What Can't Wait

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  “So you proposed to my mom. Great solution.”

  “Come on, Marisa.”

  The tardy bell will ring any second. I have to act fast to get him to go away and stay away for good. It hurts to be this close to him, to be reminded of what I threw away.

  “You think I need rescuing? You think you can fix everything? You go around me to my mom like this is some nineteenth-century novel or something. Having my mom breathing down my neck about getting married is the kind of help I don’t need, trust me.”

  Alan’s face goes so sad now that I just want to reach out and touch him. But it’s too late to go back. I already ruined what we had. He just doesn’t know it.

  “How can I make it OK?” Alan asks. There’s still a flicker of hope in his eyes.

  “It’s over, Alan.”

  “I know you don’t mean it, Marisa,” he says weakly.

  “Yes, I do.” I stare him in the eye and try to make my voice like steel. He has to believe that this is the only “I do” he’ll ever get from me.

  “You aren’t—this isn’t like you.” His brown eyes are wet now.

  “Maybe you just didn’t know me,” I say as the second bell rings.

  “Please, Marisa.”

  “Better hurry up, we’re already late.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Good-bye, Alan,” I say. And I leave him standing there. I walk until I get to the end of the hall. Once I’m around the corner, I run. Past the economics class we’re both supposed to go to and up the stairs. I can’t let him see me cry because then he might guess that the last thing I want is to be away from him.

  But when I get to the upstairs bathrooms, I stop short.

  Pedro Jimenez is standing in front of the water fountain with his arm around Brenda’s shoulders.

  chapter 26

  “Look,” Pedro says to Brenda, reaching out to wrap his other arm around me. His smile brings everything back. “Your friend can vouch for me, we’re cousins by marriage. I’m a nice guy, right, Mar?” He squeezes my shoulder hard.

  I want to shake his arm off and push him away, but I’m paralyzed. His cologne is the same.

  “Who said I was looking for a nice guy?” Brenda says. She smoothes her hair and sweeps it over one shoulder. “You got a brush, Marisa?” she asks, already tugging me toward the bathroom. “Later, Pedro,” she says over her shoulder.

  “Come see me when you want some trouble,” he calls to her.

  “Not a word,” Brenda hisses once we’re in the bathroom. “No lectures, OK?”

  “What about Greg? I thought—”

  “Let Greg take care of himself. He’s been spending way too much time around that girl from the tennis team. Way too much time. Like I haven’t noticed.” She punches the button of the hand dryer for emphasis.

  “What?” I shout over the dryer. “He’s totally into you, Brenda, you know that.”

  “Jesus, Marisa!” She walks over to the mirror and smoothes her eyebrows.

  The dryer shuts off, but Brenda’s voice is just as loud as before. “Stop taking everything so serious. It’s time to have some fun. Not everyone wants to spend their last month of senior year moping around in some math teacher’s room.”

  I flinch.

  “You and me always talked about senior year, what a good time we’d have. Pero you haven’t even bothered to hang out with me or anybody for ages.” Brenda crosses her arms.

  “Es que . . . I just haven’t felt like myself.”

  “If you say so,” Brenda says. “But it’s not like you’re the only one with problemas. I miss you, Mari. You act like you don’t care about anything. You walk right by the lunch table without saying ‘hi,’ you never call me back; what am I supposed to do?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been a crappy friend,” I say. “So catch me up. What’s going on?”

  “Just exploring new territory,” she says. She pushes herself up onto the edge of the handicapped sink and swings her legs.

  “You broke up with Greg?”

  “Not exactly, not yet.”

  “But don’t you owe it to him to—”

  “Wait a second,” Brenda interrupts. “Don’t you be telling me what I owe Greg, OK? Look what you did to Alan! He’s loco para ti, and then all of a sudden you just decide to ignore him. No explanation. No way he deserves that.”

  “Maybe it’s me, not him.”

  “Well, he sure as hell don’t know that. And so what if it is just you? I can say that, too. It’s me, not Greg. There. Will that get you off my back? I just want to have some fun, comprendes?”

