Salva blocked the memory, pricking himself again on the wire. At least Papá hadn’t been hammering away on the topic of what his son was going to do with his life. Though Salva was sure if he returned to the patio, the subject was waiting for him. But he wasn’t going back for that. If he slipped through the gate, he could be out of hearing distance before his father even realized he was short one child to pressure.
Salva unwound the wire.
Lucia was eyeing him. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to push Papá?”
“He’s busy chatting up Señora Mendoza. I don’t know why he doesn’t just marry her.”
His sister blinked. “Because he’s still in love with our mother.”
Salva shoved open the gate. The dirt road behind the house was overgrown with weeds—the next job on his list of chores, no doubt. But this was Sunday. He’d sowed the frigging garden and then had to work at the plant yesterday. Plus, he had to work all this week. Today was his afternoon. And he was taking it.
He launched into a jog, down the dirt alley, and within moments was sprinting on pavement. He didn’t care where he was headed, just away. Maybe Tosa’s. Maybe Pepe’s. He and his best friend did need to talk.
Salva slowed his pace as he neared Main Street. His shoes were falling apart. He’d spent his fall shoe money on extracurricular fees, and now the rubber on the back of his left Nike was peeling away. Meanwhile, he had all of five dollars in his pocket. Everything else this month had gone into El Banco de la Familia.
Which was fine. He only had nine weeks left of high school anyway. Then nobody would be looking at his shoes.
Nine weeks. Was that possible? Two months with Pepe and Tosa and Char. Man, it seemed like he’d known them forever. Only two more months with—
Beth. She was standing across the street alone at the drive-in window. Barefoot, her sandals in her left hand.
For the first time all day, he appreciated the sun.
Salva scanned the area. It looked like she was really alone.
He crossed the road in his lousy shoes and walked up behind her. She was staring at the list of hard ice cream flavors. “Hey,” he said, hey being the internationally recognized greeting for someone whose reputation you have just massacred along with your own. To his knowledge, Beth had never even been called into the principal’s office before yesterday, much less spent an afternoon in a Cell.
She jumped about a foot in the air. Good thing she hadn’t ordered yet.
“I suggest the chocolate,” he said, “though Rocky Road is pretty good if you like nuts.”
She gave him a defensive glare.
This was going to call for more than an apology.
The window opened with a grunt from the owner, who was balding, had a potbelly, and looked about fifty years old. If I’m running a place like this when I’m fifty, please shoot me.
Beth said, “A single scoop of bubblegum on a sugar cone, please.”
That made Salva grin. Most teenage girls thought they were too mature for bubblegum. “I’ll have chocolate,” he said, “on a plain cone.”
She squinted at him in the sunlight. “I was here first.”
“I’m buying.”
“I-I have the money,” she stammered.
He guessed she didn’t have enough experience sponging off guys. Char would have tried to make something out of the offer. Beth just stared at him like a deer in headlights, though a very pretty deer.
Two cones appeared in the window. She took hers, then reached forward to pay. Salva intercepted, snagging her wrist. He dug his five dollars out of his pocket, paid, and collected the change. Then he picked up two napkins, wrapped one around his own cone, and offered her the extra. “Walk with me,” he said, “down to the river.”
She disdained the napkin.
“We should talk,” he added. “Don’t you think?”
Her eyes zipped around as if searching for a hidden audience, then slowed and finally settled on him. “I suppose.” She bit into her brilliant blue ice cream speckled with pinks and greens.
He walked beside her. Close. About as close as he thought he could get away with. It was four blocks down to the river, the best four blocks of town. The trees were actually planted to provide shade along the sidewalks here, and the sidewalks were flat and kept up by the city, no cement tilting at a thirty-five-degree angle.
She didn’t look like she was enjoying the atmosphere. Her shoulders were stiff, and despite the sandals in her hand, she kept plucking at her shorts as if trying to make them longer. He’d messed things up back at school, between the two of them. He ought to put it right. Come out with it, in the open. He swallowed the last bite of his cone. “Look, about what happened on Friday, I didn’t mean…That is, I’m—”
“Don’t.” She picked up her pace. Her cone was vibrating.
Was she so angry she wouldn’t let him apologize?
He had to lengthen his strides to keep up with her. “I just wanted to—”
“You’re going to say you’re sorry.”
“I never meant—”
“I know you never meant it. Just don’t say any more.” She sped up again. He tried to grasp what was happening. Something didn’t make any sense. She was running away, and his instincts told him that if he let her go—if he let her brush off the apology and refuse to talk about what had happened, then everything would be ruined.
He ditched his napkin in a painted garbage can and ran after her. “Wait.” He took her elbow. “What is it you think I never meant?”
She was standing at the edge of the park, a great wide expanse of sloping grass and scattered trees. Neglected ice cream dripped down her fingers. “You don’t have to worry,” she said, her voice so soft he could barely hear. “I know you didn’t mean for me to make anything out of the kiss.”
The kiss? She thought he was trying to back out of his decision to kiss her? And the strange thing was, the idea had never occurred to him. It wasn’t the kind of action he could back out of, kissing someone in front of the entire student body. He stepped closer. “I meant to apologize,” he said gently, “for getting you into trouble. I wasn’t going to apologize for the kiss.”
