Amor and Summer Secrets

by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

  I snarled at the back of my brother’s head as I suppressed the urge to reach over the car seat and choke him with my bare hands. All those times I watched his back, and the one time I needed him to stand up for me, he bails. Why? Because it served his own interests to keep his mouth shut. That was all he cared about—himself. I felt the heat building in my head like a time bomb.

  “We’re here!” my mom sang from the front passenger seat as our Lexus SUV stopped in front of the Departures drop-off.

  “I still can’t believe this,” Madison cried.

  “Two months! And the party!” Emily whined, tossing her hands in the air.

  “Look, you guys, I can’t even think about that. I can’t even think about the party or I’m gonna lose it,” I squeaked, trying to hold my voice steady.“I brought my laptop. I’m gonna e-mail you guys every day, okay? We’ll set up a chat room in IM, and you’ll have to tell me every single detail. Madison, I’m so sorry I won’t be there.”

  “God, could you guys be more melodramatic?” Vince moaned, stepping out of the vehicle in his ripped jeans and Foo Fighters T shirt. With his grimy black hair and scruffy two-day-old beard, all he needed was painted black fingernails and he’d look like a member of the band.

  “Hey, just because you don’t have any friends who will miss you this summer doesn’t mean you have take it out on me!”

  “No, I have friends. They just have better things to do than act like a bunch of crybabies. Geez, two months on a tropical island. Woe is you,” he scoffed, throwing his black carry-on duffle bag over his broad shoulder.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Woe is me. This is all your fault!” I yelled, throwing a dog toy I picked up off the floor of the car. It landed with a thud at the back of his ratty head.Vince spun around, his lips tightening as his eyes darted for ammunition.

  “Kids, don’t,” my mother quickly warned. “Let’s not make a scene.”

  “Sorry, Mom, if I’m embarrassing you,” I said, cocking my head.

  Ever since she took my father’s side on this, I’ve put her in the same enemy camp. I was suddenly seeing her unending patience as pathetic passivity. The sight of her made my teeth grind.

  “Mariana, don’t speak to your mother like that,” my father ordered as he pulled out my suitcase.

  “Oh, sorry. Thanks, Mom! I’m so happy you planned this trip without asking me. When I get back, be sure to let me know what college you’ve decided I’ll be attending and any new extracurriculars you’ve signed me up for. Hey, maybe you’ll go the extra mile and arrange my marriage while you’re at it.”

  I knew I was only making things worse, but there was something about this phony good-bye scene that made me want to add at least a smidgen of authenticity. It’s not like my parents had earned any polite discretion. Sure, I knew many kids would love to spend the summer without their parents in Puerto Rico. But, frankly, I wasn’t one of them. And no one, other than my friends, seemed to understand that.

  “Mariana, I wish there was something more we could do. Maybe you could just hide out in an airport bathroom and we’ll pick you up after your plane’s left.You can stow away at my house the whole summer,” Emily whispered, putting her arm around my terry cloth–covered shoulders. I was wearing a turquoise hoodie and matching pants. I figured if I had to endure the mental torture of a four-hour plane ride, I might as well be comfortable.

  “Spic, seriously, my parents will fly you back for the party. I could have Gayle arrange it,” Madison suggested once again, not realizing the racial slur she threw out in my dad’s presence.

  I quickly caught my father shoot her a disgusted look. He’d heard them call me “Spic” before and he’d ranted about how offensive it was, but he didn’t get it. They weren’t making fun of me. They thought the nickname was cute. Besides, it’s not like I was really Hispanic, so why should I be insulted?

  It’s not half as bad as the nickname I got saddled with last year. My European History class had just finished an entire lesson on the Spanish Armada, the fleet of ships that sailed against England in 1588. A kid in my class, Hugh Larson, seemed to find the name hysterical, so much so that he pinned the nickname—Spanish Armada—on me, I being the only “Latina” in our entire grade. My brother and I officially made up Spring Mills High School’s one percent Latino population, a fact that was hard for our classmates to overlook. So for the rest of the school year, my entire history class called me “Spanish Armada.” I didn’t take offense, and actually, sometimes it was kind of funny. But I was more than happy to see the course end in June and the nickname die with it.

