Work Text:
“A book report,” Bruno complained, dangling his feet in the fountain at the centre of Pepa’s room. “Another stinking book report! Like Señora Grijalva hasn’t already set us at least seven of those this year!”
Pepa swung her feet, sending a wave of water towards him and Julieta. “I don’t know why you’re complaining, Bruno. You read plenty of books.”
“I do,” said Bruno. “But I don’t want to write about them. Look, either they’re boring and I don’t finish them, but Señora Grijalva probably has, and she’ll be able to tell I don’t know how they end. You know I’m terrible at bluffing. Or I finish them but they’re just meh, and then I don’t know what to say about them. Writing a report on one of those is like getting lost in a maze for days on end where the only thing to eat is plain boiled potatoes. Trust me, I speak from experience.”
“Of mazes, potatoes, or book reports?” Pepa enquired.
“Book reports. And potatoes, I guess. Not mazes, because the only one of those I’ve ever seen is in Julieta’s room and I’ve never been lost in that.”
The maze in Julieta’s room was made of sweet-smelling hedges, neatly clipped and only hip-high. It was good for walking in when you were trying to calm down or think, but no good for getting lost in. If you spent too long in it, Casita would rearrange the hedges to give you a straight line to the exit.
“You like boiled potatoes when I cook them,” said Julieta. “Unless you’re bluffing.”
“I just reminded you I’m terrible at bluffing,” Bruno said. “Besides, you don’t serve them up as whole meals.”
“Just for you, I will next time.”
“Try it, see what Mamá says.”
They stuck out their tongues at one another.
“What are you talking about, anyway, Bruno?” said Pepa. “I know there are plenty of books you like. Sometimes you can’t shut up about them.”
“Yeah, you interrupted me before I’d finished,” said Bruno, feeling mildly frustrated at having not made sense, but glad of the chance to fix it. “Sure, I can talk about those to you two. But not to Señora Grijalva. It’s too personal. Like, I’d be telling her my innermost thoughts.”
“Your innermost thoughts are about Odysseus fighting the Cyclops? Bruno, I had no idea you were so shallow.”
“Just because Odysseus isn’t real doesn’t mean I can’t have deep thoughts about him.” But this was a debate they’d had before, and Bruno hadn’t come out of it well. “Fine, what if Señora Grijalva wanted you to write a report on Félix? You can’t tell me you wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
“I’d be embarrassed to hand it in,” said Pepa. “But I’d love writing it. If only she would set us that. Sadly, the only books I’ve read in the past two months are ones I’ve already written reports about. I need to know they’re going to make me feel the right way. Mamá’s already on at me enough as it is.”
“Well, at least you’ve been reading,” Julieta mourned. “I’m always too busy or too tired, especialy this time of the month.”
“Not in front of Bruno!” exclaimed Pepa and Bruno together, imitating Mamá. All the triplets knew Bruno was completely used to such girl talk and wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
“Tell you what, Bruno,” said Julieta. “You write about another boiled potato book, and we’ll bribe you with chocolate santafereño so you get it done faster. And then you can tell us the story of one of your favourites, and me and Pepa can write about that one.”
Letting himself be bribed with chocolate santafereño just meant Bruno had to deprive himself of it until he’d finished. It was a tactic that worked well for Julieta, but not for him. “Not fair,” he said. “I want someone to tell me a story.”
“Once upon a time there was an absolutely gorgeous guy named Félix …” Julieta threw a teasing glance at Pepa.
“Who was sailing home from the wars past a bunch of strange islands …” Pepa caught the glance and tossed it to Bruno.
“At the absolute worst time of the month.” Bruno caught the glance and figuratively twirled it around. “Hey. I’ve got an idea.”
Unfortunately, when Úrsula Grijalva set book reports to her oldest students, she had an ulterior motive.
Yes, it encouraged them to read outside school and gave them vital practice at writing, things many of them were inclined to neglect at an age when they became more interested in pairing off and/or learning a trade. Yes, it was also an easy, unimaginative option for the teacher, although who could blame her, considering she’d been running the Encanto’s one and only school all by herself since she’d founded it? But also, reading was her greatest pleasure. The book reports gave her information she craved: news of books she hadn’t read, and clues about who she might borrow them from.
