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Jose isn’t going to lie.
He waited for Alex to come back inside. He waited for her to knock on the door and take all those words back. To promise normalcy and bow her head and do as he told her for once in her life.
He thought the threat of the streets was too much for her.
Evidently he was wrong.
He opened the door after four hours and she was long gone by then.
His wife Rosa was disappointed, he knows. She was frosty for days after he threw Alex out; she’d never liked the proof of his infidelity, but she’d never lashed out at Alex because of it, either. She’d never been loving, but she wasn’t the type to wound a child for someone else’s mistakes.
Today, he skips work and cleans out Alex’s room. He takes her clothes and her belongings and puts them in bags and boxes to go to the thrift store. If Alex isn’t coming back, at least they’ll be able to give the bedroom to their youngest child, Isabel. She’s three now, but she’s been rooming with their middle child Ana, who is going on nine and there’s enough of an age difference that it’ll pose a problem soon.
Rosa, on her knees beside the window, holds one of Alex’s clay bowls—a creation Jose hasn’t seen before, not that he’s taken the time to note them—and says, “Do you believe you will regret this?”
Jose just shakes his head.
He is the father to three girls by his wife, and another girl by a mistress that turned out to be a monster. He has no sons.
Rosa has a bitter twist to her mouth as she sets the bowl into another box. “Alex is fourteen. Just a baby. And you have left her to die.”
“She made her choices.”
“The only reason I am still here is because I do not want a divorce. It would be a disgrace to the Church. But you are a disgrace to God.”
“Alex was the disgrace.”
“She would’ve grown out of it. She would’ve found a nice boy and settled down properly. She would’ve given up the idea of—what did she call it—gender fluidity? She would’ve grown into a beautiful woman and done the company proud. But you did not give her the chance.”
“She was no creation of God,” Jose snaps, ripping another one of Alex’s shirts from a hanger. He tosses it into a box. “She was the creation of a monster who broke our minds. We can only be grateful our daughters were spared the same fate.”
“But they were not spared the reality of having a sister run away from home. What does that say about us? What will the pastor say, when he hears?”
Jose doesn’t care. “She made her choices, as I said. If she did not want to be normal, then she was free to leave. That’s what she did.”
Rosa’s eyes dim. She sighs, and stands. “I… I am going to our room for a while. I think I will spend more time at Church tomorrow, in Confession. I need guidance, and you are not helping.”
She turns away and walks out the door, leaving him standing there. He’s got boxes all around him and the life in the room drains as soon as Rosa is out of sight. He stays in place for a long moment. Then he slowly sinks to his knees.
Alex had been a freak. What kind of human being could do the things she did? Behave the way she did? Think the thoughts she then spat out like daggers? Alex was like her mother: twisted. Sick. Destined to be drenched in the poison she uses on others.
Looking at her innocent, handmade animal creations, Jose suddenly isn’t sure if that’s really true. She’s got a whole collection of them, little cats, dogs, wolves—so many wolves—and snakes. Snakes, all over the room.
The symbol of change.
Alex knew her mother. Jose has seen him skulking around, pressing at Alex’s boundaries and whispering lies into her ears. Forcing the happy-go-lucky little baby Jose had begrudgingly loved into a resentful, disrespectful teenager. Alex’s mother was a monster.
Would things be different if Jose had protected her better? Would she still be here?
He gathers up a couple of clay snakes and puts them in a box.
It doesn’t matter now.
…
He doesn’t ever forget his oldest daughter. It’s hard to forget a child you raised, one you loved for a few short years before that love was broken and used as bullets from that child’s gun.
He needs a drink. He’s too sober to be thinking that poetically.
He makes his way into the kitchen, where normally he’d be able to smell breakfast by now. Or coffee. Something. But instead there’s nothing.
When he gets to the kitchen, he finds his wife at the table, staring at the newspaper with her head in her hands. The newspaper has tearstains on it.
“Rosa? What’s wrong?” he asks, sliding into the seat beside her. He tries to wrap his arm around her but she shoves him away.
