man. Instead, you repay us with your unacceptable behavior–”

Camilo’s eyes snapped to hers. “You wanted the family to look good.” 

It was the first time he had ever talked back to Abuela, and she stopped speaking. “You don’t care about Mirabel either,” Camilo continued before he rose from his seat and quietly went upstairs.

After that, Abuela never brought it up again and Camilo avoided Mirabel for a month. And so, it became yet another one of the unsaid things in the family that haunted la casita.

Something is off today.

Camilo soon realizes that Mirabel doesn’t want to see him. She never outright says it, but Camilo knows, especially when Mirabel finds a way to avoid him for the third time that day.

He suddenly feels queasy. He resists the urge to shift into someone small like Antonio and instead looks at Isabela, who has replaced Mirabel for being his chores buddy of the day. They are supposed to be doing the weekly maintenance on the walls of Casita, but when Camilo stops swinging from the vines that Isabela is growing, she tilts her head.

“Is anything wrong?” she calls up to him.

Camilo grabs a vine and slides down. The ragged edges of the leaves burn his hand. He lands shakily in front of Isabela. “I’m not feeling so good today,” he says to Isabela, praying that she would let him go. His left hand quietly pops into Antonio’s tiny fingers, and he shoves it behind his back.

Isabela frowns. “Something must be going around,” she mutters to herself. “Mirabel said the same thing. Maybe we should let Abuela–”

“No,” Camilo says, too loudly. When Isabela gives him an odd look, he adds, “It’s not a big deal. I haven’t swung around in a while, so my stomach feels…” he gestures with his other hand. On cue, his stomach rumbles.

Isabela studies him. “I can just check Casita myself today,” she says. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat one of Ma’s pastries?”

Camilo waves her off. “Just a nap should be fine,” he says, trying to smile. “I owe you one.”

She shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.” She flicks her wrist. A large sunflower crawls from the dirt, yellow petals peeling open to the sun, and Isabela grabs hold of a leaf and lets it carry her into the air.

Inside, Camilo passes by Luisa, who is snoring peacefully on the couch, face pressed against the cushions. She is drooling. He is tempted to draw something on her face, but his stomach squirms and he instead heads to the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. The cold calms his stomach down. His left hand shifts back to its normal size.

He catches his reflection in the mirror. He looks pale. He looks like someone with a guilty conscious. He wishes he could shift his features into his smiling cheeks and his smiling lips and his smiling eyes. But his reflection stays the same, so he closes the door and heads to his room.

On the way, Mirabel’s door cracked open. Camilo glimpses a flash of green. 

He is given the choice to walk away. But he stays and watches. Mirabel is slumped next to Bruno. Bruno is rubbing her shoulder. They bump heads gently, and Mirabel whispers something to Bruno, who nods and continues rubbing her shoulder. He whispers something back. Camilo’s chest squeezes. He wants, but guilt clutches his throat. Guilt about Mirabel. Guilt about his envy. He wants, but he wishes he doesn’t. 

The emotions bounce around in his chest like balloons pressed together and he careens away. He doesn’t want to think. Through his haze, he still somehow finds his room and staggers straight to bed.

Camilo remembers when Casita decided not to give Mirabel a gift. He remembers spying outside of the kitchen, late at night—Mami pacing the room, Papi trying to calm her down, Abuela and Julieta arguing. Mami was frantic. “No one in the family ever rejected a gift from Casita,” she said, and another flash of lightning burned within the clouds above her. “What if Mirabel is a curse?”

“Nonsense.” Julieta’s eyes flashed. Her voice was cold. “Mirabel is a child. Even if she doesn’t have a gift, she is still the same person.”

Papi’s voice was quiet. “Perhaps this is what Br–” he began.

A thunderclap echoed through the air. “Don’t mention his name,” Mami wailed dramatically. “He abandoned this family. He brought nothing but misfortune to everyone. Look what he did to our wedding day. Look what–”

“You liked him the best, Pepa,” Julieta said quietly.