  “Mariana, it’s time to go,” my father instructed from the curb, where he was guarding my luggage. “Madison, I’m sorry she’s missing your party but I’m sure you’ll have just as much fun. Now, Mariana, say good-bye to your friends.”

  For a split second I wanted to shove him into oncoming traffic.

  I turned to Madison and Emily and tears instantly spilled from my eyes. I’d never had to say good-bye to them before.At least not like this. Sure, we’d all gone on vacation with our families before, but those trips lasted two weeks, tops. This felt like forever.

  “I’m gonna miss you guys so much,” I cried, spreading my arms wide.

  “I’ll miss you too,” they replied in unison.

  “You have the best birthday party ever! And send me all the pictures!”

  I stood there for a couple of seconds hugging them, crying. A part of me was hoping, silently, that they’d really miss me at the party, that it could never be as much fun without me. That I mattered that much.

  “All right, Mariana, you be careful over there,” instructed my mother as she put her hand on my back to break up the group hug.

  “I will,” I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

  I looked fiercely at my father. I had nothing to say to him, and I was not going to give him the satisfaction of a “good-bye.” He glared right back at me.

  “Mariana, Vince, hurry up or you’ll miss your plane,” he ordered without an ounce of sentiment.

  I sighed and turned my back to him. Vince was already standing at the automatic glass doors to the airport, waiting for me. I stormed toward him without looking back at my parents.

  “Good-bye, Mariana,” my father yelled after me. “And Vincent, don’t get into any trouble. The neighbors over there might not be as nice as the ones here, so don’t throw any parties.”

  I stopped in my tracks and coughed unexpectedly. My parents knew about the party Vince threw last year? Since when? My eyes shot toward my brother. His expression was flat. He didn’t seem surprised.

  Suddenly, it all made sense. That was why my brother was not allowed to go to Europe, that was why he was so willing to accept this Puerto Rico alternative, and that was why I was being forced to babysit him. This was all because of that stupid party. If I had just been as irresponsible as him, if I had just gotten wasted like he did, I wouldn’t be in this situation because then they wouldn’t trust the two of us together. Now I couldn’t tell if I was being punished for lying (by omission) on Vince’s behalf or for being trustworthy enough to look out for him.

  Chapter 8

  My white iPod headphones were plugged into my ears as I sobbed silently to my most depressing playlist. I was seated in the window seat with my legs pulled up to my chest, staring at the clouds as the plane moved farther and farther from home.

  The thoughts of everything I would be missing swirled in my head. What if I came back and Emily and Madison had formed this tight bond with no room left for me? What if it’s the greatest party of our lifetime and they have all these inside jokes I don’t understand? What if they get boyfriends and no longer want to hang out with a single loser?

  Truthfully, none us of had ever had a real boyfriend. The last boys we dated were in fifth and sixth grades, and they didn’t count. It was more like everyone in our class thought we were supposed to be dating, so we all paired up in matching couples—one girl for every bo
y. But we didn’t hold hands, hang out or even speak to each other in person. It was too embarrassing.

  Since we got to high school, we hadn’t really met too many guys worth pursuing. And there were certainly no guys pursuing us. Not that we hung out with people outside the walls of Spring Mills. All of our free time was spent happily dedicated to ballet, which didn’t introduce us to very many boys. It was hard to make new friends, but to be honest, I would rather have two great friends I could trust with my life than a flock of so-called “friends” to occasionally hang out with but who would stab me in the back the moment the opportunity arose.

  Now I was going to Puerto Rico where I had no one but my brother. And considering this whole mess was his fault, I wasn’t currently placing him on my list of allies.

  “Mariana, come on. Stop crying,” Vince whispered, nudging my elbow with his.

  I continued staring out the window and pretended not to hear him.

