“We’ll get the cable back when you get that movie studio contract, right?” Rick asked.
“Oh, let’s give this a real try first,” Mom said. “Homes without the constant barrage of commercials from cable TV are supposed to produce more grounded children.” She was really committed to making it seem like they were removing good things from their life due to sound parenting, not money problems.
Friday afternoon at the Herreras’, Abuelita came in from the living room, where she’d been watching television, and said, “No Girl Scout meeting today, chamitos.”
Rick looked up from playing tug-of-war with a paper towel with Daniela. “Was it canceled?” he asked.
Mila looked up from her homework. “Why’d they cancel it? Will they reschedule it?”
“No, it’s not canceled, but there’s no getting there. Listen.” Abuelita stood in the doorframe between the two rooms and used the remote to turn up the volume on the TV.
“Our studio has gotten a lot of calls about Balboa Boulevard. Since early this afternoon, the traffic there near the 118 has been stopped dead in both directions. There are no accidents or construction reported; however, people have been stuck for hours, and it’s showing no signs of improving. If anyone has details about this situation, text your tips to us.”
A reporter then interviewed a lady in a minivan. She’d gotten out of her car to use a bathroom and come back to realize things were still not moving, so she’d ended up walking away to get a couple of convenience-store hot dogs. When she returned, not a single car had moved a single inch. They cut to a shot of a couple of gentlemen selling a wheelbarrow-full of water bottles and oranges to thirsty drivers. Another guy with an empty wheelbarrow was trying to appeal to bored drivers with a cardboard sign that said TAKE A RIDE IN THE WHEELBARROW $1.
Abuelita shut the TV off and flapped one hand. “Phsst. Another crazy afternoon in the City of Angels.”
“Aw!” said Mila. “I was looking forward to painting today.”
The hair on the back of Rick’s neck stood up. He felt a sudden need to check on his duct-taped signs. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Let’s go anyway.” He tried to sound casual, but his voice squeaked on the last word.
Abuelita said, “‘Doesn’t sound so bad,’ Ricardo? It broke some kind of record!”
Something was telling Rick he absolutely had to check on his signs, right now. He knew there was a roundabout way to get there from when he’d looked up the location of Yum Num Donuts online. “What about if we went south and then east around the San Fernando Mission instead of our usual route? If we left right now, we could park a few blocks away and walk and still make it in plenty of time.”
Are you sure about this? his stomach squeaked, like his voice just had. Rick shifted in his chair and mentally begged his innards to work with him.
Mila added her voice to Rick’s. “Could we try going that different way? And you could stay and wait for us and get something at Yum Num Donuts. You know how much you love their apple fritters. Please?” Somehow she made her eyes look like a puppy’s.
“Please?” Rick echoed.
Abuelita looked at them both and then raised her arms to heaven. “Does every grandmother fall for a child’s ‘please’? Fine, we’ll try it. But if it looks like we’re going to get caught up in the mess, I’m turning around. And I will get a fritter.” She smacked her lips. “Yum Num does make the best apple fritters.”
The drive in this new direction made Rick’s stomach moan, even though Abuelita was doing her hit-every-light-while-it’s-green trick. Rick wasn’t sure how much of his queasiness came from the traffic and how much came from the feeling something bad had happened. He tried to hide the fact that he was slipping a double-reinforced bag out of his backpack, but Mila saw and shot him a pitying look, mouthing, Thanks for doing this with me. He was relieved when they found a parking space three blocks away from Yum Num Donuts and he was able to tuck the unused bag away.
“We’re a little early. Why don’t you come with me before we go to the artist’s house,” Abuelita said. “I’ll buy you both an apple fritter.”
Do I like those? his stomach asked faintly. I bet I like those. Ask me when I can think about it better.
As they approached the bakery on foot, Rick shaded his eyes from the intense sunshine of a Southern California afternoon. They crossed the sea of still-unmoving cars that was Balboa Boulevard. He saw that his duct-taped signs had been seriously messed with. Five had been switched to the opposite side of the street from where he had placed them. One had been thrown into a dusty ditch near the sidewalk.
