IN THE CURVE OF A CUL-DE-SAC rests the Moon family home. As far as Florida houses go, it is nothing atypical—yellow stucco capped with a red tile roof. Palm trees and other tropical plants line the walkway. As Marisol leads me up it, a lizard darts across our path. Her hair is still dripping wet, sticking to her t-shirt. In the short amount of time that we've been outside after Dahlia dropped us off, she's accumulated enough sweat dripping down her face to become visible to me. The humidity rubs itself to a paste against my skin.

We walk inside and the world comes to life. The AC's on full-blast, the cold air buzzing as it circulates rich spices through the air. Warm golden light spills from overhead. A peppy tune—"pop" music, as I've learned to call it—trickles out from a speaker that magically changes color with each beat. We're dumped into the brightly-lit kitchen, where her parents cook side-by-side. A yappy, medium-sized, curly-tailed dog with orange fur dances around our feet, licking our ankles and sniffing at us.

"This is Gucci," Marisol says, rubbing the dog behind her ears. "Ooh, my baby, did you miss me?"

I let her sniff my hands. "Hi, Gucci."

Her mother is this tiny little Korean-American woman. She is clothed simply in a t-shirt and jeans cuffed at her ankles, and her silky black hair falls to her shoulders in perfect little waves. Her eyes are dark and intense and seem to see right through me.

In contrast, her father's outfit has, as Marisol would put it, "drip." A pair of slacks and a suit jacket unbuttoned casually over a white blouse. He's small and round and bald, but he has a full coily brown beard. He's black, dark-skinned.

"Hi Mom!" Marisol throws herself into her mother's arms, then embraces her father. "And hi Dad!"

"Hi, spawn." Her father hugs her back and spins around to me, hugging me warmly. "You must be Antigone. I'm Marisol's old man. You can call me Desmond if you want."

"I'm Judy." Her mother offers me her hand like we've made a business deal. "We've heard so much about you."

"Moooooooom!" Marisol whines. "Not that much."

"What?" She holds up her hands in mock innocence and then returns to the pan simmering on the stove. "I'm just—what is it that you say, M&M? Spilling the tea? You're all she seems to talk about these days."

Well. She did decide to illegally smuggle a Greek demigoddess into her country, one whom she thought was on the run from a god that wrongfully wants her dead. Something of that nature is bound to take over a person's life.

Except I can't say any of that. So, instead, giggling, I poke Marisol in the side. "Oh? What about, pray tell?"

Marisol's cheeks redden. Playfully swatting my hand away, she rolls her eyes. "Shut up!"

"Girls! Hot food, be careful!" her mother flaps her hands at us, shooing us off. "Dinner'll be ready in fifteen. Have a seat at the counter."

We do as we're told. Marisol's so short, her feet can't reach the little footrest on the tall chair, so she tucks her legs up underneath her. Gucci the dog parks herself beneath us, pawing at our chairs for attention.

"So, Antigone." Judy says as she chops a carrot. "Marisol tells me you're from Greece. What part?"

"Apollonisi," I answer at the same time that Marisol says, "Athens."

"Apollonisi is a neighborhood in Athens," Marisol explains. "It's really nice there, right, Antigone? Down near the water."

There's no reason to lie so senselessly to her parents. Just because they know where I'm from doesn't mean they'd ever find out the truth about me, so why not tell them some semblance of it? Wasn't the entire reason for me to meet them because Marisol felt so guilty about hiding me from them? Why does lying to them make her feel any better about this situation?

But I figure it's not my place to say, so I stay quiet.

Her mother's knife makes a ck-ck-ck sound as it slides through the skin of the carrot into the wooden chopping block beneath it.

"How are you liking America so far?" her father asks. "A bit of a culture shock, isn't it?"

"Oh, you have no idea."

"You seem to have adjusted okay, at least," he observes. "Marisol, why don't you show her your room, take her to meet Jaden?"

The idea of meeting Marisol's little brother is enticing, to say the least.

Marisol nods. "We'll be right back," she tells her parents, and she grabs my hands and drags me deeper into her house, her dog Gucci chasing us, tail wagging.

She leads me to her bedroom, which is so pink I almost need sunglasses. Her walls, her desk chair, ninety percent of the accent pieces—everything is blindingly hot pink. Most of the furniture is black, which makes all the pink that much more off-putting. Miscellaneous items—piles of dirty clothes, jazz shoes and footundeez and ballet slippers, a whole surfboard—litter the floor, covering so much of it I can barely see her fluffy white rug. Books are stacked against the wall, piled as high as my hips. A bisexual pride flag hangs from one window, a rainbow one from the second. Her dresser is layered with bobby pins and hair ties, bottles of Bath and Body Works perfume and lotion, old cans of hairspray, more dirty clothes, various pieces of jewelry, and caboodles full of makeup. Her bed is hidden beneath a lurid pink comforter and mile upon mile of stuffed toys. The only relatively neat space is her desk, which houses just her laptop, some pens and pencils, and a handful of cough drops.

"Wow," I say.

She plops down on her bed, shoving her stuffed toys aside to make room for me. I sit across from her, my legs tucked up underneath me, her in the same pose. Gucci hops up on the bed with us, and spends a couple moments sniffing and licking at us, wagging her tail, before hopping to the floor and curling into a ball.

