1

Juanita Velez

Stay… away…

            Juanita stared at the woods as if daring them to move, her hand laced around the handle of her carry-on suitcase. Sunlight peeped through snow-covered trees hulking like yetis across the road. Nothing was there, her eyes told her. But something was. She’d heard it, a whisper so faint that any slight movement would’ve muffled it. Standing still, she made out the hiss slinking through the trees: Don’t.

“Yo, Nita!” shouted Drew from the patio, the other four crowded behind him. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothin’…” she said without conviction. Maybe what she heard were her gut instincts in a last-ditch effort to talk some sense into her. She was sure this was in a rulebook somewhere, Breakup Etiquette for Dummies: Rule # 1, if your ex invites you somewhere, don’t go.

“What’s wrong? Is it your shoes?” Maya asked, smiling with her eyes and mouth. Juanita was so zoned out she hadn’t heard her coming. “See all this white stuff? It’s called snow. It’s why I told you to bring snow boots!”

Being from the San Fernando Valley, snow never was on Juanita’s radar. Though the wet white stuff was hardly the reason she was so tense. Brows furled, she turned to the woods a second time. She saw nothing there before, and she was seeing nothing now. She wasn’t convinced. “Listen…”

“Okay,” Maya said, a question in her voice. “To…?”

Juanita stepped toward the woods, glaring as if down a dark alley. “Somethin’s there.”

“All the more reason to join us, wouldn’t you say?” Maya gripped her forearms, smiling at her with her baby-blues. “Am I right, or am I right?”

“I dunno...” Juanita cast a suspicious glance at the woods. “This place gives me the creeps. We should go someplace else.”

            Maya crossed her arms, a smirk playing at her lips. “Fine. Are you going to pay for it?”

            Apparently, Becca had funded the trip herself. Even for a TV star, $4,200 was a hefty bill. Not even in her dreams did Juanita have that much money. “I’m sure we could all chip in for someplace cheap,” she said.

            Maya laughed the way you did when faced with sheer stupidity, as if Juanita had tried to convince her that one plus one equaled five. “And where do you expect to find somewhere cheap so close to Christmas?”

She started to take Juanita’s hands in hers, but only managed to get one of them. Juanita kept the other tight around her carry-on’s handle.  “Relax, okay?” Maya said. She was a plus-size girl with a round face and a head full of brownish-red curls. “I know this must be like, emotional overload, seeing each other for the first time since you sent me that awful text.”

She chuckled at this. Shame kicked in Juanita’s belly. A text was a shitty way to end a relationship. Even at 18, she’d known better, but it was the safest way to go. The emotional weight of an in-person break up would’ve been too much. Her thing with Maya wasn’t supposed to last as long as it did.

Juanita took her hand back from Maya’s. “Sorry about that.”

“Hey, it’s fine!” Maya had too chipper of a tone when saying this. Based on Juanita’s past experiences, people who worked so hard at being chill were anything but. “We’re all really happy to see you. Semhar, Becca… So…try to have fun?”

Juanita’s face lit up as if Maya had announced she won a Tesla. “Becca?”

“I think she might miss you more than me. She talks about you all the time.”

Juanita kept herself from smiling too hard. A year and a half ago, Becca was the love of her life. She was also one of Maya’s best friends. On paper, rebounding with her ex-lover’s best friend was low. In her defense, Becca had called everybody her best friend in high school. It made no difference who Juanita had gone with; the optics would’ve looked bad.

She flicked her gaze over Maya’s shoulder, seeing Becca in all her glory. She had skin the brown of autumn leaves and eyes the color of almonds. Her black mane framed cheekbones made for magazine covers. Beautiful and cute rolled up in one, Becca had one of those faces Juanita could stare at all day and find new things she liked. 

When their gazes crossed, Becca stood tip-toed and gave Drew a peck on the lips. Juanita’s gaze dove to her shoes. She’d seen photos of Drew and Becca but didn’t believe they were actually together. It might’ve been truer to say she didn’t want to, telling herself the photos were just tabloid fodder.