Mami stopped wailing. The clouds above her started to drizzle.

“Quiet,” Abuela said wearily, holding her sopping sweater above her head. She looked tired. “We’re not talking about Bruno today. We are discussing Mirabel’s future.”

“Mama,” Julieta protested, but she fell silent when Abuela shook her head.

“We must think about the family,” Abuela said. “What does it mean that Mirabel didn’t receive the gift when every other family member has?”

The people in the room stared at each other, all suddenly silent.

But Camilo connected the dots. He knew what the family needed. What Abuela needed. What he was supposed to do. Because he realized that Casita didn’t want Mirabel. Because a child’s form of justice is sometimes cruel. And if no one was going to tell Mirabel the truth, then he would do it.

In his dream, Camilo has drawn blood. He feels it on his fingers, and when he looks down, his fingers are red and sticky. Below him, Mirabel’s glasses are shattered. Mirabel herself stares up at him with large frightened eyes. She is the age when she had just finished her failed ceremony and she is tiny. Camilo scrambles off of her. 

“Mirabel?” he whispers, and he realizes that he is still somehow fifteen. He looms over the small form of Mirabel and realizes just how small she is. 

His heart pounds. “Are you okay?” He stumbles forward, but Young Mirabel yelps and crawls backward.

His chest burns. He scrambles back and gives Young Mirabel space. “Hey,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t mean to hurt me?” Young Mirabel hiccups. She glares through her tears. Venom burns in her very un-Mirabel-like gaze, and Camilo can feel it sinking in his chest, wringing his throat. He swallows and doesn’t say anything. There are glass shards in Young Mirabel’s hands and Camilo watches her pull them out with trembling fingers.

“Please let me help,” he whispers. He winces as blood trickles down her hand.

“Go away,” Young Mirabel whispers. Another glass shard is ripped from her hand. Blood splatters. Camilo cringes backward. “You really think this isn’t your fault?” Young Mirabel says, and that’s when the dream ends and Camilo wakes up.

It is dark in the room. Camilo has slept for too long. When he stares up at the ceiling, shadows sway hypnotically to the beat of the rocking curtains. 

He had accidentally missed dinner. He wonders if Isabela has told the rest of the family that he felt sick. Probably. Missing dinner usually meant that a family member was tasked to storm into the late person’s room to bang on their door, but today, his room is silent.

He stares at his darkened ceiling. The sheets around him are damp with sweat, and Camilo closes his eyes and tries to forget the look in Young Mirabel’s eyes as she pulls one glass shard after another from her hands as he falls back into a restless sleep.

Isabela and Luisa had never known about it. They never even guessed it, never really paid attention to the dynamics of the family outside of themselves. It wasn’t their fault. Not really. How could Isabela and Luisa find the energy to pay attention to anything outside of Abuela’s expectations?

When Camilo was really young, even before he got his gift from Casita, he used to be jealous of Mirabel. Camilo loved Mami, but Mami’s emotions spiked and dipped, and there were days when Camilo looked over to Tía Julieta and wondered what it would be like to have her calm warmth in una madre. But his jealousy never lasted long. While Tía Julieta loved her children like a warm blanket swaddled around a baby, Mami’s love wrapped around her children like a hurricane of intensity. Mami loved the same way a thunderstorm caressed a house; a few lightning bolts, but the downpour always had a soothing beat. Tap. Tap.

But more than that, having Mami meant that Camilo didn’t have to grow up under Abuela’s watchful eye the same way Isabela and Luisa did. Whether it was because Mami would explode whenever Abuela got too nosy about Dolores or himself, or whether it was because Abuela had higher expectations for Julieta, Abuela was always harder on Isabela and Luisa.

Camilo might have been a secret favorite of Abuela’s. But Isabela and Luisa, they were both the clear public favorites of Abuela, and Abuela’s chosen ones had responsibilities to uphold. 

It took an entire year for Camilo to walk into Mirabel’s room to give Mirabel a real apology, but Isabela and Luisa were never able to pay Mirabel any more attention than they would to a fly on a wall.