I don't know what this is. I don't really know what's happening right now, but... I think I'm thankful for this, for this moment of casual intimacy. She's so close I can feel the heat radiating off her skin, so close each breath she takes tickles my nose. Her nails are claws, pointed stilettos, a nice glittery yellow. She's wearing shimmering pink lip gloss.

"This is where the magic happens," she says.

I roll my eyes and show her one of the stuffed toys, a penguin with a bow tie. "What do you need all of these for?"

She snatches it out of my hand and cuddles it to her chest. "Don't talk about them like that!"

"Like what? They're just toys."

"No, they aren't! Toy Story and that one animated Rudolph movie literally ruined my life as a kid. I genuinely thought they were all, like, sentient. I tried sleeping with just one of them once, but then I got all sad 'cause I thought about the others, and how they must have thought I abandoned them since I wasn't sleeping with them. So I slept with all of them that night. And then I started thinking they'd think I was upset with them if I didn't sleep with them after that, so every night I'd sleep with all of them. Because I was scared of hurting their feelings. But mostly because I didn't want anyone to feel left out."

I imagine little Marisol snuggling with all of these stuffed animals each night, some of them surely bigger than she was. The thought of that brings a smile to my face.

"That's sweet," I tell her. "That you care so much, that you always have. It shows that you have a really big heart."

"Either that or I'm not immune to propaganda and subliminal messaging in children's movies." She shrugs. "C'mon, you wanna go meet my asshole of a brother?"

I nod.

She grabs my hand and drags me down the labyrinth of her house, to a closed milky white door. Gucci starts the journey following us, but gets distracted by the kitchen, and pads off to rejoin Marisol's parents.

She knocks twice. Then, not waiting for an answer, she barges inside. "JADEN!"

The room is near pitch black, illuminated only by a single screen that flickers like the moon above a cloudy sky. The shadow of a young boy perches in front of it, blocking the full screen from my view.

Marisol flicks the lights on and picks her way across the floor, mumbling to herself: "Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, oh, my God, please don't be a cum rag—dude, how long has that pizza box been in here?"

I follow her, careful to step where she steps.

Jaden turns around at the sudden brightness, blinking his eyes, ripping a pair of bulky black headphones from his head. He's dressed in all black. "Don't you knock?"

His room is just as messy as his sister's, but noticeably darker. Even with the lights on, everything is washed in soft, gentle tones, like moonlight—the brown walls, and the plaid bed, and all the posters covering every surface. Her room was harsh to look at, lurid, abrasive on the eyes. His room, in contrast, is like jumping into a pool of cool water after a day out in the harsh sun.

Also, it reeks, like unwashed pre-teen boy and week-old pizza.

"I did knock, asshole." Marisol glances at his screen. "Oh, my God, are you on 4chan?"

He quickly exits out of the screen, slamming his computer shut. "What? No!"

"I'm telling Mom," Marisol decides. "MoOM—!"

"No, don't!" Jaden flails his arms, pleading. Whatever this fortune thing is (in my limited grasp of the English language, fortune is what I heard. Not 4chan), it isn't something he wants to be caught on. "What do you want?"

Marisol crosses her arms over her chest. A mischievous glint catches in her eyes. "Oh, nothing right now. But I'll remember this. You owe me." She offers me to him. "This is Antigone. Our guest of honor." Sniffing the air, she wrinkles her nose. "Dad said you'd shower for her."

"I did shower," Jaden insists. "He just didn't say I had to use soap."

"Ew, oh, my God, tell me you're joking."

"Nope."

"Oh, my God." Marisol gags. "Go take an actual shower. Please, for the love of God and all things pink."

"If you promise not to tell Mom about 4chan."

Marisol rolls her eyes and flicks him on the forehead. "You're such a loser. I pity your future partner. Unless you're aro. In which case, I pity your future plants. Come on, Antigone." Once more, she slides her hand into mine and drags me out into the hallway. "We're leaving." She turns out the light and shuts the door behind us.

"You're bribing your brother," I say.

"Oh, yeah, that's nothing. My brothers and I, we've always gotten by on a trade-and-barter relationship. I don't tell Mom he was on 4chan, he'll do the dishes for me for a month. Et cetera. I'm a good noodle, so he's usually the one with a debt hanging over his head. So was Kennedy. It was great, 'cause I always had them around to do my—" a pause. Her eyes widen. "Shhhh!" she hisses, even though she'd been the one talking. Pressing her arm in front of me to hold me back, she peers around the wall. "They're talking about you," she whispers, a wild sort of excitement in her voice.

"—I'm just concerned is all," her mother is saying.

"Marisol would never—" her father argues.

"I know. That's why I'm thinking it might have been"—she lowers her voice as she says my name, like it's some sort of swear and she's a child using it for the first time; the hesitance in her voice, and the guilt, sends my stomach rocketing down to my feet with guilt—"Antigone's doing."

"I think you're blowing this out of proportions."

"Desmond, I have a gut feeling about this." That same thing Marisol talked about, the gut feeling she gets. "Either Marisol is hiding something from us, or that girl is. And I know my daughter."

"It was an honest mistake," he offers. "A mistranslation."

"Her English is good enough. She wouldn't make such a stupid mistake. And she's an exchange student! How does that make any sense? It's July. How can she be an exchange student in the middle of summer break?"

Marisol's face is ashen. "Holy fuck," she whispers, her voice barely audible. "We fucked up."