  “I don’t get why you’re acting like this is the end of the world. Do you realize how awesome this is gonna be? Trust me, it’ll be a lot more fun than if you stayed in crappy old Spring Mills.” He yanked my headphone cords until the earbuds fell from my lobes.

  “God, that’s so easy for you to say, isn’t it? Vince, you’re going off to college in September. Your life in Spring Mills is over.You don’t care what happens there. Great,” I snapped, my head jerking to face him. “But mine isn’t.”

  “So? You miss one party. Trust me, there are going to be others. Heck, your sixteenth birthday is in October. You can have a huge blowout then and put Madison’s to shame. I mean, do you think that much is gonna change in two months?” he scoffed, as he flipped through the latest Sky Mall magazine.

  “Vince, how long did you go out with Suzy Taylor?”

  “Two months,” he mumbled.

  “And when she slept with Sam Jenkins and the whole school found out, did it not bother you because it was only two months? Because nothing happened during those two months? Because those two months were no big deal?”

  Vince didn’t answer, not that I expected him to.

  “A lot can happen. And regardless, who wants to go home feeling like an outsider in their own life?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “You’re never gonna be an outsider with Emily and Madison. Come on, you guys practically communicate telepathically.”

  It was exhausting trying to explain how I felt to a boy who was not at all empathetic. I closed my eyes and let the buzzing of the plane’s wing fill my head.

  “Mariana, we are going to have fun.”

  “You don’t know that,” I whispered as I opened my eyelids and smoothed my palms over my messy red hair. “You have no idea what it’s gonna be like there. We might be the only people under eighty-five.”

  “So, we’ll make new friends.”

  “You’ll make new friends. It’s easier for boys,” I said, my fingers fidgeting.

  “It can be easy for you, too. Maybe now that you’re surgically removed from Emily and Madison you’ll actually talk to . . . other people,” he said dramatically, raising his hands and wiggling his fingers in front of his face like a low-budget magician.

  “Vince, seriously, now is not the best time to be giving me attitude.” I returned my gaze to the clouds outside my window.

  “Dude, right here, right now. As you cry your little eyes out, I predict that you are going to have the best summer of your life—way better than any stupid party. I predict that in two months, when we’re back on this plane, you’re gonna be crying that you have to leave Puerto Rico,” Vince said, slamming the tray table in front of him for emphasis.

  “Yeah, what do you think this is? Dirty Dancing?” I asked. “That stuff doesn’t happen in real life.”

  I popped my earbuds back in and tuned my brother out.

  Chapter 9

  When the plane’s wheels landed on Puerto Rican soil my stomach swished in waves. I wasn’t sure if it was from the rocky landing or the impending situation, but at that exact moment, I almost had to pull out the barf bag from the seat pocket in front of me.

  I closed my eyes and breathed slowly.

  “Dude, we’re here,” Vince cheered, grabbing my biceps with a shake—the absolute last thing I needed. He jumped up from his seat, long before the fasten seat belt sign was turned off, and was hit with an evil eye from a nearby flight attendant. To appease her, he slightly squatted in the vicinity of his seat, ready to pounce the minute the plane pulled into the gate.

  I, however, was planted in my seat fending off ripples of nausea when the pilot finally triggered the overhead light. I waited until the passengers around me had retrieved their bags before tugging my pink duffle bag from the compartment above—it was embroidered with my initials MLR (my middle name’s “Louise,” after a great grandmother I never knew). It must have weighed at least thirty pounds and of course I had no help with it since my brother was already halfway up the aisle headed for the door. I threw my black laptop bag onto my other shoulder and followed the mad rush of passengers.

  As soon as I stepped into the brightly lit Luis Muñoz Marin international airport, I was smacked with a spectacle of tan strangers rushing and pushing in every direction. The chaos reminded me of a Discovery Channel special I saw on killer bees, and an instinctive part of me felt the urge to cover my head and run.

  “Vince. Vince!” I yelled to my brother who was darting ahead of the crowd like he actually had a clue where he was going.

