“‘Boring’ is a strong word,” I say. “I enjoyed eating cookie dough bites with Cassie at my brother’s games, does that count?”
He checks the rearview mirror. “How’s she doing?”
“Better,” I tell him. “Thanks to you.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” He clears his throat and shifts in his seat.
The car rumbles through Ponquogue’s main drag, a collection of boutiques with Thanksgiving cornucopias and pilgrim decorations in the windows. First Pav’s Place, the purple and orange walls whizzing by, followed by Wok and Roll Chinese food, always with the door hanging open even on cold days. The Ocean Beaches sign remains crooked and warped.
From here I’d turn right at the fork by 7-Eleven to go home. Marcos signals left at Main Street’s one traffic light. Pine Needle Street.
The shops peter out, giving way to buildings with For Rent signs. The shack on the corner looks ready to collapse and give up on life for good. Bienvenidos al Pueblo, it might as well say.
“You wouldn’t be able to handle it,” Cassie had said.
Marcos’s fingers take up their tapping again.
The sidewalk cracks until it’s hidden by high grass. These houses were summer beach bungalows once. When people rich enough to buy mansions up on the hill left them behind, their exterior paint cracked, bleached by sunlight for too many years. Gone are the small grassy yards with swing sets and trampolines from the Ponquogue I know. Freshly painted porches, sturdy plastic mailboxes, the sound of a lawnmower and the hiss of a sprinkler–my normal.
From one of the windows, thick drumbeats flow out. Salsa music, maybe? I don’t know. Then the click-click-click of bicycle chains, not smooth and oiled like my father’s trail bike, but worn and choppy, skipping beats and catching others. Three kids with spiky black hair circle in and out of the road in figure eights. They don’t react to the car until the last instant, swerving out of the way.
We pull onto a gravel driveway that slithers between two sagging chain link fences. To the left: a small white bungalow, chipped paint, shades pulled low. To the right: a small white bungalow, chipped paint, upside-down wheelbarrow in the yard.
“Here we are.” Marcos shuts off the engine and the car exhales. He wipes his hands down the front of his jeans and attempts a smile.
I’m already halfway out of the car.
You wouldn’t be able to handle it.
There’s nothing to handle. I’m standing here while people all around are living their lives. I’m trying to figure out my own.
“Do you have snacks?” A dog barks from down the street, followed by the sound of a chain yanking against a fence.
“Excuse me?”
“Small morsels of food, preferably eaten between meals?”
Now his smile is real. “Since you asked so nicely, yes.”
We step through a gaping hole in the fence toward the house on the left. He opens the screen door, stained with rust, and beckons for me to go first.
The walls are yellowed and the floors tired, curving under my sneakers. The kitchen and den blend into one, hosting a sturdy couch and a small TV. No photographs, knick-knacks, useless contraptions anywhere. Not like our house, dedicated to photos of Richard in uniforms: Ponquogue soccer, Notre Dame soccer, and US Army. I’d hidden all of my gymnastics pictures, leaving only a series of school portraits. Boring and safe.
A man in the kitchen looks up. He has Marcos’s eyes and arms twice the size of my head.
“You must be Victor.” I extend my hand. “I’m Savannah.”
Victor sizes me up. He does not seem impressed. Suspicious, a little confused–yeah, I’d give him both of those. Has he heard anything about me? Well, I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere until Marcos says so.
“My charming brother doesn’t function well before four o’clock,” Marcos says.
That earns a smirk from Victor. He wipes his hand slowly on his jeans and then extends it. “What brings you to our neighborhood?”
“Helping your brother get a scholarship.”
Our hands meet, his shake firm. “Good luck.” While Victor’s voice isn’t exactly friendly, it’s not sending me out the door. He’s evaluating me with eyes like his brother’s, except flecked with amber. “He needs all the help he can get.”
“What would you like?” Marcos opens the refrigerator, causing Victor to fall into the counter. “We have cheese, bread, ketchup–”
“Cheese is expired.” Victor propels himself onto the ledge.
“I had it for lunch. It was fine.” “I’m not driving you to the hospital for food poisoning,” Victor says.