  Normally I would back off, but I can’t let this go, not now that Pedro’s in the picture.

  “It’s not even about that. Have your fun, no importa. But Pedro Jimenez, he’s—”

  “Damn hot,” Brenda says. “And he’s got the best connections for parties. Lo mejor. Come on, Marisa. We’re only seniors once. This is it. You’ve got to get out and enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “But what if—”

  “What if nothing. Ay, Marisa. We have got to get you out of this rut. You talk like you’re thirty years old, and you’re barely going to turn eighteen. What you need is a good party. Pedro told me about one next weekend. All the seniors who—”

  “No,” I say. It makes me feel sick just to think of being anywhere near him. And it would be even worse to see him with Brenda. “I can’t.”

  “What is your deal?” she snaps.

  “Please, can we just stop talking?” I close my eyes and start to tremble. I need to get away fast because a big wave of sadness is coming, and it’s going to hit me soon. But there’s no time.

  The tears run in straight lines down my face.

  “God, Marisa, don’t cry. Forget what I said, I didn’t mean to be so damn nasty.” Brenda squeezes me tight. “Don’t worry about it, OK?”

  “But I am worried,” I whisper into her shoulder.

  May

  chapter 27

  “Ma, if you still want to go to Mass, we have to leave soon,” I call.

  It’s Wednesday afternoon, Mami’s day off. She talked Gustavo into watching Anita so that we can go to Mass and light some candles before tomorrow’s AP calculus exam.

  “Mami?”

  “Sí, mija, I’m just looking for mi rosario.” Her voice is muffled, and I can hear her going through her drawers in the bedroom.

  I stand up from the kitchen table. “Did you check in here? It’s probably with your other church stuff.” I pull open a drawer and sift through layers of prayer cards and Sunday bulletins.

  As I’m pushing aside a copy of Oraciones para Madres/ Prayers for Mothers, something catches my eye, an envelope at the very back of the drawer. I slide it out and see that it’s got my name on it, and it’s postmarked February 26.

  My heart is pounding. I don’t know what I feel more of, excitement that this letter came for me at all, or anger that it was kept from me. I’m still staring at the unopened letter when my mom walks into the kitchen.

  “I found it.” She holds up the rosary. “What is that, mija?” she asks. She slips her reading glasses on.

  “When did this come?”

  “That? Ay, no sé.” She hesitates and rolls the rosary beads between her fingers. “I meant to tell you about it, mija, but things got so crazy. Plus you were busy with Alan and taking care of Anita—”

  “Come on, Mami. Why did you hide this from me?”

  “I wasn’t hiding it,” she says. “Es que I just didn’t want—”

  “It’s addressed to me.” I tap the envelope. “Marisa Moreno.”

  “Mija.” Mami puts her hands together like we’re already in church. “Dime, does Veronica Gomez ever come home to see her family? She wasn’t even at her brother’s wedding. Yolanda says that she barely calls.”

  “Vero joined the army, Ma. She’s stationed in Germany. Of course she can’t just come home whenever.”

  “I just knew it would be the same for you. How could I mak
e it without you, Marisa? I need you here, helping me. The family needs you. College is good, but you could go here. Houston’s good enough, isn’t it?”

  I turn the envelope over in my hands.

  “I’ve been praying for you since forever, mija, wanting good things for you. But if you leave, you won’t come back. And then what will I do? And what about la chiquita?”

  That is so low, dragging Anita into this. Mami even reaches onto a shelf by the stove and takes down my favorite picture of her.

  “Nobody can take care of her like you,” she says.

  I start to tear the envelope open.

  “Mija, please don’t.” Mami lays her hand on the letter.

  I pull it away and hold it against my chest. “You’ve already tried that, Mami. Go ahead, go on to Mass without me.”

  “Please, Marisa,” she says. “The letter doesn’t even matter. Don’t you want to be with Alan and stay with your friends? There are colleges right here.”

