It made a part of my heart vibrate in a way that tore down the awkwardness from the first day I’d met them.
Until the bell rang, implacable.
My song died on my lips, although my heart still beat with its rhythm.
Beto played the last measure, and when the final note resonated in the air with an echo, he looked at me and said in Spanish, “That was amazing!”
That’s all it took for the euphoria to bubble.
“Who could guess this shy girl had such a big voice?”
“And that accent?” Donovan teased me. “It was perfect.”
I wasn’t shy, and my accent hadn’t been perfect. My r had over-rolled when I’d sung the word friends, and my cheeks were still burning over it, but they all pretended they hadn’t heard it, or maybe they weren’t pretending. Maybe I was just being hard on myself.
“Gracias,” I said.
“I guess this means you’re in?” Donovan asked.
I nodded.
“Yes!” cheered Tirzah and Beto.
Soon, ninth graders were starting to arrive for first period, and a tall boy sent us an annoyed look.
“I need to head to EL,” I said, grabbing my stuff.
“And I have Gov and Civ,” Beto said.
Donovan rolled his eyes. “Who has time for Gov and Civ when we finally have a singer?”
But there was no choice but to head to class anyway.
Unlike the previous days though, now I knew I wasn’t alone. My new friends saw what I could do with my voice, the person I became when I let the music take over.
We’d made that music together.
Maybe it was the adrenaline of being so brave so early in the day, but finally, everything went smoothly.
During math, I completed all my assignments on time.
“Did you finish already?” Mr. Taylor asked when I returned the tablet to the back of the room.
“Yes,” I said.
He opened his laptop, and I saw his bright blue eyes scanning the screen to double-check my work. His face broke into a giant smile.
“Well done, Soler,” he said, giving me two thumbs-up. “There’s only one wrong answer, but you’ve improved so much. If you continue like this, you’ll get a badge by the end of the week.”
It was about time I got my first badge! Now that I knew how to work on the tablet, I wasn’t scared of falling behind anymore.
When the period was over, Tirzah was waiting for me to walk to the next class.
The whole morning, the band members and I looked for each other. Knowing there would be at least one friendly face waiting for me to say hi was enough to help me make it through the next hour and a half.
By the time lunch came, the four of us walked to the cafeteria together. I clutched my lunch bag with the empanadas Papi had packed for me against my chest. Flashbacks from my first day here almost had me bolting away, but I was flanked by my band.
Tirzah was the only one who got school lunch. The pizza looked delicious.
“Do you want to try it?” she asked.
I hesitated, but she started cutting up the giant slice.
“I’ve never had pepperoni pizza,” I said.
“What?” Donovan said.
I shrugged. “I don’t like spicy foods.”
Beto laughed like I’d told the funniest joke in the world. “Come on, María Emilia,” he said. “Pepperoni doesn’t even count as spicy.”
“To you,” I replied. “I’ve never eaten hot peppers before.”
He held the piece of pizza out to me. The scent of cheese mixed with the pepperoni, and the bridge of my nose broke into a sweat.
“Be brave,” said Donovan.
What if the pepperoni was ultra hot and my face burst into fire?
I bit down.
My tongue exploded in a delight of flavors. How was this school pizza on the same menu as the atrocious radioactive yellow-cheese sandwich?
“This is almost as good as the one my dad makes,” I said. “I’m going to tell him to put pepperoni on his pizza next time.”
Donovan shared the enchiladas his mom had sent, and Beto put a container with pupusas in the center of the table. I added my empanadas.
I loved seeing the ripples of delight pass over each one of their faces.
“This is delicious,” Tirzah said as she tried one of the empanadas.
“I’ve never tasted any better,” Beto said. “Don’t let my abuela hear me say this, but wow.”
Donovan didn’t seem to be able to speak. He was too busy eating.
I tried a little of everything they shared, and I loved it all.
Lunch with Los Galácticos was so far the best part of school. Instead of sitting by myself or hiding in the library to pretend I wasn’t as lonely as I looked, I sat with my friends, exchanging foods from our countries, the foods that made our families happy.
Later that day, we had our first practice. Tirzah picked me up at my house, and together we walked to Donovan’s.
Ashley Jane watched from her yard where she was helping her dad mow the lawn.
“Are you and AJ enemies?” Tirzah asked.
I sighed. “We’re not exactly enemies … She doesn’t like me, and I don’t know why.”
“She doesn’t like anyone,” Tirzah replied, twirling a pair of drumsticks in the air, as if she were warming up for a workout. “We went to kindergarten together, but when my parents got divorced in fourth grade, she stopped talking to me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I asked her why, and she pretended not to understand my accent …”
“But you don’t have an accent in English,” I said.
“Exactly,” she replied.
I wondered about Ashley Jane. What about me threatened her so much she decided I wasn’t worthy of being her friend? Her parents and siblings were nice. She was nice to my brothers. I didn’t understand.
“Don’t worry too much about her,” Tirzah said. “Not everyone is going to like you in this life. At least that’s something my grandma used to tell me when things like this bothered me too much when I was younger.”
“Your grandma rocks,” I said. “I don’t know what we’d have done without her.”
