The Secret Side of Empty

by Maria E. Andreu

  That’s what I’ll get, a bike lock. I know I want to save for a computer, but suddenly the thought of spending my sixty dollars feels amazing, like I’m a little lighter. A better me.

  I walk into the pharmacy superstore and get a basket. There aren’t many bike lock options, but the more expensive one looks better, sturdier, so I throw that one in the basket. Next I head over to the makeup aisle. I’m not much of a makeup wearer, but maybe I need to change that. I hover around the eye shadow. They’re like paints in art class—dark, light, shiny, flat. I want them all. I settle on a shiny forest green and a sparkly beige for my eyelids. Maybe if I put on green eye shadow, my eyes will look greener. Anything would be better than my dark, small, ugly brown eyes.

  And next a journal. After seeing mine in my father’s hands, all of a sudden I can’t touch it anymore. I need a new one. And not some dollar-store spiral notebook, but a real journal. Maybe even leather bound.

  I wander over to that section and see what they have. Baby’s first year. Inspirational quotes. Gag. As I’m combing over the five options, I hear behind me, “Hey?”

  I look up. It’s Soda Guy from the other night. He’s not quite as tall as I remember him. But his eyes are lighter. He’s in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  I guess I stare too long, because he shifts his weight a little from his left leg to his right. “I’m from the other night . . . remember? The car, the dead end?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember. You were in Brian Ferriss’s car.”

  “Yeah, hi, I’m Nate,” he says.

  “Hi, Nate.” I really want to say something else, but nothing is coming to mind.

  “You’re Sean’s sister’s friend, right? So . . . what’s your name?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m M.T.” I brace for the joke. EMT? Mother Trucker? He spares me.

  “M.T., nice to officially meet you.” He does air quotes around “officially.” He is cute when he does air quotes.

  “So that was weird the other day, right?” he says.

  “Awkward and weird, yeah.” Boy, I am scoring points for sparkling conversation.

  “Awkweird.” He smiles. I laugh. He looks pleased.

  Then I look down at the journals.

  “Yeah, so, you’re busy, I just saw you and . . .”

  I really don’t want him to go, so I scramble around for a reason to keep talking. I hold up two journals, one yellow with buttercups on it, one with bluebirds in orange boxes, facing in all directions.

  “Which one?”

  He scrunches up his nose. “Hmmm . . . of those two?”

  “I know. Options are slim.”

  “Yellow flowers for sure.”

  I laugh, put the bird journal down, and hug the buttercup one to my chest. “Yellow flowers it is.”

  As he walks me over to the register, he says, “So you don’t go to Willow. We’ve established this.”

  “No, I go to the girls’ school.”

  “Oh, you’re one of the Goretti Goddesses? Is it true the nuns beat you guys with rulers?”

  “Not if they know what’s good for them. We hit back.”

  He laughs and bumps into me for no good reason, like he wants to get into a wrestling match. I wonder briefly if I could take him. That thought is followed by amazement that this super-cute guy is hanging around looking clumsy, doing a whole lot of staring at his feet.

  After I pay, we stand, all “where do I put my arms.” Someone goes by and the alarm goes off. The bored clerk waves them on without looking up. I wish for a split second that I had the guts to stuff my pockets full of eyeshadow and walk out past the detectors, all calm and cool.

  Over the noise of the alarm, Nate says, “So, Willow’s having a dance on Friday. You should go.”

  “Oh, I think my friend Chelsea said something about going.” It is a total lie, but he doesn’t know that.

  “So maybe I’ll see you there.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  I toss the bag, receipt, and packaging to all my new things in the trash can outside, then stuff them all deep in my backpack. I like the idea of erasing evidence. It feels like a superpower.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “A Willow dance, are you serious?”

  “C’mon, Chels, just this one time.”

  “But their dances are so lame.”

