by Alisa Valdes
♦
“Hey, you okay?” asked Kelsey, setting my cup upright again before too much fluid slopped out of it, and mopping up the rest with her napkin.
“Oh, my God. I know that guy.” My voice came out in a whisper as I halfheartedly tried to help her clean up my mess. Kelsey laughed uncomfortably.
“Uh, yeah you know him. He’s your barbaric boyfriend.”
“Not Logan, dork. The other guy.”
My friends all looked at Demetrio now. I knew how he must have looked to them. He looked to them as he had initially looked to me - like a guy who didn’t frequent chic bagel shops near Coronado Prep. He had small gold hoop earrings in both lobes, and wore four or five showy gold chains, with large links, around his neck. He looked like something menacing yet ridiculous that had just swaggered out of a rap video. Logan came along behind him, taller than Demetrio by a couple of inches, with a mildly condescending, curious look on his otherwise pleasant face. Everyone in the cafe watched at Demetrio with silent concern, as though he might yank out a gun and yell “on the floor, bitches!”
“I didn’t realize it was hooligan day at the Einstein’s,” sneered Thomas softly.
Victoria chuckled unkindly, but quietly enough to be considered polite.
“You know that guy?” asked Kelsey, stunned.
“Remember I told you a guy called 911 for me after my crash? That’s him. That’s the guy.”
Victoria looked surprised. Kelsey was about to ask me another question, but Demetrio was within earshot now, and slouching ever closer. Everyone kept quiet, and tried not to seem uncomfortable, which is to say, they all looked quite uncomfortable.
“Hey Maria,” said Demetrio, when he got to our table. He smiled, in an embarrassed sort of way, licking his lips nervously and stuffing his hands deep into his jacket pockets. I noticed, and not for the first time, that he was unusually attractive, and would have been quite the pretty boy if not for the gang tattoos and minatory getup.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, realizing as it came out of my mouth that it was probably a pretty rude response. I quickly amended myself. “I mean, hi. But, seriously, how did you find me? This is a little weird? Are you following me?”
He seemed hurt by this, but pretended not to care. “Don’t worry. I ain’t following you or nothin’ like that. I remembered you said you came to an Einstein’s near school some mornings – remember, we used your old cups for the fire kindling? – so I took a bet it was this one.”
He paused for a moment, and looked at my friends, his forcedly friendly smile soon fading, and his brows knitting in worry, as he met their sanctimonious eyes.
“Here,” he said, taking something shiny out of his pocket. “This is why I came. I found this where you crashed. It looked expensive, and it had your name engraved on the back. I thought you might want it back. That’s all.”
He let the Tiffany necklace with the heart locket unfurl from his fingers, and held it twinkling in the soft light.
“How sweet,” said Kelsey, sincerely. One look at her face and you could tell she adored him. She was often drawn to the bad-boy types, however; I blamed the fact that she was from a very wealthy family, and was extremely sheltered, and thought everyone was the same. The last guy she’d dated had been a high school dropout who raced stock cars and was now in prison for armed robbery.
Logan came up now, and stood next to Demetrio. Seeing the necklace he’d given me in the other guy’s hand, he shot me a worried look, as though he thought Demetrio had stolen it.
Quickly, I said, “Everybody, this is Demetrio Vigil, he’s the guy who called 911 when I crashed in the East Mountains last week. Demetrio, these are my friends, Kelsey, Victoria, Thomas, and my wonderful boyfriend Logan.”
I hadn’t meant to emphasize the word “boyfriend” so much, but it just came out that way. I looked at Logan now, and said, “Demetrio brought my necklace back today. I lost it in the crash. Isn’t that nice?” For some reason, I was smiling too hard, as though part of me didn’t quite believe my interest in Demetrio were entirely innocent.
Logan still looked confused, as though trying to figure out how Demetrio knew how to find me.
Demetrio nodded his hello, and my friends smiled awkwardly back at him and said it was a pleasure to meet him, even though I could tell they didn’t mean it.
