Stef Soto, Taco Queen

by Jennifer Torres

  We worked and saved, worked and saved—for a little more than a year—until one day, while she was reading the newspaper, Mami stopped and said, “Hmmm.” She waved Papi and me over and pointed to a small ad in the corner of the page:

  FOOD TRUCK FOR SALE. USED, GOOD CONDITION.

  “Hmmm,” Papi and I agreed. It wasn’t a restaurant, but it would be ours and we had saved just enough. “It wouldn’t hurt just to look,” he said.

  Two weeks later, the truck was in our driveway.

  The previous owner had called it La Perla del Mar, the Pearl of the Sea. The name was painted in loopy blue letters across one side of the truck, and it was the only thing that Papi thought really needed fixing. La Perla del Mar sounded like seafood, he thought, and that wasn’t the food that brought him back home. We sat on the lawn, Mami spreading Papi’s jacket out between the grass and her green dress, and tried to come up with a new name.

  “Señor Salsa,” Mami proposed.

  I groaned.

  “Holy Frijoles,” Papi suggested.

  I threw a clump of dried grass at him. He ducked and laughed.

  And then it came to me. “Tía Perla.”

  My parents looked at each other, not sure whether we were still joking. “No, really,” I said, standing up and dusting off my skirt. “Listen.” It was a name that sounded like home, I told them. Like food cooked from scratch by your favorite aunt. “Plus, we won’t have to repaint the whole thing.”

  Mami tilted her head right to left, my idea rolling around her mind like a marble. “Tía Perla,” she said.

  Papi nodded, slowly at first and then feverishly. “Órale!” he growled, hugging Mami and me tight. “Órale!”

  We congratulated ourselves for a few happy minutes until Papi slapped his palm to his forehead. “Almost forgot!” He climbed back inside the truck and returned with three bottles of strawberry soda. Tía Perla was home and officially part of the family.

  Over the next few weekends, we painted over the seascape that had been airbrushed onto the truck’s side, replacing it with bunches of red and white roses. We covered up most of the old lettering, too, everything but PERLA. Papi had lifted me onto a stepladder and handed me a paintbrush. In careful blue strokes, I wrote TÍA.

  Five years later, our paint job is faded and chipped, and palm trees from the old seascape are peeking through in places. It needs touching up, I think, as I sketch in the margins of my social studies notes. But who’s going to do it? I certainly don’t want to spend any more time with Tía Perla than I absolutely have to.

  chapter

  4

  Julia’s house, behind a tall wrought iron gate, looks like it belongs on a different planet than mine, which is small and painted pink. But really, it’s only a few blocks away. Our grandparents were friends back in Mexico, and it was Julia’s dad who owned the construction company where Papi used to work. When we were little, before Tía Perla, Mami used to drive Julia to school every morning and bring her back to our house every afternoon. Julia and I would haul Mami’s old purses and dress shoes to the front porch and pretend we were actresses. Or bankers. Or spies. Julia always decided, but it was always pretty fun.

  Then, when we got to seventh grade, Julia decided she was too old for a babysitter and persuaded her parents to let her take the bus to school. Not the school bus—the real, public bus. She’s the only one in our class who does, and it’s just about her favorite thing to talk about. She flutters into class seconds after the bell rings, blows her bangs off her forehead, and sighs, “Oh, Ms. Barlow, I’m so sorry I didn’t get here in time, but my bus was running late.” Like it’s her own personal bus. Or at lunchtime, when she stands at the end of a table, tapping her foot on the linoleum until we all take a break from our conversations and look up. “You’ll never believe,” she begins, after she’s sure she has everyone’s attention, “what happened on my bus.” Like anyone is even interested.

  But the thing is, a lot of people are interested. Even me. It’s like she’s living the seventh-grade version of the glamorous lives we used to act out on my front porch.