During breakfast, Camilo glances over at Mirabel. She has three eggs and six pieces of toast on her plate. She must have missed dinner as well. He feels the urge to sidle over to her and ask how her morning went. But he can tell that she needs some space. Her back is stiff. So he leaves her alone.

He is about to head out when Isabela gracefully floats in. Her eyes focus on Mirabel. Mirabel does not look happy when Isabela begins heading over, so Camilo sighs and slips past Dolores spreading la mantequilla on her toast. He calls out. “Isabela!”

Isabela stops her determined beeline to Mirabel. She glances at Camilo. “Why are you so cheerful this morning?” she grumbles as she tosses her hair. A blossom falls to the ground.

He drapes an arm over her shoulder. “Just checking up on my least favorite cousin,” he says. He ignores the flower that she throws at his face. “Just kidding. I heard that you have an arrangement of flowers you need to prepare for next week’s wedding.”

“And?” Isabela asks suspiciously. “We are not going to feed the flowers to the next-door neighbor’s goats–”

Camilo snorts. “That sounds fun,” he admits. “But I wanted to repay the favor from yesterday. I could help you with the flower arrangements if you need more help.”

She blinks at him. “Well, I was going to ask Mirabel–” she begins.

Camilo spreads his arms. “And I’m right here.”

“Fine.” She sighs. “Just don’t poison any goats again.”

Isabela leaves the kitchen. When Camilo is sure that she is gone, he taps Mirabel’s shoulder. He juts his chin over to las arepas hiding in the corner, behind the basket of bread. It’s one of Mirabel’s favorite foods, right up there with los churros, and Mirabel blinks at him. “Thanks,” she says quietly, and he knows it's not because of the arepas. 

He nods slightly and makes sure to leave the kitchen before Bruno comes in.

Camilo doesn’t see Tío Bruno for the entire afternoon. It’s on purpose. He wonders if it’s a little obvious that he’s avoiding Bruno, but he doesn’t care. Bruno can think whatever he wants to think. If Bruno realizes that maybe Camilo isn’t as fun as he seemed to be, so what? Lo que sea. Camilo never liked Bruno anyways. Not his soft demeanor or his odd quirks. Definitely not his kindness.

After a day of skillful dodging, it all comes down to luck. When Abuela seats them down at the kitchen table for dinner, Camilo finds himself next to Bruno. He blinks at Bruno, then at his seat. His mind comes up blank with excuses. Abuela is watching. Bruno is watching. The entire family is watching. So Camilo inwardly sucks the queasy feeling in his stomach and smiles at Bruno before sitting down in his seat.

He pulls a quesadilla towards himself. Bites down. The cheese fills his mouth with sticky, savory goodness, and the cut on his hand from Isabela’s wedding arrangement of roses begins to close. It’s Tía Julieta’s cooking. Camilo takes another bite before he’s even finished chewing. 

Across the table, Abuela observes him. “Looks like someone’s hungry today,” she says, sounding amused.

Camilo mumbles something unintelligible. He has a mouth filled with sticky cheese, which means he can’t respond to anything. Obviously. He feels Bruno’s curious gaze on him, and he purposefully pretends that he doesn’t notice. If Bruno did talk to him, Camilo can’t respond anyway. Rule one of the dining table: Let the person eating the quesadillas finish in peace.

Mami raises an arched eyebrow at the three additional quesadillas on Camilo’s plate. “What did you make him do today?” she asks Isabela, who rolls her eyes.

“Flower arrangements,” Isabela scoffs. “It’s not so difícil. Even Antonio can do flower arrangements.”

Camilo just takes another bite of quesadilla and soon, the conversation turns away from his piled plate of quesadillas to other things. Preparation for the wedding next week. New gossip about the cute girl across town. Luisa elbows Isabela, not very subtly, and Isabela turns red and folds her arms together.

