I had to put my phone down because my hands were literally shaking. Dustin! My heart was hammering. I opened my bedroom window, desperate for air. Was this a panic attack? The logical part of my brain was thinking: I know Dustin He wouldn’t be that much of an ass. He couldn’t be. But he was the only person at Westburg who knew!
Then my brain landed on: Everyone would see this meme. What if my parents saw? They never would, but my brain was clearly out of my control. I couldn’t stop picking up the phone again, looking again. There was bile in my throat. I had to calm down. I took deep breaths. I remembered my mother opening and closing her fists, and tried that. I clenched my fists so hard, they hurt. And that hurt shifted something—because suddenly I had a single calm thought. Which led me to a very calm decision. I took a screenshot of the meme and sent it to Mr. Rivera. He emailed me back immediately. I was to come straight to his office when I got to school. Then I texted Jade. She replied with a meme of a woman covering her mouth in slow motion.
* * *
The walk from the bus into school felt like a marathon. I didn’t look up once. I could sense people eyeing me. It helped that I was bundled up in a coat and scarf and hat. Not that anyone at Westburg even wore winter coats. I’m hip. Even though they probably had thousand-dollar goose-down parkas at home, they didn’t wear them to school—I’m guessing because they went directly from cars with heated leather seats into warm buildings, and back. No waiting for the T or the bus in single-digit weather. But that was a whole other thing. Sometimes I wished my brain could just focus.
Minutes later, I was sitting on the small couch in Mr. Rivera’s office. He had already shared the meme with the administration, and he said a formal report would be written up, not that that meant anything immediately. But he told me I didn’t have to go to first period if I didn’t want to, wrote me a pass, said to just stay put, and then he got busy talking to other administrators and filling out paperwork.
I couldn’t face going to class yet, anyway. But I was too fired up to sit there doing nothing. Yeah. Fired up. I wished I hadn’t already done all my homework. I wished I’d brought my notebook, anything for a distraction. Damn. Even working on that METCO presentation would be better than just sitting there. My leg was bouncing like I’d downed five cups of coffee. Like every neuron in my body had gone electric. Yeah, fired up. And that’s when it struck me—the METCO project. Oh yeah. Yes! Let those administrators do their paperwork for the next decade. Liliana, you stay chill. The METCO kids and I—we’d show those racist fools at the assembly. But until then, I was going to suck it up and go to class. And more importantly, find Dustin. He and I needed another talk. Big-time.
* * *
Before geometry I spotted him at the end of the hall, but he stepped inside the nearest classroom. Had he seen me? Was he avoiding me? What a wimp. Whatever. I’d find him later.
At lunch I sat with the METCO kids. Yep. It took a mad racist meme, but they waved me over to sit with them at last. I caught Holly’s eye at our regular table, and she totally got it, gave me a Go over there, girl head nod. They were all as amped up as I was at the other table, their voices loud, hard.
Brianna grabbed my arm. “I just can’t believe this shit. No—I can.”
“You know what? Fuck them!” Marquis fumed, his mouth full of food. He practically started choking.
“Don’t die on us, Marquis,” I said. Everyone managed a laugh.
“Yo.” He coughed hard, cleared his throat. “I’m hip. People should just be happy I didn’t start posting stuff in response to ‘Go back.’ Listen, I could have written some stuff.” He paused. “But I’d be kicked out of school in a second.”
Brianna crunched hard on a carrot. “They can’t do that to you and not what’s-his-face.”
“Steve,” I offered. “You mean Steve.” I’d been thinking about what he’d written—he was super careful, actually. Saying “some people” and “go back” online weren’t exactly things you could get suspended for, and he knew it.
“Whatever that fool’s name is. Wasn’t he the one on teen Jeopardy!? Anyway, doesn’t matter. I don’t care what show he was on, he’s mad ignorant.” Marquis took a big bite of his hamburger.
“For real, though, how could they make that meme of you on a piñata—” Brianna couldn’t even finish her sentence. “I would be going ballistic.”