  It’s true. Willow Falls Regional High School dances are lame. Maybe something about their monstrously big gym that never looks full, or the DJs they get, or the way that everyone hangs out in little pockets by cliques. The all-black clad crowd—they must be the theater geeks or the art crowd—stand outside the actual gym, looking too bored to be there. The cheerleaders, who I know by sight from town football games and general cheerleaderiness, wear clothes that are too tight, topped off by too-perfect blond hair. There is always a cluster of the Antisocial Pot Smokers type there, smelling of pot. I wonder why they come at all.

  “I really want to see him,” I tell Chelsea. Of course I have told her every moment of the Encounter at the Pharmacy in microscopic detail, nanosecond by nanosecond, and we have deconstructed the code locked inside his words for an hour already. I know if we are on a boy mission there is no question she will come to the Willow dance with me.

  “I’ll go if you do something for me,” she says.

  “Sure, what?”

  “Come with me to Siobhan’s school next weekend.”

  “Oh come on, Chelsea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just—there’s that paper, and I have a calculus test the Monday right after that and . . .”

  “Siobhan’s not that bad, you know. You can study in the car on the way back. And it’s not like you’re going to study for it anyway and you know that. Please come.”

  I am surprised that Chelsea has picked up on me not liking Siobhan.

  I really want to do what Chelsea wants. But the thought of going to see the whole college experience unfold right in front of me, like a sick little buffet of desserts in front of a homeless, hungry person, makes me want to crawl under my covers and not come out until nothing matters anymore, like when I’m twenty-four. Plus there’s Siobhan. Make that twenty-five.

  “I’ll ask my mom, but you know how my Parentals are,” I say. They can always be counted on to mess things up.

  “I’ll come ask with you.” Uh-oh, Chelsea means business.

  “No, no, I’ll ask, I mean it.” The thought of Chelsea in my apartment makes me queasy. It’s an unspoken thing between us that since she’s clearly got the better crib, we always go to her place instead. Chelsea in my apartment feels like the princess at the city dump. It’s just not done. I’d better ask with enthusiasm or Chelsea will park herself on my mother’s sewing machine and try to convince my father herself.

  Chelsea drives me home.

  I walk upstairs slowly, trying to figure out a way to do what Chelsea wants but also not go visit Siobhan. I push open the door to the apartment. The smell hits me right away.

  Not freaking again. I can’t believe it.

  I make my way to the kitchen by touch only in the pitch black. There, Jose colors by the light given off by the kerosene camping lantern. My mother has put a few candles on the stove burners as well. They give the room a gloomy glow. She’s wiping the middle of the stove in slow motion.

  “So he didn’t pay it again,” I say.

  “Business is slow at the restaurant,” she answers slowly. She moves like her elbows and her shoulders hurt.

  “I’m sure it is. How long is it going to be this time?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve asked to borrow money from a few people.”

  “Yeah, awesome.”

  “Did you want a candle to take with you to your room?” For once my mother doesn’t try to pretend like everything is okay. I guess she’s not in the mood for me, either.

  “I needed to ask you about something.”

  “What?”

  “Two things, actually. One, there is a dance I want to go to on Friday.”

/>   “Yes, of course. Dances are fun. Did I ever tell you about the dance where your father and I met?” Dances are always good for an easy yes with her. I feel like I should listen to the story even though I’ve heard it before.

  “I guess.”

  She lights up. “I was wearing a light blue dress my mother had made me. It had these little capped sleeves. It was a few days after my seventeenth birthday. Like the age you are now. My mother had made it for my birthday. I had on my one pair of good heels. I was so worried they’d get ruined because the road to the town square was all dirt and there were pebbles.”

  “So you tried to walk on tippy toes.”

  “And close to the acequia because the ground was less rocky there, yes. I wore my hair short then. My mother hated that. ‘How are you ever going to catch a husband with your hair short like that?’ she used to say.” Her eyes have a faraway glaze and are all aglow with the kerosene lamp. It’s like she’s telling me the story of some fairyland she visited in her dreams a long time ago.