Hardly anyone had packed any books when preparing for that frantic flight they had all taken fifteen years ago. Even Úrsula had filled her too-small backpack with clothes and food instead. She’d assumed she would end up somewhere with a book shop and be able to start her collection anew, and besides, how would she ever have chosen which few to save out of so many friends? So at first, her life in her new home had been purgatory. Yes, the Encanto was beautiful and safe. Yes, living in a village being built from scratch was never exactly dull. But the only things to read, grudgingly lent around by their owners, were one extremely clichéd romance novel, one single-volume encyclopaedia, one sailor’s almanac for the year 1887 with a bullet hole most of the way through it, two lovingly annotated recipe books, and several Bibles.
Then had come the shop, the second most magical building in the Encanto, appearing one night in a swarm of twinkling lights. It sold luxuries the people of the Encanto couldn’t get hold of any other way. Right now it was stocked with musical instruments, but that would change any day now, unpredictably. Even Bruno, asked what the place would sell this time next week, was never able to see.
When it sold books, Úrsula would buy as many as she could afford. But that was never very many. Even though the goods had a magical origin, prices were about the same as they would be in a normal town, because the widow Ortiz, who ran the place, had to provide for her six children and could not believe anyone wanted as much as they would be able to afford if she lowered the prices. Maybe she was right, for most of the things the shop sold. Nobody needed more than one acordeón. But in the case of books, Úrsula felt her policy was distinctly unfair.
So the Encanto’s stock of books had built up gradually, and since there was no library (Úrsula kept trying to persuade the council to build one) people traded them around. Locating a specific title often involved talking to a chain of people who had had it and passed it on. Or Úrsula could shorten the chain by asking her students for book reports.
This time, all three Madrigal triplets had written about the same book. That was fine because they’d all written different things about it, so they obviously hadn’t been copying one another’s work.
Pepa had written about the pair of lovers at the heart of the story, though three times as much about Fernando, the happy-go-lucky tiple player mistaken for a bank robber, as about Josefa’s struggle to find her place in her loving but overbearing family. She made a convincing case for Fernando being an all-round wonderful human being, handsome, brave, and persistently facing adversity with a cheerful heart. Úrsula was less convinced he was a wonderful character, since he sounded a little too good to be true. But she was intrigued.
From Bruno, Úrsula learned more of the plot, including the startling fact that it ended in tragedy. What sort of tragedy, Úrsula did not learn, because she averted her eyes from the rest, wrote a quick A at the top, and set the report aside. She already knew Bruno could write well. There was no point in exposing herself to spoilers.
More tantalising still was Julieta’s description of the imagery in the book, the twin symbols of the maze and the fountain, and particularly the food Fernando ate on his travels, described so deliciously that Julieta said she felt as though she could taste it. On a chilly northern island in November, Fernando ate sweet, sticky cakes oozing with butter and honey. At Christmas in London he ate figgy pudding rich with fruit and nuts, poured over with rum and brought to the table clad in a corona of blue flames. In a city that Úrsula suspected was located only in the author’s imagination, he ate buttery pies that were somehow both hot and cold at once.
Úrsula’s mind was made up. Next time she visited Casita, she would ask to borrow La Media Luna de la Madrugada.
A month later, Bruno was building a house of cards in his room, as a way to unwind after the vision he’d just done for Señor Vasquez. Felipe Vasquez, aged eleven, was afraid of horses and had so far utterly failed to learn to sit on one. He was going to become a competent rider eventually, and even come to enjoy it if the look on his face was any guide. The problem was, the Felipe in the vision had his full adult height and a thick moustache.
“I have to wait that long for my son to follow in my footsteps?” It was lucky Señor Vasquez didn’t have Pepa’s gift, Bruno mused, or they’d be having a hell of a thunderstorm outside. “Look again, boy!” So Bruno had raked together the embers of his fading future sight, but the younger Felipes he’d glimpsed after that hadn’t been anywhere near a horse. He saw the boy carrying a platter of cakes. Holding hands with a girl Bruno didn’t recognise. Tending a … was it an injured bird? It didn’t look like a terrible future compared to some that Bruno had seen. But none of this was good enough for Señor Vasquez, especially when the final image, the one that went onto the tablet, showed father and son having a blazing row.
Señor Vasquez would be back. Bruno didn’t even need his gift to know that. But at least he wouldn’t be back today.
Just as he was leaning the first two cards against one another to start the fifth floor of the house, someone knocked on the door. He jumped, making the entire house fall down.
