The Truth Is

by Nonieqa Ramos

  You know, maybe this will work out perfectly. Your moms would have to punish you by ungrounding you.

  Anyway, we’re covered. Miss K’s got our back! Miss K is having a hard time having a personal life and being a drama teacher. She forgot all about a bridal fitting so had to cancel our stage crew practice without alerting our parents ahead of time. She said we could work on the sets for an hour or two then lock up.

  Let’s do this. We have to do this. This is the chance we’ve been waiting for.

  This is the chance YOU’VE been waiting for.

  Wait. Verdad, Bambi is fine!

  His name is Bambi.

  So what? How could you not think he’s guapo?

  No, I do. He is. There’s no question that he’s good-looking. Soft, thick, light caramel hair, skin like eternal summer, the biceps, and the booty. The problem is I don’t care. I’m not feelin it. If he tried to hold hands with me in the popcorn, he’d be wearing the popcorn. I don’t like even the idea of a date. Once you say the word date, you give a dude permission to put his moves on you.

  Then, this is gonna happen? Blanca presses.

  I sigh and type my confirmation. This is gonna happen. Whether I like it or not. We’ve been talking about a double-date like this our whole lives. Now that it’s about to be a reality, I realize I’m more interested in the fantasy. The mysterious someone in the dark laughing when you laugh. Passing you the Junior Mints. Tasting Junior Mints in one peppermint kiss. In that fantasy I never know who the mysterious person is, but I know it’s not Bambi. But Blanca wants this to happen with Fernando, and that isn’t going to happen without me . . .

  ……

  I stand up. The bus’s back door opens and out pops Blanca. The exiting crowd is rowdy. I get mashed against a pole among shopping bags and some Middle Eastern dude carrying a box that I’m telling my racist ass not to think is a bomb. But if it is, I’ll tackle his ass.

  By the time the bus clears, I know where I am. I’m almost in front of the Dollar Theater. The theater I have not stepped into in 360 days.

  Blanca is literally going to take me hostage down memory lane.

  12

  My brain is a game of 52 pickup. The theater. She’s kidnapped me back in time. But my brain spars hard with the hands of the clock and forces them forward. ’Cause look at the time! Danny. I’ve got to get to Danny. Away from here.

  I’m surrounded by a pregnant lady who must be having triplets, a guitarist and his breh with the trumpet. A college student who must be carrying the complete works of Shakespeare in her backpack. I can’t reach the bus cord. I’ll have to wait to the next stop. I unzip my hoodie because I’m super-hot all of sudden. Pull out the fabric of my T-shirt to blow air on my chest.

  I have too much spit in my mouth. The Middle Eastern dude gives the pregnant lady his seat and I have room to find my own. I crack a window to get some air but all I taste is exhaust. I want to spit, but I can’t bring myself to do it. The bus doors finally open but I’m afraid if I move, I’m going to hurl. All the people talking seem to be sucking away all the oxygen. Somewhere on TV I heard you put your head between your legs to get over a panic attack. Shit, is that what I’m having?

  Putting my head between my legs, I can clearly see everything that people stick under seats or falls out their pockets: chewed-on lollipop sticks, cough drop wrappers, a condom, a cockroach that is making its home in a Snickers because it satisfies him.

  My hat falls off and thankfully some heat escapes from my head. I grab it and fan myself. I might hurl in it if I don’t get off the bus now. Up on my feet, I’m like Michael Jackson in “Thriller” dragging myself to the doors. In the gutter, I throw up the little breakfast I ate. Right next to someone sitting in the gutter.

  “Sorry, man.”

  “Been there,” the scroungy dude says, holding up Jack Daniels. “Want some?”

  “Um,” I say, feeling clearer in my head and lighter in my feet, “I really like to wait until,” I check my celly, “eleven o’clock before I hit that. But thanks, man.”

  “No problem.” He holds up the bottle in a toast.

  I step onto the curb. The neighborhood hasn’t changed. I swear that was the same dude in the gutter the last time I was here. In the year 3000, will we still have alcoholics in gutters? Can’t we give them, like, some kind of BYOB bar where they could drink and pass out on a cot, free of charge?