  On Tuesday afternoon, I see Julia in the hallway, yanking books from her locker and shoving them in her backpack. “I can’t believe he kept us after class,” she fumes to Maddie, who’s leaning against the lockers and coiling glossy black hair around her finger. Maddie is new this year and glued herself to Julia on the very first day. Arthur knows her from Sunday school, but still, she pretty much left her old reputation behind when she came to Saint Scholastica. Was she first pick or last when they chose teams in PE? Was she ever sent home with head lice? Did she always win the spelling bee? If she started wearing feathers in her hair, would everyone else start wearing feathers, too? We don’t know. Maddie has nothing to live down and nothing to live up to. I’m more than a little jealous.

  “Urrgh,” Julia grumbles when she can’t get her backpack zipped. “I’m going to miss my bus.”

  I consider pretending I didn’t hear, but she seems really upset, so I stop next to her locker. “Julia, if you need a ride, my dad can take you home.”

  Julia and Maddie lock eyes for a moment. “No, thanks.” Julia blinks. She slings her navy-blue cardigan over her shoulder and goes back to wrestling with her backpack.

  I shrug and walk down the hall. I’m only a few steps away when I hear Maddie ask, “Why don’t you just go with her? Didn’t you used to carpool or something?”

  Julia slams her locker shut. “Seriously? There’s just no way. I mean, Stef and her truck smell like old tacos. What is she, the Taco Queen?”

  I don’t turn around. I pretend not to hear, but my cheeks burn. Julia’s always been bossy and kind of a show-off, but never straight-up mean. I glance right and then left. No one’s looking, so I pull my ponytail over my shoulder, bury my nose into it, and take a cautious sniff. Vanilla citrus-blossom shampoo. So there.

  But I have to admit, isn’t there just the faintest whiff of burnt tortilla mixed in? As soon as Papi and I get home a few hours later, I change out of my uniform and throw all of it—white blouse, plaid skirt, blue cardigan—into the dryer with three lavender-breeze dryer sheets just to be safe.

  I try not to let Julia get to me, but after a week, I’m still not convinced I don’t smell like Tía Perla. Before school starts, I wait outside our classroom with my sweater balled up under my arm. I stop Arthur and Amanda before they can step inside. “Come over here,” I demand, taking them by their wrists and dragging them around the corner.

  “Now smell this.” I shove the cardigan under their noses. They look at each other, then back at me. “Go on,” I say, shaking the sweater. “Smell it.”

  They both take a sniff.

  “OOO-kaaay?” Amanda looks up. “That was awesome, Stef, and totally not weird at all. Are we allowed to go to class now?”

  “But does it smell like tacos?” I demand, shaking the sweater again. “Am I the Taco Queen?”

  Arthur had just taken a gulp of orange juice from a cardboard carton. It shoots out of his nose and across the tile floor as he bursts out laughing. “Taco Queen?” he sputters, wiping his hand across his lips.

  Amanda considers it, then leans in for another smell. “Not tacos,” she confirms. “But I like it. What detergent do your parents use?”

  I roll my eyes. No help at all. As we’re walking to Ms. Barlow’s room for language arts, I tell them what I overheard Julia say. Arthur can’t stop laughing, but Amanda groans. “Why would you even listen to her? You know she just likes being the center of attention.”

  I nod. “Yeah. I know, right?” Still, Julia’s words cling to me like a stale smell. Amanda has her soccer team, Arthur has his music, Julia has her independence, and it seems like all I have is Tía Perla. Somehow, I have to find a way to wipe off the stains she’s leaving on my reputation.

  chapter

  5

  Ms. Barlow is finishing a bagel and sipping from a cup of coffee when we find our seats a few minutes before school sta
rts. She wipes a splotch of cream cheese off her lip as she smiles to greet us. “We’re going to start with a writing exercise, so go ahead and take out your journals while we wait for the bell to ring.”

  I dig mine out of my desk and find a spot on the cover that I haven’t already filled with doodles. It’s almost always easier to draw my thoughts than to find words for them. The last time we wrote in our journals, I sketched a sailboat bobbing along atop curling blue waves. Now I add a sea monster, surging from the sea to swallow it whole.

  “Niiice,” Christopher drawls. “Do my backpack next?”

  I glance up and find four or five other kids looking over my shoulder. “Yeah?” I’m not sure Christopher is serious. I’ve been trying to spend more time working on my art. Sometimes I think I might even be getting better, but I’m not sure anyone else notices.

