Not a Chance

by Michelle Mulder

  I imagine Nerick at twelve, ripped apart by his father leaving and ripped apart again every time a new story flew around.

  “Well,” the Eye says, “people will talk. It’s the human condition, I guess. The less you give people to talk about, the less gossip you’ll have to worry about.”

  “Not necessarily,” I say. “Some people have such wild imaginations that they’ll invent things where nothing exists at all.”

  This time, the Eye glares at me openly, so I glare right back. Let her talk. I’ll be gone soon enough anyway. That’s what I figure.

  Thirteen

  I’m not coming back next summer. Not a chance. Not when Aracely’s married and maybe pregnant. Not when Nerick already knows everything I can teach him about bicycles and won’t come by anymore. (Even if he wanted to, I doubt he’d visit, knowing how much fuss it causes.) Surely my parents will understand how torturous it would be for me to come back next summer.

  It’s the second week of August, and next week we’ll start packing for the trip home. I’ll mention something to my parents about saying my final goodbyes, making it very clear that I mean final. I’ll present it like a done deal: I’m not coming back next summer, and it isn’t up for discussion at any family meeting.

  In seventeen days, I’ll be riding my bike again. Or visiting Emily. Or stirring compost with my grandmother. I won’t be sweeping orange dust off the concrete floor of the bedroom I share with my parents.

  “Can I come in?”

  Aracely’s leaning against the door frame, her head tilted toward it, smiling. But her voice is tight, and her eyebrows are pulled together as if she might cry.

  I wave her in and close the door behind her. “What’s up?”

  Her smile disintegrates, and she perches on the edge of my bed. “Vin’s grandmother came by this morning.” She falters, and tears stream down her face.

  I picture Vin lying in hospital, his eyes burned out by toxic mining chemicals. Or his skin disfigured, or a limb gone, or…or…

  Aracely waves away the panic that must be showing in my face. “Don’t worry. He’s fine.”

  I reconfigure Vin into the happy guy in the drawings. “Oh. What happened then?”

  Aracely stares at the floor, hands clasped in her lap. “His grandmother doesn’t want me spending time with you and Nerick anymore.”

  “What!” I exclaim. “You’re not married yet! She can’t tell you how to spend your time.” I want to ask what on earth Aracely’s thinking, marrying into such a nosy and controlling family, but that’s a whole different discussion—one way too similar to the argument we’ve been having all summer long, and I don’t want to go there now.

  “Too many people are talking, Dian.” The tears have stopped now, and she’s looking at me as if she’s asking for something. “Vin’s grandmother says people might turn against me too, and that would reflect badly on our marriage. She wants—”

  “What? For you to give up the right to choose your own friends? To ditch me and Nerick because an old gossip who lives across the road from us has nothing better to do than make up stories?” I’m standing in front of her, fists clenched. “What does she want, Aracely?”

  I try to calm down, without much success. After weeks of trying to figure out how to stop the marriage, now I find out that I only had to go down to the river to talk to Nerick and all bets would be off? How ridiculous is that?

  “I don’t want to stop talking to you, Dian,” Aracely says. “You’re my friend. But you’ll leave at the end of the summer, and I imagine you won’t be coming back. Not for a long time anyway.”

  Her eyes meet mine, and ice water trickles down my back. She knows. I never said a word about not coming back, but she knows.

  You could still come to Canada and leave the gossips behind, I think, but the words sound hollow. No matter how much she hates certain things about where she lives, we both know she’d be miserable in Canada. I get that now.

  “We have to do something,” I say.

  She looks up at me with suspicion on her face, but I’m not hiding anything this time. “I’ll talk to Vin’s grandmother,” I say. “No, better yet, my parents will talk to her. People still respect them, right? They’re the doctors that the priest sent. That’s good, isn’t it? Even if they’re the parents of that terrible girl who talked to Nerick by the river?”

  * * *

  “It’s not our place to meddle in people’s personal lives,” Mom says that evening when I ask her and Dad to visit Vin’s grandmother.

  It’s bedtime. Nerick’s come and gone. And even though we’re not leaving for another two weeks, my bags are all packed. I needed time to think, and organizing stuff always makes me feel better. I’ve even taken a stab at organizing my parents’ things.

  My parents must have noticed all this premature packing, but they haven’t said anything. Mom’s sitting at the teacher’s desk, her finger marking a line in a medical journal that she is reading. My dad’s lying in bed making notes in his day planner. I can’t believe he uses a day planner in a place like Cucubano. I think this is part of my family’s problem. At least he has the decency to put down his pen and look at me.

  “Our job here is to offer help where people want it,” he says, “and if they don’t ask for help, we keep our noses out of it. There’s a very fine line between support and telling people how to live.”

  “And you jump over that line all the time.” I’m lying in bed, arms crossed, staring at the bunk above me. “You were happy to bring Aracely to Canada with us when you thought it would make you look selfless, but now you can’t be bothered to stand up for her in Cucubano. How does that make any sense?”

  “Look,” Mom says, finally taking her finger out of that damn journal, closing its pages and putting it to one side. “We’re not refusing to stand up for her. I just think we can tackle this problem in other ways.”

