Char was a slow learner, though a lot of Salva’s peers weren’t aware of it because nobody’s stereotype of someone with a learning disability was a gorgeous girl with bare shoulders and legs that stretched to heaven. But he knew she didn’t like to admit when there was something she didn’t understand.
And she would not have understood his rejection.
He had told her to shut up. She would comprehend that—would have taken it hard. Would have grasped, finally, that their relationship wasn’t going to the next level.
But she wouldn’t understand why. Not really. And he couldn’t explain—couldn’t apologize for shooting her down in public because she might misinterpret the apology as an expression of interest. Which would leave him right back where he had started.
Of course, she wasn’t acting hurt. Laughing at his best friend’s jokes and accepting every drink Pepe passed her way. She was acting as though the evening’s outcome was just as she’d expected.
Tosa glanced up from his cards for the first time since their blond hostess had waved him aside and disappeared into the ranks of her other guests—a diss that might not have been a bad thing. Salva wasn’t sure his openhearted friend was any more prepared to function at Linette’s speed than Char was at Pepe’s.
“I don’t think it’s Pepe’s fault,” Tosa said. “She was drinking plenty at Linette’s last party all on her own.”
Probably true. Char did struggle with setting her own boundaries, never having had any practice. “Yeah, well,” Salva stated, “Pepe doesn’t have to help her down that road, does he?”
“Listen, man,” Tosa replied, “I’m not getting in his way tonight. That girl hasn’t given him the time of day before, and I don’t think he’s gonna be too happy if we interrupt. If you want to play hero, go right ahead.”
“I can’t. You know he’d read it the wrong way.” As would Char.
Tosa took a swig of his own drink. “You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Cuz there are plenty of other girls lookin’, if you’re on the prowl.”
Salva was not on the prowl, though it was easier to worry about Pepe and Char’s relationship than to analyze his own status. “I’m not really looking.”
Tosa wiggled his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Well, you probably don’t have to look, the way you smell in that cologne. You friggin’ reek of desperation.”
Salva put him in a headlock.
Never a good idea with a guy over six feet tall.
In a matter of seconds, Tosa had him on the floor, one foot on Salva’s back. “Footrest for sale! Anybody want a footrest?”
Salva swept his friend’s ankle, then rolled. And Tosa crashed down beside him. They both broke into wild laughter.
Which finally brought their blond hostess back into the room. “Listen, you two,” she snapped, “anyone who breaks furniture in this house has to work it off, and you don’t wanta know what kind of trashy jobs my stepmom comes up with.”
Tosa sobered, giving her his largest puppy-dog eyes. “Sorry, Linette.”
She bought it. Salva could see the witch-in-charge go right out of her and the maybe-I-should-take-another-look seduction slide into her features. A second later, the duo was winding its way into the next room.
Great. Well, that had worked well. Now Salva had not only one friend seducing a girl who was two speeds behind him, but a second friend getting seduced.
Which was what parties were all about.
So why am I not looking for someone to lock lips with? Just for entertainment’s sake? Salva let his gaze travel slowly around the room. There were three, maybe four unattached girls here who weren’t hideous. But he just couldn’t see taking the trouble.
He dropped down into Tosa’s vacated chair beside the poker table. The guys there were playing for chips. Literally. Nacho Cheese and Sour Cream and Onion.
“You want in?” the dealer asked.
“Naw.” Salva leaned back and stared up at the ceiling fan.
He couldn’t concentrate.
Kept having the same vision over and over in his head. And he couldn’t seem to clear it. What he saw—what he kept seeing, as the blades of the fan spun above him, were the auburn highlights in Beth’s hair. And the doelike eyes that had stared up at him from her ghostly face. And the way that white dress had draped her slender frame.
The night was insane. He must be high on adrenaline. The game had been incredible. The car was—face it, the car was unlike anything he’d ever planned on riding in during his life. And as designated driver, he was going to get to drive it home.
But really, he wasn’t even thinking about that drive.
Because he couldn’t get rid of the realization that had rocked and cracked his world like a broken windshield. Just before the car had pulled up.
She might be crazy—wearing that thin dress on a night that was maybe twenty-nine degrees. And she might be a nerd—because, really, who from Liberty High School ever applied to go to Stanford? And she was most definitely a walking disaster area.
But she was also beautiful.
8
THE DARE
The minute hand on the multipurpose room clock clicked to twenty past, and Beth felt the sharp movement as though it were a scalpel at her throat. The same scalpel that had sliced through her on homecoming night and continued to cut deeper during the long walk home in the dark. Alone. To the empty trailer.
Her mother’s constant absence and Ni’s newfound dis-tractedness should have accustomed Beth to being stood up. She clenched the frayed strap of her backpack and forced her-self to rise from the stage. He isn’t coming.
For the two weeks since that awful night when Char’s comment had ripped the scab off Beth’s grief, Salva had had no time for study sessions, due to extra sports practice. Then this weekend, she had seen the writing, not on the wall but in full-color print on the front page of the regional paper. State champions. And his picture—of course it had been his picture—along with the words brilliant and all-star. The town had thrown a five-star parade.