(At which point he got a very short flash of a real house falling. It was a long way in the future and he couldn’t tell whose house it was, but he could look again later and maybe they’d be grateful to be warned. Maybe.)
When he opened the door and found Señora Grijalva outside, haloed in the green he was still blinking out of his eyes, he forgot all about what he’d just seen.
“Good afternoon, Bruno,” said his teacher. “Your mother said it was all right to come up. I was wondering if you’d —”
“— found out who’s got the book.” It probably wasn’t magic fuelling Bruno’s precognition at this point. More like dread, experience, and a sense that he really should have known this would happen. “Sorry, no.”
“That’s a shame.”
She stood on the landing expectantly, as if she thought he would change his mind if she gave him a moment. For a slim woman with a naturally quiet voice, who’d been shorter than Pepa since Pepa was twelve and who wore her greying hair in two girlish braids instead of in a bun like Mamá and most other women their age, she was excellent at letting her presence fill a room. Bruno wanted to know how she did it, but that wasn’t the sort of question he could ask his teacher.
“It seems to be a real page-turner,” Señora Grijalva remarked chattily, as if she and Bruno were friends rather than having the unequal relationship they actually did. “I’ve never known a book be passed around so much! I must have asked seven or eight different people and either they didn’t have it any more or they’d already promised it to someone else. Agustín seems to have borrowed it twice.”
“Lucky Agustín,” Bruno said, since she seemed to expect him to say something. Maybe he and Julieta and Pepa and their friends should have planned out the book’s journey around the village a bit better. Agustín was only supposed to get it once. They’d banked on Señora Grijalva losing interest by now.
“Agustín said it was the best thing he’d ever read.”
No no no Agustín, why’d you say a thing like that?
“I was chatting with him outside the cantina and your mother overheard us. Now she wants to read it too.”
Oh no no no. “She does?” And wait, what — Señora Grijalva chatting with Agustín? Since when? Agustín was just a student, younger than Bruno. They weren’t supposed to chat with their teacher! There was a, a natural social boundary, right?
“Yes, I told her all about it and she said it sounded fascinating. What’s the problem, Bruno?”
He fiddled with the hem of his ruana. “Well, it, uh, there’s things in it that, that a respectable woman maybe shouldn’t, uh …”
She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about that! I think you’d be surprised how broad-minded Alma can be. This book sounds better and better. I told her I’d let her read it after me.”
There were words that were definitely inappropriate to say at school. Bruno let a selection of them arc through his mind like pebbles tossed from hand to hand.
“Which,” Señora Grijalva said, “leaves the question of how I’m going to get hold of it. I’ve never asked you for this before …”
No no no no no please don’t let this go where it sounds like it’s going!
“… but it’s really getting ridiculous how hard this blessed book is to track down, so please could you have a look?”
Oh. It did. Just his luck. Well, it was his own fault.
“Well, I, I …” How was he supposed to tell her he wasn’t going to see anything because there was nothing to see? It wasn’t often he knew the outcome of a vision in advance. “I could, but what if, what if the answer is you’re never gonna read it at all?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I dunno. Just, just warning you, I don’t often see good things. Some people …” Wait, was his reputation about to do him some good for once? He lowered his voice, to sound like he was imparting a secret. “When I see something bad, some people think I make it happen.”
Except it wasn’t a secret, of course. Everyone knew.
Señora Grijalva smiled. “Time is very mysterious, but I’d be surprised if that’s how it works.”
Bruno said desperately, “Well, it is how it works. I mean I’ve done it often enough, I know these things.”
“And why would a miracle that gave us a safe haven, and this amazing house — you’re welcome, Casita — and a magical shop that sometimes brings us excellent books, and your sisters’ eminently helpful gifts, also give us a boy who brings down misfortunes just by seeing them?”
Bruno shrugged. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand peso question.”
“The how much?”
“Uh, something I saw. Can’t be actual money, that would be way too much for anyone. Might be some kind of game? Looked like fun.” No no no, what was he doing, chatting with her? How did that happen? Was this what happened to Agustín outside the cantina? Any minute now he was going to tell her some outrageous lie that he wasn’t going to be able to back up. He could feel it. Was there any chance at all that Agustín would have to back it up instead? It would serve the clumsy beanpole right. Except Agustín was going to marry Julieta and live in this house some day, so Bruno kind of needed to stay friends with him. “Well anyway, I’ve finished for the day. I don’t do visions after dinner. Uh, before dinner. I mean, obviously I do do visions before dinner, but not right before, and dinner’s gonna be any minute. So I, I’m afraid I can’t help you, sorry, Señora, see you at school tomorrow.”
