As Long as You Love Me (Previously Kiss and Tell)

Prologue ♔ Estas Calles

Kiss and Tell will be published as a paperback and e-book from W by Wattpad Books under the new name "As Long As You Love Me". The book is available for pre-order now: https://a.co/d/bV1ARdt

***

What can be sown in the streets of Venezuela is death.

Someone said this at my brother's funeral with the kind of acceptance usually preceded by a sigh and followed by qué se puede hacer. Like we were talking about losing a contest, rather than normalizing the fact that venturing in the streets might mean returning home in a casket.

My body trembled during the entire service but my chin didn't waver, my eyes didn't rain. I was so full of anger that my insides were a volcano about to erupt, ready to wipe away civilizations. In that moment, it was my civilization that I wanted to clean the slate on.

How had we got to this point? How was I the only one bursting at the seams with anger like lava and ashes? Wasn't anger supposed to be one of the early stages of loss? And yet everybody around me either cried or shook their head, murmured that he'd been so young, so full of promise.

Mami was on the former camp. Ever since we'd received the news she had been unable to draw a breath that didn't come along with a fresh wave of tears. Papi's face was stern, which probably was a compounding reason for mami's sorrow. My brother, Carlos, had died fighting for the opposite side from papa's. He loved Carlos with every fiber of his being but he'd never really moved past the disappointment that Carlos didn't share his support for the revolution. Meanwhile my twin sister, Coralina, clung to her boyfriend, Rodrigo, with a vice that would probably leave a bruise. She was stuck in a combination of shaking her head and crying, also floored that her brother would give his life in protests against the chaos our country had descended into.

And then there was me. The black I wore during the funeral service seeped into my heart, inflaming me with the same kind of anger that Carlos felt that fateful morning. It had already been close to two months since he was last able to go to class at university because the teachers were on strike. A bunch of his friends and guys from other schools had agreed to protest downtown, close to the main newspaper of Maracaibo. I helped him prepare bottles full of vinegar and cut up rags from old t-shirts so that he'd protect himself from the tear gas that was sure to hit them and almost as if I knew, I clutched at his hands last minute and wouldn't let him go.

"Yo también," I said, gripping him tighter. "Let me join you."

Carlos' dark eyes twinkled. "I never would've imagined that a day would come when you'd want to skip school."

To make the point he looked down at my school uniform. I'd got up as soon as papi left for work at five thirty in the morning, got dressed and sneaked out of my room to wake Carlos up while mami and Cora still slept. The plan was that after Carlos left, I'd wake them up with breakfast and act as a smokescreen for Carlos.

His joke made me wrinkle my nose because never in my thirteen year school career had I ever skipped a day. I was the best student in my class, so advanced that my teachers always told mami it was a shame that there was no way to accelerate my education. And yet that day I didn't care about school. I didn't want to let go of my brother. I wanted to cling to him, school record be damned.

He flicked my fringe like he knew annoyed me and gave me a hug, saying, "Leave the ugly fighting to your champion, mi princesa. One day we'll be free and I'll give you this kingdom again."

I remembered rolling my eyes. I remembered watching his back disappear down the corner outside of our apartment as I closed the door.

That was it. He was gone. I would never see him again, hear his obnoxious laughter, bury my face in the crook of his neck when he hugged me, watch him banter with Cora until her face turned red like a tomato.