“I can’t believe you, girl!” he says.
“What?” I ask, removing the helmet.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” The innocent happiness of his smile makes me think I don’t have anything to fear with him. I can trust my instincts. This guy, even though he was dating the meanest girl in school, is actually really sweet. And tough. On him, it’s a good combination.
“Like what?”
“You just did in ten minutes what it takes most people months to learn.”
“I did?”
The laughter bubbles up from his chest, cool and calm. “You’ve just graduated to the intermediate track, girl. I knew you’d rock at this.”
We switch to a harder track, and like before I feel at ease, completely at ease, after only a couple of loops. I listen to my heart, and I ride. I love the rush of adrenaline. I feel like I can’t go fast enough. It’s like all that training on the mountain bike, and all those secret rides on Grandma’s motorcycle (we could never tell Dad, he’d freak) have been building up to this. The wind cuts beneath my chin and I laugh with the rush of the ride. After fifteen minutes, I want more. I want harder. I want to dance on this motorcycle, lift off on it, twist. I want to move. I circle back around and stop to talk to Chris. He says he’s speechless, which is impossible, given that he has just spoken to tell me so, but anyway. He’s impressed. I am so excited I can hardly speak. The first man to walk on the moon could not have been more in awe than I am right now. I jump up and down and squeal like a silly . . . girl.
“I want to try the advanced track,” I say.
“You sure?” Chris tilts his head doubtfully.
“Please!” I beg. He smiles at me, and then his face grows serious. He touches my face with his hand and moves close. Then his lips are on mine, and I feel the heat spread through my body. At first we kiss with closed lips, but then he nibbles mine and our mouths open. It’s gentle, the way we explore each other’s mouths with our tongues. He tastes good, clean and healthy. Warm. I could kiss him forever.
“You are amazing,” he says when we come up for air.
“Does that mean you’ll let me take your bike on the advanced track?” I blink playfully.
His beautiful mouth curls into a grin. “It means I’ll let you take my bike — and me — anywhere you want.”
29
The next morning I wake up early, full of energy, and stare at the gentle spray of sunlight through the slits between my shades. I can still smell Chris on my lips. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Life is good.
I come downstairs whistling to myself, dig around in the cabinets for a mixing bowl, wooden spoon, and pan. I open the shades on the small kitchen window, struggle with the lock for a moment, slide the glass open a crack, and then, with the Southern California birds — I have no idea what you call them — singing and a cool breeze whispering through, I make pancakes from a mix. I know. How very domestic of me.
I guess I’m feeling guilty for lying to my father. Dad is still asleep, and I could barely sleep, up all night thinking of Chris and motorcycles. I’ve been up up, like wide awake, since six. Last night, after an evening of riding motorcycles, as the world cooled down and the stars and crickets came out, Chris brought me back to the school, and we kissed for like an hour, first on this low brick wall outside the band room, and later on the cool, wet grass. We pressed our bodies against each other, and it was intense and rather urgent. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to spend the night there, with him, looking up at the hazy moon and the determined stars, listening to the gentle, salty wind in the trees. Talking. I feel like I can talk to Chris about everything. I told him all about my friends back home, and my grandma, even my weird mom. He didn’t even seem freaked that I had a mom who abandoned me. Usually people feel too sorry for me when they don’t have to. Chris simply listened to me talk about her and said the same thing I think, which was “With all her problems, it sounds like you’re lucky she’s not around.”
Dad shuffles into the kitchen in his threadbare red plaid pajama bottoms and a gray T-shirt, groggy and happy, just as I discover a bag of blueberries in the freezer. Yes! Blueberries so rock in a pancake.
“Hey, kid,” he says. He smells like secondhand cigarettes, like someone else must have been smoking at the party. The way my mom almost always used to smell when she’d come to visit me, back in the days when she used to actually, you know, come to visit me. Dad yawns, stretches, and asks, “How was the movie?”
