Love in English

by Maria E. Andreu

  I want to learn your melodies, the discordant and the sweet,

  I want to tell your tales, and change their endings

  So that they include a girl like me

  Who longs for you

  You tip your hat and say, ‘You belong here.’”

  The crowd claps. There is something heady in this welcoming sound from strangers. I smile and look over at Neo again, my heart pounding, feeling the power of telling a story to strangers, the way people have felt for thousands of years. Here, around our version of the campfire, I have told my tale, and I’ve been heard, and the power of that is thrilling. I wonder if just one little bit of the feelings I shared will carry with at least one of these people. I hope so.

  I let go of the mic and walk back to where Neo and I are sitting. He leans into my ear and says, “I am so glad I know you.”

  I smile. I don’t know why, but his words make my eyes fill up with tears, with the emotion of the moment. “I am so glad I know you too,” I say.

  Empire State of Mind

  “Okay, one more thing,” says Neo, when we’re outside. “You ready?”

  I nod. I’m high from the rush of saying my poem, of people coming up to me at the end and saying nice things.

  We walk a few blocks and suddenly we’re in front of a massive building.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “The Empire State Building.” He smiles.

  “What!” I say.

  You can’t see the top from the street. It’s huge and hulking. “Come on,” he says. “I got us tickets to the top. You want to go up?”

  I can’t believe it. Can’t believe that he knew how much this would mean to me, can’t believe that he planned all this, can’t believe I’m finally going to go.

  I make it through the line and up the scary-fast elevator in a fog. Dreaming of this is one thing. Being here is surreal.

  We get out of the elevator and step onto the observation deck. It looks like the whole world is laid out all around us, far below us, bustling and massive, millions of people in thousands of buildings, the heartbeat of the whole world.

  “Do you like it?” he asks.

  I turn to him. His eyes are studying me.

  “I can’t believe you did this. It’s amazing.”

  He smiles wide. It’s startling and it warms the spot around my ears, and I look at him—really look at him. In a rush, my mind is flooded with words. Words that describe all the things I love about Neo. Words that I couldn’t think of with Harrison. Neo, I love how you capture the essence of a building in a sketch, the soul of what makes it beautiful. I love how you always look at me like what I have to say is important. I love how you always make sure there are enough snacks. I love that when you read my words, they matter to you. I love how you feel like home.

  Neo looks into my eyes too. The moment expands a little, explosions in my ears, the glow from the Empire State Building playing off his eyes, already so blue on their own.

  “This has been a perfect day,” he says.

  I lean in closer, just a centimeter, just a bit, because the crackle of the moment makes me do it, because he looks so perfect with his charcoal button-down and the dimple in his chin. Because he made this whole, magical day possible, the trip to the place I’ve most wanted to see, the moment up on the stage, and now, here, this beautiful view, sparkly and perfect and almost more than I can soak in, like it’s a moment I want to be bigger for, but which I’m perfect for, both at the same time.

  He leans in. When his lips touch mine, the moment shivers through me, his lips, warm and perfect, part mine. His hand is on the small of my back, and he pulls me in, and I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to, because all I want to do is kiss this boy in the most perfect spot on the planet. I lean against him, and he puts his arm around me to pull me even closer. I move my hand up to his jaw, then back toward his hair. I run my fingers through it.

  He pulls back and looks in my eyes. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

  I rest my head on his chest. I can’t believe this just happened. It’s amazing. And . . . it’s complicated. Because . . . Harrison. But I can’t worry about that now. I want to soak in the perfection of this moment. I will have to tell Harrison what this means. But not right now.

  I put my thumbs in his belt loops and look at him again. I want nothing more than for him to kiss me again. Or maybe I’ll kiss him.

  His phone buzzes.

  “Hey, is that your phone?” I ask.

  “Yeah. It’s been going crazy.”

  “You should check it,” I say. I hate to have the moment broken. But maybe his dad needs him or something.

  Which reminds me, I haven’t checked my phone for a while either. I slip my phone out of my back pocket. Dead.

  When I look up at Neo, his eyes are worried. “That’s Altagracia. Your dad is trying to find you.”

  The Worst Call Ever

  My throat is thick with a big ball of panic. This is not good. I run a thousand things through my head. But there really is only one thing to do. Call my dad.

  This is going to be bad.

  Neo offers his phone. I take it, and dial my dad’s number. He made me memorize it, even though I told him that was dumb because I had it stored in my phone. But I guess it’s for moments like these that it’s good to know a number by heart.

  “Hello?” he says, his voice hot and fast.

  “Papi, soy yo.”

  “¿Qué número es este?”

  “I’m on a friend’s phone,” I say. Factual. Incomplete but factual.

  “What friend? And don’t tell me Altagracia because I already know that’s a lie. It was not good of you to put your friend in a situation where she had to lie.”

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” I say.

