Amor and Summer Secrets

by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

  Javier was rather computer illiterate. I sat in the Internet café teaching him how to change the settings on his e-mail messages. He wanted to use my laptop, because he had never used one before, despite the fact that it was in English and the desktops at the café were in Spanish. This only made my tutorial more difficult.

  “You go to ‘Edit,’ then ‘Preferences,’ ” I explained, showing him commands with my index finger. “Then click on the tab ‘Messaging.’ ”

  Javier followed my instructions. Every once in a while he’d look at me and smile, proud to have finally understood what I had been trying to explain to him for several minutes. He was a nice guy, but even with our limited communication skills, I got the impression that he wasn’t very bright. And he smelled a little funny. I had never seen him smoke, but he reeked of cigarettes, and his breath had a weird kosher pickle aroma. I held my breath when he spoke directly facing me.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost two o’clock. We had been at this for an hour. I hadn’t designated a time when we were going to wrap it up, but I was thinking that time was rapidly approaching. Any more of this and I would start counting the freckles on my arms.

  “Ya know, you really shouldn’t pick a cursive font for your e-mails,” I explained when I saw the messy, bolded, swoopy text message he had composed. “It’s kinda annoying to the people reading your messages. Why don’t you change it to something standard, like Times or Arial? You remember how to change the font, right?”

  He blinked at me like I had just suggested he solve a logarithmic equation off the top of his head.

  I reached my hand out and rested it on top of his. I moved my finger slowly on the laptop’s mouse pad to show him where the fonts were on the toolbar. But before I finished scrolling through the drop-down menu, something near the café’s front window caught my eye. I swiveled my head and saw a glimpse of a guy standing outside on the sidewalk. As soon as he met my glance, he quickly turned and sped away. It was Alex.

  “Holy crap!” I yelled, jumping to my feet.

  I ran out of the café without saying another word to Javier, pushing open the heavy glass door and darting down the sidewalk. Unlike most cities I’d been to, Utuado didn’t have a lot of foot traffic. I didn’t have much trouble spotting Alex.

  “Alex! Alex!” I yelled, charging after him.

  He kept moving.

  “Alex, stop! I want to talk to you!”

  He paused but didn’t turn around. It took only seconds for me to close the gap between us. I stopped in the shade of a palm tree.

  “Alex, why’d you run away?” I puffed, catching my breath.

  He turned around slowly.

  “You were busy . . . with Javier,” he stated curtly.

  “I know, I’m helping him learn some computer stuff.”

  “Is that all?” he asked, his dark eyes squinted like tiny slits.

  “Yeah, what’d you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled.

  “Alex, where have you been this past week? Why haven’t you stopped by?”

  I thought for a moment that I should be more subtle, beat around the bush until I quietly figured out why he was ignoring me—be more like a regular girl. But I didn’t have much time left on this island and I had zero experience playing “games” with boys. I wanted to know the truth, and frankly, it just seemed silly not to ask.

  “Where have I been? What are you talking about?”

  “Alex, you came to this big family dinner then, poof, you disappear. What happened?”

  “What happened was you not wanting to see me anymore!” He shook his head at me like I was an escaped mental patient still wearing the straightjacket.

  “What? Why would you think that?”

  He paused and examined my face for several moments. His head jolted back. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “That Lilly called me the morning after the dinner and told me you got freaked out by how the family reacted to us. That you thought we were going ‘too fast.’ ” He sneered slightly. “She said you asked her to call me to tell me to back off. That you came to Puerto Rico to have fun, not to get wrapped up in some serious relationship.”

  My mouth fell toward the gray cement sidewalk about as quickly as my stomach did. I could hear the words he was saying, but my brain couldn’t conjure up a single rational thought. How could I respond to that?

  Alex stared at me.

  “You never told her to say any of that stuff, did you?” he asked, raising his hand to his dark hair.

  I shook my head no, slowly dusting the cobwebs off my brain.

  “¡Ay Dios mío!”

  “Oh. My. God,” I stuttered in response.

  We stared at each other for several seconds, not saying anything.

  “Alex, I thought you lost interest in me. I couldn’t figure out why you stopped coming by. I thought it was something I did—”

  He quickly leaned in and kissed me, cutting me off mid-sentence. I tried to kiss him back but my mind was still dizzy.

  “I never lost interest. I thought I was pressuring you. I wanted to give you space,” he whispered when he pulled away.

  “Wait, then why did you come by the Internet café? Or was that just a coincidence?”

  Alex took a deep breath and slowly sighed. I had never seen him angry before, but I was guessing from the heat of his breath and the look in his eyes that he was struggling to contain his emotions.

  “I stopped by the hotel. I wanted to see you. It had been a while, so I thought it would be okay. But I ran into Lilly. She said you were at the café with Javier. And that I shouldn’t go there, that I should just let you guys be together,” he snipped through gritted teeth.

  I sighed and shook my head. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I felt like such an idiot. I’d trusted Lilly completely, and this wasn’t a one-time lapse in judgment on her part. It was an ongoing deliberate plot. She had set me up as recently as this morning.

