Listen to Your Heart

by Kasie West

  But even if he had, I reminded myself, he’d gotten the same speech from Ms. Lyon about keeping identities secret. He wouldn’t say anything. At least, I hoped he wouldn’t.

  I gave Alana panicked eyes, and she gave the slightest shake of her head. Did that mean Frank didn’t know?

  “Yes, we have,” Alana said. “They’re pretty brutal.”

  “What emails?” Diego asked from where he stood at the stove.

  “For the podcast. They’re boring,” I said, trying to downplay them so Frank didn’t feel the need to elaborate. It didn’t work.

  “I think they’re super entertaining,” Frank said.

  “Of course you would,” Alana retorted.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked her.

  “Well, obviously they’re upsetting to Kate! You’re over there devouring them as your Friday night entertainment,” she said huffily, even though she had been reading them one after another to me only an hour ago.

  “Why are they upsetting to Kate?” Diego asked.

  “I’m wondering the same thing,” Frank said.

  I opened my mouth to answer when Alana said, “Because they’re making her stressed about the future of the podcast.”

  “Not that stressed,” I said.

  “Can someone fill me in here?” Diego asked.

  “Oh, when Looking for Love didn’t call in this week, listeners weren’t happy,” Alana said.

  Diego occupied himself with chopping tomatoes. “Why is that Kate’s fault?”

  “It’s not,” Alana said. “But listeners like to take it out on someone and she’s one of the faces of the podcast, so she gets the privilege of being yelled at.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on my stool.

  “You were yelled at?” Diego asked.

  “Well, yelling through emails,” I said.

  “They were in all caps?” he asked.

  I laughed.

  Alana rolled her eyes. “Okay, Mr. Literal, they weren’t in all caps but …”

  “Here,” Frank said, taking out his phone. “I’ll read you one and you can see for yourself.”

  “No need to read one,” I said, but Frank was already speaking.

  “ ‘Kat and Victoria. Why didn’t Looking for Love call in? You need more phone lines so people can get through. It’s always busy. You can’t run a good show if the interesting people can’t get through.’ ” Frank put a finger in the air. “I actually heard that’s true. That people are getting busy signals. Maybe he did try to call in.”

  “He probably didn’t,” Diego said, tasting a spoonful of his sauce. “I mean, maybe the caller didn’t have an update last week. Maybe nothing happened.”

  For the first time since Diego called in, I felt guilty for the secret I held. In the beginning, I wasn’t quite sure it was him. Once I was surer, I thought of it as a moral obligation to keep his identity private. But now, as his friend, I felt like he should know that we knew. Why hadn’t I thought to tell him before?

  But then again … it wasn’t like he was being forthcoming with us. He knew we worked on the podcast, obviously. He wasn’t offering up the fact that he was the caller in question. If he wanted us to know, he’d tell us. But we did know. Gah. I felt torn.

  I looked at Alana to see if she was having the same internal battle as I was, but she was standing up and checking on her chicken.

  “You’re probably right,” Frank said, putting his phone facedown on the counter. “Let people complain. It creates buzz.”

  Diego opened up a package of corn tortillas. Then he put both hands on the counter and met my eyes. “I’m sorry people are complaining.”

  I almost said, it’s not your fault, but stopped myself. In this case, it was, and I couldn’t bring myself to say that lie. “It’s okay,” I said instead. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “The podcast gets lots of fan mail, too,” Alana said, closing the oven door. “Nothing to worry about. Kat had a guy ask her out through email today.”

  I sucked in an indignant breath.

  “You did?” Frank asked. He snatched his phone back up and started scrolling through it.

  “Please, let’s not talk about this.” I could feel my face getting hot.

  Alana laughed as Frank read the email out loud. Diego had a huge smile on his face, too.

  “I’m going to kill all of you,” I said, but was actually glad for the lightened mood.

  Diego began assembling his tacos with cabbage, cheese, salsa, and the fish that was now blackened to perfection. Alana pulled her chicken out of the oven and plated it as well. As they worked side by side in the kitchen, they kept bumping elbows and shoulders. It was so obvious they were doing it on purpose, too. I found myself staring too often, a nervous feeling forming in my stomach. I was just nervous for Alana, I told myself. Worried that she was going to be disappointed if he didn’t ask her to the festival. He’d ask her. I needed to stop worrying about it. That thought did nothing to calm me.

  After they arranged the food, the plates were set in front of us. Frank and I sampled each of their dishes.

  “And the winner is?” Alana asked.

  Diego’s tacos were amazing. The best I’d ever had. But he was right, I was biased. I pointed to Alana. And in a surprise move, so did Frank. Alana cheered.

  Diego growled. “Do you think your dad will let me borrow his golf clubs, Kate?”

  “No need to take out your anger on the kitchen,” Alana joked.

  Diego smiled her way. “If I can’t win the cook-off, I have something else to prove.”

