Haters

by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

  “Chris fucking Cabrera, yo! What up, dawg?”

  I look up and see Chris and Tyler come through the open door from the family room. Tyler’s head is turned because he’s looking at the scene in the center of the sofas — I can only guess it’s, what, a couple of girls Frenching? Ugh.

  Behind them I see Jessica, Brianna, and Haley. They all look amazing, like they just stepped off the pages of CosmoGIRL! I feel my body tense up with envy. I don’t want to be envious of them, but it’s impossible not to. I should ask Jessica about the race I’ve been assigned to write about for the school paper, but this probably isn’t the right place to do that. It seems like everyone worships her anyway. The kids out here look at them and act all submissive, like the coyotes in the canyon. Everyone might as well bow down to these girls. They are worshipped.

  Chris wears jeans and a simple ringer shirt, but he looks way hot. He seems bored, until he sees me. Then he smiles, and I feel light-headed, like I’m drunk or something, even though I’ve only had a couple of sips of warmish soda. Chris has a natural masculinity that makes me crazy. He is the finest guy in the world. Tyler, who is totally gorgeous, too, wears khaki cargo shorts and a striped button-down shirt, like a prep. He heads straight for the keg with a weird smile. Andrew shakes hands with Tyler, and they start to look at me and whisper and laugh.

  Jessica wears a tiny white skirt that rests very low on her firm, narrow hips, with a blue-and-white-striped shirt that falls off one shoulder, all retro. She has on big white earrings, and these cool wedge sandals. Her legs look glossy, like she’s got something syrupy on them. She could not look cuter if she tried. She makes me feel big and clumsy. Brianna wears super-low jeans and a short Juicy T-shirt that’s really low-cut — you can practically see her nipples poking through. Her boobs stick out like a couple of small blimps, and all the guys are, like, hell-o. Haley looks the most normal of the three, but even she’s a glamour girl. She’s got on a long skirt, peasant-style, beaded at the waist, with a tank top and a small sparkly sweater and sandals. She’s the only one of the girls who smiles when she sees me. I get a good feeling about her, even though I’m starting to feel a little dizzy and weird, like I just got off a roller coaster. I take a deep breath and try to get control over my head. I have to stop being so tense.

  Chris takes a cup of beer from Andrew, who seems to have made it his mission to give everyone alcohol. Then Chris heads directly over to me. Jessica watches him from the keg, where she and the other girls are getting their cups filled by Andrew. Brianna and Haley watch Chris as he sits next to me, and they look at one another like they’re worried about something. Haley shrugs, and Brianna elbows her.

  Jessica looks at me, throws her head back, and laughs again. It seems like she does this a lot, and I have a feeling she’s only doing it so I’ll think she’s having a better time than she actually is. Why is she so committed to making me think she’s all happy? She puts her arms around Andrew’s neck and acts like she’s totally into him, but she keeps looking over at Chris to see if he notices. He doesn’t. He’s too busy. Busy looking at me.

  “Hi, there,” he says. He has a coolness to him that rises above every other guy here, like he really doesn’t care what people think. He holds his cup out to toast with me.

  “How are you?” I ask. I’m not sure, but I think I’m blushing.

  “I’m glad to see you.” He sits next to me, and I can smell that spicy cologne he wears. I love it.

  “Me, too. I mean I’m glad to see you.”

  “So, what do you think of Trent’s party? Great, huh?” He seems sarcastic, like he doesn’t like it.

  I shrug. “It’s okay.”

  He looks into my eyes and smiles with that laugh right below the surface. “Yeah? You think? Really? Look at these people. They’re insane.”

  I shrug again.

  “You guys have parties like this back in Taos?”

  “No,” I say. I blush again, but I’m not sure why. I miss Taos. My friends there felt like real people. Not like this.

  “Good for you,” he says. He looks around the yard. “I’d probably like living in Taos for that reason.”

  “You don’t like the party?” I ask. I’m surprised. For some reason I thought everyone would like this party. Or at least if they didn’t, they would try to hide it, like I do.