“Where’d you find the locket?” Logan asked Demetrio of the necklace.
“In the snow where she crashed, under where the car was. I went by there a couple days ago and there it was, shining in the sun. Hard to miss all that ice, man. Even in real ice.”
“I gave her that for Valentine’s Day last year,” said Logan.
Demetrio nodded. “I figured. She talked a lot about you after the crash.” He smiled at me to let me know he was on my side, and didn’t intend to make trouble for me. To Logan he said, “It’s a nice gift.” He handed the necklace to Logan. “I don’t mean nothing by it. Just thought she might want it back. Cool?”
“I appreciate it,” I told him. “That was very nice. I owe you twice now. Once for calling 911, and once for finding my necklace.”
“How’s the ankle?” he asked.
“Better.”
“You gonna dance on it Saturday?”
I felt my friends’ eyes upon me, incriminating for my having told this stranger so much about myself. “Yeah. I think so. Doctor said it’s okay, so, you know, if I wear an ace bandage and all that.”
“Well, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Demetrio reached into his pocket once more, and pulled out a small yellow card, laminated in plastic, and dusted it off on the leg of his jean. “This is just a little something I wanted to give you, too, because you don’t never know what life holds.”
He leaned toward me, and held out the card. I took it, and looked at it briefly. It was a Catholic prayer card for Saint Anthony the Abbott. My mother and I were Catholic, technically, but we didn’t go to church as often as we should - which was a nice way of saying we pretty much never went. My dad’s grandmother from Chimayó used to have things like this prayer card in her house. I caught Kelsey’s look of amused cynicism, and tried to ignore it even though it mirrored my own feelings about the situation. The gesture was sweet, but the card was so not something any of us would ever carry around. It was in the realm of quaint superstition that most of my friends avoided, other than for purposes of erudite mockery.
“Uhm, wow. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten anything quite like this before.” I tried to conceal my own discomfort, but probably failed because Demetrio looked even more embarrassed now.
“I know it ain’t for everyone, but where I’m from, that’s what we carry for protection.”
“I would have thought a gun worked better for protection where you’re from,” deadpanned Logan, pretending it was a joke. Demetrio took a moment after the comment to take a deep, calming breath, then continued to talk to me as though Logan hadn’t said anything at all.
“It’s probably lame to you. He’s the patron saint of animals, so I got it for Buddy, too. If nothing else, give it to your dog.”
“That’s so sweet,” said Kelsey, leaning toward Demetrio with her elbows planted on the table and her chin in her hands. She might as well have had little cartoon heats floating up out of her big, shiny eyes.
“Uhm, no, it’s fine! Not dumb at all.” I blinked hollowly. “But what do I do with it?” I set the card down on the table and smiled at Demetrio to let him know I, too, had found Logan’s joke in bad taste.
He shrugged. “Just carry it. If you need it, if you feel like, you know, like you’re in trouble or danger or whatever, like if you crash again, which God forbid happens, you’ll know what to do.” He backed up a little and made room for Logan take his place next to the table. “I better go. Hope you all have a good day. Glad you’re doing good, Maria. My best to Buddy. Laters.”
Demetrio turned to walk away, a look of subtle humiliated annoyance on his face
, but Logan swiftly caught him by the arm.
“Hey, bro,” Logan said, coping a tough-guy stance I’d never seen him use before but that kind of appealed to me anyway. “Thanks, dude. Me and my girl? We appreciate what you did here. And I’d like to give you a little something for your trouble.”
Logan took his slick black leather wallet out of his back jeans pocket with great show and pomp, opened it and flipped through the many crisp twenty-dollar bills he had there.
“Nah, man.” Demetrio looked slightly offended, but unsurprised - almost as though he pitied Logan. He was patient with my boyfriend, and forgiving. “I’m cool. You have yourself a good day.”
“At least let me get you a coffee or something,” said Logan, smiling gallantly. “I mean, if it weren’t for you, who knows what might have happened to my girl. Right?”
