The Universal Laws of Marco
Page 14
LIL’ JAY
When ya gonna stop being creepy?
ME
What’s creepy?
LIL’ JAY
Licking that bar and staring at us. And I heard Diego. That’s our treat.
ME
Ha! Not when you get two days indoor for hitting someone.
DOMINGO
He called Pop “Forrest Dump.”
ME
It’s Forrest Gump.
DOMINGO
Who’s Forrest Dump anyway?
LIL’ JAY
So we had to hit him.
DOMINGO
Yeah. Because respect.
ME
(bites into Klondike)
This is so good.
DOMINGO
We had to! You’re not being fair!
ME
Did you have to kick him in the nuts and shove him inside his locker, too? Was that fair?
Erika pulls the covers over us. The boys have fallen into such a deep sleep in the room next door that we can hear their snores. “I could spend the night.” She scoots up, until her body is fully over mine. Her legs straddle my hips. “We could . . .” She shakes her hips. “Have fun.”
I let my hand slide up her thigh. “Like this?”
“Yeah,” she says, a little breathless. “Or”—she leans over and kisses me—“like this.” And then she tilts her head to the left and lets her tongue slide across my ear. That thing she does. That power of attorney. It’s hard to think after that.
Hands sliding over each other’s skin.
Hands sliding under each other’s clothes.
Hands sliding up.
Hands sliding down.
Our lips everywhere.
“We could do more,” she says, when our shirts are crumpled on the floor. “We could . . .”
ME
Like messed him up bad, bad?
PRINCIPAL JOHNSON
Not the worst I’d ever seen. No. But they seem angrier than usual. And if this kid hadn’t initiated the fight—and he’s initiated quite a few—I’d have given your brothers more than an indoor suspension. I’m trying to give them a break, with your dad in the hospital again. But we all need to think about what’s going to happen to them.
ME
What’s gonna happen to them? They’re fine.
PRINCIPAL JOHNSON
They’re not fine. Not even now with you at home. They’re struggling.
ME
I’ll get them back on track. I always do.
PRINCIPAL JOHNSON
But this is your senior year. You’re not always going to be there. Who’s going to keep them on track when you’re gone?
Erika leans down to kiss me, her tongue like a wave over mine.
I want more.
She wants more.
It would be so easy to take it to this next level. I have condoms in my dresser. “Just in case,” my mom had said, when she’d slipped the box in the drawer. “I was young once too,” she joked. “And not responsible. That’s how I got you. The best—”
“Mistake you ever made,” I finished for her.
“Yes.” She smiled. “The best mistake I ever made. I wouldn’t change a thing.” She laughed. “But you haven’t made any mistakes yet.” She pointed to the box of condoms. “And you’ve got a full scholarship.”
“I won’t make a mistake,” I promised her.
But here is Erika, twisting her hips in that way that makes me want to sign over that power of attorney. “I want to,” she urges. “I do.”
It would be so easy.
Except . . .
Sally.
In that moment—I don’t know why; it makes no sense—I think about her.
Of the past Saturday: Sally in front of her birthday cake, slicing the square into smaller squares, her mom beside her, holding the paper plates. That one moment she stopped slicing and looked around the room, her eyes lit by hope.
And our eyes meeting and, without thinking about whether I was still mad or angry or whatever, I mouthed Gotcha, and she smiled—her first smile since we had surprised the crap out of her.
That smile felt like coming out of a freezing-cold school to stand beneath a June sun.
That smile felt like that day when her car broke down and I took those curves extra fast, her shoulder pushing into mine.
We had promised each other always.
We had broken that promise.
And here is Erika—who has told me she loves me but I have never told her I love her back. But that’s okay, she says, because I’ve been “hurt” because “of what happened to your dad.”
Erika is in my bed, her mouth curved up into an excited smile.
We’ve been together for six months.
In so many ways, I want this to go further. But . . .
JADE
(leaning against locker)
I feel terrible.
ME
Don’t.
JADE
I do. I feel like this is my fault.
ME
It’s not.
JADE
It is.
ME
You were a kid. It’s not.
JADE
But your dad, he saved my life.
Erika pulls the covers around her shoulders, hides her nakedness.
“I’m really sorry. I should have thought about being . . . prepared . . . and having something . . . on hand. . . . I didn’t think tonight would be . . . the night. . . .”
“No. It’s okay. You’re right. We have to be safe.” She slips off my lap, sits with her legs crisscrossed, and watches me, a little warily.
“I really am sorry,” I say.
She nods, tilting her head like she’s thinking.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m just confused.”
“It’s not you,” I try to reassure her.
“I know,” she says. She leans across me, slides open the top drawer of my nightstand. The shiny box of condoms gleams in the light. A ten-pack.
“Well?” she whispers. “Couldn’t we ‘be safe’ with these?”
My heart thumps in my chest. I’m speechless.
She sighs. “Is this about Sally?”
• • •
“What is she, psychic?”
“Maybe? Maybe she saw the condoms earlier in the night? Or at some point in the last few weeks? I don’t know.”