In the corner of his eye, he can see Bruno’s green sleeve. Bruno reaches for a napkin, and Camilo can only see him patting Mirabel across the back. Sees Mirabel lean forward into Bruno's comforting grasp, and he chokes on the quesadilla. The mirage vanishes. Mirabel is on the opposite side of the dinner table. 

Camilo pulls the glass of water towards him and inhales. He comes up spluttering, and the entire family is staring at him again.

“Tía Julieta,” Camilo announces. There is cheese on his chin, and he doesn’t wipe it off. “Your quesadillas are too good to resist,” he says. He sounds a little sheepish and is glad when the entire table laughs. Everyone, except for Bruno who has resumed observing him with those careful eyes.

“My food can’t do anything for you if you choke on them,” Tía Julieta scolds, wagging her finger. Camilo just pulls his face into a grin and takes an even bigger bite of quesadilla, and Tía Julieta huffs good-naturedly.

But when everyone returns to their previous conversations, he feels Dolores nudging his shoulder. “Everything alright?” she whispers. “Your heart is loud. Like really loud.”

He nearly groans aloud. He had forgotten to take the world’s greatest lie detector into account. He glances at her and mouths, “Bad dream,” and her eyes grow large and round. Thankfully, she only nods and turns to join the family in their gossip about the “supposedly cute new girl.” Isabela is slowly reddening to the color of a tomato. 

Beside Camilo, Bruno stirs, then coincidentally taps him at the same time Camilo takes yet another massive bite of his food. When Bruno opens his mouth to say something, Camilo raises an eyebrow and points to his mouth still stuffed with more cheese. Bruno just looks at him. Guilt rises within Camilo. But he knows that when Bruno speaks, he will start shapeshifting uncontrollably. So he continues chewing silently, and soon, Bruno looks away.

Feeling both awful and accomplished, Camilo tunes back into the conversation at the table. “So she has really pretty hair?” he hears Mirabel tease. It seems as if Mirabel is back to normal. She adds, “The new girl’s hair is quite silky and smooth, isn’t it?” and a very red Isabela seems to decide that enough is enough.

“I’m leaving,” Tomato Isabela huffs. And with her signature move, she tosses her hair over her shoulder and storms off gracefully. A trail of blushing pink poppies blooms behind her. An additional cactus pops up next to Mirabel’s chair that Mirabel expertly dodges.

Camilo has never been happier about Isabela’s melodramatic antics before. 

Using Isabela’s grand entrance as an excuse to sneak out, he quickly announces his self-dismissal from the table. And to look less suspicious, he takes another quesadilla with him, because “Tía Julieta, they’re just really good today.” Also, he just wants another quesadilla. Then he speed-walks out of the kitchen.

Camilo avoids Bruno for an entire week. He turns it into a game, and it’s a little too much fun. Once, he manages to escape Bruno by turning into Abuela and marches out of the house uninterrupted. Then he collides with the real Abuela. They blink at each other, before Camilo transforms back into himself with a pop, and races away, hearing Abuela shout, “CAMILIO! TU CULO. AQUI. AHORA.”

With his increasingly reckless attempts, he begins to capture his family’s attention. When Camilo begs Luisa to toss him on top of Casita, she frowns. “Is this a competition?” Luisa asks, and there are absolutely no competitions for roof tossing around. But Camilo nods because Bruno is right there … in some sort of mask? “Luisa,” he hisses again, and Luisa just sighs and places down the wood she is carrying to lob him on the roof.

“Estás loco,” Dolores says when Camilo pleads for her to become his ears. He has asked her to warn him if Bruno breached a radius of a hundred feet. “Casita is only two hundred feet wide,” she adds.

“Exactly,” Camilo says. He is sure that his request is reasonable. “Think about it. If Bruno doesn’t come near me, then I won’t have an upset stomach.”

“Estás loco,” Dolores repeats, swirling a finger around her head, and flounces away.

Camilo approaches Isabela next. “Isabela?” he says, placing his hands together. Isabela’s face pops out from behind her enormous garden of palma de cera. She is wearing big, green rubber gloves. She spots Camilo and scowls.

