The Universal Laws of Marco

by Carmen Rodrigues

  Thank you, Diego. I salute your advice and your perfect attendance.

  ERIKA

  But—

  ME

  (taps her thigh, whispers)

  She gets it. So, don’t.

  ERIKA

  (closes mouth)

  ME

  (looks back at Sally’s table)

  ERIKA

  (taps my thigh, nods toward Sally’s table, and then whispers)

  You don’t.

  ME

  What?

  But I know what.

  • • •

  On Friday after school I stop by Mrs. A’s classroom for some clarification on our physics project. The first part, explaining a physics concept and how it applies to my life, I’ve got. I like digging into wormholes, and yesterday I found a slew of books at the library that will help me, like Unveiling the Edge of Time by John Gribbin. And I think I can figure out how wormholes apply to my life. Who wouldn’t want to travel through time?

  But the second part, the whole managing invisible forces with my own universal set of laws? Yeah, that part has me completely baffled.

  “You’re taking it too literally,” Mrs. A says now. She’s standing at the front of the classroom, cleaning off her whiteboard. She’s so short she had to drag a chair over from her desk. Then she climbs up, wiping away the date and the last bit of yesterday’s notes with her eraser.

  When she steps down, she says, “Think about gravity. Without it, we’d just fly away, but gravity keeps us locked here, on the floor of this classroom. We may not realize it, but we depend on gravity every second of every day. Gravity is literally one of the most important parts of our lives, but we give it zero thought.”

  I glance at my feet, planted right where I left them, and realize how right she is. And when I think about those gratitude lists that people are always making, the ones that are supposed to help you appreciate life more, I recall how so many have listed “the air I breathe,” but not one has ever listed “gravity.” And we couldn’t even breathe earth’s air without gravity! We’d be too busy suffocating in outer space.

  “Okay, but how do I turn that into my own law that I use to . . .”—I consult my notes—“use to manage those forces?”

  “Well . . .” She tucks the chair back into place and slips around to the front of her desk, perching at the edge. “What sayings do you live by? The ones you use to calm yourself down when you’re angry or sad or overwhelmed?”

  She sees the doubt on my face. “Let me guess—you’re thinking that you don’t feel any of those things.”

  I shrug. I’m sure I do, but I try not to dwell on those feelings. “This project seems awfully personal,” I say.

  “It might be. But I think it’s important to send you off into the world with an understanding of the tools you have in place to survive it.”

  And there goes Mrs. A, being all hippie again. She smiles, patiently waiting for me to catch up.

  “So, I have to think about my feelings first and then figure out what?”

  “Figure out what bit of wisdom you’re carrying around.” She rubs her head. “Okay, so whenever I’m having a hard day and I can’t do anything right, I think about what my grandma once told me. She’d say, ‘Little Lily’—that’s what she called me—‘all of life is a practice. You don’t have to get anything right the first or second or third time. You just try to get better every day. You do that and you’ll be fine.’ ” She smiled again, a little lost in her own memory. “And that has helped me more than you know.”

  What were the little bits of wisdom I had been carrying around inside of me? And had those sayings been guiding my life? I thought about our wall of quotes. So many of those words were what I pulled out whenever I needed to find the courage to walk into the unknown. And I had walked into the unknown a few times—as a gawky fifteen-year-old applying for a first job at Grendel’s. As a seventeen-year-old applying to an elite college.

  “So part two of this project really isn’t about physics; it’s about wisdom.”

  Mrs. A wags her finger at me playfully. “Marco, physics is wisdom.”

  • • •

  I leave Mrs. A’s classroom in overdrive. It’s like I’m watching some kind of Tetris game in my head—quotes and phrases floating by as I try to find the right spot in the construction of the narrative that will likely form my paper.

