Courtney Justus

The first time Nahuel held my hand, we were sitting on the concrete steps of the meditation center. The sunlight scorched my bloodied lip and bruised jaw, the product of an encounter at home that morning. It was the fourth day of the summer meditation and wellness course for teens where Nahuel and I first met, minutes before the day’s session began. Nahuel and I had spent those first three days laughing together, learning breathing techniques and ways of staying centered. We ate strawberries by the tiny back plot behind the center. In those early days of December, summer storms not yet settled in Buenos Aires, we chanted mantras in the upstairs space of sleek wooden floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, sunlight slanting across our bodies as we lay in shavasana. 

That morning, my brother Ramiro had pivoted on one heel and punched me. I’d come into the kitchen and found him arguing with our father, something to do with Ramiro not passing the summer makeup exams he’d taken earlier that month. “Excuse me,” I’d said, just trying to get to the coffee maker, to the sugar bowl with its blue diamond pattern. I didn’t even know who had started the whole argument or how many of his exams Ramiro had passed. Whenever I asked about these things, Ramiro leered at me, so I didn’t ask. 

I was slipping in between Ramiro and the sink, the diamond-patterned bowl in sight, when he did it, fist connecting to lip and jaw. An accident, he said, blaming the impulse on our father.

“I almost believed him,” I told Nahuel. As I spoke, Nahuel offered me a plum from his backpack, a small gift that made me smile through tears. Even while my hands were still slick and sticky, he offered his open palm to me. His hands were softer than I expected, knuckles stained with ink from the pens he used for drawing.

“I can’t let our compañeros see me like this,” I said. “I look awful.”

I expected him to say something like it’s okay, or it’ll get better, or another equally cringey iteration of what my mother told me when things like this happened. Instead, he put both his hands on mine and said, “You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”

“You’re going to be late.”

Nahuel said nothing, only looked at me, the sunlight refracting off his dark eyes. He still held my hand. When I did stand up, he followed, tucking another plum into my backpack before we headed inside. Inside, Jacinta, who had encouraged me to take the course with her, was leaning against the wall, looking toward the doorway. She drew one hand up to her mouth, hazel eyes fixed on me. Jacinta had been a part of the spiritual onda, this movimiento, for as long as she could remember. Her father was a yoga teacher, her mom an energy worker and tarot reader who worked out of a tiny shop in Nuñez that sold crystals and artesanías.

As we sat in a circle on the floor – Jacinta to my right, Nahuel to my left – she whispered hijo de puta, then pressed her lips quickly together before anyone could wonder if it had been her.

Moments later, we began with a breathing exercise. I felt Nahuel’s hand drop close to mine, our fingers brushing before I brough my hand to my knee. We weren’t supposed to touch other people while meditating or doing breathing exercises, but a pang still sliced through me when I thought of how I’d let go of his hand.

Just before the day’s session ended, the instructor pulled me aside and asked me if I was okay, glancing from my lip to jaw to eyes. Behind him, Jacinta was talking to one of the other girls, but kept looking over at me.

“Sí, estoy bien,” I replied, then told him I’d fallen down the stairs. He stared at me a few seconds too long, his thin black eyebrows bunching together. I wondered if he’d confront my parents. Would he try to get them to come here, do a course themselves? Did he think that would fix things?

***

After everyone else had gone home, Nahuel and I stood outside the building, the late afternoon sun peeking between a verdulería and a crafts shop across the street.

“You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to,” Nahuel said. “You can come to my place for a while. At least stay for dinner.”

I tried to swallow but couldn’t. From the nearby plaza de Martínez, children’s laughter floated over to us, making my throat close up tighter. I lowered my head, then finally managed to squeeze out an “Okay.”

“What are you going to tell them?” Nahuel asked. “Your family, I mean. Do you need to text them?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t.” 

We started our walk toward Avenida Santa Fe, where we took a bus all the way down to Olivos, then the train for just one stop. I waited until the train had pulled away before I checked my phone and saw a missed call from Mamá. ¿Dónde estás? She texted me. En camino, I typed. Not sharing how close or far I was.

At home, I found Mamá hunched over the kitchen sink, scrubbing a plate, her wavy, dark brown hair falling across one shoulder. When she saw me, she put down the plate, stood upright as our eyes met. I walked over to her, my body stiffening as I passed the sugar bowl. Wordlessly, she brought one damp, warm hand to my cheek.

***

I was maybe twelve when I started going to train stations by myself, sitting on the black metallic benches that faced the tracks. Ramiro was sixteen then, failing Matemática and Lengua and getting kicked out of classes for picking fights. After a full week of arguments at home, I slid out the door one afternoon, mumbling something about going to Jacinta’s house, though I sensed they couldn’t hear me. At fifteen, the summer I met Nahuel, similar arguments still floated and ebbed through our house every day.