“I am!” I said.
“No. Like, I’d grab whoever did that and just—” She made a fist.
Dustin. I pictured his face, his bangs in his eyes. Ugh. I’d gone over this a million times, so much that I could actually feel my brain pulsing. No one else here knew about my dad.
Then, get this: Dustin actually walked over to my table. For a second, I thought I was imagining it.
“Hey,” he said, looking mad awkward. “Can we talk?”
“Actually, I need to talk to you,” I said, willing calm into my voice.
As his friends two tables over stifled laughs and coughs, I snatched the closest carton of milk and lifted it in the air. So much for calm.
“Lili!” he yelped.
I was seriously about to pour it over his head. “How could you, Dustin?”
“What are you doing?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” My calm had fled, and I’d switched to trying not to cry. His friends were now flat-out howling.
“Know what?” he asked.
“God! At least have the cojones to admit it—the meme? Of me?”
“Have the what?”
“BALLS!” I yelled. One tilt of my hand, and the contents of the carton would be all over his head.
“Whoa, calm down!” he said, reaching up to take the carton from my hand. He placed it back on the table. “I didn’t, Lili. It wasn’t me, I swear. That’s what I came here to say. I knew you would think it was me.” His face was dead serious as he leaned in and whispered, “I would never do that to you. Never. You know me better than that.”
I gave him some real side-eye and sat back down.
“Lili!” He started to say something else, but he hesitated.
“Wait.” I pivoted. “You know who did it.”
“Shit.” Dustin looked back at his table. “Over here,” he said, waving me over to the windows.
“It was Steve, wasn’t it?” I asked. Of course! I couldn’t even bring myself to look at his table. If I met eyes with him, I would officially lose it.
“Lili, I swear, I never told him. I knew you were going to think that, too. But he doesn’t know about your father—”
“Oh, okay! I’m really supposed to believe that.” The bile rose up in my throat once more. “So… how then? How did he find out?”
“I don’t know. He was just being a jerk, I guess. He’s always making memes. But I swear to you—”
I was only half listening, because I was thinking back… back to the times when Steve had acted totally jealous every time Dustin hung out with me instead of him. Like I was taking his best friend away. Wow. Maybe Dustin was telling the truth. Because deep down, did I really believe that Dustin would do something as awful as tell Steve about my dad? Steve must have been really pissed about the whole Erin drama in Mr. Phelps’s class too.… Yeah, it all made sense. And—is this pathetic?—I actually felt a little bit better—that it wasn’t Dustin. But that only lasted for a second, because then I realized that Dustin was still friends with Steve even after he’d made the meme. Had Dustin just let it slide? I glanced over. Dustin was gnawing his thumbnail so hard, I thought he might bite off his entire thumb. Let me guess—he hadn’t said squat.
“Whatever, Dustin,” I said, and walked away.
Despite the fact that half the cafeteria was probably watching, I didn’t care. I couldn’t even figure out how I felt about anything because it was like I was feeling everything. Confused, pissed, relieved, embarrassed, sad. Dustin so wasn’t the person I’d thought he was! And that sucked in a major way.
As I sat down, hard, I could see Holly
three tables over. She was on her phone. Her new thing was an SAT vocab app; she was obsessed. I stood back up and tossed my lunch into the trash can.
I caught Brianna’s eye. “Later,” I said.
“You bet.”
I walked toward Holly. “Hey,” I said. “Mind if I interrupt your SAT vocab app for a minute?”
She looked up. “Fuck yeah,” she said. “I hate this bullshit. I hate tests. I hate it all. But how are you?”
* * *
I came home to find Mom sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. I raced over, dropped to my knees. “Mom! What’s wrong? Is it Dad?”
“No, mija,” she said, her voice so deflated, eerie almost.
“What is it, then?”
“The school called.”
Oh. Oh.