Marcos takes a deep breath. I bite back a smile as he fights to keep his composure. “Okay. Revised. We have bread and ketchup–”
Victor opens up a cabinet and hurls a bag of potato chips at me. I catch it with one hand. “They might be expired, too. Great date, pendejo. Way to plan ahead.”
Marcos’s face matches his red shirt quite magnificently.
“It’s cool,” I say. “I love ranch-flavored barbeque chips.”
Victor’s eyes widen with surprise. “No way. Have you ever tried–”
“Bye, Vic.” Marcos nudges me toward a doorway.
His bedroom. My heart thumps as we sit down on the pale-blue bed. It’s pressed against three walls, with one slim window overlooking it.
I take a breath. It smells like fresh laundry, and the cottony scent immediately calms the sudden onslaught of nerves. “Behave yourselves in there, children,” Victor calls.
“God, Victor!” Marcos shuts the door in exasperation. “You are not allowed to speak anymore.”
Through the wall behind us, an alarm goes off. It’s loud enough to feel like it’s in his room, urgent and angry. I jump.
“The neighbors.” Marcos nods to the wall. “In the next apartment.”
So this tiny place is split down the middle. “Where does Victor, you know, sleep? Do you share this room?” Meanwhile, Marcos is lucky he isn’t any taller, because his feet would probably hang out the door when he lies down.
“Victor has slept on the couch for the past six months,” Marcos says. “He thinks it will toughen him up for the military life.”
“Correction. I am tough,” calls Victor. The screen door wheezes open and closed. No privacy whatsoever.
“You know, my brother’s an officer in the army,” I say.
“The soccer player and Lord of the Rings fan?” Marcos picks crumbs off of the bed. Larger ones first, then infinitesimal ones. If he ever encountered my leotard drawer in its heyday, he’d be dabbing at chalk particles for days. “That’s what Vic wants to do when he graduates from college. If he graduates. He’s not one for going to class.”
He pulls out a textbook and then turns to me. His gaze is piercing, commanding. “Can I be honest with you, Savannah Gregory?”
Everything feels magnified in this pale-blue room. Sound. My heart rate. The way his dark eyes probe mine for an answer, although I don’t know what he wants to be honest about or why.
“Yes?” I squeak.
“I don’t waste my time.”
I ball my sweating palms into fists. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m not like the assholes you read about in the papers getting DWIs and stealing shit. I’m no Roberto selling weed in the bathroom, although I have to admit that his business skills are impressive.” Where is he going with this? I nod anyway. “I’m going to get this scholarship, and I feel like you’re the best person to help me.”
My PSAT success came from a fire that has since been reduced to embers. It was all for Ocean State Buccaneers gymnastics, not because of my love for academics and the pursuit of standardized testing.
“You work hard,” he’s saying now. “You know what it’s like to focus on a goal.”
I do, except that the things I once wanted wound up as fleeting as the early morning fog that rolls in off the ocean.
“Also.” He shifts so that we’re touching, his arm
wrapping around my back, and now every part of me is warm. “Cassie is lucky to have you as a friend.”
Yeah, right. But when I lean my head on his shoulder, I start to relax for the first time since Mr. Riley’s assembly. “How about that math?” I say into his collarbone.
Outside, the dog keeps barking. Car doors slam shut, engines rumble up and down the block, and once in a while, someone laughs. No police sirens or the sounds of, I don’t know, fists connecting with bones. The looks from Victor and Tommy Brown feel like they happened months ago. Whatever the hell Cassie was trying to imply about what I could handle, I’m not seeing it. The place is alive, that’s all.
Marcos reaches up with the other hand to scratch the back of his neck. “I’ve learned all of this before, but I can’t stay awake in class.”
“Why’s that?”
“Work.” I feel the word against his throat. “Too much damn work. Gotta pay the bills.”
It occurs to me that a senior Castillo might walk in and ask what the hell I’m doing in here with his youngest son. “Where are your parents, by the way?”
His shoulder tenses. It’s like asking about soccer. It’s something that he’d rather not share. I’m about to tell him it doesn’t matter when he surprises me by answering. “My parents don’t live here.” Absentmindedly, he begins rubbing my side. “They’re in Mexico.”
