That was the night I finally understood everything. It all rushed into my head as I was lying in bed. The old woman had always thought the Jarabos' hatred was one of those long-standing feuds between families that fester and fester and never form a scab, but it wasn't. The Jarabos weren't any worse than others like them and they didn't hate us any more than they hated others like us. They'd taken against the old woman because of the bundles, because now the whole village thought they could wish ill on their family and get away with it, that they could slip through the woods in the middle of the night and come to this house in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a wasteland, to cook up some bad luck for the boss the lord the master without ever paying the price. But they detest us all equally, find us all equally disgusting and that disgust gets inside us and fills us with a poison that we carry so deep down we start thinking it's ours, but it's not. And then I fell asleep and when I woke up the rage was gnawing away at me like woodworm and I don't know if the shadows put it there between whispers in the night or if it came into my head of its own accord but that doesn't matter because either way I knew I had to get it out. I couldn't quit my job just yet. There was something I had to do first. Excerpted from Woodworm by Layla Martinez All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
