Light of Day (2 page)

I had the lounge to myself, as Sunday nights it was only Olive, Caballero, and me at the station. With its hot pink walls and sleek white leather furniture, this was where the celebs chilled before going on the air. The fancy espresso machine was tempting, but caffeine was a no-no for me before the show. The natural boost of adrenaline from my nerves was more than enough to hype me up.

I took my notes from my handbag, smoothed them out on my lap, and began to read. Twenty minutes until showtime.

My show.
It still didn't feel real.

I'd been volunteering at the station since January, doing anything that needed to be done—reception, paperwork, coffee, call screening. Like the other interns, I'd had dreams of being a DJ one day. The difference between me and them was that I started writing my own segments and recording them at night, when some of the equipment was free. Last spring, I'd finally worked up the courage to ask Caballero to listen to one of my segments—a sassy piece about a day in the life of a Miami Latina. I'd never forget seeing his face light up.
“We gotta get you on the air, mamacita!”

And so here I was, the clock on the wall ticking. It was now
September, and after six months of doing this, the nerves were still there.

At one minute to nine, I entered the booth and Caballero passed me the headphones. Sitting down, I cleared my throat and listened as the current song faded out. I'd been told my voice was low and smoky and made for radio. Then again, that was from creepy male listeners who were looking for a date.

I leaned in.

“Hey, it's me, Gabby Perez and you're listening to
Light Up the Night
coming to you from the heart of Miami. I'm the yin to Caballero's yang, and I give you the female side. The real deal without sugar-coating or truth-tampering.

“Do me a favor, will ya? Get all your friends to hear this. I don't care where you are or what you're doing—tell everyone to shut up and listen. Something happened to me last night that you have to know about. Something really scary.

“I was with a girlfriend at this club. We were approached by a guy. You know the type: suave, full of compliments, lots of bling. His name was Raul and he said we were the most beautiful girls in Miami. He was hitting on my friend and she was loving it. I went to the ladies' room to give them a minute alone. When I came out, a guy was waiting for me. He told me he saw Raul slipping roofies into our drinks. I managed to get my friend out of there, and she passed out in the cab. This morning, she couldn't remember anything about last night.”

I dared a glance through the glass. Caballero was wide-eyed. He mouthed,
Is it true?
and I nodded.

I lowered my voice, like I was talking intimately to a friend. “Here's the thing. Have you heard of roofies? You might know it as the date rape drug. It's super easy for a guy to slip it into your drink without you knowing, as I found out.

“Do you know what could've happened to us if Mystery Guy hadn't warned me? Do you have any idea?

“Mystery Guy, if you're listening, thanks for the heads-up. I owe you. To everybody out there, guys and girls, keep an eye on your drinks and those of the people around you. We've got to have each other's backs.”

I gave Olive a nod, indicating that she could send a call through. “Thanks for calling into
Light Up the Night.
What's your name?”

“I don't wanna say.” It was a shy female voice.

“No problem. That's some scary stuff I'm talking about, huh?”

“Yeah. I'm pretty sure someone did that to me. Put roofies in my drink.”

I swallowed. “Tell me about it.”

“It was at a frat party. I was a freshman. My friends thought I just got drunk and made a mistake, but I didn't even like the guy. He'd been hitting on me for weeks and I couldn't stand him. Then I wake up beside him the next morning.”

That fucking asshole
, I wanted to say. But this was live radio. “I'm so sorry. Did you confront him when you realized what had happened?”

“Yeah. He said I was into it, but I knew he was lying. I told him I was gonna call the cops, but I never did. I didn't think I could prove anything.”

My fist curled around the microphone. “You did the best you could. I'm really sorry that happened to you. I'm sure every girl listening is going to guard her drink more closely from now on.”

“I hope so.”

