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constellations | chapter 1

“Monsters are Real”

Lucía

Lucía Simón—feel free to call her Lucí—always knew that monsters were more than stories people tell to scare children.

Well, she assumed that that's why people told those stories, anyway. She never heard them for herself, when she was little—there wasn’t much of a point, when she could already see them with her own eyes.

The first time she saw a monster, she was little enough that the memory didn't really stick. Her mamá told her, years later, that she was two when it happened. She’d been playing in the garden outside their home in Richmond, Virginia when a monstrously huge rat jumped out of the bushes and tried to attack her. Don’t ask her how—even her mamá didn't really seem to know—but apparently Lucía had grabbed the rat with her stubby little toddler hands, picked it up, and smashed it into the ground so hard its spine cracked in two. Her doña had rushed outside in a panic, drawn by the sounds of Lucí’s scream, but she'd found Lucía safe and sound and back to playing in the garden. The only evidence of the attack—the remains of the rat—had lain forgotten a few feet away from Lucí, slowly disintegrating into golden dust.

She never understood how, exactly, she did that. She’d tried asking her doña a few times over the years—maybe she'd used a rock, or something? But the answer had always been no, there hadn't been any sign of that. As best as her doña could tell, Lucí really did kill that rat with her own two hands. Lucía was a strong girl—years of hiking and archery will do that to you—but she wasn’t ‘break a giant rat’s spine clean in half’ strong, and she certainly hadn’t been when she was two.

It wasn’t the last monster she saw, of course, although it was the only time she snapped one’s spine in half. She kept seeing them, even when they seemed like they were trying to disguise themselves, and succeeding, judging by the reactions (or lack thereof) of the people around her. It wasn’t too terribly often, but it was enough that, eventually, her doña decided to tell her about them. It was near the tail end of preschool—Lucí had been four, at the time—and long enough ago Lucí had still been a boy, back then, or at least she’d still thought she was. Her memory of the conversation was a little fuzzy, but the important bits had stuck—they were one of the few memories from that long ago that had, actually. It had been an important talk, to say the least.

“Monsters are clever,” her doña had told her. “They can hide in plain sight, and most people can’t see them, or if they do, they think they’re something normal and nice.” She’d leaned closer then, and whispered, like she was telling Lucí a secret, “special people, though, they can see them. People like your mamá and I, and you, too. The monsters don’t like people who can see them.”

“Why not?” Lucí had asked, in her little baby-Lucí voice, staring up at her doña with wide eyes. “Are they shy?”

(In her defense, it had sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation at the time.)

“No, amor,” her doña had replied, smiling softly. “The monsters like to hurt people, and people who can see them might try to stop them. So the monsters are extra dangerous for us.”

“Oh,” Lucía had said, her face falling. She hadn’t really known what to say. She’d known for a while that monsters were real, and that sometimes they tried to hurt her, of course, but knowing that they were specifically out to get Lucí? That was something different. That was something scary.

Her doña’s brows had knit in concern. “Lo siento, mi oso,” she’d said. Her voice had turned firm, but still gentle, protective, like a big strong rock you could brace yourself against. “I didn’t mean to scare you. But me and your mamá are never gonna let something bad happen to you. That’s why you have to tell us whenever you see a monster, okay?”

Lucía nodded. “Okay, Doña.” She trusted her. She always had.

Her doña’s real name was Luna Pérez, but Lucí mostly just called her doña, or sometimes doña Luna. She was a tall, tough lady, all lean muscle like a wolf, with long auburn hair she usually wore in a ponytail and eyes so brown they were almost gold. She was an old friend of her mamá’s from all the way back in junior year of high school—they’d fallen out of contact for a little while, the way high school friends sometimes did, but a couple of months after Lucí was born they’d started talking again. Apparently, Luna had happened to move to Richmond by complete chance and, knowing Lucí’s mamá lived there, she’d reached out.

The two of them had fallen right back into their old rhythms, apparently, after that, and so Lucí had grown up with Luna around to help out—usually as a babysitter—more often than she wasn't. She always made time for them both, even when she was busy, which was apparently more often than you’d think, considering that her job didn’t really sound all that time-consuming—she taught archery at a private school about a half-hour’s drive from where Lucí and her mom lived, a little but loved house in suburban Richmond.

Lucía loved her doña. They weren’t related, as far as she knew, but she’d always thought of her like another parent—a ‘bonus mom’, as Lucía had once described her, to her doña’s complete, incandescent delight. She'd meant every word—Lucí couldn’t remember a time when her doña hadn’t been a regular fixture of her life.

And then there was her mamá: Francisca Simón, a gentle Chicana woman with ever-so-slightly reddish-brown hair and laugh lines worn into her face, which was the same tanned brown as the rest of her and covered in a miniature galaxy of freckles just like Lucí’s. She was a retired musician from Santa Monica, all the way out in California, who had moved out to live in Virginia when she was 30 to support her twin brother, Federico. He’d been sick, really sick; Lucí didn’t know the details—understandably it was something her mom didn’t talk about, as a rule—but it had been bad. He’d died not all that long after she moved, but by that time Francisca had been out of the music scene for two whole years and didn’t exactly have the money, let alone the emotional wherewithal, to up and move back to Santa Monica, so in Richmond she’d stayed.

In a way, it was lucky that she had. She’d met Lucí’s mitéra a few months later, on a hike up in the Appalachian Mountains. The hike had been a spur of the moment thing; a friend had been planning a trip there for a little while but ended up not being able to go, so he’d offered for Francisca to go in his place. Years later, she’d told Lucí that she didn’t really know why, exactly, she had gone up there. “It was just… a feeling,” she’d always said.

