Surviving High School

by Lele Pons

  When I ring the doorbell I half expect him to answer without his shirt on, but sadly he is fully clothed. And he’s not alone! There’s a tiny girl in pigtails by his side. She’s dragging a stuffed bear back and forth across the floor.

  “Hey Lele! This is my little sister, Aya. Aya, this is Lele, I go to school with her.”

  “I’m four!” Aya holds up four fingers.

  “I didn’t know you had a baby sister! She’s so cute!” I go into full-on gush mode.

  “Lele is pretty and has pretty hair,” Aya speaks into Alexei’s leg. “She looks like Elsa from Frozen.”

  “Cute, and a genius, wow,” I say. “Aya, I think you and I will be great friends.” Aya laughs shyly, hiding her face behind the bear.

  “She gets shy sometimes,” he says. “Come in, I’ll pour you some lemonade.”

  “Can’t say no to lemonade,” I say, and then immediately start replaying it in my mind. Can’t say no to lemonade? Can’t say no to lemonade. Can’t say no. Did I just make myself sound like a floozy with no self-control? Agh, again with the overthinking! I’d take a chill pill if only I had one.

  Inside, the house is perfectly air-conditioned. There’s an easel where Aya has been finger painting and an array of photos of Alexei with Aya and their parents, who are, surprise surprise, very attractive. I swear this could be a family of Barbie dolls. What is his mom, like twenty? I squint at the photos, trying to figure out this sorcery. Alexei pours me lemonade and I thank him, but try to act cool about it like I’m not some kind of lemonade fiend in a helpless lemonade trance.

  “Okay,” he says, leaning on the kitchen counter, “where do we start?”

  “Well, we start with a scenario or situation, and then stage it, basically. It’s just you and me today, so we should do something simple that just involves two people. One I’ve been meaning to do for a while is basically about how much easier life is for guys than it is for girls.”

  “Ha! That’s so not true,” he says, smirking.

  “It is true! Life is so much harder for girls!”

  “Oh yeah, tell me one way. No, tell me two ways.”

  “Umm, okay, easy. First of all, guys can pee standing up practically wherever they want. A couple of weeks ago when we were walking home from school I had to pee so badly but I couldn’t do anything about it. Meanwhile, you just went over to a tree and that was that!” Did I just say that? Suddenly, I don’t care, I’ll say anything. His smile and sparklingly warm blue eyes tell me that I can be myself, they tell me he’s happy I’m here. Pray to Jesus that I’m reading them right.

  “Okay, okay, that’s fair. One more,” he allows.

  “Easy. That same day it was really hot out and you got to just take your shirt off, but again, there was nothing I could do. I was hot as hell, but could I take my shirt off? Noooo, ’cause I’m a girl.”

  “Hey, if you wanted to take your shirt off I would not have stopped you.”

  “Pervert!”

  “Just sayin’.”

  “What’s a pervert?” Aya asks. She’s sliding around the floor on top of her bear.

  “Remember we talked about grown-up words? This is one of them,” he says.

  “Pervert! Pervert! Pervert!” she chants while stomping her feet.

  “Great, my parents are going to love this. You’re a troublemaker, Lele Pons, you know that?” And there it is, that wink of his, as rare and beautiful as a comet.

  I manage to snap myself out of this reverie and get down to business.

  • • •

  These are the scenes we film: Me struggling with my hair in front of the mirror, me struggling to find the right outfit, me having to pee so badly. Alexei easily combing his hair with one hand, Alexei easily picking out a T-shirt, Alexei easily peeing in the bushes like it’s no big deal. Then, Alexei playfully nudges my shoulder and then, because I can’t take the injustice, I punch him in the balls, just like I imagined doing when he tried to give me a high five. This is getting to be a habit.

  All spliced together it looks really cool, like Alexei and I are old buddies, partners in crime, collaborators. And you can only tell a little bit how much I just want to climb on top of him and tear his clothes off with my teeth. I mean, what? Who said that? *Looks around suspiciously*

  Aya, who has been watching us film very patiently, wants to go swimming.