“Thanks for sharing your story.” I hung up. “That was brave of her. Who are these jerks who think they can drug us, anyway? I'm thinking they've gotta be the most insecure, cowardly turds out there. They must have”—I searched for a non-censorable word—“
man parts
so little they have to drug girls so we won't remember them. We've all got to be on the alert for guys like Raul—that gold-chained charmer could be out crawling the clubs even as I speak.”

I took a few more calls. Ranted more. Played some music. Then ended the show at one second to ten, handing off to Caballero. There was no time to debrief, but his eyes said he was proud. It was a relief. I wasn't used to dealing with topics as serious as this, and I felt the weight of it on my shoulders.

When I walked into the control room, Olive looked up.
“You were fabulous, Gabby. We've never gotten so many calls. I wish your show was twice as long so I could've put more through.”

“They liked the show?”

She grinned. “They want Raul's balls on a platter.”

THE NEXT MORNING I SAT
in math class, calculating the hours until graduation. Since it was only the second week of September, that meant . . . 1,220 hours. Now
that
was the kind of calculation I was interested in.

“This is the most boring class ever,” my friend Bree said with a sigh. She wrote on the scratched-up wooden desk,
Bordom is evil
.

Bree could never spell, but at least she was good at math. I had the opposite problem.

“Boring is right, but I need this friggin' class to graduate,” I said, copying the equation off the board.

Unlike most of my classmates, I was turning eighteen soon. Since my birthday was in December, right after the cutoff date, I was one of the oldest students in the senior class.
Apparently December babies did better in school that way. All I knew was, if I'd been born a couple of weeks earlier, I'd be in college already.

“You'll pass the class, don't worry. Too bad you can't get JC to tutor you. He always gets As in math.”

“Yeah, too bad.” At the mention of my ex-boyfriend, I rolled my eyes. The breakup had happened four months ago,
before
summer vacation, and people still weren't over it. I should just be glad that Bree was still talking to me—she was the only one of my former group of friends who did. Breaking up with popular JC Suarez, it turned out, was the equivalent of social suicide at this school.

It had been a relief when Bree sat beside me on the first day of classes. I hadn't seen her—or any of that group—all summer. The trouble was, Bree was also a major distraction. Math wasn't a problem for her, so she didn't have to pay attention. Unfortunately, I did.

My parents would freak if I failed.
I
would freak.

Granted, I hadn't failed math last semester because I was bad at math. I
was
bad at math, but I could have pulled off a pass, at least. I'd failed because I'd started skipping class to avoid JC. Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that having over ten unjustified absences meant an automatic F. I'd had eleven.

As a consequence, my parents had grounded me for the first two weeks of summer, and I'd missed two weeks of mall
and beach mayhem with Maria.

The bell rang. Saying bye to Bree, I headed to my locker.

St. Anthony's Catholic High School was in a tall, Gothic building that used to be a convent. Instead of hallways decked out with student art and antidrug posters, St. Anthony's hallways had paintings of Jesus, Mary, and the saints and framed photos of every pope since the 1930s. Not to mention a huge photo of Abbess Hildegard, who'd been the head nun here for forty years. Hildie, as we called her, glared down at us, as if to say,
Don't you dare, kiddies.

A horde of freshmen boys blew by, almost trampling me.
I hate this school
, I thought for the millionth time. My parents had wanted me to go here instead of Rivera, where Mom taught chemistry and Dad taught geography. In eighth grade I'd gotten into some trouble—staying out past curfew, getting drunk once—none of it earth-shattering, but it was enough to make my parents clamp down. They figured Catholic school was the solution. The fact that it would separate me from my friends was a bonus.

I grabbed lunch from my locker and headed for the cafeteria. It had long wooden tables, the same ones the nuns used to sit at. You could just picture them in their habits, slurping soup and talking about God, or whatever nuns talked about.

Going to the caf was always a risk. If the girls I usually sat with weren't there, I was screwed and had to sit by myself.
I could never sit with Bree, because she inhabited the popular table—and the truth was that our friendship didn't extend beyond the classroom door. My eyes scanned for the girls, and luckily, there they were. The Paranormal Twins.

