Rooting for Rafael Rosales

by Kurtis Scaletta

  She included the link to Grace’s blog entry and sent it, then watched YouTube videos of cats for twenty minutes to pass the time.

  She checked her email again. There was no reply. Bijou probably wasn’t online.

  She heard a car door swinging shut and Dad shouting, “Is anyone home?” She put the computer to sleep and drifted downstairs.

  “How was work?”

  “You know,” he said.

  She didn’t, but decided not to press him.

  ***

  The next morning she finally had an email from Bijou.

  Dear Maya,

  Sorry I didn’t write back sooner. It wasn’t fair of me.

  I read your sister’s article about Rafael. I did not understand all of it (rag doll? crater? popping kernels?) but I get the idea. Rafael has always been up and down, up and down. More up than down. Does it make sense in English to say he thinks too much? I would say don’t worry, but in truth I worry too. I also think too much.

  Bijou

  Maya wrote back immediately.

  Bijou,

  I am so glad to hear from you. If there were prizes for thinking too much, I would have a room full of trophies! I think too much about melting glaciers and acid in the oceans and bees. I even think too much about thinking too much. So I will continue to worry about Rafael.

  When he does well, Rafael gives me hope. Now that he is failing, I feel like we’re all doomed. It’s like the fate of the world depends on how he does. Do you think I’m silly? My father would call it magical thinking.

  Your friend,

  Maya

  ***

  Dear Maya,

  I am not superstitious, but I like your type of magic.

  Also, I am happy to be called your friend.

  Your friend in return,

  Bijou

  ***

  She emailed Bijou a lot over the next few days, especially in the evenings while listening to Kernels games on the Internet. Maya wrote about school, family, and being on TV. As she wrote the last one, she thought she might seem spoiled and privileged again, so she added:

  Don’t think all American children are on TV all the time. It was dumb luck, and I messed it up anyway.

  But Bijou wasn’t offended.

  Oh, I never want to be on TV. I want to be RICH, not famous! ;-)

  But do you know Rafael was almost on TV one time? I mean as a child. He is on TV all the time as a player. There was a big baseball star giving baseball lessons in the street. Rafael wanted so bad to be seen with the famous player, but he wasn’t picked. Instead it was his best friend, Juan. Rafael was mad with jealousy.

  Juan! That reminded her. Maya saw the green light next to Bijou’s name and clicked on it to open a chat window.

  Maya: Hi!

  Bijou: My typing in English will be slow.

  Maya: I don’t mind. I have a dumb question.

  Bijou: ???

  Maya: Remember that picture you sent with Rafael as a boy?

  Bijou: Yes of course.

  Maya: You made a mistake, I think. The boy with the baseball looks like the man I saw on TV. I emailed about it earlier.

  Bijou answered surprisingly fast.

  Bijou: Sure. You’re right. That is Juan. I don’t know how I made that mistake.

  Maya: I knew it.

  Bijou: U should be a detective.

  Maya: :-)

  Maya: Next I will investigate how to stop Rafael’s slump. :-(

  Bijou: Good luck.

  Maya took her bike out the next day. It was hot, even in the morning, so she stopped at the golf course and turned around. As she rode back, she heard a familiar voice.

  “Maya!”

  She squelched to a stop. There was Claire, wrapped in a towel and riding home in her wagon with Rodney pulling. Claire leaped out and ran toward her. Maya got off the bike to give her a hug. Rodney looked both confused and embarrassed.

  “Maya!” he said.

  “What happened to day camp?”

  “Oh, that didn’t last a week!” he said. He mouthed: “Biting.”

  “Oh no! Claire, you didn’t.”

  “I wanted to use the swing, and another girl was on it,” Claire explained.

  “No teeth. Never use teeth unless you’re arguing with a carrot!”

  Claire squealed with laughter. “I want Maya to come home with us!” she said.

  “Not today,” said Rodney. He looked at Maya. “Unless you want lunch?”

