by Matt Mendez
The storm over the Tucson Mountains—the multiple slashes of lightning, the grayish-black sheet of pounding rain cutting across the range toward Fabi’s little casita—was a welcome sight. Fabi opened the small window over the kitchen sink and breathed the desert air, the smell of wet dirt and creosote. Blooming palo verde. She’d never experienced a monsoon like this. One that meant business. Hard-blowing winds and fat, relentless rain flooded the mountain almost every night, leaving the tiny backyard of her new place at the base of the mountain sloshed with mud and rock. Spiky weeds grew wild in the yard seemingly overnight—Grampá pulled them most mornings after spending nights hiding out in his room, not wanting anything to do with the storms.
Fabi had finished unpacking a week after moving in, and finally developed the film she’d found when packing up her old apartment. Most were pictures of Juan as a newborn swaddled in blankets, his face pinched shut. Her favorite was of her holding him at a party, her smiling at the camera and Juan’s eyes opened wide, watching her. Her Juanito, always the careful observer.
She placed the photos in frames, hung them in her bedroom and around the house. She’d also rescued old pictures of Mamá from Papá’s drawers as they packed up his old house, and hung those, too. They sold the house a month after the funeral and used the money to buy this new place. Gladi had sent some photos she’d been holding on to as a housewarming gift. Fabi painted all the walls, and she and Papá took to working on the place. Replacing the bad plumbing. The rotting electrical. The collapsing roof. Fabi had a sewing room, the Singer set up by the window and overlooking a garden she planned on starting the following spring. Papá said he would frame out a flower bed, something for vegetables. He suggested maybe she should learn to sew—if she wanted. When Fabi came across items neither her or Papá thought they needed or wanted to look at again, jewelry or some old army memorabilia, she took them to a van she’d passed on her first drive into town, a multicolored VW just off I-10 with a plywood sign with the word DONATIONS spraypainted across it. A woman inside received those things gratefully.
A week after Juan’s funeral, Coach Paul visited Fabi at Papá’s and told her about the scholarship he’d hooked Juan up with in Arizona. He explained how Juan had done a good job coaching another boy while he’d been injured, and what a shame it was her son had been caught up in “that life.” He said he’d had no idea Juan had been into drugs or stolen a vehicle until he’d watched all that mess on the news; he knew about the arrest record, but who didn’t have one on this side of town? The coach wanted Fabi to know he’d done everything to get Juan on the straight and narrow, and considered himself to be just as much at fault for what happened as she was. He cried.
While Fabi hated that Coach Paul bothered to stop by in the first place, she liked the idea of Arizona. Of starting over. There was nothing left for her in El Paso. She went to the library and found the school Juan would’ve gone to, pictures of the basketball gym, of science labs, of young faces in image after image looking happier than anyone at a community college probably ever looked. Fabi decided she would be the one to go to Pima Community College, and told Papá to pack his things the moment she returned home.
Like the coach, and JD, her father also blamed himself for everything. Blamed himself for not taking her and Juan into his home sooner. For not being a bigger part of their lives. For not teaching Juanito to be a man. As if Juan was killed for not being a man. That was exactly the reason her son was killed. For being a man. A brown one.
• • •
Fabi’s pregnancy ended two days after Juan’s funeral. She started cramping and then bleeding one morning, a supernova occurring inside her body, the universe captured in her sonogram suddenly collapsing. Because it was early in the pregnancy, a doctor from Project Vida later told her she’d be perfectly fine, able to have kids again if she ever wanted. Fabi thanked the doctor, not knowing what else to say, only knowing that nothing in her life would ever be perfectly fine again.
• • •
The next morning would be Fabi’s first day of class. She’d registered at the West Campus of PCC after applying and taking her assessment tests all on the same day. She had even declared a major—electrical engineering—even though her adviser, a woman named Yvette who was younger than she was and had her degree from the University of Arizona hanging in her office, said she didn’t need to pick right away. Fabi placed directly into College Algebra, MAT 151. She’d studied the algebra book she found in Juanito’s room, worked on the same equations he’d done, going through his notebook and working out all the same problems. That afternoon she ate her lunch in the basketball gym. There was no team practicing inside, no smell of sweat or buzz in the air. Instead, long tables were set up to help students register for classes and sign up for different clubs. Fabi looked for a sewing club but only found crocheting.