Movie? Oh, right. The movie. Quick, Paski, think of something. “It was okay.” I shrug for that surly-teenager emphasis. “You know, the usual shoot-’em-up aliens kind of thing.” Dad nods, stretches, and yawns again, like he wants me to notice him stretching and yawning or something, then starts to wash out the coffeemaker from yesterday, to make more coffee, which, as it so happens, is his primary food group.
“Pancakes,” he says, impressed.
“Blueberry pancakes,” I correct him. “I’m going all out.”
Dad pats me on the back, and once he’s got the coffeemaker set up and dribbling its bitter brown brew into the pot, he shuffles out to our little square of front porch to fetch the newspaper. He comes back in shivering. “Cool out there. Nice. Smells all oceany. I love this place.”
“It’s okay,” I say. Is “oceany” a word?
Dad smiles to himself, thinking he’s won. Thinking that I love this place, too. I feel just guilty enough to let him believe it. He sits at the dining room table and opens the paper with all this drama, like he wants me to notice him opening the paper. I hate when he does this, because he usually sighs and then starts to read me all the awful news about how terrible the government is. Times like this, I wish Dad had a wife. Someone who would say something like “So what’s new in the world today?” and actually, like, care. Not that I don’t care about what’s happening in the world. I just don’t care to talk to my dad about it.
“So,” he says, scowling at the paper. “What you got planned today, Chinita?”
“I have to cover that motocross race,” I tell him. “Remember? For the school paper?”
Dad hits his forehead with his hand and gets the guilt face going again. There is now a smudge of black newsprint on his forehead. He has no idea, and I’m not in the mood to tell him. He’d just panic. “Oh, right. I’m sorry, Punkin. I didn’t forget. I just — I need my coffee.” He gets up to check on the brew progress. Bobs his head to try and speed up Mister Coffee. As usual, I feel like the parent. Like he hasn’t figured out he can’t control the speed of the coffee machine with his head bobbing. It’s the same with elevators. He likes to press the button over and over, like it will make the elevator come faster. Things like that drive me nuts.
I flip a pancake. I love the bubbles on the uncooked side right before they’re ready to turn over. There’s something satisfying about the hiss of the damp side on the surface of the pan.
Dad clears his throat. “Is this race something your dad could come with you to?” I feel my shoulders tense up as I scream silently inside my head. No! I mean, it is, technically. But I’m planning to meet Chris there. We’re going to watch the race together and he’s going to give me tips about the sport.
“I don’t know,” I say evenly.
“I hear you,” says my dad. “At ease.” He pushes my shoulders down and laughs to himself again. He nods up and down at me like he’s some kind of detective who just found a super-important clue. He’s real proud of himself for figuring out that he is allowed to go to the race but that I don’t want him to. “Say no more,” he adds with a pat on my back. “I’ll stay here and do the laundry. You take the Squeegeemobile. She’s all gassed up.”
Ick. There’s something about the phrase “she’s all gassed up” that makes me ill. My dad has a real gift for making everyday things sound terrible. I flip the cooked pancake onto a white CorningWare plate. We’ve had these plates since I was a tiny kid. I can’t remember ever using any other kind. Steam rises from the p
ancakes like a genie from a bottle. There’s no better morning smell in the world than pancakes cooking, except maybe bacon frying. I wish we had bacon. That would have made the breakfast perfect. But as usual we don’t. I think of the Squeegeemobile and realize I am finally going to have to drive that thing. Oh, well. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I have an image to protect anyway. I’m that kid. And that kid always has a funky car. Or something messed up. I remember a that kid from middle school whose mom would pick her up in a weird station wagon full of trash and newspapers and dogs. They’d shove the girl in the very back, so you could see her big, pale face frowning through the smudgy glass as the car drove away. We used to laugh at her, but we were only eleven and didn’t know that, you know, she might have feelings or something like that.
I give Dad some pancakes and sit down with a plate of my own. I’m feeling very hungry this morning. I feel like I want to consume everything in sight. Chris Cabrera has had that effect on me.
