Ambitious

by Monica McKayhan

  “Who’s Catalina Sanchez?” I asked.

  “You know, the girl who took the dance class with you and Luz last spring at the community center. She was like one of J.C.’s favorites in the class, always trying to outdo everybody,” said Grace.

  “She was the girl who wanted to beat you up last summer because she liked Fernando, and he wouldn’t pay any attention to her because Fernando likes you,” Kristina added.

  “Fernando doesn’t like me like that. He’s like a brother to me,” I explained.

  “I hate to tell you, Mari, but Fernando doesn’t want to be your brother.” Grace giggled. “He’s liked you for a long time.”

  “What’s Luz doing locked in her room with Catalina?”

  “She and Luz have been pretty tight since you started going to Premiere. She doesn’t even hang with us at school that much. It’s always Catalina this, Catalina that,” said Grace.

  “I don’t trust her,” Kristina said. “Luz didn’t tell you about Dance America?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “She and Catalina are dance partners now. They’re trying out for Dance America together,” Kristina explained.

  “What do you mean? She’s already trying out for Dance America with Jasmine and me. We already have a group. Brooklyn Bellezas. Remember?” I asked.

  Grace shrugged. I could tell that she was trying to stay out of it.

  “She claims that she’s not a part of that group anymore,” Kristina explained.

  “When was she going to tell me?” I asked, and both Grace and Kristina shrugged.

  “You know how Luz is sometimes, Mari. I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Grace.

  Easier said than done. It bothered me that Luz would leave the group without even telling me. But worse than that, she’d already formed a partnership with someone else—someone she knew I didn’t get along with. I walked just a little bit faster, headed for Luz’s redbrick-front house. I stomped up her stairs and rang the bell. She swung the door open. A bottle of Jarritos soft drink in her hand and her hair pulled up into a ponytail, she stood there with a smug look on her face. Just past her, I could see Catalina standing in the doorway of the kitchen, wearing leotards and patting her face with a towel.

  “Hola,” Luz said.

  “What’s this about you getting a new dance partner?” I asked. “What happened to the Brooklyn Bellezas?”

  “That’s your group, Mari. Yours and Jasmine’s. I’m doing my own thing now,” she said.

  “When were you going to tell me?” I asked.

  “I was going to tell you—” she looked over my shoulder and peered at Grace and Kristina “—it’s just that the two big mouths beat me to it.”

  “I didn’t say a word, Luz,” Grace, the peacemaker, said.

  “She deserved to know,” Kristina said.

  “So you’re gonna go up against me in the competition?” I asked just to be clear about it.

  My best friend since forever was now my opponent. It felt strange. It felt as if a part of me had begun to die right there on Luz’s stoop—a stoop that I’d stood on so many days before, eating paletas and watching the older girls jump double Dutch, at least until we were old enough to jump, too. It was the same stoop where Luz and I shared our deepest, darkest secrets with each other—about boys, about how our bodies began to change during puberty and about life. We became blood sisters on that stoop; pricking our fingers with a safety pin and smashing the blood together. We were inseparable for life—at least that’s what we promised.

  “Hi, Mari.” Catalina appeared in the doorway next to Luz.

  The two of them grinned, and I walked away. I was fuming as I hopped down Luz’s concrete steps and crossed the street toward my own house. Grace and Kristina followed.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mari. She’s just jealous of your friendship with Jasmine.” Kristina tried to console me.

  “Yeah, just brush it off, Chica. She’ll come around,” Grace said.

  I grabbed my bag from the stairs. “Thanks,” I whispered to them before going inside.

  I felt as if the world around me had come crashing down in a matter of minutes. How do you repair your world when it’s shattered in a bunch of pieces?

  eleven

  Drew

  With my backpack draped across my shoulder, I strode with Preston down West Forty-Second Street in the heart of Manhattan. Sometimes we just walked the streets of New York because we had nothing better to do. We ended up near McDonald’s in Times Square, where loud music enticed tourists to come inside for a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. With the restaurant’s bright lights, loud music and big-screen televisions, we couldn’t resist going inside.

  “Order me a chocolate shake,” Preston said. “I gotta find the restroom.”

  He disappeared into the crowd of people, and I stood in the long never-ending line waiting to order Preston a shake and myself a large fries. Not that I needed to eat again after having pizza at Manny’s, but who could resist McDonald’s fries? Besides, the McDonald’s in Times Square was always a nice place to meet beautiful girls who might be visiting the city for a weekend. You could always tell who the tourists were. They were the ones looking up at the skyscrapers, with their video cameras in hand. Or they were the ones who stopped in the middle of the sidewalk with no clue that they were holding up the foot traffic. You could always find tourists taking photographs with the life-size wax statue of Morgan Freeman or some other celebrity just outside the wax museum on West Forty-second Street.

  Finally making it to the counter, I ordered Preston’s chocolate shake and a large order of fries. I spotted Preston having a conversation with a blond-haired girl wearing a short miniskirt and a cropped top with her stomach hanging out. She definitely wasn’t his type, and I could tell that she was invading his space.