I took the 314 bus to get to school, the 365 to Jacinta’s house, the train only if I needed to go somewhere further away. In walking or riding past the train stations, I couldn’t help but notice the way people sat with their earbuds or newspapers, seeming tethered yet unburdened in the way they awaited the train. I had not yet experienced that sort of waiting myself, the ability to sit still, at peace, waiting for something to carry me forward to where I needed to go. I wondered, too, what would happen if I didn’t have to leave right away. If I didn’t have to catch the next train on my side.

One day, while my father was stomping around the kitchen, I slipped out to la estación Acassuso, the one closest to my house, where I sat next to an elderly woman whose back curved like a shell, her lavender cardigan a bright burst against the gray sky. She didn’t say a word to me, not even goodbye. Even after she caught her train, the quiet and safety I’d experienced next to her lingered. So I began going day after day, sometimes right after school. I told my parents that the buses were running behind, something not too hard to believe given some of their haphazard schedules.

I would either ride the train for several stops or just stay at the estación Acassuso, writing in my journal or listening to music. It was mostly during the daytime, then on weekends while my whole family was home. Even when the trains didn’t run on time, their sound was always the same: the screeching of wheels, shuffling of bodies, scraps of a phone conversation. Estoy llegando.

One night, after my parents had gone to bed, I went to the station, only to find a group of older boys – eighteen, nineteen maybe – standing near my chosen bench, nudging each other, swearing and spitting on the sidewalk. Had there been others on the platform, maybe I wouldn’t have minded, but they were the only ones in sight. As one of them turned in my direction, I ran back home, then locked the front door with trembling hands. Ramiro was in the living room, playing FIFA on his PlayStation. His brown eyes had pink blotches and reflected the soccer field on the TV screen.

“Were you out?” he asked, eyes glued to the screen. He played as Real Madrid, his favorite team.

“Just in the garden. I came around the other way,” I lied. 

After he’d gone to bed, I sat on the living room floor, hugging myself. I watched our elephant ear plant through the window, its leaves shaped like giant hearts, bending sideways as the night wind picked up outside.

***

“A friend told me he saw you at the train station the other day, writing in your notebook. What were you doing there? Just writing?”

Jacinta and I were sitting on her back patio on a Saturday afternoon, drinking lemonade. Above us, a white dreamcatcher spun in slow circles. 

“Yeah, I was,” I mumbled.

“Sofi, it’s getting more dangerous there. My friend Teo, he got mugged the other day. And Luli was being followed by this old creep.” She put her glass down, the ice cubes clinking. 

“I couldn’t concentrate with my dad and Ramiro screaming at each other in the kitchen,” I blurted, just as she said, “I got so worried.” 

Jacinta bit her bottom lip. I looked away, afraid I might tear up if our eyes met.

“You know, when there’s stuff happening with your family… You know you can always tell me, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” I tried to smile, but my face contorted into something akin to a grimace. What could I tell her that she didn’t already know? 

***

A week or so after the course ended, I took Nahuel to Jacinta’s mother’s shop. The building sat between a school uniform shop and an apartment building, like an accident or an afterthought. It used to be a verdulería, the old wooden crates once used for vegetables now tucked into the back rooms for storage. Jacinta’s mother had painted the walls vanilla, though a mustard yellow lining was still visible near the floor. With Nahuel’s hand in mine, we looked at the clay pots painted with Sanskrit, blankets embroidered with the ohm symbol. I ran my fingers over necklaces that hung in a line, each crystal tapering off into a fine point, as clean and sharp as a tooth. I thought of getting one for Mamá but wondered if she would wear it. 

As Nahuel and I left the shop, he reached into his pocket and took out a thin paper bag, from which he drew a black tourmaline pendant on a thin beige rope. I squeezed the crystal in my fist. 

“It’s supposed to protect you from bad energies,” he explained. 

I moved it back and forth in my hands as he admired his own tourmaline. One half was slightly larger than the other, the slight curves of it reminding me of a human heart. 

***

At the end of the meditation course, Jacinta threw a party at her house. A rare occurrence, since her parents let her go out to parties but didn’t want them at their place. That weekend, they were at a friend’s house in Pinamar, told Jacinta she could have friends over. Jacinta invited everyone from the meditation course, plus some of her school friends, who I knew mainly in passing. I brought a brownie cake, gripping the plate in both hands as sauce dripped from the top onto my fingers. 

