by Ann Aguirre
So I watch as Sadie uncaps her marker and finds a clean spot in the stall.
* * *
I’d found out I was moving to Healy just a few weeks before, when I was tucked under the covers in my family’s apartment in Houston, trying to read Animal Farm for English class. My mother walked in and asked if we could talk. “We’re sending you to live with Tía Lucy,” she told me from her seat at the foot of my bed.
“You’re sending me where?” I said, shutting my book, which was the only good part about having this conversation. I swear, if this dude wanted to write about the Russian Revolution, why not just write about it and skip the animal stuff?
“To live with your tía Lucy,” my mother repeated, even though she knew I heard her the first time. “In Healy. We’re driving you there Friday.” She patted my leg and looked like she was trying not to cry.
I think she’d waited until I was in my pajamas to make this announcement, maybe because she thought I wouldn’t throw a fit and run out of the house dressed in old boxer shorts and a black T-shirt with holes in the armpits. Which I didn’t. But I definitely thought about it.
I stared at my mom, trying to take in her words. She’s beautiful, my mother, with olive skin and hands as soft as a baby’s even though she works as the manager at the Happy Washateria and does laundry all day long. But lately there are gray hairs popping up around her temples and she has a new, tiny double chin. She’s gained about twenty pounds since everything that happened with my brother, Jorge. My dad’s lost exactly the same amount.
“Mom, no,” I answered, sitting up. “I don’t want to go live with Tía Lucy in Healy. I want to stay here. With you and Dad.” And with my friends, I thought to myself. Even if lately there had been a lot of awkward glances at the cafeteria table and too many texts that they responded to with just a K.
“Carmen, please don’t fight me on this,” my mother said, taking a deep sigh. “This is only for a little while. Maybe only until Christmas or just for this school year. I think it would be good for you.”
I guessed my mom had seen what Luis and Nestor had scribbled on my red school binder. When she’d come home from work, it had been sitting on the kitchen counter with all my other school junk. But it was nothing. I knew it was just a joke because when Luis and Nestor laughed at it, I did, too.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I asked, and my throat tightened up. “Why are you kicking me out?”
My mother winced and I felt both glad and guilty.
“We’re not kicking you out, preciosa,” she said. Then she did start to cry—not sobbing hysterically or anything, but there were tears sliding down her round apple cheeks. “We all need a … little break. A fresh start. And your dad and me need … some time.”
Before everything that happened with Jorge, my dad used to hurry home to our apartment from his job at Discount Tire and kiss my mom’s neck and growl like a tiger in a way that made me roll my eyes even though I knew I was lucky to have parents who were still in love when almost everyone else I knew had parents who were divorced. But not long after the start of the school year, Dad had started coming home hours after his shift had ended and sat in the living room, flipping through the channels on the TV and picking at a plate of leftovers that I warmed up for him. Sometimes if I stayed up late enough I would hear him yelling at my mother through the wall that separates their room from mine.
My mother never yelled back. She just cried. Like she was doing now, here in my bedroom. I stared at my legs. They looked like two long, skinny mountain ranges under the quilt my abuelita made me. Everything felt off balance and strange, like we were rehearsing a scene from a play we might perform someday. A tragic play like Shakespeare would write if he wrote about Mexicans living in Houston in the early twenty-first century.
“Carmen, your dad and I love you so much,” Mom said, leaning over to touch my face. I let her even though what I really wanted to do was shrink back and slide under my quilt and turn out the lights and imagine I lived in a parallel universe where everything in my life was like it was before.
“I love you, too,” I said. Because I did, even though I was upset.
My mom smiled, still touching my face.
“Listen, you don’t have to go to school for the rest of this week,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Not if you don’t want to.”
I looked at my copy of Animal Farm and thought about what Nestor and Luis had written on my red binder. I remembered the tight smile Ana gave me in the lunch line when I asked her what was going on this weekend.
“Nothing really,” she’d said.