Adriana and Caroline dressed alike in drab, dark clothes and dabbled in anything occult they could find—tarot, tea leaves, aura reading, ghosts, aliens, zombies—the Paranormal Twins weren't picky.

I slid in next to Adriana. She had thick brown hair extending halfway to her butt, pretty hazel eyes, and a glittering nose ring. She might've been pudgy, but you could hardly tell underneath the layers of dark, voluminous clothing. Caroline, on the other hand, was thin and sandy-haired, with skin so white she'd probably burn just by thinking about the sun. Although the dark clothing did nothing for her coloring, at least her leopard-print glasses added some sass to her look.

“What's up, girls?” I asked, unpacking my lunch.

“Caro's uncle showed up on Friday night,” Adriana said, like this was big news.

“Oh yeah? Where's he from?”

Caro gave me a
duh
look. “He's dead, Gabby. We channeled him.”

“Channeled? Wow. So that technique you were talking about last week worked?”

“Sure did,” Adriana said proudly. “We'll teach you if you
want. The key is to protect yourself with white light and only ask for helpful spirits to enter.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” I said between bites of sandwich. This paranormal stuff, at least, was a lot more interesting than dissecting the latest Kardashian crisis like my former friends did over lunch. “So what did your uncle say, Caro?”

“He said I'm going to find love soon. But I have to open myself up to it first.”

I hoped her dead uncle was right, since Caro was desperate for a boyfriend. Problem was, dressing like the Wicked Witch of the West wasn't appealing to most guys.

At that moment, I spotted JC strolling into the cafeteria.

That was how he walked—he strolled. When you were so popular you practically owned the school, you could do that. JC and his best friend, Liam Murray, were headed our way, laughing and joking. I remembered how I used to get all nervous and tingly when JC came into a room. With his deliberately tousled dark hair, warm brown eyes, and genuine
glad to see you
smile, he was our school's most universal crush.

Then it happened—that second of eye contact, ending when JC looked away without acknowledging me.
Ouch.
It used to be that his expression would show hurt. Now he kept it neutral, as if he hadn't seen me at all. As if I were as much a ghost as Caro's uncle.

The Paranormal Twins noticed the snub.

“I hear they're all druggies now,” Caro said. On the surface, she was shy and soft-spoken. But underneath, she was a Chihuahua who'd chew your arm off for a juicy bit of gossip.

She was trying to make me feel better. But I knew it wasn't true. JC's group of friends (formerly
my
friends) were pretty much on the straight and narrow, except for some booze and a little weed at parties. They were all from ultrainvolved middle-class families who expected their kids to get into college. The most rebellious thing they'd ever done was driving around the city late at night rearranging traffic cones.

No wonder my parents had thought JC was a positive influence on me. Me, who'd gotten drunk once in eighth grade and had never lived it down.

“I'd believe they're using,” Adriana agreed. “Karina and Ellie meet in the girls' bathroom all the time and stay there way too long.”

“They're both bulimic, that's why,” I said.

The girls' eyes widened.

I waved a hand. “I'm kidding. I'm sure they just want to get out of class.”

JC and his buddies sat down at their usual table—the one I'd sat at every day since we'd started dating in the spring of freshman year. Now I couldn't even walk by it without feeling icy stares. They hated me for breaking his heart.

JC was the type of guy who gave flowers and
Just Because
notes. The type of guy who saw all the best parts of me and was ignorant to the rest. The type of guy whose family had welcomed me with open arms.

He had the same initials as Jesus Christ, for Christ's sake.

Even now, I wasn't sure I understood it. I just knew that the longer we were together, the less I wanted to be with him. And secretly, in the deep dark parts of me, I was annoyed by him. Something about him didn't feel . . . manly. Maybe it was that he was such a pushover when it came to his best friend, Liam. After screwing around in his classes last year, Liam had convinced JC to write two of his term papers for him. I couldn't respect that.

