“Who?”
“Ferriss. And some kid Nate. A few others.”
“Oh, probably Jackson was there. Crazy, kind of hyper?”
“Curly black hair?”
“Yep, him.”
“Yeah, he totally terrorized my cousin while she was visiting.”
“He’s nuts. The other ones are marginally normal. Ferriss has been going out with Tracy for, like, two years. Nate was seeing that girl from chem, what was her name?”
“Naomi,” offers Joon helpfully.
Argh. Kick to the stomach.
“I thought they broke up?” says Laurie.
“I don’t know. I thought someone said they saw them at the movies.”
“No, they broke up at the end of the summer,” says Laurie. “Anyway, he’s cute, right?”
I shrug. I don’t know these girls well enough to trust them with my hots for Nate. Plus, Nate and I had, like, one conversation. I don’t want to seem all stalker-y and pathetic. Which I am, but he doesn’t need to know.
The dance goes on like this, no sign of Nate, no dancing, just gossip and soccer talk, college visit stories. The Nate question is forgotten after three spectacular break-up stories, one involving an overdose of aspirin and a guy pulled out of school for a month of rehab. By the end of the dance, I’m tired of hoping. I’m feeling kind of stupid for making Chelesa suffer through a Willow dance for nothing.
“C’mon, Chels, we’ve got to get home.”
“You sure you guys don’t want to go to the diner?” asks Laurie.
“No,” says Chelsea, “we should get home.” I am sleeping over at Chelsea’s house, and her parents are pretty strict on curfew.
We pull into Chelsea’s drive, say a quick hello to her dad, who is watching a Vietnam documentary on what can only be described as a movie theater screen. We go up to her room. I change into sweats and a T-shirt, and Chelsea puts on pink pajama bottoms with hot pink monkeys on it and an old T-shirt from Boston College. She pulls her laptop on her lap while she chews on a Twizzler.
“So he didn’t go,” she says.
“I know, whatever.”
She stares at her screen, then gets in closer.
“M, check it out. Laurie just posted a picture on her wall. Isn’t that him?”
I scoot in next to her and look. Yes, it’s him in a red sweater, crammed into a booth with Laurie, Joon, and a few other guys, all grinning wide for the camera. God, he looks good in red.
“Isn’t that the diner? Laurie just posted it from her phone.”
“Whatever.”
“You should friend him,” she says.
“I’m not friending him.”
“I’m logging out and you’re friending him.”
“No, Chels! That’s desperate. I don’t want to.”
“Fine, okay.” She drops it, and I’m grateful. “But check your account if you want. I’m going to go brush my teeth.”
As she pads off down the hall, I log into Facebook. The friend request icon is lit up with a red 1. I click on it.
Friend request from Nate Robinson. With an email. It says:
“Hey, Laurie said you were at the dance but I looked and looked and didn’t see you. I got there kind of late, I guess that’s why. I can’t keep chasing you around town, so how about we be friends on here?”
I lift my hopes back up and hold them in my hands as I click “Accept.”
THE KITCHEN IN CHELSEA’S HOUSE IS BLINDINGLY, SPARKLY WHITE. There is a slab of marble on a giant island holding a bowl of apples big enough to stock the produce section of any reasonably sized supermarket. No one family could ever eat that many. Food as decor.
Chelsea grabs some frozen waffles and puts them in a toaster oven which is magically hidden behind some cabinet doors, like the refrigerator and everything else.
“So . . .” You can tell she’s been holding the conversation off until the right time. “We’re going to Siobhan’s, right?”
“Yeah.” I’m still a little stunned my parents agreed. But they did.
“So here’s what I think we should do today. How about we go to the DMV so you can take your written test? We can practice driving all weekend and see if they’ll take you for a driving test before we go on the road trip. We should have two drivers, just in case.”
I can’t get a driver’s license, but I can’t explain why to Chelsea. I’ve looked at the list of “points” you need even to apply to take the test. I don’t have any of them. Social Security card. Passport. Birth certificate. I take a moment to throw little hate daggers in the general direction of my parents. For the thousandth time.
As we all started turning sixteen and a half, everyone began to take their driver’s test. When my turn came, I blew it off with lame excuses. Chelsea was relentless for a while, but then she got old enough for her license and got her Beemer as a reward. She had dropped it. Until now.
“There’s no way I can take the test before next weekend,” I say.
“You never know. Let’s go and ask.”
“I haven’t studied for the test.”
“Oh, please, M, you helped me study so much you probably have that book memorized.”
“Yeah, yellow means speed up, right?”
“I’ll drive you by your place and you can get your birth certificate.”
Why is Chelsea being a pitbull all of a sudden? My heart is pounding so hard I am afraid I might pass out.
“I don’t think my mom keeps it there. I . . .”
“You wanna call her? We can drive her to the bank deposit box if she doesn’t keep it at home.”
Bank deposit box. That’s funny. She’s both my best friend and also someone who lives on a completely different planet. It’s like she’s a native and I’m trying to explain where I come from to her, but she’s got no words for “road” or “building.”
“Chels, seriously, I just don’t want to.”