I looked at my mom and nodded. “Okay,” I answered. “I’ll stay home and pack.”
* * *
On my first day at Healy High, I had to beg Tía Lucy not to go in with me. It was bad enough that she had to drive me when I could just as easily have walked.
“Honey, I know you’re a big girl, but I just want to make sure you get inside all right,” she said. When she called me a big girl I gave her a look. Tía Lucy is a nurse at a pediatrician’s office, and sometimes she forgets I’m not five and she can’t bribe me with lollipops. Besides, the walk from Tía Lucy’s beat-up Toyota Corolla to the front doors of Healy High School was about twenty feet.
Still, I knew she was just trying to be nice to me. She had tiptoed around me the entire weekend, ordering pizza for dinner and letting me watch whatever I wanted on television.
And she never mentioned Jorge once.
That first day I finally persuaded her to let me go in by myself and I found the main office and got my schedule and, just like that, I was a tenth grader at Healy High School, Home of the Tigers.
At my school in Houston you had to wear a mandatory school shirt and jeans and everybody had to have a laminated student ID on a lanyard around their necks at all times. The words SAFETY EXCELLENCE RESPECT were printed on the lanyard. Or at least they were until kids starting blacking out some of the letters so they just read SEX. Then they started giving out lanyards without words.
But at Healy High you can wear whatever you want as long as it’s not too short or too tight or too revealing. Also, there isn’t a police officer patrolling the campus all the time, and the sport everyone cares about isn’t soccer but football. There are more white kids at Healy High than at my old school, but just like at my old school all the white kids sit together in the cafeteria and all the black kids sit together and all the Mexican and Salvadoran kids sit together, which is how I ended up with Sadie and Claudia on my very first day, eating my lukewarm school cafeteria pizza while they asked me about Houston.
“What’s it like living in the city?” Claudia asked, picking at her roast beef sandwich but not eating it.
“It’s okay,” I said. Obviously, they didn’t know about Jorge. I mean, what happened was in the news, but they wouldn’t have heard about it all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. “There’s a lot more to do there,” I continued.
“Like, do you go to clubs?” Sadie asked in her tough girl voice, and I could tell she was sizing me up.
“Sometimes, if we can get in,” I said. This was a lie, but it impressed Sadie anyway, even though she nodded like she wasn’t impressed at all.
“So why’d you move out here then?” Claudia asked. I wasn’t prepared for this question, which was stupid on my part, but my first lie led to another. I thought about something a girl who goes to clubs would say.
“I got into some trouble,” I answered. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” I liked how it sounded. Mysterious. Back in Houston during freshman year I’d had a pretty decent group of friends and we’d done our homework most of the time and sometimes we went to parties where a few people smoked pot but never me. I’d been one of those kids who belonged to the big mushy middle of high school. Not popular but not a total freak either. I was just a regular girl, living my ninth-grade life. Most of the upperclassmen hadn’t known I’d existed until everything happened with Jorge.
Then everyone knew who I was, but it wasn’t because I was popular.
Claudia and Sadie seemed satisfied with my answer about getting into trouble. Sadie finished her Dr Pepper, and Claudia and I followed her when it was time to leave the cafeteria.
“Let’s go chill on the benches outside the library,” Sadie decided. “Sometimes Alex Villalobos is out there, and he is so fine. You’ll see, Carmen.” Sadie giggled and Claudia giggled and I giggled, too, but I felt a heavy weight on my chest as I understood that this was My Life now. This school where I only knew two girls. This town where I lived with my tía Lucy. This place without my parents. Without Jorge.
As we made our way down the hallway, I spotted a girl coming toward us from the opposite direction. She was wearing a big hooded sweatshirt even though it wasn’t very cold and her hands were stuffed in its pockets. She had her head down and her short hair was tucked behind her ears. When she walked past us, Sadie whispered, “Slut!”
