Turtle Baby by Abigail Padgett

hand.
    "Mi corazon," she whispered, her eyes rolling back in her head. "Mi Acito."
    Bo watched as a white bird simply slid from the air and crumpled on a plywood stage held up by oil drums. Chac's arms stiffened for a moment, as though she were reaching for something far away, and then she was still. A bubbling foam at her lips continued to reflect the light in blue sparkles.
    In the pandemonium that followed, people yelled, "Doctor! Medico!" and Andrew LaMarche flung a khakied knee onto the narrow stage and crawled to the white form lying in the pool of blue light. In less than a minute he turned and found Bo's eyes in the panicked crowd.
    "She's dead," he mouthed. "Call the police."
    The Australian named Munson Terrell, Bo noticed, was on the stage cradling Chac's head. At the back of the room a skinny, long-haired boy with a guitar pulled aside the plastic tarp where a wall should have been, and vanished into the rubble-strewn darkness on the other side.

Chapter Eleven
The Moth Gatherer
    Bo woke from an uncomfortable sleep and for moments wasn't sure where she was. Checking her darkened surroundings, she recognized an open closet door revealing a familiar clutter of clothes. Mildred asleep and snoring in her basket beside the bed. And outside, the endless surging of the Pacific Ocean against Sunset Cliffs. Home. Relentlessly accurate, her digital clock radio announced in green numbers that dawn was a thing of the future: "4:23 A.M.," it said.
    "Shit," Bo remarked, noting that her beige pinstriped sheets were knotted in ropes and three of the four pillows with which she liked to bank herself against potential things that go bump in the night were on the floor. The fourth was squeezed to a damp wad against her chest. In the dark beyond the end of the bed the scene in Tijuana seemed to be just out of sight. A small white bird, fallen and still. Bo rubbed at her eyes with the edge of a rumpled pillowcase, flung long legs over the side of the bed, and stumbled onto the little balcony facing the sea.
    "It's okay to cry," she told the foggy breeze blowing up from the beach. "Healthy, even. Who wouldn't?" Wrapping her arms around her ribs under one of the old Tshirts she always slept in, she allowed herself the experience popularly termed “a good cry”. Except in Bo's experience, crying invariably caused nothing but a lingering headache, sore throat, and burning eyes. Sniffling, she wondered why everyone else in the world waxed so rhapsodic about crying. It just wasn't her thing, she acknowledged, popular wisdom notwithstanding.
    Wandering back into the apartment, she pulled on a pair of sweat pants and her most closely guarded secret, armadillo houseslippers. The stuffed-toy footwear boasted washable vinyl plating and cute suedecloth faces, one of which was missing its nose after an early encounter with Mildred. Bo had found the slippers at a swap meet only weeks ago, and decided to allow herself the eccentricity of owning them. Pretending not to be eccentric all the time was so draining. Andrew, she thought with amusement, would undoubtedly abandon his suit for her hand if he could, at the moment, see her feet.
    But he couldn't. He'd stayed at the Avenida Revolución club with Chac's lifeless body, urging Henry to take Estrella and Bo home. Determined to stay, Bo had only begun a tirade against patronizing men who think women swoon at unpleasantness, when Estrella obliterated Bo's thesis by actually swooning. Or almost swooning. She'd been caught in the crush of people trying either to leave or to gawk at the singer's body, turned pale under her makeup, and slumped to a chair in which she quickly placed her head between her knees. Bo had recognized no option but to accompany her friend to the street as Henry ran to retrieve the car. When he returned, Estrella had recovered but Henry seemed to be hyperventilating. Needed, Bo gave up hope of immediate information regarding Chac's death, and climbed into the Benedicts' car.