  “I could go swimming,” Alexei says. “Are we all done with the video?”

  “Yep.” I click UPLOAD and smile.

  “Awesome, do you wanna go swimming with us? There’s a pool out back.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you do know how to swim, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course, I just didn’t bring my bathing suit, so, you know.”

  “You can wear one of Mommy’s!” Aya shouts. “Swim-ming, swim-ming, swim-ming!”

  “Good thinking, Aya,” Alexei says. “My mom has tons of bathing suits. I’ll grab you one.”

  “Ummmm . . .” Am I ready for Alexei to see me more than half naked? Yikes.

  “Come on, it will be great. I don’t want you to leave yet. I like having you around.”

  “Well, okay then! Sign me up.” I blush like a ripe tomato, wait until he’s in the hallway closet to gleefully bury my face in my hands.

  • • •

  There they are, those washboard abs etched from pure bronze glistening in the sun. Alexei is coating himself in sunblock—abs, arms, neck, chest—while I watch from the bathroom window, trying to squeeze myself into the microscopic spandex bikini that belongs to Alexei’s mother, a.k.a Miami Barbie. The top zips down the front so you can adjust how much cleavage you wish to reveal, but I have to keep it almost all the way down if I want to fit into it at all. I’m overflowing! I can’t go out there like this! I look obscene! Pornographic!

  Alexei, on the other hand, looks like a cutout from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog—wholesome, classic. I prop my chin up on the bathroom window to watch him adorably blowing up a pair of water wings for Aya. I slip into a pleasant daydream: Alexei is my husband and this is our home, Aya is our precious daughter learning to swim, splashing happily, everything has worked out, life has fallen into place, I’ve found my Prince Charming and—HOLY MOTHER OF GOD! Alexei’s father pops up in front of the window, catching me in the act of staring at his son. I jump back, holler like a baboon, fall on my ass. The daydream vanishes; the spell is broken. Once again, I am a joke. There’s nothing I can do but laugh.

  13

  3 Signs That Show a Person Is Latin

  (5,000 Followers)

  Quick question: Who on earth decided that Frisbee golf is a sport? Golf itself is barely a sport to begin with, but when you mix it with a plastic, Day-Glo, semi-aerodymanic disc, any semblance of legitimacy or prestige is zapped right out. It is an activity for the old and senile, the recently lobotomized, and, apparently, high school juniors. Coach Washington has us chasing these wayward flying saucers all over the soccer field for the entire ungodly forty-five minutes of gym—the sight is laughably tragic.

  In case you’re in the mood to be bored to death, this is how you play: You toss the Frisbee in the direction of a flag, which is supposed to represent a hole. You try to get it to the flag in the least amount of throws possible, then write down your number with a tiny orange pencil, then go on to the next flag, then the next. At the end of the game whomever has the lowest total of throws written down wins the game. I think.

  I don’t really know and I’m definitely not following the rules because I couldn’t possibly care less and because as soon as I start paying attention then the whole thing will become real, and once you’re someone who has played Frisbee golf you can never be someone who has not played Frisbee golf.

  Coach Washington keeps shouting at me, “Lele, you’re doing it all wrong. Come on, it’s just like regular golf except with a Frisbee!” which literally means nothing to me. I’m sorry, do I look like Tiger Woods? Maybe I could pass for one of his foreign supermodel blonds,
and after almost an hour of Frisbee golf I’m definitely in the mood to bash into someone’s luxury vehicle. . . .

  • • •

  Okay, believe it or not, this story is not about Frisbee golf. It’s about what happens after Frisbee golf in the locker rooms while we’re changing out of these neon mesh uniforms and into our regular, non-night-vision-alien clothes. I’ve just opened my locker when my phone starts to ring. I forgot to put it on vibrate for school. And, because I am who I am, I can’t just have a regular ringtone that comes with the iPhone (Sencha, Ripples, By the Seaside, Default, you know), I have to have it set to “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee. For those of you who don’t know it, this song is a fast-paced, rhythm-based, drum-machine treat that more or less just repeats “A ella la gusta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina), como le encanta la gasolina (dame mas gasolina)” over and over. In other words (English words): she likes gasoline (give me more gasoline), how she loves gasoline (give me more gasoline). In the world of Daddy Yankee (also known as Puerto Rico), “gasolina” can refer to either the street life or to a cocktail made from rum and fruit juice . . . it is unclear which “gasolina” this song is actually about.