My mouth dropped open and my eyes got wide when the girl just kept walking. If Sadie had tried that at my old school, there would have been a fight right there in the hallway and Sadie would have gotten a beatdown until the police or some teachers broke it up. Honestly, Sadie deserved a beatdown for being so nasty. But the girl just kept going, her head bowed. Her hands still jammed in her pockets.
“That’s Alice Franklin,” Claudia explained as we headed toward the library benches. “She slept with two guys at a party this summer. Like, in the same night. And then she killed one of them when she sent him these nasty texts while he was driving.”
“The dude she killed was fine, too, and the quarterback of the football team,” Sadie added. “Brandon Fitzsimmons. Of all the dudes to kill, she picked the wrong one. Now basically we all hate her.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding, the sound of Sadie’s whispered slut! still stuck in my ears.
We made it to the benches outside the library, but Alex Villalobos wasn’t there. Claudia had some Pixy Stix in her backpack and after she let Sadie choose what color she wanted, she let me pick one, too. I tossed the pink sugar down my throat and let it dissolve into nothing on the back of my tongue.
* * *
When everything started with Jorge the summer before I had to move to Healy, he also wore a hoodie a lot even though it wasn’t cold. And he started taking five showers a day and refused to eat food he didn’t make himself. And even though it was summer, he didn’t want to go skateboarding with his friends anymore like he used to. He just shut himself up in his room all the time and played the same three Ramones songs over and over again until I heard the lyrics in my dreams.
His phone would ring and I would find it buried in the couch or under the coffee table and I would answer it.
“Is Jorge there?”
I would knock on his bedroom door covered with Los Crudos and Massacre 68 stickers and one that said SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME. I would yell, “Jorge! Phone!” but he always just ignored me. Pretty soon his friends stopped calling.
Jorge and I used to spend the summers together watching television and having competitions to see who could make the tallest sandwich. Mom would leave us a list of chores to do while she and Dad were at work, and when we had one hour left before they got home, Jorge would yell, “Let’s do this thing!” at the top of his lungs, and we would race around doing everything on the list as fast as we could while Jorge’s punk music played super loud.
But the summer before I had to leave home, none of that happened. And every day it got weirder and scarier. Like the night I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and found him dressed in his black hoodie and sweatpants, staring at the refrigerator.
“I’m hearing them behind there,” he whispered.
“Hearing who?” I asked.
“Them,” he said. His dark eyes were frantic and he was covered in sweat. He kept staring at the refrigerator like he thought it would come alive.
“I’m going to get Mom and Dad,” I told him, but Jorge shook his head and walked past me and back inside his bedroom without saying anything else.
On the first day of school Jorge said he wanted to get there early, so he took the first bus. My parents just went along with it. I think they were happy he was going to school at all. I knew they’d had to see how odd he’d been behaving, but I heard Mom tell Dad it was a phase and I noticed Dad coming home later and later from work so he wouldn’t have to deal with it at all.
I took the second bus to school with Nestor and Ana and some of my other friends. We were all excited because we weren’t freshmen anymore. We sat toward the back of the bus and shared headphones and listened to music and talked about how none of us wanted to get Mr. Haymes for math.
Sometimes I try to remember that Monday morning bus ride and how normal I felt during it. I didn’t know how nice normal felt until I didn’t feel that way anymore.
* * *
It had only taken me a few weeks at Healy High before I realized that independent study was a great place to take a nap. As long as the teachers didn’t catch you.
“Carmen. Wake up, please.”
I lifted my head off my desk and blinked a few times before looking at Healy’s most ancient teacher, Mrs. Gallagher, who was sitting at her desk at the front of the room like a lump with a frown and two beady eyes.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, but I bet Mrs. Gallagher could tell that I wasn’t. I couldn’t really help it if it was the last few minutes of independent study and I’d already finished my homework. Healy High is easier than my old school. Way easier. They don’t assign as much and I get plenty of time in school every day to finish my assignments. And there’s never any homework on the weekends during football season because they expect everyone to go to the game.