  Preston was reserved and laid-back. He was the guy who cared what girls were feeling or thinking, and he couldn’t bear to see a girl cry. Which is why his last girlfriend, Dusty, had walked all over him. She mistook his kindness for weakness. From then on, any girl who he ended up with him had to meet my approval. I became his conscience. I was the one who reminded him that he had enough money and enough charm to have any girl in the state of New York, or New Jersey for that matter.

  “You just can’t be so eager, man,” I’d told him. “You have to play hard to get a little bit. Make ’em work for the love.”

  “Make them work for it?” he’d asked with a laugh.

  “You laugh, but I’m serious. That’s why you’re always heartbroken at the end of your relationships with women. You put too much of yourself into it. You can’t give them your all—not all at once.”

  I think that he took my advice to heart, because right after that he dated three different girls all at once, and not one of them had captured his heart. From across the room it appeared that the blond-haired girl had accomplished what she’d set out to do: extort money from my very rich friend. He pulled out his wallet and pulled a bill out; handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said just as I walked up.

  He gave her a grin, and I all but dragged him out of McDonald’s by his hair. He’d lived in this area all his life, and he still seemed more like a tourist than a native. Being rich didn’t allow you to interact with those who were less fortunate. Before Preston met me, he’d never even walked the streets of the city. He’d been chauffeur-driven most of his life—at least until he was able to drive himself around. Before last summer, he hadn’t ever tasted a real New York hot dog from a street vendor or ate a slice of Italian pizza. He’d never ridden the subway, tasted Junior’s cheesecake from the flagship Brooklyn restaurant or stopped for a latte at Starbucks in SoHo. He’d never been to any of the boroughs besides Manhattan. He’d been sheltered.

  “What are you doing, man?” I asked after we were outside.

  “She said she was hungry. Said she hadn’t eaten anything in two days.” He was serious.

  “She was hustling you, man.�
�

  “Really? No.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She didn’t look hungry at all. If she hadn’t eaten in two days, you should’ve taken her to the counter and bought her a cheeseburger instead of giving her cash.”

  “She said she was going to the counter and ordering her food right away.”

  I turned around just in time to see Preston’s blond-haired friend walking quickly down West Forty-Second Street—no cheeseburger, no large fry, no chocolate shake.

  “You see that?” I pointed her out. “She hustled you.”

  He laughed when he saw her. “She hustled me.”

  Wearing nothing more than our T-shirts, boxer shorts and tube socks, Preston and I shot hoops using a pair of dress socks as the ball and a makeshift basketball goal—a trash can. He tried with everything he had to block my shot, but I was too smooth. I maneuvered around him with precision and shot the socks into the trash can.

  “Two points!” I yelled.

  “You win,” he said and then headed for the kitchen. “What you got to drink in here?”

  I collapsed onto the sofa to catch my breath. ESPN was on mute on the flat-screen television, while Rihanna’s sexy voice rang loudly through my dad’s expensive speakers—a Caribbean-style song featuring Drake. I started dancing around the room as Preston tossed me a bottle of Gatorade. Having the house to myself for a weekend was not unusual, especially with a sportscaster father who traveled a lot. And it wasn’t unusual for Preston to hang out at my place for the weekend, or for me to hang out at his.

  Without any adult supervision, we’d probably find ourselves playing sock basketball until we were tired or bored; whichever came first. I’d teach him a few hip-hop dances and laugh when he actually tried to do them. Around midnight, we’d take a walk into Midtown and grab some Korean food or a couple of cannoli from the late-night Sicilian place on the corner. In the past, we’d walked over to ESPN Zone and played a few video games—that is, before they closed down in New York.

  As we listened to Mister Cee on Hot 97’s Friday Night Live, I bounced to the music. I had energy and the night was young. For some strange reason, I had an urge to talk to Mari; wondered what she was doing. With parents as strict as hers, she was probably in bed already. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken the time to get her cell phone number, so contacting her would be a long shot.

  “So what you wanna do, man?” I asked Preston.

  “I got a taste for pancakes,” he said.

  “Pancakes? At nine o’clock at night?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s IHOP or Junior’s. Which one?” I asked.

  “Junior’s!” he exclaimed. “In Brooklyn.”

  “Why Brooklyn? There’s a Junior’s right here in Manhattan.”

  “I bet the pancakes are better in Brooklyn,” he said and grinned, and then I knew. He was thinking of Jasmine and wanting to be close to her.

  “Have you been talking to her?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Jasmine. That’s who.”

  “Only at Manny’s a couple of times. I would like to talk to her more, but I don’t think she’s feeling me.”

  “You gotta loosen up a little, man. You’re too uptight. And you gotta be a little more assertive. Ask the girl for her number,” I told him.

  I’d watched him drool over Jasmine for days but never having the courage to ask her out. Whenever he threw any hints, she played him off. It seemed as if they were from two totally different worlds. Jasmine didn’t seem refined at all. She smoked cigarettes, which was a huge turnoff. She was from Bed-Stuy, which was a place I was sure that Preston had never set foot in. And if he ever visited there, he’d stick out like a sore thumb. A preppy white dude wearing a pair of Calvin Klein jeans, low-top Converses and an expensive blazer, who didn’t appear street-smart, shouldn’t be casually walking around some streets in Brooklyn.