She hadn’t been doing very well at the time, to put it mildly, and had hoped that a couple of days alone in the mountains would give her the space she needed. That part had apparently gone mostly to plan; the hike had done her wonders. But then, early on the evening of the final day when she’d almost made it back to her car to head home, a November storm had hit, way out of band of the weatherman’s predictions for that week. She’d slipped and fallen from a ledge down to a clearing a few minutes’ walk from the hiking trail, and had survived the fall—thankfully—but she’d broken her ankle on the way down. With the storm looming over the mountains like a wall of ink, blotting out the already-darkening evening sky… well, it hadn’t looked good.

That was when another hiker had come hurrying out of the dark woods, reflective strips on her raincoat shining in the light of her lantern like a lighthouse on a shore. She had been hiking a minute or two behind, apparently, and had heard her scream as she fell and rushed down the slope to save her. “But the hill was still slick,” Lucía had said once, “couldn’t she have fallen, too?”

Her mamá had nodded and smiled in that fond way she always did when she talked about Lucí’s mitéra. “Yes, mi amor,” she’d told Lucí. “I asked her that too, actually. She told me... that she hadn’t stopped, not for a moment, to think about that. She just ran.”

The mystery woman had picked Francisca up over her shoulder, then, and hauled her back to the hiking trail. With some directions, they’d made it back to Francisca’s car, where the woman had started driving to the nearest hospital. She'd introduced herself: her name Asha Harper—Doctor Asha Harper, PhD, actually—and she was an astronomer and avid hiker. She was born and raised in Greece, but she’d moved out to the States years before not long after finishing her studies; long enough, by then, that you could only really hear the echo of her accent when she talked.

She’d rambled about what she was studying while she drove. Lucí’s mamá didn’t remember the ride itself very well, and had been in and out of consciousness for most of it. She always told Lucía that she’d been scared, in that car, because her ankle hurt and she was soaking wet, her teeth chattering from the cold, but she had felt safe, too. “I don’t know how I knew,” she’d told her once, “but I was so completely sure I was safe there. With her. I’d never been more sure of anything.”

Asha had stuck around in the hospital until Lucí’s mamá was discharged, and she’d stuck around after that, too, helping her recover. She didn’t have to, but she'd wanted to, apparently. Asha wasn’t a shut-in, but she wasn’t really a people person, either—it was rare, she’d said, that she felt so at ease around someone as she did with Lucí’s mamá. Ironically, considering Asha’s profession, they’d both been a little starstruck for each other.

“She was beautiful, Stardust,” her mamá told her. “And kind. Quiet, and a little sad, too, but so, so kind.”

Eventually, her mamá had gotten pregnant. Lucía wasn’t entirely sure how, but she figured it had probably been with IVF, because Lucí was the spitting image of her parents. She had her mamá’s freckles, and her hair fell in thick waves, just like hers, only instead of brown Lucí’s hair was dark as night, the same color as her mitéra’s. Her skin was a bronzier color than her mamá’s, and she had her mitéra’s eyes, too, this shade of deep, dark blue, so dark it almost looked purple in the light. Lucía had always been glad that she looked so much like both her parents—she got the sense that it brought her mamá a lot of comfort, knowing some piece of her partner was still in the world with her. There was also a part of Lucí that was proud to look like Asha, proud to look like this woman that her mamá thought the world and all the stars of.

Lucía had never met her mitéra. About a month before Lucí was born, she’d gone up into the mountains with some equipment for a project she’d been working on and never come back down. The police had gone looking for her; where she was going wasn’t exactly remote, so it shouldn’t have been hard to track her down, but they’d found nothing. Not even Asha’s car. She was just… gone. “You will hardly notice I have gone, by the time I come back to you, Poláris mou,” she’d said, just before she left.

But she had noticed, because Asha had never come home. And though Lucía had never lacked for family, not a day in her life, she’d always felt this deep pang of sadness in her chest when she thought about what had happened to her mitéra. The closest thing she had to meeting her in person were the pictures her mamá had of the two of them, smiling and happy and so obviously in love that it hurt.

Lucía had almost gotten to have that. Just one more month and she would have been born, and she’d have gotten to grow up with both her parents in her life. Sometimes she dreamed about that. She’d see her mitéra, living with Lucí and her mamá in their little house, and she’d ask Lucí what she did that day in school and quiz her on the planets and help her with her reading, which always took Lucía ages because she was dyslexic and she couldn’t help it, really she tried, but it wasn’t her fault that the letters just floated off the page like they’d all realized they had left their iron on and needed to go home right now. She usually had those dreams the night after a bad day at school, or after something scary with a monster had happened and Lucí had been reminded that yes, there are monsters out there, and they wanted to hurt her in particular.

But then, the next morning and all too soon, she would awake, smile still plastered on her face for the first few moments after she sat up in bed—before she remembered that her mitéra was gone, and those dreams would never come true.

— 🟄 🟅 🟆 🟅 🟄 —

Lucía was five years old, nearly six, the first time she met someone else who could see the monsters, although neither of them realized it at first.

It was the first day of 1st grade, and Lucí’s stomach was a churning pit of butterflies. She’d spent the last year with her kindergarten teacher, Ms. Karissa, an incredibly patient woman who had never once treated Lucía’s disabilities like something to be ashamed of, and now having to leave her behind to start fresh with grade school… it was honestly making Lucí pretty nervous. Her first day hadn’t been too bad, though, really, unless you counted ‘constant general nervousness throughout the day’ as ‘too bad’, but that was hardly the fault of the school. Lucía had survived, all in all, and she’d made her way outside to wait for her mamá to come pick her up.

She took a seat on a bench next to a girl, glancing briefly at her. The girl was dark-skinned, and her hair—which she wore tied up into a little bun at the back of her head—was a dark chocolate-brown color, shot through at the ends with streaks of honey blonde, and curly like a princess's. She looked about the same age as Lucí (she was pretty sure she remembered seeing her in class today) and she had a big hardcover textbook flipped open in her hands, so big it looked like she could probably barely lift it. The cover read something like acre church, maybe, along with something else Lucí couldn’t make out enough of to read. Reading was hard enough already, even when she could see the whole page; it was definitely impossible when she couldn’t see half the words.