“Take a look for yourself. Maybe now you’ll regret.”
She pushes the paper across the table in the angriest motion he’s ever seen. Wary, he picks it up.
It’s been two years, but he knows this girl. Her hair is still green, her eyes two different colors, but she’s dirty. Almost skeletal from starvation. Vacant now, in death.
Teenager Found Dead in Alley: Cause of Death Unknown
A Jane Doe was found in an alley this morning by a passerby, who phoned the local police. When officers arrived on the scene, it was clear the teenager had been dead for many hours. Blood loss is the obvious killer, though how such stab wounds were acquired is unknown. Anyone who has any information is encouraged to step forward.
The article goes on, but that’s all Jose gets out of it.
Alex is dead.
She was murdered.
Rather brutally, actually, given the graphic photograph attached.
Jose doesn’t know if it was a mundane cause of death—not that murder could ever be mundane, but a knife would be pretty average for stab wounds.
Somehow, he gets the feeling that that’s not the case. The longer he looks at the picture, the more he’s convinced that she was killed by her mother’s power.
The Norse side of her. The side Jose always tried to deny.
He sets the newspaper aside and gets ready for work. He says nothing to Rosa, who he knows stares after him.
He doesn’t eat anything, barely participates in meetings for the company.
Can he be held responsible? Alex was his child, after all. If she’d lived in his home, she might still be alive.
Alive.
Holy Father, his daughter is dead.
He stops by a newspaper stand on the way home after work. He goes to the police station, instead of to his house.
The man at the front desk looks at him disinterestedly when he lays the paper on the counter.
“This was my daughter,” Jose eventually says.
The officer looks a little more interested. “What was her name? Do you know what killed her?”
Jose shakes his head. “She ran away from home two years ago. Her name was Alex Fierro.”
“You never reported her missing.”
It’s not a question, but Jose still hears the word why in the air, as if it were shouted from a microphone. “Let’s just say she made her choices. I didn’t want her… negativity… affecting my other children. I thought she left to see her mother, who I haven’t seen since Alex was dropped on me in the first place. I guess she got into trouble, instead. I’d like to see her body, if I’m allowed.”
“Let’s see what we can do, shall we? We have to close this case.”
Jose supposes he’ll have to take what he can get.
…
When the case is closed, he gets clearance to bury her.
He has a snake engraved on the headstone with her name, birth and death dates, and the words: Child of Change.
He will never understand Alex, what she wanted, what she was.
But even the dead deserve a tiny amount of respect.
It’s the least he can give her, the little baby who laughed when he blew soap bubbles and loved her pottery wheel.
…
He tries not to think about it too much.
He spends a lot of time at Church, begging for answers. Begging for a way to alleviate the guilt he feels for her untimely death. Sixteen is much too young.
It’s no surprise that the priest has little to give him. Trust in God’s plan. She’s in a better place now. Heaven’s gates welcomed her. God loves all his Children, and the Angels needed her to come home.
Lies, all of it. He had never told anyone of Alex’s deepest problems—she’d refused to come to Church, as the child of a pagan deity, and she’d refused to deal with God. His fellow churchgoers didn’t speak of her much; if they did, it wasn’t where he could hear. So how could they know that Alex was never going to play into these vows?
He doesn’t know what they’re telling Rosa, who goes through the five stages of grief all over again. Over the years, Rosa made up memories of a young woman that had never really existed: one that didn’t run away to his father whenever she had the chance, one who didn’t yell at them, one who didn’t lash out at the slightest provocation. One that loved Rosa.
Alex had never loved any of them.
On what would’ve been Alex’s twenty-first birthday, Jose goes through the day in a trance.
It’s funny, what death can do: it always reminds you that there are more important things than petty grievances. Once, Jose thought Alex’s parentage was unforgiveable, that what Loki made her was something he’d never be able to see past.
Alex’s death has revealed that that simply wasn’t true. So she wasn’t the normal daughter he’d wanted. She was still a person. She had a teasing personality and loved bright colors and found her happiness in getting her hands dirty.