“I know what you’re doing,” she says.

“No, you don’t.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re trying to hide from Tío Bruno. Camilo, the entire family knows at this point. Even Tío Bruno. The only reason that I don’t feel bad for him is that he clearly thinks it’s somewhat funny as well.”

Camilo blinks. “He thinks it’s funny?” he parrots.

Isabela aggressively snips off an awkwardly bent branch from her palma de cerca. “He came up to me and asked if I could spare him some violently ugly plants to scare you with. I told him, ‘Mi tío, my plants are not supposed to be ugly on purpose,’ and you know what he said?” 

Another aggressive snip. A branch falls and nearly hits Camilo on the head and Camilo has to force himself to stay. “Um. Tío Bruno says, ‘Of course, my darling Isabela?’” he tried.

“No!” Isabela spits. Camilo ducks, and a second later, an entire angry cactus swipes by where his face used to be. Isabela doesn’t seem to notice. She scowls at the tree she is pruning. “Tío Bruno says, ‘Oh, that’s what they all say. But we all know that some of your plants are just really ugly.’” She waves a fist at the sky. “Can you believe the nerve of that estúpido?”

“No?” Camilo says weakly. “Does that mean that you’ll help me–”

“NO!” Isabela screeches, and Camilo takes that as an opportunity to run away because even Isabela can be scarier than Bruno sometimes.

It’s Antonio who helps him the most. Camilo just has to bend down and whisper his plan into Antonio’s ear before his little brother lights up. Though it’s probably the mention of lions and tigers that gets him excited. It takes three rounds of fleeing from Bruno on the back of three lions stacked on top of each other, and one round of the lion stacked on Camilo when Antonio loses interest altogether and wanders off to play somewhere else.

Which leaves Mirabel.

“Come in,” Mirabel calls through the door, and Camilo peeks in and finds her embroidering on a massive piece of shiny green cloth. In her hands, gold threads twists and glimmer in the faint light that is shunted through the shutters.

“I am–”

“–currently escaping from Tío Bruno, because the entire family knows by now. And I think you’re worrying Abuela, because she actually talked to Tío Bruno. But then Tío Bruno nearly had a heart attack, because Abuela never talks to him. But Abuela told him that she wanted to talk about feelings. Which is pretty new for her and I’m really proud of her. But then Tía Pepa came in as soon as Abuela mentioned, ‘feelings,’ and almost followed Bruno into having a heart attack. But don’t worry about Abuela, because Tío Bruno assured her that you weren’t hurting his feelings,” Mirabel says. As usual, she says it all in one breath.

Silence. “Oh,” Camilo says awkwardly. He isn’t sure that he caught everything. “I’m… glad?”

“Though you should probably know that he is lying,” Mirabel adds. She peers over at him through her round, green glasses. “Because he is a little hurt. And confused. Especially since it’s not his gift that’s the problem. Right?” She doesn’t even wait for Camilo to respond. “Well. I know it isn’t. I’ve sort of figured what it was about. You should talk to Tío Bruno.”

“My stomach feels weird when I see him,” Camilo complains.

Mirabel tries to slip the golden thread through the needle’s eye, but the ends have unraveled. It refuses to go in. “It’s a nervous reflex,” she says. Unlike Dolores, she takes his comment seriously. “A little annoying. But nothing you can’t push through.”

Camilo doesn’t need to ask how Mirabel knows. Instead, he watches her stick the golden thread in her mouth. When she pulls out the thread again, the unraveled bits have stuck together, so when she threads it through the needle’s eye again, it slips through.

“See, your issue is that you’re a little stupid,” Mirabel says. When Camilo makes a sound of protest, she ignores him. “Sure, baby Camilo was a demon. You sucked. You really did. But– nuh-uh,” she says, raising an eyebrow when Camilo tries to speak again. “I never got to rant properly about Estelle the Rat, so you get this.”

Camilo shuts his mouth and swears that she’s laughing a little. But Mirabel turns to fiddle around with her golden thread, and he can’t see her face anymore. 