  ***

  Maya dried and dressed Claire while Rodney made sandwiches. Claire took two bites of her crust-off PB&J, then clambered out of her high chair and staggered over to the couch to lie down and sleep.

  “She’s so tired,” said Rodney. “I couldn’t get her out of the kiddie pool.” He set his turkey and Swiss back on the plate and wiped his hands on a napkin. “So how’s your garden?”

  “Not good.” She explained what happened.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Seth and I wanted to do a pollinator garden, but now that we know about her allergies”—he shook his head—“obviously we can’t.”

  “Do you still have your job?” Maya asked.

  “No. I’m a stay-at-home dad again, since day camp didn’t work out. What have you been doing?”

  Maya told him about her blog post. He must have been one of the six people in the world who hadn’t read it. They finished their sandwiches, Rodney occasionally glancing over at Claire.

  “You know, she misses you,” he said.

  “I miss her too,” said Maya.

  “Maybe you can babysit again.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “I’ll talk to Seth,” Rodney promised.

  Claire still wasn’t awake after lunch. After an hour, Maya put her bike helmet on and got ready to leave.

  “She’s going to be upset when she wakes up and you’re gone,” Rodney whispered.

  “Tell her I’ll come back this weekend and play,” said Maya. “I’ll tell her a story.”

  “It seems like you’ve grown a lot in the last two months.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Maya. “My clothes still fit.”

  “I don’t mean taller,” he said. “I mean older. When I saw you on your bike, at first I thought you were Grace.”

  Maya laughed. “I don’t think I’ll ever look like Grace.” They looked sort of alike, but Grace was…Grace was Grace. Even when she was Maya’s age, she was bigger and sturdier than Maya was now.

  She had a thought riding home. Would Rodney mistake her for Grace if the two of them were together? No, because putting them side by side highlighted their differences. If someone was looking through old pictures, they might mistake Grace for Maya or Maya for Grace, but there’s no way they’d be confused if they were both in the photo.

  And there was no way Bijou would make that mistake with Juan and his brother.

  A new idea emerged. What if Bijou had not made a mistake? What if she was telling the truth the first time and was lying now?

  There was only one reason she would do that.

  ***

  Maya found Grace in their shared office space.

  “Blogging about last night’s Twins game?” Maya asked.

  “Yeah,” Grace said. “Hard to sustain enthusiasm the way they’ve been playing, but I want to be professional about it. Analyzing all their flaws is a lot of work! What’s up?”

  “I’m wondering…would a baseball player lie about who he was?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, play under a different name. Pretend to be someone else.”

  Grace turned around in the chair to face her.

  “Tony Oliva used his brother’s passport when he came to the United States so scouts would think he was younger. I heard about it once on a Twins broadcast.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He thought he had a better chance of being signed. Teams want to sign younger players. They have more time to develop and more years left in them.”

 
; “That was a long time ago though, right?”

  “Yep,” said Grace. “But that still happens, especially with foreign players. Are you worried that Rafael isn’t Rafael?”

  “No, I’m sure Rafael is Rafael,” said Maya. “I was wondering for no reason.”

  “Sure you were,” said Grace suspiciously, but she spun back around to work on her blog.

  When Grace was off the computer, Maya spent an hour doing Web searches, looking futilely for photos or information about Juan Santos Garcia. There were too many useless links to sort through—stories from the last few years about Juan’s multimillion-dollar signing and speculation about when he would ascend to the majors.

  But when she started typing “Dominican players lying…” it auto-filled to “Dominican players lying about age.” There were a half-million results. Apparently it was a big problem. It was especially common for players to use a brother’s birth certificate.

  She cleared the browser history so Grace wouldn’t see what she’d been doing. If she saw the search results for Juan Santos Garcia along with baseball players lying about their age, she’d put two and two together.

  What if the man playing as Juan really was Juan’s big brother? That would be a multimillion-dollar swindle. Maya didn’t even want to know if it was true. If it was, and she knew about it, she might have to do something about it.

