He gives a weak wave. I notice Band-Aids on three of his fingers.
“I’m Nestor,” I tell him. I look around and notice that most of the class is furiously pounding buttons on their calculators. “I moved here from Fort Hood.”
“You in the Army?” Talib asks as he turns his calculator upside down, attempting to write words with the numbers.
“My dad is. He’s an explosive ordnance disposal specialist.” Noticing Talib’s raised eyebrows, I explain. “That means he disarms bombs.”
“Is he … working right now?”
I sigh. Here it comes. “Yeah, he’s in Afghanistan.”
There’s always an awkward silence after this. A mumbled excuse before I’m on my own again.
But Talib puts his calculator down and whispers, “Is it true that military bases have underground tunnel networks for transferring kidnapped aliens?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you buy rocket launchers at the grocery store?”
“They’re usually sold out.” I smirk.
“Don’t kindergartners have to complete wilderness-survival training?”
“I got a blue ribbon on the tower-of-death ropes course as a six-year-old,” I tell him, stifling a laugh. “The Army should hire you to write their recruitment brochures.”
Talib slaps his desk and laughs, earning us a hard stare from Miss Humala.
I point to the Band-Aids wrapped around Talib’s fingers and ask, “You trying to house-train a tiger?”
Talib gives a slight smile and runs his fingers through his hair. Another pea falls out, and he sighs. “Me? No, not really. My dog ran away a couple of nights ago, and I’ve been looking for him out in the woods. A lot of thorns are out there.” He chuckles nervously and adds, “Yeah, thorns.”
I’m showing Talib some of my other drawings, skipping past my Days in New Haven page, when he flinches and says, “Hey!”
He rubs the back of his neck and reveals fingers covered in butterscotch pudding.
The pea-flicker has upgraded. He cackles at Talib, showing crooked teeth under cracked lips.
Talib looks toward the front of the classroom, but Miss Humala is oblivious, hunched over a student’s desk, muttering, “Mass over volume, not volume over mass! For the fifth time!”
The crying girl in front of me, Maria Carmen, I think, passes Talib a tissue and then goes back to whispering with the girl next to her. “We woke up this morning, and the goats were all gone. When I fed them last night, they were all fine. All we found were tracks leading off into the trees. I know it’s still out there, just waiting to take something else. I’m never walking through the woods again,” I hear Maria Carmen whisper.
She takes something out of her pocket and shows it to the girl. A bright pink tag with the number five on it. It’s the same as the tags I found in the woods, except those have a three and an eight on them. I’m still not sure what they are.
My first day of school has landed me in a tornado of weirdness.
“That’s Brandon,” Talib says, nodding to the pea-flicker as he wipes the pudding from the back of his neck. “I can’t stand that baboon.”
“Yeah, I don’t think he’s too high on my list, either.” Maybe on a list of who I’d like to see pecked by ravens, but I don’t mention that to Talib.
I close my sketchbook and feel two wet globs hit me in the cheek and forehead.
Brandon cackles and slaps his hands together. I wipe as much of the sticky pudding off my face as I can, smearing it on my blank science worksheet.
First days at a new school are about as great as finding a fingernail in your hamburger, but this pudding-throwing, pea-flicking fake soldier is making today one of my worst ever.
“Gentlemen! What exactly is going on?” Miss Humala says as she stands in front of Talib, snapping her neck to the pudding-thrower and then to me.
“War of the pudding cups,” I mumble under my breath.
Miss Humala looks at me. “You’d better clean up in the bathroom,” she says before marching over to Brandon. She seems more upset that I smeared pudding on her precious worksheet than the fact that it was thrown at me by a boot camp dropout in the middle of her classroom.
I scowl at Brandon’s camo pants as I head for the door. He mutters, “Fire for efficiency,” and sneers at me.
“It’s ‘fire for effect,’ moron,” I mutter.
What kind of messed up town has Mom dragged me to? And how can Abuela live here? Between pudding assaults, obnoxious ravens, and whatever’s in the woods that has Talib and Maria Carmen freaked out, I’m feeling sorry that I corrected Mom when she took the wrong exit off the interstate. I should’ve just let her keep driving straight into Mexico.