It was easier with Elliniká—for whatever reason—but the book the girl was reading was pretty clearly written in English. Ironically, most books were the exact opposite of ‘it’s all Greek to me’ for Lucía; she would’ve preferred it if they were more Greek, actually.

Lucía looked away, going back to scanning the parking lot for her mamá’s car, a worn old sedan that had started to discolor a little from prolonged sunlight but still drove just fine. She wasn’t planning on paying the book or the girl reading it much more attention—she was probably doing the same thing as Lucí was, waiting for her moms, and Lucí didn’t really want to bother her.

But then, without warning, the girl looked up and over at Lucía, grinned, and said,

“Did you know that the Hoover Dam is over two hundred meters tall and has a volume of nearly two hundred and fifty million cubic meters of water?”

Lucía blinked, a little startled. The girl’s eyes were a startling shade of grey, like storm clouds, kind of scary but really pretty, too, alive with the light of excitement. Her words slowly processed. “Woah,” Lucí said, because she hadn’t known that, no. She wasn’t really sure what a ‘cubic meter’ was, or how big it was supposed to be, exactly, but two hundred and fifty million of them sounded like a lot. “That’s really cool,” Lucía added, smiling at the girl, who beamed right back at her, and flipped the book in her hands around so Lucí could see the diagram on the page. There were a lot of numbers and letters Lucí couldn’t read and probably wouldn’t have understood even if she could, but it looked pretty impressive.

“Oh!” the girl suddenly gasped, her smile fading a little. “Sorry! I forgot to introduce myself. My stepmom says I should have better manners. My name’s Annabeth.”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” replied Lucí, and really she didn’t. She had her own tendency to spout off new things she’d just learned, anyway, when the excitement inside her got to be too much to hold in and she had to let it out somehow.

“Oh,” said Annabeth, looking a little confused, like it was a first for her. “Um, okay! Thanks! What’s your name?”

“I’m Nicanor,” she added—because that was her name, then—and tried to ignore the weird little twinge in her gut when she said it. Her mamá said she’d named her that because the word came from Nike, the Greek spirit of victory in the myths her moms liked to read her, but Lucí had never really liked it that much. It always just felt… off, whenever someone called her that. Back then, though, she’d thought she was just stuck with it. Still, she’d always preferred it when her mamá called her Stardust or her doña called her su pequeño oso. Sometimes, in her dreams, her mitéra would call her Komítis, and she liked that one best of all. Shortenings of her name were okay, too, though, or at least they weren’t so bad, so Lucí added, with a little smile, “but you can call me Nica if you want.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Nica,” replied Annabeth, smiling back. She turned the book back around and started tracing the diagram she’d shown Lucí a second ago, eyes slowly roving over it like she was trying to piece together the equations by sheer force of will.

She really must know her stuff, Lucí thought. “How do you know all that?” she asked.

The girl looked back up, and suddenly her grin was back in full force. She slipped a little piece of cloth between the pages of her book so that it was sticking out from the top and lifted the heavy cover up and over to close it. “I’m gonna be an architect when I grow up,” Annabeth told her proudly. “I got this from the library on Saturday. There’s so much stuff I never knew in here!” She patted the book with her free hand, hugging it close to her chest like a stuffed animal.

Oh, thought Lucí. Architecture. Not acre church. That made a lot more sense.

“Well, I don’t really know math stuff that well,” said Lucí honestly. To be fair, she’d only just started learning much of anything more advanced than adding and subtracting that day in class, but Annabeth seemed way ahead of that. So Lucí added, “You’re really smart!”

Immediately, Annabeth’s whole face lit up like a christmas tree, and Lucía found she really couldn’t help that hers did the same thing back. Annabeth’s enthusiasm was positively infectious. They kept talking over the next couple of minutes, although it was mostly a lot of Annabeth grinning like a loon each time she launched into a new explanation, talking at a million miles a minute. Lucía didn’t mind. It was nice meeting someone who talked the way she did, thought the way she did. Granted, she didn’t understand most of the words Annabeth used, and couldn’t pronounce half of them anyway unless she sounded them out, so she had to ask a lot of questions. But surprisingly, that only seemed to make Annabeth more excited to explain. She’d make a wonderful teacher, in Lucí’s opinion.

Eventually, Lucía’s moms came to pick her up. She’d been so distracted by her conversation with Annabeth that she hadn’t even heard the sound of their car pulling up. She finally looked up when she heard footsteps approaching, and beamed as bright as Annabeth had at the sight of her mamá, who had nearly reached her. Her doña was there too, though she was waiting back at the car and watching Lucí with a soft, fond smile on her face. “Mamá!” Lucía exclaimed. “I made a friend! Her name’s Annabeth and she’s gonna be an architect some day!”

Annabeth looked… surprised? Confused? Lucí wasn’t sure why. She was pretty sure she and Annabeth had just made friends in the sacred language of kids yammering at each other about their interests. Lucía wasn’t exactly the best at reading social cues, but it had seemed pretty clear to her.

“That’s great, Stardust,” her mamá told her warmly, ruffling Lucí’s hair. She glanced at the book still tucked tightly into Annabeth’s arms and smiled. “That’s a big book,” she told her, genuine the way she always was. Lucí’s mamá hadn’t been condescending a day in her life. “You must be really clever to be reading something like that already.”

Annabeth nodded tentatively. “Um, thanks, Ma’am,” she said. Lucí… frowned. That was weird, wasn’t it? Why did she sound so subdued? It was like all the energy had drained out of the other girl at once, replaced by anxiety.

“Sorry, Annabeth,” said Lucí. “I have to go home now. But maybe we can play tomorrow at recess?”