“We cool. Nah, man. I gotta jet.”
“Ugh. ‘My girl,’” said Kelsey under her breath, to me. “He thinks he owns you. How can you stand it?”
I ignored her, because that was just how Logan talked and nothing more, and watched the boys. Demetrio shrugged gracefully out of Logan’s grasp, and faux-limped in his usual way, toward the door, nodding goodbye to me in a slightly wounded way that made me realize he thought I thought he didn’t belong here. Which wasn’t true, exactly. I felt sorry for him, and a little sickened by my own awkward behavior toward him. Mostly, I was confused.
I glanced at my friends’ faces, and found that, with the exception of Kelsey, they still saw Demetrio as the potentially dangerous outsider that I had also believed him to be one week ago, because of his clothes, mannerisms and grammar. Logan’s mouth had crept up into a cruel grin, as he fought the urge to openly laugh at Demetrio. I felt awful. How could Demetrio be all that bad if he’d helped me? If he’d gone out of his way to find me to return my beloved necklace? I just didn’t understand things anymore. So much that made sense last week suddenly didn’t seem fair anymore. My heart ached for the lonely gangster and I was suddenly ashamed - of myself, and of my friends.
“Thank you!” I called out to him, horrified to realize I - supposedly the superior one here - hadn’t thought to say it yet.
Demetrio didn’t seem to hear me. He was halfway out the door, and just kept moving. My breath caught on the lump in my throat, as he swaggered out the door, into the swirling snow, alone. I was overcome with an urge to chase him down, and hug him - and this frightened me. I was more sensible than that, wasn’t I? I was too smart to fall for a gang member.
“Well, that was alarming,” said Thomas.
“You know, Maria,” joked Victoria after the door had closed and Demetrio was gone. “You really ought to be more careful about who you crash in front of next time.”
Kelsey pursed her lips in offense, but Thomas and Logan guffawed at her biting witticism. Normally, I probably would have joined it, but nothing felt normal anymore. For the first time that I could remember, I smiled politely, but did not feel like laughing with them.
♦
A short time later, we all stood in the student parking lot looking at the big curved and barbed hunting knife Logan’s dad had given him as a reward for making the skeet-shooting team. I pretended to be interested. Kelsey didn’t. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Thing like that cost much?” asked Thomas, trying to look as manly as was possible for a toe-walking science geek once thought to be on the autism spectrum, but still looking a bit startled and discomfited by the tool.
“Hell yeah!” said Logan, turning the blade with an admiration in his gorgeous blue eyes that bordered on infatuation. “This here’s an eighteen-inch big gamer, with special engraving. A beauty. I’ve wanted one for a while. Dad’s awesome.”
Seeing a teacher walking our way, Logan quickly sheathed the weapon and stuffed it under the seat of his silver Chevy Tahoe, as every sort of armament was forbidden on school grounds. We all agreed it was time to get going anyway, so I kissed Logan goodbye in the student parking lot - he and his amazingly broad, strong shoulders were headed to Calculus - and joined Kelsey for a frigid walk across the sprawling ivy-and-brick Coronado Prep campus, toward our Art History class. I saw Logan toss a bit of uneaten bagel to a few crows as he walked, and pointed it out to Kelsey.
“See? He can be kind to animals. You’ve got him all wrong.”
“Probably just fattening them up for the slaughter,” she replied, bitterly.
“No one eats crows. Not even Logan.”
“Blackbird pie, deary. You never heard that nursery rhyme? Two and tenty black birds baked in a pie.”
“I never understood that one.”
“Yeah, me neither. Come to think of it, I never understood most nursery rhymes and songs. They were always about the black death, or the plague, or some other horrible thing the old English found excellent for children to laugh about.”
The snow was tapering off a little, but the wind had kicked up and literally sucked the air out of you when it gusted. We huddled together, arm in arm, leaning into the gales, and moved quickly.
“Oh, and by the way? When you told me some ‘guy’ called 911 for you last week, you neglected to mention the fact that he was young and incredibly freakin’ hot,” Kelsey said, her voice chattering with cold, near my ear. “I thought it was some fat truck driver type.”