The breakup had gone badly. When I'd first told him I wasn't happy, I'd let him talk me out of it. But the end result was two months of emotional carnage.

All my mom's worries had been for JC. She'd pointed out that a guy like him might only come along once. She'd met my dad when they were only sixteen, and they'd married right after college. Didn't I want a guy who'd always be there for me, who'd adore me and our future kids, just like my dad?

She was right. But it wasn't enough.

JC was too good a person to go around hating on me. So everyone took care of that for him. The rumor was that I'd become a snob since I'd gotten my radio show. That I thought I was hot shit and could do better than JC Suarez.

Everyone was all too eager to assure him—and me—that I couldn't.

And the truth was, I believed it.

My brother, David, was watching TV in the living room when I got home from school, his feet propped up on the coffee table. Way to brighten my day.

His “hey” was more like a grunt.

I didn't ask why he was here. Once a week he came to pick up his laundry and have a home-cooked meal. Same deal for the whole three years he'd been in college. He might be pre-med, but doing laundry, cooking, and anything besides studying and applying expensive cologne weren't among his skills.

I thought the point in going away to college was to
go away
. But he'd chosen the University of Miami and lived a half-hour bus ride from here. I didn't see why my parents had agreed to pay his living expenses when he could live at home. But I was grateful, because it meant I didn't have to deal with him every day.

I went into the kitchen to get a soda.

“What's for dinner?” David shouted from the living room.

“Don't know.” The casserole was in the fridge, but I wasn't going to inspect it for him.

I thought about going to sit with him for a few minutes,
but decided against it. Most of our conversations turned sour. They would start off pleasant enough, then he'd say something condescending, the old David snark, and I'd call him on it. Of course, Mom and Dad would see
me
pissed off and David as cool as a cucumber, and I'd get all the flack.

“Hey, Gab, come here!”

What did he want now? I figured I'd be civil and go in.

“So how's the party planning going?” he asked.

“Fine.” Aunt Sarita and I had been planning my parents' twenty-fifth anniversary party since June, and David had never offered to pitch in.

“Let me know if you need any help.”

I gave him a flat look. “Oh, come on. The party's next weekend. You're just offering because you know we've done everything already.”

David bristled. “Hey, you had the spare time on your hands, not me. I did a summer hospital placement. You were at the mall.”

“I put in a lot of hours at WKTU, too,” I countered. “Okay, fine, why don't you come early to help set up?”

“All right, but Melody's coming with me, so I don't want to bring her too early.”

Melody was the latest girlfriend—a petite blonde who studied nursing. She had a sweet disposition and never challenged David's opinions. She had all the makings of a future
trophy wife
if
she could hang on to David, which was doubtful. He never stayed with girls more than a few months, since he always found some flaw that made them undateable. Not that I was one to talk after the sinking of the JC Suarez.

“Good show last night,” David said, startling me.

He never listened to my show, and neither did my parents. In fact, my entire family—with the exception of Aunt Sarita—hoped I'd drop the radio dream and go into teaching or some other profession. Anything but radio. Too flaky.

But I'd come to count on them not listening—I could never be so open and comfortable on the air if I knew they were.

“I thought you never listened to the show.”

“I don't. Melody told me about it. Was that true about the roofies?”

“Yeah, the story's true. You're not going to tell Mom and Dad, are you? They'd freak.”

“'Course not.” He looked offended.

That was the upside of David. I'd covered for him so many times he'd be insane to cross me.

“I don't want you to put yourself in a situation like that again, though, Gabby.”

Did I detect a note of concern? “I didn't
put myself
in that situation, that scumbag did.”

His eyes narrowed. “You shouldn't have been at the club.
Two underage girls would be a magnet for someone like that. You're lucky the other guy saw him do it. You dodged a bullet, Gabby.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”