Annabeth glanced back at her, her face brightening a little but still not nearly as much as it had been. “That sounds good,” she replied, offering a little smile. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t open her mouth again, so Lucí just nodded and grinned right back.

“Okay!” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

She ran ahead of her mamá to the car, and soon they were driving off, Lucía sitting in the back seat and yammering on about her new friend to her moms.

Lucí did, indeed, see Annabeth tomorrow. She saw her the day after that, and the next day, too. It wasn’t really all that great of a feat, considering they were both in Ms. Alaimo’s class, but it wasn’t just that they saw each other. They’d become inseparable, best friends as both would describe the other, after not very long at all, always sticking together during recess and then after school, too, while they waited for their moms to pick them up. Soon enough, Lucí took to sharing her interests with Annabeth—usually a mix of archery, the planets, and music—just as much, and with just as much fervor as Annabeth did with Lucí. She found out that Annabeth had the same disabilities as her, down to the letter: Autism, ADHD and dyslexia; check, check, check. It was just easy, spending time with her, almost impossibly so, in a way Lucí had never really felt with anyone else her age before. Annabeth told her one day that she felt the same way—what she’d wanted to say that day when they first met, just before Lucí had left with her mom, was that no one had ever called her their friend before. “Ti?” Lucía had gasped. “But—why not?”

(Annabeth spoke Elliniká, too, also from her mom's side (her real mom, not her stepmom), although she'd never met her; apparently, the last her father had heard she'd been off on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, busy getting her PhD at a university in Athens. Lucía had found out about that when the other girl swore in it one day at recess, and later they had realized that Annabeth even had the same quirk Lucí did, finding it easier to parse Greek letters than English ones. Ever since then, it had sort of become a secret language between the two of them, since no one else at their school seemed to speak it.)

Apparently, Annabeth had told her, most other kids thought she was weird and kind of annoying, always going on about what she had read about that day at school. That made Lucía mad. Her friend didn’t deserve to be treated like that; she was the smartest person Lucí had ever met, and if other kids didn’t like that then they were probably just jealous. She told Annabeth as much, who had suddenly looked thoughtful, as if she’d never considered that before.

Annabeth wasn’t weird—no more than Lucí was, anyway—but sometimes she did or said things that made Lucí a little worried. See, eventually Annabeth started to get invited over to Lucí’s house, and they always had fun there, playing in Lucí’s room or in the backyard—Annabeth never seemed to want to leave by the end of the afternoon—but she always seemed a little off while she was there in a way Lucía couldn’t really describe. Sometimes she’d look surprised when doña Luna brought them snacks, or she’d flinch when Lucí’s mamá said her name, and she was always super formal around the both of them. She always called them ma’am, or at most Mrs. Simón and Ms. Pérez.

“Are you scared of my moms, Annie?” Lucí asked her one day when they were sitting together on the floor of Lucía’s room, a half-played game of Sorry! sitting between them. (Annie was a little nickname between the two of them; no one else ever called her that. It was like how Annabeth would sometimes call Lucía Nori.)

“Oh, um, no,” Annabeth had replied, but she definitely sounded like she was holding something back. She kept chewing at her lip, the way she always did when she got anxious. “It’s just, um… I don’t know, I always feel like they—well, they can’t be this nice all the time, right?”

“I mean… I guess? Sometimes I get in trouble, I guess. But my mamá’s a really nice lady, I think she would cry if she hurt an inchworm by accident.” Annabeth giggled a little at that. “And doña Luna, she’s a little stern, but she’s really nice too.”

“Oh,” said Annabeth, looking down at their game. She let out a soft hum. “I guess I—well, my parents aren’t… they’re not as nice.” She looked sad, and maybe even a little bitter. “My dad isn’t around very much. And I think his wife, my um, my stepmother, I think she hates me.”

Lucía couldn’t fathom how anyone could hate Annabeth Chase, but the idea that someone did ticked her off, the same way it had when Annabeth told her how other kids treated her. “I’m sorry,” she told her, gently bumping her shoulder against her friend’s. “That really sucks.” She wasn’t really sure what else she could say, but she knew she had to say something. Her mamá always told her that friends had to be there for each other, no matter what. “My moms like you a lot,” she added. “Doña Luna said, uh, she called you a ‘fine com… cohm-pahn-ee-own’, I think.” She wasn’t really sure what that meant. Her doña sort of had a habit of talking weird like that sometimes, all flowery and formal.

“Companion,” corrected Annabeth, her voice a little distant like she wasn’t fully paying attention to her own words. Lucí wasn’t bothered; she knew Annie never meant anything by it when she corrected people. She just knew so many words that it was sort of instinct to point it out whenever someone else got one wrong, and, in all fairness, Lucí had just done that. “It means a good friend or ally,” Annabeth added. Then she paused, blinking and lifting her head back up to meet Lucí’s eyes. “Um, did she really say that about me, Nori?”

Lucí nodded. “Mhm. Doña never, ever lies, too, so I know it’s true.”

Annabeth sort of looked like she didn’t know what to do with that, and she was quiet for a few moments. “I wish my parents were like yours,” she said finally.

It was things like that, about Annabeth’s life, that just started to get to Lucí, over time. It made her angry, but it also made her feel helpless because she just couldn’t do anything about it. She was just a kid, the same as Annabeth, and she clearly couldn’t do anything about it, either. She’d confided her worries in her mamá once, and she’d been sympathetic, but she’d also said there wasn’t really much she could do. Lucía didn’t understand. What good was being an adult was if you couldn’t help people when they needed it?

The months of their first year of grade school continued to wear on. Lucí didn’t have many other friends, but she figured she didn’t really need them; no one else understood her the way Annabeth did, anyway, so she didn’t really see the point in it. She was really glad to have Annie in her life. It was because she was so glad that, over time, she started to feel guilty, because for some reason she couldn’t figure out for the life of her, sometimes she’d look at Annabeth and she’d feel… jealous. She hadn’t even been sure what she was feeling the first couple of times it happened, because it just didn’t make any sense; what reason did Lucía have to feel jealous of Annabeth? If anything, it was usually Annie who would tell Lucí how jealous she was of her moms.