  “I’m going to open it now.” I slide my finger all the way under the flap of the envelope.

  “After everything, sometimes you can be so ungrateful!” Mami says all of a sudden, but she doesn’t move. I can feel her looking over my shoulder.

  When I refold the letter, I look up and see that she’s crying.

  “Oh, Mami,” I say.

  “The main thing is that they accepted you,” Ms. Ford tells me the next morning. She lowers the letter to her desk and picks up her breakfast taco.

  “But the response date already passed. What can I do now?”

  “There must be something. Let me check into it, I still know a few people at the university.”

  “OK, miss. But I—”

  Ms. Ford waves my words away. “You just worry about the exam today. Good luck!”

  In the testing room, I line up my pencils and look around at the other kids from my class. A few people look so nervous they should have a puke bucket by their desks. But my calculus buddy Julio just grins. I know he’s thinking that we are so ready for this.

  There are plenty of questions I don’t understand. I skip them like Ms. Ford taught us to and finish all the ones I do know just before time is called for the first section. The second section even goes a little better than the first. When the test proctor calls time, I almost can’t believe it. A year, practically a whole year of work, and it’s over just like that. I kind of feel like when you fall asleep in a movie and all of a sudden the credits are rolling, and you don’t know what the hell happened. You don’t know if you liked the movie or hated it or if you wasted your ten bucks. And there’s no way to figure it out because it’s already over.

  I have ten minutes before lunch, so I do the only thing I can think of and wander down the stairs to Ms. Ford’s classroom. I tap the window on the door and wait for her to look my way. When she does, I give her two thumbs up. She tells the class something, then comes to the door.

  “You look pleased,” she says.

  “Yeah, it went pretty good, I think.” I want to say more, like ask her about this one question on derivatives, but we’re not allowed to discuss anything on the exam for forty-eight hours.

  “Listen,” Ms. Ford says, “the dean of the College of Engineering is supposed to call me back later today. I’ll keep you posted on anything I find out.”

  “Thanks, miss.”

  I’m walking away from Ms. Ford’s room when I hear Brenda’s footsteps behind me. I know it’s her long before she gets close.

  “Boo!” she shouts, grabbing my shoulders from behind.

  “Yikes!” I say, really making a show of it. “Seriously, Brenda, I don’t think you’ve actually snuck up on me since middle school.”

  “It’s hard to be sneaky in heels,” she admits. “So? How was it?”

  “Not bad. I think I might actually have passed. Sucky thing is we don’t find out until July.”

  “Not to freak you out, but it’s usually the tests I think I did good on that I end up failing.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “You want some French fries? On me?”

  “OK,” I say. And then we’re walking together toward the cafeteria, almost like nothing was ever wrong between us.

  chapter 28

  “I’m going to read todo esto,” Anita says, holding up a picture book.

  “OK,” I say. I pull her into my lap. I’m lucky to get away with it. Lately she’s five going on fifteen.

  “Mar-tin was mad,” Anita begins. She doesn’t go on until I give her a smile. “Mar-tin was mad and sad. Mar-tin was mad and sad and also lone . . .”

  “Sound it out, chiquita.”

  “Also lone-lee.”

  “Good girl.”

  I try to focus while we read the rest of Martin’s Mess, but my thoughts drift. Things are OK with Brenda as long as I don’t think about how “friendly” she’s become with Pedro. But I miss Alan so bad.

  It’s like Anita can read my mind, because when she finishes the book, she asks, “How come I don’t see Alan nunca?”

  “Es que . . . I hurt his feelings.”

  I jump up to kill a roach that’s creeping along the wall opposite us. I hope she’ll forget about Alan by the time I get back from flushing it down the toilet.

  “Did you say sorry like Martin?” Anita asks.

  I sigh. “Things in real life aren’t always like in books, Anita.”

  “Like hell!” She jumps up and puts her hands on her hips.

  “Anita! Don’t say that.”

  “Mommy does.”