I wasn’t expecting that. At work, sure. Permanently in Mexico, no. I try to fight back the waves of warmth so I can focus on asking coherent questions. “It’s just you, Victor, and expired cheese?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you visit them?”
He shifts, uncomfortable. Looks like Marcos is better at being the interrogator than the interrogated. “Too expensive. Hopefully after I graduate.”
The dog finishes barking. The television through the walls shuts off.
I cough.
He clears his throat.
I cough again, willing Marcos to speak. For once, the boy doesn’t have any questions. You first, buddy. He’s not budging. He’s waiting for me to make a move. One of his eyebrows quirks up as if he’s inviting me to change the subject, or make out with him, or… anything besides sit here.
I could do that, I guess. Toss aside the textbook and the still-neglected bag of chips and…what? Pin him to the bed? Apparently I’m okay with kissing Marcos in front of the eight hundred or so students of Ponquogue High School, but not in this small room where we are clearly alone, all angles accounted for.
This goes on for five minutes. Okay, ten seconds. “Practice is going to kick my ass later,” I announce without any noticeable trigger.
“Yeah?” He sits up a little straighter.
“We have a competition soon that will be a spectacular failure.” To put it mildly.
“Impossible. I can see it now.” He nudges me playfully with his shoulder, a motion which makes the bed creak and my heart flip. “Lights, cameras, Savannah Gregory on the still rings.”
I glare at him. “You didn’t say still rings.”
“I may have.”
“Boy, do you know anything about women’s gymnastics?”
There’s no tension in his shoulders, no tapping of his fingers, just a mischievous look in his eyes. “Enlighten me.”
So I do.
Marcos doesn’t stop me as I discuss the different levels, explaining that while being a Level 10 is solid, ahead of most gymnasts, it’s not the same as elite, the Olympic-level gymnasts.
He shakes his head when I finish my spiel. “As far as I’m concerned, any kind of flip is death-defying.”
I demonstrate a few jumps in the space between the bed and the wall, ignoring the way my muscles groan. Besides last night, this is the most I’ve jumped since physical therapy. The thin strip of wooden floor vibrates beneath me. Close enough to a balance beam. “If you do them in combination, you get bonus points,” I tell him as I transition from a split jump to a tuck jump three-quarters. Stuck it. “But if you wobble in between, forget it.”
He stands next to me, tugging up his jeans preemptively and shaking out his arms. “All right, all right.” He pauses from his silly warm-up, exhales, cracks his neck once. “How do you do the goat jump?”
“Wolf jump,” I correct him with a grin. He’s so eager, so genuinely ready to try despite the fact that his neighbors are probably wondering what the hell the stampede is all about. “No goats allowed.” I do it again, jumping into the air with my legs up to hip level. One leg straight, the other bent.
Although we’re in his tiny bedroom on a warm fall afternoon and none of what I’m doing is for a coach or a judge, I can’t fight the confidence that fills me each time I explain something, demonstrate something else, and he watches with approval.
He takes a dramatic moment to gather himself and then jumps with surprising agility. I applaud. “You’ve officially qualified for the Olympic Trials. Just gotta work on pointing those toes.”
A neighbor bangs against the wall. “Knock it off,” a voice calls.
“Say I’m a seventeen-year-old gymnast with wolf jumps and Olympic dreams,” says Marcos, undeterred by his irritated neighbor. His hands rest on his hips like we’re taking a brief water break before the next segment of practice. “Who do I have to talk to in order to make the team?”
“If only it were as easy as showing up and talking to someone.” I’m off and running again, Marcos following along like we’re on a grand adventure.
I never knew I had this much to say to anyone until he asked. I’m used to everything being implicit, to Cassie already knowing what I’m thinking after I’ve spoken half a sentence. To my teammates, who could watch my routine and know by my facial expressions whether I was pleased or disappointed.
“Why did we never talk before Senior Cut Day?” I’m a little winded. By this point, the textbook’s on the floor, completely abandoned. I knocked it down when an attempted press handstand went awry. (Bet the neighbors loved that one.)