  “I was getting to be an old maid. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how it was there. All of my friends had been dating the men who would be their husbands for a few years by then. My sister had been married maybe two years. She went to the dance, but she sat with the married women and didn’t dance.

  “I didn’t want to get married. I thought I’d be a lawyer and help poor people. But by then I had been working and had stopped going to school . . . I don’t know how long. A year, maybe?”

  She looks at me like I know the answer. I want to squirm away, but know I need to sit here and listen to her.

  “Anyway, when I got there I spotted him right away. I had never seen him before. I was so bored with all the boys from my town, but he was new. I found out later he had come from across the city with his cousin. He was so handsome! You’ve seen the pictures, right?”

  Gag. There’s the one up in the hallway. The two of them looking like clueless babies, all happy about God knows what.

  “Yeah.”

  “He says he spotted me right away, too. And he was so bold, you know? I liked that about him. Other boys sort of stood around looking stupid, but he walked right up to me. My mother hated that about him! He was too fresh, she always used to say. But he asked me to dance and I did. And we danced together all night. At the end of the night, he walked me over to the little stand and bought me a soda, which was a pretty dashing thing to do. The boys from my town never spent money on us like that.”

  I stare at the candle on the stove. Hoping it will hypnotize me away from listening to this story again.

  “So we took our soda and walked over to a little clearing. My mother was furious with me afterward for walking off with a strange boy like that! But we just sat and talked . . . it felt like forever. And do you know what he said to me?”

  Of course I know. I’ve heard this story a hundred times.

  But the proper response is, “What did he say?” So that’s what I say.

  “He said, ‘I’m going to America and I’m going to be a very important man one day. How would you like to be a very rich man’s wife?’”

  “Ummm, Ma, you don’t think that was a little weird?”

  “Weird? No! It was romantic.”

  “But he’d just met you.”

  “I don’t know. They were different times. A different place. People got serious fast over there. Not like here where there is all this dating and living together. We didn’t do that there.”

  Still creepy.

  “Anyway, so I had to act offended by that, of course. I couldn’t act like a girl who thought it was okay to get propositioned like that by a stranger.”

  “You just said it was romantic.”

  She waves her hand in frustration. “Anyway, so what I said was, ‘I just turned seventeen. I am a liberated woman. I’m not marrying anyone anytime soon. I’m going to have my own career.’ And he said, ‘When is your birthday?’”

  “Wait, he just skipped over the whole career conversation?”

  She gives me an irritated look. “I said, ‘My birthday was three days ago.’ And he got down on one knee.” She is looking giddy. “He said, ‘I am a poor man now and I didn’t know I would meet the woman of my dreams here tonight. Let me give you the only thing I can give you tonight.’ And so you know what he did?”

  I do know, but I let her say it.

  “He sang me a song. A love song. And when he was finished, he said, ‘That was my first gift to you, but it won’t be my last. One day I’ll have whole orchestras for you on your birthday, and dresses and jewels. Anything you want.’ And then he kissed me.”

  I want to say, “So how did that orchestra and jewels thing work out for you?” but that’s mean even for me. So instead I say, “And making out the first time you met a guy was okay back then?”

  “We did not make out. It was all very proper. We were married six months later.” She’s done. Thank God. “What was the other thing you wanted to ask me?”

  “The other thing is that Chelsea wants me to go with her to some college visit thing she’s doing. I told her it was stupid.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” she says, like she’s talking to the kerosene lamp. She’s back to looking tired.

  “It’s, like, you know, a whole weekend. Leaving Thursday after school and getting home Sunday. I know it’s so long.”

  “Yes, but it will be good for you to see a college from the inside.”

  “What’s the point?” I ask her. She makes me so mad sometimes. Especially after that gross the-day-I-met-your-father story.

  “You never know,” she says.

  She’s ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m going to have to convince her to say no to me.