  Suddenly, Julia’s squeal from the back of the classroom yanks everyone’s eyes off my drawings and reels them back to her.

  “No way!” She shakes her head at her cell phone’s glowing screen. She’s the only seventh grader who’s allowed to take it out of her backpack in the classroom—her parents had insisted. They gave her the phone for safety reasons, like if she runs into trouble on the bus. She’s supposed to text them when she gets to school and again when she gets home so they know she’s all right. Not that she’s told us all about it a million times or anything.

  “What?” Christopher asks.

  Julia doesn’t answer. “No way!” she screeches again. “No way, no way, no way!”

  She screams and hugs her cell phone over her heart.

  Even Amanda is curious now. “Seriously. What is it?”

  “This is going to be so amazing.” She sighs, sinking breathlessly into her chair but still not giving any hints about what she’s talking about.

  I roll my eyes. If Julia doesn’t want to say what’s so amazing, fine. I’m not going to beg.

  But that doesn’t stop anyone else.

  “Come on,” Maddie pleads. “Tell us. What’s going on?”

  “Oh, no big deal,” Julia finally teases with a toss of her auburn hair. “Just that Viviana Vega is coming to town and I’m getting front-row tickets to her concert.”

  Maddie screams.

  “No way,” I whisper to myself. I look over at Amanda, whose eyes are wide with envy or disbelief. Probably both. Only Arthur seems unimpressed. He shakes his head and opens up a music magazine. The only singers he cares about are singers no one else has ever heard of. And everyone has heard of Viviana Vega.

  The bell finally rings, and Ms. Barlow settles the classroom down to call roll.

  “All right, all right. That’s enough, everyone. Julia, I’m not sure Viviana Vega qualifies as urgent—put the phone away, please. Find your seats. Let’s get started.”

  When Ms. Barlow had passed out our journals on the first day of school, I had expected the usual “how I spent my summer vacation” kind of assignment. Wrong. The writing prompts she puts on the board are always surprising and sometimes strange.

  WHY ME? she wrote once with no further explanation.

  IF YOU HAD TO SPEND A WEEK LIVING INSIDE ANY BOOK, WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

  WRITE A THANK-YOU NOTE TO AN UNCLE WHO SENT YOU A CAN OF CHICKEN SOUP FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY.

  Compared with that one, today’s question seems almost normal: IMAGINE YOU CAN TIME TRAVEL, BUT YOUR PARENTS DON’T BELIEVE YOU. HOW WOULD YOU CONVINCE THEM?

  I can’t convince my parents of anything. I feel like I have plenty to say about today’s question, but every time I bring my pen down to write something, the words vanish. Instead, I sit scribbling robots and rocket ships in the margins of my journal until Ms. Barlow comes down the aisle in her white canvas sneakers, taps me on the shoulder, and whispers, “Just start somewhere, Stef. Anywhere. Sometimes starting is the hardest part. It’s easier after that.”

  I nod and begin. “I can’t convince my parents of anything.”

  chapter

  6

  After language arts, I have math, and after that, a ten-minute break before science, where Mrs. Serros divides us into pairs for an experiment—with baby diapers.

  “We’re going to continue talking about polymers, which you’ll remember are long strings of molecules that can have some very interesting properties,” she explains, walking up and down the aisles and around the desks. “Some bounce. Some stretch. Some are tough and rigid. Today you’ll work with a superabsorbent polymer. See if you can figure out why it’s called ‘superabsorbent.’”

  We cut our diapers open, revealing a grainy white powder that we collect in Ziploc bags. When we drop water onto the powder, the granules swell into big blobs.

  “Talk to your partners,” Mrs. Serros says. “Besides in a diaper, where else might a superabsorbent polymer be helpful? How might you use it in a garden, for example?”

  My partner, Jake, pokes at the glob of diaper gel on our table. “Sick,” he says. I don’t know if he means “gross” or “cool.” It’s kind of both.