It had started to worry Lucí. She’d never felt that way about a friend before. Eventually, though, she started to realize that the reason she hadn’t was probably because she’d never been friends with a girl, before Annabeth. She’d never had someone around so much of the time who was always wearing her hair so much prettier and wearing clothes that just looked so much better than Lucí’s. She’d sort of always wished she’d been born a girl, but that was just how everyone felt, wasn’t it? Girls were better than boys, Lucí had always thought, they got to paint their nails and have long hair and they got to be nicer, too; they weren’t loud and wild the way boys sometimes got. But now that quiet wish had turned into something louder, something longing, and only ever more so the longer she spent with Annabeth.

But feeling this way toward Annie was wrong, wasn’t it? It wasn’t nice to be jealous, and Annabeth definitely didn’t deserve it; she hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been born better than Lucí. So one day after school in December, a couple weeks after Lucí’s sixth birthday with winter break fast approaching, Lucí had confessed how she’d been feeling to her best friend while they waited for their parents to pick them up. Lucía couldn’t remember the last time she’d said sorry so much in a single conversation. But strangely enough, Annabeth didn’t seem angry or offended; her face had turned thoughtful, her forehead scrunching up the way it did whenever she was thinking hard about something.

“Well,” said Annabeth, “I mean, I don’t really think most boys feel that way. Or I’ve never heard of it if they do.” Lucí frowned. No, but she was sure they did, they had to; to be fair she’d never actually heard another boy say that, but surely they all felt that way. Why would anyone want to be a boy?

She told Annabeth as much, but that only seemed to confuse her more.

“Maybe you’re a girl, too?” Annabeth suggested, after a little longer in thought. Lucía blinked at her. (She’d never even considered that. Was that something you could do?) Annabeth kept talking. “It would explain why you don’t like being a boy so much. Maybe the doctors got it wrong when you were born, or something?”

“I… maybe? I mean, I have—uh, boy parts.” She looked down at the sidewalk.

“Well, I’m a girl,” Annabeth declared, “and I say you can be a girl if you want to be one.”

“Really?” asked Lucí, and Annabeth nodded, smiling determinedly at her. Lucí… paused. She wasn’t sure that Annabeth could just decide that, just like that, but then, Annabeth had been a girl a lot longer than Lucía had, so she probably knew all sorts of girl secrets that Lucía had never heard of.

A lot longer than Lucía had. Lucí could be a girl; Annabeth had said so. And she pretty much trusted Annabeth with her life.

She… really liked the sound of that.

“I, um,” said Lucía finally, absently folding and unfolding her hands in her lap, “I… I think I’d like that.”

“Okay,” said Annabeth. “Then you’re a girl.” Lucí couldn’t help the huge, dumb grin that broke out on her face when the other girl—the other girl!—said that, and it seemed like neither could Annie because she answered Lucí’s grin with one of her own, just as bright and dazzling as her smile always was. Lucía felt so happy that she wanted to cry. Had… had it always been that easy? Could it always have been that easy?

Oh, she realized. She… she was going to have to tell her moms, wasn’t she? The realization hit her like an anvil in Looney Tunes. What if they told her that Annabeth was wrong and Lucí couldn’t be a girl after all? Could they do that? Maybe they outranked Annabeth in Girlness and could override her because they were older than her?

Annabeth must have noticed the sudden panic setting in on Lucí’s face, because she grabbed her hand and squeezed it a little, startling her out of her impromptu mental rabbit hole. “Hey,” she said. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I, I really wanna be a girl,” she told her friend, managing to stumble through her words without choking on them, at least for the moment. “but Annie, w-what if my moms say I can’t?” She whispered the last few words out so only she and Annabeth could hear them, like if she said them any louder they’d grow teeth and bite her.

“We don’t have to tell them yet,” Annabeth soothed. We? Lucí started to open her mouth to ask, but Annabeth just giggled. “Yes, we. Of course I wanna help you, dummy. Did you think I wasn’t?”

She… hadn’t really thought about it, honestly. Some part of her had sort of just assumed she’d be on her own with this. But it would be okay. Annabeth would help her. Annie always knew what to say, and Lucía’s moms adored her; they’d listen to her, surely. She smiled sheepishly. “Uh… no,” she managed. Annabeth rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in it.

“Besides,” Annabeth said, “you’re still new to girl-ing.” Both of them giggled at the blatantly made-up-on-the-spot word, but Annabeth’s eyes flashed with scheming intent. “So I’m gonna help you with all that stuff. You can have some of my clothes that I don’t wear much, if you want. And I can help with your hair! Maybe we can braid it?”

“O-okay,” Lucí managed, feeling a little more steady now. Seeming to realize it at the same moment as Lucí had, Annabeth gently let go of her hand. “Um, thanks. For… helping me.”

“Yeah,” said Ananabeth. “Anytime.”

Things became a little easier after that, in a way Lucí wasn’t really sure how to describe. It was just… easier, like a fog had been lifted from her life. She’d never really given much thought to what she would do when she grew up, not the way Annabeth had with architecture, but a few days after that fateful conversation Annabeth had brought up something she’d been reading about, and Lucí had found herself genuinely wondering about it.

There was literally a whole world of things out there she could do, of course, but there were certain things that felt closer to home, too. She’d always loved learning about the planets and the stars, and had voraciously devoured everything she could understand of the textbooks her mitéra had left behind—all of which, luckily for Lucí, written in Elliniká—and so maybe she could be an astronomer. An astronomer, like her mitéra, in more than just her field but in gender, too. There was music, too; she’d always had a good singing voice—her mamá had always told Lucí she must have gotten it from her—and the idea of singing her heart out on a stage… well, it sounded nicer when she thought about herself, herself on that stage, not the boy she’d (badly) pretended to be. She wasn’t really sure yet, but for the first time she felt excited to think about it. She felt alive, now, like she’d been asleep all her life and someone—Annabeth—had finally decided to shake her awake.