  “I’m not a party boy,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “No, I mean I like parties. Parties with a purpose. Like, my parents have parties, and people talk about ideas. They tell stories, they talk about places they’ve traveled to. It’s interesting. This shit, though . . .” He looks around and shakes his head like he’s just heard something really funny. “Pssh. Whatever. You know?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  We sit there looking around. The guy from the family room, the one who made me kiss that Amber girl, comes out with a crazy look on his face. He’s running around in a way that makes me think of a small dog. He doesn’t look very smart. He says hi to Chris and Tyler and comes over to me and says, “Okay, new girl, the guys and I were just talking inside, and we agree that you have to kiss Jessica Nguyen next.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “What?” Chris asks me.

  “Dude,” says the guy, “you should have seen her swap spit with Amber, man. It was fucking hot.”

  “You kissed Amber?” Chris asks me.

  “They made me,” I say.

  “Chris, dude, do you not agree that it would be totally hot to see Paski and Jessica kiss?”

  I look at Chris. “Help me?”

  “Trent, dude, calm down,” says Chris. Trent? This is Trent? This nerdy little guy is the one holding the party? That explains why everyone does what he wants. But how the heck is he a football player? Aren’t they supposed to be bigger than this?

  Trent starts to jump around and says, “That would be the most amazing threesome of all time, those two and me. Damn, come on, Paski, do a nigga a favor!” Nigga? Did this little white boy just call himself a nigga? How disturbing. On so many levels.

  “Maybe later,” says Chris. “We were talking about something right now. We’ll find you, okay, bro?”

  Trent makes a face like he’s just been dissed or something, and he runs over to Jessica and starts to talk to her. She looks over at me with the most disgusted expression. “Oh, hell no,” I hear her say. “I don’t kiss girls, okay? And even if I did, I wouldn’t kiss that one.”

  Why didn’t I stand up to him like that? Why am I acting like such a wimp?

  “How was Amber?” Chris asks me.

  I blush one more time and look at the ground.

  He lifts my chin with his finger and grins at me. “I would have liked to see that.”

  “Yeah, sorry you missed it.” I try to sound as sarcastic as I can.

  “There’s someone I think I’d like to see you kiss more, though.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  He touches my bottom lip with his thumb, very lightly. “Me.” This is the part where a normal guy would, like, try to make a move on a girl. But not Chris. He just sits there and stares at me with the laugh that never seems to actually come out. The feel of his thumb has filled my body with a powerful longing, like it feels to take my bike down a really steep slope. Excitement.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I ask. I look over at Jessica. She’s laughing again, this time with Tyler. She’s jumping onto his back so he can give her a piggyback ride around the yard. In her tiny white skirt? Guess she likes people to see her undies. She pretends to whip him like a horse. “Yah!” she shouts. “Yah!” People laugh and clap like this is high entertainment.

  Chris watches them for a second. “I guess, I suppose I have a girlfriend.”

  “What’s the deal with you guys?” My head is feeling light again, and I shake myself.

  Chris takes a deep breath and sips his beer, watching Jessica over the rim of his cup. “I’ve been trying to break up with her for a while.”r />
  “Really?” This makes me nervous. If he breaks up with her, she’ll blame me. And God only knows what Jessica would do to me if she thought I took her boyfriend. On the other hand, it makes me really excited to think about the possibility of dating Chris.

  He nods, and the laugh finally comes out of his mouth, a small, frustrated chuff. “The only problem is that you can’t really do things that piss off Jessica Nguyen and expect to live.”

  I look at him to see if he’s joking or not.

  He smiles. “She doesn’t want to lose me.”

  “She’s smart,” I say, wondering as I do if this is too forward and inappropriate. “I mean, if I were her. You know.” I guzzle the soda because I don’t know what else to do.

  “I’ve tried, like, four or five times, and she always gets me to come back somehow.”

  “Like how?”

  “She calls me up crying and begging,” he says with a shrug. “One time she said she was going to kill herself.”

  “Really?” Somehow I can’t imagine Jessica doing any of those things. She seems way too aloof for that kind of needy emotional stuff.