He makes me want to experience everything.
I stare at the table and hope that my dad can’t hear me thinking about Chris. My thoughts are so clear and colorful that I can’t imagine anyone not being able to tell just by looking at me what’s in my head.
“What time is this race?” asks Dad, sticking a huge bite in his mouth. I mean huge. It’s like half the pancake all at once, getting folded up into his mouth like a cardboard box into a trash can. He eats faster than anyone I’ve ever met. If it weren’t considered rude, I think he’d hold the plate right up to his mouth and just shovel it all in like a dump truck.
“It’s at two,” I say.
“Cool,” Dad muffles through his pancake. I look away from the mess in his mouth. “Then we have time to go throw a Frisbee around in the park or something.”
Frisbee? Is he out of his mind? What am I, seven? Like I’d be caught dead throwing a Frisbee in the park with my dad? Please. “Actually,” I say quickly, “I need to go get some clothes.”
Dad swallows with a loud gulp. I don’t think he chewed. He’s like that snake from fourth grade, the one my teacher used to feed a live mouse every month. Ugh. I want to love him, but right now he sort of grosses me out. Dad needs a course in manners or something. “Oh, okay,” he says. “Where should we go shopping?”
I look at him and feel like I could hold a pencil between my brows with all the angry skin folded up there.
“Ah,” he nods. “I see. You’d rather go alone.” He sops up some syrup with a look like a wounded child. I feel sorry for him again. He is so good at that, making me feel bad for him when I shouldn’t. I mean, isn’t it normal for a sixteen-year-old girl to want to go clothes shopping alone? Or with friends? Without her snake-mannered dad?
“I have plans with a friend,” I say.
“Cool, okay, chill, no problemo.” Dad forces another half a pancake into his mouth. Dad swallows and starts to whistle, which tells me he’s up to something, I don’t know what.
I think of calling Tina to go to the mall and the race with me, but I have a feeling she’ll spend the whole time pointing out how shallow everything is. Tina’s cool, but I can’t exactly see her shopping. She’d rather read and talk politics. I remember that when I was in the hospital, Haley told me I could call her anytime if I wanted to hang out or talk.
“What friend?” asks Dad. He’s trying to sound casual, but he’s being a detective again. He trusts me, but I don’t think he trusts any of the other kids in Orange County.
“Haley,” I say.
Dad nods solemnly. “As long as it’s not that boy, what’s-his-name.”
“Andrew?” I ask.
“No! I mean, of course you’d never hang out with that psycho. The other one. Cabrera.”
“Chris?”
Dad frowns and chews with his mouth open. “I don’t like him.”
I avoid eye contact. “Haley’s cool.” I finish my pancakes and get up to put my plate in the dishwasher.
“Look at this.” Dad points with his fork at a news story. “Damn shame. I can’t believe they get away with it, bloodsucking bastards.”
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t look at the story because I don’t want to have sad news ruin my mood. I’m in love. I rode a motocross bike. I’m going shopping. “It’s awful.” I say this last bit just to placate my dad, because if I don’t he’ll take it as me disagreeing with his politics, and if I do that, I’m in for an hour-long lecture I don’t have time for.
“The problem is that la raza don’t vote,” says Dad. “We need to get involved in registering them.”
“Sure,” I say. I have an overwhelming urge to run. “But right now I have to make a phone call. I’ll be in my room.”
Dad looks up, wounded again. Don’t do this to me, I think. I don’t need this right now. He looks like he’s going to launch into one of his “la raza” sermons, but he notices my frown and stops himself. “Thanks for the pancakes,” he says. “Blueberries were a good touch. I’m a lucky dad to have a teenager who still thinks enough of me to make me breakfast now and then.”
Still avoiding eye contact, I say, “You’re welcome. I’ll be upstairs.”
I shut the door to my room, fish Haley’s phone number out of the purse I had on me at the hospital, and call. I flop onto the unmade bed and stare at the ceiling. At first Haley sounds surprised to hear from me. But she quickly warms up.
