Stef Soto, Taco Queen

by Jennifer Torres

  That’s when I want to take the phone out of his hands and say, “No. No, you can’t just let things happen.” That’s how I got into this Viviana Vega mess, and now I have to do something. But first, I need Arthur and Amanda back on my side. The whistle blows. Her game ends. The teams start shaking hands.

  I know I can’t count on Amanda to come looking for me after what happened at lunch on Friday, so I take a bottle of soda from the fridge and ask Papi if I can run over to say hello. He crouches down and peers out the order window as if trying to size up the distance between us and Amanda.

  “I’ll have my phone,” I remind him, patting my pocket.

  That seems to satisfy him. He stands upright again and waves me off.

  chapter

  24

  I hang back, leaning against a tree, and wait until Amanda is done talking with her teammates before I approach her. “Hey,” I say, holding the cherry soda out in front of me.

  “No, thanks,” she says when she sees it. Her face is bright red. I know it’s from the game, but it makes her look really angry, and part of me wants to turn around and walk back to Tía Perla.

  But I take a deep breath and pull back the soda. “Okay. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about yesterday. It’s my fault the Viviana Vega rumor got out of hand, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you and Arthur.”

  Amanda narrows her eyes at me, smiles, then holds out her hand for the soda. “Okay.”

  I finally exhale, and we sit down on the grass.

  “I really need your help,” I tell her, pulling tiny leaves off sprigs of clover. “We have to figure out what to do about this.”

  “Help with what? Just tell everyone she’s not coming. They’ll be mad. Then they’ll get over it.”

  I’ve thought of that, but there has to be some other way. A way to get Viviana Vega to come to Saint Scholastica. It sounds impossible, but the idea that a celebrity would come to Tía Perla’s order window sounded impossible once, too. When I explain it to Amanda, she groans and throws herself back on the grass. I’m bracing myself for another argument when she says, “Fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Fine,” she repeats, sitting up. “We’ll think of something. But you better tell Arthur you’re sorry. We need him, too.”

  Amanda sees her mom waving at her from the field where her younger brother’s game just ended. She gets up and dusts the grass off her shorts, saying, “I still think you should just tell the truth and get it over with.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “They’ll get stuck up there,” she calls over her shoulder.

  I feel a million times better when I get back to Tía Perla. In the time it’s taken me to smooth things over with Amanda, another truck has pulled up, Taquizas La Paloma. When Papi isn’t on the phone with other drivers, he’s meeting them in person to worry or plot or complain. But I don’t have time to wonder which they’re doing now. I go into the cab and rifle through the glove box for a pen and something to write on. I find an old envelope—that should work—and take it over to the card table that Papi has set up for our customers. Then I sit clicking my pen—open, close, open, close—trying to think up a plan.

  Before I know it, twenty minutes have passed. And instead of even one good idea, all I have are a dozen little doodles crammed into a corner of the envelope. I crumple it up and start rubbing my temples.

  I hear Papi call, “Adios!” as the other truck driver pulls away. Then, instead of getting back inside the truck, he sits down next to me at the card table. “I need your help with something.”

  The drivers are all preparing their speeches for the big city council meeting, Papi explains. He wants to write one, too. “It needs to be very professional,” he says. “No mistakes.” I can see he doesn’t trust his English enough to write the speech on his own. I know he’s asking me to write it for him—and I know how embarrassing that must be.

  But still. I have my own problems right now, and I don’t really feel like letting Tía Perla stand in my way again. I look away.

  “It’s just that I’m pretty busy right now,” I tell him. “With… school stuff. And the dance and everything…” My voice trails off. Papi doesn’t say anything. He just pats my hand, stands up, and walks back to the truck. A little well of guilt bubbles up in my throat, but just like missing the concert, maybe this is for the best. It’s time to get back to brainstorming. I turn over the envelope to make a fresh start.