  “Oh, yeah. I shouldn’t tell people about it, actually.” He looks like he regrets opening his mouth. “It’s her own personal stuff. It’s kind of disrespectful to tell you about it. I’m sorry. She’s a good kid. She’s just a little . . .” He looks at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  Chris stares at me and says nothing.

  I feel my heart expand in my chest. I want to say something back, but there’s nothing to say. I am so falling in love with this guy, and it’s so wrong in so many ways, I can’t even tell you.

  “She knows how I feel about you,” he says.

  “She does?” I mean, I don’t even know how he feels about me. How unfair is it that Jessica knows but I don’t? This might explain why she hates me, by the way.

  “I told her about you the first day I saw you. I called her on the phone, and I was like, ‘Jess, don’t get pissed, but there’s a girl who rides as well as you do, and she’s pretty, and she’s cool, and she doesn’t seem to have an attitude problem.’”

  “You said that?” I’m not sure I like being compared to Jessica, even favorably.

  He nods. “That’s the only bad thing about Jessica. She’s got major attitude.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I told her that’s why I wanted to split up. Her freakin’ attitude. When you know her, you realize it’s just because she’s insecure, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. It’s a nightmare.”

  “Why would Jessica be insecure? She has everything.”

  “People are complicated,” he says. He brushes the side of my face with his hand. I feel chills, and it’s like my body fills up with something sweet and warm. “She wants attention, I think. But she also wants to feel like she’s just like everyone else. She’s never really fit in anywhere. She’s always been different somehow, you know?”

  “Because she’s Asian?”

  “Vietnamese. No, not just that. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. More like because she’s really rich and pretty and kind of mean, and she just stands out. I don’t think she realizes she’s being mean, either. It’s just her personality.”

  “She looks like she wants to stand out,” I say as Jessica flashes her panties to the world and whips Tyler like a mule.

  “Yeah,” says Chris. “I don’t know. Whatever. It’s complicated, like I said. People are complicated.”

  “Are you complicated?” I ask.

  He laughs. I like his laugh. I don’t think he laughs a lot, but when he does, it’s like bells ringing. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “How so?”

  “Let’s see. I’ve got a girlfriend I can’t get rid of. I want this other girl instead. She’s remarkable.”

  “That’s pretty complicated,” I say.

  “Doesn’t have to be.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  I look at him and feel like my soul is showing through my skin, naked. “I guess,” I whisper. I want him so much I can hardly breathe.

  He says, “If you want it simple, I mean. Like me and you. One plus one. That’s pretty simple.”

  “I always liked that equation.”

  “That simplifies things,” he says. “I’m not complicated anymore.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’ll tell her tonight when I take her home.”

  “Tell her? Tell her what?”

  “That we’re over. That I don’t want to be with her anymore. I actually broke up with her a week before you got to our school, but she guilted me back into being with her. But this time I’m really going to do it. And then, you know, I’ll ask you out.”

  “Oh,” I say. I remember the note from Jessica and imagine the horrible things she could do to me. I should stay away from this guy. Then again, Jessica isn’t the one who decides what I do. And Chris rocks.

  “I mean, I’ll ask you out if you’re not, like, going out with Andrew Van Dyke or something now.”

  I make a disgusted face. “No!”

  Chris laughs. “What’s wrong with Andrew?”

  “Nothing. He’s just kind of, like, I don’t know. It’s like he thinks he’s a player or something.”

  Chris laughs some more. “Yeah. But you know what, Paski? It’s like with Jessica. Andrew’s just a mixed-up, insecure guy like the rest of us.”

  “Are you insecure?”

  He smiles. Nods. “It’s the human condition.”

  Jessica is finished with her piggyback ride, and she’s running over. She stands in front of us with her hands on her hips. She looks hateful, but I try to remember what my grandmother said about her needing my help, and what Chris just said about her being insecure like everyone else. I remember how Emily and Janet told me I should warn her about the accident, no matter how much I think I don’t like her. I don’t know, though. I don’t totally buy it that she’s got issues and she’s just, like, a poor little rich girl or something. She actually looks like she’s going to kill me. Is that something poor little rich girls do? Kill girls?