CHAPTER 4
ABP. ABH.
Always Be Positive. Always Be Happy.
Mom drilled these two mantras into me about three deployments ago. It doesn’t matter that I drew a complete blank today when my math teacher asked where I was from. It’s not important that Mom lost half the kitchen dishes when a box fell off the moving truck on the highway. While Dad is halfway across the world, as far as he’s concerned, everything is fine.
I know that when Dad is deployed, he views himself as a soldier, husband, and father, in that order. He has to so he can do his job. And Mom says we have to help Dad do his job the best he can.
But sometimes it really sucks being his last priority.
I finish my email to him, telling him about Talib and not mentioning the pudding-flicking, soldier-wannabe bully. Or that kids seem freaked out by something in the woods. As far as he knows, New Haven is a small, boring town with no annoying animals or mysterious threats lurking behind trees.
Well, half of that is true.
I close my laptop and go downstairs to Abuela’s kitchen. The smell of pastelitos de guayaba fills my nostrils. My stomach reminds me that I skipped the questionable bean burritos the school cafeteria served at lunch.
“Ay, créeme. No necesitan más vinagre, chica,” I hear Abuela say.
I round the corner and find Abuela in an empty kitchen.
Who was she talking to?
I grab a plate and pile three pastelitos on it. Stuffing my face with Abuela’s guava pastries helps me forget my mom has moved me to a nonexistent town where bullies flick rejected dessert at you and the woods swallow up family pets. The sticky pastry crunches in my mouth as the sweet guava filling oozes out the sides.
“Who thinks your beans need more vinegar, Buela?” I ask, trying to figure out who I heard her talking to.
Abuela throws her hands in the air. “I’ve been making frijoles negros for years. I know how much vinegar it needs. She should stick to … ay, no importa.”
Well, that didn’t get me far.
“Oye, niño,” Abuela says. “Get me a bowl for the beans.”
I have no idea where Abuela keeps anything in her kitchen, so I start opening cabinet doors. In a bottom cabinet next to the fridge, I spot three small pink tags with the numbers two, seven, and nine on them.
They’re the same as the tags I found in the woods and the one the girl in science class had.
Why does Abuela have these?
I finally find a bowl and hand it to Abuela. She starts to hum Celia Cruz’s “Azúcar Negra,” stirring a large pot of frijoles on the stove. Her slippered feet shuffle in a salsa on the floor, and she punctuates her song with a flip of her ladle every time the beans bubble up in the pot. I sit at the small kitchen table and spot a framed drawing of a rabbit holding a bunch of flowers next to the stove. Below the drawing, scrawled in blue crayon, the card reads, Feliz día de madres. Te quiero para siempre. Tu hijo, Raulito.
I ignore that the rabbit my dad drew looks like the result of a radioactive experiment. It’s sweet that Abuela framed his Mother’s Day card. I’ve given Mom lots of drawings over the years, but she never hangs them up. I think it’s because it’s just something else she would have to take down when we move again.
Mom comes in from the li
ving room and plops down next to me at the table, deflating with a heavy sigh. She arches her back, stretching it. With all of Dad’s deployments, my mom has moved our belongings all by herself five times. If she were a superhero, she’d be La Empacadora, faster than professional movers, able to leap giant packing boxes in a single bound.
I set a pastelito on a plate and slide it over to Mom. She puts her arm around me and squeezes my shoulder.
“You know your dad doesn’t like guava?” she says, once again rubbing her thumb over Dad’s wedding ring hanging from her neck. “That man is crazy. At least I know you’ll put your dish in the dishwasher once you’re done. Unlike him.”
“He’s not that messy,” I say, shaking my head.
“Hah! Not that messy. You’d think a military man would be better at making the bed or folding clothes.”
I look at Abuela, and she gives Mom a sympathetic smile.
I press the pastry crumbs on my plate with my finger. Mom does this every deployment. She always goes through a phase where she complains about Dad. It makes it sound like she’s mad at him, but I know the truth. Sometimes it hurts too much missing somebody, so you try to convince yourself you don’t really need them. And you think that trying not to love them so much makes it hurt less when they’re gone.
