by L. E. DeLano
“I had nothing to do with any of that! I wasn’t in that car!”
“You were in the courtroom! You were hugging your brother when your Daddy’s fancy lawyer got him out of a manslaughter charge!”
“In case you forgot,” I snarl, pointing my finger right in her face. “Your mother agreed to the plea bargain. I wonder why that was? Probably because her lawyer knew she didn’t have a case!”
Maya suddenly, spectacularly implodes.
“Bitch!” She screams, but it’s more like a wail. Then she shoves me, hard. “Bitch!” She screams it again and punches the side of my car. I jump back, startled, as she keeps on punching, punctuating with a word for every punch.
“I! Hate! You! I! Hate! You!”
She flips around, covers her face with her hands and slides down the car to the ground. Her hand is a bloody mess, and she’s crying, great gulping sobs that shake her body.
I stand there helplessly watching her, glancing around to see if anyone else is seeing this, but it looks like we are alone for the moment. What do I do? I don’t know what to do. I know I’m not making it any better by standing here staring at her.
Finally, I sit down next to her, leaving a foot of space between us. There isn’t anything to be said to make this better, so I don’t say anything. I just unzip my backpack and find the stupid zippered pouch with the fluorescent floral designs on it that my mother gave me. It’s got Advil, alcohol wipes, Band-Aids, and a pack of tissues in it. I pull out a few of the tissues and hand them over to Maya. She takes them without a word and holds them on her eyes as she struggles to get ahold of herself. Finally, she blows her nose and takes a few deep breaths.
“My mother took the plea bargain,” she says in a very quiet voice, “because they had the transcripts of my dad’s text messages. If we had continued the trial, they would’ve introduced them as evidence that he had been texting close to the time of the accident.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know,” she says, swiping at her eyes again with the tissues. “My dad was texting his girlfriend. My mom didn’t know he was cheating on her. She couldn’t bear the thought of everyone seeing those texts. Of everyone knowing.”
She takes another deep breath in, but it breaks on a ragged sob as she puts her face in her hands again and cries, “How could he do that? How could he do that to her? To us?”
My shock renders me mute as Maya cries. And cries.
“Do—do your sisters know?” I finally ask.
She shakes her head and cries more, so I guess she was the only one her mother told. One more burden she has to bear.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can seem to say. “God, Maya, I’m so sorry. Sorry this happened to you. To all of you.”
She doesn’t say anything, just keeps on crying. It’s possible I’m the only one she’s told. Haylee would tell everybody. Maya can tell me because she doesn’t give a shit what I think about her. I watch her cry, feeling helpless and useless and so awful.
I’m an awful person. It all wells up inside me and then I say it.
“He tried to call me that night. Jack.”
The words come out, like I ripped a Band-Aid off a wound and tore the scab with it. Now it’s oozing, and it’s all coming out.
“He tried to call me that night before he left the party,” I go on. “I ignored him. I ignored his text, too. I fell asleep, and I had my ringer off—”
Now I’m crying. “I don’t know what he wanted. I never asked him. He might’ve been trying to find somebody to pick him up. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I curl into a ball, setting my forehead on my knees and I’m crying, crying, crying. I feel her hand touch my shoulder, and before I know it, we’re hugging each other fiercely, sobbing, the floodgates jammed wide open, washing over us both.
Eventually, we both pull back, rubbing at our eyes. I wipe my nose on my sleeve, and Maya reaches down and grabs the tissues, handing them to me.
“You need them more than me.”
I give a watery laugh, and cram a few tissues on my nose, blowing hard.
“Sorry,” I say again.
She pulls in a breath, let it out slowly. “I guess we both got a shitty deal.”
“You got it worse.”
She tips her head back to rest it against the car. “Yeah, I did.”
“Do you know her?” I ask hesitantly. “The woman?”
“No. Our coffee shop is right by the train station. I think she was a regular customer. Whoever she was, she doesn’t come in anymore.” She turns her head and looks at me. “Your brother really texted you that night?”
“Yeah. All he said was ‘Hey.’ I guess when I didn’t answer that’s when he tried to call. I should have picked up.”
We sit there in silence for a few moments, just breathing. Collecting ourselves.
“It’s cold out here,” Maya finally says. She holds out her hand, trying to flex the fingers.
“I’ve got stuff to clean you up.” I pull out the alcohol pads and the Band Aids. “Does it feel broken?”
She flexes her fingers again and rotates her wrist. “No, I don’t think so. Hurts like a bitch. Writing is going to suck for a while.”
I watch as she dabs at her hand with the alcohol wipes, and I help her put on a couple of Band-Aids. They don’t stick very well on her knuckles.
“Are you going to be able to play basketball?”
“I’ll make it work,” she says. She puts her injured hand down to the ground to push up, then winces when she tries to put weight on it. I get up to my feet and put a hand down. She grasps it with her good hand, and I pull her up.
“What time is it?” she asks.
I check my phone. “Almost four.” I glance around the empty student parking lot. “Is somebody coming for you?”
