by Robin Talley
“Yo, Dad!” I jogged up to him.
Dad smiled. “Been a while since you last shouted ‘yo’ at me.”
“Yeah, well.” I grinned at him. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Shoot.” He stood, dusting off his jeans.
“Are we supposed to put our names down somewhere for roommates for the trip to Texas next week?”
Dad laughed and reached into his backpack. “I suppose we could start. Gotta say, if I’d known you kids would be so excited about that trip, I’d have set one up for every weekend.”
Wow. How different would this summer have been if Christa and I could’ve had a dorm room to ourselves every single week? More than just this trip—my whole life would be different now.
Dad pulled out a notebook and pen. “So, will you and Lori be roommates, same as always?”
“Oh, uh, no.” My grin faded. It hurt, literally, to talk about Lori. A persistent, stabbing pain in my side. “Could you put me down to room with Christa Lawrence from Rockville?”
Dad glanced down at me. “Is everything all right between you and Lori? I noticed you haven’t been talking to her as much as usual.”
“Yeah, uh.” The day before I’d seen Lori next to a truck full of paint cans talking to Carlos. He’d waved at me, but Lori looked at her feet. I didn’t wave back. “We’re having, you know, one of those things girls have where they’re weird with each other. It’ll be fine.”
Dad’s eyebrows quirked, but he seemed to accept my explanation. “All right. You and Christa, then.”
“Can you also put down that Drew is rooming with Jake Spotswood from Harpers Ferry?” I might as well set things up so Drew couldn’t back out.
“All right.” Dad scribbled on the pad. “Glad to see you’re both getting to know kids from the other churches.”
“Thanks.” I watched Dad shove his notebook back into his backpack. “How come you didn’t go into town today?”
“Well, keep in mind, I can go into town anytime I want.” We started walking down the gravel road. Dad was heading for a pink house with a big brown dog lying in the sun on the front walk. “It’s one of the perks of being a grown-up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Where are we going?”
“To the Riveras’ house. That’s where I’m staying, remember? With Pastor Dan.”
“It’s so not fair that you get to sleep in a house. In a bed.”
Dad chuckled. “Well, it’s actually a couch, and if it makes you feel any better, I’m sleeping on the floor right now so your poor friend Rodney can have it.”
“Oh, right.” The chaperones had told us a million times before we got here that we could only brush our teeth with bottled water. Even one drop of the water that came out of the faucets in this part of Mexico could make us sick. But Rodney had forgotten, I guess. He’d come down with a serious case of what Miranda called “Montezuma’s Revenge.” He’d moved in with Dad and Pastor Dan for a couple of days so he could run to the Riveras’ bathroom when he needed to. Whenever we saw him at meals, he only picked at his food, and his face was scarily pale.
“I thought the Riveras had a guest room,” I said.
“They have a guest house out back, but the power there isn’t reliable, so we’ve been camping out in their living room, same as you.”
“‘Camping out’ in a living room is totally different from having to use a collapsible shower in a field,” I said.
Dad chuckled again. He seemed to be in a better mood than he had been lately. “So did you get the information you needed? About the health center?”
I stopped walking, panic in my throat. How could he know I was going to get dental dams at the college health center? I hadn’t told a soul.
Then he looked at me expectantly, and I remembered. The Casa de Salud. Whew.
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, it sounds as though the health care system here has a lot of issues. And Jake told me something about a plank on international health care at the conference that might help. But I don’t know what to do about any of it. Jake keeps starting these petitions but he can’t get anyone to sign them, so I don’t know if that makes sense or not, and...”
I trailed off. I hadn’t realized I’d been thinking about this so much.
Dad bent down to pat the sleeping dog and opened the front door. I followed him inside. No one else seemed to be home. The Riveras had a pretty living room with soft-looking couches and windows that let in so much light it felt as though we were still outside.
“You know, I hadn’t thought about the global health care resolution that way, but your friend Jake might be right,” Dad said. “Let me see if I can find the materials on that. I brought a lot of the conference documents down here with me. I don’t know when I thought there would be time to read.”
Dad pulled a suitcase out from behind an end table and flipped it open. He tossed aside a pile of wrinkled T-shirts. Mom would’ve been furious to see he hadn’t been trying to keep anything folded at all.
“Um, Benny?” I jumped. Rodney was standing in the hallway. I hadn’t even known he was in the house. He looked paler than the last time I’d seen him, and he was bent over, clutching the small of his back. “Can you come here for a sec?”
Dad straightened up. “Sure, Rod. Be right there. Aki, sweetheart, there’s a bunch of papers at the bottom of the suitcase. See if you can find the background materials I brought with me on the conference planks.”
“What, you mean right now?”
Instead of answering me, Dad took off down the hall after Rodney. I held my nose and reached into the suitcase for the sheaf of papers. Everything was crumpled.
The top papers were all about our travel arrangements for this trip—plane ticket confirmations, super boring stuff. I was flipping through it, looking for anything about the conference, when I saw the photo.
