“Grandma always looked forward to seeing that bonfire every year,” I say.

He looks at me. “Yeah?”

“If she were here, she’d be watching it getting assembled, drinking too much quentão with her friends.” I chuckle to hide the pain this memory leaves in my chest. I can almost smell the hot mulled wine just thinking about it, fragrant with oranges, cloves, and cinnamon.

My eyes sting with tears.

Pedro looks like he wants to say something, but one of the bonfire logs collapses, startling me. I instinctively grasp his arm. He looks down at my hand, and I let go, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I turn around to hide my flaming-hot face. “Do you want an espetinho?” I ask to change the subject.

“You’re asking me out?” he jokes, looking as smug as always.

“No. It’s just a thank-you for agreeing to help Vozes. And... Well... I feel bad about breaking your sunglasses.”

Pedro looks a little disconcerted. “You don’t have to.”

“Have you tried Seu Floriano’s espetinhos? I haven’t had one in ages.”

Pedro looks like he’s going to refuse, but he nods instead. “What the hell. Who says no to Seu Floriano’s espetinhos?”

“Wait behind the museum? I’ll bring you one. We can’t risk being seen together.”

“Of course not,” he agrees.

I exit the museum and cross the street into the feirinha. But the espetinho vendor isn’t at his usual spot. Even the banner is gone.

“Where is Seu Floriano?” I ask Isabel, who’s sitting behind Dona Clara’s booth, her eyes glued to her phone.

“Gone,” she says.

“Gone where?”

Isabel finally looks up, hoops dangling from her earlobes. She glances at Deals Deals in the distance, at the encroaching neon lights.

“Gone, amada.”

21

THURSDAY, MAY 5

I enter the Deals Deals parking lot like I’m stepping onto a cemetery of fallen businesses, all my neighbors’ dreams buried under concrete.

“Larissa, wait!” Pedro shouts behind me. “I thought we were meeting behind the museum. Where are you going?!”

“Seu Floriano lost his booth!” I tell him, whirling around. My voice is hoarse with anger. I point at the supermarket. “They did that to him!”

Pedro looks from me to the neon lights on Deals Deals’s facade. “I didn’t know.”

I storm off in the direction of the supermarket. I just can’t stand around while they poach us one by one!

I step inside, Pedro right behind me.

This place is massive, cameras everywhere, TV screens announcing deals, and singsong voices coming through the speakers. Customers bustle in and out of aisles with full shopping carts, oblivious to the ghosts all around them.