Mafia Doll

Pamela glances back inside, as if leaving something important hanging on an invisible hanger, and then at me. She nods. She bumps the door with her hip so it won’t slam and we go down the stairs together. I don’t know what’s waiting at the end of the block—Auntie’s questions, Grandma’s silences, shifts, bills, a future that isn’t drawn yet—but for the first time all night I feel something move in the right direction: I’m not leaving her alone. And I’m not leaving myself alone either, because I also need to learn to look at what hurts without shattering.

After fifteen minutes of a silence that rasps me raw inside, I can’t take it anymore. I try to bite my tongue—I want the whole story before I explode.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Pamela bites the inside of her cheek and turns her face to the window, like there’s an exit out there I can’t see.

“Pamela, if they’re forcing you—”

“It’s not what you think,” she cuts me off, ice-cold—the cold she uses when she’s actually shaking.

I wait. The silence stretches like a thread about to snap. She doesn’t add anything. It drills through my patience.

“Then what am I supposed to think? Help me out here: I’m completely lost.”

She sighs and rubs her forehead. Her fingers tremble.

“You wouldn’t understand. You’re too… whatever.”

Too what? Naive, rigid, proper? I feel heat climb my face.

I frown. She exhales hard, like talking to me weighs on her bones.

“Maybe if you tried to explain it, I would understand,” I shoot back, hurt.

“Enough!” she finally explodes, voice broken. “I know exactly what you think of me right now. The night was heavy enough; I don’t need your judgment on top.”

“I’m not judging you,” I lie halfway, because the image of her in that place burns in my eyes. “I just want to understand. The man’s with the Zetas cartel, isn’t he? I saw the cartel tattoos, Pamela! Why are you lying to us?”

“Because I love him! Is that okay?!” The word love snaps in two and she hurls it at me like a glass that shatters.

My heart stops. All the air in my lungs turns dense.

“I’m in love with him,” she insists, and now she does look at me, with tears that don’t fall, stranded on the edge. “And I couldn’t tell you—least of all knowing how much you hate those people.”

“In love?” I whisper, the word coming out like a splinter. A cold wave combs my gut from top to bottom. Love… with who?

That criminal? No.

I go mute for several minutes. Her hazel eyes bounce from me to the road and back. I can’t speak. I don’t want to scream. I don’t know how to hold her up without collapsing myself.

She leaves me speechless.

“Pamela… we said we’d escape this misery, remember?” I point to the dirty street, the crooked posts, the busted bulbs. “We’re… we’re going to finish architecture with top grades and move to Los Angeles. That was the plan, right? You said that once we were there you’d adopt a dog. That still stands, doesn’t it?”

She doesn’t answer. Her jaw tightens. I see her clench her teeth not to cry.

I know my words reach her—I know her—but something in her fights, hard, like my dream is a luxury she can’t afford anymore.

“We want to get away from the drugs. We want out of Sunnyside and far from criminals. That’s why we don’t mess with cartels!”

She finally turns her face and holds my gaze. And in that clash, it isn’t the Pamela I know: the one who laughs loud, dances anywhere, makes even misfortune feel lighter. The one I saw on that couch wasn’t her; she was someone surrendered to the street, someone who bargained with fire not to freeze to death.

The message lands like lead: what if we don’t get out of here?

Then why not dance with the devil if it’s the only way not to burn alive?

“Listen, Vanessa,” she says at last, word by word, like each syllable costs her, “I didn’t see it coming. I can’t control it. I knew it would hurt you, so yes, I hid it. But you saw him. Antony isn’t—”

“No.” I cut her off, and I can hear my voice shaking with anger and fear. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with that psychopath. Don’t say it again. Please.”

“Vanessa, stop…”

“No. Enough.” I press my back to the door like I need a wall to keep from coming apart.

The rest of the ride is a hole. Heavy silence. The engine hums. I swallow, and guilt tangles in my throat: maybe I’m being cruel; maybe I’m not seeing it all. But there’s one thing I do see with a clarity that hurts: he doesn’t love her. At all.

I don’t shout. I don’t lecture. I speak like someone setting a beam so the roof won’t cave.

“We can’t drop out of school. In two years, we’ll be done, and we’ll move to another state. With our grades, we can go anywhere. You know that.” I draw a long breath. “I won’t say anything to Aunt Carmen or Grandma about your job. But Antony… Antony is going to wreck your life. Believe me.”

The last word trembles.

I step out before she answers. The cold air cuts my face. A few meters away is my bike, chained to the gate exactly where I left it. I walk over with my hands shaking—from anger, from fear, from love put in the wrong places.

Behind me, Pamela is still standing there. I don’t look back. I pull out the key, free the chain; the metal chills my fingers and centers me. I breathe. I swing a leg over.

“Pam…” I say, barely, without turning. “Take care of yourself.”