It was tucked between two stacks of papers, but it wasn’t crumpled at all. That was because it was in a protective plastic sheath. The photo looked old, though, like Dad had been carrying it around for years.
At first I thought it was a photo of Drew, but I realized quickly that wasn’t right. The guy in the photo looked about Drew’s age, but his eyes weren’t as crinkled as Drew’s, and the corners of his lips didn’t turn up quite as high. And he was wearing a T-shirt Drew didn’t own for a band I’d never heard of.
As Dad’s footsteps echoed back down the hallway, I realized who it was.
My uncle Andrew. Dad’s brother. He was about Drew’s age when he died.
“Sorry about that,” Dad said. I fumbled through the papers, sliding the photo back where I’d found it. “Did you find the materials?”
“Oh.” I tried not to look guilty. “Uh, no.”
“Give it here.”
I handed Dad the stack, wondering if he was hiding the photo of my uncle on purpose. Did he carry it everywhere he went?
I gazed out the back windows while Dad looked through his documents. The Riveras had a courtyard, like the Perezes did, with a wall around it. Behind the courtyard, I could see the guest house. It was tiny—probably a bedroom and nothing more. The curtains were open. I could see straight through to the other side, where a door stood ajar.
Hmm.
“Found it.” Dad handed me a couple of pages. “This is the background on the international health care plank we’re voting on. Want to read through it and tell me what you think?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected homework. “Do I have to?”
“Well, you said you weren’t sure what you could do to help. So here’s one thing.”
I tucked the papers under my arm, gazing out at the guest house again.
“I’m pleased to see you’re interested in this,” Dad said. “Let me know your verdict, all right?”
“All right. H
ey, I should probably get back. I need to talk to Drew about something.”
“Sure thing.” Dad let me out of the house with a wave.
I left and went down to the end of the block in case anyone was watching. Then I cut around behind the row of houses and doubled back, staying close to the hills where Christa and I had spent so much time in that first week.
Sure enough, the Riveras’ guest house door was standing open. Only a little way, but it would be enough.
The curtains were open on this side, too. Inside the room, I could see the dim outline of a low bed.
If the power didn’t work out there, that meant the lights wouldn’t, either. No one would be able to see inside the room when it was dark out.
Wow. Wow.
I couldn’t wait to tell Christa.
CHAPTER 14
I had to wait through the whole afternoon and dinner and vespers before I could tell her.
To make things worse, vespers was extra-long that night. And extra-annoying. Nick and Paul and their friends Will and Tyler had apparently spent the entire day drinking, and they kept burping loudly whenever the chaperones weren’t paying attention. And I’d gotten stuck sitting on the floor right in front of them.
I kept trying to inch away from them so I wouldn’t have to smell their burps. After I inched away for the third time, while one of the Harpers Ferry chaperones was droning on about the importance of being open with God about our sins, I heard a sudden burst of laughter behind me. I turned to glare. Will started giggling again as soon as he saw my face. Then Tyler said, “What’re you looking at us for? I thought you were a muff diver.”
The laughter after that was so loud the chaperone had to interrupt his talk and tell the guys to be quiet. I turned back around, my face burning.
The guys were just being jerks. I knew what they’d said shouldn’t bother me, but it did.
Plus, I didn’t want Christa to hear them saying that kind of stuff. She was sitting on the far side of the room with Madison, and I didn’t think she’d heard, but I didn’t want to take that chance.
Maybe she’d had the right idea about keeping things secret.
“All right, y’all,” Lori’s aunt Miranda called from the front of the room. “It’s time for the singing.”
Usually everyone would groan as soon as one of our chaperones said the word singing, but since it was Aunt Miranda, people just nodded, looking bored. She was younger than most of the chaperones, and she wore hippie-type clothes like crocheted vests and scarf-headbands. She was black, too—she and Lori’s mom were only half sisters; Lori and her parents were as white as Elmer’s glue—and sometimes she tried to be all buddy-buddy with me, as though we were two black girls together against the world. As if I’d forget she was so old and dressed like a weirdo.
“Guess what?” Aunt Miranda said. “We have a special helper here this evening, don’t we?”
Everyone shifted in their seats to see the “special helper”—Juana. She was sitting next to Señor Suarez, holding his twelve-string guitar.
My dad was on the other side, smiling at her encouragingly. He and Drew had been hanging out at the Suarez house a lot lately, practicing their Spanish and stealing extra bites of Juana’s mother’s cooking.
Señor Suarez gestured for Juana to begin. Her forehead was wrinkled, and her fingers shook as she lined them up on the neck of the guitar. Now I understood what she’d been trying to tell me earlier that day—that tonight, after her long hours of practice with her dad, she was finally going to play for us.
I was amazed, honestly. I couldn’t imagine learning to play a twelve-string at her age. My guitar teacher at school wouldn’t even let me try until eighth grade.