Tirzah smiled. “When she arrived in Utah years ago, she knew no one. Other immigrants like her became her family, and ever since, she’s been trying to pay it forward.”
I loved that phrase, pay it forward. That was also what Celestina was doing with her letters. She’d helped me, from almost a hundred years in the past, without knowing.
Soon, we arrived at Donovan’s. His house was a log cabin planted in the middle of an orchard. The sweet twang of apples drifted in the air. A ladder leaned on one of the trees, and a half-full barrel of fruit stood at its side. My mouth watered.
This looked like a fairy tale, and I thought Celestina would’ve loved it.
“Come on,” Tirzah said, leading me to a little door into the garage.
The band was set up inside.
Cardboard boxes and blue-and-yellow plastic bins were heaped against one of the walls. On another there was a huge mural of the Mexican flag intertwined with the American one. A colorful rug was spread on the floor covering the stained cement that still smelled of motor oil and grease.
Against the back wall was the drum set. A giant logo of Cookie the astronaut on top of a flaming meteor was painted on the bass drum, the name Los Galácticos underneath it in fancy, curly handwriting.
“Mrs. Sosa painted it,” Tirzah said, heading right toward the drums. As soon as she sat down behind the set, she closed her eyes and started beating the drums softly, already lost in a rhythm she seemed to summon from deep in her heart.
Beto stood in front of the electronic keyboard with headphones on. Today he wore a Real Salt Lake jersey, and a smile cut through the concentration on his face. Cookie lounged on a sofa, licking her paws and washing her face.
I never knew dogs did this just like cats! I blinked a couple of times i
n case I was imagining the whole thing, but she kept washing her face like my Estrellita would when Violeta and I had a girls’ night on a Friday, so long ago it seemed like another life.
She must have felt me looking at her because she looked in my direction and … blinked at me.
Goose bumps covered my arms. She was saying she loved me.
“Hola, Emilia! We have a microphone right there,” Donovan said, pointing at a rickety table covered with old Oreo wrappers and bottles of water. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Part of me was thrilled to be with these cool kids, and another part of me itched to run away. How was this my life? I just sang solos with the school choir. I never imagined I’d be part of a band of misfits: Los Galácticos.
“Why is the band called Los Galácticos? You never told me, Donovan,” I asked.
“That’s right! I was going to when your brother arrived.”
“And his tail was broken.”
He laughed so loudly, Tirzah peered at us through narrowed eyes before going back to her drums.
“It all started with my brother, Julián, and his friends Ben and Isaac,” he said in a story-telling voice. “They played on the same fútbol team, but before then, they met at ELL class.”
“Lucky,” I said.
“They started spending all their time together. Isaac noticed that kids kept doing the Vulcan salute to them when they crossed in the hallways.”
“The Vulcan salute?”
Donovan demonstrated, lifting his hand, his pinkie and ring fingers glued to each other, a gap, and then the middle finger and index together, the thumb all by itself.
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to imitate him and unable to. My middle and ring fingers insisted on sticking together no matter how much I tried.
“The Star Trek sign,” Beto said, his headphones hooked to his neck for a change.
“Star Wars?” I asked.
Donovan laughed. “My brother made the same mistake, and he started a war between two of the greatest fandoms ever that continued all the way to high school. And now college, I guess.”
I knew about Star Wars, but I’d never even heard of Star Trek.
Tirzah, who’d stopped warming up to listen in on the band’s origin story, pulled something up on her phone and came over to show me. On her screen there was a picture of a man with pointy ears and black hair in a short bowl cut. “This is Spock. You know, the Enterprise? That was the ship.”
I shook my head. I mean, I thought I was up to date on movies and general popular culture, and now I felt more like an outsider than ever.
“I feel like an alien. Like I not only came from another country, but another world. I know nothing.”
“Exactly!” Donovan said. “Spock and the Vulcans really are aliens. And that’s how Julián and his friends felt. And how we all feel at some point when people start talking about something that is supposedly common knowledge or popular culture but we’ve never heard of it before.”
“People in school still call us aliens,” Tirzah said. “Sometimes even illegal aliens.”
I shivered when I remembered Mateo’s little face when one of the Boden boys had asked him for his alien number.
“Were they mad? Julián, Ben, and Isaac?”
Donovan grinned. “Those three are legendary. Instead of getting mad, like everyone expected—you know, because Latinos are violent revolutionaries,” he said, rolling his eyes, “they totally embraced the name. They started the band and registered it under the mandatory clubs. The old principal wouldn’t let them be The Aliens, so they became Los Galácticos. The principal thought it was because of Real Madrid, but Isaac is a rabid Barcelona fan. He’d never!”
We all laughed at that.
“So we’re aliens,” I said.
Donovan shrugged. “Especially him.” With his lips puckered, he pointed at Beto, who was playing the keyboard with headphones on, eyes closed, swaying to a music only he could hear. The keyboard was unplugged.
We all laughed again, and Beto opened his eyes and, taking his headphones off, said, “So, are we playing or not?”
My palms suddenly prickled with nervous sweat. They’d already heard me sing, but this was the official first rehearsal.
