by Meg Medina
“Piddy, what’s going on?”
I shrug. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not Piddy these days. You say no one is bothering you at school anymore, but you won’t even go. You’re fighting with your mami all the time, disappearing. You don’t want to work.” She stops and takes my face in her hands. “¿Qué te pasa?”
“I hate it at DJ — that’s all. I’m never going back.”
Lila throws back her head and laughs. “¡No me digas! A dropout in the tenth grade! Qué lindo. And what are you going to do for a living?”
“I don’t care. I’ll learn to do hair or something. It worked out all right for Gloria, didn’t it? She’s, like, a millionaire.”
“Well, that millionaire still works six days a week, mija.”
I don’t crack a smile. Lila leans back and sighs.
“It’s that girl at school, right?” she asks. “Yaqui? She still after you?”
I don’t answer, which is the same as a yes in Lila’s book.
“Cristo, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” She shakes her head. “I could have broken her legs for you.”
When I still don’t reply, she leans in. “I promised you I wouldn’t tell your mother what happened, and I haven’t, but I need to know what’s going on — the whole story.”
A cold fear wraps around me tight, but I’m so tired of worrying about Yaqui that I finally sigh and give up.
“There’s a video,” I begin. “Somebody took it the day she jumped me. Now the whole school has seen it. I was half naked by the end.” My eyes fill up before I can stop them. Lila grabs a napkin and dabs at the gray mascara streaks that are starting to form.
“A video,” she mutters. “In my day, they busted your lip, and that was that.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Being responsible never comes easy to Lila. “Here’s the thing. You still have to go back to school on Monday.”
It’s like ice water on my head. “No.”
“Listen to what I’m going to tell you,” she says gently. “You can’t let Yaqui What’s-Her-Face get her way. She’ll never leave you alone if you run now.”
“Let her have her way?” My face gets hot, and I push back in my chair. “Let her? I didn’t let her do anything! She jumped me for no reason — and I don’t even know why she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“Yes. She does.” It’s hard to keep my voice steady. “You want to see the bite marks she left on me again?”
Lila shakes her head. “She doesn’t even think you’re a person. For that matter, she doesn’t think she’s a person. You’re just the next one in her path. It’s not personal. That’s how it is where she’s growing up. Beat or get beaten.”
“And how do you know everything about Yaqui Delgado?”
Lila looks at me and shakes her head.
“Because there’s always a Yaqui in every school, in every place in the world. I met a few malditas along the way myself,” she says. “You think I could look like this and not have people hate on me?”
She chuckles and pulls out a stick of blush.
“It’s different now,” I say as she starts rubbing the cream into my cheeks. My mind fills with the video, shot by shot for everyone to see.
“A little. But at least one thing is exactly the same,” Lila says.
“What?”
“You know where this Yaqui girl is going to be in a few years if she doesn’t change? She’ll still be there — same as always in her old neighborhood — a nobody with nothing. And guess what? That’s her worst fear. And who knows? Maybe that’s what she’ll deserve for being a punk and making people feel bad just because she could.
“But you? You’re different,” she continues. “You’re going to be better than that, and that’s what kills her, Piddy. That’s what makes her burn with hate. She can already see you’re winning. You’re going to get an education and use your brain. You’re going to be a bella persona with a good job and a nice place to live, maybe even nicer than Gloria’s or Mitzi’s. You’ll get somebody good in your life who’s not going to fool you with a hidden wife. And you’ll make enough money to take care of your mother when she’s old. Ay, Piddy, one day you’ll be so far away from Parsons Boulevard, you’ll think you dreamed this hellhole.”
I put my head down and sob.
“I’m still scared,” I say.
Lila kisses my head and whispers in my ear. “I know. But it’s you that has the real strength in all this, Piddy. You just don’t know it yet.”
She packs up Ma’s supplies and stands up. The kittens scatter off to the living room.
“Now get dressed, niña. Our customers are waiting.”
It’s a beehive at Salón Corazón, just the way Lila predicted. The bells on the door keep jangling with one person after another. The women are comparing holiday sales from one store to the next, trading coupons and diet secrets, complaining about which family member ruined their meal this year. I try to tune everyone out, putting my face in the hot towels from the dryer when the thought of Monday makes me want to cry all over again.
Around noontime, my phone vibrates. I don’t recognize the number, so I ignore it. When it vibrates again a few minutes later, I open the text. The words jolt me.
Come outside.
Shit.
I peer through the beaded curtain. I can’t see anybody waiting outside the shop through the plate-glass window. That only leaves the back door, which leads to the alley. There is no way I’m going into an alley with Yaqui. My hands are shaking as I go to the employee bathroom. The window is high on the wall, almost near the ceiling, but it’s got opaque glass. The only way to look out is to open it — and it’s the crank kind. I close the toilet lid and climb up. I turn the handle slowly, trying to open the window so gently that no one will notice the pane moving. When it’s open an inch or so, I finally look outside.
Joey is standing there, kicking at little chunks of asphalt with his boots. He looks scraggly, like he hasn’t seen a shower in days. He’s staring at his phone, clicking away. My phone vibrates again. I grab my jacket from the hook in the supply room and go outside to meet him.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
“Standing. What does it look like?” He blows into his hands to keep them warm. His fingernails, I notice, are filthy. His eyes still have grit in the corners.