What did she expect—that he would remember her paltry little tutoring sessions after all that? Hardly. He had passed his first term in English. It wasn’t a stellar mark. He should want to achieve more. But there was no point watching the scalpel of time until it bled her dry.
She vacated the room for the hall. Shouts from JV basketball practice echoed from the gym around the corner as she strode in the opposite direction. The wing was dark, except for the light from cit/gov, aka Coach Robson’s room. And the green glow of the nearest exit.
Just go home, she told herself. Go home and finish that essay for the Ag Association on why you want to be a famous writer and why they should choose to invest a thousand dollars in you even though you never want to look up the rear end of a cow, create a strain of lettuce, or cure onion blight. Go home and forget about him.
Forget she’d ever dreamed. Her head shrilled at the thought.
It took a moment to realize the sound—a high-pitched electronic buzz—was actually coming from cit/gov.
She glanced into the room.
And found Salva. Asleep. Slumped on a keyboard, arms folded, head sideways, eyes closed. Oblivious to the buzzing keys.
Unwanted empathy rushed to her chest. The screen was a deep liquid blue. Either he’d finished what he was writing, or he’d lost the document. Her gaze flicked to the printer. CHAPTER 5: WITHOUT PRECEDENT. He had typed up his notes for tomorrow’s cit/gov test. Who did that?
She turned off the Power button on the outlet.
Peace reigned as he continued to sleep. He looked younger. Innocent. Dark eyelashes rested low. Her hand hovered above his face, so near she could touch that stray strand of hair on his forehead. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to skip the tutoring session after all. He was still at the school, just asleep.
His profile shifted.
And she had the sudden urge to kiss him.
She struggled to suppress the instinct, but
her face lowered.
The eyelashes flicked up, and she was close, way too close. He looked startled. Trapped.
Her hand brushed his rising shoulder in her attempt to pull away. “Y-you fell asleep.” She staggered back.
He sat erect, then exhaled and ran his fingers through his hair. “Sorry.” He glanced at his wrist, seemed to realize his watch wasn’t there, and squinted up at the clock. “The computer lab was closed for some reason. Coach Robson said I could type here.” He gave a quick glance toward the printer. “I must have crashed. I…haven’t gotten a lot of sleep in the last couple weeks.”
She hadn’t slept too well either, since homecoming. Since he had defended her. Though she’d been trying in her pathetic hopeless way to forget about that moment. To remember that he hadn’t even noticed her at first, hanging in the background by the bleachers, and when she’d finally gathered enough courage to congratulate him, he’d stared at her like he’d never seen her before. And then Char—
Beth felt her stomach clench.
He had probably forgotten about the entire confrontation.
“Listen…” Salva made a fist and ran his knuckles along the table’s edge. “I’ve been meaning…that is…I wanted to apologize for Char. For what she said to you after the homecoming game.”
Beth’s heart stumbled.
“She didn’t know”—he kept talking—“at least, I don’t think she knows…about your grandmother. Though even if she knew, she wouldn’t understand.” There was something in his voice—something that chimed in unison with Beth’s own sense of isolation.
“But you do,” Beth whispered. “Don’t you, Salva?”
He pushed his chair back from the keyboard, plucked the notes from the printer, and walked away, cutting through the five rows of desks. Then he dug his hands into his pockets and stared out the window into the early November night. The end of daylight saving time had rendered the Earth dark.
Silence filled the separation.
She wanted to offer him solace—the same gift he had given her the day he had fixed all the zippers on her backpack. “Salva, if you ever want to talk—”
“It’s getting late.” He cut her off, his gaze still toward the glass.
She swallowed the rejection. “If you want to postpone our session—”
“No!” He spun, strode to the back of the room, and began pacing between the signs UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU and HELL NO, WE WON’T GO on Robson’s time line of political quotes. “I can’t fall any further behind. We’ve got a cit/gov test tomorrow, an AP lit quiz on Thursday, and a paper due in career prep. Plus, I have to work extra hours to make up for what I missed during the championship. And we have our second round of SATs this weekend.”
She blinked at the panic in his voice, then stated the obvious. “Yes, but you test well.” He may have been afraid of automatic toilets back in elementary school, but he had also been the first kid to pass his time tests, the kid with the most stickers on the class chart, the kid whose name was always called when the teacher read off the super-high exam scores for the display board. In fact… Beth scanned the corkboard above the computers. Sure enough, Salva’s chapter 4 exam was posted at the center.
He paused at THE BUCK STOPS HERE. “You must have done pretty well last spring if you’re planning to go to Stanford.”
With most people it would have felt like bragging to share her first-round SAT scores. But not with him. She told him what she’d earned. “What about you?” she challenged, stepping closer, certain he had at least a fifty-point advantage.
He displayed a sudden interest in the ceiling map of the world. And told her.
Her mouth dropped open. That was more like a hundred points. “Where are you applying?” she asked.
His eyes remained on the map as he reeled off the names of six colleges, all within the state.
Ridiculous. “You could get into those even with a D in AP English,” she said.
“I need scholarships.”
“Give me a break, Salva.” She snatched the notes from his hand. “You should be aiming Ivy League.”