“I never told you this,” Mirabel admits. The atmosphere grows solemn. “But when I was younger, I wondered what would happen if I told Mama. Or Tía Pepa. When you apologized that day, I thought, ‘I could do it. I could do it and I wouldn’t even have to worry about being pushed off Casita.’

A loop. Two loops. The golden thread in Mirabel’s hands balloon, and when she pulls, they shrink into a knot at the ends. Mirabel tugs at the threads, and when the knot doesn’t move, she begins stitching the shiny green cloth.

“Then you kept knocking on my door every week,” she says. “And when I told you to go away, you avoided me for a month. And you did the creepy watching thing that Bruno always does, where no one can tell that you’re watching until you do something so obscure that only a stalker would do. Like when I lost my glasses that one day and you showed up with them on your face, saying I left them on Antonio’s bed. Do you know how freaky that was?”

“You always leave your glasses on Antonio’s bed,” Camilo protests. “Or on the kitchen windowsill.”

Mirabel stops stitching and raises an eyebrow. “See? Pretty creepy.” 

He pauses. “Fair.”

Mirabel returns to working on the green cloth. Her tone is still conversational.“So what was I supposed to do then? I wanted to stay mad and I hated you.” She huffs. “But you were trying so hard, and I don’t know, I saw that and some little thing inside me said, ‘Wow. Mirabel, he’s so bad at trying hard, just like you,” and that gave me an existential crisis for three weeks. Three weeks. So I just never told anyone. Which honestly, I probably should have. But that’s not the point. And...I’m rambling, because the point is, I think a lot.”

Camilo snorts. “No way. You do?”

Mirabel swats him. “Shut up. I’m still talking.”

“You’ve been going on for five minutes.”

She makes a face at him. “Deal with it.” Then, she sets down the green cloth on her lap and looks at him, really looks at Camilo. 

“So the point is, I have complex thoughts.” Mirabel wags a finger at him. “Which means you also probably have complex thoughts. So go talk to Tío Bruno and resolve all your complex thoughts with him because this morning, I just made a bet with Isabela that you would talk to him by the end of this week.”

It’s funny how apologies work. Sometimes they’re big and extravagant, like Mami’s when she buys Papi six boxes of chocolate. Sometimes, they’re small and quiet, like Dolores’ when she whispers to Luisa about the best places to nap in Casita. Sometimes, they come too late, like Abuela’s hug to Bruno ten years after she chased him away. Sometimes, they look like Isabela’s flowers or Tía Julieta’s biscuits.

After a month of silence, Camilo stood outside Mirabel’s door. He waited the night. And when she opened it the next morning, he looked at her with Dolores’ and Tía Julieta’s and Abuela’s voices in his mind, and quietly said, “Lo siento,” but Mirabel had already closed it again.

So he waited outside the next day. And the next. Until Mirabel kept the door open and asked, “Why? Why now?” and Camilo looked at his feet and whispered, “I thought I was right, and now I know that I wasn’t,” and Mirabel just stared at him with red-rimmed eyes and said, “Get out.” 

So he gave her space, but in the ways that he knew how to. He watched. He waited. He disappeared when needed. He helped at odd moments. Until Mirabel tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Why are you so weird?” and they finally had a conversation in her room that lasted the entire night.

Camilo stands outside Tío Bruno’s room and studies the door. The lines outline a little Bruno figure behind a simple hourglass design. Door Bruno looks deep in thought, eyebrows pressed together as he stares at the hourglass. He pulses with the warm magic of la casita. For a door that had been barred by ominous wooden planks for ten years, it looks no different than the rest of the doors in the hallway.

Camilo contemplates waiting outside. But the door creaks open as if the room was waiting for him all along. He hesitates, tries knocking, and when nothing happens, he inches his way inside Bruno’s room. His stomach gurgles anxiously, and he impatiently rubs at it to stop.