Rick made a strangled noise and went to rescue the dusty sign from the ground. The front had been graffitied with purple paint.
“Yuck, what a mess,” Mila said. “Why do that? It doesn’t even look like anything but a dripping blob. We should bring it with us to Ms. Diamond’s house and fix it up.”
Rick held the sign flat with clenched fists and made a new, more-strangled noise in response. This sign already had been fixed up—perfectly. His face got hot. Someone messing with his signs felt like someone messing with his skin.
Abuelita felt Rick’s forehead. “You feeling okay, Ricardo?”
“No. Not okay. This is wrong,” he said.
She rubbed his back. “Can’t let vandalism get you too far down or you’ll never get up again. Breaking things and spray-painting them is a full-time job for some hee-haws around here. Let’s go inside and focus on the happy things in life, like fritters. Also, I need the restroom.” She went into the Yum Num Donuts entrance, which was crowded with other people ready to focus on their own happy, sprinkle-covered, chocolate-frosted, jelly-filled things.
Mila followed, looking over her shoulder at Rick when he didn’t move.
“I need a minute,” he said.
She said, “Okay. I’ll see you in line.”
Rick loosened his grip on the sign to check the damage. Not only had someone spray-painted a drippy purple blob on the front, but when he flipped it over, he saw they’d stuck stickers of purple octopuses over the back. Where he’d signed it with his Sharpie, someone had sprayed an inexplicable epithet over the name Colossus of Roads. It said SPLAT. He ripped off the stickers and put them in the trash.
The duct tape was still in place, but the sticky bits were now plastered with sand and dirt. This sign couldn’t be rehung. Rick tenderly placed it back down, telling it, “Wait for me here. Right now, I need to put your friends back where they belong.” The signs wouldn’t work as well with one missing, but he had to do what he could.
He found a milk crate and ran from signpost to signpost, repairing the damage. Just like last time, no drivers paid him any attention. He found that his duct tape was still plenty sticky. Correcting the five signs went more quickly than setting them up in the first place, because he didn’t have to wait for traffic to slow for him to cross the street. These other five signs were definitely the work of the same vandals: they may not have had blobs spray-painted on the front, but the back of each was coated with octopus stickers and the word SPLAT.
Rick felt more human after this act of restoration. He walked under DON TS: THE ONLY THING MISSING IS “U” and joined Abuelita and Mila inside, wiping his face with the corner of his shirt. The smells of yeasty dough and sugary glazes wafted around him.
Mila awkwardly patted his shoulder. “I wish Ms. Diamond could meet the jerks who did that and show them how to make old signs beautiful instead of ruining them,” she said. “She’d say ‘Make art everywhere you go and find art everywhere you look’ that way she does and make them understand.”
Rick nodded. If Mila had replaced the word art with Snarl Solutions, they were in complete agreement, he figured.
They made it to the counter and Abuelita ordered three fritters. But when Abuelita opened the bag to offer him one of the grease-paper-wrapped goodies, his stomach let out distressed bubbles and squeaks, moaning, I wish I wanted to eat that soooo much, but I’m too upset. Both Mil
a and Abuelita gave him a pitying look when he said, “Can we save mine for later?” Rick tried hard to appreciate that the only thing missing at Yum Num Donuts today wasn’t him, but that was the best he could do for now.
NOT YOUR ONLY TALENT
BACK OUT ON the sidewalk, Rick collected the sabotaged sign and tucked it under his arm, impatient to restore it again. In fact, once he’d cleaned it up, maybe he’d design a work order to fix this section of Balboa permanently. It’d be much harder for hee-haws and jerks to rip down road signs fastened with solid Department of Transportation nuts and bolts.
After walking with him and Mila to Miss Diamond’s house, Abuelita decided to go for a stroll and drop in on one of her friends. At Ms. Diamond’s, fewer Girl Scouts than normal had made it, but the ones who were there were painting like mad. Rick and Mila headed toward the double helix where they’d been working last time. “Maybe we can work together to help fix that poor thing,” Mila said as Rick put down the vandalized sign.