“No, I mean about Sally.”
“What about Sally?”
Diego raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t know why she said that. I don’t have feelings.” I pause. “I have nostalgia, but not, like, feelings.”
Diego’s eyebrow inches higher.
“I have memories. . . . It can be confusing. . . . That’s all.”
“Mm-hm.”
It’s the next night, after work, and we sit outside Grendel’s, at a picnic table, enjoying a rare Grendel’s perk: end-of-the-night deli freebies.
Rare because usually by the time Diego and I get off, the freebies are more than gone. But tonight, thanks to some new relationships Diego has made among our colleagues in the deli—Doing recon, bro, for the interview—we have a feast before us: risotto, chicken wings, kale, tuna salad.
Diego shoves some tuna salad into his mouth on the tip of a freshly baked pita chip.
“So, she just popped into your head, mid–you know?”
“Yeah, mid-exactly.”
“And you don’t know why.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Humph.” Diego washes the chip down with some water. “When I’m mid–you know with Jade, I’ve only got one girl on my mind.”
“So what? So that means I’m into Sally?”
“Just curious timing, man.”
“I really . . . you know . . . wanted to . . . with Erika. Before that. Maybe I should have tried to . . .”
“No.” Diego shoves a forkful of risotto in his mouth. “You did the right thing.”
“Yeah. Something like that . . . You have to be sure.”
“And I wasn’t?”
“Nope. You weren’t.”
• • •
“You don’t want to get an apartment together. You don’t want to do this together.” She was listing facts, and her legs had moved from crisscrossed to a tent perched protectively in front of her chest.
I slid up the wall behind my bed. “I’m sorry.” I stopped myself from saying reflexively, I’ll try to do better. I was starting to think that maybe I couldn’t.
“Well, I think this all started with Sally being back.” She watched me closely, like she was trying to find an answer in my body language, but I stayed calm, relatively still. I moved my hands into my lap, quietly waiting for whatever came next.
“Is it?” she repeated, her tone more urgent.
“I don’t think so,” I said finally.
“Think?” Her voice went up.
“Erika.” I leaned over to touch her, but she moved away, standing as she put her clothes back on. “Erika?”
• • •
“Did you know,” Diego says as we walk toward our cars, “that Grendel’s has been here, in this spot, since 1902? Place started with a crew of six, including the OG.” Diego winks, a sure sign he’s about to deliver a punchline. “Original Grendel.”
“Jokes and facts.” I laughed at his corny ass. “You got them both, huh?”
“And heart. I got serious heart for this place.” He touches the center of his chest, and I can see, in his eyes, that he does have heart for Grendel’s. He clears his throat. When he speaks, his voice deepens, the words carefully enunciated. “And, thanks to you punks, my interview skills are straight.” Earlier that day, we all sat around the lunch table, asking Diego a variety of questions.
JADE
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
SOOKIE
What’s your best contribution to Grendel’s?
ME
Have you done anything that made the operations of the store better?
JADE
What’s your strength as an employee?
ME
What’s your weakness?
Diego had laughed at that last question. “Um, twentieth-century pop songs?”
“Your answers were pretty tight,” I say.
Like, I learned that last year when we switched to ergonomic box cutters, that was because of a suggestion made by Diego. “My wrist thanks you,” I had told Diego, and he smiled proudly.
“Bro, my interview skills are tighter than two strands of a licorice stick. I feel ready for tomorrow.”
Diego was the first to interview for the position, with preliminary interviews continuing on until Tuesday. The final interview would be held sometime after, most likely the week of prom. “Not nervous?” I ask.
“No, excited. Tomorrow’s interview is do-or-die, and when it’s do-or-die, you grab on to your future and hold on tight.”
• • •
“I want to move forward,” she said, slipping her shirt over her head.
“We are moving forward,” I said gently.
She sighed, sitting on the bed as she laced up her shoes. “We’re crawling forward.”
“Crawling is moving,” I argued. “Babies start off by crawling.”
“So, we’re babies?” She turned to me, her lips twisted.
“We’re only six months old,” I continued. “That’s pretty much baby-relationship status, right?”
Her eyes searched mine. “Six months is a turning point—”
“Into what?”
“Serious or not serious.”
“Says who?”
“Marco.”
“Says who?” I repeated, but I knew who—everyone at our school. We saw the pattern happen over and over again. Six months and couples either fell like dominoes or turned into iconic high school sweethearts. We stood at that precipice of forever and never. Erika wanted to move forward, and I . . . I wanted some more time to think about it.
“Are we serious or not serious?” she repeated.
I looked away. I didn’t have an answer.
• • •
There are moments when everything can change. You cross a threshold and step into a new world. All possibilities that were open before are suddenly closed. But that’s okay.
That is, if you choose correctly.
Thoughtfully.
The night of my eighth-grade dance, I crossed a threshold. Only, I didn’t really see that I was making an irreversible choice. I didn’t see the consequences that would follow. And, really, you can’t see the consequences. Crossing over a threshold doesn’t work like that.
