The Soul Game by Javier Castillo

Author:Javier Castillo
Language: spa
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9788412141825
Publisher: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España
Published: 2023-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Harlem

Early morning,

April 25, 2011

Miren Triggs

Nothing’s more painful

than unwittingly plunging yourself

into an inescapable spiral of mistakes.

I’d forgotten how tempting it could be to feel like a threat. To know that no one can hurt you, like you’re all covered in spikes. When you walk fearlessly down the streets of a city like New York, maybe you’re the one people are afraid of. I’d left home with tears running down my cheeks, torn up because I was incapable of letting myself be loved. Part of me fought against any show of affection, but another part of me needed it just to stay sane.

My head still ached from getting hit by the rock. As I headed north, I didn’t want to think about—or, really, I pretended not to know—where my long, decisive footsteps were taking me. I walked for over an hour, avoiding the main streets and crossing over whenever I saw an ATM whose camera might spot me. The whole way, I thought about my mother’s words and my grandmother’s newfound happiness, the way she had managed to rebuild her life despite years of physical abuse from the person who was supposed to love her.

My grandmother had become a kind of distant lighthouse across the bay, with a powerful light showing me the way forward. But there was one small yet obvious difference between us: my grandfather was dead, whereas my attackers—at least two of them—had taken root in my mind, sitting comfortably in an armchair made from my screams that night, eating popcorn as they watched the monster they created with their brutality destroy me from the inside. There was only one solution.

Before leaving home, gasping for breath through my own pained cries, I put on a black sweater and grabbed my pistol from my underwear drawer, the 9mm Glock I’d bought years before and never registered. The instant I picked it up, I knew this was a mistake. But it was one of those mistakes that’s long overdue, the kind of mistake you put off until the crucial moment when you’re forced to face it. Mistakes like that are inevitable, since just thinking about them changes you forever. I couldn’t go on in this way. Either something had to give, or I was going to continue losing my battle with loneliness.

I was in tatters, but at the same time nervous and angry, filled with contradictory feelings because I also knew there was nothing left of the person I had once been: a happy, smiley, carefree young woman.

By the time I allowed myself to process what I was doing, I was at 60 and 123rd Street, staring at a red, three-story building. On the ground floor was a bodega called Best Grocery NYC. It was closed, and the door was secured with a black grate that I’m sure shrieked horribly every time they opened and closed it. There wasn’t a soul in sight. A few cars cruised past at a calm, slow pace, confirming that, at that time of night, their drivers would rather be in bed.

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