  The rest of the afternoon is so busy at the park that Papi says we can call it quits and head back to the commissary early. With the city council meeting just two days away, the place crackles with nervous anticipation like drops of water on a sizzling pan. Someone has written SAVE OUR TRUCKS! across the meeting notice. Drivers huddle over highlighted printouts of the proposed regulations, fine-tuning their arguments.

  Papi shakes their hands as he leaves the commissary. They wish one another good luck and agree to meet outside city hall on Monday night so they can walk in as a group.

  “Remember to put on a clean shirt,” one of the drivers jokes, nudging Papi in the ribs. “You’re going to be on TV.”

  I wait until we’re in the pickup to ask Papi what he meant.

  “It’s not like real TV,” Papi explains. “They tape the meetings and show them on the public-access channel so people who can’t be there in person can still follow along. I don’t think anyone really watches it, though.”

  I’m relieved. I know how nervous Papi gets when he has to speak English in front of strangers. Just the thought of him having to speak English on television was making me nervous, too. And now I understand why he wanted my help.

  So on Sunday night, when he asks to rehearse his speech, I switch off the TV, put down the laundry, and really try to listen. Reading off index cards, he talks about hard work and supporting a family and raising a daughter. He looks up, unsure, at Mami and me. She nods encouragingly, and he continues. He talks about opportunity and the American dream, and for the first time in a long time, I remember that sweet, strawberry-soda feeling when Tía Perla was a dream all three of us shared.

  chapter

  25

  No one is waiting for me outside the classroom when I get to school on Monday morning. I’m not surprised, but the knots in my stomach tighten anyway. Amanda is at her desk, finishing last night’s homework. She looks up when she sees me, and I bite my lip. She rolls her eyes and nods toward Arthur. Just do it, she mouths.

  Amanda had let me off pretty easily at the park—all it took was an apology and a soda. But she never stays mad very long. Amanda boils over and cools right back down. Arthur’s different. His anger is more like a slow, steady simmer, especially when someone has hurt his feelings. And I’ve known him long enough to know I did.

  He’s in his seat, headphones on under a thick hooded sweatshirt that he’s wearing even though it’s not even close to cold outside. I stand in front of his desk for a few seconds, waiting for him to look up. When he doesn’t, I say, “Arthur?”

  Nothing.

  “Arthur,” I try again, louder. “Arthur, I’m trying to apologize.”

  I know he can hear me, but he barely blinks.

  “Hey!” I bark, pulling his hood down around his neck. His hair underneath is a crazy mess of just-out-of-bed spikes.

  “Hey, yourself!” he shoots back, finally taking off his headphones. “You’re supposed to be apologizing, remember?”

  Right. “Sorry.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was a jerk. Do you forgive me?”

  He shrugs, and the headphones go back on. “I’ll think about it.” But I’ve known him long enough to know he already has.

  It’s a good thing, too, because by now it seems like Julia is the only one—besides Arthur and Amanda, of course—who isn’t expecting Viviana Vega to show up at our school.

  “You know she isn’t coming.” Julia is seething on the way into the art studio for our dance-planning ses
sion after school. “Why do you keep pretending she is?”

  “Well, she won’t if we don’t even try,” I answer. But I know I have to think of something fast, and I’m counting on my friends for help.

  Julia blinks. “Whatever.” She pulls a binder labeled DANCE out of her backpack and finds our master checklist. Almost every box is ticked. Amanda and her team have folded hundreds of paper stars and strung them together in long, shiny garlands. The grocery store has promised the refreshments team not just ice cream and soda but plates and napkins as well. Arthur has turned his playlist over to Mr. Salazar for approval, and Maddie has sent invitations to all the middle schools nearby.

  And, finally, I have something to contribute, too, something more than half-truths and exaggerations.

  I wait for Julia to get to “posters” on our checklist. Just as I expected, she puts her hands on her hips and taps her foot impatiently. “Well, Stef? How much longer are we going to have to wait?”

  “Oh, about two more seconds,” I say, opening Mr. Salazar’s supply closet and pulling out the poster I stashed there earlier. I unroll it then and hold it up for everyone to see.

