Crazy Messy Beautiful

by Carrie Arcos

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Carrie Arcos.

  Cover design by Danielle Calotta

  Images courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Arcos, Carrie, author. | Title: Crazy messy beautiful / Carrie Arcos. |

  Description: New York, NY : Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2017] | Summary: Sixteen-year-old Neruda Diaz, influenced by his namesake, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, yearns to fall in love but has yet to find the right girl. | Identifiers: LCCN 2015049597 | ISBN 9780399175534 | Subjects: | CYAC: High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Bullying—Fiction. | Artists—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction. | Poetry—Fiction. | Classification: LCC PZ7.A67755 Cr 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 | LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049597

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698198623

  Edited by Liza Kaplan.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For David

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  THE INFINITE ACHE

  NUMBER EIGHT

  BODY OF A WOMAN

  LEANING INTO THE AFTERNOONS

  NOT ONLY THE FIRE

  THE QUESTION

  WHO ARE YOU

  I HUNT FOR A SIGN OF YOU

  GIRL LITHE AND TAWNY

  WE HAVE LOST EVEN

  I’M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS

  THE MORNING IS FULL

  ODE TO BROKEN THINGS

  MY AFFLICTED HOURS

  AND HOW LONG?

  GENTLEMAN ALONE

  ALLIANCE

  I LIKE FOR YOU TO BE STILL

  WE TOGETHER

  WITH ECHOES AND NOSTALGIC VOICES

  WHAT WE ACCEPT WITHOUT WANTING TO

  HOW MUCH HAPPENS IN A DAY

  I HAVE GONE MARKING

  THE WEARY ONE

  HERE I LOVE YOU

  THERE’S NO FORGETTING

  THE TRAITOR

  DOWN THROUGH THE BLURRED SPLENDOR

  SHORE OF THE HEART

  IF YOU FORGET ME

  WALKING AROUND

  TONIGHT I CAN WRITE THE SADDEST LINES

  SAD SONG TO BORE EVERYONE

  MELANCHOLY IN THE FAMILIES

  LOVE IS

  ALMOST OUT OF THE SKY

  POET’S OBLIGATION

  IT’S GOOD TO FEEL YOU ARE CLOSE TO ME

  I DO NOT LOVE YOU EXCEPT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU

  POESIA

  THE WIDE OCEAN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE INFINITE ACHE

  Her name was Ella. She had no other name. Ella was first, middle, and last, readily on my tongue and mind. She was older than me and a good head taller, but that didn’t matter. She was my world from eight a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday.

  During class, Ella pulled me, as if with an invisible string, from stuffed animals to picture books to swings to a small sandbox. I killed dragons. I rescued cats. I held babies and played house. I was the prince to her princess. We celebrated with feasts of crackers, both goldfish and graham. We shared cut-up apples and slices of oranges like they were candy. We visited outer space on secret missions. We explored uncharted lands. The truth was I would have traveled with her anywhere.

  My Ella.

  I can still see her—straight shoulder-length black hair, bangs like freshly cut grass across her forehead, her brown arm in a cast during those last months, wide smile with two missing front bottom teeth. Her blue flowered dress dirty from playing. Her knees red and skinned from falling off her scooter. Broken scabs scattered across to reveal smooth white scars underneath.

  Like all tragic love stories, she left me . . . for kindergarten at a different school. On our last day together, Ella gave me a kiss on my cheek. I was embarrassed and ran and hid from her, refusing to come out and say good-bye.

  I never saw her again.

  I blame Ella. She was the one who first showed me what a terribly beautiful and cruel thing love could be. I also blame The Poet. He gave words to my anguish and made me acutely aware of this infinite ache, a deep soul longing that came sometimes in the dark and lingered in the light. His words picked at a wound I didn’t even know was there until I read them. Now it’s impossible to close.

  But Ella . . . Ella opened my heart and then broke it. Maybe I’ve been trying to fix it ever since.

  NUMBER EIGHT

  Being named after a famous dead Chilean poet is not ideal. First of all, when you introduce yourself, everyone’s like, What? And you have to say your name at least twice for someone to get it right.

  It usually goes down like this:

  “My name’s Neruda.”

  “Wait.” The person leans in closer. “How do you say your name?”

  “Neruda.”

  “Ne . . . ru . . . da . . . interesting.”

  Interesting really means weird, but people try to be polite, unless they have no social skills at all, and then they just come out and say, “What kind of a name is that? Does it mean something?”

  Of course it means something. All names have meaning, moron. My parents didn’t just come up with it from a stupid Internet search either.

  Then there’s the occasional person who’s actually heard of the name. Those people say this phrase every time: “Neruda, like the poet?”

  “Yes, Pablo Neruda.”