“You weren’t?” Her head came up, and those doe eyes looked straight into him.
“I didn’t plan it.” He shrugged. “It just kind of…happened.”
She nodded as if this made any kind of sense, but then she turned away and headed across the park.
He tried to plan as he stripped off his shoes and socks, then sank his feet into the cool grass; but the attempt at strategy was impossible. She had no respect for anything less than solid truth. When he caught up with her, the remnants of her cone were gone. “Was your mother very angry?” he asked. They ought to get that out of the way—clear up exactly how much groveling he should be doing.
“No.” Beth weaved around a giant maple. “She understood it was just a scene in a play.”
What was that supposed to mean? That it was just acting? It hadn’t just been acting on his part. The rest of it, yeah, but the kiss—well, he thought maybe he’d finally stopped acting. He’d been acting around Beth for months now, and he supposed he’d reached the point where it needed to stop.
He let that realization sink into his brain as the river came into view, not a wide crystal blue of perfection, but a gray-green curve with a mossy tinge. From the edge, an empty crescent of sand rose up, followed by weeds, then sharp rocks guarding the upper rim.
“Y-your father, though,” Beth said, continuing across the grass. “I-I guess he hasn’t forgiven you yet. I thought maybe he would when I told him about the Shakespeare grade, but—”
“When you what?” Salva froze. He had been there, in the Pen, for the entire four-second conversation between his father and Beth, and she hadn’t said anything about a grade.
She turned back to look at him. “When I told him that we got an A on our Shakespeare project. Didn’t he tell you?”
She’d seen his father
again? When, when had this happened, and what had his father said to her? Had Papá gone looking for her? Or called her home to tell her mother what Beth had done wrong? “When did you talk alone with my father?” Salva crossed the gap between them.
“Fri-Friday.” She backed away. “I-I went to your place after school. He didn’t tell you?”
No, his father hadn’t told him. This was out of line. It was one thing to punish Salva for his own stupid behavior. But it was absolutely not okay that Beth had come over and his father had failed to mention it. “What did he say?”
“He just…” A wince of pain crossed her face, and she turned, ducking under the branches of a tree—a giant wide parasol of a tree with white flowers that had just begun to drip petals onto the green beneath them. “He didn’t really say anything.”
She was keeping something back. What had happened to her?
“Beth—” Salva followed her under the branches.
“Your father said you weren’t there, and I-I left.”
But I was there, in the backyard, working on the garden. Suddenly Papá was not the same person Salva had known all his life. If not letting him talk to her was part of his punishment, that was one thing. But making her feel bad? Lying to her? Not even saying she had come. His hand gripped the tree trunk. “I can’t believe…”
The expression on Beth’s face changed. Her fingers touched his arm gently, wrenching him out of his anger. “But we did get an A, Salva. And it was the highest mark in the class. The Mercenary told me.”
“You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” he said.
The fingers fled. “Why would you say that?”
“You came to my home the day we were suspended. That takes guts. And then you talked to my father after how rude he was to you in the Pen. He’s not usually like that, Beth. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.” Except Salva was afraid that maybe his father was more prejudiced than Salva had ever realized. Papá had been through a lot, put up with a lot from a lot of privileged people in his life.
But that didn’t excuse being unfair to Beth.
Salva sat down under the tree. If he sat, this talk would last longer, and he was in no hurry for it to end. No hurry for her to go anywhere. He reached for her hand and tugged her down beside him.
She started gathering the white blossoms within her reach.
And he found himself telling her his own take on fear. “I always defend against getting hurt, you know. Never put myself in a situation that I think might be uncomfortable.”
“Everyone likes you.” She scooped the blossoms into a pile, then continued to gather.
“I don’t know. I’m so careful not to upset people; I think maybe not everyone knows who I am.”
“Are you telling me Pepe and Tosa don’t know who you are?”
“Oh, not them,” he said, then paused. “Though, well, being careful about what I say—it might be more true with my friends than with anyone else. Sometimes it’s easier to tell strangers what you’re thinking than your friends.”
Her hands paused in their gathering. “And I’m more like a stranger.”
Boy, had he blown that one. Hadn’t even seen that coming. Brilliant, Salva.
“No,” he told her directly. “You’re different. Like the one person I feel I can tell what I really think. And even if you hate it, you won’t mock or take it the wrong way. You’ll just tell me you hate it and then tell me why.”
She hadn’t told him she’d hated the kiss. In fact, she had been adamant that he not apologize for it.
“You’re wrong about me,” she said, looking up and meeting his gaze.
He didn’t think he was wrong. He thought maybe he was finally getting things right.
“I am afraid,” she continued. “I was afraid the first day you asked me to read your paper last fall, the one about Milton. And I’ve been afraid ever since.”
Was she saying she was afraid of him? His every nerve rejected the idea.
“Do you know why I told you no that first day?” she asked. “Why I didn’t want to help you?”
“Because I am a complete jerk and you knew sooner or later I’d land you in the principal’s office?”
“I was afraid of you.”
She couldn’t be afraid of him.