He dropped the feigned interest in the ceiling map, doubt plain on his face. “It’s not that easy,” he said.
Easy? “You could go to Princeton. Or Harvard. Or UPenn. You have the grades and the student involvement.” Maybe he couldn’t afford to spend a year in Kenya helping the needy, but he had plenty of qualifications. So what was the barrier?
He reached for his notes.
She held them beyond his grasp. “I dare you.” The words sprang forth without intention. “I dare you to apply to three top-ten colleges and see if you get in.”
He veered around her, retreated toward the darkened computer, and lifted a folder.
Was he just going to let his future coast? How could he push himself so far and then stop?
She approached slowly. “Salva?”
He whirled and snagged the notes from her hand. “Okay,” he said. “If you’ll partner me on my Shakespeare project.”
She staggered back. “W-we don’t even start Shakespeare until January,” she said.
He filed the notes in the folder. “Yes, but I might not have anything to hold over your head then. And where else am I going to find an expert who’s actually in drama?”
Electricity ran straight through her gut. Get a grip, Beth.
The Mercenary’s Shakespeare projects were notorious. Students had to read at least three plays, pass a killer exam, and then pick a scene to perform in public for maximum impact.
“Look,” he continued, “we’re graded based on the impression we make on the student body. What is the chance you’ll make as much impact by yourself as with me?”
No chance. All he had to do was lift his pinky finger to get everyone’s attention.
Half an hour ago, she’d thought this was over—that she’d never spend another minute alone with him. And now he was asking—no, daring—her to make a commitment that ran through March. She was in this far too deep. “You’ll fill out three full applications to Ivy League colleges?”
He nodded.
“And you’ll post them before deadline?”
He rolled his eyes but concurred. “As long as I pick the place and time of the performance. Do we have a dare?”
“You have to show me the applications first.”
“Do we have a dare?” Those eyes were very dark, her own personal abyss.
She had never been so thrilled to drown. “Yes.”
9
¿QUÉ ES?
Harvard. Princeton. Yale. Salva tried not to wince as the woman behind the post office counter pounded the stamp—once, twice, thrice—and tossed the applications onto a pile behind her. She slammed the metal window down in his face. It was already five minutes after five o’clock, and the December night had coiled into darkness. He had been the last at the end of a long line.
Salva turned and shoved his way into the cold—the kind of cold that made his ears curl and his teeth ache. No snow—just the bitter chill and expanding patches of ice. He buried his hands in his sleeves and hugged his arms to his chest, an action that rendered no more defense than his thin jacket.
The idea of spending the night at the Laundromat was unbearable.
He’d thought about bailing on the post office trip, but then he would have had to relive the interrogation he had faced this morning. “¿Salva, qué es?” Talia had asked as he’d set the first of the envelopes on top of his school gear.
“Sí, Salva, what are you mailing?” Casandra had chimed in.
“They’re nothing,” he’d said, brushing off the question.
Nothing, he repeated to himself now. Forget about the applications. They were just a dare, and he’d lived up to his side, which was the point—so he didn’t flunk AP English.
And he wasn’t flunking. With Beth’s help, he’d pulled up his grade to almost a B.
She’d even told him this afternoon that his final college essays were “awesome.”
Bizarre. Because Beth didn’t use the term awesome with regard to his writing. At least, she never had before. She wasn’t as harsh now as back in September, but she used lots of phrases like “I think you could make this stronger” and “Get to the point,” her polite version of “Cut the crap.”
What did “awesome” mean? That after four revisions, it was obvious his essays were so bad he hadn’t a hope of ever fixing them to a level that would gain him acceptance?
Of course I won’t get accepted. People from Podunk don’t get into top-ten colleges.
But he couldn’t tell Beth that. She seemed so certain she was going to Stanford; and if she was going to be crushed, he didn’t want to be on the side of I-told-you-so.
Though maybe he was wrong. Maybe she would get in. She’d claimed her grandfather was an alum. Expensive schools counted things like that. They called them Legacy Rules or something.
Salva, on the other hand, had a father who had become a U.S. citizen less than two years ago—not exactly a legacy.
And a mother who is dead. Memories from the hospital threatened: Mamá’s voice, faint from the pain; her skin, bruised purple around the central line in her neck; her eyes, glazing over as the nurse had pumped in more medication. The caustic complaint of the old man in the waiting room who had claimed that these people were the reason no one could afford insurance.
Salva’s feet skidded on ice. He grabbed hold of a slumped fence, managed to regain his footing, and looked up.
To his surprise, light glowed from the single wide. What the H?
Had Char dropped off Talia and Casandra at home early with no one here to watch them?
He bolted forward through the gate, slid again, and grabbed the handrail, then hauled himself up the porch, tugged open the door, and braved the Shrine—careful to keep his eyes off the portrait on the living room wall.
“¡Salva, finalmente está!” Casandra barreled into him. “He’s here. He’s here! ¡A cenar!”
Talia arrived, and they dragged him into the kitchen.
Where the smell of Mamá’s tamales punched him in the gut: chicken, queso blanco, chilies, and the overwhelming scent of homemade corn masa. An intense longing seared through his chest, and he fought for control. Losing.
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