  “I can’t believe I listened to her,” he mumbled.

  “I can’t believe she lied.”

  Chapter 42

  I walked into the hotel alone. Alex wanted to join me, to confront her together, but I didn’t want to create an ambush. Plus, I assumed the reasons Lilly did this (like she really had any) had more to do with me than him. I didn’t want her to censor her comments because of his presence. And I didn’t want to have to censor my own. Fighting with Lilly was intimidating enough without adding Alex into it.

  The lobby was empty. Vince had already left, probably to go to the beach. He had been complaining recently that he couldn’t return to Pennsylvania from a tropical island without a tan. The hotel was utterly silent, but I knew Lilly was still there. She had sent Alex to find me; whether she wanted to get caught or not I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t skip out before hearing the result of her handiwork. My guess was that she was expecting me.

  I heard a clang of glassware from the bar. Though she had never worked in the restaurant’s kitchen before, I knew it was her. I could feel it.

  I walked in and saw her unloading clean glasses onto the proper racks. She stopped immediately. And for a few moments we just glared at each other. I didn’t say anything. She knew that I knew. Despite the fifteen feet separating us, I felt like we were staring at each other from across the Grand Canyon. The air locked in my lungs and I felt my fingernails dig into my palms.

  “Look,” she started, carefully putting down the tray of glasses and slowly moving to the other side of the bar. I wanted her to stay where she was. I liked having the buffer zone between us. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Really!” I snipped, my eyes wide and my tone instantly going on the offensive. “Oh, please, then explain it to me. Explain how you lied to me and how that’s ‘not that bad.’ ”

  We were alone in the bar, which was a blessing. I hadn’t intended to start off so harsh. I planned on hearing her out first. It wasn�
��t as if she was Madison or Emily or Vince. I could yell at them recklessly and know that we’d live through it, that we’d still be friends afterward. Lilly didn’t have that absolution.

  “Oh, come on, Mariana. I did you both a favor!”

  “And how is that?”

  “You guys didn’t even know each other and you were acting like you were ready to walk down the aisle. It was ridiculous.”

  “I’m sorry you felt that way, but how you felt wasn’t really relevant to us, now, was it?” I asked, my head jerking from side to side.

  “That’s exactly my point! You didn’t care how I felt. You both acted like I didn’t exist.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.

  “You didn’t exist, really? Because I remember you introducing us at your Quinceañera, you sitting on the beach with us, you eating dinner with us, you hanging out on the porch with us. Exactly how did we ignore your existence?” I tugged at my fingers as I shouted the list of events.

  “God, do you hear yourself? I shouldn’t have to be the third wheel in my own house. You were the guest here, Mariana, not me!”

  “We never treated you like a third wheel. I thought we were friends.”

  “We are!”

  “Well, friends don’t lie and scheme and hurt each other! Not like this.What you did was mean. I don’t see any way you can justify it!”

  “I’m not trying to justify it. I just think you should at least try to see this from my side!”

  “Then, what is your side? Why did you do this? Because you were jealous?”

  “Jealous? Jealous of what?”

  “Of me and Alex.”

  Lilly paused, caught her breath, and looked toward the doorway that led to the lobby. I wondered for a moment if she was going to walk out. But then she lifted her hand to her forehead and mumbled, “It’s not that I like Alex.”

  My heart seized.

  “Oh, my God,” I rasped.

  “What?”

  “Lilly.”

  “What?”

  She refused to look me in the eye.

  “You can have any guy you want. You know that. Your friends, all guys by the way, swoon over you. All of them. They fight for your attention. And the one guy I like. The one guy who likes me back, you decide you have a crush on!” My mouth stayed open as I shook my head.

  “I never said I had a crush on him!”

  “Oh, please! You might as well have.”

  “Mariana, it’s not like that,” she defended, taking a few steps back.

  “Then what is it like?”

  “Forget it! It doesn’t matter.You’re not going to listen to anything I say anyway.”

  “Obviously that’s not true because Alex and I fell for your crap pretty easily.”

  “Alex and I. Alex and I. That’s all you care about!”

  “And clearly all you care about is yourself.”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back. Lilly’s eyes instantly watered and her whole body wrenched backward. Only it was too late. I had said it. It was out there in the universe. And I would have to live with it. So would she.

  Chapter 43

  When you’re in a strange place, it’s hard to find a private place to cry. Especially when the person you’re crying about lives in the same house. I couldn’t go there. And I couldn’t stay at the hotel. I stormed out of the bar moments after Lilly did, only she probably had a place to run off to and I didn’t.

  I walked around aimlessly for about an hour, wiping tears from my eyes. My head was swimming with everything we’d said. I went into the fight certain I was unequivocally right and she was undeniably wrong. But now I wasn’t so sure. I had said some mean things. I knew I’d hurt her feelings. And though she’d hurt me first, that didn’t erase my guilt.