  Maybe that’s why I don’t really see Sally in the parking lot until I’m slipping my key into the ignition of my truck. That’s when I focus on the real world, the one where me driving on autopilot could end someone’s life, and I see her, in profile. She is two aisles over and she doesn’t see me because she’s looking underneath the hood of her car. A second later, her palm slams against the car’s side. A universal sign for, My car’s acting like a piece of crap and I don’t know how to fix it.

  For whatever reason, I hear Erika’s voice in my head: It’s sad, right?

  And it was sad, Sally being out here with no friends. But maybe it was deserved? Or maybe there was, like Sookie said, more to the story. Because there’s always more to the story. People do crappy things in reaction to the crappy things that have happened to them. But does that make what they did less crappy?

  Nope.

  What I’m saying is, I should leave her stranded here, even if the night school crowd can be a little rough. And the security guards aren’t exactly good at providing security. And she is like a sitting duck with her mopey eyes and poor eye contact.

  I should just go about my day, because what do I owe her? Wasn’t she the one who told me to leave her alone?

  And so that’s what I do—I turn the key in my ignition, and I’m about to back out when the other me, the better version of me, says: Enjoy that guilt if something bad happens to her.

  And then Mom’s voice chimes in: Or, you could help.

  Pop’s too: We raised you to help.

  And then the opinions take over my headspace:

  OTHER ME

  You know this girl. Like really, really know her, and you’re gonna treat her worse than a stranger.

  ME

  What do I know about her anymore?

  OTHER ME

  For starters, how about she saved up her money for three months to buy you a pass to Disney World so you could go with her? You gonna pretend that never happened? That she didn’t do a bunch of nice things for you throughout most of your life?

  MOM’S VOICE

  So you can help.

  POP’S VOICE

  You will help.

  Two minutes later I’m standing a few feet away. “Sally?”

  She jumps and hits her head on the inside of her hood. “Damn.”

  My thoughts exactly.

  She looks at me. Full-on eye contact. I swallow hard.

  “You okay?” I indicate her head.

  She nods, letting her rubbing hand fall to her side.

  “How about the car?”

  No words, just big eyes and a shrug. Her fingers ripple at her side. I remember that ripple down to that day it first showed up in Mr. Weaver’s class.

  Not everything has changed.

  “Maybe I can help?” I ask.

  “Okay,” she says, and her eyes get a little wet, magnifying her irises. She looks like an anime character in distress.

  I step forward until I’m looking down at an engine and some other . . . stuff. What that other stuff is, I’m not sure, because I don’t know jack about cars. When Old Ancient hits the fritz, I call on Diego. But I’ve marched over here like some dude to the rescue, so I pull out the stick marked “oil” and inspect that. Looks oily. Then I unscrew the cap marked “radiator” and see some green stuff there. And then, just as I’m out of ideas, my phone chimes.

  “Hold up,” I say, grateful for the rescue.

  “Marco? It’s Principal Johnson.”

  Or maybe not.

  When I hang up, Sally clears her throat. A quick glance reveals that her eyes have reduced in size. Som
ehow that makes it easier to breathe.

  “I have to go,” I say. “It’s my brothers. They’re in trouble.”

  “Oh.” She looks worried.

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not like that. They’re always in trouble.”

  “Oh.” And worry turns into surprise. Last she saw Lil’ Jay and Domingo, they were sweet kids. She doesn’t know this newer hell-on-wheels version of them.

  “Is anyone on the way? To get you?”

  “No, but it’s okay. You go. I’ll . . .” She glances at the mystery beneath her hood, those fingers rippling double time. “I can figure it out.”

  I shift back and forth on my heels, with this kind of buzzing inside that shouts: Not a good idea. Don’t do it.

  But then there are those eyes—pale gray, rimmed in ebony, growing in diameter by the second.

  A souped-up Mustang rolls up next to us, even though there are empty spaces all around. Two guys pile out, the driver pulling on a T-shirt as he rises from his seat. Outside, he pauses to look Sally up and down. Then he smirks and says, “Hey, girl, you need help?” He saunters around to the front of the car, followed by his boy. We’ll call him Scary Eyes.