  Here’s the thing, though. Neruda wasn’t even his real name. Pablo Neruda was actually a pseudonym for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neftalí came up with the pen name when he was a teenager to hide his writing pursuits from his dad, who wanted him to become something more practical, like a businessman or an accountant. Let’s just say I’m grateful he changed his name.

  Latin people have a thing for long names. It’s because we take on the surnames of both parents, with the mother’s name going last. You just keep adding on names. You can trace our genealogy through the last name, going back generations. Since I’m technically only half Chilean, on my dad’s side, I was spared a long, complex name and am simply Neruda Wayne Diaz. The Wayne is after my mom’s dad, who lives in Ohio. But to most people I’m just Neruda.

  In Pablo Neruda’s lifetime he wrote a ton of poems, many of them about love but also about everything in between life and death, and he was even awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also a Communist, which is always a bad thing to be if you’re an American, but if you study Latin American history, you can kind of understand it. He died on September 23, 1973, twelve days after a violent military coup in Chile, way before I was born.

  Every now and then I’ll get a devotee, someone whose
eyes flame like a zealot’s when he hears my name. He’ll speak to me in Neruda’s words, as if I should recognize them, as if I’m Neruda reincarnate. I’m given the feverish speeches on how he was the greatest poet to have ever lived.

  I know that.

  You can’t have a name as iconic as Neruda and know nothing about your namesake. Plus it’s one of the first things my dad ever taught me. While other kids were listening to stories about moons and little pigs and cats with hats, Dad would tell me about Neruda, or “The Poet,” as he referred to him. He said his own dad, my papi, who died a couple of years ago and had emigrated from Chile with his family in the 1980s, had read him Neruda when he was little too.

  I don’t remember Papi as well as I’d like to, and the older I get, the more my memory of him fades. When I think of him now, I can recall only a handful of things: that he liked to take long walks by the ocean, do crossword puzzles, and say funny things a lot, like “camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente”—the shrimp that falls asleep gets carried away by the current. Every time he said this, I’d imagine a little shrimp curled up in some seaweed and z’s floating upward in tiny bubbles, and crack up.

  He also had very strong, callused hands. We would arm wrestle, and his hands would easily dwarf mine and win. Dad never could beat him either, not even in the end.

  Papi used to tell me we’d go to Chile one day so I could see where he grew up. He said we’d visit the white sand beaches and the deep green forests of our people. But he died before we got to go.

  Lately I’ll hear Dad muttering some of the things Papi used to. My favorite is “Él que no encuentra el amor no encuentra nada.” He who does not find love does not find anything.

  I think The Poet would agree. I’d like to think that would be his favorite too.

  • • •

  When I was little, Dad spoke Neruda’s poetry often—some from memory, some from the worn pages of his collection passed down from Papi, most of the time in Spanish, and always underneath the soft glow of the lamp by my bed.

  Dad read The Poet like English teachers read Shakespeare—with love and reverence. He has two photos on the desk in his home office. One is a picture of Mom and me from when I was six. She’s hugging me from behind and I’m smiling up into the camera. The other is a picture of Papi standing next to The Poet from their chance meeting in Valparaíso just before my dad was born. So really, Neruda and his influence have been in my family for generations.

  But even though I have been “Neruda, like the poet” for sixteen years, I am nothing like him. When Pablo Neruda was my age, he walked around in a large black floppy hat and black cape, seducing girls like a young Don Juan. Supposedly girls fell in and out of love with him as frequently and as easily as rain falls from the sky. Because Pablo Neruda was not just one of the greatest love poets.

  He was The Greatest Love Poet of all time.

  I, on the other hand, am the unluckiest in love. It’s not for lack of trying. So far I’m about zero for seven, the names of the girls written on my heart like the scars I can still recall on Ella’s knee—Marisol, Stephanie, Jessi, Angela, Trinity, and Elise.

  I like to think of them as the preview to a great love story, one I’ll hopefully get to tell—and live—someday.

  Dad has told me not to worry about it. He says I’m a late bloomer and that it’ll all come together for me in college, like it did for him and my mom.

  But I don’t want to wait.

  I want to feel the passion of The Poet’s words for someone and be able to say them out loud. Lines where he talks about craving someone so much that he’s become an animal, crawling and prowling the streets. Nothing can sustain him, no food, no drink, only her. I want to know what it is to be that hungry for someone.

  And by someone, I mean Autumn Cho.

  Because this is the year it’s all going to change.

  Eight is my lucky number.

  BODY OF A WOMAN

  I lean against the wall over by the math building and check the time on my phone. There’s only five minutes left to get to class. I remove the small, worn-out, rolled-up book of The Poet’s poems that I usually carry folded in my back pocket. It’s my favorite: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. It’s one of my dad’s favorites too, and Papi’s before him.

  I open it to page 5 and read a few lines for inspiration, for strength. And for courage.