But Juana seemed to know what she was doing as she strummed the first notes. It was a song we’d sung at vespers a few times. Her version of the song was simpler than the complex cords her father usually played, but it was beautiful all the same. Señor Suarez led the singing, but instead of paying attention to the lyrics, I watched Juana play. She was a beginner, that much was clear—some of the chords didn’t sound quite right, and she was concentrating a little too fiercely on the movements of each finger—but her eyes were shining. She loved music just as much as I had at her age.
Suddenly, my hands itched to touch those strings. I hadn’t picked up a guitar in more than a year, but now the memories flooded back. I’d loved the tautness of the strings under my fingers. The steady weight of the strap across my back.
I wanted to feel what Juana was feeling. I wanted it to all be fresh and new again.
No disappointment. No resentment, either. Nothing but a world full of open possibility.
When the song ended, I started clapping, hard. We didn’t usually applaud at vespers, but people joined with me anyway. A few even let out little woo hoos for Juana. She grinned at us, her face alight.
I was startled when she climbed down from the couch, passed the guitar carefully to her father, ran over and hugged me. I laughed, though, and hugged her back. For the first time in years, I remembered what it was like to get that excited over playing. When it’s not about hitting every note perfectly or impressing anyone—it’s just about the joy of the song.
Señor Suarez stood, smiling down at Juana, and led her outside as Dad and Reverend Perez launched into the closing prayers.
After ten minutes of monotonous pastors praying in simultaneous English and Spanish, they finally dismissed us. Everyone climbed up off the floor, stretching. I leaped to my feet and made a beeline for Christa.
She was already in the doorway next to Madison. Her eyes sparkled in the reflected light from the candles that dotted the room. Even her glitter headband seemed to take on an extra shine.
“So, I have news,” I told her. “Kind of a lot of news.”
Madison was watching us. I tried not to let that bother me. It wasn’t cool to get jealous just because your sort-of-but-actually-not-really girlfriend was hanging out with her ex.
I still kind of wanted to shove Madison, though. Or maybe just pinch her.
But I’d be mature about it. It would only be a tiny pinch. On, like, on her elbow or something.
Christa glanced at Madison. That only made me want to pinch her more.
Finally, Christa turned back to me and jutted her chin toward the door. I got the idea and followed her out of the Perezes’ house and halfway down the block.
She and Madison walked together. I stayed twenty feet behind them, my eyes shooting daggers into the back of Madison’s neck.
Finally the crowd started to thin out as people wandered back to the church or drifted off in twos and threes. Christa slowed down, then stopped. Madison leaned in to say something to her, then walked away toward the church.
Christa was alone in front of me. Now that I wasn’t distracted, she looked astonishingly pretty against the dim lights in her pale purple dress. Something was written across her left arm in a dark blue marker, but I couldn’t read it from this distance.
She turned around and smiled. I smiled back, trying to forget about Madison. There were too many good things to focus on the bad ones.
As I got closer, I could read the letters on her arm. QUESTION STABILITY, it said. I liked that idea.
I liked the dress she was wearing, too. It was a tiny bit tight around the waist, and the hemline showed more of her legs than I was used to seeing. It was tight around her chest, too.
The clothes I was wearing were hers. I’d borrowed a long skirt (that wasn’t nearly as long on me as it probably was on her) and a sleeveless top that buttoned up the front. I’d never seen her wear either one before. She must’ve brought more clothes with her than Lori had. I’d brought a bunch of clothes of my own, too, if my suitcase would ever get here, but for now I didn’t mind wearing Christa’s. It made me feel closer to understand
ing what it was like to be her.
“So,” Christa said when I got close enough to smile back at her. “What’s the big news?”
Oh, right. I grinned. “I asked my dad if we could be roommates next weekend in Texas, and he said yes.”
Christa’s eyes widened. “That is so awesome.”
“Yeah.” I was so glad to hear her say that. “I thought so, too.”
“I mean, to have some time for just us? That’ll be perfect, right?”
“God, yes.”
She reached out as if she was going to take my hand. Then she glanced to the side and pulled back.
“Also.” I kept going, before she could say anything. “I found a place for us to go. Here, I mean.”
“What?” Christa’s head swiveled back toward me. “Wait, do you mean—tonight?”
“Yeah.” I was smiling so hard I was afraid my jaw was going to fall off.
I told her about the guest house. Her eyes widened even more.
“How far is it?”
“A couple of blocks. We can walk out back behind the houses, toward the hills.”
Christa turned and started walking so fast I started laughing.
“It’s going to be dark,” I said. “Do you think we should get a flashlight?”
There were lots of flashlights back at the church. We’d been told to bring them along with our sleeping bags. We used them if we needed to get up at night to go to the bathroom.
“Wouldn’t they see the beams?” Christa said. “They’d think someone was breaking into their house.”
“Well, that’s kind of what we’re doing.” We both giggled. “Hmm, do you think there are still candles left from vespers? We could put them on the floor way below the windows. The light would be so faint I bet they wouldn’t see it.”
“That might work.”
We went back to the Perezes’ house. I’d thought it would be deserted, but the adults, my dad included, were still standing around talking in the front yard. The door was wide open. Beyond it we could see the empty living room with the candles still laid out.