It usually doesn’t work.
“And your first day? How was it?” Abuela asks, changing the subject.
“Pretty much the same as the nine others I’ve had,” I lie. Though this was definitely the first time I got smacked in the face with pudding. How many points do I get for that?
Mom looks at me, tilting her head in confusion. “Ten first days? Has it really been that many?”
I push my plate away from me. “Yep. And this time it wasn’t even the military’s fault. You and Dad decided to move when we didn’t even have to.”
Abuela’s shoulders slump, and I regret my words immediately. I’m glad we’re living with her. I’m glad Mom and Dad decided we could live with Abuela instead of living on post. I just don’t think my parents get how much it stinks always having to start over.
“Well,” Mom says, brushing crumbs off her hands, “let’s take a tenth first-day selfie for your dad. I bet you earned a thousand points for my challenge.”
I don’t bother to correct her and say it was more like negative fifty points.
Mom pulls her phone from her back pocket, and we snap a picture. She tries to get the pastelitos in the shot, too, but ends up cutting off our heads at the nose. It’s just our crumb-covered mouths and guava pastries.
I clear my throat. “Buela, are there lots of animals in the woods behind your house? You know … like, scary ones?” I chuckle nervously.
Mom looks up from her phone. “Aren’t you a little old to be scared of animals? I thought twelve-year-olds weren’t afraid of anything.”
“No, it’s just that some kids at school were talking about the woods. This one kid lost his dog, and this other girl lost … goats, I think?”
Abuela’s breath catches in her throat, and she coughs.
Mom’s eyebrow rises. “Goats?”
“Cariño, this is Texas,” Abuela says, waving her ladle toward the backyard. “My hairdresser, he carries a hunting rifle to the grocery store. And the bank? The bank raffled off a shotgun to a nine-year-old. There are definitely no animales locos in the woods. They would’ve been completely destroyed. Ya tú sabes.” She smacks her hands together.
Mom puts her hand on my back. “You don’t think they were just making up stories for the new kid, do you? You know, like in Kentucky?”
I shrug. Talib actually seemed nice. “I hope not.”
Before Mom can respond, there’s a sharp knock on the back door. Abuela shuffles over to answer it.
The crying girl from science class, Maria Carmen, is standing on our porch. “Does Nestor live here? You know, the pudding boy?”
“Pudding boy? I’ve been in town exactly three days and I already have a nickname?” I mutter under my breath.
“Who?” Mom looks at me, confused.
Abuela moves aside and motions Maria Carmen into the house, winking at me. Maria Carmen’s inky black hair is in six braids down the back of her head. Her eyes aren’t a watery red anymore, so I guess she stopped crying.
“You should join the trivia club. It meets in Miss Humala’s room during lunch.” She smacks a flyer down on the table. It’s covered in neat handwriting, and the border is decorated with drawings of lions, sharks, eagles, and llamas. They’re not too bad.
A smile grows along the side of Abuela’s mouth. I don’t like the way Mom keeps looking from Maria Carmen to me and then to Abuela, smirking.
I stare down at my empty plate, unable to distract myself with food. “Why do you think I should be in a trivia club?”
Maria Carmen smooths one of her braids with the palm of her hand. “Because in science today, you correctly answered all of Miss Humala’s questions under your breath. I heard you.”
Busted.
Mom looks at me and shakes her head. “He never participates. All his teachers say so.”
Yeah, Mom, I don’t. Waving my hand wildly in the air kind of ruins the whole “under the radar” thing I’ve got going on.
Maria Carmen puts her hands on her hips, tapping her foot. “Well, are you going to join?”
Mom nudges me. “You should join, Nestor. You and your dad are always quizzing each other.” She turns to Maria Carmen. “They’re always quizzing each other.”
We get it, Mom. The problem with being an only child with a deployed dad is that your mom gets to focus all her attention on you.
“I think it’s decided. You join,” Abuela says, pointing at me with her ladle. The look on her face tells me this isn’t up for debate.