  He stopped, adjusted his black Foo Fighters T shirt under the strap of his duffle bag and turned around. “What?”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I half whispered, half yelled.

  “Mariana!” he whined. “We just got here. Couldn’t you have gone on the plane?”

  “Well, it’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?”

  I turned to assess the faces of the travelers surrounding us. None of them caught my eye, and they all seemed to be in quite a hurry.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me,” I said to a twentysomething woman passing by. She mumbled something in Spanish and kept walking, never breaking her stride.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I tried again, touching the shoulder of white-haired man sifting through a carry-on bag.

  “No hablo inglés,” he muttered, not looking up.

  “Oh, okay. Um. I can do this. Uh,” I said under my breath. “¿Dónde. Está. El. Baño?” I asked so slowly that I must have sounded mentally retarded to any native speaker within earshot.

  The old man looked up at me with confusion. Clearly he did assume I was retarded, and pointed down the terminal. “Allí,” he stated.

  I thought back to the Spanish lesson we had on “Aquí, allí, allá.” I was pretty sure “allí” meant “there.” So I took a wild guess that the bathrooms were down the terminal over “there” somewhere. I walked toward my brother, who was standing with his arms crossed and his gray sneaker tapping impatiently.

  “Look, I need to find the bathroom,” I said, as I walked in the direction the man had pointed. “Just look for the ‘baño.’ It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

  We walked several paces. The thick crowd of travelers engulfing us made it hard to absorb our surroundings, and the duffle bag on my shoulder felt like it weighed more than I did. My bladder was about two seconds from exploding.

  “Hey, look!” Vince pointed to a sign a few feet above him. It said “Toilets” in English.

  “Okay, now I feel like an idiot,” I muttered.

  There was a line of at least three women in front of me, and all of them were rattling off in Spanish. After five years of language classes at one of the best public schools in the nation—classes I received no less than a “B” in—I realized I could not understand one word they were saying. They might as well have been speaking Japanese.

  The reality of the situation began to sink in. I was the annoying tourist—one of those foreign strangers who take up the entire sidewalk in Philadelphia mumbling in some ridicu
lous language with guidebooks and cameras in their hands, begging for directions in some indecipherable accent. I made a mental note to be nicer to tourists when I got home.

  Chapter 10

  By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Vince’s eyes looked like he was on a mission from God. The minute he saw me, he rapidly lifted his duffle bag from the white tiled floor and spun around with determination.

  “The baggage claim is this way.” He pointed to a sign clearly translated in English. “Alonzo should be there by now. At least that’s what Dad said.”

  Alonzo Santiago was our father’s first cousin, which I’m pretty sure made him our second cousin. We actually met him once twelve years ago when he vacationed on the East Coast. My family took him to the Jersey shore, thinking that since he was from the islands, he must be a big fan of beaches. However, the minute the native Puerto Rican dipped his big toe in our ice-cold Atlantic waters, he ran screaming back to his towel. According to my mother, Alonzo spent the rest of the day asking my father, in Spanish, exactly what was appealing about soaking yourself in a murky freezing ocean and why in the world so many people were there. If the day was like any other day at the shore, I’m guessing that every inch of coastline was covered with a beach chair, towel or umbrella.

  However, I barely remember him. I was only four years old at the time. Dad showed us pictures of the visit a few days ago. I still wasn’t speaking to my father, so I couldn’t voice my initial reaction, which was that Alonzo looked a lot more Puerto Rican than my father. Alonzo appeared young in the photos, in his twenties at most, with tan skin, black hair and black bushy eyebrows. Being as though he was the only relative currently in Puerto Rico who had actually previously met me and my brother, it was determined that he would greet us at the airport. Of course, he hadn’t seen us in more than a decade, so I had no idea how the man was going to pick us out of a crowd.

  I struggled to keep up with my brother as he sped through the airport. For a kid who had never left the States and had very limited exposure to airports (his only other flights were our family vacations to Disney World), he seemed to be developing a rather rapid sense of direction.