Jaime had a friend named Adam whose mother was also from Trinidad, like Jaime’s mother was. Adam’s mother, Ms. Tracey, told Adam stories about the strange spirits and creatures called jumbies that lived alongside the people there, and had even written some books about them. Once, when Jaime stayed over at Adam’s house for a birthday party, Ms. Tracey turned out the lights and told all the boys there about the spirits of Trinidad. Ghosts that roam the island at night. Mermaids who can lure men to their deaths in the blue water of the sea. Douens, the souls of lost children, spirits who have no faces and their feet on backward, spirits who like to take other children into the forest where they can be lost, too.

Not one boy slept that night.

It was the best birthday party Jaime had ever been to.

Now, in his sketchbook, Jaime drew ghosts, mermaids, douens. In one sketch, a lovely woman appeared at the edge of a frothy shore. Not the superhero he usually drew, but someone taller and paler, wearing a tight dress. Her feet were bare. He turned the page and drew the woman unzipping her skin and slipping out of it headfirst. She had the face of a wild boar. She reminded him a bit of another Trini spirit Ms. Tracey had talked about, the soucouyant, a woman who made a pact with the devil so that she could shed her skin and become anything she wanted, from a wild boar to a monkey to a ball of fire. The drawing made him both scared and sad. Scared because he had to wonder if his hand knew something about the blond woman that his brain didn’t, and sad because his own mother wasn’t around to tell him scary stories, or nice ones. That Adam couldn’t stay over at his own house, call his mother “Ms. Renée,” and listen to her stories. How many stories get lost when a single person is lost?

Again, he turned the page. This time, he drew more thoughtfully and intentionally. The superhero he kept drawing over and over. Dark and beautiful, dense, curly hair piled loosely on her head, she wore nothing flashy—no armor or unitards or masks. Just a plain gray coat that fell nearly to her ankles, a cane in her hand.

She looked a little like his mother. And yet she also looked like herself, whoever she was.

“Who is that?” Tess asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Jaime said.

Tess tapped the coat. “Reminds me a little of Ada’s dress. Plain like that.”

“Without the hearts,” Jaime said.

“She doesn’t need hearts?”

“She doesn’t need to wear them on her clothes.”