He’s never been inside Bruno’s room. He’s certainly heard things before, especially from Mirabel, who has complained about the winding stairs endlessly going up, up until she has to literally drag herself with her hands to get to the other side. He remembers Abuela complaining about the sand, sand tracked into the cracks and hidden spaces of la casita.

When he looks up into Bruno’s room, there is still a lot of sand. But the winding stairs that Mirabel has described are gone. Instead, there is a ten-meter-long staircase of stone that stretches before him. Long, yes. But certainly not the soul-crushing set of stairs Mirabel went on and on about.

He doesn’t spot Bruno anywhere. He eyes the staircase and wonders if climbing them would be too much like trespassing, though he has already trespassed, even if technically, Bruno’s door invited him to come inside. Before he can come to a final decision, someone leaps out and grabs his shoulders from behind.

Camilo instinctively pops. Mid-yelp, he finds himself as Luisa and turns to grab the intruder. Then realizes that the intruder is Tío Bruno, who is blinking up at him innocently. On Bruno’s face, a black mask sits, the same one he was wearing when Luisa tossed Camilo onto Casita’s roof. A green cape also swishes behind him.

“Um,” Camilo says in Luisa’s deep voice.

Bruno sighs. He takes off the black mask and tucks it under his ruana, inside some invisible pocket. “I forgot how underwhelming it is to scare a family filled with magical powers,” he grumbles.

Camilo shrugs. He isn’t very sorry. He would rather keep the fragments of his dignity left. “Are you supposed to be a turtle?” he asks curiously as he pops back into his skin.

Bruno grumbles again. “I was trying to be a villain,” he says. “It’s funnier to chase someone dressed as a villain. I tried asking Isabela to give me one of her evil plants, but she instead hit me with her trovel and I decided not to ask her again. She would be a scarier villain.”

So that was the plant business that Isabela was going on about. “Isabela would make a very scary villain,” Camilo agrees. 

He eyes Bruno’s very familiar-looking cape. It is made of the same, shiny cloth material that Mirabel was working on earlier. The image on the cloth is complete now. A neatly stitched hourglass glints against the deep green of his cloak.

Bruno follows his gaze. He twirls around a bit. “Mirabel stitched it for me,” he says. “How do you like it?”

Camilo crosses his arms together. “I should have guessed she was teaming up with you.”

Bruno chuckles. His laugh sounds a little like a wheeze. Or a rat choking on something. “Not just Mirabel. The entire family. Why did you think I could find you so easily?”

“Ten people against one,” Camilo complains. “That’s not fair.”

That seems to make Bruno curious. He tilts his head. “So it was just a game to you?”

“I turn a lot of things into games,” Camilo admits. “It’s fun that way. Even when it’s not actually very funny.” He finds it suddenly very difficult to meet Bruno’s gaze. He looks out into the chasm that gapes underneath the stairs. Even when he squints, he can’t find the bottom. “Sorry about avoiding you.”

Tío Bruno hums. “You should sit with me,” he offers and walks to the edge of the cliff. Before Camilo could shout in alarm, Bruno plops to the ground. He dangles his feet off the edge casually, and when Camilo sees that Bruno isn’t somehow being sucked into the void, he cautiously joins him.

It’s kind of fun. Camilo swings his legs and feels the terrifying gravity of the void underneath him. But somehow, he’s still sitting. He isn’t dragged into the void’s gaping jaw. He suddenly wonders if this is how Bruno sees the future, as vast and as terrifying as the chasm. If Bruno sees himself as the only one with the flashlight, forever searching for the bottom. It’s a lonely image.

Camilo shifts. Then, he does it. He asks Bruno about the question that has been lingering on his mind for the last couple of months.

“Did you know?”

He feels Bruno shrug. “There are lots of things that I know.”

“What I did to Mirabel.”

A pause. “Yes,” Bruno says, and it hits Camilo like one of Mami’s slaps. 

He physically recoils. Then, he forcibly reels in his emotions again. So Bruno knew this entire time. No big deal. “Was it a vision?”

