Haters

by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

  “What about Brianna? You’re just going to let her go to jail for you?”

  “Eh,” she breathes as if it means nothing to her. “Brianna won’t even notice she’s not at home. You know how she is. A loaf of bread is smarter than that girl.”

  “Is that how you talk about your friends?”

  “Sometimes. Only when they deserve it.”

  “So what do you say about me behind my back?”

  “You? Nothing.”

  “You know what, Jessica? You’re sick.”

  She laughs like I’ve meant this as a compliment, which I haven’t. “Ah, but the truth is, you’re are just as sick as I am. You’re just like me.”

  “I should let you know who’s going to replace Lori in the race today.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.” There’s a long, long silence, during which I imagine she is sharpening the blade of some kind of huge, deadly knife, specifically for the act of stabbing it into my heart.

  “But you can’t do that!” she responds, simply and without detectable emotion. “Motocross is my special thing. Not yours.”

  “No, Jessica, cruelty is your special thing. You’re very, very good at it.” I hang up. Around my neck, the amulet feels like it’s starting to glow, and I sense its low, comforting vibration in my bones.

  I think of my grandmother’s warm gaze and use her energy to calm myself before going down to breakfast. I am so nervous about this race, I could throw up. I’ve been practicing every day after school with Chris, riding at the track until sundown and then going to Starbucks to hang out with Tina. We all sit in the corner of the shop on the puffy chairs and drink decaf Frappuccinos while we do our homework. It feels good, and right, to have these two people in my life. These two friends. I’m happy to say Chris and Tina really get along, even though neither one had spent much time with the other before. Chris is amazed by her drawings, and he wants to show them to his art dealer mom. Tina has started calling me “the diplomat,” because she thinks I’m even better than she is at building bridges between different cliques. She’s also the only person in Orange County I have told of my plan to build an even bigger bridge with Chris. I mean, big. He’s the one. I’m going to lose it to him. I’ve already made up my mind, but I want to be sure I do it right, meaning that I’m protected. I told Emily and Janet, too, and they’re really excited for me. Emily has been e-mailing me tips that border on the obscene, from this about.com Web site.

  Finally I get out of bed and put on a pair of jeans and a plain old T-shirt, clothes from my other life, back in Taos. They feel really comfortable and good. I open the door of my room and head downstairs. I find my dad sitting at the table alone. I’m surprised. Lately Melanie has been here with him, and the twins have taken to running in and out of our apartment as if it’s their own. They’ve even hooked up their spare Xbox 360 to our television.

  “Hey, Chinita,” he says. “Ready for waffles?”

  “They smell great,” I say. I sit at the table, and Dad hops up to get a plate for me. He sets them down in front of me, and after I drizzle fresh maple syrup, I attack the food. Dad stands watching for a moment, and then I notice he’s beaming. That’s right. Beaming. Like he’s so super-proud of me.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask.

  “Did you forget?” he asks.

  “Forget what?”

  “Today’s a special day.”

  “I know. The race is today.”

  “Ah.” He sits back down at the table. “But before that, there’s your appointment.”

  “My appointment?”

  “At Planned Parenthood,” he says. He clears his throat and blushes. Oh, God. I did forget.

  “That’s today?” I ask absently. I don’t want to talk about this with him. I really don’t. Thankfully, he seems as uncomfortable about it as I do.

  “Yup. In an hour. Go get ready after you eat.”

  I stare at the plate of waffles, and suddenly the food doesn’t look as good. “I’m done,” I say.

  “But you didn’t eat.”

  “Guess I’m not hungry.”

  An hour later, my dad drops me off at the Planned Parenthood office and drives away. He wanted to come in with me, but I was like “Uh, no. I don’t think so.” He wanted to make sure that I wasn’t scared. Scared of what? The only thing that was scary was the fact that my dad wanted to go in there.