  And across the street, there are all the junkies in the park. I mean, really? Can we not just give them a place to shoot up that doesn’t involve monkey bars and sandboxes? Would this not be a public service to everyone involved?

  I squash my fedora way down low on my head and stick in my headphones. Just as Kendrick’s about to drop the beat, loud laughter rounds the corner, followed by footsteps. Loud laughter that gets quiet all of a sudden. I leave the headphones in so I can pretend I don’t notice the bunch, maybe three or four guys, so close they’re stepping on my shadow. I hear their accents. I’m catching words like “puchica!” and “cabal” and I mentally identify El Salvador. My neocortex drops the words gang and MS-13 and I remind myself to DIY pepper spray tonight. If I live that long. Hopefully these dudes are just out to rob me.

  What am I doing here?

  One dude: “Ta’ chivo, ¿vá?”

  Giggle. Giggle. Another dude: “Chera!”

  Un otro: “Yo! The girl in the dope hat!”

  I don’t turn around and speed the hell up. “Fuck off!”

  “No seas puta, damn!”

  I jaywalk into traffic to avoid them and almost get sideswiped.

  Laughter: “¡Te pelaste!” the El Salvadoran dude calls over the honk of a horn blaring at me, “We’ll just keep it!”

  I whirl around. Across the street of gypsy cabs and busted cars, are the would-be assailants in Yankees caps tossing something back and forth like they’re warming up on a baseball diamond. Takes me a minute before I realize. I dropped my bus pass. OH SNAP.

  I cross the street at the light this time. The dudes turn their backs on me and play it off like I’m not there.

  “Give me my Metro card.”

  “Damn,” the dude who likes my hats says, “She got no manners. Ghetto!”

  “Ghetto? Like y’all hanging out here in the middle of the day?”

  They all turn around and face me. Dude with the Puerto Rican flag tattooed on his bicep clears his throat. “We’re on break. Been up since we opened at five a.m. this morning.” He points to a White Castle. “About to head back. You?” He tosses me my Metro Card.

  I don’t catch it of course. Got to bend down like a fool to pick it up.

  I’m a traitor to black women and a now racist against El Salvadorans and Puerto Ricans. “I’m”—I shove my bus pass into my backpack—“sorry,” I mumble, scanning the landscape. I might scale that White Castle. It would make the perfect place for a primal scream.

  I give up chasing Blanca and head toward the bowling alley. Right now I need Danny to say the right things, do the right things, and make me rewind to our kiss and delete every single thing that’s happened since.

  Right on time, Danny shows up on his skateboard with a bunch of kids in toe. We—as in me, myself, and I—are not pleased.

  Here’s the lineup: There’s an Indian girl in a man-sized T-shirt and zebra-stripe pajama bottoms next to a white girl in booty shorts (her booty cheeks have goosebumps) and a crop-top (her belly button looks cold), each of them holding a skateboard. I’d say they’re a little older than us, maybe juniors? I’m déjà vu-ing hard watching the Indian girl’s ridiculously long black hair swing like a pendulum. There’s a Paul Bunyan tall blonde. . . person in a man’s flannel and jeans, and a tall skinny chinito/black dude(?) wearing these teeny-tiny reading glasses hanging onto the end of their nose for dear life. Chinito sports an AfroPunk T-shirt and purple shorts—that I know I’ve seen . . . in the cafeteria. That’s right. Chinito is the one I saw stealing bananas!

  But what stands out is Danny—and his shi
ner. “Are you okay?”

  Danny looked like if he fell off a cliff and narrowly managed to climb back up. Greasy and uncombed hair lies wilted on one side of his head. His jeans look like a crumpled dollar bill that got forgotten in a pocket. And those hands.

  “Just had to save my skateboard from a dastardly thief earlier,” Danny says. “Everyone, this is Verdad.” He points to the others and rattles off names: Prisha, Sarah, Jane, Baldwin.

  “Later,” says Chinito aka Baldwin, jumping on his(?) skateboard.

  The black-haired Indian girl hugs Danny and says, “Under Graffiti Bridge.”

  I mathematically analyze the distance between her boobs and Danny’s when they hug in relation to the time each hug took multiplied by commensurate eye contact.