“No. I was going to text Haylee and have her come get me.” She glances down at her bruised and bandaged hand. “She’s going to be all over me asking about this.”
“I can give you a ride.”
She gives me a look, but I go on. “I’ll drop you a block away from home so your mom won’t know it was me.”
She considers a moment and flexes her hand again. “She’s at work. And I’d appreciate it.”
I open the car door for her, and she slides in. As I climb in the other side she pulls down the visor to check her face in the mirror on the back. I do the same.
“Ugh,” she says.
“We’re both pretty wrecked,” I agree. “I’ve got some concealer and mascara in my backpack,” I reach back to pull it up, handing it to her. “Second zipper.”
She gives me directions to her house and awkwardly makes the repairs to her face—using her bad hand—as I navigate traffic. It turns out she only lives about ten miles from the school.
“What are you going to tell your mom about your hand?” I ask her.
“I’ll tell her I tripped or something, I guess.”
“You can tell her you hit me. She’d probably be okay with that.”
Maya cracks a smile. “Yeah, probably. But then school would expel us both if they heard we were fighting.”
She points to a bank on the corner of an upcoming street. “Turn here,” she says. “The one on the end.”
I pull into a townhouse community in a nice area. Maya’s house has flower boxes on the windows and one of those colorful mailbox covers—this one for Valentine’s Day. There’s a decorative wreath on the front door. It looks like a nice place to live.
“Let me guess,” Maya says. “Not what you were expecting.”
“I thought you lived in the city.”
“You thought I lived in Philly?”
“I guess I just assumed—”
“You just assumed that I lived in the hood? Right?”
“I just—no�
��you just seem like a city girl.”
“Urban,” she says, making finger quotes in the air. “That’s the word you’re looking for when you want to say somebody’s from the hood but you don’t want to sound like you’re being racist while you say it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Your friend Olivia lives in Philly,” she reminds me. “A beautiful townhouse off Rittenhouse Square—at least that’s what she tells everybody. But because her daddy has a contract with King Limo to drive her here and pick her up every day in a luxury sedan, it’s a different kind of Philly. I mean there’s Philly and then there’s Philly, right? Do you even realize how you sound?”
My next protest stalls on my lips. No, I didn’t realize. But I didn’t mean any of that. She’s reading stuff into it and pinning it on me and that’s pissing me off.
“I’m not a racist.” I say, hating how defensive I sound. “And I can’t help it if I’m rich.”
“You’re not rich. Your daddy is rich. You’re just along for the ride. And I didn’t use the word racist, but you’re feeling it aren’t you?”
The look she gives me makes me want to squirm.
“Look, I know we’ve got very different lives—”
“But we don’t,” she says, her hand cutting through the air. “Yeah, my parents came here from Puerto Rico, but I was born here. We live in a regular house in the suburbs. My Dad used to work a lot, too. We drive cars and eat out and shop at the mall. But everybody likes it better when we live different lives so we don’t have to be included in theirs.”
“I just meant I know I’ve never had to deal with some of the stupid shit you’ve had to deal with from people like me.” She rolls her eyes, so I add: “Or from me directly. I don’t always know how things come across.”
She’s not letting me off. “Sometimes you do know, though.”
I swallow the uncomfortable tightness in my throat. “Sometimes I do—I did. And I’m sorry. I really am.”
Maya’s not looking away, holding me to every word of that. “So?” she finally says.
“If I say something—wrong—or insensitive, I want you to let me know.”
I get a flat stare for a response.
“I mean it. I need to train myself to think about this stuff. So tell me. I won’t be pissed.”
“You’re pissed right now.”
I start to protest and she holds a hand up. “Okay. I’ll call you out, when you need it.” She puts the makeup back in my backpack and sets it in the back seat.
“Thanks for the ride,” she says.
“Maya—I’m sorry. I really am. About . . . everything.”
“I know.” She gets out of the car, but pauses before she closes the door. She leans in.
“Hey,” she says. “I don’t really hate you. I just hate . . . all this shit.”
“Me, too.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I watch her walk into the house, flexing and unflexing her hand as she goes.
I don’t really know Maya Rodriguez. But I understand her a little more. Part of me wonders if we could have been friends before all this happened but I know that would have only made things so much worse.
23
"All our hard work ruined,” Devon tells me. “It makes sense your mom would put a business card in the bag, but I didn’t even think about it. I’m sorry Maya ripped you a new one.”
We’re down in the basement, which is like a second family room. My dad intended it to be a man cave with hardwood floors, finished walls and ceiling, pool table, home theater system, and even a bar. We hardly ever use it. When Jack and I were younger we used to have parties with the neighbors, and people from my dad’s work all the time. Now it’s maybe three times a year, and Dad’s too busy to come down here any other time. He did forbid mom to put any of her stuff down here, so at least I don’t have to worry about knocking over a bin full of vibrators.
“Can you blame her?” I reply. “Her mother lost it on her.”
“So, is she going to be blasting you on Instagram, or poisoning your food at school tomorrow?”
