Efrain's Secret

by Sofia Quintero

  So we spend the entire period on the writing section of the exam. We have to choose two out of three writing tasks, and each answer has to contain at least one hundred words. The first option says:

  Your Spanish pen pal asked you about cars in America and what kind of cars you like. In Spanish, write a letter to your pen pal discussing cars in America.

  Man, the only thing I’m pushing is the subway turnstile. I skip to the next option: create a story based on a cartoon of a guy and a girl sitting on the floor talking while a cat walks by. The Regents doesn’t expect Gabriel García Márquez out of an AC senior, so in ten minutes I churn out an inane tale about the couple getting into a big argument about whether cats are better than dogs that ends in their breakup. Only then do I reread the instructions and realize that I was not supposed to write dialogue. By the time I finish rewriting my dumb story without the damned dialogue, I have twenty minutes left in the period. If the next question is off the wall, I can write a stupid letter about why the best cars in America actually come from Japan.

  In Spanish, write a journal entry describing what you do in a typical day. You may wish to include:

  morning routine

  school activities

  after-school events

  work/household chores

  family activities

  leisure activities (walking, shopping, sports, music, television/movies)

  meals

  evening/bedtime routines

  I’m all over it.

  Most people use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. I rely on my worries. Otherwise, I have a typical routine. After I shower, dress, and eat breakfast, I take my little sister to school. Depending on how she feels about me that day, she either talks my ears off or ignores me. Then I walk to school alone because my best friend thinks I’m a criminal and will not associate with me. At school, I learn many interesting things, like although I’m very smart, I’m too Brown and too poor. In other words, I could never be smart enough. On a good day, I spend time with my girlfriend. We study and talk. My girlfriend has some problems, but she stays strong and good, and that is why I admire and respect her. Sometimes I wish I were more like my girlfriend. Every night I take the train to Hunts Point and sell drugs on the street. The people I work with are not bad. They’re only criminals. I like them, but I don’t know if they are my friends. Sometimes I feel bad about what I do, and sometimes I am proud that I can take care of myself. I would take care of my family, too, but my mother thinks I work as a salesperson in a clothing store….

  Scribble, turn, scribble, turn … Before I know it, the bell rings, and I’m drowning in a sea of sucking teeth. While everyone else races to finish writing and counting words, I stuff my answer sheets into the exam booklet and take them up to Miss Polanco’s desk. She hands me a manila envelope with my name written across the front in her neat cursive. I don’t even want to ask what it is. She says, “¿Y cómo estás, Efrain?” Her eyes gaze with concern.

  I just shrug as I put the envelope in my bag. I don’t know how I am. I have seven more periods to go.

  Enmity (n.) ill will, hatred, hostility

  The second I get into the locker room, Lefty rolls up on me and slaps me on the back as if we were boys now. “What’s good, Scout?” My face burns at the sound of my street name echoing through the locker room. Chingy pretends to ignore us while changing into his gym clothes, but I can feel the vapors down the aisle. “I thought you were still on lockdown?”

  I say, “Obviously not.” Not just to squash Lefty’s attempt at chitchat but to send Chingy a message, too. But he slams his locker shut and leaves.

  “The cost of doing business, man. Charge it to the game,” says Lefty. “Word is that Hinckley posted bail for his soldiers and even got his paid lawyer to rep Julian while Snipes left y’all to fend for yourselves. That’s the kind of trifling shit that made me cross the street.”

  I’d rather charge it to his head, and I almost tell him that I didn’t need Snipes to help me. Instead, I hold my tongue and click the padlock on my locker. As I walk toward the gym, Lefty trails me. “Yo, Scout, this school’s a large market, and I desperately need to expand operations before my competitors gain share, you feel me?”

  I stop dead in my tracks. Dude just got all Wall Street Journal on a brother while admitting that he comes to school every day to sell drugs, even though he almost qualifies for Medicare. “What?”