The rain unloaded, and Fabi shut the window, the drops pelting the glass. The water started coming down so hard and fast that she could no longer see through it. Her first class would be College Algebra, and she was surprised by how much she already liked the subject. How much easier it was than she remembered from high school. She liked how answers could be reduced to their lowest terms. That the problems could be solved at all made algebra better than real life.
The rain continued, and the water in the backyard rose, seeping through the torn seal along the kitchen door. Fabi opened it; cold water rushed over her bare feet and flooded onto the linoleum. She walked into the storm. Lightning cracked across the purple sky. The rain slapped hard against her face, her body. Near the foot of the mountain, small avalanches of mud and rock slid toward her and her home. Threatened worse. The wind shrieked and thunder boomed as the thin branches of mesquite and palo verde in the yard flexed to the point of breaking. Fabi knew the storm would be over soon, everything calming to a stop. Only wreckage left behind.
• • •
At sunrise her father came out of his room and went to work cleaning up the fallen branches, cutting them into smaller pieces with a hand saw, and then he washed away the mud from the concrete walkway. He stacked fallen mountain rocks into a neat pile in the corner of the yard before repairing the seal under the back door to keep water from seeping back inside.
Fabi biked to school on her first day as a college student and navigated the hallways of the Santa Catalina building until she found her classroom. She took a desk right in front. A clean whiteboard bolted to a gray wall faced the room as students took their seats. Still sweating from the ride, Fabi took out her book, pencil, calculator, and her notebook—no, Juan’s notebook. The first few pages were still alive with his handwriting, his name written on each one at the top right-hand corner. As the professor came into the classroom, Fabi turned to the first blank page and wrote her name exactly the way her son had. Without a word the professor grabbed a dry-erase marker and began to scribble an equation on the whiteboard, a long mix of letters and numbers. When he finished he set the marker down.
“If you cannot solve this equation, do yourself a favor and drop this class now.”
Fabi and the rest of the class stared at one another, puzzled about what to do. Unlike the images she’d seen online, nobody was smiling. Some in the class took out pencils and paper and got to work, while others packed their belongings and left. The fluorescent lights of the room were bright and harsh, the window blinds closed, blocking any morning light from sneaking in. Fabi thought about Juan and knew exactly what he would do if he were sitting there instead of her. At that moment there was no other place Fabi wanted to be. Fabi carefully wrote the problem down and began solving for what was unknown.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Meg Files for believing in my work and inviting me to present at the Pima Writer’s Workshop where I was lucky enough to meet Dara Hyde, my now agent and confidant.
Dara was the first person to read Barely Missing Everything and the one to point out that the audience for this novel was young adults, teens just li
ke Juan and JD. I’ll be forever grateful for her insights and her help in making this novel what it is.
And to Caitlyn Dlouhy, a superhero of a person and my editor. Thank you for being the champion Juan, JD, and Fabi needed. You have shaped and molded Barely Missing Everything with your careful brilliance. Without you I would not have been able to fully unlock this story. Thank you. Many thanks to the Atheneum team, who love books and readers.
Thank you to my family, to my má who is just like me but also way different, to my brother and sister who got my back. And to my father, who died two months after I signed the contract for this novel, and who I miss every day. This book is made from their sacrifices. I love you all.
Without Fernie Rubio and Carlo Passaseo, without our childhoods, this story could not have been written. We miss you Carlo.
Thank you Marlo, my wife of twenty years. I’ve been made better at life by your fearlessness and determination, by your generosity of spirit. I love you, and thank you, thank you, thank you. And a special thanks to our two daughters, Margie and Gabby, who were both born as Barely Missing Everything was being written. Their energy is on every page.
And finally, to each and every reader, thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Like his characters, MATT MENDEZ grew up in central El Paso. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona and is also the author of the short story collection Twitching Heart. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Tucson, Arizona. Barely Missing Everything is his debut young-adult novel. You can visit him at mattmendez.com.
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Atheneum Books for Young Readers
A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book
Simon & Schuster, New York
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An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division + 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com + This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. + Text copyright © 2019 by Matt Mendez + Jacket illustrations copyright © 2019 by Dana Ledl + All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. + Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. + For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]. + The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. CIP data is available from the Library of Congress. + ISBN 978-1-5344-0445-8 (hc)+ ISBN 978-1-5344-0447-2 (eBook)