  “Did you read the note I gave you, apartment girl?” she asks me. She does that awful fast blink she does.

  “I did,” I say. “Why does everyone call me that? What’s wrong with apartments?”

  “What note?” Chris asks me.

  I consider my options. I can stay quiet and be nice, or I can tattle on her and, like, not be nice. I’m finished with the cup of soda, and I have to admit, I’m not feeling all that nice. I’m feeling a little nauseated, truth be told. What’s wrong with the Coke?

  I looked at Chris and say, “The note where Jessica told me to stay away from you or suffer the consequences.”

  “What?” Chris asks, looking at Jessica. “You did that?”

  “No,” lies Jessica. She narrows her eyes at me, and I can practically see the steam coming out of her ears. “I think apartment girl’s had a little too much to drink.”

  “I’m drinking soda,” I say.

  “Guess you’re a real lightweight, then,” Jessica replies, with a cruel smile. “Either that or just stupid.”

  As I look at her, I’m overcome with the vision about her again. I’m feeling a little woozy now, sick actually, like I need to lie down, and it’s harder to resist the vision. I see the whole thing at last, start to finish. I see Jessica in her lavender and white racing clothes on her motorcycle. She has a white helmet with a big yellow rose on the side. It’s pretty. I see a banner, national motocross team regionals. The start flag comes down, and she’s off, on a track, jumping and flipping, just like I do on my bike, only faster and higher. She’s beautiful. So graceful. I gasp. She makes it through two impossible turns, way out in front of the pack, and then, on the third turn, she hits a rock and her tire spins out underneath her and she wipes out. I see her lying on the ground, her helmet cracked. She’s not moving. People scream. There’s blood. I can’t
stand it. I feel sick and sad. It’s horrible, the most vividly horrible vision I’ve ever had, and I’m overcome with the urge to warn her, but then I realize she’s not dead, and I think that maybe it would be okay to keep it to myself. She’d only say I was crazy if I told her about this, anyway. She’d use it against me somehow. I hate this “gift,” and I want it to go away, and maybe if I just stay quiet this time then the spirits will finally realize they chose the wrong person and they’ll move on. I know, I’m selfish. But sometimes the visions don’t come true, and sometimes you have to protect yourself, especially from venomous haters like Jessica.

  “Paski?” Chris leans over and waves his hand in front of my face. “Hello? Anybody home? Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” I shake myself out of the vision state and look at them. Jessica is laughing at me.

  “Guess she doesn’t hold her soda very well,” Andrew laughs, walking over. Jessica looks over at him and grins. His eyes stray to me. Jessica says, “Cuckoo, cuckoo,” and laughs at me.

  “No,” I say. “That’s not it.” Well, maybe that’s part of it. But still. If I’m nuts, it’s not by choice, it’s genetics.

  “You feeling okay?” asks Chris.

  I take a deep breath and brace myself for what I’m about to do. Do? I’m going to warn Jessica about the wreck. Kind of. I mean, enough so that I can sleep at night but not so much that she’ll turn the world against me for being some kind of dial-a-psychic nutjob.

  The room is spinning. “Jessica,” I say. My voice sounds really far away to me. I’m sick. This is more than just being tipsy. What’s going on? “I have to tell you something important. Okay? I mean, I know you don’t like me. You don’t really even know me, but that’s okay. You don’t have to like me. I don’t care. I mean, I do care. I think my life would be a whole lot easier if you liked me. But anyway.”

  “What the F are you talking about?” asks Jessica. She sits on Chris’s lap and smirks at me. He gives me an apologetic look. Andrew asks me how I’m feeling. “More soda, apartment girl?” he says. I don’t answer because I’m focused on telling Jessica what I need to tell her; in fact, I don’t really even hear him ask me anything until after I’ve started talking again. It’s weird, like time is moving differently, like I’m floating somewhere outside of my own body.