  “Whoa,” Jake whispers.

  “Nice,” says Arthur. Even Julia and Maddie look impressed.

  Inspired by the Viviana Vega poster Arthur had given me, mine shows dozens of arms, painted in gray and black and white, all reaching upward. But instead of reaching toward Viviana—they’re holding up paintbrushes and pencils, pastels and palettes. I wrote FEEL THE HEARTBEAT across the top, the “art” in “heart” drawn in bold red strokes.

  “Very well done,” Mr. Salazar says as my poster is passed around the room. He promises to make copies and have them ready for us to tape all over school tomorrow.

  chapter

  26

  I’m perplexed to see the pickup in the parking lot instead of Tía Perla that afternoon.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Papi as I toss my backpack into the truck bed. “Are we picking up Tía Perla from here?”

  “No, m’ija. Remember? Tonight is the city council meeting. We’re not taking Tía Perla out.”

  That’s right. I nod and look out the window. It’s a warm afternoon. The days have started getting longer but not yet hot. If Papi had been working, it would be the perfect kind of evening to take Tía Perla to a park. Neighbors would be walking their dogs. Moms and dads would be tossing Frisbees to sons and daughters. Soccer teams would be dribbling their balls around orange cones. They would all see Tía Perla and realize they were craving tacos.

  I had even come up with a name for this kind of evening: Taco Weather. It was a code phrase between Papi and me. “Looks like Taco Weather,” one of us would say, and both of us knew it would be a busy, beautiful night. I don’t mention it today, though. Both of us have more serious things on our minds.

  “Mami took the night off,” Papi tells me, “and you can stay home with her if you want. I know you have a lot of work to do. But I had hoped… well, I thought we might all go to the meeting together.”

  I imagine myself sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a crowded room while a bunch of food truck drivers talk to a bunch of men and women in suits about a bunch of rules that don’t have anything to do with me.

  “What for?”

  “Well, m’ija, I know what I want to say. But it’s really important that I say it right. No mistakes. The other drivers are counting on me—we’re all counting on one another—and I think the city council will understand much better what I’m trying to say if you say it. Will you come with me and read the speech?”

  He has to be kidding. Didn’t he say this meeting was going to be on television? I mean, I know what it’s like to have something important to say and feel like nobody can understand you, but this is too much. I can’t do it. I look at my shoes.

  “Can we just go home?” I mumble. “I’m sorry. I just want to go home. I have school stuff, and I need to call Amanda, and I don’t think I would be any good up there.”

  “Órale,” he says, patting my knee. “Don’t be sorry. You and your mami can watch us from home.”

  Mami meets us at the door and hustles us into the kitchen, where dinner is already prepared “Siéntense and eat up,” she says. “We need to get out of here quickly if we want to find three seats together.”

  I cringe, and Papi intervenes.

  “Maybe it would be better if you and Estefania stay home after all,” he says. “She has a lot of studying to do.”

  Mami looks at me, then back at Papi, and seems uncertain. “Well, you need to eat anyway,” she says. “Sit down.”

  Papi serves himself two enchiladas dripping with red sauce. But once they’re on his plate, he only picks at them. He pulls his note cards out of his pocket, and I watch his lips move softly as he reads his speech to himself.

  Meanwhile, Mami paces the kitchen, carrying a glass of water from the counter to the table, and then back to the counter again. She says over and over—to Papi? To me? To herself? I’m not sure—“It’s going to be fine. Just wait. It’s going to be fine.” She’s not eating, either, and I don’t have much of an appetite myself.

  “Can I be excused?” Without waiting for an answer, I grab the cordless phone off its cradle and take it to my bedroom. As I dial Amanda’s house, I hear Mami kiss Papi’s forehead and wish him luck. The front door closes behind him, and he drives off for the meeting.

