The Universal Laws of Marco

by Carmen Rodrigues

  And she had, relaying the details of the move unemotionally, the way she might give you the lowdown on the answers to a quiz you missed.

  “And I’ll be fine,” she had said somewhere in the middle. “I like North Carolina, and I like Grandma Pearl, and it’s nice in the mountains, and . . .”

  She went on and on about all the new and good stuff she’d find up there. And how it’d be better for her dad to be doing something and how her mom could work less. She smiled the whole time, but I had noticed that beneath the table her foot was moving at warp speed. And I was pretty sure this glass-half-full nonsense was an act.

  “The glass is what?” Diego grumbled, moving his lasagna from one side of his tray to the other. “This is crap,” he muttered, and shoved the tray to the center of the table. He fixed his eyes on Sally. “Is this some of that choose-to-be-happy bullshit?”

  “Yep,” Sally said. “And it works. I’ve been doing it all day, and I feel amazing.”

  “Lying to yourself feels amazing?” Diego scoffed.

  “It’s not lying.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Nope. It’s seeing a different angle. A better angle.”

  “No. It’s like me taking a crap and you highlighting it in silver.”

  “You mean silver-lining it?” Sookie said.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “You’re just grumpy ’cause you’re hungry,” Sally said, sliding the tray back his way.

  “That tastes like crap,” Diego said, and slid the tray back.

  Jade, who was eating the “thing that tasted like crap,” looked up for a second and then went back to her food. She had been quiet all day.

  “You okay?” Sookie asked for, like, the third time.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Jade?” Sookie said.

  “Huh?” She looked up, chewing slowly.

  “You okay?” Sookie repeated.

  “Yeah.” She returned to her meal, lifting the fork to her mouth. She kept her eyes down while the rest of us exchanged looks.

  “Did something happen?” Sally asked when we walked to our next class. The hallways were crowded, and we kept getting jostled apart. I was debating taking her hand to keep us together. And also, I just wanted to hold her hand. But there were practical concerns with this maneuver.

  We had never really held hands in public before. The closest we had come to PDA was our touching in the stacks of the library.

  Were we the kind of couple who did PDA?

  Did hand-holding count as PDA?

  I might as well have been on the moon when she started on her talk about Jade, because I didn’t hear her until a second later, when she took my hand and said, “Marco?”

  I looked down.

  Yep. Hands interlocked. Mine and hers.

  It felt weird-great and awkward at the same time.

  Great because her hand was soft and warm and weird because her hand felt like a live electrical wire, sending a tingling current through the center of my body. I almost heard the buzz in my ears.

  “Marco? Hello?”

  “Yep. What?”

  She glanced at our hands, still locked together.

  “This okay?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  We were near our classrooms now. Same hallways, different doors. Sally stepped back so we were pressed against the lockers. “Did you hear what I said about Jade?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  Sally sighed. “She’s being weird today. Did anything happen?”

  “How would I know?” I asked.

  “You live next to her. Did anything happen with her dad?”

  The quick answer was no. But then I thought about it for a second while staring at our interconnected hands. Even now, outside of the crowd, leaning against the lockers, we kept our hands together.

  That was another kind of strange. Would we always be like this—linked together through palm, wrist, knuckles just for the sake of touching?

  And while I was looking at our hands, another part of my mind moved in a different direction, traveling through yesterday. Jade was fine yesterday. Fine at lunch. Fine on the bus ride home. But then I remembered what she’d said about her dad coming home, both at lunch and on the bus ride, about having to help her mom clean, so that the house would be ready for him, and that was why she couldn’t come with me to Sally’s house. I hadn’t seen Mr. Acosta’s car there when I came back from Sally’s house. But then my mind jumped to those noises at four a.m. The muffled sound of fighting that was coming from somewhere. And that dream, the raspiness of a girl crying.

  That dream.

  “Did you at least talk to your dad?” Sally asked.

  I hesitated, not wanting to lie to her but not wanting her to be mad either. But she knew the answer from looking at my face. She dropped my hand. “You said you would.”

  “You said I would,” I argued.

  “We agreed.” Her voice rose as the warning bell rang.

  “I still think you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah? Is that right?”

  “Well . . . ,” I hedged, caught up in being right but also remembering that dream. Or that not-dream. Either way, we were having our first fight. In the hallway. I looked around at the faces passing by. One in particular stood out—Erika, whose half smile slipped the minute our eyes met.

  “I can’t believe you,” Sally said, hoisting her backpack higher until the weight rested on her hips. She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t believe you lied.” And with that she stormed off.

  • • •

  I didn’t lie. I just didn’t want to make a mistake. I’m sorry.

  That’s the note I slipped to her in Mr. Weaver’s algebra class. She wrote back, Prove it. Talk to Jade on the walk home. Ask her what’s going on.

  So that’s what I did. As Jade and I made our way toward our block, I looked for a moment to “talk.” But it wasn’t easy. She was, like before, pretty silent, opening her mouth only to yawn. About a block from my house, I offered up, “You’re super tired, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and yawned again.

  “I had trouble sleeping too. I was up until about four in the morning. What time did you fall asleep?”