In the living room, there were already people dancing, among them Nahuel, who reached one hand toward me from across the room, mouthing the words to a cheesy Prince Royce song. Y en la radio está tocando tu canción, la que bailamos tantas veces tú y yo.

When “Tan Fácil” by CNCO came on, the ballad version, Nahuel pulled me in close to him. In his warm hands, mine felt even colder. My shoulders tensed, then relaxed as he pressed one hand to the small of my back. I hoped the jasmine body splash concealed the lingering stench of sweat from my fast walk from the station.

As we swayed, I looked down at my worn-out sneakers, laces slowly coming undone. I smelled licorice and chocolate, almost tasted the acidity and sweetness of soda from his breath. It wasn’t until this moment that I dared to think of pressing my lips to his. The thought built in my head and chest until, finally, I made myself look up at him. As the song came to an end, he cupped my face with both hands. 

***

I went to bed before Jacinta that night, my head fuzzy and reeling. I scrubbed my face so hard, a pink line emerged along my jaw. The taste of Nahuel’s kiss still lingered in my mouth, on the insides of my teeth. I could have let it stay all night, but a part of me longed for that clean feeling, the taste of mint toothpaste and swish of water. The feeling soda left in my mouth reminded me, in some ways, of the taste of blood, a little sweet and acidic. The mint brought me back to the garden at the meditation center, the soft leaves tickling my nose.

With the lights out, Jacinta’s bedroom turned azure. I tucked myself into the spare bed that pulled out from hers like a drawer, its pink paisley sheets as familiar to me as my own. Sleep softly tugged at me as my head buzzed, from the caffeine or the kiss or both.

When Jacinta came in, I listened to her padding around the room with my eyes still closed. She slid into her bed with a faint rustling of sheets. I opened my eyes, watched quick and steady sleep come over her, lips half-open, thick eyelashes still dark and beautiful in the dim light that came in through her thin curtains. When Nahuel leaned in to kiss me, did I look anything like that? Unfettered and unfractured, a shaft of moonlight leaking across my softened face?

***

Nahuel lived close to the train station. His family’s brick apartment building sat right on the corner of Urquiza and Ayacucho. From the cab window, I could see his mother’s pansies in the planter boxes on the third floor, the dark purple blooms shaking in the breeze. The day that Ramiro punched me, Nahuel’s mother made lomo a la plancha and offered me ice for my blooming bruise without asking how I’d gotten it. Nahuel blushed when she ruffled his hair, shying away even as he smiled. 

“Eat as much as you want,” Nahuel’s father said, his square jaw holding a small smile. His face was somehow more boyish than Nahuel’s, his lips as red as strawberries. In front of him, plums and grapes overflowed from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, I kept reminding myself that I was here with Nahuel. I was not yet in the car with my family, on our way to the beach town of Necochea, to the tiny cabin that faced the gray-blue sea. I still had a couple more weeks before I left for New Year’s and the whole month of January.

The next time I went to his place, Nahuel insisted on meeting me at the train station, despite the short walk.

“It’s silly,” I told him a few hours later as we headed back to the station. “You don’t have to walk those two blocks.” 

“I want to,” he said, one arm lingering on my waist. Around us, the leaves of orange trees and pink oleanders shivered in the summer wind.  

***

On December 30, my family and I drove four hours to Necochea in our packed, dented car. Ramiro and our father fought over whether to listen to Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. I put in my earbuds, listened to music that I knew theirs would drown out as soon as they started playing it. I ran my thumb over a frayed patch in my jeans, which used to be Jacinta’s. I found a tiny hole in my red and white striped T-shirt. My dad always complained that I wore such worn-out clothes. He asked me why I looked like such a vagabunda so much of the time. I never had the right answer. I liked the way these jeans hung loose on my waist but hugged my hips a little tighter. I liked that they used to belong to my best friend. 

“¿Cuando vamos a llegar?” Ramiro asked about an hour in.

“Falta,” our father said. Meaning, it would be a while. Also sometimes meaning that something is missing. 

“¿Qué pasa, Sofi?” our father asked, looking in the rearview mirror. I was still looking down at my jeans.

“Nothing,” I said.

“She misses her príncipe azul,” Ramiro said. He made a gagging noise. I looked out the window, bringing one hand to the tourmaline. As our father slid The Wall into the CD player, train tracks came into view on our right, just above an incline dotted with rocks. I leaned in closer, realizing that I couldn’t get out of the car, and that there was not one station in sight.

***

That night, we ate at a teal clapboard restaurant overlooking the beach. Father ordered fried squid and papas a la provenzal for the table, all the while half-joking and half-arguing with Ramiro. When Mamá slid her hand on top of his, he kept his still, but didn’t turn it over, didn’t interlace his fingers with hers. I missed Nahuel all over again.