But as you grow older, wiser, you start to see that there are thresholds, these irreversible moments that will change you and all the possibilities that follow.
On that night with Erika, I saw the threshold. And I wasn’t ready to make that choice, to close those doors.
Because some part of me still clung to the possibility of more.
Middle School
16. WHEN THE TRUTH IS SHARP
THAT DAY WHEN I LEFT Sally in the library, I didn’t talk to Pop. Or go to my next class. I walked the halls, past rows of orange lockers, trampling bubble gum wrappers and lost homework with my knock-off Adidas. At the end of several long hallways, I found an exit sign and, beyond that, the sun and grass and, beyond that, a fence, and then I was free.
It shouldn’t have been that easy to be free. Schools in Seagrove have security guards who have attitudes and golf carts to zoom around campus. They have school-issued cell phones to set up their sting operations and good track records for catching kids who skip. But I was lucky that day. I somehow managed to walk right out, like I was one stealth mother, like Pop’s favorite hero Bruce Lee.
I walked for about a mile or two, head down, barely noticing the boxy houses or the gray gravel that made up most driveways. At some point I stopped at a bodega and bought a bottled water with five quarters I found at the bottom of my backpack. It was only then, when I paused to lift that cold bottle to my hot lips, that I let myself think about the puzzle piece that came to me, suddenly, on my walk to Pop’s office an hour earlier.
It was a memory of Monday, day one of the sweater. Jade and I were walking to the bus stop together. I was in a T-shirt, sweat trickling down my armpits and over my ribs, but Jade wore that sweater—light green and patterned with small white fish, the sleeves rolled all the way down to her wrists.
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked, and she yawned in my direction, her hand covering her mouth, and walked on slowly.
We could afford to be slow. Our departure time was designed to get us to the bus stop twenty minutes before pickup—a throwback to the first day of middle school, when I had a freak-out about missing the bus and told Jade, “We have to be on time,” because my dad always said, Be on time Be ready. Be great. And Jade shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Jade never cared much about getting up early, because she didn’t sleep that much to begin with. I knew that because from my room I could look across our yards and see Jade’s bedroom window, the light glowing long after my ten p.m. cutoff time and shining brightly when Pop shook me awake at six a.m.
Today, though, she looked extra tired. “Your dad’s back again?” If he was back, it was one of his quieter phases, like that time last summer when he returned home with carnations and a freshly shaved head, a look of shame that marked every step up their crooked walkway.
Jade glanced at me wearily, yawning again but this time forgetting to cover her gaping mouth. “He came home last night.”
We rounded the corner, making an automatic left onto NW 30th Street. I could see the kids down the way, some mingling beneath the trees, some standing a few feet apart, wet hair pressed down by hats and old-school headphones. One kid smoked a vapor cigarette, his hand moving up and down mechanically as he took in short puffs; a girl beside him waved her hand in fr
ont of her face.
“Was it okay?” I asked. “Him coming back?”
“It was . . . ,” Jade said, and stopped for a second, tucking her hair behind her ears. I noticed her earrings, silver peace signs, and above those, a pair of birds, rising, like they wanted to fly away from here.
“What?” I stopped too, waiting for what came next. Because it seemed to me that Jade was opening a door that had never been opened, one that led into her family’s home, and I wanted to step through that door. I swear I did, but Jade was so quiet for so long that my eyes slid back to the bus stop—maybe out of habit or out of searching, searching for something—no, someone—I had been waiting to see all night. Sally.
After my kiss with Erika on the beach, I hadn’t heard much from Sally. The whole weekend was spent in radio silence. But I wanted to know if we were still a thing about to happen. Or if that kiss had ruined it all. And there Sally was, arriving at the bus stop from the opposite direction—short skirt, strong, athletic legs, laughing at something Diego had just said. And in my gut, there was this feeling of jealousy that held on to me until Jade touched my shoulder and said, “Are you even listening?”
“Yeah,” I said reflexively, and she ran a nervous hand across her chin and asked, “So, do you think you can love someone even if they’re hurting you?”
I glanced at Sally and Diego, talking animatedly beneath a tree now, and with that jealousy still wrapped around me, I realized that this thing for Sally—whatever it was—mostly felt good but sometimes, like this weekend, it also felt spectacularly bad. “Yeah, I think that’s how it goes. That’s normal, right?” I said, assuming she was thinking about Diego, who still hadn’t asked her to the dance, no matter how many hints she dropped.
But what I realized walking to Pop’s office was this: What if that question hadn’t been about Diego? What if it had been about her father?
Years later, on those nights after Grendel’s, when I lay in bed watching the fan swirl above me, I’d think back to that moment and the moments that followed and wonder why I didn’t ask, Who’s hurting you, Jade? Later, much later, in college, I realized that there are moments in life that you back away from, moments where the truth is too sharp, the path forward too uncertain. So you take a break—a mental vacation of sorts—and think about everything else. And that’s what I did in the week that followed Jade’s question at the bus stop. I backed away, keeping my attention on Sally and what was happening between us.