He scratches the back of his head, making his shirt ride up. Focus, Savannah. “I guess we run in different circles.”
My former circle: gymnastics, Cassie, and more gymnastics. “Cass is friends with Juliana,” I remind him. “This should have happened sooner.”
His eyes crinkle. “Yeah? What’s this?”
“This, uh…” I’m good at explaining cotangents. Hand me an on-the-spot emotional moment, though, and I’m reduced to waving my hands around, my cheeks heating up the longer I stumble for the words. Tutoring–except we’ve done none of that today. Prelude to making out again–perhaps, if we weren’t so busy pissing off the neighbors with our frolicking. “This training session,” I finish, and that’s enough to make him chuckle. Time for a change of topic. “What are you going to do with your scholarship?”
“It’ll cover two years at Suffolk. I want to be an environmental engineer, but my math grades are pathetic. Get the GPA up, hopefully get a scholarship somewhere else. Are you training for college gymnastics? Are coaches beating down your door?”
“Not so much.” I know I should be excited about Coach Barry’s e-mails. Flattered. The truth is, though, in November of my senior year with months off from the sport, I’m a recruiting spinster. Leftovers. Coach Barry’s probably looking for someone to ride the bench in case someone’s injured.
Owego State, however, is irrelevant. I’m going to do the Golden Leaf Classic and officially say farewell to gymnastics without a catastrophic fall as my last competition memory. That’s it. “I want to study kinesiology, possibly physical therapy school after.” His eyes have that go on look and once again, I can’t resist. “I’d love to work for a sports team and help athletes with recovery.”
“See,” he says like I’ve made a point, which I’m pretty sure I have not, “you want to put things back together. I want to create from scratch.”
“Sure, something like that.”
He leans over, forcing the bed to sink, and pulls a lime-green Pav’s Place T-shirt fro
m his drawer. The thing’s bright enough to stop traffic at midnight. “Juliana and I work at Pav’s twenty-five hours a week. She wants to work to survive, help out her mom, and that’s fine,” he says. “It’s not right for me. I have to feel like what I do will have more meaning.”
“Yes!” I bounce in place, causing Marcos to windmill his arms for balance. Oops.
“SORRY I TOOK up your afternoon with my life story,” I say when he pulls up in front of my house.
“We should do it again sometime,” he says, not sarcastically, and leans forward just as I lean around for, I don’t know, a hug or a high-five or something that inexplicably involves my left hand leaping in front of me. Which leads to the sides of our faces colliding, like those fake kisses on the cheek you give to your relatives where lips don’t touch skin. All in all, quite sensuous.
“Hmm,” he says.
“I’ll talk to you later.” I stumble out of the car. Gracefully done, gymnast.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ON A SCALE of one to ten, how pumped are you for today?” Emery says as we pull into South Ocean’s lot.
“Eh, a solid two,” I say. “Three points for seeing you, three points for the twins, and minus four points for the ache in my back.” By “back,” I mean “everywhere.”
“Excellent.” She offers me a whack on the shoulder, which helps nothing, and tosses me a protein bar. “See you out there, champ.”
“She’s back! She’s back!” Tiana leaps into my arms as soon as we enter the gym. She can’t weigh more than forty pounds, and it’s definitely all muscle.
“Told you I would be,” I groan.
“Tee! Look at my new socks!” another tiny Level 3 calls, and Tiana jumps off me and goes running.
“Thank God you’re here,” Emery says. “It’s tough being their one-woman jungle gym.”
As the Level 3s sprint into the gym and cartwheel onto the floor exercise (“Girls!” Vanessa shouts, and that’s enough to make them fall into an obedient line and start jogging), I think about the kids riding their bikes in and out of Pine Needle Street. My limited time in El Pueblo is enough for me to know that it’s not the kind of place where parents have the money for their kids to do competitive gymnastics. Don’t get me wrong; if I get into NYU, my dad sure isn’t writing me a check and saying, “Have fun, sweetheart.” However, the hundreds of dollars a month toward training–gym tuition, competition entry fees, coaching fees for said competitions–isn’t petty change.
Lessons in Falling Page 12