“I don’t get it. You can practice in my car.”
She looks at me for a minute, then goes further than she’s gone before. “M, you act like it’s this big difference, that because my parents have more money than yours do it’s, like, a thing.”
“An ironic conversation to be starting over a slab of marble that took six guys to carry in here. And we’re talking about cars and licenses anyway.”
“You think this stuff means anything? This is my parents’ stuff. When I leave here, it stays with them. I’m probably going to go into the Peace Corps or Teach for America or something and live in a ratty apartment and eat ramen noodles. I just happen to have this car right now that you could just happen to drive so I don’t have to drive the whole time there and back. Whose stuff is whose doesn’t matter.”
“Jeez, Chels, can you just drop it? I don’t want to, okay? ‘Whose stuff is whose doesn’t matter’ is the kind of condescending bullshit only people who have money say, first off. And second off, not everyone wants to drive around in a BMW terrorizing old ladies, okay?” As soon as I say it, I regret it. I’m such an idiot. It comes out so much meaner than I intended it to sound.
“Okay, fine, M, fine. I just thought it would be fun sharing the driving. You don’t have to be snippy.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Forget it.”
CHAPTER NINE
One of the many good things about Chelsea is that after the very few times we’ve had a fight, she is over it fast. Like it never happened. Plus, Chelsea is Excited with a capital E about this college visit. After school on the Thursday of the drive, Chelsea is like a kindergartener who has just gotten a bag full of candy. I feel like I’m about to take a whole lot of gross-tasting medicine. For three straight days.
“Okay, I’ve gotten an oil change, had the tires rebalanced, my phone’s fully charged, I have my car charger, jeans, a skirt, makeup, road trip food. Have I forgotten anything?”
We’ve had this conversation eighteen times in the last week, and given the NASA-level charts and checklists she’s compiled, I
doubt it.
“Pepper spray?”
“M.T., you must be excited. Why are you being such a downer?”
Once we hit the road, though, it kind of is fun. Route 95 curves wide and unlovely in front of us as we head north, across the stop-and-crawl George Washington Bridge traffic and into New York State. The leaves are turning and the radio is playing good music. Chelsea is driving slow by the rules of the Chelsea-verse, keeping on the right side of the road and holding the wheel with both hands.
“Siobhan kicked out one of her roommates so we could bunk with her. Not sure about the other one. You and I can share the one bunk if we have to.”
“Okay.”
“And she says there’s some kind of frat party we should go to.”
Not excited about the frat party.
“And Siobhan is going to her Women in Antiquity class tomorrow if you want to go with her. She asked her professor and it’s okay.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see,” Chelsea says mockingly, trying to get me to laugh. I know I am being un-fun, but I can’t seem to get into it.
Chelsea waits until we’re almost at the Connecticut border to ask, “So what’s with the no college thing, M?”
Uh-oh.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re going to Argentina and you don’t want to tell me, right?”
“No! Wait, what?”
“I’ve been scared about that since you said you weren’t going to college.”
“Where did that come from?”
“Well, you always used to say that.”
“I did not.”
“Of course you did. At the end of every school year. Starting in kindergarten. Don’t you remember? You would say good-bye because you were going to live in your . . . it was something about an oval house or something? Do they make houses oval over there?”
“God, Chels, no. My dad had this crazy idea about building us a round house. La Casa Redonda, he called it. And that was like a million years ago. When was the last time you heard me say that? I only said that because my dad would tell me to say good-bye to all my friends because we were moving away.”
“I don’t know, you looked pretty happy about it.”
“I did not. I was a dumb kid anyway.”
“What ever happened with that business your parents were building in Argentina?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always told me they were sending all their money over there and that’s why you couldn’t . . .” Suddenly she looks embarrassed. She just says, “Remember?”
“No.” But that’s a lie. I do remember.
When I was little, my father would come home and hand his tips over to my mother. Before they started cutting off the electricity. Before my father started staying away more and more hours. Before he started walking in through the door like his feet weighed a ton. Back then, my mother would take his tips and put them in a big old metal box that was drilled into the wall in a kitchen cabinet, because my mother said thieves never looked in the kitchen. The box was hidden behind bags of lentils and some cans.
One day, my mother and father took all the money out of the box and handed it over to their friend, whom I called Tio Roberto. He used to come over for dinner every Sunday and they would talk for hours about the business they would build back home. Tio Roberto was going to be their partner. The business would make us all rich and would help us move back to be with the family my parents always missed so much.
It must have been about a year after that when I walked into the kitchen to see my father holding his head in his hands, his elbows on the chipping table, my mother’s arms around him. I must have been about nine, because I remember it was one of the first times I was allowed to walk home from school alone.
“What happened, Ma?”
“Nothing,” said my father.
“We might as well tell her, Jorge.” Turning to me, she said, “It’s Tio Roberto and the business. Our business is gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Gone. Just . . . Tio Roberto stopped calling us and stopped answering when we called. And today we sent my sister’s husband over to talk to him and the business was closed down. Just gone. Everything.”
My father made a weird noise, his head still in her arms.