When the fries arrived, my brother reached directly for the basket instead of passing it around. Mamá used to call them animals, not to their faces, but to me. It was sweet when Ramiro was younger, animalito she said, tousling his hair, calling him her little tiger, her bear. I was always just Sofi. Never a gazelle or a lioness. 

I’m not sure the names got replaced so much as evolved. Los primitivos, Mamá once called men, specifically my father and brother. Primitives. I pictured a graphic I’d once seen on a classroom wall, of man’s evolution from primate to homo sapiens, a photo-by-photo progression.

I waited until everyone was eating before pinching a few fries with my fork. I listened as my father laughed at a joke someone told, a joke I just missed as the waiter asked me a question about salad dressing. I stared at the table ahead of us, where a blonde woman ate with her son. The hamburger on the boy’s plate leaned to one side, like it was tired.

After dinner, we walked down to a nearby strip of beach. The same boy from the restaurant ran up and down the sand, arms out like a bird. “¡Soy un avión, mamá!” he cried out. I watched her smile, then guide him by the arm back up the wooden stairs to their car. I wished they would stay. I wanted to watch the boy fly, his tiny feet kicking up countless grains of sand.

***

That night, I dreamt I was back at the meditation course with Nahuel. He sat cross-legged in front of me, face and body blurry, as if I was gazing at him through a rain-streaked window. The look in his eyes made my veins ice over. I was scared, not of him, but whatever had replaced him here, taken on his form. I could hear myself whispering his name. He got up, turning his back to me, then suddenly we were running. I followed Nahuel across the room, outside to the sidewalks, past the plaza de Martínez that was so empty for summer. When we got past the plaza, I stopped, the sky grey streaked with amber. I heard him say my name; though I didn’t recognize the tone, I knew it was his voice. Then I was walking, running, away from him. My words jumbled together. I could hear myself saying no, no, then his name. My voice morphed into a blunted echo until I jolted awake. Even then, I could still hear myself calling him. I moved my lips, trying to figure out if the real me had been speaking while dreaming. 

***

I woke up at eleven, far later than usual, even for summer. Ramiro was gone, his mattress still floating in the room. Only Mom was there, a silver tea kettle whistling as I descended the stairs. Before I even said good morning, she placed a mug in my hands.

“Hay azúcar sobre la mesa.” She pointed to the driftwood dining table, where the sugar bowl sat, uncovered. “Put as much as you want. I’ll come join you.”

As I nibbled on a medialuna, Mom read the newspaper, an old Clarín with Cristina Kirchner plastered on the front page. 

“¿Vas a ir a la playa?” I looked up to find her pale blue eyes staring at me. “They already left. Will be out there until one, they said.”

I stared into my coffee cup, at the tiny pool that remained inside. In it, my face seemed far away and childlike.

“Maybe in a little while.” I ran my fingers over my necklace, down to the tourmaline. 

“I didn’t notice you were wearing that necklace.” Mom glanced at me briefly before turning back to the paper. “Where did you get it again?”

“Me lo regaló un amigo,” I said. With that, she would know it was a boy friend. I’d always loved the word friend in English: how it can cover up things you don’t want to say without actually making you lie, without costing you the truth. 

She looked at her own plate, half a pastry still sitting at the edge. She didn’t ask who gave it to me; she didn’t have to. 

“You miss him, don’t you?”

I bit my tongue, heart beating in my throat. Mom knew about Nahuel. Not everything, but enough.

“Sí,” I mumbled. One syllable, leaving my tongue quickly enough that she could’ve thought she misheard me.

“You’ll see him again soon. Tenés todo el verano.” All summer, an expanse that seemed removed from our days in the cabin, like it belonged to a different time altogether. I imagined an older Sofi, walking past the artesanías booths and cigarette-smoking skateboarders of la plaza de Martínez, wearing a floral skirt, afternoon sun baking her shoulders. I tried to put myself in her body, but could only see her move, back turned to me, always a couple of steps ahead. And meeting her, Nahuel, two inches taller, darkened arms wrapping around her in a bind, an oath.

“He’s a sweet boy. You could bring him home sometimes, too, you know.”

Her voice caught at the end. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation, if that’s what you could call it. Most of the time, I just kind of nodded, said “Okay” before turning to whatever I needed to do next: homework, dishes, going out, maybe to the station.

