I stay silent. I don’t care that Marc’s silly, slutty girlfriend broke up with him. I don’t care that he’s having a bad night. I’ve got my own problems to think about.
Unfortunately, the longer I stay silent, the longer he keeps talking.
“Man, I don’t know. It was like everything was going great, you know? And I…we were cool together. She’s pretty and funny and popular. We just…it was like great. And then she dumps me tonight. We were supposed to go to this dumb dance together, and she dumps me. She says that I didn’t really want to go to the dance with her. And that I make everything hard. And that we like different things. And that her mom says that compatibility is super-important…That’s why her parents divorced, you know, because they were incompatible. And that”—his voice rises—“is why she thinks we’re no good together. And she, get this fucking shit, doesn’t want to waste any more time with someone who’s not her match.” He picks up a rock and throws it hard at the side of his house.
“Well, did you?” I ask, even though I’m thinking that I shouldn’t have asked anything, because at the very end of his my life sucks monologue, his voice actually cracked, and I’m seriously afraid that he might start to cry.
“Huh?”
“Did you not want to go to homecoming?”
His patio light flicks off, which makes me think that I was right about the crying thing. I can’t see him, but I hear him sigh exceptionally loud. Then I hear the grass crunch underfoot.
“Hey.” He stops a few feet from my chair.
“Do you do that a lot?” I ask him, even though I know he doesn’t. But sometimes you have to say something just because.
“What?”
“Jump my fence?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“You mind?” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one with my candle. He motions with his head for permission to sit across from me. I shrug my shoulders and he sits down.
“This dance thing is stupid. Who goes to dances? It’s so gay.” He takes a drag from his cigarette and holds it out to me.
“No thanks. So you did give her a hard time?” I sit up and study his silhouette in the dark. I find the fact that he’s sitting across from me after all these years…uncomfortable.
“If I gave her a hard time, do you think that I would be wearing this stupid tuxedo thing?”
“That’s a tux?” All I can make out in the dark is a white shirt and a dark pair of pants.
“Well, part of it. I took off the tie and jacket after she left.” He tugs at the collar and scratches his neck. “It felt weird. It’s gross how other people wear these things before you do.”
“Yeah, well, try wearing a thong.”
“What?” The end of his cigarette burns orange. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“A thong? An invention designed for the sheer purpose of putting women back in bondage.”
Marc gives me a blank look.
“Forget it.”
“So what are you doing out here on a Saturday night?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. I’d rather not get into my abandonment issues right now.
“Usually, I go out with Sheila on Saturday. She likes to go to the movies and then she likes to go to Dairy Queen.” He lets out a rumbling moan. “Man!”
“Wow. You act like this is the end of the world. She’s just a chick. Hey—” I pause to explain because he looks like he’s about to snap my head off. “Your word, not mine.”
He takes another drag off his cigarette. And I wonder if one day he’ll get lung cancer and die. I know, it’s an evil thing to think. But as he flicks the butt of his cigarette into MY garden and lights another one, the thought feels justified.
“So you’re friends with Danny Diaz now?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve seen you guys hanging around after school together.”
“Oh.” So this is another part of the reason why he can stand to talk to me?
“You know Danny?” I raise my eyebrows. I’ve never seen Danny speak to Marc. I can’t imagine them as friends.
“I know of him. I have his sister, Dalia, in my biology class. She’s hot. You know? Well, she…” Blah, blah, blah, and Marc continues to talk, but, for some reason, I stop listening. His mouth moves, but the words that come out sound like mush.
“So what do you think?”
I shrug and turn my face away. I think about all the crap he’s put me through since elementary school—the way he stopped talking to me, the way he made me disappear—and how, after all this time, he can sit across from me and blab total nonsense without feeling like he remotely owes me any type of explanation. What kind of person does that?
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m running on and on. I do that when I get…weird.”
“Weird?” I repeat, even though I’m silently rehashing every single snub that has taken place since the fifth grade.