  I open the door and see the waiting room. A bunch of other women sit there, mostly older than me. No, wait. All of them older than me. I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel weird, but I do. At least I’m alone, though.

  I give the receptionist my name and appointment time, and she signs me in. She asks for my insurance card, and I hand it to her. My dad has this great insurance now, or at least that’s what he says, thanks to some screenwriters’ guild or something. Anyway, I try not to shake as I take the card back and put it in my wallet. I say a silent prayer that the receptionist won’t, like, ask me why I’m here or something, because I truly do not want to have to answer that in front of all these people.

  I sit in a chair in the waiting area and flip through a magazine. For some reason it’s all about golf. That’s what they have here. I look around for something else, but all the good magazines have already been taken. I notice a couple of the women are here with men, but they hold hands and kiss, so the men are obviously not their dads. I wonder how many girls my age have dads who would make them an appointment at a place like this. Probably not too many.

  A few minutes later, a hippie-looking lady in purple clogs opens a door and, after looking at a folder in her hand, calls my name. I set down the golfing magazine — such a struggle, I know — and join her.

  “How are you?” she asks me.

  “Okay.”

  She takes me to an exam room, and she sits in a chair while I sit on the table. She closes the door and then asks me what I’m hoping to get out of my appointment.

  “Uh,” I say. I blush. “I don’t know.” Duh! What a stupid thing to say. I’m an idiot.

  She smiles at me in a comforting way. “Your dad, when he called, said you might want to look into some birth control options.”

  I feel the blush turn into a full face-fire. “He did?” I choke.

  “You’re actually lucky he’s looking out for you,” she says. “You’d be surprised how many parents don’t want to think about it, and how many kids get into trouble as a result.”

  I look at my feet. She pulls out a booklet called Your Choices and starts flipping though it, showing me all the different options out there for me. I listen and think they all sound barbaric. Did you know an IUD is a wire they stick in your uterus, and that it works because it irritates your body into thinking you’re pregnant already? Awful.

  “You can think about these options while you undress,” she says.

  “Undress?”

  “The doctor will be right in to talk to you more about all this.”

  She tells me to take off my pants and underwear and to sit up on the table with a sheet over me. I’ve had pelvic exams by my regular doctor, so this isn’t that weird, but the whole thing of being here to talk about the fact that I’m thinking about having sex soon is a little much for me right now.

  The purple-clog lady leaves, and I do as she requested. I sit there on the table wishing I had something to read so I could distract myself from the fact that I’m here, naked, on a piece of butcher’s paper on a table with a thin, ugly sheet over me.

  The door opens, and a tall, black woman doctor with short, dyed-blond hair and red trendy eyeglasses comes in. She looks nice with a relaxed and pleasant face. She asks me a lot of the same questions the other lady asked me, which makes me wonder why I had to talk to the first lady at all. But whatever.

  The doctor tells me to put my feet in those stirrup things and to scoot my butt to the end of the table. I do it, staring up at the fluorescent lights and pretending I’m somewhere else. It’s not like it’s painful or any
thing. It’s just awkward. It’s not first on the list of things I’d like to be doing, let’s just put it that way. She does an exam and tells me that everything looks fine but the lab results will say for sure. Then I sit up again, and we talk. There’s something very uncomfortable about this. I mean, she was just sticking stuff up there, and now she’s sitting here talking to me like we’re having coffee somewhere.

  In the end, I decide on birth control pills and condoms. The doctor observes me calmly and tells me she thinks I’ve made a good, healthy choice, and she writes me a prescription. She gives me a free pack of the pills to start but tells me they won’t be effective for another month. A month? I have to wait a month? I go back to the waiting room and call my dad to tell him to come pick me up.

  He tells me to come on out; he’s been waiting for me in the parking lot.

  42

  I stand over my bed, peering into the white cardboard box of racing outfits. Lori, who happens to be my size, gave them to Chris, who dropped them off with Melanie while I was at the Planned Parenthood appointment.