  “How?”

  My parents glance at each other. Mom nods, and Dad speaks. “If you stop spending so much time with Nerick, this whole thing might blow over on its own. You’ll be old news. People will move on to something else.”

  I turn and stare at him. “You want me to get rid of a friend just so you don’t have to stand up for Aracely? You’re going to let the old bat across the road win?”

  Mom shouts my name so loud that even a deaf bat could hear. So much for all my efforts to keep my own voice calm and even.

  I grit my teeth. I’m not going to storm out like I usually do. I’m staying. Like my parents do when they’re at the Legislature, protesting about the tar sands, or clearcutting, or foreign mining operations, or any of the other bazillion things they’re unhappy about. I’ll stay here all night if I have to, and I’ll tell them I won’t go back to Canada until they do what I’ve asked. That’ll throw them for a loop, especially since I’ve got my bags already packed, two weeks early.

  But they need to know I’m serious about this. They need to listen to me, and maybe the only way I can make that happen is to use the same tactics they use against a government they don’t agree with.

  Protest respectfully and demand respect. How many times have they drilled that into me?

  “Don’t shout at me, Mom.” I sit up in bed and raise my eyebrows at her. “Please.”

  She narrows her eyes but says nothing, just crosses her arms and looks away. Dad takes the cue. “I’m trying to understand your position,” he says. “You do realize that if we talk to Vin’s grandmother, we’d actually be removing any obstacles to the marriage, right?” He looks at me like I haven’t thought this out.

  Do not blow up, I tell myself. Keep calm. “I’m not totally into underage marriage now, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m talking about a person—Aracely—not a protest issue. No matter what I think of her marriage, I’m not just going to sit around while people hurt my fr
iend with a bunch of lies. You might, but I’m not.”

  “Don’t make us out to be the bad guys.” Mom’s arms are still crossed, and she’s still scowling, but she’s not shouting anymore. “We’re not the ones spreading stories, and we’ve told you how you can get the stories to stop.”

  For such brainy and passionate people, they sure abandon their mottos fast when it’s convenient. “What happened to Do what you know is right and If you just stand by and watch, you’re part of the problem?”

  Mom lets out an exasperated sigh, but Dad is looking thoughtful. I’m halfway there.

  “I’m going to bed,” Mom says and goes outside to brush her teeth. Dad follows her. I get up to grab a flashlight and sit back down on my bed.

  “Good night,” my parents say when they come back.

  “I don’t think we’ve finished this discussion,” I answer.

  “Oh, I think we have,” Mom says. “We’re the parents here. We set the boundaries.” She flicks off the light.

  She’s quoting from Raising a Confident Teenager, which she only does when she knows she’s on shaky ground. I flick on my flashlight and shine it on their beds.

  “Turn that off, Dian. It’s time to sleep.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not sleeping and neither are you until we finish talking about this.”

  “Turn off that flashlight.” That’s Mom’s furious voice.

  I train the beam on her.

  Mom flings back the covers. “Give that to me.”

  I bolt out of bed and start running. I know exactly where the bags are, and I have the flashlight, so I know I won’t trip. I shine the light on Mom’s face. She looks confused and a little alarmed. Raising a Confident Teenager doesn’t mention midnight flashlight-tag games at all.

  Dad laughs. I shine the flashlight on him. He looks into the darkness in Mom’s direction. “I’ll race you for her,” he tells her, and all of a sudden, we’re all dashing around in the semidarkness, falling over suitcases, Mom swearing, and me and Dad laughing. Finally, she makes it to the wall switch and turns on the overhead light.

  She’s trying to look serious but doing a very bad job of it, standing there in bare feet, yoga pants and a T-shirt that says I love my chihuahua. (My mother hates dogs, especially small yappy ones. At least my parents walk their talk when it comes to wearing donation clothes.)

  “You ready to talk?” I ask.

  “If it means we can eventually sleep after a long day, yes,” Mom says.

  “I have a feeling,” says Dad, “that the lights won’t all go out again until we agree to what you’ve said, Dian. Am I right?”

  I nod, not smiling anymore.

  “You’re a tough negotiator,” he says, but he looks more admiring than angry.

  “Years of training,” I tell him. “I learned from the best.”

  Fourteen

  The Eye rushes past, ignoring us. Technically, Aracely, Nerick and I should be offended, scandalized, outraged, but I can’t stop grinning.

  “I wish she’d done this sooner,” Aracely whispers in my ear.

  “Who knew she could keep her mouth shut for this long?” Nerick mutters, and we laugh.

  It’s the second-last Saturday before I go back to Canada, and we’re each carrying stuff home from the market. My friends have groceries. I have paper, pencils, an eraser and envelopes that I’ll leave in Aracely’s house with some money for postage. I’ll hide them, so she doesn’t find them until after we leave Cucubano. (She’d object to the money for postage, but I know she doesn’t have money to spare.) I’ve already explained how to call me collect from the public phone in the next village over, if ever they need to. I doubt they’ll call, but I feel better knowing it’s possible.