  Yes, this is my ringtone. Apparently I can’t be normal, not even once. So, the ringtone goes off and it is loud, and everyone is looking at me like “ummmmm.” Everyone, that is, except one person: Yvette Amparo. That’s right, Yvette Amparo, sworn nemesis, is not staring at me, because she is too busy dancing to my reggaeton ringtone. She’s into it; she gets it. Gasp! Maybe we’re not so different, she and I.

  Then, everyone’s staring at her instead of me. The girls don’t know what to make of it, it’s like a giraffe at the zoo doing . . . I don’t know, what would be weird to see a giraffe do? It would be like a giraffe at the zoo dancing to reggaeton. There you go.

  When she notices everyone staring, she stops.

  “What?” she asks with breezy, popular-girl confidence. “A Latina can’t get down to a little reggaeton?”

  “Whoa, you’re Latina?” I say. I never knew, but Miami, duh. I mean there are a lot of us here.

  “Puerto Rican, obviously.” She frames her own face, imitation-diva style. “What did you think Amparo was, Japanese?”

  “No, I thought it was just pure evil.” (I can’t believe I said that!)

  “You’re a riot.” She laughs, like actually laughs.

  “I’m Venezuelan, actually.” It blurts out of my mouth. “I can’t believe we’re both Latina.”

  “Shut up,” she says. “Your skinny butt looks like it’s from Sweden.”

  “Hey,” I say. “First of all, thank you for calling me skinny. But second of all, my butt is fat!” I turn around and demonstrate, jiggling clumsily back and forth. Always a jiggler, never a twerker.

  “Wow, you’re really serious.”

  “I’m ALWAYS serious,” I say, and we both laugh.

  “Hey,” she says. “Are you gonna make a Vine about this?”

  “You’ve seen my Vines?” I ask, surprised.

  “Girl, really? Everyone has seen your Vines. You’re hilarious, and now that I know you’re not a bitch, I can like you just like everyone else does. Oh, and I like your new look, by the way. Very sophisticated.”

  OKAY, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? It means pigs can fly, hell has frozen over, the moon is blue, cows can dance on ice, fish can swim—wait. You get the point: the unthinkable has become a reality: Yvette Amparo and I had a conversation that wasn’t aimed at destroying each other’s lives. For the first time in my life I truly believe that nothing is impossible.

  Imagine how different these first months of school would have been had I known Yvette and I had this one deep-seated thing in common? Would it really be so politically incorrect for us all to wear signs with our race printed on them? Well, probably yes.

  Luckily, I have found in my experience that if you want to know if someone is Latino, all you have to do is look for three telltale signs.

  Reggaeton

  Reggaeton wasn’t always first on this list, but it’s getting promoted ever since it identified Yvette as Latina and thus became an olive branch of sorts. From what I’ve observed, if you’re not Latino, you don’t get reggaeton. I mean, I barely even get it, probably because it’s not something to “get,” it’s something to just feel, an excuse to just let it all go, leave the world behind. When a white person catches you wigging out to reggaeton, they try to pretend they don’t see you, like you’re breaking some major law by having a little fun and they want to make sure no one thinks they’re part of this debauchery. Get yourself invited to one of our weddings, on the other hand, and you will be drowning in a sea of Latina ladies letting loose, no shame anywhere to be seen. As it should be.