  Sally glances nervously from me to the guys. T-shirt Guy steps closer, like he’s trying to inspect the engine. Sally steps back—one, two, three, until she’s inches from my side.

  “This is looking bad,” says T-shirt Guy. He looks at me, like, Son, I’m about to school you in front of your girl.

  And let’s be honest, he can school me. Because I know nothing about cars.

  But the way his eyes keep roaming over Sally, like she’s the quick meal he’s about to catch before getting his education on, has me saying, “We got this.”

  “Got this?” T-shirt Guy repeats, straightening. He gives me the once-over, like, Yeah, right.

  Now, I’m pretty sure that if this ends in a fight, I’ll take a good old-fashioned beatdown. But Diego’s taught me enough to know that you gotta stand your ground with certain types. You gotta throw out that vibe that you’re willing to take the beatdown to protect the things you care about. And I’m not saying that I care about Sally. I’m just saying that I don’t not care about her. You get the distinction, right?

  So, I roll my shoulders back—present all six foot two, two hundred pounds of me—and repeat slowly, “Yeah, I got this.”

  Scary Eyes asks dryly, “So, what’s wrong with it?”

  I’m one foot forward when Sally grabs me by the arm, playing off that power move by slipping her hand into mine. She smiles kindly and, in that soft voice of hers, says, “He’s got it. Really. But thanks. Thanks a lot. It’s nice of you to try to help.” She doesn’t break eye contact with them. Not once. Instead, her smile grows, calm, confident, reassuring.

  After what feels like a minute, T-shirt Guy says, “We got class anyway.” Then they walk off, Scary Eyes looking over his shoulder every now and then.

  When they enter the school, Sally looks at me. “That was weird, right?”

  For a second I’m silent. I’m coming off an adrenaline high. Then I go with, “Okay. How about this? I’ll give you a ride home, and then you can figure it out from there.”

  She looks at me, surprised. All that projected confidence is gone—the best fake out in the history of the world. “I actually have to go to the library. I have to be at work by five. Is that okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah. No biggie. We just have to make that one small stop first.”

  “Okay,” she says, and when her gaze drifts down my arm, I realize that we’re still holding hands.

  Or, maybe, what I realize is, I haven’t let go.

  • • •

  A few things: The stop will not be small. Principal Johnson does not know how to deliver short lectures.

  And it is not a “no biggie” that Sally is riding shotgun in my truck.

  It’s a big biggie. A huge biggie. A huge-ie.

  But I’ve worked it out, see? Because that feeling that I needed to protect her from something terrible—even though, honestly, I was just hella afraid—that’s me tapping into some kind of learned response that goes all the way back to our childhood.

  And you know how these kinds of learned responses go. You just can’t help yourself. It’s like when I’m stocking the cereal aisle at Grendel’s and I get to the Honeycombs. The kid in me remembers the sugar high, and my brain, sensing a reward, sends a message that’s like, Oh, man, want that. Have that. Buy that. But because I’ve conditioned the adult in me to make better choices, I also hear, No, sugar. That has absolutely no nutrition, and who invited you to come here and tell me what to eat?

  And I don’t buy Honeycombs. Haven’t in years. But you can see how both responses are automatic.

  Well, that’s how it was in that moment with Sally.

  And, you know, studies also show that being in stressful situations with someone can make you feel closer, which explains why, right now, it’s perfectly normal for me to sneak sidelong glances at her at just about every red light. So far there have been six red lights and six sidelong glances. She doesn’t seem to notice. The windows are rolled down, since Old Ancient doesn’t have working air-conditioning, and Sally’s head is about an inch or two out the window. Her hair takes flight in the wind, trailing across bodegas and bus stops and guys on the corner offering up window washes for a few quarters.

  This darker hair, I reason, is what magnifies her eyes. Makes them more serious. More tragic. That adds to my susceptibility to her. (Because who doesn’t want to protect an anime character?)

  And then there’s the way she fills out her white T-shirt a little more than she did in the Middle.