  “I’ll get around to it,” he said.

  “When?”

  “As soon as you ask Mari for hers,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “What? I don’t need her number,” I said. “Well, maybe when she starts tutoring me in math…I’ll probably need it then or something…”

  “Do you realize that you always say or something when you’re lying?”

  “What? That’s dumb.”

  “You do,” he said with a smile. “You like her, and you know you like her. Why don’t you just admit it?”

  “I think she’s cool. She’s fun to hang out with…or something.”

  “Let’s go to Brooklyn for pancakes,” Preston said.

  Before I knew it, Preston and I were dressed in old, grubby sweats and on the subway headed for Brooklyn. Using his computer expertise, Preston had located an address and phone number for Jasmine. He called her and she’d agreed to meet us at Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue at midnight. For her to take the risk of sneaking out of the house that late, she was obviously as interested in Preston as he was in her.

  Jasmine was already seated in a corner booth at Junior’s, a small boy next to her—his jaws filled with pancakes as she wiped syrup from his mouth. She gave us a wave as we entered the restaurant.

  “Hi,” Preston smiled.

  “Hi,” she said. “I went ahead and grabbed us a booth.”

  “Thanks. That was very thoughtful,” Preston said and slid in next to Jasmine.

  I removed my Yankees cap and took a seat also.

  “Who are you?” asked the little boy.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jasmine scolded him. “This is my little brother, Xavier. My parents work nights, so he had to tag along.”

  As I watched Jasmine and Preston nervously chitchat about absolutely nothing, I found myself staring at her. She was pretty, but I honestly couldn’t understand Preston’s infatuation with her. There were several pretty girls who would jump at the chance to be with him. Girls who were much more refined and way prettier. But for this girl, he was willing to ride the subway to Brooklyn in the middle of the night and order nothing more than a Diet Coke.

  They were so caught up in their conversation that Xavier and I were completely ignored. I was bored.

  “So you got Mari’s number?” I asked Jasmine.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanna talk to her,” I said. “Can I have it?”

  “Hmm…I don’t know. What do you need to talk to her about?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “I don’t know if I should be giving her number out. Especially if you’re planning on calling her right now.”

  “Well, maybe you can call her and ask her if it’s okay.”

  She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jacket; dialed a number.

  “Hey, Mari, it’s me, Jasmine…”

  After talking about everything else, including the dances that they’d learned during their lunch hour that day, Jasmine finally got around to asking Mari if she could pass her number on to me. She gave me a look as she continued her conversation.

  After hanging up, she looked my way. “She said it’s cool.”

  I keyed Mari’s number into my phone. I didn’t want to seem too anxious, so I waited around before calling; pretended that it wasn’t that serious. In reality, I couldn’t wait to get her on the phone. I wondered if there was any chance that I could see her before heading back to Manhattan.

  “I’m gonna step outside for some fresh air.” I made up an excuse to leave the table; needed privacy. I stepped out into the Brooklyn night air, pulled my cell phone out and dialed Mari’s number. She picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “What’s up, kid?” There was a smile in my voice, and I tried to hide it. “It’s Drew…from school.”

  “Hi.” She sounded as if she’d been sleeping.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Not really,” she said, but I could tell that I had.

  “Guess where I am.”

  “Brooklyn. Jasmine told me,” she said. �
��What are you doing in Brooklyn?”

  “It’s Preston. He had a strong urge for Junior’s pancakes…so…”

  “So you came all the way to Brooklyn for pancakes?” she giggled. “There’s a Junior’s in Manhattan.”

  “Truth?” I asked.

  “Truth.”

  “Okay, Preston wanted to see Jasmine…badly.”

  “Really? He must really like her.”

  “He does, even though he won’t admit how much.”

  “So, you just tagged along for the ride?”

  “Pretty much,” I lied. “Any chance you can get out of the house?”

  “Not a chance. They have chains on all the doors around here,” she said and laughed. “But it’s nice to know that you’re so close.”

  Was she trying to pull my heartstrings? Because it was working.

  “Okay, well, I guess I’ll talk to you later. Even though it’s Friday night and the night is still young…um…”

  “Maybe you can call me when you get home,” she said. “You know…just to let me know that you made it there.”

  “Okay, I’ll do that.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not going to be sleeping, are you?” I asked.

  “I’ll wait up,” she said.

  And with that, I went back inside. I was suddenly in a hurry to get home. I had a phone date—or something. Whatever it was, I was excited about it.

  “Okay, bro. We need to get back to the city,” I told Preston. “Let’s wrap up this little rendezvous. Jasmine…nice seeing you again. Xavier, good to meet you…”

  Xavier gave me a wide grin, and it was then that I noticed his missing two front teeth. I held my hand out, grabbed his little hand in mine and gave him a firm handshake.

  “Stay in school,” I told him.

  “Okay.” He giggled.

  “So I guess I’ll see you at Manny’s on Monday,” Jasmine told Preston.

  “I guess so,” Preston said, agreeing that Manny’s would be their next meeting place. “Can I call you a cab or something?”

  “No. We’ll be fine.” She smiled. “I’ll see you later.”