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LATER STILL

“PLEASE, CARLA—”

She cuts me off. “And here I thought you were doing fine.” “I am. I am doing fine. I just want to meet him—” “We can’t always get what we want,” she says. From the flatness of her tone alone, I know it’s a phrase she uses on Rosa all the time. I can tell she regrets saying it to me, but still she doesn’t say anything else.

She’s leaving for the day, halfway out my bedroom door when she stops. “You know I don’t like saying no to you. You’re a good girl.” I rush right through this opening. “He’d get decontaminated and sit across the room, far, far away from me and only for fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes at the most.” She shakes her head, but it’s not a firm shake. “It’s too risky. And your mother would never allow it.” “We won’t tell her,” I say instantly.

She gives me a sharp, disappointed look. “Do you girls really find it so easy to lie to your mamas?”