  How the angle between her waist and hip is greater, too, accentuating the slope of her curves.

  How her hand felt in mine, different from the first time Erika and I held hands, that jostling for position: Whose thumb goes first? Just the link of a few fingers? Or should we go for an index and pinkie grab?

  With Sally, the alignment has always been perfect. The thumbs fall into place. There’s no air between the palms.

  And she squeezed my hand.

  That’s what I remember now that my adrenaline has settled.

  And I squeezed her hand back.

  On light seven, I glance up from my inspection of her book bag—a button that says MAKE LITERATURE NOT WAR—and find that her head is back inside the truck and she’s studying me too.

  We speak at the same time:

  “Your button is cool.”

  “You’re bigger. Like, a lot bigger. Which is good. Because back there . . .”

  A car honks. The light turns green. I move again, seeing the Middle rise up in the distance. Outside, after-school buses load up the extracurricular kids with their practice tees and soccer cleats and socks pulled up to their kneecaps.

  “You were just . . .” She glances at the kids outside the school. “You were like that, small . . . before. But you look the same, face-wise, just not . . .” Exhausted by her explanations, she falls back against her seat.

  “So, what you’re saying is we finally see eye to eye?”

  It’s not a good joke, but she smiles. Our eyes meet, and she asks, “So, did turning into a giant make high school better?”

  “Huh?” We’re in the parking lot now.

  “You thought it would be easier for me because I was tall. So, was it easier for you because you weren’t so . . . ?” She’s trying to find the least-offensive word.

  “Small?”

  “Yeah.” The next smile is embarrassed, toothy. She swipes a hand over her hair, brushing back windblown strands. I smile too, because I remember that conversation was the night of our first real kiss.

  She looks away, at the parking lot. “You’ve stopped.”

  “Stopped what?” Her words don’t make sense. But neither does this. Us, in this truck. Her, different, but the vibe still like old times.

  “You stopped driving. The truck.”

  “Oh.” I lift my
foot off the brake. We glide forward.

  Man. What is going on?

  I park near the front of the lot, hopping out of the truck like I’m all business. So much so that I’m three feet from the school door when I realize she’s still sitting in the truck, chin resting on the lip of the window, watching me. “Are you coming?” I shout. She can’t wait in the truck. It’s too hot.

  (Too far away, other me whispers.)

  Like I said, too hot.

  “Really?”

  “Unless you want to die from a heat stroke, yeah.”

  “Okay.” She smiles.

  But I don’t smile back.

  I’ve got this under control now.

  Except for that tingling in my stomach.

  Whatever that means.

  Middle School

  10. I’M PROUD OF YOU

  JADE FLOPPED DOWN ON THE sand in her polka-dotted bikini. “We should do this every day of the summer.”

  “Right?” Sookie said, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  I looked at the stretch of sand filled with kids from the Middle—tossing Frisbees, chasing waves, or lounging, like we were, on the hot earth. This was our final class trip, and we didn’t go to Disney World or Universal Studios like most eighth graders around here. We went a few miles down the street from our very own ’hood—Key Biscayne. Principal Johnson got one of the hotels to donate a private beach and a few wealthy businesspeople to fork over the dough for buses—and not just school buses, coach buses, the kind that had TV screens and reclining seats. That trip highlight had Diego saying, “Man, it is super legit to do your business while moving. I felt like I was ballin’ hard.” Which made all of us crack up, because . . . well, because.

  And being on the sand is never bad, which was why Jade was plotting out how to get back here over the summer. She rolled onto her belly, inches from Diego, and continued. “But how can we get here every day is what I want to know. Maybe we could take a car?”

  “Like a cab?” Diego asked.

  “Yeah,” Jade said.

  “Girl, you ain’t ever heard of a bus schedule?”

  Jade giggled. “I take the bus every day, including today.”

  “Sheesh.” Diego sucked his lips. “No, the one for grown folk, not this luxury ride we had today.”