“Thanks, but I’ve got it,” he responded.
“Oh. Okay,” she said, her voice tinged with disappointment.
“A nice surprise arrived today!” Ms. Diamond announced to the group. “An extra delivery of freeway signs!” She waved to a stack. None of them approached the dimensions of the grizzly sign, but a few were sizable. Rick knew what would make Mila smile. He hurried over and said, “I’ll take two of the biggest ones you’ve got.”
“All yours, chickadee,” she said.
Rick dragged the signs back to Mila and said, “All yours, mythical-creature painter.” He’d imagined she would clap her hands with quiet delight. Instead, she was searching around on the floor with a stricken expression.
“Where are the signs I did last time? And the ones we did together?” A dragon and the two SPEED LIMIT UNICORNS were still there, but the rest of them weren’t.
Rick scratched his head. He knew he hadn’t listed those signs on any work orders. “Ms. Diamond?” he called. “Did you write up plans for more signs to be hung since last week?”
She looked sheepish. “No, I was waiting for you.”
Mila’s looking so distressed made Rick feel less so. This would be an easy problem to solve. “They’re around here somewhere,” he assured her. “I’ll help you find them.”
They walked around the room together, until Mila stopped. Rick looked where she was looking. The older girls who’d taken over the Chompy McChompface sign had finished it with bold white letters at the top: THE SKY’S THE LIMIT. Now they’d turned their attention to some smaller signs. One girl was starting to spread blue paint across NO PARKING EXCEPT MERMAIDS.
Mila didn’t look like she could speak, so Rick did it for her. “Stop that!” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” No more vandalizing of signs was happening today if he had anything to say about it.
The girls looked up at him in surprise. “What’s the problem?” one asked.
“You can’t take my friend’s signs and paint over them. Give those back!” He stomped toward them, and the girls scuttled away from him.
“We didn’t know these weren’t up for grabs,” one girl said sulkily.
“Yeah, they looked like mistakes,” another said. “Sorry.”
Rick didn’t bother to reply. He loaded Mila’s creature signs onto a drop cloth and dragged them to safety. Mila followed him.
“The paint we use dries pretty quickly, but let’s see if it’s not too late to wipe it off,” Rick said, using the edge of the drop cloth to do exactly that. The blue paint smeared. The mermaid was visible, but in a pale underwater-ish way.
“Well, at least we saved the rest of them,” Rick said.
“Thanks,” Mila said. Rick could barely hear her.
He handed her a paintbrush and nudged one of the big new signs toward her with his sneaker. “You can’t let those hee-haws get you down,” he said. “Keep painting. Think about the wise words of Eleanor Roosevelt.”
She sat, still and cross-legged, no sign of her I-love-to-make-art face.
Rick sucked in his cheeks to make a super-serious presidential-wife-looking face. “Women are like tea bags—
no one knows how strong they are until you…uh…put them near a plate of cookies?”
“It’s ‘No one knows how strong they are until they’re in hot water,’” Mila whispered.
“No, no, you’re quite wrong,” Rick said quickly, raising his voice to a falsetto. “I am Eleanor Roosevelt, and I should know my own quotes! Now, young Mila Herrera, get some paint on that paintbrush and keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground!”
“That’s Teddy Roosevelt,” Mila whispered a tiny bit louder.
“Are you sure? Didn’t he say something about not fearing fear itself?” Rick answered, still doing the falsetto.
“That’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” she half announced, half whispered, a ghost of a smile stealing onto her face.
“Sheesh, how’s a kid supposed to keep his inspirational quotes straight with all these Roosevelts to keep track of?” he answered in his own voice.
Mila patted her brush timidly on her paint palette. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you ever wonder if your only talent matters at all?”
“Sort of. Mostly I feel like no one wants to know about my only talent because it makes no sense to them. If I were a great basketball player or a straight-A student, I’d get tons of attention, but if I say ‘Hey, I understand traffic patterns,’ people look at me like I’ve got ants crawling out of my nose,” Rick said.
