𝑭𝑨𝑽𝑶𝑹𝑰𝑻𝑬 𝑷𝑨𝑹𝑻. ( fezco. )

𝑰𝑵𝑻𝑹𝑶.

𝑷𝑨𝑶𝑳𝑨 𝑯𝑨𝑺 𝑩𝑬𝑬𝑵 𝑰𝑵𝑽𝑰𝑺𝑰𝑩𝑳𝑬 for a long time. her twin brother was always the popular one - dro ( short for pedro ) was a linebacker. he was friends with nate jacobs and christopher mckay, from the twins' first day in town. they'd moved there from miami at ten years old, accent still thick on her lips, missing the humidity over this dry heat. she used to get up every morning that summer they had arrived and rode her bike around, memorizing every street, every corner, every landmark possible. it took her mind off her parents' divorce and her brother pulling away from her. it took her mind off her loneliness.

by the time middle school rolled around, paola had made a couple friends for herself. she was cool with kat but mostly stuck with rue and lexie. nate would come over with dro all the time to hang out in their pool and in seventh grade he asked her out. they lasted a month before he said her nose was too big & dumped her. in eighth grade, daniel took her to the movies twice. he gave her her first hickey and she'd barely rubbed him over his jeans before he came in his pants. after that, she never went to the movies with him again.

in high school, while rue was getting high, lexie & paola got really close. they spent fridays at her house, in the attached mini-den of her bedroom, binge watching veronica mars & all the csi's. her favorite was miami, obviously. she would go back every summer and see her big sister, who had graduated college by the time paola was entering her freshman year. for those six weeks in the summer, she and lexie were apart but always texting each other. maybe they were so close because they knew what it was like to live in the shadow of some older sibling that was infinitely more popular than them. maybe they just both were weirdos together. she did miss rue though. the three stooges just wasn't the same without their curly.

all throughout high school, her dad was off on business trips, leaving the twins alone most of the time. dro spent a lot of that time having sex with girls or having his friends over. he paid someone to do his homework for him, cheated on all his tests, and would pass every year without ever letting his gpa drop below a two point nine. paola had a three point eight but it wasn't that hard to maintain that, especially at their school. for some classes, she just had to fucking show up. he bought drugs from fezco a lot and in the beginning, fez would come to the house. ashtray, who she preferred to call just tray, would be there & she'd give him goldfish crackers or a caprisun. the kid made her laugh.

she wore her hair in a ponytail a lot. shoved herself into loose clothing, borrowing both dro's and her dad's hoodies, letting them hang down to mid thigh while she wore leggings or mom jeans. vans for days. ponytail, hoodie, leggings, slip ons. over and over and over and over. like a uniform kind of. if it was hot, big t-shirt with some logo or tv show or artist on it. she blended into the background, easily.

the june of her junior year, she got her license and a surprise car from her father - jeep wrangler rubicon, four door, glossy black, lifted. her dream car. dro got a red camaro because he was kind of a douchebag. then, they both left for miami in late june, two days after their last day of school and their sister picked them up at the airport with a sick look of determination in her eyes. she told paola, over cuban coffee the next morning, that she was gonna "turn her hot". paloma ( lolo for short ) was making bank as a sugar baby in miami and under her guidance, paola got into jogging. she started wearing tight jeans and form fitting shirts. she wore a bikini to the beach, which they went to damn near every other day, and it was always tiny as shit. lolo gave her some confidence in her own body and honestly, it felt fucking great. she wore her hair down, she didn't hide her laugh behind her hands, she drank hard lemonades and mojitos and coronas but avoided drugs because she'd heard about rue back home and lexie would probably be bummed if two of her friends turned out to be addicts. but paola, for once, had some fun. and it was great. because people noticed her. boys flirted with her, girls flirted with her, she liked what she saw in the mirror: a smiling girl whose nose was the perfect shape, thank you very much.

then they got on the plane and came back to the burbs and a part of her screamed to put the leggings back on. shove on a hoodie. throw her hair into a ponytail. but she didn't. she refused. she and lexie went out to their annual catch-up dinner & paola was wearing short shorts. and sandals. and a fucking crop top with her hair out and she felt fucking wonderful. she felt new. she felt happy.

🥀

sav montano as paola baez.
ricardo hoyos as pedro baez.
stephanie rao as paloma baez.
danny pino as benicio baez.
euphoria cast as their respective characters.