  “Well, it’s a word for grown-ups, not little girls.”

  “So are you going to say sorry like you’re ’posed to?” The bossy look on her face makes her a very convincing miniature of Cecilia. I almost laugh.

  “It’s not funny.” Anita gives me a long, disapproving look, then scoops up the book again and moves to the edge of the couch, as far away from me as she can get. She flips through the pages slowly, a determined look on her face. She stops on one page, following the text with her finger and mouthing the words, then thumbs forward a few more pages. Finally she holds the book up with the pictures out toward me, like she’s the story-time lady at the library. “Read here,” she says.

  I scoot a little closer to her. “OK. It says, ‘Martin was not mad anymore. Now Martin was just sad. Will Grandma ever love me again? That was what he wanted to know.’”

  Before she turns the page, Anita carefully shows the pictures to me and to the stuffed animals she lined up on the couch earlier. Martin, the overweight teddy bear, is standing outside his grandmother’s house, apparently too scared to knock.

  Anita taps the first word on the next page.

  “Grandma came outside and told Martin how happy she was to see him.”

  Anita shows the pictures and turns the page, and I read on.

  “‘You aren’t mad at me?’ Martin asked. “‘I’m sorry for breaking your vase.’”

  “Grandma told him that she forgave him already. She was just waiting for him to come see her.” In the picture, Grandma hugs Martin.

  “Keep reading!” Anita says.

  “Martin knew what it was like to be mad and sad,” I read. “But he knew his favorite way to be was GLAD. And that’s just how he felt when Grandma forgave him. The end.”

  Anita closes the book. “Now you going to say sorry?”

  I half nod, half shrug.

  “If you don’t, you’re going to be really sad. And I’ll be mad.” She brushes her bangs out of her eyes and gives me her best grown-up look.

  “We’ll see, Anita,” I say.

  “So you’ll make Alan glad again so that el padre will call you man and wine at church and I can be the flowered girl?”

  She doesn’t miss a thing. I ignore the “man and wine” bit, but she keeps at it until finally I text Alan to see if he’ll meet me before school tomorrow. He doesn’t respond until much later when I’m already in bed, and even then it’s just a one-letter text: “K.” But
I’ll take what I can get.

  chapter 29

  I don’t know what to do with myself while I wait for Alan under the oak tree. I’m nervous and excited, hopeful and scared, plus a half dozen other emotions I don’t really have names for. Basically, I’m feeling everything all at once.

  I lean against the tree and try to imagine how things were, that easy closeness between us. I close my eyes and let the good memories and the warmth of the morning draw me in.

  “Marisa.”

  I open my eyes. “Alan!” When I try to hug him, he steps away. I think about all the time separating us from the last night we were together. The way I’ve acted, he has a right to be mad.

  “I brought you Krispy Kremes,” I say, pulling the box of doughnuts out of my backpack.

  Alan barely glances at it. “Not hungry, thanks.”

  “Oh, OK.” I drop the box and sit back down by the tree. “Do you have time to talk?”

  “I guess.” He hesitates. I think he’s going to sit crosslegged by me, like always, but he doesn’t. He sits down more than an arm’s length away and turns his body at an angle so that he isn’t really facing me. He picks at the edge of his sketchbook.

  “So?” he says.

  I know it’s my job to start this conversation, but I don’t know how to crack through the awkward silence. And with the way he’s sitting, I can’t even see his eyes. I feel like I’m talking to his shoulder.

  “I miss you, Alan.”

  “It’s been a while,” he says flatly.

  “The way things have been between us, it’s not what I wanted. You’ve always been there for me, and I—”

  “That’s right, I’ve just been there to you. Off to the side. Not important. Disposable.”

  I think of Anita’s little book and its easy apology. I was stupid to think a few words could make everything up to him.

  “I’m sorry, Alan, I—I messed up so bad I don’t know where to start.”

  “Maybe with the part where you stopped speaking to me without telling me why?” he says. He hunches over a little and starts shading something in his sketchbook.