“But he has to give us our money back, right?”
“We can try, but I don’t think so,” said my mother. “I don’t know what we can do from so far away if we can’t even find him.”
“Are we moving back to Argentina now? Maybe you can find him and make him give us back our money.”
“We can’t go back like this,” said my father, muffled.
“Like what?” I said.
“We came here with nothing. We can’t go back with nothing after all these years.”
“Monserrat Thalia, don’t worry about it. Go do your homework,” said my mother.
And that was the last I ever heard about our business. But I don’t want to tell Chelsea any of that.
She’s still talking, keeping both hands on the wheel as a giant tractor-trailer passes by us. Chelsea says, “I can’t tell you how many times I went home and cried to my mom about all the times you told me you were moving down there. And she always used to tell me that if you really moved, we’d visit you.”
“I never knew that.”
“Yeah, well, if that’s what you wanted to do, I wanted to be happy for you.”
“You’re crazy. I’m not going anywhere.” I wonder if I told her the truth now how she would react. I want to tell her. I start to figure out the sentence in my mind. But I can’t get over the thought that she would pull back in disgust that she’s been having a sneaky little illegal in her life all this time. That somehow I’ve infiltrated her pure, perfect, charmed life and made it dirty.
“Not even college, apparently.”
“Ooooh, burn. Score one, Miss O’Hara. What’s with all the parental college pushing?”
“It’s just going to be so weird not being together next year. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah. I think.”
“Plus you’re so smart. I just want you to . . . you know. Whatever. You force me to sound like a dweeb.”
I poke her with my elbow affectionately. “To be honest, it doesn’t take that much forcing.” She laughs. “Come on,” I say. “We need some sugar.”
“Agreed,” she says, as I reach into the backseat to the giant stash she brought and breathe a sigh of relief that she’s letting us drop the school conversation.
IT’S ABOUT 6:00 P.M. WHEN WE FINALLY ROLL THROUGH THE HUGE STONE GATES. For a minute, it looks like we’re really in a Disney princess movie or a medieval fairy tale. The buildings all look like perfect Gothic castles, tall spires reaching up past postcard orange and red trees. I love it so much I hate it.
The Red Bull I had on the way in the hopes of getting myself more “up” for this is making my heart pound. Siobhan is waiting for us in red Abercrombie sweatpants and a hoodie. She hops in the backseat.
“You made it,” she says. “I’m so excited! We’re going to have a great time!” I think I like her even less when she’s happy. It’s like watching a reptile dance.
Then she spots my Red Bull and points to it. “Do you love Red Bull? I love Red Bull. I don’t think I’d be surviving college without it. You know?” Then she grabs my forearm and talks ten thousand words a minute like she’s just had twelve Red Bulls.
At least someone will be jumpier than I am.
“So first, there’s this a cappella thing that I said we’d go to. My boyfriend’s in it; you can meet him. Then there’s the party at Psi. But we can’t stay out late because I’ve got class tomorrow morning. You coming . . . M.T.?”
Eeek. She’s trying.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Awesome! You’re going to love my professor. She’s the coolest.”
She shows us where to park and puts a visitor’s pass on the dashboard, and we tak
e the long walk to her dorm room. I’ve never seen a college campus before and it makes me ache more than ever to know I won’t be able to go. The buildings are even prettier up close, with gargoyles and architectural details in stone, statues that look a gazillion years old. We walk up to a building with ivy growing up its walls—ivy, of course—and Siobhan leads us inside.
At least the inside looks like it’s seen better days. It gives me a flash of wicked satisfaction. The overhead fluorescents are awful, and the paint looks as bad as any apartment I’ve ever lived in. The industrial-strength carpet is worn through in the middle of the path, mysterious black stains spotting it. Siobhan leads us through the maze, left, then right, no views of the outside world, until I have no idea which direction I’m walking. Then she stops at a door that looks like every other door, covered with a message board with things stuck and drawn on it. Siobhan’s says: “Hi Cuz!!” and “Hello, Siobhan’s Cousin!” and “Study group changed to 11:00 tomorrow,” and “Tracy let me borrow your charger. Come snatch it back. B.” and “TB, your band blows.” This last one Siobhan rubs off with her index finger.
“Home sweet home,” she says, swinging her door open and letting us in first.
Inside, it’s like you’d expect Siobhan to live if she got sent to white-collar prison for starving her slaves or something. She’s got cinder-block walls, but she’s made them fashionable some-how. There’s a Monet and an inspirational quote. She’s got very clean-looking white curtains. Her desk is immaculate, with color-coordinated accessories, like Better College Dorms and Desktops is on its way for a photo shoot. It’s tight quarters, but everything is in matching Container Store so-chic plastic boxes of various sizes. You can see a mile away that she’s gotten Top Bunk, because her beige comforter with tiny pink roses is neatly spread over it.
“Sorry about my roommate. She’s such a slob,” Siobhan says, kicking some shoes under the bottom bunk. The bottom bunk has a camouflage bedspread and a poster that says, “My karma ran over your dogma and your dogma had to be put to sleep.”
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