Did Lucía mention that she was really, really glad that Annabeth Chase was her best friend?

— 🟄 🟅 🟆 🟅 🟄 —

It was in late March, not long after the first vernal equinox of the new millennium and the last day of school before spring break, when Lucía found out that Annabeth could see the monsters too.

The day hadn’t been anything special. Lucí—who was actually going by Lucí, now, at least to Annabeth; she’d asked her to call her that a couple days after winter break had ended—and Annabeth had been waiting together on ‘their’ bench, the same one where they met, out in front of their school. There were no dark, scary clouds in the sky; it was a perfectly clear, mild day, somewhere around the ballpark of 60 or 61 ℉arenheit.

And then they saw it. There was a man, tall and bulky, built like a military bunker and dressed in a long, dark coat with a hat on. Lucía did a double take when she saw him, because, well—beneath his hat he had one eye. He didn’t seem to see Lucí yet; he was sort of just lumbering around the parking lot, clearly looking for something but not, for the moment, quite finding it. He was a monster, there was absolutely no doubt in Lucí’s head. “Ánni?” she asked, barely above a whisper, instinctively speaking in Elliniká in case the man could hear them. “Boreís na ton deis?”

She risked a glance over at her best friend, but Annabeth’s eyes were fixed on the one-eyed man—the cyclops?—or more accurately at his one eye, as if she could see it just as well as Lucí could. A sliver of hope rose in Lucía’s chest.

“Ton vlépo,” Annabeth said back. Then she blinked. Her gaze flicked toward Lucí’s, and their eyes met. “To máti tou? To vlépeis?” she whispered, awestruck. “You… can see them too?” Lucía nodded, and despite her fear a tiny little grin spread across her lips. Neither her shock nor relief lasted, though. “We have to hide before he sees us!” Annabeth whispered, urgent.

Lucí nodded. Annabeth had clearly dealt with this before; she didn’t hesitate for even a moment, stuffing her architecture textbook—it was a new one she’d picked up a couple months ago, after finishing the first one around Christmas the year prior—into her backpack and climbing over the bench to duck for cover behind it. Lucía followed her lead, silently praying that her moms would get here soon. She remembered what her doña had told her two years ago. She had to tell them, and she had to tell them that Annie could see them too; she didn’t know if Annabeth’s parents could see the monsters but she didn’t really care, either, she knew her moms would keep Annie safe and she needed to make sure that Annabeth would be okay.

Just then Lucí heard the rumble of a car’s engine. She glanced over at Annabeth, who bit her lip and nodded, and so Lucí risked looking around the corner of the bench. Sure enough, pulling into the parking lot was her moms’ sedan; Lucía let out an audible sigh of relief. The monster—the cyclops—seemed to be having the exact opposite reaction, huffing with frustration before storming off down the sidewalk. Lucí looked over at Annabeth and said, “He’s leaving. My moms are here.”

The same sigh of relief escaped Annabeth’s lungs as soon as the words were out. “Okay,” she said, still barely higher than a whisper but a little louder than she’d been a moment ago.

The passenger side door opened, and Lucía’s doña practically leapt out onto the pavement, her eyes narrowing as they fixed onto the retreating shape of the cyclops. Once she was sure he was really gone, she turned toward Lucí, who waved and made her way out from behind the bench, pulling Annabeth up with her. Her doña turned and said something to her mamá, who followed her out of the car and joined her old friend as the two of them raced over toward the bench. “Stardust!” her mom nearly shouted when she reached Lucí, practically crushing her in a bear hug. “Mi amor, mi amor, ay dioses míos.” Her voice was a soft, comforting hum in her chest against Lucía’s face. Her doña didn’t say anything, but Lucí could still see her, standing a few paces away and scanning the parking lot with a cold, determined gaze. Annabeth hesitantly approached from behind Lucí, fiddling with the sleeve of her shirt and keeping her eyes on the ground.

“Mom,” gasped out Lucí; suddenly in her mamá’s arms the reality of what she and Annie had just survived was hitting her all over again. She could barely breathe. “Mamá, había un hombre, un monstruo, solo tenía un ojo—the biggest I’ve ever seen, and and he almost s-saw us, Mom—”

“It’s okay now, mis queridos,” said Lucí’s mamá, cutting her off, her voice low and soothing, as she reached out to take Annabeth’s hand and pull the other girl into the hug as well. Annabeth looked so confused, but she didn’t try to resist, grabbing onto Lucí’s mamá with the same desperation as Lucí. “You’re safe,” she told them. “You’re safe.”

After they’d gotten over their mutual panic, they’d proceeded to, with almost feverish intensity, swap stories about their experiences with monsters on the floor of Lucía’s bedroom. Lucí told Annabeth about the Rat Incident when she was a toddler, and they both laughed—Annabeth was just as baffled as Lucía was at the thought of little two-year-old Lucí wrestler-finishing a giant rodent—and Annabeth told Lucí about the spiders that attacked her at night, always vanishing just in time for her stepmother not to see them and assume Annabeth was lying for attention. (Lucí saw red when Annabeth told her that. Mrs. Chase didn’t deserve a stepdaughter as amazing as Annie.) It was a great comfort for them both, finally getting those stories off their chests.