Mom kisses my forehead and gets up from the table. “That’s wonderful,” she says. “I’ve got to run. Don’t want to be late for my first day!”
Mom heads out of the house, dressed in light blue scrubs. She’s an intensive care nurse at the hospital in Springdale, a few towns over. She always had a nursing job on post, so this is her first time traveling for work. I’m sure she’s going to take a selfie for Dad in front of her new hospital.
“So you don’t usually join things, I guess?” Maria Carmen asks as Abuela hands her a plate with two pastelitos and pulls out a chair for her.
I shrug. “Not really. Not since I joined a soccer team when we lived at Fort Lewis in Washington.”
“What happened?”
“I practiced for hours, kicking the ball against the side of our house. Drove my mom nuts. I watched soccer drills on YouTube every night.”
“And?”
“We moved before my first game.”
Maria Carmen gives me a sympathetic smile. “Well, look at it this way. Trivia club will give you a break from Brandon.”
Abuela turns from the boiling pot of black beans on the stove. “Who is this Brandon?”
I glare at Maria Carmen and shake my head. Abuela doesn’t need to know about the pudding-thrower. “No one, Buela. Just a kid at school.”
“Por supuesto, no one. I’m sure,” Abuela mumbles as she sits down with us.
“Thanks for the pastelitos, Señora Lopez. You make the best ones I’ve ever had.”
Abuela beams with pride and squeezes Maria Carmen’s hand. “Don’t worry, niña. They’ll find out what happened to your goats. It’ll be okay.”
Maria Carmen lowers her head. “I know. Thanks.”
She takes out a pink tag from her pocket and sets it on the table. “I just wish we could figure out what took them.”
Abuela doesn’t respond, so I point to the tag and ask, “What is that?”
Maria Carmen rubs her thumb over the tag. “It’s an ear tag. We put them on our goats to keep track of them.”
I don’t tell Maria Carmen that I found two of them in the woods. She seems scared enough already of what might be out there. And I definitely don’t tell her that Abue
la has three more tags in her cabinet.
Suddenly, Maria Carmen pushes back from the table and stands. “I … I have to go.”
Abuela and I follow her to the door. She turns and says to Abuela, “Please don’t tell my mom I was here.”
I give them both a puzzled look, but they don’t clarify.
I step outside and watch Maria Carmen disappear up our street, wondering about goats and why her mother wouldn’t want her at our house.
Cuervito, perched in a tree in the yard, screeches above me. “So you survived the first day! And you already got a girlfriend!”
He hops up and down on the branch. “Things are looking up for you, kid,” he squawks.
I consider giving him a rude gesture but change my mind.
“You’d better go away,” I whisper, worried Abuela will hear me outside arguing with the local wildlife. “There’s only so many annoying raven comments I can take.”
Cuervito screeches and beats his wings, the sound thudding through the evening air. “But your abuela said…! Well, never mind.”
I stomp my foot on the ground. “What did she say?”
Cuervito ignores me and dives down, pecking at one of Abuela’s tomatoes. He sails off into the night, but not before pooping on the garden gnome.
I turn back into the house and set the table for dinner by myself. As I put down a second plate, a noise in the backyard catches my attention. I look out the window and spot Abuela. She’s marching off into the woods, a large kitchen knife in her hand.
CHAPTER 5
THE FIRST ANIMAL I EVER HEARD SPEAK was a black-and-white guinea pig named Mrs. Pancake. She lived in a large blue cage at the day care Mom took me to while she worked at a hospital at Fort Benning, Georgia. I fed Mrs. Pancake my unwanted Goldfish crackers and stale pretzel rods.
“Keep ’em coming, kid. Keep ’em coming,” Mrs. Pancake said, rocking on her back and rubbing her swollen, furry belly.
The first time the guinea pig spoke to me, I thought I was just imagining it. I had a pretty hyperactive imagination then. But this guinea pig looked straight at me and struck a deal. “You keep me nose-deep in snacks, and I’ll poop on the toy-hogging snot over there who keeps biting you.”
The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez Page 3