  We sat on the hill behind the school, the goalposts of the football stadium barely visible in the dark. Alana was next to me, clinging to my arm because she was cold. Frank was on the other side, leaning back on one hand, holding a flashlight with the other. Diego stood, a golf ball on a tee, my dad’s golf club in his hands. He surveyed the distance, then turned our way.

  He pointed the end of the golf club at me and winked. “This one’s for you.”

  My heart gave a happy flutter. And that’s when I realized it—what all my unexpected reactions around him had been about lately—I had a crush on my best friend’s crush.

  No.

  This couldn’t happen. It wasn’t happening. I cleared my throat. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” I said, but my voice came out funny. I tried not to look at Alana next to me.

  Diego wound up and swung. The thud of the metal connecting with the ball echoed, and I watched as the ball flew into the air, highlighted by the beam of Frank’s flashlight. Then it disappeared into the night.

  Alana laughed so hard that she snorted. “It’s too dark,” she said between her laughter. “You can’t prove anything.”

  “He can if we turn on the stadium lights,” Frank said.

  “We’re not turning on the stadium lights,” I responded. “We can just do this after school Monday.”

  “The football team will be practicing Monday,” Frank said. “I’m going to go turn on the lights.” He stood.

  Alana did, too. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, this is a stupid idea,” I said.

  “It sounds fun to me,” Alana said.

  I stood. “We should all go, then.”

  “No, because when we turn on the lights, Diego has to be up here to hit the ball,” Frank said. And with that he, his flashlight, and Alana went back down the hill, leaving me and Diego in the dark.

  “Wait!” I called out, but they didn’t stop.

  Why would they do that? Alana knew I hated Frank, but why hadn’t she sent me down the hill with him so she could be alone with Diego? Considering she was the master flirter, she was doing this all wrong. Even I knew that. Was this another one of her games? Was she trying to make herself look more appealing? What was Alana thinking? Probably not that I had feelings for the guy she just left me alone with. Why would she think that? Only a horrible friend would like the guy her best friend liked.

  I rubbed my arms and turne
d slowly away from Alana’s disappearing back and toward Diego.

  He stood there, with his golf club, watching them disappear down the hill as well. He seemed just as disappointed by this turn of events as I did.

  Okay, I could do this. I’d been doing this. Nobody needed to know about my feelings, including him. I sank back down to the dirt and looked up at the sky. The stars were so numerous that they seemed to be close to bursting through the blackness.

  “It’s amazing up here,” I said.

  Diego looked up, too. “I agree. But I wish I could see this sky over a million different cities.”

  “Really?”

  He propped the golf club on the ground and leaned on the end of it. “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know. This is my home. It’s my comfort zone.”

  “I would argue that you can feel that way anywhere,” Diego said thoughtfully, “if you are comfortable in your own skin.”

  Maybe that was part of my problem. I wasn’t all the time. I was only truly comfortable when right in the middle of the lake. It’s when I felt the most like me.

  “And that is what is called confidence, Diego. I’ve always known you had it.”

  “I’m not confident about everything,” he mumbled. “So I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “I get how you might feel out of your element sometimes.”

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see much better now. I picked up a stick that was on the ground next to my leg and began drawing in the dirt. “Who taught you how to cook?” I asked.

  “My grandmother. She was amazing at it. To her, food meant love, and there was never a shortage of it growing up.”

  “And your grandpa?”

  “He was a field worker. Back-breaking labor for pretty much no pay. But it’s what brought them here from Mexico, and my dad got to go to college and live the dream. He’s a pharmacist.”

  “And your parents want you to go to college?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you don’t want to go?” I don’t know why I assumed that but his talk of seeing the stars from under a million different cities gave me that impression.

  “I want to go to culinary school. But first I want to go and travel around the world and visit small villages and learn from little old women or men steeped in tradition. I just know those are things I’d never learn in any school.” His gaze was distant, like he was imagining this now.

  His passion was contagious. “That does sound exciting.”

  He straightened up, his dreamy gaze disappearing. “But not practical.”

  “Is that you talking or your parents?”

  “A little bit of both, I think.” He paused for a minute. “It was nearly impossible to even come here tonight. And this is only thirty minutes away.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s always a battle to get out of the house. In my parents’ dream world I would only do school stuff, work, and sleep.” Our eyes met, and I wondered if he was going to tell me he had been calling in to the podcast. This complaint was similar to what he had said the first time he called. I held my breath in anticipation, trying to decide what I’d say if he admitted it. I’d tell the truth. That I knew it was him. But he didn’t admit anything. He just went quiet.

  “So they don’t know about your dream world,” I finally said. “Your desire to travel?”

  “No. This is actually the first time I’ve said it out loud. It mostly lives in my head.”

  He’d shared it with me first? That means nothing, I told myself.

  “Any expert advice for me?” he asked.

  Right. I was the advice giver. He wasn’t sharing this with me. He was sharing it with Kat. “I need my cohost here to give proper advice,” I joked.

  He lifted one side of his mouth into a half smile.

  “Let’s see. Advice.” I tried to think, even though my heart was beating faster than normal. “Isn’t part of being young being able to do impractical things? When else will you be able to travel the world without responsibilities?”