  I reach in and remove the pieces of clothing one by one. They are all leather, heavy, protective in the way that motocross racing clothes have to be, but they range in style from a basic black outfit to a sexy white-and-hot-pink one. I try them all on and assess the results in the slightly rusted mirror on the wall in my room. I eventually choose the sexy one. It looks the best. I know it will probably give my dad a heart attack, the way the white leather pants lace up the front like a football with hot pink laces, and the way the jacket has cutouts that accent the shape of my breasts. But I also know that a lot of people are going to be watching this race, and that one of them is going to be Chris.

  I finish off the outfit with Grandma’s amulet, tucked into my shirt beneath the racing jacket.

  Trying not to look too sexy, I lumber down the stairs in the stiff leather pants and shuffle into the living room. My dad is sitting on the sofa with Melanie again. She’s over all the time. They might as well get a big yellow tube, like in a hamster cage, and just connect these two apartments already. That or knock down the wall and make it official. They look up. My dad’s mouth tightens at the sight of me, and I know he doesn’t like the outfit. Melanie smiles at me, though, and tells me I look great.

  “Doesn’t she look great?” she asks my dad. He says nothing. Crosses his arms. “I said, doesn’t your daughter look beautiful?” Melanie elbows him until he agrees with her. She’s softening my dad in certain ways that I really like. I could get used to having her around. “You know what?” she asks me. “I have the perfect shade of pink lipstick for you. Come with me.”

  Melanie grabs my hand and pulls me over to her apartment. She’s wearing flip-flops and has this funny way of dragging her feet that I think is cute. The twins sit on the couch, still in their pajamas, playing video games, and smile when they see me.

  “That’s an awesome outfit,” says Kerani.

  “Superhero outfit,” says Keoni.

  “Moto-Girl, Master of the Universe.”

  “Mistress of the Universe.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Motocross Madness.”

  “Moto-Mistress, mad at the universe,” says Kerani. They laugh. They continue with this word game. I stop listening.

  Melanie leads me into her room and starts to dig through the clear plastic makeup tub on her wooden dresser. I assume she made the dresser herself. She makes almost all of their furniture. After twisting the caps off a few tubes and analyzing the shade, she finds the lipstick she was looking for.

  “Pucker up,” she says. I do, and she puts it on me. I don’t think I’ve ever had another person put makeup on me. I feel her breath on my cheek as she fills in my lips carefully, and I get chills. So this is what it feels like to have a mom, I think. I could get used to it. Yes, I could. “There,” she says. I look at my face in the mirror, and sure enough, the lipstick looks really good with this outfit.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “It’s one of those all-day kinds, too, so it won’t come off no matter what.”

  “Glad it was the right color, then,” I joke.

  “Oh,” she says. “The thing is, if it had been wrong, we could have taken it off quickly. It’s only after it dries that you can’t get it off.”

  I like this, the motherly makeup advice.

  Melanie considers my face, knits her brows together, and says, “Here, sit down.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed, and she proceeds to give me a full makeover. Foundation, blush, eyeliner, shadow, mascara. The whole thing.

  “There,” she declares, smiling. “You’re beautiful.”

  I stand up and look again in the mirror over the dresser. I like what I see. I have chills. I want to cry. I have never in my life had a grown-up woman help me with girlie stuff like this. She notices my tears and pulls me in for a hug.

  “I never had a daughter,” she says. “And I always wanted one. This is so much fun. We’re going to have so much fun together, Paski.”

  “Thanks, Melanie,” I say.

  “Of course. Hey, how about after the race, we go shopping? Celebrate your win?”

  “I might not win,” I say. I’m also thinking that Chris and I already have plans for a date after the race, but I don’t want to tell Melanie because she might tell my dad, and he’s still not thrilled about Chris.

  Melanie laughs and puts a hand over her heart. “I highly doubt you’ll lose. But if you do? You’re still a winner. Remember that.”