  The subject of Viviana Vega doesn’t come up for the rest of the morning, but by lunchtime, the whole school knows about her concert, and tickets are all anyone is talking about.

  “So,” Amanda says, smacking her lunch tray down on the table where Arthur and I are already sitting. “According to Julia, the ‘cheap’ seats”—she puts air quotes around “cheap”—“are forty dollars each. I have ten dollars left over from my birthday. Where are we going to get the rest?”

  “You could try selling a kidney,” Arthur mutters drily, taking his veggie burger patty out of its bun. “You have two.”

  Amanda sticks her tongue out at him, then turns back to me. “I’m serious, Stef. We have to be there. I don’t want to hear all about it from Julia Sandoval. We’re figuring this out. Like, today.”

  Just like that, she stands up again, jamming a granola bar in her pocket before I can say anything. If Amanda were a polymer, she’d definitely be the kind that bounces.

  She’s right, though—it’s a lot of money. But paying for tickets isn’t our only problem, maybe not even our biggest problem. There’s no way Mami and Papi are going to let me go to that concert without them—and there’s no way I’m letting them come along with me.

  We go from lunch to PE, which seems cruel. All I want to do is nap. But at least it’s just kickball today. After PE is social studies and finally, because it’s Tuesday, art.

  Most people, if you asked them what their favorite day of the week is, wouldn’t say Tuesday. It’s still early in the week, and Friday is a long way off. There’s nothing special about Tuesday. Except, for me, there’s art class. And in art class, I never hear Mami’s voice telling me I’m too young, or Papi’s nagging me to be careful. I am in charge of the blank piece of paper in front of me, and I can turn it into something as vivid and adventurous or as quiet and calm as I want. There aren’t any restrictions. Except Mr. Salazar’s, of course. But that’s different.

  Pinned to the walls of Mr. Salazar’s studio are a decade’s worth of sketches and paintings, some yellowing, their corners creased. Smears and spatters of paints and pastels stain the tabletops, and dried-up clay is ground into the tiled floor. But our paintbrushes are always clean, organized by shape and size in old soup cans. We sit on tall stools at broad tables instead of desks and chairs. We can talk as much as we want as long as we get our work done.

  We hang our backpacks off a row of hooks just inside the door to keep them clean and out of the way. Then we pick out smocks from a bin near Mr. Salazar’s desk. The smocks are actually old button-down shirts with ink stains on the pockets or holes in the elbows, donated by parents or by Mr. Salazar himself. I pick out one with pink and green pinstripes and put it on backside-front.

  “Grab a brush and fill up a cup of water on your way to your seats,” he tells us. Then he asks me to pass out watercolor trays. I come up short, and he frowns. “Maddie, will you share with Julia?” The girls nod. “And, Stef, do you min
d sharing with Amanda for today?”

  Once we’ve all settled on our stools, Mr. Salazar takes a basket full of white crayons and sends it around the classroom. We each take a crayon and pass the basket along as he tapes a piece of watercolor paper on the whiteboard and begins the day’s lesson.

  “Who can tell me what ‘resist’ means?” he asks, his back to us while his hand darts over the page. Whatever he’s drawing is invisible from where I sit, white wax on white paper.

  “To fight back!” Arthur calls out, pumping his fist in the air. Mr. Salazar nods, without looking away from his work.

  “Anyone else?”

  “To push away?” I venture.

  Mr. Salazar turns around and points a finger, first at Arthur, then at me. “Right and right. Very good, both of you. Today we’re going to be practicing a technique called wax resist.” He swizzles his paintbrush in a plastic cup of water, then dabs it on a cake of paint. “And here’s why.”

  He brushes a wash of violet over the paper, then switches to blue and then to green. The colors bloom on the page. They spill into one another in liquid bursts—except for where Mr. Salazar had sketched with his crayon. The mystery drawing turns out to be a spiderweb, its strands gleaming white through all that color.

  Is the wax holding back the free-flowing paint, keeping it from going where it wants to go? No, I decide. It’s something else. The wax is shining through, bold and bright and refusing to be painted over. Julia seems to have read my mind.

  “It’s wax resist because the wax is resisting the paint!”