  The idea that she could have done all of this because she had a crush on Alex was too much. It didn’t make any sense. She’d known him for years, if she liked him then something would have happened between them by now. I didn’t get the impression that Lilly was ever refused what she wanted. It was amazing that someone who looked so much like me could have a completely opposite effect on guys. I’d gone my entire life barely being noticed by the opposite sex, while Lilly was instantly revered by them.

  I ended up back at the Internet café. I needed someone to talk to, even if it was only electronically. It’s not like I had much of a choice. I couldn’t call my mom, my aunt and uncle didn’t have long-distance, so whenever I spoke to her, she called me. Not that my mom would be much help. She’d just tell me to apologize no matter what the circumstance, even if it wasn’t my fault. “Do you want to be right? Or do you want the fight to be over?” she’d ask. Like it was ever that simple. And Vince was useless. If I attempted to confide in him, he’d zone out midway through.

  Apparently, Javier had left my laptop with the cashier at the snack bar after I had run out. I grabbed it and logged on to my computer. There were only two people in the world who I knew would take my side. I smiled through my tears when I saw Madison connected to IM.

  MARIRUIZ: Hey, Mad. Long time, no talk. Sorry I’ve been MIA.

  I waited for several seconds, chewing my fingernails. No response.

  MARIRUIZ:You there? I really need to talk.

  MADISONAVE: Busy.

  Great, clearly she was mad at me too. Granted, I hadn’t written her in almost two weeks, but I had hoped she’d let that slide. It was an emergency; couldn’t she hold her grudge later?

  MARIRUIZ: Sorry I haven’t written. But things here are really screwed up right now.

  MADISONAVE: Gee, Spic, are they? I wouldn’t know.

  MARIRUIZ: Ya know, you really shouldn’t call me Spic. It’s kinda offensive.

  MADISONAVE: What, you’re all PC now? Please, if you come back thinking you’re all Jennifer Lopez and speaking with some fake Spanish accent, I’m gonna puke.

  MARIRUIZ: I didn’t say that! But a lot of people consider it a curse word. You shouldn’t call me that anymore.

  MADISONAVE: Whatever. It didn’t bother you before.

  MARIRUIZ: Well, maybe it should have.

  MADISONAVE: Yeah, ’cause you’ve been in Puerto Rico for two months so now you’re all ethnic.

  MARIRUIZ: Why do you need to be like that? It’s my nickname, and I don’t like it anymore.

  MADISONAVE: Whatever.

  MARIRUIZ: Look, I really need your advice. I’m fighting with Lilly, ya know the girl I’ve been staying with? She did this totally messed up thing. And because of her I didn’t see Alex for almost a week.

  MADISONAVE: I have no idea who Lilly and Alex are. Busy. G2G

  MARIRUIZ: Come on, Mad! I really need to talk to you.

  MADISONAVE has logged off, read the pop-up window.

  She was obviously a lot angrier than I realized. Given that I was going home in less than two weeks, it was not the best time to alienate my best friend. We were starting sophomore year in the fall and I didn’t want to go back to school with Madison and Emily hating me. Just the thought of it tightened the knots in my stomach.

  I dropped my head in my hands and started to cry. I hadn’t felt this alone since the day I arrived in Puerto Rico. Thinking about how bratty I acted then mortified me now. I couldn’t believe I had refused my aunt’s cooking. Could I have insulted her more? And to think my Uncle Miguel was still nice enough to cook me breakfast every morning. He even went out of his way to engage me in conversation. If it weren’t for him, my Spanish probably would have never improved. I probably wouldn’t have even tried.

  And then Lilly, the one relative in the entire world who shares my likeness, I treated like some homeless person I’m embarrassed to be seen with. I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. I turned down so many invitations to hang out with her friends, and why? Because I misinterpreted a comment she said while I was eavesdropping. If it weren’t for her Quinceañera, I might never have opened myself up to this island or to this experience. She was the one person who went out of her way to m
ake me feel at home, to make me feel like I fit in, like I belonged in Puerto Rico. And to thank her I go and hook up with her friend.

  The tears continued to spill down my cheeks. I wouldn’t blame her if she hated me.

  I heard the door to the Internet café swing open. I spun around half hoping to find Lilly but instead I was face-to-face with my brother. His skin was covered in sand and his swim trunks reeked of ocean water.

  “What’s with you?” he asked, as he slid his hand through his sticky, knotted hair.

  I swiped at the tears on my face and sniffed my runny nose.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  “Uh, yeah right. Why you bawlin’?”

  My brother was as unsympathetic as usual. At least I could count on him to be consistent.

  “I got into this fight with Lilly,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “What’d you do?”

  He walked over to one of the computer terminals and logged on, barely looking at me. I could see he was checking the latest MLB stats.

  “Why do you think I did something? She’s the one who lied.”

  “Oh, God. About what?” he moaned. I could tell by his tone he was focused on his screen.

  “She told Alex I didn’t like him anymore. That’s why he hasn’t been coming around.”

  “So?”

  “So!” I yelled, banging my hands on the table and shaking my laptop in the process.

  “Well, it’s his dumb fault for believing her. He could have asked you himself. It’s not like he didn’t know where to find you.”