  Amanda picks up on the third ring. We talk about the essays we have to turn in to Ms. Barlow and the mystery smell in Mrs. Serros’s room before I get down to business. “I still don’t know what to do about Viviana Vega. Have you thought of anything?”

  “You mean, besides the truth?” she asks.

  “Ha. Ha.”

  “Well, what about an impersonator, then?”

  “Know any?”

  “Can’t you pull it off?”

  I hear footsteps in the hallway and then a knock at my bedroom door.

  “Estefania?” Mami says through the crack. “The meeting has started.”

  I tell Amanda I have to go, then join Mami on the living room sofa.

  chapter

  27

  On the screen, I see three men and two women sitting in leather swivel chairs behind a massive table. Each is wearing a suit jacket, and each has been poured a tall glass of water. Facing the table is a wooden podium, and behind that are rows and rows of folding chairs. Every seat is filled. I can’t see any of the faces in the audience, only the backs of their heads. Knowing that Papi is in one of those chairs—that sometime tonight he’ll get up and speak at that podium—sets a million butterflies aflutter in my stomach. Mami takes my hand.

  The woman at the center of the table, wearing an ivory blazer and peering down through reading glasses, lightly taps her gavel. “Let’s move on to Agenda Item 4: Proposed Regulations for Mobile Food Vendors.”

  The man sitting next to her clears his throat. “Mayor Barnhart, I am presenting these proposals at the request of some concerned citizens who are worried about health and safety risks associated with the growing number of food trucks in our community. I’d like to open this up to public debate.”

  Mayor Barnhart looks out into the audience. “It looks like we might have some public comment?” A line forms at the podium, long and wriggly.

  A woman with short brown hair and a long gauzy scarf goes first. She bends the microphone so that it’s closer to her mouth, takes a quick look behind her, and speaks.

  Her family owns a diner in town, she says. It has been in her family for decades. But now, all the food trucks parked nearby are stealing her customers. It’s not fair, she complains. Trucks don’t have to pay for bathrooms or buildings, carpets or air-conditioning. “Please pass these regulations to level the playing field again.” The men and women at the table take notes. Some nod their heads. I look at Mami, and she’s biting her lip. We scoot closer together on the couch.

  Next at the podium is a man in a blue-striped shirt with rolled-up sle
eves. He says he lives near a park where taco trucks come every weekend. “Some of these things are so old and unsightly you just have to wonder about cleanliness, you know? And what about air pollution? What about the noise? What if a truck were to hit one of the kids?”

  A few people in the audience clap. The man in the striped shirt goes back to his seat, and a man in a green sweater takes his place at the podium. He tells the city council he owns a bakery and coffee shop. His wife, he says, got sick after eating at a taco truck not too long ago. “If that happened at my shop, the health inspectors would be all over me. These trucks need to abide by the same rules as the rest of us!” He pounds the podium with his fist. It makes a dull thud—the same sound as my heart falling when I think about where this meeting is headed.

  I have my complaints about Tía Perla, but I can’t bear listening to these strangers anymore. It feels like they’re picking on a friend, and suddenly I can’t believe I’m not there to stick up for her.

  “Mami, we have to go,” I say, jumping off the couch.

  “M’ija, I know it’s hard to watch right now, but let’s see what happens. Your papi hasn’t even had his turn yet.”

  I’m already in my bedroom, pulling my shoes back on. “No, Mami. I mean, let’s go!” I call to her. “We should be there. With Papi.”

  I’m back in the living room seconds later. Mami stares at me, momentarily shocked. Then she looks at the television and at her keys on the coffee table. “Órale.”

  chapter

  28

  Mami drops me off in front of the city hall steps. I scramble up, two at a time, while she finds a place to park. On the frantic ride over, I had come up with a plan: Find Papi and read his speech, just like he asked. But when I open the doors, I realize it’s impossible. I have to tap on shoulders—“Excuse me”—and squeeze between elbows—“Sorry, can I get by?”—just to shove my way inside. I search the crowd for familiar faces. I see a few, but I don’t see Papi.