He began to close the door.
“Bruno.”
The door wouldn’t close. Her foot was in it.
“When I saw your mother just now, she’d only just started cooking. You have plenty of time before dinner. That isn’t the real problem, is it?”
Bruno’s mouth opened without consulting him. “No, I mean there’s no problem, why would there be a problem?”
“Good,” said Señora Grijalva. “I already asked your mother. She said you’ve only done one vision today, so it should be fine.”
That meant Bruno had to do it.
“Okay, come on up. But I think you might be disappointed.”
He led her through his sitting room, past the scattered cards. They were the only untidy thing in here. He had to keep this room presentable for visitors, so most of the clutter was in his bedroom along with every personal possession he didn’t want the likes of Señor Vasquez to see. Or Señora Grijalva, for that matter. Imagine if his teacher saw the silly drawings of animals dressed up as people that he’d been doing lately to relax, or his attempts to write scripts for the fragments of … not quite plays, some future thing … that he’d seen in visions! He suppressed a shudder and led her up to his vision room, counting the steps in his head to keep himself calm. Twenty-four, the same number there had been all these last few months since Casita had moved the vision room to the upper level of his tower. He liked the change. It was good to keep his work separated from the rest of his life. He wouldn’t have minded the staircase being higher.
The vision room had walls of rock and a floor of multicoloured tiles, but it was open to the sky, which was scattered with high clouds tinted red by a gorgeous sunset. “Goodness, are we on the roof?” Señora Grijalva said, and, “Is it that time already? I must have spent longer talking with your mother than I thought.”
“Oh, that’s not the real sky,” Bruno explained, holding a bucket under the stream of sand that ran like a waterfall down the rock. “The sun does its own thing. You can’t really tell time by it. The weather does its own thing too. It never rains in here, no matter how Pepa’s feeling.”
“Do you mean we’re still indoors? How magical!”
“Yeah. You can climb the rocks if you want to see what’s past them, but the view just kinda drops off, over the edge. It’s like everything else is so far down, all you can see is sky.”
“That’s amazing.” For a moment she looked tempted to climb. “Where does that sand come from? Oh, is it a closed loop like a fountain?” She looked down into the funnel-like hole that the sand stream normally drained into.
Bruno took the bucket away, letting the stream flow into the funnel again. “Maybe. There’s no way up to where it comes out. I don’t think Casita likes us asking questions like that.”
“It wants to preserve the mystery, does it? I can’t say I blame it.”
That was a surprising thing for her to say. He’d been using Casita as an excuse for not knowing the answers. He was supposed to know, because it was his family’s miracle. Lots of people couldn’t accept that he didn’t know, because the miracle granted him special knowledge and they couldn’t seem to understand that it had a very specific boundary. And people who didn’t live in Casita tended to see it as something like a temperamental machine rather than a characterful living being. Not as something that could have wants.
Teachers were on a different level from kids. He’d read enough books to know. He couldn’t, off the top of his head, think of a book about anyone going to school and having a good time there. There were strict teachers, unfair ones, vindictive ones, haughty ones, and droning ones who never taught you anything that stuck. The best you could hope for, in a book, was a teacher who was simply distant, so you could whisper and pass messages without being noticed. That was Señora Grijalva most of the time, always busy with the younger kids. Bruno’s class kind of had to whisper at the back of the room, because they were often puzzling through their lessons together, craning their necks to share the same few books, instead of actively being taught.
The most fun he ever had in the same room as Señora Grijalva was when she put on plays, which she did about once a year. As a child he’d been in a couple of them. Nowadays he was too busy and self-conscious, so he just watched them. She wrote the scripts herself, tailoring them for the actors she wanted. They were big events in the village, with nearly everyone joining in or turning up even though some of them grumbled that the plays in their old, lost hometowns had been better. That the poor señora was doing her best, no doubt, but everyone involved was a rank amateur and surely she was rushed off her feet dealing with all those kids every day. Bruno supposed putting on plays was part of a teacher’s job, since no-one ever volunteered to take it off Señora Grijalva’s hands. He kind of wished it was his job, except he knew he didn’t have the social skills to handle something like that.