After that, spring break came and went, and when it was over and Lucía returned to class, Ms. Alaimo found that, quite suddenly, it was all but completely impossible to pry Annabeth and Lucí apart. She tried, she really did, but after a couple of weeks she, seemingly defeated, started to put the two of them together by default whenever she needed to divide the class into groups. Of course, they had already become much closer after the previous winter, when Annabeth had helped Lucí figure out that she was, well, Lucí—Lucía still didn’t have the words to express how much she appreciated her best friend’s help—but this was on a different level altogether. No one who couldn’t see the monsters would ever believe what Annabeth and Lucía could see, but that didn’t matter, not anymore—they believed each other, and that was enough.

Buoyed by that comfort, and perhaps feeling a little brave, Lucía decided to ask Annie to help her tell her moms about being a girl in late June, not long after summer break began. Maybe Lucí shouldn’t have been surprised—she was pretty sure she could count on one hand the number of times that Annabeth had been wrong since Lucía had met her. But she was, she really was, when she and Annabeth told Lucí’s moms, the comforting presence of Annabeth’s shoulder the whole time against Lucí’s, and they, just like that, accepted it. As if it was never a question whether they would in the first place.

“You… you’re not mad?” asked Lucí, so quiet she was almost whispering.

“Mad?” Her mamá shook her head, smiling gently. “A little surprised, maybe, but not mad, mija.” And oh, how that one little word, my daughter, almost broke Lucía down into tears right there and then. Her eyes stung with tears, but the pain felt so tiny, so unimportant, compared to everything else she was feeling right then. “Listen to me, Stardust,” her mamá told her. “You are the most important thing in my life, the brightest star in my sky, ¿entiendes? I will never try to stop you from becoming who you are meant to be.”

Then Lucía really did cry, and then her mother was crying too, even as she enfolded Lucí in a comforting embrace.

“Mamá,” whispered Lucía.

“Mija,” answered her mother.

— 🟄 🟅 🟆 🟅 🟄 —

Hardly a day went by, that summer, that Lucí and Annabeth didn’t spend together. Lucí’s moms had told her not to worry about figuring out how to tell the school that Lucí was transgender—which, her doña told her, was apparently the word for what she was; she knew because a few of her students were trans, too—and so, without any classes or homework to keep them otherwise occupied, the two of them resumed their normal rhythms. Only now, all three of the most important people in Lucí’s life knew who she really was, and now she was even wearing girl clothes and starting to grow her hair out. Lucía couldn’t possibly have been happier.

Or well… she would’ve said that, if it weren’t for one thing. Annabeth had changed. Lucí knew Annabeth was happy for her, too; it had nothing to do with that, but Lucía wasn’t blind. Annie hadn’t talked about it, but as the summer went on it became gradually more and more clear that something was very wrong. These weird shadows had started forming under Annabeth’s eyes, almost a little bit like bruises, which she’d looked for in a dictionary and found out were apparently called ‘eyebags’, and were, go figure, a sign of significant exhaustion. She seemed a little tired all the time, too, yawning in the middle of the afternoon and sometimes spacing out mid-conversation. Lucí had tried to talk to her about it, once, not long after Annie’s seventh birthday, but her best friend had just waved it off. “Mm’ okay,” she’d replied. “I think I got to bed too late last night, that’s all.”

Lucí didn’t believe that for a second, but she’d let it lie. Her best friend seemed almost something close to fragile, something she’d never known her to be before, and she didn’t want to push her too hard and make the situation worse than it already was. It really scared her, watching Annabeth so clearly not okay day after day, and she couldn’t help but think back to when Annie had told her about the spiders in the night, and how her stepmom didn’t believe her. She hoped it hadn’t gotten worse over the summer, but she really didn’t know what else could be causing this. She’d started asking Annie to sleep over at her place more, which both girls’ parents had been completely okay with, and that had seemed to help; Annabeth’s eye bags had lessened, and she’d seemed more alert during the day. Lucía couldn’t help the little spark of pride that ignited in her chest when she realized her best friend was doing better because of something she had done.

But… she also couldn’t help worrying about what would happen when school started again, and Annabeth could no longer stay the night at Lucí’s place three or four times a week.

The summer came and went, and just as Lucí had feared, come the fall Annabeth started to get worse again. Lucía was so preoccupied that she barely noticed the bizarre ease with which the entire school had accepted her newly-out self, referring to her the right way every time with nary a mistake. It was nice, but it seemed so completely irrelevant compared to the rapidly-worsening state of Lucía’s best and only friend. Annie seemed somehow even more exhausted than before; most days she barely even seemed like she was there in class, and when she did, she was paranoid and snappy. She’d never snapped at Lucía, but once at recess a boy named Silas had said something nasty to her about her book and she’d just about bitten his head off.

By the time Halloween had come and gone—and, go figure, Annabeth could have been mistaken for wearing a zombie costume for how exhausted she’d been as she and Lucí made their way across town, doña Luna not far behind them—Lucí had gotten so desperate that she decided to tell her mamá. She’d agreed that something was deeply wrong, but once again there wasn’t much she could do, especially if Annabeth wouldn’t tell them what was happening. She agreed to have her over to stay the night as often as she could, usually twice a week on Fridays and Saturdays, and while that had seemed to help it didn’t fix how tired Annabeth seemed for the majority of the week.

Lucí’s seventh birthday party came and went in mid November. She barely cared to notice. She hadn’t been getting as much sleep as she used to, herself, these days.

Then Thanksgiving came, and Annabeth and her father went up to Boston for fall break to visit some family there—Annabeth’s Uncle Randolph, Aunt Natalie, and her little cousin, Magnus. Apparently they hadn’t stayed for as long as they planned, though—Annabeth told Lucí when she got back that there had been an argument, late on Thanksgiving night, and her father had driven them to a hotel for the night before taking them home the very next day.

Annabeth, Lucí realized over the next couple of days, seemed… different, after fall break. She seemed even more paranoid than before, now often casting furtive glances over her shoulder or at her surroundings, but her snappishness had almost entirely gone away; in fact she rarely said much to anyone. She still spent time with Lucía, but even when there was no one around but the two of them Annie seemed preoccupied.