“Not weird, not like that.” He shakes his head, and puffs his cigarette. “You know, I really am sorry.”
I turn to look at him. He inhales deeply and holds the smoke inside. His head falls forward, and his face is concealed in the shadows. He’s like a poster boy for love gone wrong, and the crappy thing is that I’m actually starting to feel sorry for him.
“Look, Marc…” I blow out my candle and stand. “We all mess up. Believe me. Talk to Sheila. Apologize. Get over it. I don’t care. I’m going inside.”
I turn to leave, but Marc grabs my arm and holds me in place.
“Wait—” he says, his grip firm.
“Hey—” I try to shrug free, but he holds on tighter.
“That’s not what I’m trying to apologize for right now, you know?” He stares at me as if I’m supposed to understand whatever it is he’s fumbling toward. But all I want is for him to let go of my arm.
“Marc, let go.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, ignoring me. “That’s all. I…wow.” Marc stands. The cigarette falls to the floor. He pushes it out with the corner of his patent-leather rental shoe. The whole time, he never lets my arm go. “I never thought we’d ever talk again. You know?”
I stay quiet. It’s my thing.
“I thought that we’d hate each other for the rest of our lives, and then, I guess, tonight, I don’t know what, but I’m sorry, okay?” The last part comes out as a whisper, and I remember when Marc and I were seven and playing in his tree house. By mistake he nudged me over the side, and when I landed on my back on the grass below, he put his hand over my mouth to muffle my cries while he kept telling me that he was sorry in that same little voice. The only difference (besides the fact that he nearly suffocated me) was that he also kept begging me to not tell my mother.
“Marc”—although I’d rather not have this conversation, I have to ask—“what are you sorry for?”
“I’m sorry”—Marc pauses, long enough to let go of my arm—“about everything that happened after your mom and stuff.”
“Oh, Marc, I don’t wanna talk about this—” Not now, not ever.
“But I do. Susie, if I don’t, I’ll just feel like a chickenshit tomorrow. I mean, I’m already a chickenshit. If I weren’t chickenshit, I’d be at that stupid dance with Sheila. Yeah, it’s gay, but so what?” He shakes his head, turns from me, and runs his free hand through his hair.
Oh, the irony.
“Marc?” My voice is wobbly.
“Yeah?”
“I’m chickenshit, too.”
I think about Marisol. I let the whole week pass without apologizing to her. And now she’s out having the first Cinderella night of her life, and I’m stuck here like an idiot with my jerk-off neighbor who isn’t so bad. I guess.
“This week’s been hard for me, too,” I admit.
We lapse into silence. I feel jumbled.
“So, I guess we’re both chickenshit,” Marc says finally. He sits down next to me on my swing. “You know, I really am sorry about your
mom and stuff.”
“Marc, please—”
“No. After your mom died, I really didn’t know what to say, or how to be around you, and I was a really bad friend, and I’m sorry.”
He speaks in his tiny voice, but this time it catches in his throat and stays stuck. I know that he’s crying. I just know. Because I know Marc. Marc is sensitive. I don’t know why the last six years made me forget that.
“Okay, Marc.” I don’t know what else to do, so I put my arm stiffly around his shoulder. Gradually my other arm finds its way around his back. “It’s okay.”
It’s funny how Marc, my first enemy, should become the first boy that I hold. But life, I can hear my mom say, is funny like that. I look around the garden and exhale. It is the first cry that I have had all week where I don’t feel completely alone.
TWENTY-TWO
amends
at two fifteen a.m. i call marisol’s private phone line. i figure by now she should be home, tucked in bed, watching Nick at Nite. So I almost hang up the phone when she answers it half asleep.
“Marisol?” Despite my two-hour pep talk, my voice is tentative.
“Yeah? Who’s this?”
Of course, I know that she knows it’s me. Of course, I know that she’s trying to be cold. But still, I give her the benefit of the doubt. “It’s me, Susie.”