“C’mon, Nita!” Maya said, maybe hoping her perkiness would spill into Juanita. It wouldn’t, not as long as Becca was with a dude she once called, “lil’ bro.” Drew wasn’t so little now, that was for sure. “Be a part of this!”

Coming here was a mistake and you knew it would be.

Her gut had urged her to ignore Maya’s invitation. Her heart urged her not to. She’d always wondered how far she and Becca could’ve gone if circumstances never got in the way. It was foolish thinking a piece of her might’ve lingered in Becca’s heart, too, that Becca’s messages on social media were anything more than basic pleasantries--just her catching up with an old friend.  

Juanita swallowed a groan. She had a long six days ahead of her if she didn’t try to enjoy herself. She was getting a free vacation. It’d be a shame to waste it pouting the whole time.

She followed Maya to the rest of the gang: Semhar and her boyfriend, Kaz-something, Becca and Drew. She’d known from how the cabin’s three gables peaked through the woods that it was big. She wasn’t giving it enough credit. It was like the cabin was made by giants for giants.  Vermilion-colored logs made up its top half, its bottom half made up of grey stones.

Drew unlocked the sliding glass door, and everybody rushed inside like shoppers storming into Walmart on Black Friday.

Stopping to stare up at the balconies on the second level, a memory played in Juanita’s mind. It was junior year, Becca’s birthday. She stood outside on Becca’s balcony, gazing up at the moon and stars, Becca cocooned in her arms. They made love that night. It was the only time in her twenty years Juanita could say she made love to somebody. They didn’t have sex, didn’t fuck, but basked in the other’s essence, their spirits connecting just as their bodies were. She wondered if Becca still remembered that night. She could never forget it. After all, it was her first.

A breeze that felt too cold affixed her feet to the ground. It wasn’t the chilly air that crippled her with horror, it was the hissing that came with it, even fainter than it’d been a moment ago, but there was no mistaking it. Don’t, something murmured.

She looked up, saw nothing but the sugar-white sky. “Y’all hear that?” she said to the others. She couldn’t keep her voice from shaking if she wanted to.

Everybody stared at her as if she was standing on her head.

“Hear what?” Drew said.  

“Somethin’ keeps talkin’ to me.”

“Ooh,” Drew said, making ghost sounds, an I’m-gonna-get-you motion with his fingers. “Is it the Boogieman?”

Juanita stepped off the welcome mat. “They don’t call Mount Diamond, ‘Mount Death’ for nothin’.”

Kaz, Semhar’s boyfriend, laughed as if tickled. His girlfriend had disappeared somewhere. Already a big guy, he looked even bigger in his polar parka. “That was just some crap I read on Reddit,” he said with a dismissive handwave. “Nothing to take seriously.”

She could explain away hearing the voice once. Maybe it was the wind. Okay, fine. Hearing it twice was when Juanita had to put her foot down and call a thing a thing. Something was in this cabin, something they hadn’t brought with them. “I’m just sayin’, that’s a real sus nickname. People don’t be sayin’ that shit about Disney World, do they?”

            Drew laughed, an ugly, vicious sound not unlike her mother’s. Agitated to no end, she stormed inside and shoved him. “Shut up!” she yelled, seeing red. She had no tolerance for folks mocking her. She dealt with that enough at home.

            He barely moved, his endurance owed to the thirty pounds of muscle he’d packed on in the year and a half following high school.  

Becca moved in front of him as if to defend him against Juanita, all 110 pounds of her. The extreme disappointment in her eyes was why Juanita didn’t shove him again. “Hey!” she yelled.

Maya stepped in between the couple and Juanita, placed a hand on Becca’s arm in a gesture that told her to relax. She then grabbed Juanita by the arms to still her. “It’s okay,” she said. “He was just joking.”

Juanita glared at Drew. “Don’t be laughin’ at me. I don’t play like that.”

“He didn’t mean to offend.” Maya looked back at Drew. “Drew, apologize.” He made a face that asked, for what? Maya arched a brow. “Now,” she ordered.

He looked at Becca as if for commands. She nodded, and so he said to Juanita, “My bad, yo.” Maya cleared her throat. Drew sucked his teeth. “Juanita, I’m sorry.”