  “Rodriguez, Saldaña, fall in!” yells Coach Moretti.

  I start toward my spot for attendance, but Lefty blocks my path. “So let’s meet after school on the football field, and I’ll break you off with—”

  “Back up off me, man.” My life is enough of a catastrophe. I throw out my arm to pivot past him. “I’m not interested.”

  “What’s going on over there?” Coach Moretti heads toward us intent on knocking heads. A few rubbernecks, including Chingy, follow him.

  “Oh, so it’s like that?” Lefty backs up to stay in my way. “You want to play me?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” The last thing I need is to get into it with Lefty, but I can’t back down. Not with all these eyes on us. Not anymore.

  My fleeting attention offends Lefty. He yells, “Oh, so now you don’t see me?” Then he steps into my face so that we’re chest to chest.

  Suddenly Chingy grabs my arm and yanks me backward, coming in between Lefty and me. “Fall back, son,” he says with a finger pointed at Lefty’s dome. “’Fore you get your chin checked!”

  Coach Moretti yells, “Get security!” That’s when Lefty swings. Chingy blocks and prepares to counter when the coach dives in between them. But Chingy and Lefty still lunge and curse at one another, and our classmates jump to keep them apart. When he hears the static from the guard’s radio as he nears the gym, Lefty breaks free of the guys who hold him back and bolts through the fire exit. “You two to the assistant principal’s office now!” Coach Moretti yells at Chingy and me. “Anybody else who’s not in his place within the next ten seconds gets a zero for the day.”

  “Damn!” Heads race to their places on the floor as we leave the gym. I shadow Chingy’s heels as he bounds down the steps to the lobby and into the AP’s office.

  The secretary says, “Hello, Rashaan. What brings you here?” Chingy says nothing. He just throws himself onto the bench and folds his arms across his chest. She translates his body language quickly. “You? In trouble? Who sent you?”

  “Coach Moretti.”

  “Oh.” The secretary waves her hand as if to say No big thing. After all, a little competition gets out of hand during gym class every other week. Then she finally notices me. “Mr. Rodriguez …,” she says, as if the sight of me changes her perspective.

  I have nothing to say, so I just sit beside Chingy on the bench. He leans his head back against the wall and stares at the clock across the room. I sneak glances for a chance to make eye contact that never comes. Finally, I just say, “Thanks, bro.”

  Chingy remains stone-faced. Then, as if he can’t help himself, he finally says, “Seems like you’ve had enough beatdowns for a while.” With his eyes still fixed on the clock, he asks, “Who stomped you like that?”

  Maybe I should fuel the illusion that I had a scuffle in the pen. But I need him to know the truth. This is Chingy. He’s fam. “My pops,” I say. Although Chingy still refuses to look my way, I see his jaw pulse for a flash. “You think I look bad,” I rush to add. “His lip’s so fat, he sounds like a Dominican Elmer Fudd.” He doesn’t laugh, so I try again. “Guess you’re going to have to make another adjustment to your admission calculation system.” Chingy’s eyes slack from something other than amusement, but I still appreciate the reaction.

  “Rashaan,” the secretary interrupts, “you may go in now to see Mr. Graves.”

  Chingy nods at her but hesitates to stand. Looking at me from the corner of his eye, he mumbles, “Whatever.” Then he stands up and heads into the office.

  In my twelve-plus
years of school, I have never been called to the principal’s office, but to be honest, this beef with Lefty was worth it to get Chingy to speak to me again.

  Advocate (n.) a person who argues in favor of someone or something

  No matter how much I beg, the assistant principal suspends me for the rest of the day. When I ask if this will go on my record and affect my chances of being valedictorian, Mr. Graves says, “That’s something you should’ve thought about, Mr. Rodriguez, before deciding to follow in Mr. Irizarry’s footsteps.” It makes me angry to hear him judge Nestor like that and brush me off, but I have to eat it. Instead, I try to argue like a lawyer, saying that I was innocent until proven guilty, that I hadn’t yet been convicted of anything, and all that. Homeboy tells me to get out of his office before he suspends me for the rest of the week.