  “What on earth did your parents tell her?” Nerick asks me when the Eye is far ahead of us. A warm breeze ruffles the tall grasses on either side of the pavement, and we walk on the gravelly edge of the road, ready to jump aside if a truck comes roaring past.

  I shrug. “My parents talked to Vin’s grandmother. Then they all went to talk to the Eye. Apparently, she got hopping mad but didn’t deny anything. Dad tells the story like a huge triumph. Mom’s worried the Eye will turn everyone against us now.”

  Nerick shakes his head. “Everyone knows what Señora Vargas is like, and no one would let her push away the only two doctors who ever come here. You’ve been sent by the priest, after all. Señora will be offended for a while, and then everyone will forget this ever happened.”

  “You’ll be old news, Dian,” Aracely agrees.

  “Thank goodness for that.”

  Thank goodness, and thank my parents. They did even more than I asked them to. Now there’s just one more thing I want them to do before we go.

  * * *

  Their favorite quote is from Gandhi: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

  I’m at the second-last stage right now. I sit cross-legged on my bed, as calm as I can be, while my mother fights.

  “It’s against everything we believe in, Dian!” She pulls up a chair and sits down. “Why do you think we forbade you to ride the bikes all summer? We don’t believe in one person pedaling around, flaunting something no one else owns.”

  “But it won’t belong to Nerick,” I say. “He’ll use it for deliveries, which means he’ll get his work done faster, but mostly he’ll use it to teach bike mechanics to anyone who wants to learn.”

  Mom sighs. We’ve been over this several times now—my plans, how I’m sure they’ll work, and how she disagrees. (I think I’ve almost convinced Dad though. Right now, he’s sitting at the teacher’s desk with a pad of paper, thinking about how to pull this off.) “Look,” Mom says, “I know you’ll do everything in your power to collect bikes and raise money to send them here. I know people have done this kind of thing before, but it could take years. And meanwhile, Nerick will be pedaling around, the only person in the village with a bicycle, and we’ll look like we’ve favored him above anyone else in Cucubano.”

  “But we aren’t just giving him a bike,” I say. “He’s earned it. No one else wanted to learn to fix bicycles, even after Señora Vargas made sure everyone knew I was giving lessons.”

  Mom blinks at me, and her exasperation melts into a condescending tenderness. “Oh, Dian. You don’t really think Nerick only came to learn about bicycles, do you?”

  I feel my cheeks blazing hot, and I can’t look at her. Of course by now I’ve figured out that he likes me. As much as I like him. But what’s the use of thinking about that when we live an entire continent apart, and a whole village flies into panic if we even talk to each other?

  My mother’s gazing at me like I still believe in Santa Claus. I hate how she assumes she knows far more than I ever will, and how it never occurs to her that I might know something she doesn’t. I’d love to tell her about the cycle-tourism guy just to wipe that condescending look off her face, but if Nerick wants to keep it quiet, so will I.

  “The point, Mom, is that anyone could have asked to learn. They didn’t. Nerick did. End of story.” I cross my arms and try to snatch back the meditative calm I had a few minutes ago. “It sounds like you’re worried about what people will think if you give Nerick a chance.”

  “No,” she says, “this is not about Nerick being Haitian, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is about beliefs and what we stand for. This has nothing to do with Nerick specifically.”

  “And that’s why it’s so unfair!” I say. “He worked hard this summer. He actually cares about the bicycles, so why not give him one so he can teach everyone when the other bikes get here?”

  Mom passes a hand over her face, like she’s trying to reason with a toddler. Dad looks at me, concerned. Everything is riding on this one moment. If I don’t say something brilliant right now, bo
th bikes will be tossed into the back of a pickup truck and carted off to the city next Wednesday. Nerick will forget most of what he’s learned by the time the cycle-tourism guy comes back. If he comes back. This bike, and the other bikes we’ll send later on, could change my friend’s future—and the futures of plenty of people in the village—forever. Nerick, the most knowledgeable bike mechanic in a village full of bicycles, could earn enough to keep food on his family’s table no matter what color his skin is, and no one would depend on the whims of a random rich, foreign cyclist.

  “One of the best ways you can help Nerick,” Mom says, “is to help him stay off of Miralis Vargas’s radar. Giving him the only bicycle in the village would be like painting a target on his back, as far as rumors are concerned.”

  She’s right, of course. And I hate that. Why should someone as awful as the Eye have so much power?

  “What if we get her involved?” Dad asks. “Miralis Vargas, I mean.”

  Mom and I both look at him like he’s insane. I picture the Eye flying down the road on a bicycle, shouting her rumors at top volume, like the town crier. She’d crash for sure.

  “She can be the spokesperson, if you’ll pardon the pun.” Dad beams at us and pauses in case we laugh, but when neither of us does, he carries on. “Every campaign needs a voice, right? She’s perfect for it.”

  “Except that she might spread a story that’s completely different from what we tell her,” Mom says.

  Dad’s smile droops.

  “What if we give her a job or something?” I ask. “What if she’s the official list-keeper of who will get bicycles? She’d love that—people coming to her place to have their names written down on a list. I bet she’d stick to the story really well if she were one of the main characters.”