Sitting there in independent study, I wondered whether I was getting dumber just because I was living in Healy.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and take this down to the vice principal’s office for me?” Mrs. Gallagher asked. She held up a sealed envelope.
“Sure,” I answered, sliding out from my desk, happy to get out of there a little early.
I headed down the hall and, just past the big GO HEALY TIGERS! banner hanging outside the cafeteria, I saw Alice Franklin at her open locker. She wasn’t wearing her hoodie like that first time I’d seen her with Claudia and Sadie. She just had on a black top and black jeans. She was reading some piece of paper and frowning at it, and she folded it and shoved it back into her locker.
“Hey,” I said to her. I didn’t know I was going to say it until I did.
She turned and looked at me with a scowl on her face. I guess if people constantly called me a slut in the hallway, I’d have a scowl on my face all the time, too. But even with a scowl Alice Franklin was one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen.
“What?” she said.
“Uh, do you know where the vice principal’s office is? I’m new. I have to take this there.” I held up the envelope Mrs. Gallagher gave me as proof I wasn’t lying.
“Oh,” said Alice, and the scowl softened. She shut her locker and pointed down the main hallway. “Head straight that way and make a left. His office is the first door on the right.”
“Okay, cool,” I said. “Thanks.”
Alice’s voice was very quiet in return, but I heard her say, “No problem.”
I headed down the hall, and when I looked back over my shoulder I saw Alice walking in the opposite direction, her backpack slung low, her head down.
I knew where the vice principal’s office was. Healy High School is smaller than my middle school. But I guess I thought it would be nice if for one minute someone was halfway nice to Alice Franklin, even if it was just to ask for directions.
* * *
The first assembly of the year at my old school was always in the gym, and as me and Nestor and Ana and everyone crowded into the tenth-grade section, Luis yelled, “It smells like ass in here. Don’t they clean it during the summer?”
“No,�
�� Ana responded, wrinkling up her nose. “The sweat smell just intensifies in the heat.”
Lately, when I think back to that morning, I try to picture the senior section in my mind. I try to find Jorge’s face in the crowd. But I never can. I don’t know why I try. Maybe because I want to know what he looked like right before it happened. Did he look frantic like he did that night he heard “them” behind the refrigerator? Calm because he knew what he was about to do? Happy because he was going to do it? I hope he didn’t look happy, but maybe he did.
“Fighting Hornets, welcome back to another great year at Jackson High!” Principal Carter yelled into the microphone, instantly sparking some squealing feedback. Everyone groaned, from the high-pitched sound and probably from Principal Carter’s words, too.
“God, I’m already bored,” said Ana. And that’s the last thing I remember right before the loud boom that came from the senior section on the other side of the gym. Everyone jumped, including Principal Carter and all the other administrators who were seated on folding chairs in the middle of the floor. Suddenly there was a pocket of gray smoke billowing out from the senior section and kids were jumping from the top bleachers and racing out of the gym. Two girls ran right into each other and the smack caused them both to fall down.
“What the hell?” said Luis, and we were all standing up now, turning to look at one another, our mouths hanging open. My heart was pumping hard, and the boom was still ringing in my ears. There was a smell of something rotten in the air, like milk that’s gone sour.
Somehow we were herded into the hallway and then teachers were screaming at us to exit to the football field. Some of the girls were crying and I heard one boy talking about how a bomb went off and I heard another one talking about Erica Garza and Darrell Curtis and that they were bleeding pretty bad.
And then I heard someone mention Jorge.
We were excused for the day and I got a ride home from Luis’s older brother. I didn’t know where Jorge was and no one in my family was answering their phones. By the time I got home there were news trucks around our apartment complex. I didn’t know how the school got hold of my parents so fast but they did, and our apartment was full of police officers and some people from the school district and two ladies wearing name badges that read PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES and a woman I later found out was a social worker who smelled like cigarettes. My mother was curled up in the corner of the couch crying and my dad was sitting next to her staring at nothing and nodding as different people came up to talk to him, but he was barely saying anything back.