  The squad disappears from whence their wacky asses came, aka from the life that Danny leads that I know nothing about. Because I am mature, I instantly hate their asses. My ass is cuter.

  Awkward silence.

  “Graffiti Bridge. Speaking in code, huh?” I finally manage to say. “A secret hideout? From the looks of you, a secret identity?”

  “Totally undercover.” Danny slides his hands on the rim of my crazy-angled hat. Danny is wearing—nail polish?

  “And you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, noting the cover-up pancaked over Danny’s bruised eye. The lipstick? “Maybe I’m not in disguise for the first time.” I can’t say I like the way that feels. I want to go back to school. Home. Whatever page of my story where life made sense. “Let’s get out of the hood.”

  “Hold up. This may be the hood, but where else could you get your shoes shined while you eat a chorizo and egg with a side of hash?” Danny smiles. His teeth shine unexpectedly white for someone who may possibly have climbed out from a dumpster. “We could explore the old theater. It’s kinda fun walking around in there. There’s a dope chandelier. Prisha says it’s actually worth a ton.”

  Danny keeps talking, but I don’t hear the rest.

  “You don’t look healthy. You good?”

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know. I just have to move.”

  Speed walking, I break into a jog. Danny’s by my side cruising on their skateboard. HIS skateboard. She’s a he. Right? I’m tryin to ignore the lipstick. Not ’cause Danny doesn’t look cute. Because it’s confusing as hell. Because that makes Danny a bio girl who’s a bona fide boy wearing lipstick, damn it. That’s my understanding. Is that Danny’s understanding? Can you just decide that shit? Is that what Danny is doing? Can he just snap! undecide all of this?

  Danny effortlessly cruises over cracks. I never decided how I felt about Danny. It just became a reality. Part of my story. Like one of those chapters Blanca ripped out and handed me one by one, I couldn’t cheat and read ahead. I’m breathing in and out now, more like in meditation than a run.

  It’s a good thing I’m hitting Walk signs because I’m not paying any attention to the traffic rushing past. Just the traffic in my brain. Am I expanding my brain, or going insane? Both.

  Danny holds out his phone and videos our path. I side glance at that jut of chin, the glint in his eye like the shard of mineral trapped in sidewalk concrete, the cocky smile. The hands bruised and beautifully cut like church stained glass. Even over a gaping pothole, Danny has perfect balance. We fly past a posse of guys checking me out like my boobs are jogging past without the rest of me attached. Danny does some kind of 360 jump and makes them flinch.

  They shout, “Dykes!”

  Me: “End tables!”

  That’s when Danny almost falls. He is dying laughing. “Out of all the things you could have said . . . I love your brain.”

  I blush. Danny loves my brain!

  Should I say I love his brain back?

  I should be out of breath by now, but I’m not. I feel like a cheetah that’s been unchained. I’m stretching my legs. I’m seeing the possibilities. I’m hungry.

  Danny and I should be able to be—whatever we are! With or without each other. Why do we want every damn thing to be the same? I think about the Holy Trinity, the statues of saints back at the cemetery. God is a hundred billion things but humans are expected to be one.

  Blanca: Write that down.

  I let Danny give me a peck, then pull away. “Sorry!” I gulp down the last of the Tic Tacs. “My toothpaste was missing this morning. Resume.”

  “Sorry.” He looks genuinely sheepish.

  “You’d be sorry if not for Tía Sujei’s Tic Tacs.” We kiss like a run-on sentence and finally after like seventeen semicolons, we take a breath. “Let’s go.”

  “No.” He backs up. “Not today.”

  “Not today? You do realize school is a five-day thing, right?”

  Danny licks his lips, tasting mine. I get a mad tingle in my lady parts.

  “Maybe I’ll catch you after school?”

  “Actually, I have coding. Then homework.”

  “Okay. How ’bout that theater sometime? Or just an old-fashioned movie.”

  “Movie? Uh.” I back up a few more steps. I just realized I haven’t watched a single movie in a theater, on a TV, or otherwise in almost a year. “That’s something people do. Maybe . . .” I turn my back.

  Danny hasn’t moved.