Her hands dug into the grass. “Afraid I would fall in love with you and never mean anything more to you than a stupid mark on a stupid essay.”
His heart pounded beneath his lungs. And he couldn’t move.
The grass shredded. “I was afraid you would walk off,” she added, “and never see me again, and I would never be able to forget you.”
He didn’t want her to forget him.
“So we’re both afraid,” she continued, those brown eyes very close. “We both hedge our bets, you with your friends and me with you.”
Her chin was trembling.
His hand came up and touched it. Her chin. Her cheek. Her ear. Her neck. He pulled her head to him. And his lips met hers. Soft.
So soft, at first, like melted ice cream. And then deeper.
And her lips were answering his. Her touch was answering his. And she was coming with him. He fell onto his back in the grass. His hands were in her hair, down her neck, her shoulders, in her hair again.
Her hands were on his shoulders, in the grass, then his hair. Her chest was over his. She was propped above him on her elbows.
Then she wasn’t. Her tongue was meeting his and her heart was beating the same wild, rapid rhythm right above his own.
A stranger’s voice ripped apart the moment. “Ugh! You kids today. Can’t even leave each other alone in public.” An old woman, her hand attached to the leash of a little yapping dog, shuffled across Salva’s line of vision.
Vision still obscured by the falling veil of Beth’s hair.
Beth looked at him. They both looked in the direction of the departing duo.
Then looked at each other again. Beth’s eyes were shining. A brilliant warm brown. It was ridiculous really. Seven months he’d been meeting with her in private, and the first two times they’d kissed, they’d been scolded for kissing in public.
She collapsed on top of him, and they both laughed.
15
FRIEND OR FOE
Slam! Clang! Someone was battling with the screen door. Beth rolled over under the bedcovers. She didn’t want to fight. She wanted to return to the dream in which the colors had all been muted, save the deep orange-gold glow of the sun dropping over the horizon of manufactured homes and vacant lots. And he had been walking her home.
“Beth!” A familiar voice shattered the sunset. “School!” Nalani was shaking her.
Cripes! It was Monday—the Monday after break.
“You didn’t set your alarm,” Ni accused.
Beth rolled out of bed, literally. She was trapped in the tangle of bedcovers.
“Where is it?” Ni asked, now digging through the bureau. Items began to fly in her friend’s direction: a bra, a pair of socks, underwear.
“I-I don’t know,” said Beth. She managed to untangle herself from everything except the sheet, which was coiled around her waist.
“Got it.” Ni plucked a blue alarm clock from the top drawer, then started pushing buttons.
The sheet finally fell away. Beth tugged off her nightshirt and began scrambling into her underclothes.
“Jeans?” Ni was now staring into an open drawer.
“Um…laundry basket.”
A pair of semi-clean jeans hit Beth in the chest, followed by a turquoise blouse she hadn’t seen since last year’s academic awards ceremony. Her friend must have braved the closet.
“Get dressed. I’ll get breakfast,” said Nalani, dashing from the room.
Beth complied, detoured to the bathroom, doused her face with water from the sink, swished her mouth with toothpaste, and emerged to begin the daunting search for her backpack. Thank goodness for best friends! Ni had been picking her up—and rescuing her on the way to school�
�since they were twelve.
“It’s by the couch,” Nalani shouted from the kitchen counter.
Sure enough, the bane of Beth’s existence lay in front of the sofa. Along with her shoes.
“Go ahead and tie them,” Ni said.
Beth tied the laces, then glanced at the kitchen clock. The hour hand was aimed at the three. The power must have blinked at some point in the last nine days.
“We’ve got ten minutes,” her best friend said, handing over a raspberry jam sandwich. “Let’s go.” The screen door was propped open, no doubt as a time-saver.
Beth slammed both doors on her way out.
The sky was gray, and puddles of the same shade lined the street’s edge. “So…” Her best friend untwisted the pink strap of her book bag, then swerved around the puddles to higher pavement. “How was your break?” She launched into rapid strides.
Beth struggled to keep the pace. How was she to explain everything at a near sprint? About the kiss. And the second kiss. And how she hadn’t heard anything from Salva since. Why hadn’t Ni called while on her trip? She knew Ms. Courant wouldn’t let her daughter use the cell phone or long distance.
Though to be fair, Beth hadn’t exactly tried. How am I going to explain what’s going on with Salva when I don’t really know myself? “Um…how was Colorado?” Beth stalled. An unwise choice.
“Great,” Ni said, and started reeling off places she’d been, things she’d seen, the names of twenty-five cousins she’d met—
This is stupid. You need to tell her, and you need to tell her now.
Everything Beth hadn’t said over the past seven months swam in her head, along with guilt, chaos, and confusion.
The afternoon in the park with Salva had been incredible. For both of them. That kiss hadn’t been platonic. Or tentative. Or at all questionable. At least it hadn’t felt that way.
But then he hadn’t called.
Maybe he couldn’t while his father was so upset.
Or was she just searching for excuses?
The high school emerged in the distance—a dull gray prism. Beth felt her stomach tighten. Salva would be there, on the social podium that was his place at Liberty High.
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