  The Telenovela Slap

  The telenovela is a distinguished art form in which Latinos act out over-the-top dramatic situations and exaggerate every syllable for the sake of our entertainment. They kill each other for money, they sleep with each other’s husbands/brothers/fathers/sons, and wear enough makeup to paint an entire town—in other words, it is a soap opera for the Latina lady (or gentleman, if that’s the kind of thing he’s into. No judgment). As you can imagine, with all of the elaborate backstabbing that goes on, there is also a fair amount of slapping. You can spot a Latina girl by her courage and audacity to slap a bitch. It doesn’t matter who you are—male, female, ugly, attractive, hero, villain—if you cross a Latina, you will get the telenovela slap.

  Loud Cursing

  Latino guys and girls are more, let’s say, self-expressive than your average person. We feel our feelings deeply and aren’t ashamed to demonstrate them to the world. For example, if your mom calls you to tell you to come home when you’re having a perfectly good time with your friends, you might start cursing loudly (in Spanish) into the phone, not having a care in the world about who is around to hear you. And, yes, we Latino folk do have a great deal of respect for our parents, but that doesn’t mean we can’t curse at them. In our culture, at the appropriate time, a round of loud cursing is just the way we relate to each other. Other times, I’ll throw a curse word or two at my mom and end up getting telenovela-slapped.

  So, there you have it, the Lele Pons official guide to spotting a human being of Latino origin. Of course, just because you can spot their Latino-ness doesn’t mean you will automatically know what type of Latino they are. Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Argentina . . . the list goes on and on. A Latino or Latina can be from any of these places and you don’t want to assume which, because when you assume you make an ass of you and me, and also you will be risking the dreaded telenovela slap.

  Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn you. (Quote by Taylor Swift, least Latino person on the planet.)

  • • •

  “You’ll never believe what happened today in gym,” I say to Alexei when he calls me later that night. “Yvette and I realized we’re both Latino and I think now we don’t hate each other anymore.” He’s taken to calling me fairly frequently, just to say hi or tell me about something funny he thinks we could film. Sometimes he says he just wanted to hear my voice, which is pretty intimate if you ask me.

  “So she likes you now because you’re not just a white girl? That’s sort of racist.”

  “Well, sort of. More like racial elitism.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyway, that’s not really the point. The point is now we gotta film ‘3 Signs That Show a Person Is Latin.’ Can you come over in like an hour?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Great, love the enthusiasm. Oh, and Alexei?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ll have to be okay with getting slapped.”

  • • •

  CUT TO: Fourteen takes of the telenovela slap later and Alexei is icing his face, trying not to cry. Way to take one for the team!

  14

  And Thus . . . a Friendship Was Born

  (5,722 Followers)

  Ah, December, month of jo
lliness and togetherness and possibility, month of Styrofoam snow and spray-painted frost and waiting in line at the mall to get photographed with a fat old man who is most likely a disgruntled pervert with a shaky financial history. And no, I’m not talking about Uncle Freddie, who is in Miami with his wife and three children for the entire month. Let’s be real, December is really Santa’s month, whether he deserves it or not.

  You’d think that being sixteen I would no longer have to go through the whole ordeal of dressing up and waiting in a forty-five-minute line to get an annual Santa pic, but alas, you are mistaken. Uncle Freddie and Aunt Sylvia and their darling Kyle, Suzie, and Johnny are in town and spirits are preternaturally high. Preternatural is a word I learned in English last week that basically means “supernatural” or “beyond natural.” So why not just say supernatural, you might ask? Well, earthling, because preternatural sounds oh so much cooler. Plus, it never hurts for people to think of you as the smart one in a group. Hey, do not call me a nerd, okay? I’m just slowly working on my new brand of mystique and sophistication. Lele 2.0, to be revealed in 2016.

  Anyway, so we’re waiting in line with Uncle Freddie and Co., the kids high on gummy bears and the grown-ups buzzed on white wine spritzers. I’m surrounded by bumbling imbeciles. Lovable imbeciles, my lovable imbeciles, but imbeciles nonetheless. Johnny says, “Where do monkeys like to hang out? The monkey bars!” Squishing the so-called punch line right up against the joke so no one has time to guess the answer or even understand that a question was being asked. Uncle Freddie follows this up with “What’s the difference between your mom and a bowling ball? You can only fit—”