  “There are going to be parties and things like that,” I tell her. “With boys. Maybe beer.”

  “I think you’re a smart girl and you’ll be responsible. Can you go to see a class, too?”

  “I doubt it. I mean, it’s not really that kind of weekend.”

  “That Chelsea is a good girl. I think it’s a great idea. Don’t worry about your father. Let me talk to him.”

  I can tell she’s already made up her mind. My mother actually looks excited about it. I consider telling Chelsea that my mother said no and then hiding in the library for the weekend. Or maybe a Walmart, like the pregnant girl in that movie. I could move into Walmart, except I’m not sure where there’s a Walmart around here. Maybe Saks at the mall. I could live just in that bathroom comfortably for a weekend. It’s bigger than our apartment and it’s got a whole lot less linoleum and lentils.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Finally, it’s Dance Day. Chelsea and I get to Willow Falls Regional fashionably late and walk the three miles between the parking lot and the gym. Okay, maybe not three, but a lot. Since Goretti is basically an overgrown house for a school, this place is kind of scary. Even if Nate is here, I probably will never find him with the gazillions of other people clogging up the walkways.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find Laurie and them?” I ask, scanning the crowd for a familiar face. We know Laurie and a few of her friends from town soccer and, supposedly, it’s on their invitation that we’re here.

  “Yeah, they said we’d meet by the vending machines outside the gym. But we shouldn’t move in too big a pack or you’ll look too intimidating for him to come up to you,” says Chelsea. I wonder where she got the Boy Decoder Ring and if she’ll let me borrow it.

  Chelsea has had three Serious Boyfriends, including the last one, the unfortunate Jonathan. I’ve been sworn to keep her from him even if she goes temporarily insane and latches on to his leg as he tries to get away.

  I have had none. I had my first kiss in the eighth grade with creepy little Matthew Gibbons. Plus that weird email thing with the kid from chemistry last year who used to write me all these sappy things but then never actually wanted to see me in person. I’ve had my share of “my friend says his friend says he says you might be cute”s a
long the way, but nothing that has ever turned into anything.

  Laurie and her friends aren’t by the vending machines. I take in a deep breath when Chelsea says, “Let’s see if they’re inside,” and we step in the yawning jaws of their gym.

  It’s even bigger than I remember. If that’s even possible. Giant banners line the top of walls: willow falls regional, home of the raiders. state champions. regional champions. Lacrosse, football, baseball. I guess if you’ve got, like, 200,000 students, a few of them must be good at everything.

  The music bounces off the walls, tinny and uninspiring radio songs. Unless these guys have stadium-quality sound, there’s no way they’re going to get the volume high enough to matter. Everyone is in pockets, like I remember them, except for one group of surfer haircut guys who are dancing like maniacs right at the entrance, either hopelessly in need of attention or completely high. The freshmen look about four years old, hovering near the door, intimidated.

  Finally, Chelsea spots them.

  “Hey,” says Laurie, “you made it.”

  “Yeah,” says Chelsea.

  “I don’t know why we come to these. They’re so lame.”

  “Habit?” I say.

  “I guess. Plus it’s weird that there will only be a few more of these and then we’re all off to college.”

  Well, some of us. Isn’t somebody going to slack in this crowd?

  “You all right after practice?” says Joon, one of our best forwards, to Chelsea. Chels had an epic crash with someone’s elbow during our last practice that looked like it might have rattled one of her eyeballs loose. I tried to get her to sit out for the rest of the practice but she wouldn’t.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “I can’t wait for college guys,” says Laurie. “Everyone here is so useless.”

  I don’t want to break it to her that it’s these high school guys and guys just like these who will be college guys next year.

  “No one interesting?” asks Chelsea. Good, Chelsea, good. I have instructed her to get whatever intel she can on Nate, but not to reveal my interest. “What about those tennis guys? We had the weirdest thing with them on the strip the other day.”