  “Which friend?” he pushes.

  “My friend Neo. From ESL.”

  “¿Qué clase de nombre es . . .” He catches himself. “What kind of name is Neo?”

  I furrow my brow. “Greek?” I say. Is that what he wants to know?

  “No. Boy or girl?” he asks.

  I look up at Neo. He looks worried, maybe a little guilty. “Boy,” I say.

  My father curses in Spanish under his breath a bit. It sounds like he’s pulled the phone away from his mouth. I hear my mother’s soothing tones telling him not to worry, that at least they heard from me and I’m okay.

  He puts the phone back to his ear. “Tell me where you are right this minute and be waiting for me outside. I am on my way.”

  “Actually, Pa, no. It’s going to take me . . . it’s going to be a little while before I can get there.”

  “Where are you?” He sounds furious, a pot on a fire that’s too high.

  So I tell him. And that’s when he really gets mad.

  The Fallout

  I walk into the apartment building with a terrible dread. I’m not sure how I get up to the third floor, but suddenly I’m there.

  I open the door.

  My father is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a few steps away from the door. My mother clasps a sweater tight around her behind him.

  He storms up to me.

  “What were you thinking?” he snarls. “Who was that boy?”

  Every tightly wound expectation and warning in my father has suddenly unraveled, and he’s screaming. I don’t think he’s ever yelled this way at me before. There was one time when I went to the store but got distracted with friends playing jump rope, back home. He was livid that day. But I could tell, even then, that the anger was about worry.

  This anger doesn’t look like it’s about worry. It’s about fury.

  “¡Te hice una pregunta!” He’s screaming in Spanish. He has totally forgotten his own rule. Do I answer in Spanish or English? What will make him less mad?

  “I went to . . . there was a place where you recite poetry. I wanted to go,” I say. It’s no use lying. I’m tired of it anyway.

  “With some boy we’ve never met? What are you
thinking? Do you know what boys think of girls who lie to their parents just to run off to . . .” I have never seen his face so red. The lying isn’t just lying. It’s lying about a boy.

  My mother puts a birdlike hand on his upper arm. “Mi amor, if we just . . .”

  He screams over her. “No, none of this. Is this what you want for her? She’s going to run the streets now? ¡To los Nueva Yores! ¡Así, sin permiso! With some boy who didn’t have the respect to come ask for her at home, properly?”

  The idea of Neo coming up here for the seventeenth-century ritual of having to ask my dad permission to take me out mortifies me beyond measure.

  “It’s not like that here, Pa!”

  “It’s like that here, in this house! This is my house, and it’s like I say it is! And do you know what could have happened to you over there? In a city with millions of people, and with us not knowing where you were? And you without your phone?”

  “I had my phone. It just died.”

  I open my mouth to say something else but my mother shakes her head, a warning to stay quiet.

  “Mi amor, please, keep your voice down,” she says to him.

  He lowers it to a growl. “Who does that? Lie like that? Run off with some boy? You’re like these Americans.”

  He means it as an insult, and that cuts deepest of all. What does he want from me, anyway? He wants perfect grades, he wants me to love the topic he thinks is best, he wants me to stick to old rules about boys like we’re living in the Dark Ages. And he wants me American but not too American, brave but not too brave. Just as suddenly, I am the one yelling.

  “That’s what you wanted!” I say. “No Spanish, you said. Learn American ways, you said! You wanted an American daughter. Well, you got one.”

  I storm past him to my room and throw myself on the bed. I want to move the bureau in front of the door so that no one can ever come in here again. I want to crawl out the window. I want to scream. I want to play music loud enough to wake up the whole block.

  He follows me to my room. “Your phone, right now.”

  This winds me. How can he take away my phone? “It’s dead,” I say. Like that’s going to make a difference.

  “Right now,” he says.

  I pull it out of my back pocket and give it to him, a seething fury crawling up my body. At least there’s one good thing: after I hand him my phone, he leaves me alone.

  Neither Here Nor There

  I bury my face in my pillow. It smells stale, like everything in this dimly lit, grungy place. We weren’t rich at home, but we weren’t like here. The frustration bubbles in me and tears come. They’re not sad, though, they’re boxed-in, angry tears. They’re trapped tears. Nothing will ever be like before we came here. I punch the pillow. I wish I could scream until all this frustration and rage evaporated away.

  There’s a soft knock on the door. I turn on my back. “What?”

  My mother peeks her head in. “¿Puedo entrar?”

  I nod.

  She sits on the bed. She’s so thin now, so frail-looking. I wonder where the woman from back home has gone. I haven’t seen her laugh since . . . since when? I can’t remember.

  She moves my hair away from my forehead. “Remember when you were little?” she asks. “I . . . I had . . . how do you call it? Superpowers. You wouldn’t let anyone hold you but me.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “One ‘Arrorró mi nena’ and all your problems would be solved.”