  Autumn rounds the corner and time slows like it usually does when I see her. Today her black hair is down and she’s all classic, dressed in a cream T-shirt and jeans. Even with two thick textbooks underneath one arm, and a backpack, she walks with style and grace. No, she walks like she’s a visitor to this world, like she’s going to disappear any moment, and I’ll forever wonder if I simply dreamed her up.

  As she nears me, I fall in step alongside her. I turn to say hi, but she’s wearing pink earbuds, so I can’t get her attention.

  But it’s okay. This is progress.

  I strut next to her, and it’s like we’re walking to the same soundtrack, something smooth and mellow, like an old ’70s jam.

  She glances at me and tosses me a smile, a real smile that makes me feel all woozy and amazing at the same time. A good smile can do that to you. And with her smile, it’s like I’ve been waiting for it my whole life.

  “Hey, Neruda,” she says a little too loudly.

  My name falls from her lips, and it’s like she speaks me into existence. It’s hers and only hers to utter. The importance of this moment, or the possible importance, hovers in the air between us. I need to mark it so that later I can trace everything back to this point on our time line—the point where we first began.

  “Yeah, hey . . .” I start to say.

  But she turns right and disappears into the crowd, taking the music with her. I watch in silence, not even caring about the elbows thrown my way because I’m blocking pedestrian traffic, going against the grain. Let them walk around me. They are nothing to me.

  Autumn Cho is my lucky number eight. She just doesn’t know it yet.

  • • •

  When I get to English class, Mr. Nelson’s voice is all bumpy and revved up—maneuvering his volume like a speedboat hitting waves, constantly jerking forward and working hard to keep our attention.

  Suddenly Callie’s arm brushes up against mine on the table. This happens sometimes because I’m a lefty, and it’s annoying.

  Even though Callie Leibowitz sits next to me, we only interact when it’s assigned. When we’re forced to work together, she stares at me with a surprised, bored look, from under lids that droop with the weight of heavy black eyeliner. She’s quiet in class, like me, except for when she walks. She stomps around in thick black boots with lime-green laces that rest on top like spiders. She wears those boots with everything—skirts, jeans, and shorts. Sometimes she changes the laces. I know this because I spend most of class staring down at the ground or concentrating on my drawing.

  To be honest, Callie kind of scares me. She’s strong both in attitude and in physicality. I’ve seen her on the volleyball court. Not many can return her jump serve. In fact, she’d probably take me down. I mean, not in one move, but she’s got some guns on her. I can see the defined cut of her biceps when she’s just sitting still. I have to work, just a little, to make mine stand out like that.

  When she’s not looking, I flex my arm just slightly. Then I catch her bored stare in my peripheral vision, followed by a slow grin, and stop.

  I scoot over, creating even more distance between us.

  Mr. Nelson is talking about some MMA fight he watched over the weekend, using it as a metaphor for life, explaining how we should work hard now because working hard in school will lead to success later in life. Mr. Nelson recycles his Motivational Speeches once a week. We’ve had life is like a race; life is like a football game; life is like a baby eagle that gets pushed out of the nes
t. He gets very animated when sharing these life lessons, knowing the class’s attention span is about three minutes.

  Personally, I think if Mr. Nelson really wants to keep our attention, he should flash a picture of a naked woman every now and then. Three-quarters of my group—group three—would focus for sure.

  Group three is all male, except for Callie. Luis and Josh usually spend class drawing pictures of boobs and male genitalia all over their notebooks or on the desk in pen. I know when class is almost over because the last five minutes always smells like saliva and wet fingers and a feverish attempt to wipe off the drawings.

  Callie goes back and forth between ignoring the drawings and giving Luis and Josh the finger.

  I couldn’t care less about them. The fact that my non-reaction pisses off Luis is just an added bonus.

  There’s nothing wrong with drawing naked bodies, but Luis’s and Josh’s are crude, deformed versions—fantasies of guys who probably spend a lot of time sneaking porn and have never seen a real naked female body up close.

  I, on the other hand, have seen several naked women in the flesh. Over the summer, I took an art class where we studied the nude form, which is like basic training for an artist in hand-eye coordination and technique. It was hard to concentrate the first day when the female model removed her yellow robe in front of us and sat down totally naked on the stool in the center of the room. My heart was pounding so loudly, I was sure everyone could hear it, and I couldn’t help being turned on. Fortunately, no one paid any attention to me. Everyone was focused on their art. By the third day, I didn’t even notice the model’s nakedness—well, I did notice; her body was beautiful. But I wasn’t distracted by thoughts of what I’d like to do with that body. I was more concerned with capturing it on the page in all of its honest glory.

  I didn’t start drawing nudes right away. I first started learning how to draw in elementary school after I was diagnosed with a slight learning disability. It’s been several years, but my permanent record is still marked by an “LD,” tacked on to the end of my name like MD or PhD. Because of my namesake, you’d think words would be my strength.