“Yeah,” Marisol says, sounding resigned. “I know. What do you want?”
So much for the benefit of the doubt.
“Were you sleeping?” I ask stupidly. Obviously she was sleeping.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay…” I lose my nerve, and, for me, apologies require massive doses of nerve. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No, you woke me up. Just tell me what you want.”
The problem with Marisol is that she’s always pretty good at calling people out. She likes follow-through, even if it means stumbling through the worst part of it.
“Well, the thing is…The thing is I’m sorry.” I say it in one breath because I’m honestly afraid that if I don’t, I never will.
“You’re what?” Marisol’s voice is softer now.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her again, only this time the words don’t run together, and I take a deep breath to continue the thought. “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad for having a date to homecoming. I didn’t mean to. I mean…I guess, in my own way, I was jealous, and a little bit insecure, and afraid that I was going to lose you.”
Once the words start, they flow. I think on some subconscious level I’ve been analyzing this fight for the better part of the week, especially during those moments watching Tyra.
“Susie, what would make you think that you were going to lose me?” Leave it to Marisol to get to the point.
“Not lose you entirely,” I say quickly, “but lose out on doing stuff with you. I don’t want to be the third wheel on a Friday night. I don’t want for us not to have our movie night, or hang out on Halloween…I don’t want to lose that.” I try to sniffle quietly. I’m crying. How stupid is that? I keep telling myself that this week shouldn’t have been so hard for me. But it has been.
“Susie, maybe—and I’m not saying that’s going to happen with this guy—but maybe, just maybe, we’re not going to be able to spend so much time together when we’re older, but would that be such a bad thing? Think about it. It’ll give us more to talk to each other about. Right?”
“Uh-huh.” I brush the tears away with the back of my hand. They’re sliding like puddles down my cheeks.
“You’re like my sister. You’re never going to lose that. I will never let any guy come between that. ’Kay?”
“Yeah,” I whisper into the phone. “But what about my mother’s memorial service?” I ask.
“I’m not going skiing,” she says. “I made that decision before you called me. I’m sorry that I even asked you.”
“Oh.” On some level my heart heals just a little.
“Good. Do you want to get a tissue or something?” Marisol asks gently.
“How do you know I’m crying?” I half hiccup, half giggle into the phone.
“Because, I know you.” We laugh together, and I take a moment to cherish how right it feels.
“Hold on.” I pad quietly down the hall to the bathroom and swipe a roll of toilet paper. Then I pad back to my room, sit on my bed, and wrap my comforter around me. “Okay, I have a whole roll of toilet paper. Tell me everything.” I tuck my knees under my chin and rest my head against the wall. “And when you’re done, I’m going to tell you everything that happened to me tonight, and I’ll give you a clue right now—Marc Sanchez.”
“No,” Marisol shrieks. “Hey, but wait, I go first.”
“Okay,” I tell her, suddenly filled with love for her. “You go first.”
TWENTY-THREE
la casa diaz, part ii
the next day i am surprisingly calm. i get up. i brush my teeth. I take a shower. I play my guitar. I do homework. I am perfectly normal until my father drops me off in front of Danny Diaz’s house. It is only then, right before I reach to ring the doorbell, that I have a mini–panic attack. All I know is that I suddenly feel insecure about almost every part of my body. I feel like my clothes are too casual and my hair is out of place. And what if Danny has forgotten that I was invited to dinner? What if I’m showing up and nobody is home?
I glance at their driveway. Three cars are in it. They are definitely home.
Part of the problem is that I’ve straightened my hair and I’m wearing the outfit from the mall. I look better, but I don’t feel like me. I don’t feel like me at all.
Which, Marisol told me while she straightened my hair and dabbed cream eye shadow on my eyelids, was the point.
Not that being me is a bad thing, but feeling like me—the insecure me—definitely is a problem.
