The Truth Is

by Nonieqa Ramos

  “Yo, Rudy. Why am I to blame for all of this? I had nothing to do with the spray-painted desk. I wasn’t even here.”

  “You’re never here.”

  “Technically I’ve never missed a day.”

  “Dang, you so literal. I mean, you are not present. You’re the only one who hasn’t asked once how Nelly is. You’re the only one who hasn’t gotten in touch. You know, even Annie went to the rally? Even when she knew Brooke was going to go after her ass.”

  “Look,” I say. “This has gotten way bigger than me. I may have started something with Nelly, but I’m not responsible for all this. I just want to be left alone. Damn, I barely knew Nelly.”

  “Nelly’s one of us. Ain’t that enough? I mean damn, don’t you care what happened to her? Do people normally just disappear from your life?”

  “Fuck, Rudy. You have no idea.”

  Rudy blinks all surprised.

  “Yeah, the robot has flesh.”

  After a beat, Rudy nods. Points behind him again. “By the way, the other desk. They took it too.”

  “What other desk?”

  “The one you’re always—using.”

  My eyes dart to the back of the room. My throat tightens. I can’t believe I didn’t notice the minute I walked in. I nod and walk out the room to the water fountain. I’m feeling too warm, and if I could take off my shirt I would. I’m trying to reset my brain, downgrade my temp before I pass out.

  I douse my whole face in the fountain. I need to get control.

  ……

  Detention is in a classroom and not the gym, thank God. The lady presiding over our next hour-and-a-freakin-half is not anyone I know. Behind the front desk, she faces a laptop and messes with stations on Pandora that blast through the speakers on the ceiling. From the front door, two seniors lug in a pile of what looks like yoga mats. The teacher hasn’t decided what she wants and switches from the sound of rain to chimes to Gregorian chants. Everybody around me is trying to guess why Ms. Esquivel has settled on brown noise, which I didn’t even know was a thing.

  “First, everybody’s gonna push the chairs to the wall. Next, starting with the back of the room,” and Ms. E points to me when she says this, “everybody is gonna take turns and come up to get a mat.”

  “Can she do this?” Rudy asks.

  Boricua 2 aka Penelope, whose hair is now violet, nods. “She can do this and so much worse.”

  I trip up the row to grab my mat as every ally of Nelly all of sudden has to stretch and fall on the seniors handing out mats. Trip as one of them sticks their legs out when I make my way back.

  By the time everybody has their own mat and is situated on the floor, every kid is joking about nap time in kindergarten and how they used to pretend the mats were really rafts and if they touched the “water” a shark would get them. A bunch of kids launch into a loud-ass rendition of “Baby Shark.” Ms. Esquivel “accidentally” blasts the music and lowers it.

  “Sorry, not sorry. But since I have your attention. No mantras to recite this week.”

  “Thank Goddess,” mouths Penelope. “Got enough from AA.”

  Ms. E sits on her own mat in the front of the room. “There is a lot of tension going on in this room. A lot of talking smack. For just a bit, we’re going to give it a rest. Give ourselves a rest. Speaking of childhood games, let’s take ourselves back to kindergarten. Criss-cross applesauce. Hands on lap.”

  I watch everybody comply. They roll back their shoulders and straighten their spines, listening to the baritone heartbeat of cellos, but all I can hear is the telltale heart of my own panic. I’m desperate for push-ups or whatever other old-school draconian bullshit any of these teachers can throw at me.

  “Your body is feeling exactly what it wants to feel. Let it. Your mind is going where it wants to go. Let it.”

  Just like Ms. E says, I feel like a tree planted at my mat, my roots extending into the ground. Only I’m not feeling centered and at one with anything. I feel directly connected to magma, and I’m full of fire. My roots are underground snakes. They slither to the same sacred haunts. The graveyard. The movie theater where Blanca tried to take me.

  “Feel your arms, your branches extend upward. Outward. Feel the sun. Reach for it.”

  I reach for the light.

  ……

  The chandelier. In the Dollar Theater. It’s ridiculous. It’s like a top hat in the ghetto.

  First off, the marquee of this theater is missing the first T. So it actually says HEATER. Which is funny because we all know it doesn’t have one.

