you see me.

[lou]

she's wearing this.

Mexico was nothing like what she thought it would be.

For obvious reasons, they couldn't fly there, so they'd packed up what few belongings they had, Lo by far more tearful, leaving Zach a note because he was sleeping and she didn't want to disturb him that detailed the inner workings of the stove and had the take out numbers for every restaurant in Sapphire Bay and promised that she loved him, and that one day she'd tell him where she went and maybe even come back for him, and they'd gotten in the car and they'd driven, Lo incessantly sniffling in a repetitive motion that came to irritate even herself and doubtlessly got under the skin of Dom, who seemed so stoic and unaffected that for a continuous hour she believed he may have been automated. She'd watched the landscape of California drift by, disappearing into the flat, brown earth that constituted the desert and then further and further until she could feel the heat sinking through the windows and bleaching her pale skin pink.

She'd imagined sombreros and donkeys and no English and what she'd gotten was Mexico City, a radiant, thriving metropolis where she almost blended in if it weren't for the pink on her cheeks and the clear disillusionment in regards to her spanish ability. It had been since eighth grade that she'd taken anything at all about the language and she couldn't remember it to save her life. Needless to say, the first few trips to the corner store, Dom had had to come with her, or just leave her back at the dingy, small apartment he'd gotten over a cafe for less rent than she could plausibly believe and get whatever it was they needed themselves. They brushed their teeth with bottled water and the only light came from the fluorescent sign from the cafe next to them, but it was enough to see by at night and sometimes seemed to bright that she couldn't sleep. It wasn't home, but it was getting there, and the balcony that overlooked the bustling street below was more of a convincing factor than she could have possibly imagined. Still, she wasn't quite comfortable with the prospect of sitting outside for too long, lest someone might see her, and typically stayed close to the window when she bothered.

The first week had come to a close without being too eventful. She bought a Spanish-English dictionary and was actively attempting to teach herself the language all over again, failing miserably, and near giving up. She'd relocated the sock she'd brought, stuffed with her meager savings of 3,000 to the depths of the freezer, where they remained crispy and cool and mostly untouched, save the late nights when she felt uncomfortable enough to open the door and peek in and make sure it was all still there, all three hundred hundred dollar bills, stacked neatly, a rubber band around the middle. Emergency money. She'd considered getting a job but didn't feel comfortable enough with the idea until she could better speak the language and at night they slept on the same bed, just a mattress, wedged up against the corner where the light couldn't get in. They'd started out with two mattresses and eventually she'd assured him she wasn't going to molest him if he just slept on the edge, since when they had to alternate between the two one was always kept up all night by the brightness of the fluorescents. Though she missed her family immeasurably, the week hadn't been too terrible and the longing, she was sure, would eventually dissipate.

On this particular Sunday morning, she sat in the shade on the tiny balcony, her long legs hanging through the bars and her back pressed against the wall, her toes wriggling in the chilled early air. There were sunglasses propped on her nose and a daisy in her hair, given to her by the sweet old man on the corner who ran a booth in the market when she bought a bouquet of them, with some difficulty. She held, aimlessly searching through the section on idiomatic phrases, a dictionary at eye level; it had been quite a while since she had the time to paw through something of decent reading material and she was peculiarly interested in the minute facets of this language she would most likely be speaking for quite a while. Though she appeared to be reading, her mind was drifting off elsewhere, to other places and people, lost in her memories of a simpler time when up meant up and not up or down. She was so absorbed that when the familiar shadow of another person approached her on the narrow ledge of a balcony, she hardly noticed.

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