Okay, I can do this.
I push my finger forward and slide it across the doorbell’s soft center. One little move and the whole house will know that I’m here.
Okay, do it. Do it. But I can’t. My hand falls limply back to my side. If I can’t ring the doorbell, how will I make it through dinner?
I take two small steps backward, and then, with the grace of a dancer, turn silently on my heels and run smack into Danny.
“Going somewhere?”
His smile lets me know that he’s been standing behind me for a good while.
“No,” I tell him. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Then what were you doing?” he asks.
“Um.” I search high and low for an excuse. It’s not like I can say that I left my purse in my car. My dad dropped me off, and my purse is hanging across my shoulder. “Um,” I repeat.
“‘Um,’” Danny mimics.
“Well,” I stall, “the thing is”—and that’s when the best of the worst lies that I can think of comes tumbling out of my mouth—“The thing is that I have mud on my shoes and I wanted to get it off…in the grass.” I point to the grass as if it should be perfectly obvious to him that that was what I was about to do before I bumped into him.
“Your shoes look fine.” He stares down at my spotless sandals. They’re brown leather without a speck of dirt on them.
“It’s on the bottom.” I sidestep him and head for the lawn, where I avidly rub my feet on the grass.
I can tell that he’s not buying my lame excuse, but he still says, “Okay, Susie. I think that’s crazy, but okay.” And then he pulls on the side of my shirt playfully. It’s not the first time he’s touched me, but it feels as if it might as well be. My skin feels hot and tingly. “We should go inside.”
He cuts up the path, and I follow him. He rubs his finger over the doorbell and turns to wink at me. He’s teasing me, and I like it. “My mom was really excited about your coming today.” He tells me over his shoulder. “She made Dalia and me clean for like four hours.”
“No way.” I’m pretty sure that he’s teasing me again. But what if he’s not?
&nbs
p; “It’s okay. We have to clean during the weekends anyway. My mom thinks that a family that cleans together stays together. Actually, she makes us do most of the cleaning.” Danny slides through the doorway, and I follow.
“Why do you have to do all the work?” I ask.
“Because.” Danny shakes his head at me, like the concept of family is foreign to me, which, maybe it is. “She and my dad pay all the bills. It’s fair to me. Besides, my mom says that if we think we’re too grown-up to clean the house, then we must be old enough to get a job. And with soccer practice, I don’t have time to work, so I’m absolutely happy to clean my room, vacuum the living room, do the laundry, and dust.” Danny runs his fingers through his hair and my toes tingle. He’s heart-wrenchingly cute today.
“Wow, you really do clean.” I try not to look at his lips. But my eyes are drawn to them. It’s like ever since I’ve given myself permission to like him, I can’t help but notice everything and anything about him.
“Don’t you?” We enter the kitchen, and the scent of Pine-Sol and onions permeates the air. Danny takes a seat on one of the three bar stools crowded around the kitchen counter. I stand next to him.
“No, we have a maid that comes three times a week.”
“That must be the life to live.”
“Not really; she always forgets to clean the bathroom and then I have to do it, which sucks.” I run my hand over the countertop.
I feel really, really strange.
“Susie?” Danny’s voice dips a little.
“Huh?” I smile at him without thinking.
“Why do you keep staring at my lips?”
“Huh?” My cheeks burn red.
“Do I have something in my teeth?” Danny smiles widely and twists his head to the side. He leans in really closely. His breath smells like ripe oranges.
“No,” I look down, and my hair drifts into my face. I wish the floor would open up, and I would be sucked under. I’m afraid that if I look up, my eyes will be drawn back to his lips…. “There’s nothing in your teeth.”
“Why don’t you sit here?” Danny pulls out the bar stool next to his and pushes it closer to him, leaving only a foot of space in between. When I hesitate, he taps the seat expectantly. Reluctantly, I accept his offer. And before I know it, we’re sitting knee to knee staring at each other.
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