Annabeth came over the day after Christmas to exchange gifts, and the first thing Lucí realized about her friend when she opened the door was the resolve in her gaze that Lucí had never seen before that day, and the melancholy, too, something almost close to grief. She had a backpack slung over her shoulder; maybe it was for the gifts? Except for the big, wrapped-up box she was carrying under one of her arms, clearly. Lucía almost said something—asked, “are you okay?”—but then Annabeth smiled and went inside, sitting down with Lucí and her moms in the living room to open presents. Her mamá had baked snickerdoodles for them earlier that morning, and despite all the worry of the last few months, there really was nothing else that could make her feel as safe, as at home, as this—Christmas lights, the scent of cinnamon, tangerines and pine needles in the air, and sitting around the fireplace with her moms and best friend.

After the cookies were packed away and the girls had washed their hands, Annabeth handed Lucí her present, which was wrapped in a surprisingly huge box. Inside was a new bow; exactly the kind Lucía favored and a really nice one, too. It was clearly based on Lucí’s measurements—it was a bit big for her, but Annabeth just smiled when she pointed that out and said, “Yeah, that was the idea. I want it to last you a long time!”

Next was Annabeth’s present, and Lucí could swear her friend looked like she was about to cry when she opened it, even though she seemingly managed to blink the tears away in time. It was an architecture textbook, the next in the series Annie had been reading recently, and it was written entirely in Elliniká. Annabeth had told her once that her parents hadn’t wanted to pay to get a textbook written for an Elliniká speaker shipped across the Atlantic, but Lucí and her moms had been able to find one for sale right there in America. (Clearly, Annabeth’s stepmom—because, let’s face it, her dad probably hadn’t even bothered to come out of his office—hadn’t cared enough to look all that hard.) Annabeth had taken one look at her present before practically flinging herself at Lucía, arms wide open for a hug. Startled, Lucía had taken a second or two to return the hug, but she’d gotten the message soon enough.

“Thank you so much,” Annabeth whispered, burying her head in Lucía’s shoulder. Lucí didn’t know what to say, so she just gently patted her friend on the back. She really, really hoped Annabeth was okay. Eventually the other girl pulled away, and the day continued, mostly as normal.

Then, just an hour or so before Annabeth was due to head back home, she pulled Lucía aside to talk to her in private. Lucí knit her brows in confusion, but she allowed herself to be pulled along by one of her best friend’s hands, her other tucked around the textbook and her backpack once again slung over her shoulder. This was weird. This was really weird. “Is everything okay, Annie?” Lucía asked softly as they made it past the threshold of Lucí’s room.

Annabeth closed the door behind her before she answered. Then she turned around, fixing Lucía with her thundercloud eyes, and for a moment she looked so intense that Lucí felt completely paralyzed, her muscles and joints locking into place. “I’m running away,” Annabeth told her quietly. “I—I just can’t do it anymore. The spiders I told you about, they got really bad last summer, and they’re still really bad and my stepmom just doesn’t care. And my dad, he… I don’t know anymore.” The words sounded rehearsed, but Annabeth stumbled through them anyway, sounding like she was barely keeping her voice from breaking. “I… I came to say goodbye.”

Lucía felt like the world stopped, the moment those words left Annabeth’s mouth. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Annabeth was leaving. Lucí’s best friend was leaving.

“Oh,” said Lucí. Her voice sounded paper-blank, even in her own ears.

“I’m really sorry,” Annabeth whispered, eyes shiny with tears. “It isn’t your fault. I swear it isn’t. I… I think you’re the only reason I survived the summer.”

“I tried to help,” Lucí said, “I—I saw how bad you were doing, I did everything I could think of but M-Mom said there wasn’t much we could do, and—”

“I know,” said Annabeth, gently cutting her off. “I know, I know. I… I knew you could tell. Thank you. So much. You’re the best friend I ever had.”

“You too,” whispered Lucía, and then suddenly they were both moving forward and holding each other tightly, quietly crying into each other’s shirts. “Please be safe,” Lucí begged, “and, and if you need to stay somewhere I’m sure my moms would help you, they love you, Annie, they really do.”

“I will,” Annabeth promised. “I know it’s gonna be hard but—anything is better than that house. I can’t live there anymore. I can’t.”

Lucí nodded. That much was as clear as day. “You’ll always be my best friend,” she told her, pulling away again to look Annabeth in the eye. She held out her hand, pinky extended. “Promise?”

Annabeth nodded rapidly, immediately linking her pinky with Lucí’s. “Promise,” she said, and despite the pain in her face she grinned. Lucí smiled too. Then Annabeth made her way to Lucí’s window, pulling her coat over her shoulders and securing her textbook in her backpack. Supplies, Lucí realized, too late, The bag is full of supplies. Her best friend pushed the window open, evidently planning on climbing out through it so Lucí’s moms wouldn’t catch her, and she turned back one final time toward Lucí. “Goodbye,” she told her.

“Goodbye,” said Lucía, trying with all she had in her not to break down into sobs. She could tell Annabeth was doing the same. If one of them broke, they both would.

Annabeth smiled, and then she climbed out the window and shut it behind her. Lucía watched as she quickly, efficiently slunk down the snow-covered alleyway between Lucí’s house and the neighbor's, and then out into the late winter’s afternoon, eventually vanishing behind a car. She didn’t reappear again.

Annabeth—Lucía’s best friend, her only friend—was gone, maybe for good. Lucía realized, right then and there, that what she’d always known—that monsters were more than stories, they were real—was more true than she’d ever imagined.

Not every monster had vicious teeth that stuck out of their mouth, or scuttled in the dark, or had one eye right in the middle of their forehead. Some of them lived in the same house as you, ate the same food, and drank the same water.

Some of them were called Mr. and Mrs. Chase.

— 🟄 🟅 🟆 🟅 🟄 —