Bruno doesn’t respond for a long time. Camilo begins to feel nauseous again. When he looks over, Bruno is staring out into nothing. Not the chasm. Not the massive cave that lay on the other side of the stairs. Just the space in front of him. His eyes look distant.

“I was there,” Bruno finally says. “Behind the walls.”

“Oh,” Camilo says numbly. 

It’s worse. It’s so much worse than he had anticipated. He pulls his legs away from the void and clutches them to his chest and presses his chin to his knees. In this position, he can’t see Bruno’s face. He breathes in. Breathes out. 

Then he remembers what Mirabel told him to do. To talk more.

“I wanted to spend more time with you,” Camilo admits, and his voice comes out small.

“Me?” Bruno’s voice pitches up.

“But you’re close to Mirabel,” Camilo continues. “And I didn’t want to intrude. And I did horrible things to her, and I maybe thought it would be better if you didn’t know about it. But if you didn’t know, then I wouldn’t deserve to hang out with you. Or even more so if you did find out.”

He doesn’t want to face Bruno. The void stares back at him instead. It looms, large and unavoidable.

After a moment, he hears Bruno sigh. “The biggest thing I didn’t like about this family was Abuela’s unspoken rules,” Bruno says quietly. “That you had to earn your position in the family. Luisa carried things. Your Tía Julieta cooked. Your Mami kept her emotions in check.” He pauses. “You smiled at dinner, every single day.”

Camilo swallows.

“But people are more than what they do well,” he hears Bruno say. He feels Bruno’s gaze is on him. He steels his nerves and looks and comes face-to-face with Bruno’s sad smile. 

“Camilo,” Bruno says, and his voice is gentle. “You don’t have to do good things to get my attention. In fact, you don’t have to do anything. You are my sobrino, and even if you did terrible things when you were younger, or even if you didn’t laugh or smile or joke around, I will still be happy to spend time with you. Lo entiendes? ”

Camilo swallows again. And when Bruno continues looking at him expectantly, he nods.

Bruno seems satisfied. “Besides,” he adds, looking away. “Mirabel is strong. She is like Isabela’s palmas de ceras. Sturdy. Stubborn. It takes more than memories to snap her roots.”

“Yeah,” Camilo agrees softly.

They both fall into a comfortable silence, staring down at the chasm.

Bruno is the first one to break the silence. “You wanted to spend more time with me?” he asks, sounding incredulous, and Camilo laughs a little.

“Well, yeah,” Camilo says. “Obviously.”

A week later, Tío Bruno catches Camilo watching him outside of the kitchen. He is busy mixing ingredients. Before Camilo can leave, Bruno waves to him.

“Come on in,” he calls out.

Camilo hesitates. Then he opens the door and creeps in. In the kitchen, there is a dusting of flour on his face. It makes him look odd; half a face filled with powder, the other spattered with bits of eggs and butter and cinnamon.

“I’m making churros,” Bruno says. He is measuring a few cups of oil. His hand, usually so shaky, is firm when he pours the golden liquid into the bowl of flour. He glances at Camilo, and Camilo sees the fleeting look of uncertainty on his face before it vanishes. “Do you want to help?”

Camilo stares at the bowls on the table. Tía Julieta likes using the red bowl to mix things, but Bruno is using it to hold the uncracked eggs. Tía Julieta also uses a lot fewer bowls than Bruno is, but she also makes a bigger mess. Just not on her face.

“Mirabel’s favorite,” he says. “Also Tía Julieta’s too.”

Bruno blinks. “Yes,” he says. He looks at Camilo again with that curious look.

Camilo shrugs the look off. He walks into the kitchen, and in the corner of his eye, he sees Casita exaggeratedly holding her breath. The shutters of her windows are half-open and even the tablecloth is half-spread on the table, and when Camilo rolls his eyes at the windows, the curtains quiver back like la casita is laughing at him.

“How many eggs do los churros need?” he asks.

A smile appears on Bruno’s face, small and bright. “Four eggs,” he says, and Camilo nods and begins cracking the eggs into the bowl, feeling surprisingly content.