  She shot me a look. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Well, when I was falling asleep, I heard some noises. Did you hear that? If you were up . . .”

  Her eyes darted away and then back to mine. “I don’t think so,” she said finally.

  We arrived at her house, stopping in front of the gate. Her dad’s car was parked outside. In my rush to get to school today, I must not have noticed it there, in its usual spot, hanging off the curb. And I could feel those puzzle pieces coming together as my lungs felt squeezed of breath. I decided to push. “So,” I said, my voice low. “You didn’t hear muffled fighting.”

  “No.” Her voice was a whisper now.

  “Some kind of crying?”

  She shook her head. The words couldn’t even leave her mouth, and her gaze traveled down to the ground.

  “Jade,” I said. “Come on.” I reached out to touch her arm, still covered in that sweater, but she flinched, her eyes filling with tears. “You’re not okay. Are you?”

  She shook her head. A silent no.

  My lungs tightened, and for a second it was hard to breathe. “Want to come inside my house?”

  This time a nod. A silent yes.

  But she didn’t move, not until I took her by the hand—a hand that held no electric current for me but clung to me anyway—and led her home.

  Senior Year

  23. NO MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS

  LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER I’D given my physics project three solid hours of work, I sit in the kitchen with my household-finances spreadsheet open on my Mac. I’m staring numbly at two columns—the left one shows our monthly income, and the right one shows our bills—when Mom walks into the kitchen.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  “Mom”—I l
ook up at her—“when did you get this bill?” I hand her the “second notification” from the hospital, the number in red an astronomical amount.

  She offers up a heavy sigh. “They gave me the bill at checkout, but I thought we’d worry about it when the time comes.”

  “And you thought that would be . . . ?”

  “When they sent the bill again, in the mail.”

  “So now?”

  “Don’t lecture me, Marco. There’s so much else to worry about.”

  She glances down the darkened hallway. Down that corridor is the rest of our family, asleep, but there is a new noise coming from the twins’ bedroom. After a second, a sleepy Domingo appears in the hall and stumbles his way toward the bathroom. The light flicks on. The door swings shut.

  “Too much water before bed. I tell him all the time,” Mom murmurs, and then she sets her tired eyes on me.

  “We’ll be under,” I say, pointing to a third column, TOTAL DEBT. “Way more under than we already are.” As much as we tried, we were always about ten grand in the hole. Cars broke down. The twins needed more dental work. Mom got sick and missed work. And so on. But ten grand was manageable, even with the high-interest rates that credit card companies liked to force on people who lacked options. Now, though, with this increased amount, we’d be in real trouble—that can’t-make-your-minimum-payment trouble.

  “I know. I thought I could apply for help, but they’re basing our neediness on last year’s tax returns and we’re above the qualification.”

  “So we’re not needy enough?” I clarify.

  “Yep, not enough.”

  “And a payment plan?”

  “The hospital won’t give us one.”

  My stomach turned. “Why not?” Mom looks down, ashamed. “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” She sighs. “Because of all the payments I missed on the last payment plan, the first time Pop was hospitalized. They say we’re too much of a risk.”

  “But it’s twelve thousand dollars.”

  Mom goes to the sink, picks up the sponge, and starts scrubbing the kitchen counters. “It’s not the end of the world. I’ve applied for another credit card. See?” She pauses her scrubbing, walks over to the mail pile, and pulls out a thick envelope. Inside is a single square of plastic adhered to a letter several pages long. “And I qualified.” She hands me the page.

  “Mom,” I say, pointing to the fine print. “The APR is high, higher than on any of our other cards.”

  “Yes . . . ,” she hedges. “And?”

  “And?” I pause to do the math in my head. “That’s more than two grand extra a year in interest. And how long will it take to pay off? We could end up paying double what we owe by then. And wait . . . look,” I point to the number at the top. “You only qualified for two grand. We’ll still owe ten more.”

  “Then I’ll keep applying.” She scrubs the countertops like the Formica offended her. “I don’t see what other choice we have.”

  “We have choices,” I mumble.

  Mom tosses the sponge into the sink. “Like what?” she snaps.

  “Mom, come on. I’m just trying to figure out how—”

  “Figure out what?”

  “You know what,” I say quietly, because she knows what.

  She narrows her eyes. “No.”

  “Mom.”

  “No.”

  “Mom.”

  She takes a deep breath. “That is your money. You’ve been saving little by little since ninth grade.”

  “I’ll have some left over,” I point out.

  “Still no.”

  “I’ll get a job over there and make it up.”

  “Marco, you deserve a time when you don’t have to work so hard. I don’t want your first year at Wayne to be filled with you working yourself to death. That school will have academics unlike anything you’ve seen before—”

  “Don’t knock my public school education,” I joke, but Mom rolls her eyes.

  “You’ll be up against kids who are coming from some of the top prep schools in the country. It’s going to be an adjustment for you. That money means you can give your academics one hundred percent of your attention.”

  “Mom, I give my school right now one hundred percent. And I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if I didn’t work so hard.”

  “You can’t do both, okay?” She stares at the sponge like it’s no longer her weapon.