Sometimes one of the actors wanted Bruno to check if everything would be all right on the night, but Mamá wouldn’t let him look. She said there was enough superstition around the stage already.
He’d never done a vision for Señora Grijalva before. He’d never had to look at her and think oh shit, she’s going to blame me when her cat dies. But that was probably about to change.
(Did she have a cat? He honestly didn’t know.)
“And this whole … space … is just for you to exercise your gift in?”
“Pretty much.”
“But you don’t usually need any of this, right? I’ve excused you from class plenty of times when your eyes started glowing.”
“Yeah, well, when I do it on purpose I, I mean there’s a whole ritual … thing … if you don’t mind, that is, I guess I can try it without.” His stupid mouth again. Why did he have to say that? He never normally said that.
“No, I’m interested to see,” she said, to his relief.
He laid a little fire of dried herbs from the jar he kept in a niche in the rock, then poured the sand carefully in a circle around it. He’d been practising his circles recently, counting and measuring in his head to try to get them regular. If he could get them perfect, maybe he’d see better futures. Or maybe if he tried more than one fire. Something in his mind kept nudging at him to try that, and he wasn’t sure whether the nudging was magical or just him. But Mamá already kept telling him he took too long to get ready, and people often fidgeted impatiently as they waited, disrupting his concentration. Señora Grijalva wasn’t doing that, at least.
“Okay, now we sit in the circle, and, uh …” This was his domain and he was allowed to tell anyone what to do, even Mamá. He knew that, but maybe his teacher didn’t. So it was going to be weird. “I, I need you to just sit quietly, please.”
She did as he said. She seemed to have an eye for the symmetry of the circle, too, sitting exactly opposite him. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d got the idea for the circle from some witches in a play she’d directed three years back.
He lit the fire. She didn’t move except to watch the flame, then his face as he breathed in the smoke. A little green flame kindled inside him, as if touched off by the fire. The sky darkened, making the light of Bruno’s vision the brightest light around.
“You know, I used to think I didn’t believe in magic,” Señora Grijalva said.
“Can’t talk now.” The sand was rising into a swirling dome. Images of the future flickered around them. He needed to focus on her question, except he already knew the answer. She was never going to get to read the book. He wasn’t going to be able to see the future of the book because it didn’t exist. He was going to show her that, somehow, and she’d be angry and would it be okay if he gave up going to school now so he didn’t have to spend another minute trapped in a room with her ever again? He’d have to stop watching the plays too. He was such an idiot! Would it have been so hard to just write about another boiled potato book?
“Is that cakes?” Señora Grijalva interrupted his thoughts.
That’s right, he was meant to be looking into the future. Cakes it was, luscious fat swirly ones crowded together on a tray. Icing being drizzled over them … whose hands were those? Oh, Julieta’s, of course. He knew them by the shape. No surprise she was baking. He didn’t recognise the recipe, though.
The picture dissolved and now there was a plate of little pies, each with a flat stick coming out of the top. A muscular hand took one from the plate. The picture dissolved again.
“Those both look like things Fernando eats,” said Señora Grijalva, and then, more excitedly, “That’s Fernando! Pepa described him just like that!”
The figure was blurry, his face obscured, but he was dark and stocky, wearing a distinctive feathered cap, Fernando’s signature accessory. And there was … “Is this the bit with the three priests?” he asked, squinting into the flow of images.
“The bald one, the fat one, and the tall one with the pet fish … Look, there it is in that bowl! Are we seeing inside the book?”
“That’s not how my gift works.” The scene dissolved again and reformed. “Wait, the masquerade ball!”
“Yes, with the mysterious woman in black! That’s her!”
The sand kept swirling. The images kept flowing. They were all things from La Media Luna de la Madrugada. This had to be Bruno’s weirdest vision ever, but also one of the most fun. Sometimes he’d drawn scenes from the stories he made up, but this felt like someone else had done it, which was pretty amazing because he’d only ever had an audience of two, neither Pepa nor Julieta were interested in drawing, and he’d never seriously thought anyone else would be interested enough. But these weren’t drawings, they were scenes of real people. Bruno was extremely confused.
“I don’t understand, Señora, this really isn’t how my gift works,” he said as Fernando embraced a figure who looked just like Josefa, which was to say, like Pepa with a different hairstyle. She really did look a lot like Pepa.