I want to ask about his mother, find out where he’s been, but I know better than to pry. Maybe he’s as embarrassed as I am about what happened; I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about being naked under his questioning eyes or his mother’s pale skin on that gurney. Please, God, don’t let him be thinking about the same things.
“I’m going to Pennsylvania,” he says. “To live.”
I don’t know what to say. I can’t tell him I’m sad, for sure, or that I care at all about what’s next for him.
“What’s there?” I finally ask, even though I know it’s more about what’s not there.
“Friends.” Then he shrugs. “Cows and shit paddies, too, I guess.”
“Appealing,” I say, and we both smile.
He looks at his shoes. “I’m leaving tonight.”
I look at him for a long time, my throat getting that tight feeling again. Who would have guessed I would ever miss Joey Halper? But it’s true.
“You going to be okay?” I ask him.
“Better than here.” He loosens another chunk of asphalt from a hole with his heel. “She’ll go back to my old man. Who needs that?”
There are a million things I want to say to him. That I hope Pennsylvania is where ten-year-old Joey can come back out to play again. That maybe Pennsylvania will let him be somebody new so he can sit at a table on holidays and say, Thank you, God, and really mean it.
But before I can say anything at all, he reaches for my face with his dirty fingertips and looks at me dead in the eye.
“Come with me, Toad,” he whispers. “Let’s get out of here.”
The first novela I ever saw with Lila was El Amor Es Destino. Love Is Destiny. In it, the girl’s lover steals her away from her family in the night. Ma hated that novela.
“He’s kidnapping her,” Ma said. “He should be arrested.”
“Shhh! She wants to go. It’s so romantic,” Lila told her.
All night, I’m thinking of that soap opera and watching the clock. The bus leaves at nine p.m. from Port Authority. I’m thinking, too, of what Lila told me.
One day you’ll be so far away from Parsons Boulevard, you’ll think you dreamed this hellhole. I’ve never so much as been to Pennsylvania. I can’t even imagine a life there — except how nice it would be to start in a place where no one knows me. No expectations. No chocolate-milk fastball. No Yaqui anywhere in sight.
Still.
I check my phone; no one has sent me a message. Not Ma — busy at work. Not Mitzi — maybe she’s finally given up on me. Tonight was her first basketball game, and I wasn’t there to see it, so I don’t know if Sophia ever managed to make Mitzi any good.
I’m sorry, I text her.
I don’t have time for much else. I have to meet Joey. I fold the note I wrote for Ma and leave it on the kitchen table, so she won’t worry. Then I grab my bag carefully and pull the door shut.
I can see the glow of Joey’s cigarette as I reach the corner where he’s waiting. He has on his army jacket, and a duffel bag is slung over his shoulder.
He hugs me tight when I reach him, and I swear I pick up a metal scent on him, something like fear. We both know I can’t go with him, but that doesn’t keep him from trying to change my mind. The whole ride to Port Authority, he holds my hand and tells me about Pennsylvania. I can tell he’s nervous. He jiggles his knees and cracks his knuckles until I beg him to stop.
The station is packed with travelers trying to make their way back home. Joey and I look for the monitors and squeeze through the lines that are spilling out into the walkways. At the gate, with all the seats in the waiting area full, we sit on the floor. That’s when I show him the kitten I hid in my bag.
“They got sick of living in your crappy building, too,” I explain.
After a whole day working on my feet, I’m exhausted. My eyes feel heavy as I rest my head on Joey’s shoulder. I remember when we were little and nothing too terrible was happening.
“Remember when Mrs. Feldman used to send you to my classroom?” I ask him dreamily. Joey was always sent out of his classroom because he couldn’t stop “behaving like a baby,” according to Mrs. Feldman. His desk had to be alone in the back. My teacher referred to it as Siberia.
“She could never take a freakin’ joke,” he says.
“You glued shut the class set of dictionaries.”
We both start to laugh.
At eight forty-five, there’s an announcement.
“Gate Seventeen, making stops in Mount Laurel and Camden,” crackles through the speakers. The line is already moving forward. I can smell the bus fumes wafting through the open glass doors as we stand up and gather our things.
Through the glass, I watch people hand their tickets to the driver and get their luggage tagged. Joey’s grip on his own ticket has left it blurred and wrinkled, I notice.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” he asks.
I pull him close and unzip my backpack.
“Here.” I scoop up the orange kitten and slip the little fur ball inside his jacket, where it’s warm near his skin.
“Tell him to write,” I whisper to the kitten, avoiding Joey’s gaze. Then to Joey I say, “I’ve still got his brother.” And then I pull out one more thing. It’s the envelope I usually keep in my drawer. I press it into Joey’s palm.
“What’s this?” He opens it and doesn’t say a word. Inside is a thick stack of ones and fives — two months’ worth of tips from Salón Corazón.
“In case you need it,” I tell him. “And don’t blow it on tattoo ink, you dope,” I say quickly. “I swept up a lot of hair for that.”