  So I reluctantly head back to Nestor’s place. God knows in the middle of a weekday, someone will be there. But I lean on the intercom for ten minutes, and no one answers. I even resort to standing under Nestor’s bedroom window and hollering at the top of my lungs. If Moms is embarrassed by me now, she’d die where she stood if she saw me acting like un malcria’o.

  Someone finally leaves the building, and I slip into the lobby. To my surprise, the apartment is silent. I pound on the door, but no one answers. At least I’m out from the cold, so I plant myself on the staircase. I sit there for the longest time, replaying the last few months, from my first night on that corner to the fistfight with Rubio in his car to the argument with my mother last night. The scenes unfurl across my mind, and everyone feels like an actor in one of Nestor’s urban legends instead of real people from my own life. I don’t recognize anyone, least of all myself. This person is new to me. There are things I like about Scout. He dresses smooth and swaggers in a universe where others don’t dare tread. He stays paid. He stands up for himself. That’s the Efrain that spoils Candace and checked Rubio.

  But I don’t think I can trust him.

  I need to think about something else. Something I can control. Something I can do now. When I reach into my backpack to break out my SAT workbook, I find the manila envelope that Señorita Polanco gave me. When I open it, I find a photocopy of the Harvard recommendation form with the letter she wrote on my behalf typed across it. According to the date, she wrote and sent it before Christmas, and by giving me a copy, Señorita Polanco defied the common request that recommendations remain anonymous.

  To the Admissions Committee:

  It is with both great pride and enthusiasm that I write this letter of recommendation for my student Efrain Rodriguez.

  Efrain has been my student for over three years. I won’t tell you how he performs in my classroom because his grades speak for themselves. I’d much rather tell you what the numbers on his transcript do not convey: Efrain’s character makes him more than worthy of being a member of your incoming class. This is a young man with the rare ability to envision beyond his immediate circumstances. Moreover, he already possesses the resourcefulness and discipline to make that vision a reality. Many of my students express an abiding desire to beat the odds stacked against them, but in almost two decades of teaching, I’ve found that Efrain is the first who refuses to do so by settling for what has been outlined as “good enough” for someone in his position. “Good enough” for a young man like Efrain, for example, might be enlistment in the armed forces, not for any innate proclivity for the military life but simply because there are no other viable options. He is intent on self-determining, making his own decisions among the various (often mixed) messages young men in this community are constantly sent about what they can and should do if they are to be “real” men. Perhaps it is a skill, perhaps it is a gift. Whatever “it” is, Efrain has it, and it will propel him past any gaps in his academic preparation.

  This is why I dare to say that it is actually more in Harvard’s interest to admit Efrain than it is in Efrain’s interest to attend Harvard. This is a young man who will always land on his feet and hit the ground running. If he has one flaw, it is hubris, a flaw that hardly sets him apart from any of the other students who aspire to attend your college. If anything, what sets Efrain apart from your more privileged applicants is that, given the socioeconomic hand that he has been dealt, he has any hubris at all. Because he is a Latino male raised by a single mother in one of the nation’s poorest communities, Harvard should not even be in his imagination, never mind his line of sight. Not only will Efrain appreciate and maximize all that your institution has to offer arguably more than those students for whom an Ivy League education has been a foregone conclusion since birth, but he would probably teach his classmates things they otherwise would not (but should) learn by being nothing more than the young man he is.

  On a final note, I commend your institution for its new free tuition program for low-income families and have no doubts that Efrain both qualifies for this trailblazing initiative and is precisely the kind of student it aims to support. He is the epitome of all the principles that Harvard professes to value, and I urge you to accept his application for admission. Years from now, I will be proud to say Efrain Rodriguez was a student of mine, and so will you.