  “Tomorrow is Bring Your Daughters to Work Day,” Dad said that night at dinner.

  “That’s in April,” said Mom. “And it’s not called that anymore.”

  “Fine,” he said. “It’s Bring My Daughters to Work Day. I thought I would take the girls so they can appreciate what I do.” He put special weight on the word appreciate. He picked up his turkey burger and took a big bite.

  “Do I have to go?” asked Grace.

  “Yes,” he said firmly.

  “But Maya is the one who talked smack about your company on TV!”

  “You’re acting like it’s a punishment,” said Dad. “It’s not. I haven’t had you to the office in a while, and tomorrow is the perfect day for it. I have plenty of time to show you around in the morning, and there’s a presentation in the afternoon you might like.”

  Grace mimed a wide yawn. Dad pretended he didn’t see it.

  “You know,” said Mom, “it’s not too early for either of you to start thinking about your future.”

  “My future is not working at Alceria,” said Maya, picking at her carrots.

  “Do you think when I was twelve I planned on being a market analyst in agribusiness?” asked Dad.

  “Of course not,” said Maya. But she had a hard time seeing him doing anything that didn’t involve spreadsheets. “What did you want to do?”

  “I wanted to study outer space. Maybe even travel to other planets.” His eyes got a faraway look. Maya found space travel a million times more interesting than his real job.

  “That would be so cool,” she said.

  “It would,” Grace agreed.

  “It’s a nice idea, but if I were on my way to Saturn, I wouldn’t be here for you girls.”

  “What about you, Mom?” Maya asked. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

  “I sure didn’t plan on going into human resources,” said Mom. “But the position of Patrick Swayze’s wife was taken.”

  “You didn’t have bigger dreams than being some guy’s wife?”

  “Well, I was sort of kidding, but—” She thought hard. “You know, this is what I wanted. This family.”

  “Being some guy’s wife!” Maya repeated. She couldn’t believe it. Her dad dreamed about exploring space, and her mother dreamed about having a family?

  “When you get older, you might appreciate it,” said her mother.

  “I do now,” Maya said. She didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings or ruin the first nice family conversation they’d had in days. But she wanted something more than a house and kids.

  “I’m going to be a sports reporter,” Grace said, filling the awkward silence. “It’s not a dream. That makes it sound so pie-in-the-sky. It’s a plan.”

  “You already are a sports reporter,” said Maya, which made Grace beam.

  “What about you?” Dad asked Maya. “Have you ever thought about the future?”

  “I only want to help make the world a better place somehow,” she said. She didn’t think it was a good idea to mention that Dr. Jenkins was her new hero. She thought of Bijou. “Maybe travel. Make friends all over the world.”

  “Well,” said Dad. “You might be pleasantly surprised tomorrow.”

  ***

  Maya felt like she was heading toward the Death Star as they walked across the vast parking lot to Alceria’s main entrance. She had been to the Alceria campus, but not for a long time. The lobby was vast, with skylights three stories high casting rays of light on ornamental fountains. As a little kid, she had climbed up on the ledges of the fountains and dangled her fingertips in the frothy water. She still wanted to.

  “So this is the girl!” a man said in the lobby. Dad nodded but didn’t reply. They took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked up the hall to Dad’s office. He shared the space with a younger man named Jake, who was already at his desk and clattering away on the keys. His computer tower was lined up with Lego Minifigures: Batman, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones.

  “Hey, kids,” Jake said, barely looking at them. “I hear you’re stars of Web and screen. Got any movie deals yet?”

  “Wait until my album drops,” said Maya, playing along.

  “I’m launching a fragrance,” Grace added.

  “Oh, I launched a fragrance myself,” said Jake, fanning the air with his hand.

  “Gross!” Grace said with a laugh. Dad shot him a look.

  “Sorry,” said Jake. “Anyway, it’s great to see you both. Good luck today.” He turned back to his computer.