  I turn back around. “How about we do lunch? Only this time, we exchange lines of dialogue. You are still technically enrolled, right?”

  “Lunch? That’s something people do.” He jumps on his board. “Maybe . . .” But he nods.

  We part ways. I ring the bell and get buzzed in. The office is a madhouse. It seems like everyone from homeroom, everyone from the Nelly Incident is here.

  I look behind me as I walk to the front desk. Some major evil ojos are lasering my back. “Verdad De La Reyna. Freshman. I’m late.”

  “No kidding,” the secretary says looking at the clock and scribbling me a tardy slip. “Literally five more minutes and I would have marked you absent.”

  “Well,” says the VP from her high horse, “you can mark yourself absent from whatever you have planned after school, young lady.” She scribbles on THE PAD. “Report to detention promptly at three. You can join these bozos.”

  Those bozos. The girls who called me a cunt, plus White Girl 3 from homeroom and history class. For some reason, it surprises me one of them’s got ballet shoes tied to her backpack. Then my mind blinks, and I think Hello, Lauren Anderson. Misty Copeland. Then I think, Fuck, I’m so fucked up. How did I get this way?

  The other girl, the one with the BLM shirt, is mentally cataloguing White Girl 3’s ensemble of boho shit from her feather earrings and dreamcatcher necklace down to her suede boots.

  “The Native Americans sent a smoke signal,” she says. “They want that whole outfit back.”

  “If Native Americans can even wear clothes, I can wear a dreamweaver.”

  “What?” says BLM Girl, getting in White Girl 3’s culture-appropriating face.

  “Do I need to call security?” The VP threatens BLM Girl as I plot my escape route out the office.

  “Sure, that’s how we handle problems, don’t we? With security.”

  “That’s how we handle violations of school policy, Tanya.”

  “It wasn’t a violation. It was art.”

  “Art stays on the canvas. Once it leaves the canvas, it’s vandalism—”

  Tanya, neck-rolling and side-eyeing, “Said no artist ever.”

  A procession of blue-, purple-, and silver-handed kids from homeroom pour out the principal’s office with expressions all along the spectrum from My ass is grass to And I’d do it again, bitch. The flower in Frida’s hair glitters with spray paint specks and her jaw is set. She looks like she just climbed a hill that she thought was a mountain, and now she can see a mountain in the distance—but her ass is going on. Right behind her is Rudy, tripping on jeans so wide he could jump from the Empire State building and land safely.

  Rudy: “Hey, Ex-Machina, you missed the party.” He turns to Tanya and takes a five.


  Tanya points to my detention slip: “She’ll be there for the after-party.”

  I open the office door to see two custodians, white dudes, one sporting what looks like a Robitussin-red beard and the other with enough hair in his ears to make a beard. One is carrying the desk in question toward the principal’s office and I guess the other one inhaling a hot dog is providing emotional support. Both acting like the two gravediggers at Scrooge’s funeral.

  Custodian 1: “They behave like this and what do they expect?”

  Custodian 2: “Get a free education. Free food. But they’re never satisfied.”

  By “they” do they mean kids in general or do they mean us—people of color? Are food and education not bare minimums for all humans?

  Gravedigger 1 sets the desk in front of the office. The top of it is spray-painted with the words, You always got a place here, Nelly.

  Every kid that files out rubs their hand against it. I wonder what would happen if I touched it.

  Zap!

  13

  It’s the end of a very long-ass day. I’m back in homeroom, standing in a line to get my detention room assignment. From what I hear, different teachers have different methods of doing detention. The PE teacher has kids do push-ups. The math teacher makes kids do statistics correlating detention and college dropout rates. The science teacher collects cell phones, covers the clock, and then discusses the theory of relativity.

  Rudy’s taking bets again.

  “Do you bet on everything?” I ask.

  “You bet your ass your ass ain’t safe from Tanya if she got to do push-ups. PS, the Danny Pool is up to four hundred dollars. I added in the category hermaphrodite.”

  “Hermaphrowhat?” Like I need any more categories. “He’s a guy, okay? End of story.”

  Rudy situates his headphones so he can use them in detention without detection. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, Ex-Machina.” I have a feeling he’s not just talking about Danny’s gender.