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Camila can’t remember the last thing she actually said to her daughter. She has texts, of course, all seemingly mundane and cheerful. She can’t bear to look at them anymore, not now that she knows the truth, can’t help but scrutinize each word for some clue of where her daughter truly was. Camila knows the last thing her daughter sent to her by heart, each character etched into her mind: “txt u later mami!! <3 <3”.
She’d agonized over that text for days. She’d texted Luz the next day and the next, with no response. She’d even tried calling on the fourth day. Luz could be a sparse texter at times, but she knew better than to ignore her mother. Camila had known something was wrong, an anchor wrapped around her heart that only seemed to grow heavier with each passing hour.
So she’d called the camp, trying to reassure herself that Luz was okay, that maybe something had happened to her phone. The dawning horror that chilled Camila’s veins as she spoke to one of the counselors was almost enough to make her lose grip of her phone. Feeling almost sluggish in the face of the terrifying reality that she didn’t know where her daughter was, she had asked the man to repeat himself.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s no one by the name of Luz Noceda here.”
Camila was a single mother and a veterinarian; she knew how to deal with emergencies. So she’d gripped the phone tighter and demanded answers. Things were a bit of a blur after that. The facts were these:
Luz had never arrived at Reality Check Camp.
Luz had been lying to her mother for weeks.
Luz was– is missing.
The police were useless. First, they’d tried to convince Camila that Luz was a runaway. They did a sweep of the neighborhood in an attempt to placate Camila, brief and insufficient. There was no sign of Luz, not after so many weeks. They had given up on Luz before the search had really even started, though one detective did attempt to be as gentle as possible when he informed Camila they were “suspending the active search.” She’d thrown their TV remote at him, though her aim was muddled by the tears blurring her vision.
Luz had no friends. She wasn’t very well liked at school. Their only living family remained in the Dominican Republic. There was nowhere that Luz could have gone that she could think of, if she had run away. Camila had spent hours considering every person in their lives for some clue of where Luz could have gone. It was no use.
What plagues her these days is a single torturous question: What was the last thing she’d said to Luz in person? She can’t remember. Camila tries, fruitlessly, to recall that hurried goodbye– what had she said? She hopes that she told her daughter how much she loves her.
The more she thinks on it, the more she’s sure that she hadn’t even said goodbye at all. Their goodbye that fateful day was never meant to be permanent, so it’s even more difficult for her to recall the details. You couldn’t tell a day like that was important until after. She’d been running late, Luz was going to see herself off to camp, they’d both been under the assumption that they’d see each other again.
Camila tries to tell herself this when she feels the emptiness of their house echo across her bones, when she encounters some shred of her daughter left behind. But her words are not very convincing, especially when she forces herself to think about the possibility that Luz had known. Camila thinks that reality is worse, cuts deeper than her poor baby being harmed by the world as a cruel twist of fate.
Things hadn’t been easy before Luz…left. The two of them were close, supportive, but Camila had never been able to bridge the gap between them the same way that Mateo could. The two of them had always indulged Luz’s creativity, but he had been the one to take Luz’s ideas and spin them back into something new and wonderful. The love her daughter shared with her husband was a continuous conversation that she’d always envied, an endless dance that they always came up with new steps to.
Luz had always been a lot . But Mateo had known the secret to reigning their daughter in; he always seemed to have the right words to say or the cleverest suggestion to redirect Luz and keep her out of trouble. After he was gone, Luz was like an astronaut in space without a tether– unbound and without any sort of force to slow her velocity or control her intensity.
Mateo was an optimist, always chanting “Seguir adelante!” to his girls. If he wasn’t there to keep them moving forward, she would have to pick up the slack. So Camila had found a camp that was supposed to help teenagers adjust. She said it was to help Luz, but really, deep down she knew it was also so she could have a break from the whirlwind that was her daughter. If Luz picked up some skills to help her settle, then all the better for both of them.
Camila would give anything to go back to that time, when she was tired and stressed and reaching her limit, to beg herself to forget the camp– to try harder with Luz. The house is too quiet now. It feels too big all by herself, even though she uses less of it than she ever had. Just once, she had gone into Luz’s room. It had been too overwhelming and Camila had cried herself to sleep clutching Luz’s pillow. Since then, the door remained shut.
It’s raining tonight and Camila is nodding off, curled into the couch as she so often is these days. It never felt right to her, to go to bed and sleep comfortably while her daughter was out there in the unknown. She’s letting the monotone voice of the narrator of the documentary lull her into sleep when her phone chimes, forgotten on the cushion next to her.
She almost doesn’t check it, long past the days where she had clung to it for any news of Luz. Whatever her phone wants her to see, it’s probably just as disappointing as every other notification from the past few months. Camila squints at the screen, urging the pixels to come into focus without her glasses to help. Her stomach drops at the familiar contact, the name of her whole entire heart paired with some goofy selfie– Luz. All she can do is stare, barely able to blink, afraid it’s just her imagination. As if to prompt her, her phone buzzes again, another notification from Luz stacking on top of the last one. Camila drops her phone, startled, and watches as it bounces off of the couch and onto the rug, face down.
Notifications continue to stream in, so many that her phone seems to have trouble processing them all– another alert going off before one can even finish. She blinks at the small rectangle, and something inside of her snaps, like an animal breaking free from a lead. Camila throws herself forward, scrambles for her phone, fingers fumbling as she tries to unlock it.
Immediately, she tries to call Luz. Her breath is caught by the jagged shards of her heart, choking on its way out of her windpipe when the calls immediately fail. She can’t get through.