  “Why do we need luck?” Grace whispered to Maya.

  ***

  The morning passed slowly. They walked down hallway after hallway, rode up and down elevators, and were introduced to a bunch of people with names Maya wouldn’t remember and job titles she didn’t understand. Most of the people they passed in the halls were men, but most of the people Dad introduced them to were women. He was probably trying to show them that Alceria was a good place for women to work.

  Even besides the bee killing, there was something about the place that made Maya nervous. Everybody seemed overdressed for summer and overeager to prove themselves. Men were quick to make jokes, and women too quick to smile and compliment her and Grace. More than once, somebody referred to her as “the girl.”

  They know about the TV show, she thought. They all know. When Dad had said he’d been watching it with his work group and boss, she’d assumed those were the only people at Alceria who had seen the show. Had she been the subject of staff meetings and office memos? “Tomorrow morning, the girl who tried to destroy this company will be visiting. Please offer fake smiles and be nice to her.”

  A couple of people asked her if she was excited about the presentation. “Sure,” she said, even though she had no idea what the presentation was about. Why would she be excited about some business thing? It was probably going to be some guy bragging about how Alceria had sold more stuff this year than last year and expected to sell even more stuff next year.

  They had lunch in the cafeteria, and Dad got them each an oversize cookie when they were done. It made Maya feel like a spoiled little kid, walking toward his office with the giant cookie. Instead of taking the elevator, they walked through the atrium and joined a river of people heading down another long hallway toward a row of doors. They strolled through to an auditorium with theater-style seating that ramped downward to the stage.

  The presentation, Maya realized. The whole company seemed to be invited.

  They sat in the front of the auditorium, staring at a gigantic plasma screen that was currently showing the Alceria logo.

  “Wow,” said Grace
. “Wish the new Avengers movie was showing on that thing.”

  When a gray-haired man came to the podium to address the audience, Maya felt like he was looking right at her. Of course he wasn’t, she told herself. He was looking out to the room. But it sure seemed like he was looking at her.

  “You probably know who I am,” he said, and the audience laughed, then clapped.

  “He’s the CEO,” Dad whispered.

  “Thank you all for taking time out of your day to be here,” he said, but Maya had a feeling nobody had a choice. “As you know, I’m totally committed to three things. Well, four. The first is this company, and the important work we do, and all of you. The second is my family. The third, as many of you know, is golf—but that is an unrequited love.” The audience laughed a lot harder than the joke deserved. “The fourth,” he said, “is the environment. I share this passion with my entire family. We spend so much time traveling to beautiful, unspoiled parts of the world, many of them right here in Minnesota.”

  And now the screen came to life. There was a slide show of Minnesota scenery: prairie grass and wildflowers, loons gliding down to splash in ponds, the sun setting behind some trees, a fox trotting in the snow (Maya’s heart felt a twinge), a flock of herons taking to the sky. Stirring music played.

  “And that,” said the CEO, “is why I’m thrilled to tell you about Alceria’s newest venture, which is the restoration and preservation of one thousand acres of native prairie, right here in our own backyard.”

  A map came up, showing where an L shape of green space would fit snugly into a western corner of Minneapolis, stretching almost to Maya’s own neighborhood. The caption read, Alceria Prairie Garden.

  “This is only the beginning,” said the CEO. “Alceria is committed to prairieland restoration and preservation around the state, and will eventually restore another ten thousand acres of prairie in central Minnesota.”

  A new map popped up, showing a sprawl of green between Minneapolis and Saint Cloud. The audience cheered. Alceria Nature Preserve read the caption.

  “Wow,” said Grace. “Ten thousand acres.”

  Versus how many millions of acres of tainted crops? Maya wondered.

  “And so,” said the CEO, “as we continue to strive to feed the world, we want to send a clear message that Alceria cares about our planet and everyone who lives here.” The screen showed buffalo thundering across a plain and then switched to a close-up of a bee collecting pollen from a wildflower. “Whatever their size!”