“So what song are we doing?” I asked.
Donovan pointed at a dry erase board with a list of song titles. Mostly pop songs. It had clearly been erased and rewritten many times.
“Those are some of our favorite ones,” he said. “But we haven’t found the one that really speaks to our audience, you know? Usually, when we’ve perfected a song, we stream it on our social media, and then the public can vote. It’s actually mostly our tías back in our countries and cousins we’ve never met. None has really taken off, so we’re still looking.”
“The perfect song will come,” Tirzah said, sounding like a sage from the movies.
I stared at the list. I knew a few of the songs but not by heart.
“Lucas left a binder with the lyrics,” Tirzah said, guessing my concern. “And remember, you don’t really have to sing exactly like the original version. It’s not karaoke. We’re doing covers. Big difference.”
Beto plugged the keyboard in and started playing. Tirzah joined with the beat of the drum. Donovan played the opening chord on his guitar, and before I thought too much about it, I took a deep breath and sang the first line of an Aladdin song.
At first my voice was soft and hesitant.
What if Donovan’s family said the band couldn’t practice anymore because of my horrible voice? What if the band changed their minds?
But as the music took hold of me, I relaxed my shoulders, closed my eyes, and let the rhythm of the song take me.
The words in English applied perfectly to my life, but in a language not my own, there was a little buffer that left some distance, making it easy to tap into my feelings without being overcome by them.
Minutes later, I came back to the room at the sound of applause.
“Bravo!” Donovan’s mom exclaimed. “That was amazing!” Her eyes sparkled. “Is this really the first time you all played together? It was like listening to a recording.”
Beto shrugged. “Nah, I hit the wrong chord on the second measure. The pitch was too low.”
“But she followed it like a wave and matched it!” Mrs. Sosa said, turning to me. “It’s nice to meet you, María Emilia. What a perfect addition you are.”
She clicked something on her phone, and soon, my singing voice filled the silence once again. My cheeks burned.
If there was something worse than listening to a recording of my speaking voice, it had to be listening to myself sing. Each time I’d failed to hit a note or breathed in the wrong place, I cringed. But the rest of the band seemed to love it.
Mrs. Sosa said, “After you all watch it and approve, I can post it on the band’s YouTube channel. What do you think?”
I wanted to say no. It was one thing to sing with my new friends, in the sacred space of this garage, where the notes of the instruments and my voice made magic, like the combination of the perfect pizza toppings. I had never sung like this in Argentina before. Maybe the experience of leaving everything behind, of having my world turn upside down, was the secret ingredient I needed to literally find my voice.
Finding my voice had come at a high price. I couldn’t ignore it or let it go to waste.
“Come on, homes,” Beto said, looking around. “The song slaps!”
“Okay,” I said, even though I had no idea what 30 percent of his words meant.
We continued singing song after song, but none was as magical as the first one. I treasured the memory and feeling of it like a talisman.
Mrs. Sosa, Karina, made us taquitos and enfrijoladas, which I’d never tried before and were delicious.
Too soon, it was time for me to go back home. My mom picked Tirzah and me up on her way home from work. When she saw us, she said, “You too are glowing like stars. Was the practice a success, then?”
<
br /> Tirzah smiled. “Here, see it for yourself.” She showed Mami the recording that Karina had uploaded on the band’s social media channel.
My mom listened to the recording, mesmerized, and when she looked at me, it was like she was seeing a different person. “That was … I had no idea you could do that.”
She hugged me tightly, and I felt like finally her heart understood what mine wanted to say.
The day after Donovan posted the video, it was as if the invisibility shield around me had vanished.
At the bus stop, Ashley Jane and Kel kept looking at me and gossiping behind their hands. I knew they were competing in the Battle of the Bands too, and judging by their reaction, they must have thought I was a serious threat to them.
“How come you told us she couldn’t speak English, AJ?” one of the girls from their group asked. “She sounded perfectly fluent in that song.”
I met AJ’s eyes to see what she would say, but she just rolled hers and muttered her reply. I caught every word as she said, “Hispanic attention seeker … Why won’t she go back to where she was born?”
I was stunned to silence as the bus roared up to us. As soon as it was too late to reply, I wished I’d asked if she meant Miami. And even if I hadn’t been born in this country, who was she to police who could be here and who couldn’t?
Mrs. Contreras had tried to teach me the definition of comeuppance. I hadn’t really understood the meaning until this moment, when I wanted nothing more than to see AJ get what she deserved for saying something so cruel.
But hoping for something bad to happen to her didn’t make me happy. I didn’t know a word in any language that described the feelings warring in my heart.
I watched out the window and practiced my song in my mind. Each day, the world tilted closer to the solstice, and I could keep track of the passing of time by the change in the landscape.
Red Ledges had been named for the red rock of its formations that brought visitors from all over the world. But now that fall was finally here, there was another explanation for the name.
The trees seemed on fire, and I had loved watching the leaves turn from amber to bright red and then fall to the ground, where they created a magic carpet on which my brothers and I traveled to imaginary worlds. The willow tree leaves had turned golden and were still holding on to their branches.
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