He was running out of stamina and starting to feel shaky. It was time to wind the vision down, and an embrace was a good place to end. He was trying to learn to finish visions in good places, to make people less likely to get angry about them. It didn’t always work, because it wasn’t always the last image that ended up on the tablet.
But this time when the tablet floated into his hands, it was a perfect picture of Josefa and Fernando in one another’s arms, just about to kiss. Bruno smiled and held it out as the false sky brightened rapidly like dusk in reverse. “Would you like to keep this?”
Señora Grijalva came round next to him and held the tablet so he could still see it. “This truly is amazing,” she said. “Thank you, Bruno. I will treasure it.”
He made what he hoped was a polite pleased noise as he walked unsteadily over to the bottle of Mamá’s aguapanela that he kept in the niche with his herbs, uncorked it, and poured himself a cupful. “Low blood sugar,” he explained.
“Oh! I’ve noticed sometimes you can’t concentrate after you have a vision in class.”
“It’s not so bad then. I’ve just done two in a row.” Two and a half, given what had happened with Señor Vasquez. “I’m sorry, I, I know it’s rude. Mamá says I have to wait till people have gone, but sometimes I can’t wait.”
“Don’t worry, Bruno, you’re fine,” Señora Grijalva said, which made a nice change from most of his clients. “If you want to bring some of that to school, I don’t mind. I wish I’d known before.”
Bruno thought about what would happen to a sweet treat once the rest of the school knew about it, but right now his brain was too sluggish to figure out what to say about that. He made another noise that he hoped was polite.
And it might have stayed like that, with a surprisingly good if puzzling vision that made Señora Grijalva happy, except that instead of drinking his aguapanela like it was supposed to, Bruno’s stupid mouth betrayed him yet again.
“Sorry we didn’t get an answer to your question.”
“Oh, but I think we did!” Señora Grijalva laughed. She laughed and laughed as if she’d just got a very funny joke, and dear God, what did she understand that Bruno didn’t? Or did she understand the truth, and if so, since she thought it was so amusing, was it possible that the triplets would get away with it? Surely not. Bruno didn’t have that kind of luck.
“I don’t understand,” he said carefully, neutrally.
“Don’t you? Look.” She traced her finger around the edges of the tablet.
“Curtains?”
“Yes, curtains. I think we’re looking at the Encanto’s next play — unless it’s the one after next. It’s going to take time to write the script.”
Bruno felt stupid. “Oh.”
“Yes, and I think we have a strong hint about who I’m going to cast in the lead roles. Pepa of course, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s Félix, a bit more filled out than he is now. Yes, this is next year’s play, I think. Yes, I’ve seen how those two look at one another. I’m surprised I never spotted the resemblance before. No wonder I couldn’t track the book down! You and your sisters are really very imaginative.”
Imaginative. That was another way of calling them liars.
She laughed again. “Don’t look so glum! It’s a compliment. Creative writing is one of the many things I wish I had more time to teach.”
“Oh.” And Bruno’s stupid mouth said, “But, but aren’t you going to punish us?”
“Well, that depends on how you look at it. Taking that lead role will be a lot of work for Pepa, but I hope she’ll enjoy it. Julieta will be in charge of themed refreshments — or maybe they’re only props, we’ll see — and if that involves her inventing a couple of interesting new recipes, well, I hope she’ll enjoy that too. We’ll have a chat after school tomorrow.”
A chat. Not the same kind she’d had with Agustín outside the cantina, though, right? No, a stern Madrigals, stay behind! sort of chat. Maybe he should stop going to school. Maybe Julieta and Pepa should, too.
“As for you,” Señora Grijalva continued, “you’ll be writing the script. I suspect you’re the only person who can.”
Aguapanela splashed onto Bruno’s ruana. “M-me? A whole play?”
“I think you’re supposed to drink that, not just hold it.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He gulped the rest of it down.
“Don’t worry, I know you’ve never written a play before. I’ll supervise and edit it. I expect I can find time to give you a few private lessons along the way.”
Maybe later he would tell her about the scripts he’d already written for those scenes that played out in wooden boxes in the future. But not now, because he already felt like he’d crossed a boundary with her, and he needed time to get used to it. Also, it always took the aguapanela a few minutes to start making him feel better. For now, he just said, “I, I think I might enjoy that, actually.”
“Good.”
“But, uh, can I do it instead of writing any more book reports?”
Señora Grijalva laughed. “Don’t push your luck.”