“Understanding traffic is not your only talent,” Mila said. “You’re good at making me laugh.”
“Oh yeah?” Rick was surprised by how nice that comment made him feel. “How about my art talent? Isn’t that also worth mentioning?” He made an extravagant gesture toward their original SPEED LIMIT UNICORN sign.
Mila giggled. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I bet your only talent isn’t your mythical-creature painting, either,” Rick said.
“No?”
Rick thought about it for a minute, trying to give her a sincere answer. “You have so many different ways of being quiet. Happy quiet, nervous quiet, hardworking quiet, not-minding-other-people-needing-to-be-quiet quiet.” He was getting warmed up now. “You have the I’m-making-art-yay quiet, your I’m-really-listening-to-you quiet, and your I’m-pretending-to-be-fine quiet.…There are probably a lot more besides that I’m missing.”
Mila smiled and shook her head. “You know what? The sisterhood bond I’m supposed to have with every one of those Girl Scouts? I’m giving it to you instead.” She leaned forward and punched Rick on the upper arm.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing it. “What was that for?”
“Sorry,” Mila answered, abashed. “I thought that’s what sisters are supposed to do with brothers—punch them sometimes. It’s what my dad’s sister does to him.”
“Oh,” Rick said, giving his arm one last rub. “Okay. Maybe you can warn me next time so I can brace myself. You apparently also have the talent to give your friends bruises.”
“Well, you have the talent to convince your friend to get back to her painting,” Mila said, dabbing her paintbrush on her palette with authority. “I still love doing it, no matter what.” She applied a twisty trail of orange scales atop the words Memorial Freeway and drifted into a contented silence.
“Good,” Rick said sincerely. He got busy collecting the signs he thought would work for his Sepulveda solution. He knew something was missing, but he could prep these signs today and use the weekend to figure out what that was before filling out a work order at the next session. He began retouching the signs, tackling the vandalized sign blob first, removing the duct tape, and obliterating the purple with a thick application of clean, bright white paint. Take that, purple splats! his stomach crowed. Bet they didn’t realize this sign was under the protection of the Colossus of Roads. It was enormously satisfying.
The gri
zzly girls announced that they were done. Ms. Diamond said, “There’s a preschool in Pacoima that’s going to appreciate this big bear.” She got the dolly, and all the adults in the room helped move the sign to where the delivery guy would come pick it up. As Ms. Diamond passed Rick, she asked him if he had time to help with a few work orders before he had to leave. He surveyed his painting and nodded, then quickly signed the backs with “The Colossus of Roads.” As he approached Ms. Diamond’s desk, he was exuding his own Yay-I-don’t-have-to-hide-my-talent-right-now quiet.
That evening, Dad made popcorn on the stove and put on an Avengers movie he’d borrowed from the library. He and Rick sprawled on the couch and enjoyed the show. Mom, though, stayed hunched over the kitchen table with her calculator the whole time. When she finally got up and came to see if there was any popcorn left, the final credits were rolling. “Darn it, I missed the best part of the day,” she said. “We’ll do something fun together tomorrow.”
Saturday morning, Rick found out what the “something fun” would be: Mom came into his room and woke him up, saying “Rise and shine! Dad has to head to the bank, so it’s just you and me for a while. I thought today would be a good day to work on that duct-tape boat you said you were interested in trying out. Where’s the tape Dad bought?” She started poking around his room.
Rick rubbed his eyes and stretched. He’d planned to chain himself to his desk and not get up until he’d solved the Sepulveda puzzle. “The regatta thing isn’t until October. I’m still not sure about signing up for Cub Scouts.”
“Come on. Let’s just try making the boat. It’ll be fun. I’ve noticed how happy those art-project outings have made you, and I figured since I haven’t been the best company lately, spending some creative time with my favorite Roo would be just what the doctor ordered. Aha!” Mom waved a roll of black tape she found on his desk. “We’ll start after breakfast.”
The Colossus of Roads Page 8