  Sincerely,

  Josefina Polanco

  Harvard has a free tuition program?

  When did this happen?

  Do other elite colleges have programs like this?

  Why did no one tell me?

  Why did someone have to, kid?

  I reread the letter, trying to remember the Efrain Rodriguez that Señorita Polanco describes. My memory of him is hazy, but I do recall that I like this guy, too. In fact, I like him way more than the other dude floating in my psyche even at his best. The Efrain in Señorita Polanco’s letter feels like someone I can trust, and I can’t understand how I fell out of touch with him.

  I carefully put away the recommendation and see if I can go find him.

  Resolute (adj.) firm, determined

  Free Tuition for Families Earning under $60K Families earning less than $60,000 a year will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of their children’s tuition, room, and board at Harvard, school officials said today. With this announcement, the university jumps to the head of the pack of elite institutions that are expanding financial aid for undergraduates from low-income and middle-class families. With this pledge, Harvard has one-upped such competitors as Princeton and Stanford, which announced last year that they, too, would no longer expect…

  I scan down the Web page on the library’s computer monitor, trying not to cry with euphoria. According to the press release, I’d still need to get a work-study job and take out a student loan, but it’s all good. The only thing I have to do to go to Harvard or Princeton and Stanford—ain’t Ivy League but no school to turn up my nose at—is to get in!

  So I spend the next three hours practicing SAT questions. When I get a wrong answer, and the voice inside me says, This is all for nothing, I visualize running Chingy’s admissions software and inputting 2200 all across the SAT2 line and watching my probability of getting into each school leap by double digits. This works a few times, but reality eventually takes hold. No amount of studying is going to make me bust out a score of 2200 next month. I finally accept it. The best I can hope is that a considerable improvement in my score will make an elite college give me a second look. Maybe all I need is to score 2000. Or just 1800.

  That is, if my arrest doesn’t impact my application. As much as I dread the answer, I have to find out if it does. There’s no other way to silence Scout until I know.

  Without bothering to reserve it again, I jump onto a computer and log on to my account on commonapp.org. Using the online Common Application to apply to college is the one piece of good advice that Mrs. Colfax gave me. The problem is that I had finished the main part of the application over Christmas break, and clicking on the Submit button is no different than sealing the envelope and tossing it in the mailbox. I can look at my responses to the questions, but I can’t change them.
The best I can do is hope that my answer to that question is still true. I page through a couple of screens, and there it is:

  Have you ever been convicted of a

  misdemeanor, felony, or other crime?

  “Yes!”

  The librarian gives me a sharp Hush!

  “I’m sorry,” I say, still a little too loudly. I can’t help it. When I completed the application, the answer was no. It’s still no. I haven’t been convicted of anything yet. I still have a chance of getting into every college I applied to, including my dream schools.

  I smell jawbreaker breath coasting down the back of my neck. “You finished?” I look up to see a wannabe gangster hovering over me. He wears a Giants cap with the bill to the side and drops an X-Men drawstring bag on the table beside the monitor. “I’m signed up for that computer now.” His buddies scurry to the computer stations around me and log on to MySpace.

  I shake my head, feeling mad old. For a second, I wish I could turn back the clock five years to when my biggest concern was where to hide my issue of King. Then I remember that wasn’t my biggest concern then. It just should’ve been.

  “It’s all yours, Little Man.” I stack up my files, slide them into my backpack, and rush out of the library. I may not have Chingy’s admission calculation system to run algorithms for me, but I make some quick calculations on my own as I head back to Nestor’s apartment. With or without Rubio’s salary, I probably qualify for free tuition. The first order of business is to get admitted. The SAT prep course is making a difference in my performance, and I have stellar recommendations. Miss Avery says she has a good chance of getting my charges reduced and even my record expunged. All I have to do is ace the SAT when I take it again in a few weeks and keep my nose clean.