“Good,” Maya said. “Juanita, do you accept?”

Hell no, Juanita wanted to say, but she wouldn’t win Becca back by fighting her man. She forced a smile. “It’s cool. I’m sorry, too.”

“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” exclaimed Semhar, thudding down the spiral stairs across the entrance. “These rooms are like, suites,” she said in her valley-girl accent. Voted ‘Most Fashionable’ in high school, she practically slept in name brand outfits you got into debt just looking at. She wore her dark skin proudly, her afro like a crown. “So, like, I already claimed the big one. But the other two are still fab!”

Lips spread in a huge smile, Becca wagged her finger at Semhar. “Nuh-uh! What do you mean you claimed, ‘the big one?’ Is your birthday this week? Did you put this trip together?”

Laughing, Becca and Semhar raced upstairs. Drew trailed behind. On her way to join them, Maya grabbed Juanita, who pulled away. “Nah, y’all go on ahead. Ima stay down here.”

Maya left her alone, thank God. She flashed Juanita a smile and then joined her girls upstairs. Juanita needed a break. Sightseeing wasn’t her thing anyway.

The girls’ laughter could be heard in the foyer, a huge room sandwiched between the two wings of the cabin. It wasn’t just because the sound traveled here; the second level was a lone catwalk connecting a huge triangular room to two smaller ones.

Kaz would look at Juanita and when met with silence, smile and dart his gaze elsewhere. He reminded her of sitcoms like The King of Queens or Everybody Loves Raymond, where a modelesque bombshell was the wife of a total zero.  She never knew Semhar to date blonds. His features were thin and narrow and didn’t really fill up his face, making it look about seventy-percent cheek. “We haven’t formally introduced ourselves yet, have we?” he said at last.  He offered his hand. “Kazimir Kozlov--or Kaz. Whichever one suits you, really.”

Juanita shook it. “Juanita.”

“So!” he said cheerfully. It couldn’t have sounded more put-on. The way he stood there smiling with his squinty eyes made Juanita think of a smiley face emoji. “Care to see what this floor is like?”

Not really, Juanita thought, but what she said was, “Sure.” Talking to Kaz would be a welcome distraction.

She walked with him to the next room over, the cabin’s great room. The cherry red carpet crunched under her shoes. As she eased toward the far end of the room, she discovered that what she thought was just the great room were actually three conjoined rooms. First was the kitchen, which opened to the dining room. The stove, fridge and oven looked so new they sparkled. In the dining room, the glazed wood of the Neo-Victorian table and chairs sheened.

“Wow!” Kaz said. Behind them was the actual great room, in the center of which sat a leather couch facing one the same size but plaid.  At an angle from the plaid couch was an armchair of the same red and blue pattern. The three pieces of furniture triangled a leg rest and a wooden stand, to where Kaz was heading.

Wondering what had him so captivated, she started towards him. When she was a couple of feet away, she decided her question was abundantly answered and didn’t take another step.

He held a gold figurine of some pagan deity. She thought it was a worm, but a worm was just the closest she got to comprehending its tubelike body. Its mouth opened in four ways and was disproportionally large compared to the rest of it.

She made a face as if finding a corpse in mid-decay. “The hell is that?”

“Cool, huh?” Kaz snickered, marveling at the thing like he’d found a lost piece of art. The figurine wasn’t just ugly. It was vile, something she’d expect to find in a witch’s basement. Looking at it bred unease in her spirit, a disgust so intense it was sickening. This was some satanic shit if she’d ever seen it, and she wanted to be nowhere near it.

“Ew,” she said. “Throw that shit away.”

“But it may be property of Mount Diamond,” Kaz said chuckling. “If we destroy it, won’t Becca have to pay for it?”

Head tilted, she made a face asking, are you kidding me? “You really think that nasty shit is decoration? Clearly, somebody left it here. It prolly ain’t even real gold.”

“Hmm,” Kaz said, bringing the figurine to his eyeballs for a deeper look. “I think you’re right. There are black spots all over it. Well, then. I shall adopt it.”

His wide smile turned her away. She didn’t want to risk another glimpse of that horrible thing. “Yeah, you do that.”