What I didn’t tell her was this: I had invited Nahuel inside once, after he’d walked me home from a date. That afternoon, we’d had mate cocido and medialunas at the plaza. As we approached my front gate, I could feel my head starting to buzz with the mateína. I heard the television blaring: The Simpsons, dubbed in that awful TV Spanish. An argument surged over the noise like a wave, briefly ceased, as if they could sense Nahuel and I were standing right outside, listening. I searched for my keys, then heard the voices again. Mamá and my father, then Ramiro asking them to keep their fucking voices down, he was trying to watch. I stared between the bars at the living room window, looking without actually looking. When I thought the arguing had subsided, I unlocked the gate.

“Would you like to come inside?”

Nahuel didn’t answer but followed behind me as I walked up to the front door. The key through the lock was louder than I expected. I had opened the door a mere sliver when Ramiro shouted something.

“¿Es la zorra?” Zorra. A vixen, a red fox sniffing through the forest. Though I knew, here, now, that the word meant what most people meant when they said it: slut. I shut the door again, but left it unlocked as I rushed toward the gate, closed it behind us as well.

“Sofi.” Nahuel put his hand on my arm.

“I wanted them to meet you.” I almost choked on the words, too warm and dense in my throat. “And they fucked it up, again.”

“Are you embarrassed of me?”

“No. Of course not. I just don’t want you to endure that.”

He was silent a moment. I wondered if he was agreeing with me.

“Am I really a slut?”

“No.” His response was hardly more than a breath. I could’ve missed it, misheard, had it not been for the movement of his lips, the way his glassy eyes met mine in the darkness.

I led Nahuel back the way we came, to the corner where a tree stood, two branches erupting into hundreds of twisted limbs. Beneath them all, he kissed me until my face was raw. I opened my eyes to the descending darkness, a streetlamp flickering hazily behind him.

***

I helped Mom with the dishes, then looked up bus fares on my phone. The prices were higher than I imagined, but I could still afford it. I found an open seat on a bus leaving at three o’clock. Enough time for me to get my things, make it home in time for a New Year’s celebration. My thumb hovered momentarily over the button. I hadn’t told my father or brother about it. Should I at least walk down to the beach, let them know that I was leaving? If I did, my father would want an explanation. Ramiro would probably tell him I only wanted to leave so I could sleep with Nahuel. I rocked back and forth on my feet, debating, until finally I found myself in the bedroom, the ocean outside the window seeming miles away.

One of my clearest memories of my father is from one of our trips to Necochea. I was about ten years old, running to him as the icy ocean bit at my feet. My father crouched down, opened his arms to me, then lifted and spun me, the beachside restaurants and paddle ball players still whirring in my vision after he set me down. When I looked up at him again, he smiled with all his teeth, squinting in the late morning sun.

As I folded my clothes, sorting through these thoughts, I heard a knock at my door. Mom peeked in, taking in the scene: me with a purple T-shirt in my hands, a messy ponytail, duffel bag at my feet open like a mouth. She blinked twice. The words knotted themselves in my throat. Maybe someday I’d tell her about the station, watching the Mitre line taking hundreds of thousands of people to work and school, their loved ones’ Belgrano apartments and Olivos duplexes and Martínez mansions, all the places where they did and didn’t want to go.

“Did you tell your father that you’re leaving?”

I shook my head. “I’ll text him when I’m on the bus.” I still wasn’t sure if I would text him. When I imagined myself typing those words, his old smile illuminated me before his grating voice churned through my skull.

Mom folded both hands behind her head, fingers threading though her ponytail. I could see the shadows of our kitchen building up behind her eyes, my father’s silhouette at a standstill in the frame of her irises. As the waves shushed and crashed outside, she stepped forward to hug me, the scent of fresh coffee and semi-sweet smell of medialunas still lingering on her skin. Her arms hung limply around me.

“Just text me when you get to Retiro.” She was trying not to cry. “Make sure someone goes to pick you up. Please.”

I nodded. “I promise.”

She closed the door almost soundlessly. Once I had packed the rest of my things, I texted Jacinta.

Is your family still doing New Year’s at your house?

Her reply came seconds later.

Nine o’clock. Bring a soda. Nahuel is coming, too.

I smiled, the fatigue ebbing away with the caffeine and a promise of seeing my friends. I could already smell the gasoline and stale pastries of the Necochea bus station, replaced by the fresh-baked bread and steamed meats spread across Jacinta’s table. I could see the grey buildings of Zona Sur rolling by outside my window and, amidst the crowds of Retiro station, Nahuel. I was ready to climb those steps, feel his shoulder blades sturdy under both my palms, the tourmaline necklace pressed between us. I was ready to stand before the platform, to linger amongst the windblown newspapers and passersby before deciding which train to take next.