  Blanca, Fernando, Bambi, and I are standing outside the ’heater waiting for somebody to reappear in the booth. The booth is spread-eagled with porn. It’s awkward until Blanca launches into “Do Your Ears Hang Low/ Do they wobble to and fro?/Can you tie em in a knot/Can you tie em in a bow?” and we’re all dying.

  “That brotha”—Blanca points—“could make balloon animals with that thing.”

  “You could put an eye out like that,” I say.

  Just as the ticket dude returns to his post, a stampede of high schoolers cuts the line, daring us to say something.

  Nando’s and Bambi’s muscles seem to inflate. Nando’s jaw twitches. Blanca grabs her dude by the jacket sleeve and stands almost nose to nose with him. “It’s all good. Gives us more time to decide.”

  The high schoolers are talking a lot of smack about who’s already inside the theater and who’s begging to get a beat down. To hear them talk you’d think their brehs were staking out every screening in the place, just waiting to start some shit.

  We got our neutral faces on for the public, but Blanca catches my side-eye.

  Nando puts an arm around Blanca. “What do you want to do, bae?”

  Bambi takes a step closer to me and stops like a mosquito hitting a zapper.

  Blanca looks from me to Nando. “I want to go to the movies.”

  I roll my eyes. Double-check the movies listed on the marquee. “Gimme your money, y’all.” I fingersnap. “I got a plan.”

  Blanca knows I will carry her kicking and screaming with me if she don’t comply. Fernando knows it too. He coughs up money for him and her, Bambi coughs up money for us and I hand him back my half, and I pay for my damn self.

  I gather the change and dispense the tickets.

  “Qué es eso?” Fernando says, scrunching up his eyes as he reads the title on the movie tickets. We elbow into the mosh pit of kids clogging the front door and beeline for the snack stand.

  Blanca laughs reading her ticket. “Really, Verdad. What the hell?”

  “You think any of those fools would want to see this?” I’m all proud of myself. Nobody tries to start shit in the middle of a freakin independent foreign film.

  Fernando hooks up Blanca with prime movie snacks, one of her reasons for existence, which also include after-school snacks, PMS snacks, and sleepover snacks. Prior to tonight, Fernando pumped me for information about Blanca’s faves so he was all suave, knowing exactly what to get her, enough jalapeno cheddar popcorn to feed a third world country and her fave cherry slushie. I let him have it. I’m happy for her. Ish.

  Bambi steps up and knows better than to order for me, then joins the lovers. I step up to the counter. “And let me get a small popcorn and a box of Junior Mints.”

  “Sorry,” the teenager says, looking stressed as he eyeballs a bunch of kids dry humping a Cardi B cardboard cutout. “We’re out.”

  “Out? How you gonna be out? I just saw like a stack!”

  I get yelly, snatch my popcorn, and stomp back to my crew until I see them. Ten of them. Boxes of Junior Mints in Bambi’s arms. Blanca and Nando are dyin.

  “For real?”

  Bambi laughs so hard he drops a box. I throw him the kind of shade that killed all the freakin dinosaurs.

  “How ’bout a deal?” he says. “You could share the popcorn. I could share the Junior Mints.”

  I nod. A movie without Junior Mints is like rice without beans!
<
br />   “But don’t try to put no moves on me,” Bambi says. “Let your hand touch mine by accident.”

  “Oh! You’re suave, my dude. I may be hungry, but not thirsty.” I think that made sense.

  We leave a trail of popcorn as we head to our movie. Choose the back row and plunge into ratty chairs, sticking and unsticking our feet stick to the floor. The previews are for movies we never heard of from places we never heard of. A mom in front of us is explaining to her daughter that this movie is in the dialect of their people.

  “My abuelo used to take my moms to movies in Spanish too, hoping she would speak the language,” I tell Blanca.

  “Shit, Verdad.” Blanca shoots popcorn at me. “This has subtitles? We go to the movies and have to read?”

  I laugh. Eventually after many a popcorn has been fired and retaliated against, we leave the world of the movie theater and enter the world of the hotel. I’m not drinking a watery Coke and eating fossilized Junior Mints, glad it’s dark because all the nail polish on my left hand is chipping off. I’m with my mom and dad at a fancy hotel leaving dirty dishes for the maids waiting outside my door.