  43

  Dad drives me to the race in the Squeegeemobile. Melanie, Keoni, and Kerani come, too. We kids are all crammed in the back. My dad and Melanie hold hands over the stick shift, and I have a powerful sense that their bond is going to last a long time. These two were meant to meet. I wish I had such certainty about the race. I am so nervous, I haven’t eaten since the few bites of waffle this morning.

  We get to the track and it’s packed. There are TV crews and lots of riders. The air smells of sausages and onions. We go to the registration table, and I sign in. Lori McCafferty is working the sign-up table, and I meet her for the first time. She’s beautiful, with a deep tan and long blond hair — the same girl I saw in Jessica’s wish-vision.

  “Good luck,” Lori says, hugging me. “I know you can do it.”

  Then I get directed to an area where the rest of Jessica’s team is meeting. My dad, Melanie, and the twins go to the stands and find seats. The other riders are friendly but seem a little suspicious. They’ve never heard of me, and there’s a lot riding on this race, no pun intended. If I win, I get instant notoriety, and go on to nationals. One of the other team members tells me that Jessica is in the stands with her mom and dad.

  I can’t believe it. “Why did they let her in?”

  “Her dad brought a lawyer and said this was a free and open event for the public,” says the other racer.

  I search the crowd and find them. Jessica waves at me with her one good arm, a nasty, sarcastic look on her face. She’s in a wheelchair.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see Chris. I’ll be using his old bike to race, and he was going to get it tuned up and bring it to me.

  “Wow,” he says, looking at the tight white leather. “You look hot.”

  “Thanks,” I blush.

  He leads me to the bike. But instead of the old one, I’m shocked to find a brand-new yellow Yamaha women’s bike, the kind all the top racers are using. “What is this?”

  “A present,” he says.

  “A very expensive present,” I say. I hear a screeching sound over our heads. I look up and see a white seagull circling directly above. As I watch it, three others join it, circling me.

  “My mom and dad gave me some stocks when I was a kid, and I can do what I want with the money,” he explains.

  “You can’t give me this.”

  “I can. And I just did. You know. Just in case. It’s right out of the shop, mechanic-checked and good
to go.”

  Chris kisses me and walks away, looking over his shoulder with a smile. I realize he’s leaving me with no choice but to take the motorcycle. I’m stunned. He calls out, “Kick much ass, Paski!” and raises a fist in the air.

  I hop on the bike and can’t believe how supple it is, like it was made for me. I join the other riders in our area and then follow them to the starting line. I can feel the power of the earth, of animals, of the spirits, with me. The amulet warms on my neck, and I can’t tell if it is meant as a reassurance or as a warning. I’m afraid.

  Finally the announcer calls us to line up. I stand with my bike alongside the other girls and wait for the gun to sound. And then we’re off. I try to calm myself and listen to my instincts. I pretend I’m alone on my bike in the mountains of Taos, and I just focus. I don’t even know if I’m ahead or behind. I ride. That’s all I do. It feels like flying when I take the jumps. I relax a bit and lift my legs off the bike in the sixth jump, and I sail through the air. I hear coyotes howling, and I feel the flutter of the seagulls above me. I enter a mental space that feels like a tunnel. And then, before I know it, the race is over and I’m braking. The crowd is roaring, and Haley has hopped the fence and is running up to me, congratulating me.

  Telling me I won.

  44

  Keoni and Kerani sit on the sofa in my living room and stare at me. I’m trying to find a cable sports channel that might have something about today’s race. I mean, I know I won. But at the same time, I can’t believe it. It’s like I need to see something from outside my little universe to confirm that I really did it. My future brothers breathe through their mouths and keep staring.

  “What?” I ask them. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “You’re like a god,” says Kerani.

  “Goddess,” I correct him.

  “Whatever,” says Kerani. “I mean, you totally iced everyone out there. You are the messiah who has come to dethrone the evil Jessica.”