When he looks at me, I can see that his eyes are fuzzy.
“Last call for boarding!”
My knees feel weak and I suddenly want to follow, but if I go with him, Yaqui will have taken everything from me. Ma and Lila and Mitzi. Even who I want to be.
So, I kiss Joey on the cheek and hug him close enough to feel the kitten squirming. I can feel Joey’s breath tickle my neck as he whispers.
“Take care of yourself, Toad,” he says. “Run if you have to.”
Then he climbs up the bus steps and he’s gone.
The walk to school is silent that Monday. Lila is with me. “Just in case,” she says, but I’m not sure if she means “Just in case Yaqui is around” or “Just in case you don’t go.”
It’s not even December, and the air already smells like cold metal and snow. I wonder if it’s like this to walk to your death. You know, like in prison. Empty. Ready for everything to stop with a prick of a needle, a jolt. Like you’re walking in a dream. All I’ve got to make me feel better today is my broken elephant charm in my pocket — and it’s not working too well. The closer we get to school, the worse I feel. I know I’m either going to get beaten up by Yaqui again — or I’m going to have to narc like a loser and probably get beaten up even worse when she finds out.
At the attendance office, the secretary glances tiredly before opening the passbook. Then she gives Lila the once-over, her eyes lingering on her zebra-print pumps.
“Sign her in, please.”
Lila is studying the posters on the bulletin board. She smiles innocently and peruses the sign-in log like it’s one of her glossy catalogs.
“We’ve both been a little sick, but it’s nothing contagious — don’t worry.” She signs Ma’s name with a flourish. “Have a good day, hija.” She winks at me, but I won’t crack a smile.
Instead, I grab the pass from the secretary and slip away as fast as I can. The clicks of Lila’s heels fade in the other direction as I go.
“You’ll need this to have any hope in U.S. History next year,” Mr. Fink says to the class. He pauses from his explanation of nationalism when I come in and drop the pass on his desk. I try to act like no one’s staring, but all eyes are on me as I find my seat, especially Darlene’s. I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking. Are they making fun of me? Are they remembering me naked in that stupid video? Or can they see that I’m something foreign now, different, a curiosity that doesn’t belong in this little bubble of smart kids who still care? They’ve probably seen the video, gawked at me naked, and been grateful it wasn’t them. Maybe some of them think I’m something dangerous that has to be amputated for the sake of the whole.
Sally Ngyuen sits up straight and looks ahead when I sit down next to her.
“Discussion questions, page two hundred and two,” Mr. Fink tells us. “And I want answers in complete sentences.”
Book, notebook, pencil, I think slowly — the motions of a normal day for normal people. The words at the top of the page blur up, though. I read the words again and again, trying to remember anything at all about how the world connects.
“Piddy. Piddy.” Darlene’s voice is a whisper.
I don’t turn her way. When class ends, I dart out before she can reach me and head out to my next class alone.
That afternoon, Ms. Shepherd pretends not to make a big deal about my return, although she stares at me for a beat too long when I come in. Lila’s makeup isn’t fooling anybody. Add that to my plucked eyebrows and tired face, and I’m probably a dead ringer for someone from what she calls her sixth-period “zoo.”
“Okay, everyone,” she says, handing out pages of the literary magazine in layouts. “We were finalizing layouts before the break. I hope you remember that our deadline for the magazine is this Friday. You need to work in your groups to make the final edits for your assigned pages.” She looks up at me. “Why don’t you join Rob’s group, Piddy?”
Rob’s group consists of Rob.
/> I take the empty seat beside him as everyone moves their desks into clusters and gets busy.
“I guess it’s lonely at the top,” I say, trying to break the ice.
“I’m not lonely,” he says. The awkward silence that follows makes me feel like an idiot.
“Look, Rob,” I finally say. “I’m sorry I yelled at you that day after lunch. I was freaked out the story was up and —”
“You were scared,” he says as he unfolds the layout page for the introduction. “Your eyes were doing that weird jumping thing.”
The open page catches my attention immediately. A gorgeous sketch takes up most of the page, and beneath it is his name. When I look closely, I see that it has been done in tireless pinpoints — almost as tiny as pixels. When you hold it at arm’s length, the image is of three wolf-faced kids writing on a locker. On the back of their jackets, the word LOSER is written in white letters. I think back to the day somebody wrote on his locker. I guess I wasn’t fast enough to spare him, after all.
“You’re an artist,” I say. “I can’t draw anything, especially not animals, no matter how hard I try.”
“What kind do you try to draw?” he asks.
“Well, elephants.” Which is true. They never look realistic; they always look like Babar. Rob is staring at me, so I keep blabbering. “But these wolves are great,” I add. I put down the sheet and look at him. So far I’ve only known him as a brain in every subject. Now I see he’s got other talents, too. “Rob, what don’t you do well?”
“People,” he blurts out.
“Well, yeah, that’s true.”
He doesn’t crack a smile, and another awkward silence wraps around us.
I start to proof his essay for mistakes, but it’s hard to worry about commas. Turns out, Rob’s bluntness is funny on paper. I’m almost done when he puts his hand over the text.