“Liliana…” She hesitated. Then, like someone had lit a match inside her, she bolted up. “Liliana, I’ve been sitting here thinking, Could my daughter really be this irresponsible? Could she really not understand the situation we are in?”
“Mom, wait—”
“No! You wait. You listen. Liliana, the school counselor told me about the picture of your face on a piñata, con esa palabra, ‘wetback.’ My first thought was, who would do that to my DAUGHTER? And as I sat here, getting angrier and angrier, I started wondering how someone would know to do that— So how would they know that? Pues, you’re not one, but I’m just trying to think about how they would make that connection. They must know about your father and me, then. Right? How? Any ideas?” She was on fire.
“Mom—”
“So who did you tell? That Holly girl?”
“No!”
“What were you thinking! What if someone over there had called ICE? Can you… Did you even… If ICE found out…” She couldn’t finish a single sentence, she was so mad.
“Mom, no one is going to do that!” I couldn’t even bring myself to say “ICE.”
Her eyes bulged. “You. Don’t. Know. That!”
Maybe she was right. Oh… no. But, no. “Mom, it was just some stupid kid who was being racist because you and Dad are from Central America. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Mom repeated. She massaged the gold cross on her neck. “Mija, I’ve been thinking,” she said at last. “Maybe you shouldn’t go to that school anymore.… If you don’t feel safe… If someone goes and tells…” Again with the unfinished sentences.
“No,” I said, my voice all deep like I was the parent. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting some ignorant people say where I go or don’t go.”
For a split second she looked at me, wondering if maybe I was talking about her. Which wasn’t what I meant at all!
“Mom. No one knows anything specific. I’m fine. We’re fine. Nothing is going to happen.” That’s what I was saying. In my head, I was praying that Dustin had actually told the truth at lunch earlier, that Steve didn’t actually know about my dad or my family. He’d just hit a nerve.… Yeah, hit it with a sledgehammer.
Mom’s eyes glassed. She reached for me, and I sat on her lap even though we were the same size now. I can’t remember the last time I’d done that.
* * *
Next, she dropped this news on me: we were going to spend Christmas with my aunt in Lynn this year. For the first time in the history of my life, I didn’t want Christmas break to come. Ugh. Usually it was like my favorite time of the year. But with everything at school—plus, hello, the assembly that was happening in like three seconds, not to mention Dad not being here… The holidays—and our Christmas tree—well, they sucked. “Sucked” was clearly my word of the month. In fact, we’d only put up a small plastic tree in the living room, the one that usually went on the counter in the kitchen. We didn’t bother lugging up the big one stored in the basement. So, yeah, we’d still be staying up until midnight and eating tamales and opening presents on Christmas Eve, but this time we’d be using sleeping bags at my aunt’s. Double ugh.
So I took my phone to the living room and stretched out on the couch, the red and green Christmas lights on the fake tree blinking beside me. I tried to focus on the Google Doc on my Chromebook (thank you, Westburg). Today was so crazy that I’d nearly forgotten that the assembly was tomorrow! Yeah, tomorrow. I stared at the screen, reading the same stuff over and over, and then I must have fallen asleep. Mom tapped me on the arm and told me to go to bed if I was so tired. “You’ll sleep better there,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll be back in a bit. Going to get the boys.” But it was way too early to go to sleep for the night. And I hadn’t even eaten dinner. Just then my phone dinged. Dustin.
31
Dustin had sent a text. But it wasn’t the kind I’d been expecting. You know, another apology or something. Instead he simply wrote: hey, can u leave my sweatshirt in my locker? thx.
Suddenly I was wide awake. I admit—that stung. Like he was erasing me, deleting me. His sweatshirt? Really? I had it stuffed underneath my bed so Mom wouldn’t find it. Now I’d have to dig it out. And smell Dustin all over it. There was the sting again.
I didn’t write back.