Camila changes course, gripping her phone as tightly as possible as she clambers back onto the couch, searching for her glasses. Once she’s forced onto her face, she opens her texts, sees the ever growing number of unread messages from her missing daughter.
The thread has been overtaken by a one-sided stream of messages from Luz, some pictures and videos that her phone is struggling to download, some plain old text. Camila blinks away her tears furiously, unwilling to let anything get between her and Luz right now.
Some texts are longer than others, some are just a stream of emojis. Camila scrolls to the beginning, and feels her heart break all over again. She finds the text she has memorized from Luz and reads it again.
txt u later mami!! <3 <3
Directly beneath that, she sees Luz’s first words to her in months. The sob that wracks her body is almost enough to make her drop the phone again.
lo siento mami. p erdóname, es mi culpa.
If Camila knew that she could scream loud enough for her daughter to hear it, she would scream an endless cry of, “I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you…” until her vocal chords were nothing but pulp. She doesn’t know what Luz did, what she thinks is her fault. But there’s nothing Luz could have done that Camila would have condemned to the point of not letting her daughter come home.
Camila ignores the rest of the texts for a moment, immediately trying to text Luz. Her words are a little jumbled in a haste to get her message across, begging her daughter to come home, to answer the phone. The text stalls, eventually notifying Camila the message can’t be delivered. She returns to the beginning, desperately hoping for some kind of understanding of where her daughter has been.
something bad happened. i had to make a choice and i don’t know if it was the right one. i had to do it because something even worse would have happened if i didn’t. but it’s going to be awhile before i can see u again
mami, i lied to u. i’m not at summer camp
i don’t know if u would even believe me if i told u about the boiling isles. maybe i can show u one day. i’m going to make it right. te lo prometo
my messages aren’t going thru. let me send a video…
A video attachment is directly under that text, but when Camila tries to play it it refuses to load. For a moment, she’s overcome by frustration, the tears flooding down her face suddenly feeling too wet, her mouth too dry, her skin too hot . But she forces herself to take a deep, wet, shaky breath and continue reading. She needs to know where Luz is.
I miss you. I love you. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
i met eda and lilith’s mom today!! she thinks she can cure the curse. eda’s not into it for some reason, but i could tell she really did miss her mom. i know how that feels. seguir adelanto
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my friends got their palismens!! they were all super excited!! i’m so happy for them. i wish one had chosen me…it’s ok tho! eda gave me some palistrom wood to carve my own when i’m ready just like a real witch
i have some big news!!!!! i have a girlfriend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! her name is amity and she’s so smart and cool, i can’t wait for u 2 to meet. i’m getting closer and closer with the portal. i will be with u soon mami. te quiero mucho!! <3 <3
we’re going to try the portal. i can’t wait to see u. pls don’t be too mad. hopefully i will be home soon
The texts end there, no matter how many times Camila tries to refresh. She rereads the words over and over again until they begin to bleed together. She has so many questions: Who are Eda and Lilith? What are the boiling isles? A portal for what? She has to put the phone down. Her texts still aren’t going through, and she is getting nowhere sitting here crying.
She makes sure the volume is all the way up and tucks the phone in her pocket, marching stiffly toward the kitchen. Seguir adelante, Luz had said. Wherever her daughter is, she’s trying to come home. Camila tries to force this mantra through her head as she robotically prepares a mug of tea in the dim light of their lonely kitchen.
The warmth feels nice around her fingers, but her stomach is still churning too much to drink it. She tries to parce what she does understand from Luz’s texts. Luz had lied to her about where she was, and for some reason could not get home. She’s hopefully with people around her own age, maybe this Eda, Lilith or Amity? The part that possibly scares Camila the most are the words… just like a real witch…
Luz is still lost in her fantasy world and it pulls at Camila’s chest to know that she was right, Luz is gone because she tried to change her. It scares her more that Luz could be with people taking advantage of her, pretending to be witches . What kind of person even did that? A wave of nausea rolls over Camila as she is reminded of all the horrible things her daughter could be going through.
But Camila has to be strong. Isn’t that what she’s good at? When Mateo died, she had to be strong. When Luz was getting into more and more trouble, she had to be strong. This is no different. Her baby girl needs her and Camila will be damned if she lets her daughter down again.
Seguir adelante. This is more than Camila has had to go on since the beginning. She has names, texts that can maybe be tracked…she will make do with whatever Luz has given her. Camila sighs, pushing her tea away and pulling out her phone again. She tries in vain to send another text to Luz, before scrolling back to the beginning of the recent messages.
Her heart drops into her stomach again when she realizes the video has finally downloaded. She clicks on it immediately, squinting at the poor quality, gasping when she sees her daughter waving at her. Luz’s hair is a little longer and her clothes are odd, but she looks okay. A terrible sob rips its way up Camila’s throat and she immediately has to pause the video, overwhelmed.
When it becomes clear that she’s not going to stop crying any time soon, she resumes the video and watches her daughter introduce her to a fantastical world, though it often buffers and the screen looks choppy at times. Camila doesn’t understand any of it.
That thought alone is almost enough to break her. Sequir adelante , she tells herself.
She has always had trouble understanding Luz, but that has never stopped her– will never stop her. Later, she will make a plan. She’ll try to put names to faces, try to figure out where in the world Luz is, how she can help get her home.
For now, it’s enough to listen to her daughter’s soft, “Te quiero, mama,” over and over and over again until she’s too tired to keep scrubbing it back. If there is any other comfort, it is the relief of knowing that whatever Camila said to Luz that day in the summer were not the last words Camila would speak to her.
She wouldn’t let it be.