  “I think I can.”

  “This conversation is over, Marco,” she says softly. She sighs, looks around. “You deserve better than this. That money is your way out.”

  “But—”

  “It’s over,” she repeats without raising her voice.

  I look back at the laptop, at that number in red—twelve grand. Without my college savings in play, that number seems impossible.

  Scratch that. Without my college savings in play, that number is impossible.

  • • •

  “Bro, we’ll take up a collection. I can give you two grand.”

  “Just like that?” I laugh. “Just a . . .” I snap my fingers. “You ballin’ like that?”

  “Nah.” Diego chuckles. “But . . . I could is what I’m saying.”

  “Well, I couldn’t borrow your money.”

  It’s the next night, and Diego and I sit on my stoop, eating another round of deli castoffs. This is a true Southern spread, the kind you typically get north of Miami—fried chicken, collard greens, and corn bread. Food so good, it’s nearly impossible to be upset about anything. Well, except for humongous numbers in red. I tell him about the spreadsheet, the high-interest credit card. “I want to go to Wayne,” I explain. “I need to go to Wayne because of future and all that. But this? This feels like that time Kate didn’t let Leo on that big ole’ piece of wood when the Titanic sank.”

  “Dude.” Diego sucks on a chicken bone. “That was mad harsh, right? Like, shiz, girl, flip on your side, and let a brotha on.”

  “Right? And that’s me. I’m the Kate if I go to Wayne.”

  “But we can help you out, man.” Diego reaches past the Southern food for some good old arroz con gandules. He digs into the plastic container with a spoon. No offer to me. At all. But that’s okay, because the more I talk, the less I feel like eating.

  “I can’t borrow that kind of money from anyone, especially when I have it already. What’s the sense in that?”

  “I didn’t say borrow. I said give. I don’t want it back. It’s for your pop. Your pop has been good to all of us, and your mom has, too. And Jade’s got some guilt money from saving up that flow her mom sends every month.”

  “The money she’s supposed to give Sookie’s parents for living expenses?”

  “The money Sookie’s parents won’t take for living expenses.”

  “They’re good people,” I say.

  “Yeah. And we could ask Sookie. She probably has some cash just growing interest from her bat mitzvah stash. Remember that? I think she took in a couple of G’s. And if we each give you two G’s, that’s halfway there. At least you won’t have to work so hard when you get to Wayne. You’ll need a job, yeah, but won’t have to take on so many hours.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a lot to ask of you and Sookie and Jade.”

  “You’re not asking.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but, man. I wanna be able to take care of this myself. I don’t wanna make my bad situation into a bad situation for everyone else.”

  I’m quiet for a while because Diego saying that the tribe would do this for me fills me with a bunch of emotions.

  “You okay?” he asks, trying to get a look at me, but I make a show of checking my watch and saying how I got that physics project to finish.

  “Okay.” He starts to pack up the supplies. When he’s about done, he says, “You know, we’re here—not locked up like my pop. ’Bout to get that diploma. We got options. And it’ll be okay, I think.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s already better than i
t was for our ’rents.”

  “So, what? You come here to give me grub, money, and a pep talk?”

  Diego shrugs, then chuckles. “Guess so.”

  “You know what that is?”

  “What?”

  “Leadership.” I smile. “You’ll make a good manager someday, D.”

  “Ya think?” He smiles so broadly, I see all of his teeth.

  I clap him on the back. “Nah, man. I know.”

  • • •

  I knew I had to come up with a plan—one that had me going to Wayne but didn’t have my family dying in the Atlantic. So I thought on the problem all night, and the next morning I put on my good khakis, a nice button-down shirt, and headed to Grendel’s.

  I get there before the store is open, so I knock on the door, and Mike, one of the morning cashiers, lets me in. He blows on his steaming cup of coffee and smiles at me. “You’re here early, huh?” Mike glances at his watch. It’s barely six thirty.

  “Yeah, I’m tryin’ to catch Brenda before school. Is she here?”

  Mike shrugs. “If she is, she’ll be up in the office.”

  I take the stairs two at a time, running through what I should say. That I need money? Nope. Too forward. That I need more hours over the summer for unexpected bills? Better, but probably should be more specific. How about I need full-time hours over the entire summer, so that I can earn back a quarter of what I am about to spend on the hospital bill.

  Okay, getting there.

  Finally, I would like the raise I’m due in September now, because I’m a good employee, because I’m loyal, and I’ve earned it.

  I run through counterarguments until I stand at the threshold of the door, but it’s not Brenda inside. It’s Mr. Grendel, laptop open, notepad and pen to the ready on his right. On his left, a steaming cup of coffee and two jelly doughnuts.

  “You’re here early, Marco,” Mr. Grendel says, wiping a smear of jelly from the corner of his mouth.

  I scan the room, hoping Brenda will jump out of the shadows, delivering a “Gotcha!” worthy of Sally. But she doesn’t. So I say, “Yes, Mr. Grendel. I was hoping to catch Brenda before school. Is she around?”

  “She’s on an errand. Can I help?”

  “No . . . That’s okay. I can catch her later.”