I turned my head to look at her, a look of puzzlement on my face. “He’s not hot, Kelsey. He’s a gang member.”
“Right. A hot gang-member,” she said. “You say it as if the two were mutually exclusive.”
“They are. You need to be smarter about boys.”
“Look who’s talking, mister ‘look at my big-ass knife.’”
I shook my head. “Logan’s a good guy. Maybe the other one is too, he’s just - he’s not my type.” The words rang false to me, but I desperately wanted them to be true. He couldn’t be my type. That would be stupid. I denied to myself that I’d felt a massive attraction for him both times I’d seen him.
“That explains why you were so rude to him,” she said.
“I wasn’t rude to him!”
“Maybe not you, but Logan sure was, and you didn’t stop him.”
I flinched at her words. “What? What are you talking about? I swear, Logan could bring about world peace or something, and you’d still hate him. You just hate everything he does.”
“Oh, please. Like you didn’t notice? Idiotic gun joke aside, Logan was all, ‘here, let me give you some money for your troubles you poor little underling,’ like a total snob. It was disgusting. How can you stand him?”
I shook my head again, confused by her interpretation. “Kelsey, he was trying to be nice. Maybe that’s why you don’t have a boyfriend. You don’t understand guys.”
She laughed. “No. The reason I don’t have a boyfriend is unlike some people, I’m very picky. Oh my God, you are so naive, Maria.”
“Whatever.”
“Logan was totally not trying to be nice. He was trying to put that guy in his place. ‘Let me give you some money, poor homie dude, because I’m taller than you and Maria’s my bitch, and you don’t belong here.’”
“Shut up. He didn’t mean it like that, and he’s never called me a bitch. What is wrong with you today?”
We had arrived at the Visual Arts building, and I held the door for the girl I had, until now, considered to be my best friend in all the world. Once inside, we shook the snow off, and began to walk together toward our classroom. I didn’t look at her; I was too angry about all her insults.
“Maria, I know you are the nicest person in the world, and you always see the best in people, but just this once try to at least entertain the possibility that I might be right about Logan. He might not have been doing it consciously, but I think he was trying to insult that guy.”
“Demetrio. That guy’s name is Demetrio.” It felt strange to say his name in the quiet elegance of the hallway.
“Demetrio, who is hot and as far as I could tell, pretty freakin’
nice.”
I paused at the door to our classroom, to look her in the eye. “You think?”
“Duh,” she said. “Dude calls 911, builds you a fire to keep you warm, puts your dog in his jacket even though it’s freezing cold, stays with you until help comes, and goes out of his way to return your necklace? Seems pretty freakin’ nice to me. When’s the last time Logan did anything nice for you?”
I considered this as I opened the door, and we entered the classroom. “All the time,” I told her, even though in truth I had no answer. He’d been busy lately, preparing for the shooting team trials, and - something else. I didn’t know, exactly. But I was sure he was busy, like he said.
♦
Our teacher, Linda Yazzie, was at her desk. Her thick, shiny black hair, streaked with white but no less lustrous for it, was pulled back loosely in a bun. A thin, fit woman in her forties, given to yoga and tofu, she wore faded jeans and a colorful, beautifully woven woolen shawl, with big artsy turquoise earrings and cherry red cowboy boots. She wasn’t a mother - and claimed quite vociferously that teaching all of us had rid her of that desire for all eternity - but the boys at school called her a MILF anyway. She pretended not to notice. At the moment, she held slides up to the light in her sinewy brown hand, scrutinizing them with her intense dark eyes, deciding to put some in the projector in front of her, and others to the side.
“Good morning, Maria,” she said, glancing at us. Our teacher had a habit of favoring students she felt had artistic talent, and ignoring the others; for this reason, she always spoke to me by name, and never did so for Kelsey - presumably because my best friend had difficulty drawing even the mot basic of stick figures and I didn’t.