Existence Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward her.
    â€œI don’t like the idea of someone up there watching,” she says. “Judging, or whatever. I like the idea that we get to choose for ourselves what it all means. Who we’re going to be. And I guess . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI . . . I don’t really know how to say it. I never talk like this. Or I neverdid before.” She touches his face, so gently. “You turn me into someone new, Jago. Every day, you make me a stranger to myself.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
    â€œIt’s the best thing,” she tells him, and then, for a time, there’s silence, as her lips meet his and they find a wordless way to speak.
    It’s not until they’re nodding off to sleep beneath the stars, her delicate body folded into his sturdy arms, that she finishes her earlier thought. “I guess I don’t want to believe in UFOs or in, you know, some kind of higher power, because I think it’s beautiful that we’re the only ones. Billions of stars, and only us to see them. Like a single spark in the darkness, you know?”
    He squeezes her, gently but tightly, to say, yes , he does know. And he wishes she were right.
    â€œYou never answered. What do you think?” she asks. Her breath is warm on his neck. Her head lies on his chest, and he wonders if she can hear his heart beat.
    It’s strange—this is the place where he became the Player. It’s saturated with memories and blood. But he’s never felt less like Jago Tlaloc, Player of the Olmec line. He feels like just a boy, lying beside a girl. He feels like nothing matters here but the two of them, their even breathing, their beating hearts, their warm bodies, their dreams, and their love.
    She asks him questions no one has ever bothered to ask.
    She trusts him to be gentle, to be kind, to be so many things he never knew he could be.
    She thinks him beautiful, and here in the dark, he can almost believe it’s possible.
    â€œI don’t know if we really are alone,” he lies. Then he says something true, the kind of thing Jago Tlaloc, Player of the Olmec, would never admit. “But that’s how being with you makes me feel. Alone in the universe. Only the two of us.”
    â€œA spark in the night,” she whispers.
    â€œA bonfire.”
    Jago takes his friends’ advice about one thing: He tells his mother about Alicia. She pretends to be surprised.
    â€œInvite the girl over for dinner,” she says, and it is not a request.
    He obeys.
    He always obeys his mother.
    Jago picks her up in one of the family’s bulletproof Blazers. Alicia draws in a sharp breath as they approach the first of the guard towers, then seems to hold it for the entire long, winding drive up to the hacienda. He tries to see it through her eyes, this castle on a hill, and wonders if she’s judging him for living like a king despite the teeming swarm of poverty below. The Tlalocs do a great deal for the poor of Juliaca, but they could do more—they could always do more.
    â€œThis is amazing ,” Alicia breathes, as they pull up in front of the beautifully manicured grounds and he opens her door. There’s something new in her eyes when she looks at him, and he realizes she never thought of him growing up in a place like this. He’s told her so much about the Tlaloc power—less so about the money that enables and derives from it. Other than that disastrous first date, he’s refrained from giving her lavish gifts or taking her out for expensive meals. Alicia isn’t that kind of girl.
    But there’s a radiant smile on her face that he hasn’t seen before. “What?” he asks.
    She shakes her head. “I just . . . I didn’t know.”
    Dinner is exactly the disaster he expects it to be, although Alicia has no idea. Jago’s mother, Hayu Marca, is expert at appearing sweet and nurturing—but beneath these layers