“I’ve actually been meaning to call you, Paski. How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I say.
“That’s great. So what’s up?”
“This is probably weird, but I was calling because I need to get some new clothes, and I thought you might know where to go,” I say.
“You are so calling the right person.” Her voice gets louder and more animated. “I love shopping.” Haley pauses, lowers her voice, and mumbles, “It’s very unhealthy how much I love it, actually.”
“Yeah,” I say, like I might agree with her, except that I don’t actually know what it’s like to have enough money to shop so much as to have a problem with it.
“Uh, can you drive?” I ask her. “I mean, I don’t know where I’m going around here.” It’s a lie. I mean, a half-lie. I don’t exactly know where I’m going, but the bigger problem is my troubled relationship with my father’s car. I don’t want to be seen in it.
“I’m actually stranded right now. My car’s in the shop — fender bender on the Five, you know how it is — and Mom and Dad have things to do today. You have a car?”
“Kind of,” I wince.
“Great. You come get me, and I’ll show you where the best shopping is in the OC.”
She gives me her address and directions to her house. I write it down on the cardboard back of one of my spiral notebooks for school, all the while thinking that I would rather eat cockroaches than show up at Haley’s in my dad’s car/experiment. Oh well.
I hang up and congratulate myself for making the lie I told my dad this morning actually end up being true. I am going shopping with a friend. At least I think she’s a friend. I don’t know her well enough to know for sure, and this is Orange County, where many things — and people — seem to not be as they first appear.
I shower, put on a little makeup, and fix my hair. No use even trying to compete with the likes of Haley. Sigh. And then, in my usual boring jeans and T-shirt, I open my jewelry box to look at the amulet, but I hate to admit it looks kind of dorky. I’m worried I won’t make a very good impression on Haley if I wear it. So, even though I know Grandma would not approve, I shut the lid and leave it there.
Then I zip past my dad, whose head is still buried in the newspaper, to the garage to make peace with the Squeegeemobile, cholo mural and all.
30
Haley lives in one of those large two-story peach-colored stucco tract homes with a red tile roof. I’m still getting used to the whole pitched-roof thing. Where I grew up, the roofs are all flat, and the houses are all adobe. Haley’s house is on a little hill and backs to a green sp
ace with a walking path. It’s really clean-looking and reminds me a lot of Trent’s, where the party from hell was. I guess a lot of people have houses like this around here. I would also guess that there are many parties from hell, but what do I know.
I park on the curb in front of the house because there’s a Mercedes sedan in the driveway. It’s one of the newer ones, shiny and white, sculpted and round like a torpedo with an overbite. Of course Haley’s family has a car like that. I’m the only weirdo in the OC with a car like this. But you know what? I think it’s starting to grow on me. Surprisingly, I liked the attention I got driving here, even the confused glances and the muffled laughs. It’s like driving a cartoon around. Mostly, I think people are impressed, if not with the car itself then with the guts it takes to drive it. And if I carry myself like I’m some kind of special artist or something, it’s even better.
I ring the doorbell, and Haley opens the door wearing the single cutest outfit I have ever seen. Figures. I should be happy for her, but part of me just feels like an underdressed dork, even in my new Old Navy gear. She wears dark blue jeans, low, with a big belt that looks like it was woven together with a bunch of thin strands of soft beige leather. Her top looks like a big, colorful scarf that has been tied crisscross over her chest, with a bow in the back. She has on a floppy hat and flip-flops with jewels on the straps. She’s got those Orange County toenails, too, done in a French-manicure style. She smiles when she sees me, and her teeth are really white and pretty. She has warm, friendly eyes. I can see that she could be a star, the way Tina told me. She is so Alicia Keys, down to the beautiful eyes. As I look at her, I realize she’s probably the most attractive of the three popular girls, but because she’s also the nicest, she doesn’t get the attention the mean one does. The mean one being Jessica.
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