  “Yeah …” He looked down the hill. “They should’ve found the lights by now.”

  Diego was private, I was learning. Just when I thought I’d broken through and he’d revealed something about himself, he seemed to back off. I understood. I liked to keep things inside, too.

  I followed his gaze down the hill. “Maybe they don’t know how to turn the lights on. Or more likely, the control box is locked.”

  “Probably true. Should we head down and try to find them?”

  “Sure.”

  We stumbled over twigs and roots and around trees with only our phone flashlights to guide the way. Diego dropped the golf club off in his car, which was parked at the bottom of the hill. Then we had to walk through a parking lot and around the outside of the stadium to the entrance, which was locked.

  “Do you think they found a way in?” he asked.

  “If it was up to Alana, then yes. She really is adventurous,” I said. After hearing what it was he wanted to do after high school, I realized even more how much of a good fit he and Alana were.

  We kept walking, skirting around the baseball field, which had chain link instead of cement walls. We found the gate but it was chained shut.

  “My brother climbed this once and he’s not athletic at all. I’m sure we could,” I said, but then I remembered Max’s ripped shirt. I really didn’t want to rip my clothing tonight.

  Diego tugged on the gate, and the chain was loose enough for a body to squeeze through. I wondered why Max had to climb the fence at all. Maybe he climbed it at a different section or the chain was tighter that day. I slid through, and Diego followed after me. The baseball field connected to the football field at one end zone, separated by another gate that wasn’t locked. And then we were in.

  Alana and Frank hadn’t found the lights yet, but we walked the length of the field toward the goalpost at the opposite end. Diego had his eyes on the ground and it wasn’t until he said, “See!” that I realized why. The light from his phone highlighted the single golf ball, which had come to a stop at about the ten-yard line right in the middle of the field.

  He picked it up with a smile and held it out for me.

  “You think this proves something?” I asked.

  “It absolutely proves something. Look where it was.” He took me by the shoulders and guided me to the exact location of the ball’s landing and turned me to face the goal. “Look.”

  I looked. I stood in almost the exact center. To land here, the ball would’ve had to come through those posts.

  “Admit it,” he said as if he knew I had come to the conclusion I had.

  “It could’ve bounced off the—”

  “No it couldn’t have.”

  I laughed. “You’re right.”

  He was still behind me, holding my shoulders. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “You’re right!” I yelled.

  He pulled me back against his chest with a laugh. “Yes, I am.”

  That’s when the stadium lights went on and a loud “Woo-hoo!” sounded from the top row of seats. Diego dropped his hands from my shoulders, and I took two quick steps forward. We both looked toward the noise to see Alana standing there with her hands in the air. Frank joined her a minute later.

  He pointed to us on the field. “You can’t hit golf balls from there, Martinez!”

  “I already proved my point!” he yelled back.

  “Don’t you have to prove it to them?” I asked.

  “You were the one who didn’t believe me.”

  “I believe you now,” I said.

  “Hey!” a deep voice called from beyond the stadium seats. “You kids are trespassing!”

  “Run!” Alana yelled.

  Diego didn’t hesitate. He grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me back the way we’d come. The stadium lights went out, and we were plunged into darkness. I wondered if Frank had done that to make it harder to find us.
>
  My heart was pounding a thousand beats per minute as we sprinted toward the unlocked gate that separated the football and baseball fields. When we crossed from one field into another, the beam of a flashlight swept back and forth over our heads. At first I thought it was Frank, but then there was another light. Diego pulled me behind the metal bleachers to the left and we smashed ourselves between the chain-link fence and the seats.

  My temple pressed against the side of his neck where I could feel his pulse racing.

  “My parents are going to kill me,” I whispered. It was always so important to them that I kept an upstanding reputation at all times. It always felt like our livelihood somehow depended on it.

  “We won’t get caught. It’ll be fine,” Diego said just as quietly back.

  Shouts rang out from behind us and I closed my eyes, as if that would make us more invisible. I tried to calm my breathing, take in one breath at a time as evenly as possible. In through my nose and out through my mouth. Diego smelled good—a sporty scent mixed with mint. He was chewing gum, I realized. My heart slowed its pace, and I came back to my senses, making me fully aware of the fact that I was smashed up against Diego, seemingly every inch from my ankles to my head touching a part of him.

  “Did you get a chance to read any of that magazine?” he asked softly.

  Magazine? What was he talking about? Oh, right. He’d given me the latest Lake Life magazine that was now in my car somewhere. I actually had read an article from one of the copies in the marina. He was trying to get my mind off of our situation, I was sure. I was acting like a huge wimp right now. It was nice of him to distract me. What was that article about? “Wakesurfing. I read an article about wakesurfing.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked. “Was it good?”

  “I haven’t tried it yet. It made me want to.”

  “Is that all?”

  “So far. I’ll read more … later.”

  “Okay.” He took a step back the way we’d come, and I nearly stumbled without his support. “I don’t hear them anymore,” he said. “Want to make a break for the car?”