I DIDN’T KNOW HER NAME EITHER.

The first few seconds of a song are long enough for me to know: salsa or bachata. Before I've decided anything, my foot steps out toward a bachata basic. 1, 2, 3, tap — my left foot joins my right.

I'm alone, standing in front of the closet, flipping through hangers to decide what I'll wear today. The rhythm moves through my whole body. I pull out a dress that accentuates my hip movements, slip it on, practice a small arm flourish common in sensual bachata styling. My arm extends, and at the end, I drop it — thinking about how much easier this move would be with a lead. The corners of my mouth pull upwards into a sad smile. I miss dancing.

It's been this way since I moved to Iloilo. There are no Latin socials here, nothing like what I had in the DMV — just muscle memory, performing for no one, in a room with no floor for it.

I think about one night in particular. The best one.

I walked up the stairs to the second floor of a sports bar that turned into a weekly Latin dance social. I set my jacket and bag down on a leather couch off to the side, and my friends came up to me — kissing my cheek, hugging me, gushing over my whole ensemble. There was a Halloween costume contest that night, a cash prize for whoever the audience cheered loudest for. I hadn't planned on entering. I just wanted an excuse to dress up, style my hair, and paint my face.

My look was inspired by El Día de Los Muertos. A colorful embroidered blouse, a flower crown my mom sewed for me, curled hair, skull details painted onto my skin. I didn't have a specific character in mind. But every lead I danced with, after complimenting me, asked the same question: who are you? what's your costume?

Friends kept telling me I should enter the contest. I get major stage fright — have since I was a kid — so my automatic response was a hard no, laughing it off. Then one lead, mid-dance, told me: "You look like La Llorona!" I asked who that was. He wasn't totally sure of the details. A ghost woman, he said, who killed or drowned her own children after her husband left her. But he was sure the costume reminded him of her. I thought that was cool, in a creepy way, and filed it away.

Later that evening, the DJ started rounding up contestants. My friends wouldn't let up — you should go up there, just go! — until one of them, laughing, physically pushed me out onto the floor.

The DJ explained the rules into the mic. First round: introduce yourself in character, and the audience claps for their favorite. When he held the microphone out to me, I reached back into my mind for the only name I had, and said it: La Llorona.

Second round: pairs, salsa and bachata, more eliminations by applause. Third round: solo, whatever genre the DJ threw at us, switching without warning — salsa, bachata, then pop, then reggaeton. Don't get me wrong. When I hear Bad Bunny or Rauw Alejandro, I'll straight up perreo. But not like this, not dressed like a pretty skeleton in front of a packed room watching me alone. My friend yelled from the crowd, just dance salsa! — so I did, somehow making salsa footwork work to a reggaeton beat. I got through it.

At the end, the DJ went around one final time, asking the room to cheer for who they wanted to win. Every name got a wave of noise. When he got to me, the applause was almost deafening — my ears were ringing. He called out another name first. Then he took it back. He lifted my arm into the air and yelled: "LA LLORONA!!!"

My jaw hit the floor. He handed me a wad of cash. I looked out at the crowd and found my friends first — laughing, screaming, pumping their fists — before they ran up and pulled me into their arms.

Later, dancing with the friend who'd pushed me onto the floor, he asked how I'd come up with La Llorona. I told him the truth: someone had mentioned her to me minutes before the contest started. He burst out laughing. "You didn't even know who La Llorona was??" I laughed with him too, and he led me through a spin. The whole thing was so funny — picking up a name on the fly and wearing it all night like I'd known who I was before any of it happened.

I didn't think about that $125 for long before I knew exactly where it was going.

A few months earlier, mid-summer, I'd been hosting a friend for lunch. We'd just finished eating, and I was photographing the strawberry shortcake I'd made, out on the balcony, when the lens fell straight off my camera body. I stood there frozen, not comprehending that this was something a camera could just do. Then I got annoyed — it had been struggling with autofocus for months. Six years on a secondhand body. It had a good run.

I'd wanted a Sony a7 III for a long time — mirrorless, a real upgrade. So that October, I ran a bake sale to fund it. I curated a menu, built a pre-order system, marketed it myself, baked and packaged every order with my mom as my assistant, sold my old Canon body toward the total, and coordinated pickups. I even brought orders to my dance friends at socials when they couldn't make it in person. Between the bake sale, the sold Canon, gifts from family and friends, and a couple hundred set aside from each paycheck, I raised the entire amount.

I was in the middle of that fundraiser when I won the contest. I deposited the $125 that week and watched my account climb closer to what I needed. It was, in some ways, the easiest money I ever made — the only hurdle had been letting myself do the spontaneous thing without overthinking it. Just going for it.

That Sony has been with me since — across oceans, onto white sand beaches, into turquoise water, into a whole second life behind the lens instead of in front of it.

But today it's just sitting in my room, while I finish the flourish alone in front of the closet. Both of those women are true at once. The one who won. And the one who misses it.