  My name is Amodini and I’m ignoring half my parents’ instructions about what I’m supposed to do and not do while they’re off at a business meeting and I’m at the pool. I’m Amodini leaving a trail of water behind me as I run back into the hotel room to get my favorite lip gloss and catch the maid’s daughter eating my crusts.

  Nando and Blanca agree they will kick Amodini’s ass if she snitches and hold hands.

  Then room service comes up with comida for the maid’s daughter. Her name is Daysia.

  Nando and Blanca are officially snuggling and feeding each other.

  “It would be less gross,” I whisper, “if y’all just made out.”

  “Damn,” Nando whispers. “You hard.”

  “No”—I launch a fusillade of Junior Mints—“these are hard.”

  Many mints get launched, but in the end, with him having nine boxes of Junior Mints, I have to cry uncle.

  Bambi and I are dyin laughing. So are Amodini and Daysia. They’re running in and out of rooms, the kitchen, now a ballroom. They’re pretending to dance when a crystal falls from the chandelier. Both girls pretend to get married. The diamond is the ring.

  “Run, girls, run!”

  The manager is after the girls. Of course, they get caught. Daysia gets her ears boxed by her moms because she could be fired. Amodini smuggles the crystal to Daysia as they’re both being hauled away in separate directions.

  Bang bang!

  We all look at each other. Ask and answer with our eyes.

  Bang! Bang! Crash.

  We search inside the movie screen to see where the Bang! Bang! is coming from. The explosion of breaking glass. The screaming that must be coming from another movie in an adjacent theater. We sit up on our knees and scan the theater. Other people are looking behind them.

  Light steals dark. Words that need no translation.

  “Go back to your country!”

  “Oh my God, oh my God!”

  The spray of gunfire stifling screams. Heartbeats.

  ……

  I gasp. Open my eyes. My hands are slippery fish. A black hole is where my heart should be. I’m soaked with sweat. I feel panicked like when you think maybe your period leaked through the back of your pants. The nerves around my eyes are loose electric wires. Everyone else’s eyes are closed. Like I’m the only one who survived. The clock tells me it’s only been five minutes.

  My chest. I need three hearts to hold this much pain. I walk out with the counselor hissing behind me, “Verdad? Verdad!”

  She’s propping the door open and dialing her cell.

  I dig in my pocket for my bus pass. If they suspend me, so be it. I’m not going back to detention. Don’t need to go to something that my mind attends every day of my life.

  Damn it! My bus pass. Did I lose it again even after those guys gave it back? My moms is going to hit the roof. She does not lose anything: neither umbrellas, bus passes, keys, nor her fucking sanity.

  I text Danny and tell him I’m walking northeast from the cafeteria, and he texts back that he’ll catch up with me.

  What was once a car but is now a rusting hunk of duct-taped metal on wheels pulls up. The passenger seat window is plastic wrapped. The cracked driver’s window rolls open halfway, probably as far as it goes. If I look down on the ground, I’m fairly certain I’ll see feet instead of wheels.

  “Need a ride?”

  It’s Danny’s broad-shouldered, flannel-wearing friend Jane, passenger side. I can’t place her accent. Mississippi? Georgia?

  Baldwin, wearing those teeny-tiny rectangular reading glasses, is in the driver’s seat. Danny is squashed in the back with the Indian girl and the white girl, and Mental Note: their shoulders are touching. Mental Note 2: They are beautiful.

  I will cut them.

  “You got room in the trunk?” I say to LumberJane. “Because at this point, I’m willing to ride in it, I’m so tired.”

  Danny sticks his head out his windowless window. “This no-tell motel always got a vacancy. Hop in.”

  The whole scene is ridiculous. LumberJane, a Goliath, is impressively pretzeled against the dashboard. To fit, I have to sit on Danny’s lap and stretch out my legs across the two girls in the back with us. I have claimed my territory, I think, eyeballing the girls, and I bite.

  Danny seat belts me with his arms. I lean in fitting into the puzzle piece of his body. “Can you do that forever?”

  He kisses my forehead. “That kind of day, huh?” Rubs his thumb against my cheek.

  “That kind of year.”

  “Join the club.”

  One member of the club is eyeballing my sneakers. I side-eye the Indian girl. “No matter what size I am—trust me, you couldn’t walk in my shoes.” I also kick.