And sometimes, she was a boy. Sometimes, Alex was he, not she, and that was something Jose should’ve worked through.
After all, what damage was it doing, really?
Alex was never heaven-bound. She was the child of a Norse god.
And that reality was Jose’s fault, not Alex’s. After all, she’d never asked to be born.
And she’d never asked to die.
Turning twenty-one is a big deal. It’s the final step into adulthood. He should’ve been with her in Vegas, not on his way to put flowers on a grave.
He gets on the subway and, at this hour, it’s pretty crowded. Five PM rush hour.
The only open seat is across from a couple of teenagers. His heart clenches when he sees that one has soft, wavy green hair, just like Alex did. She’s sitting next to a blond, who looks almightily bored, playing absently with a pendant around his neck with one hand while the other is wrapped around her shoulders.
As if sensing his eyes on her, she turns.
His heart stops when he sees one amber eye and one brown one meet his. The lines of her face are as familiar as his own: after all, Alex never had the chance to get old.
Numb, he sits across from them. The teenager with his child’s face blinks at him, then huffs dismissively and looks out the window.
Just like Alex used to.
He looks her over: green and pink vest, pink skinny jeans, green sneakers. Pottery wire at her waist.
“…Alex?” he asks, before he can stop himself.
Both teens look at him.
“Fuck off,” Alex says—and yes, it really is her, her voice sounds just the same. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“But—“
“Who are you, exactly?” the other teen interrupts.
Alex sighs. “This is my mother’s sperm donor.”
It stings. He flinches back as the guy eyes him curiously. “Alex—“ Jose starts.
“Leave him alone,” the blond says, tightening his arm around Alex’s shoulders. “You have no place in his life. Leave us alone.”
“But—“
“No,” Alex snaps.
Jose asks anyway. “How are you alive?”
Alex’s lip curls. “So you just expected me to die, did you—“
“Your death was reported in the papers. I buried you,” Jose hisses, leaning forward so as not to be heard. “You shouldn’t look so young at twenty-one even if I hadn’t already known about your death.”
Alex falters. Her—his?—boyfriend speaks up. “We’re both dead. That’s what happens to Norse children who die heroically—we have our immortality until Ragnarök.”
Jose scrambles for the meaning of that word. “The—the end times, right?”
“Yes, not that that matters to you,” Alex says, recovering. “It will be centuries after your death. When it comes, we will die the second death for Valhalla.”
The subway stops at the next station. Both teens stand. “Goodbye, Fierro,” Alex finishes, and walks off, leaving his boyfriend standing there for a moment.
Jose, for his part, just stares at him. “Take care of my kid, would you?” he eventually asks. “I failed that job.”
“Alex can take care of himself,” is the response. The blond shrugs. “I’m no fighter. But I will be there to pick up the pieces when Alex is done. Alex is the warrior. I’m the healer.” There’s a brief pause. “You should be proud of him. He’s a hero, in every sense of the word. And, being genderfluid is not a mistake. It’s not a problem. Alex wouldn’t be Alex if he wasn’t constantly evolving.”
Jose glances out the window, where Alex is waiting on the station, irritably staring around. “I remember. Alex embraced everything about herself—himself, I mean. She—he was fluid where I was not. Losing Alex taught me not to take life for granted.”
“Being unapologetically yourself tends to teach people a lot of things,” the blond muses. “Anyway, I’d better run. Otherwise he’ll kill me again and it’ll brutal instead of quick.” He walks away.
Jose nods.
Then the words sink in.
“What?!”
But he’s already gone and the subway is back in motion.
When Jose looks out the window, his child and the blond are nowhere to be found.
…
He’s not going to say the interaction brought him peace.
In fact, it brought more unrest than before.
But when Isabel came to him and Rosa one night at age fourteen and said with tears on her face, “I think I might be trans,” he could confidently say he didn’t get angry.
He’d learned that lesson.