My stomach gave a growl, matching my mood. He’d moved on. So would I. Aside from being pissed, I was hungry. So I decided to try to make rice again. Only this time, I used a pinch of salt—which I measured in a spoon first, instead of pouring straight from the container—and set the timer on my phone. I really wanted dinner to be all set before Mom and the boys got home, but that didn’t happen. My brothers burst through the door, slammed down their backpacks, and headed straight to the bathroom.
“Hello?” I called. The toilet flushed.
Benjamin peeked into the kitchen. He still had his coat on and was sprinkled with snow. “Oh no! Liliana is cooking again. Please don’t burn down the apartment this time!”
“Very funny.”
But instead of continuing to bust on me, Benjamin came back into the kitchen. “Need help?” His voice was surprisingly void of sarcasm.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Move it.” He dug in the refrigerator and pulled out some hot dogs. “Here. Cut these up into quarter-inch chunks.”
I did.
Next he microwaved some frozen peas and corn, added those to the rice in the pot. Then he sprinkled in a bit of Sazón seasoning, the one in the orange envelopes that Mom kept in the cupboard between the salt and the thyme.
“Thanks,” I said to my brother the chef.
“No prob. Just keep it on low heat for like ten minutes, and you’re good.”
“You’re really learning a lot in that Kids’ Chef Club, huh?”
“Yeah. When Dad gets back, he won’t even believe it.”
We locked eyes. That’s right, Little Brother, mine said. His look was more guarded, but I could see the tiniest flicker of hope. Then he crowed, “I got skills!” and hightailed it to his room.
Anyway, hello, I had made dinner! Well, we had made dinner. That wasn’t mac and cheese! And I hadn’t set off the smoke detector! Man, Benjamin was right. When Dad got back and saw the boys being all Top Chefs, it was going to blow his mind. In the meantime, I sent Jade a quick text and a picture of the meal. She gave me a thumbs-up and said to save her some.
As wiped as I’d been earlier, when I finally got into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to think through plans for the presentation, but, truth, I kept checking my phone, waiting for another text from Dustin. Something. But, nada. Pathetic! I know. But there it is. I went from mad to sad and back again every two minutes. Were we that disposable? Didn’t he have any feelings at all? I needed to get a grip. So I sent texts to METCO friends. Never thought I’d say that! Brianna sent me some funny-as-hell breakup GIFs—including one of a girl on a couch hitting the remote at the TV, and the caption You canceled. Yeah, I laughed.
* * *
So—I couldn’t focus on our presentation last night, but it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I’m not saying I was TOTALLY nervous, but I changed my shirt six times before I headed out f
or the bus, and then, yeah, for real, I ran back inside one last time and put back on the very first shirt, a pinkish-purple one, that I’d started with. At school, first thing, I bombed over to Mr. Rivera’s office. I guess I was kinda looking for a little final inspiration. A mini pep talk. On my way, a girl I knew from French class, Rosie—who had freckles all over her face, even on her ears—stopped me in the hall. “Hey,” she said. “So… um… I just wanna say it really sucks, what they posted of you. Some people are just ignorant assholes.”
It took me a second to register what she was saying. The meme. She had seen it. Of course she’d seen it. Seemed everyone had.
“Oh… thanks.” I smiled and kept moving. Yeah, some people could be ignorant assholes. But it was good to know she wasn’t one of them.
Mr. Rivera wasn’t in his office, so I poked around his bookshelf while I waited. One had kids that looked like METCO kids on the spine. I pried it out and leafed through it—and, no way, but, WAY—it had activities intended to help groups do exactly what we were trying to do with the assembly. I scanned the pages until one stopped me in my tracks. It was a perfect idea. I’d just need to tweak it a little. I could feel myself getting fired up again, like at the library the other week. I was lasering in on this one thing—the assembly.
* * *
Right after lunch, our METCO group had one last meeting to run through everything. By now, I was amped—in the best way. I came up with a crazy idea that might be—might be…
“I don’t know, y’all,” Ivy was saying as I rushed in, which totally derailed my thoughts. She was biting her red, chipped nails.
“You don’t know what?” Mr. Rivera asked, brow furrowing.
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