Page 3 of Castle of the Cursed
My first day at the center, the staff greeted me solemnly and with some trepidation, offering me pity and condolences—except Nurse Leticia. Or Lety, as she asks us to call her. You’re less alone than you feel were her first words, delivered to me with a smile.
My roommate, Bebe, peeks in from behind the nurse. She only comes to our room at night, when she thinks I’m asleep. Works for me, so I can spend my days crying in peace.
Grief is like climate change: the sobbing comes in cycles, bands of storms that roll in with little warning and uproot my thoughts. Little by little, I feel the pain transforming me into someone new.
“Here,” says Nurse Leticia, setting down a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt at the edge of my bed. “These should be your size.”
“Is it Agent Navarro?” I ask as I reach for the clothes and pull them on under the covers. “Has something happened? Is there news?”
“Ay, Estelita, always with the questions,” she says as I work under the sheets to swap my cotton pants for the jeans. “Hurry, and you’ll find out for yourself.”
Bebe scampers away as the nurse turns to go. She only approached because she didn’t want to miss the gossip.
The clothes are smaller than my old ones, so they fit better. I guess I haven’t been eating as much as usual. When I get in the black SUV, I’m alone in the back seat. Agent Navarro didn’t come.
She was the first FBI agent I spoke to after… what happened. She has a temperate warmth about her, like she thinks of her heart as an asset when solving a case and not as something that must be shut off. She reminds me a bit of Dad.
Since I’m a minor, legally my name should have never been released to the press, but a reporter uncovered my identity and printed it. Agent Navarro was so outraged on my behalf that she gave a quote to an outlet calling the journalist in question an “embarrassment to humanity.”
I’ve brought my notepad, and my tiny scrawl of case notes takes up every bit of space, the ink running in places where my tears have fallen. The staff at the center have given me limited television privileges to keep up with the news, as long as I show them I can handle it. They say the instant I prove otherwise, I’ll get cut off from the investigation.
Through the tinted window, I watch the greenery of residential communities dull into the grays of downtown. The Rainbow Center is a treatment facility for children of the elite, like politicians, celebrities, and the wealthy. It’s a place to get professional attention away from the public eye. The government is footing my bill, a sign they want to take care of me as much as they want to keep me close.
“Hey, Estela,” says Agent Navarro as soon as I step out of the SUV. She’s waiting for me on the street, as are some male faces I remember from a few weeks ago, when they first brought me to this building.
I hoped to prove to them I could be useful on the case by providing detailed accounts of every passenger, the kind of notes Dad would take when surveying a scene. Agent Navarro and the others were riveted by my observations… until I brought up the black smoke.
There wasn’t a shred of evidence that supported the presence of a fire—nor any hint of a weapon or a culprit. That’s when they informed me I was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and needed time to recover so I could see things more clearly.
As no family member stepped forth to claim me, I was declared a ward of the state and signed into the Rainbow Pediatric Mental Health Center in Washington, DC.
“Is there news?” I ask by way of greeting. “Do you have a suspect?”
“Let’s go inside,” she says, and I note a new stiffness in her tone. I follow the agents past security and metal detectors, and this time instead of being welcomed into the director’s office as an American hero, I’m ushered into an interrogation room.
My throat goes dry the instant I slide into a chair and Agent Navarro sits across from me. No one else comes in with us.
Her bald mahogany head shines under the fluorescent lighting as she sets a paper bag on the table. “I thought we agreed to trust each other,” she begins, and my stomach hardens in anticipation of what this is about. “You help me figure out what happened to your parents, and I try to keep you involved in the case.”
“Right,” I say, sitting up to catch the curveball she’s about to throw.
“Then why did you tell me your dad was a cop in Los Angeles?”
I blink and my mind blanks. I was prepared for her to bring up anything—our nomadic lifestyle, extended family members, even taxes—but not this.
“He was,” I assert when I find my voice. “For seven years.”
“And yet there’s no record of him ever being in the LAPD.”
I feel the color drain from my face and the air retract from my lungs as the ground slips away from me. My dad’s identity as a detective forms part of the foundation upon which I built my own sense of self. The universe can’t take this from me, too.
“My dad was a c-cop.”
I try to state it firmly, but my chin trembles on the last word.
Agent Navarro’s expression cracks with a sympathy that I want to believe is real. “He was,” she says, and I feel the breath rushing back into my chest. “Just not in this country. You don’t have US residency. Your parents never filed the proper paperwork.”
“I don’t understand. I was born here.” I sound defensive even to myself.