“Neither. She calmed down and we both apologized. I think we’re okay.”
I didn’t tell him the rest of what Maya told me. I’m pretty sure I can trust him with a secret, but it isn’t my secret to tell. No one else needs to be aware that she’s got more going on.
I can’t even begin to know what it’s like for her. She’s mourning her father, but now she’s mourning the image she always had of him. She’s struggling to reconcile what she’s learned with the man she knew and loved. On top of that, she has to witness her mother’s struggle, and all the fallout from that. The final cherry on top of that suck-ass cupcake is the fact that she can’t get the justice she feels her father deserved because her mother went for the plea bargain to keep other people from learning the truth.
I try to imagine my father cheating on my mother. I suppose he could, and easily. He travels a lot. If my dad was stupid enough to do that, my mom would almost certainly find out. She’s got her nose in everything. I have no doubt she would make his life a living hell if something like that went down.
But imagining that makes me feel sick. I don’t want to, so I won’t.
Devon starts to reach for the bowl of microwave popcorn on the table in front of him, then changes his mind.
“What?” I ask. “You don’t want popcorn?”
He puts two fingers on his chin and rubs thoughtfully. “I’m thinking chips. What have you got?”
“At the moment?” I make a face. “All we have are some baked kale chips flavored with rosemary. My mom made them and they’re sitting in a big bag in the cupboard. Even she won’t eat them, but it took her two hours to make them so she won’t throw them away.”
“You don’t have any potato chips? No Cheetos or Fritos?”
“Mom doesn’t buy that stuff very often,” I tell him. “Mostly Jack bought it.”
I smile a little, remembering the P.S. Jack put in his letter.
I told somebody here about the Frito theory, and he agreed with us.
“Frito theory,” I mumble.
“What?”
“Frito theory—it’s something Jack and I came up with. Do you have a dog?”
“We have a cat. But that doesn’t mean you and I aren’t fated to be together.” He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “We can overcome this.”
I smile and shake my head. “I was asking because Jack and I both agree that dog paws smell like Fritos.”
He looks at me for a moment as though he’s sure I’m joking.
“I demand proof.”
“You want to smell Mojo’s paws?”
“Well, you are my girlfriend now,” he says. “Consider it a bonding experience.”
I walk to the bottom of the stairs, and call Mojo’s name, making kissing sounds, until he finally shows up and bounds down the stairs to me. I pick him up and walk him over to Devon, flipping him on his back to give easy access to his paws.
“He didn’t just come in from outside or anything, did he?” Devon asks. “I mean, you’re not setting me up for a really nasty smell, are you?”
“I’m not, I promise.”
He gently takes Mojo’s front paw between his fingers and starts to lean in, then he stops and looks up at me again.
“You understand that for the sake of science, I would need to smell multiple dog paws, so that we can adequately describe it as an overall dog phenomenon versus something that occurs only in your dog.”
“Yes, but—”
“And we’re not going to be able to learn if it’s a cat phenomenon,” he says, still holding Mojo’s paw. “Cats use their feet to bury their poop in the litter box—that they also pee in. I’m not smelling their paws.”
“That’s nasty.�
��
“Maybe we could gather some test subjects—”
“Will you just smell his paw already?” I ask impatiently. Mojo is not thrilled with laying on his back so long when there are no belly rubs involved. Devon finally leans in, and takes a cautious sniff. Then he leans back and gives me an odd look.
“I honestly thought you were kidding me.”
I put Mojo down and he scampers over to Devon to get his ears rubbed.
“Frito theory,” I say again. “And for the record, it’s not isolated to my dog only. You can Google it. There’s some kind of weird bacteria that makes their feet smell like corn chips.”
Devon reaches for the bowl of popcorn. “Okay, you and your brother may have just put me off Fritos for a very long time.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Jack the next time I talk to him.”
“How much longer has he got?”
“I don’t know—around four months, I think?”
“Have you seen him since Christmas?” Devon tosses a piece of popcorn in the air for Mojo. He catches it, and Devon applauds.
“They didn’t let him come home for Christmas. My mom was seriously pissed and let the program director have it.”
“Did you smuggle a turkey dinner under your coat for him?”
I shift uncomfortably. “I didn’t go,” I say in a small voice.
Devon stares at me in surprise, his lips slightly parted. Finally, he reaches for more popcorn and crams it in his mouth, almost like he is doing it because he doesn’t know what to say.
“I was really tired. I wanted to sleep in. And it’s not like we could really do anything anyway,” I defend. “They only let my parents see him for two hours, and they had a big Christmas meal for everybody there—he had to help cook it. I bought him a present, and Mom gave it to him, along with all the other stuff they gave him.”
“Mmm-hmm,” is all that Devon says as he keeps on chewing.
“They had to bring all the presents home. They wouldn’t let him keep them there. But the program gave him the day off from everything he normally has to do, and they even let them all watch movies.”
I have a lump in my throat. I don’t know why I have a lump in my throat. Why do I feel like I have to defend myself? Because you should have been there, a little voice says inside my head.