  “Prisha, baby, I got you,” says the white girl. “You’ll swap spit but not shoes? C’mon!”

  Prisha shrugs and rubs her bare feet against—her girlfriend?—YAS—in apology. “Sarah, it’s not because I don’t want to wear your shoes! What if you cut your foot again?”

  “What if you do? I could not deal.”

  To Danny I whisper, “It’s the middle of September and girlfriend isn’t even wearing any shoes?” Now that I’m feeling less territorial with Danny, I can sympathize.

  Danny whispers back, “They got jacked. Then, last time she wore Sarah’s shoes, Sarah cut her foot on sheet metal. We got it cleaned up at the ER, but then her crutches got jacked.”

  I’ve been so comfortable for so long. My moms is the one who reminds me what it was like when we were living in Section 8 housing. When she tried to grow tomatoes on the balcony and somebody jacked the plant out by the roots. Half joking, I say, “Why don’t you each wear one shoe?”

  LumberJane beams at me in the mirror. “Oh, I like h—pronouns, please, Danny’s new friend. In fact, let’s all go around.”

  Pronouns are exchanged. I take notes. Jane, Sarah, and Prisha use she; Baldwin uses they. “I wish we could just all throw our own gender reveal parties like quinceañeras,” I say.

  Baldwin, our chauffeur, nods. “Word. Jane and I want to do like a naming ceremony or something. Why do the cis straight people get all the rites of passage?”

  “Why do they?” They. If cisgender (thank you, covert googling) straight people are theys, am I part of the we that is something else?

  Danny squeezes my hands, which have gotten restless again. “Jesus, now I get the bathroom stall transformation.” He gently runs his hands through my hair, which proceeds to get trapped.

  Baldwin: “Her hair is trying to eat you!” Blanca didn’t call it The Entity for nothing.

  “You know,” I direct at Prisha, “the Salvation Army. They got shoes. That’s where my moms got mine back in the day before she finished school and we moved out of Section 8 housing.”

  Sarah lifts Prisha’s chin and kisses her. “It’s tim
e, baby.” To me: “It’s just hard. She had money. She didn’t even do hand-me-downs.”

  Prisha: “I sound like a snob.”

  Sarah: “Don’t ever say that. What you gave up for me . . .”

  They make out. Before I can try to piece together what the hell is going on with these people, Danny is kissing my ear and my parts are turning to pudding.

  Baldwin: “You all need to get a motel. Not that it matters to me, but where am I going?”

  “Where are we going?” Danny says to me, his lips brushing against my neck.

  “Nowhere fast,” I answer.

  “Well, fuck. It’s official,” says LumberJane.

  “Got it,” Baldwin says, adjusting the mirror. “Destination, Nowhere.” Scrolls through their playlist.

  Me: “Hey, Logic. That’s my jam!”

  Sarah: “Really? Rap? That crap is misogynistic. How about some Tim McGraw?”

  Prisha’s Indian accent transforms into an alarming drawl: “Live like you were dyin!’”

  In the mirror Baldwin flashes a smile at Prisha and changes the station to Country FM.

  I throw my hands up. “Buzzkill! First of all, country is racist.” I return Sarah’s nostril flair with a neck roll. “Well, it is. How many black country singers do you know? Latinx?”

  Prisha actually smiles. “How many white rappers do you know? Excluding Slim Shady?”

  Sarah smiles all crazy, trying to hide her messed up teeth: “She was on debate team, FYI.”

  “None, buuuut, to begin with, hip hop was about blackness and brownness but overall about repression. Country was blues that became white because of oppression.”

  Baldwin changes the station to Taylor Swift.

  Everybody: “Turn that shit off.”

  Baldwin: “Oh my God, I’m so stressed out!”

  Me: “Who’s up for rock-paper-scissors!”

  We all rock, paper, scissors. After two rounds, I am defeated by LumberJane. She claps and blasts tunes that apparently she and Baldwin know all the lyrics to—in Chinese? “BTS, baby!”

  Baldwin: “Aw, for me, Baby Bear! I love you so hard!”

  Me to Danny: “What high-pitched hell are we listening to?” Is it chinito? Anyway, at least it’s not Tim McGraw. And it occurs to me how much I hate it when people think Latin music is only to be played on Spanish stations but white music is for everyone everywhere. So I chill.