  In a sudden, irrational thought, I almost want to ask her to sing it again, the lullaby she sang me when I was little. But then that idea fills me with a dark swirl of anger and sadness. It plays in my head, swelling up my throat. It definitely wouldn’t help.

  “It doesn’t work that way anymore,” I tell her.

  “I know, m’hijita. I know. But it’s all going to be okay. You’ll see. He was just so afraid,” she says. “That wasn’t the best way to tell you, but we’re alone here, with no family. And if something happened to you . . .”

  She thaws me, a little. “I know it was wrong to lie. But would he have ever let me go?”

  She looks off at the wall. “No, probablemente no.”

  “And how could he yell like that? He was never like that back home.”

  She puts her hand on mine. “No,” she says. “He is different. But aren’t you? Aren’t we all different here? I was able to see you grow. He left a little girl and now has to get used to you being almost a woman. It’s like learning to live with strangers. Not just you, but me.”

  I don’t want her to stay, but I don’t love when she leaves, either. I lay back on my pillow. Tonight is literally the worst night for me to be without a phone. I can’t be this girl, the one who is going out with one guy but kissing a different one. Home or here, I don’t want to be that person.

  I close my eyes. The sight that comes to me is Neo, eyes full of reflected light, about to lean in to kiss me. The sensation of the kiss shivers through me, the mix of all the things that happened today.

  Things That Happen at Lockers

  Monday morning hangs on me like a wet rag. This weekend things at my house were miserable, and today I have to talk to Harrison, which does not help my mood. I have to tell him what happened. What I did.

  I get to school early, because I want to get out of my house, and because my father insists on driving me. He doesn’t say a word the whole ride. I turn down the hallway where my locker is so I can put my afternoon books in it before finding my way to class.

  There are people lingering around it. I squint my eyes to see what’s going on. It’s early, and there’s usually not random people just standing in front of it. Except, no, it’s not random people.

  It’s Neo and Harrison.

  My heart drops. I consider running in the other direction, maybe actually running off to New York. But, no, Harrison sees me, and Neo follows his gaze to see what he’s looking at. There’s only one thing to do. I make the rest of the endless walk to my locker, my joints feeling loose as jelly.

  “What’s this?” Harrison asks, his face stone. I look at where he’s pointing. There’s a single two-toned pink rose sticking out of my locker.

  “I don’t . . .” I trail off. I look at Neo. His face is one of confusion, maybe a bit of embarrassment.

  “I wanted to surprise you. Because of . . .” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “What’s going on?” asks Harrison.

  “I . . . Harrison, I wanted to talk to you today.”

  “I’ve been texting you,” says Harrison.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “My dad took away my phone. I got in trouble.”

  “Because of New York?” asks Neo.

  “What about New York?” asks Harrison.

  I can’t do this.

  “Neo and I went to New York on Saturday,” I say. “My dad is mad.”

  “You and Neo went to New York? And now you’re leaving my girlfriend flowers?” he asks Neo. “Not cool, dude.”

  Neo’s eyes flash with anger. “This is true?” he asks me. “This is your boyfriend?”

  “Neo, I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you, but . . .”

  “Wait, you’re sorry about what?” asks Harrison.

  I take a deep breath. “Neo and I . . . we went as friends, but while we were in New York, something happened.”

  “Something?” asks Neo bitterly.

  “We kissed, Harrison. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you . . .”

  Harrison’s jaw clenches. He looks so mad.

  Neo takes the flower out of my locker. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.” He turns to Harrison. “No disrespect,” he says, and walks off. He tosses the flower into a garbage can.

  I have said everything all wrong. I wanted to explain to Harrison that I’ve been feeling weird since the wedding, but I didn’t want it to be like this, so embarrassing, so hurtful. And I said all the wrong things about Neo, too, making what happened sound smaller than it was. It wasn’t just somethi
ng. It was a thing that was right, like shining a light in the dark and finding what you are looking for. But that was impossible to say in front of Harrison, and now Neo’s walked off and I can’t explain.

  “I really liked you,” says Harrison. He turns and walks away. My eyes sting and my throat tightens.

  I walk through the day in a rough fog, every word I said at the locker spinning in my head. If only I’d asked to speak to each of them privately. If only I’d talked to Harrison after the wedding, explained how I was feeling right away. If only I’d talked to Neo about all this on the long bus ride home. I could have explained. Maybe. He would have understood. He has listened and been with me, and there’s no reason for not telling him the truth.

  I am not like this. I am not this girl.

  I have to talk to both of them. I’ll find Neo after ESL, and I’ll explain. I want him to know it was not just some moment that I got swept up in, but an instant of seeing clearly something I hadn’t known before. As I replay all our afternoons, our movie nights, our easy laughs, the way he always asked to read my poems, how he found the place where he just knew I’d be able to share something that mattered, it looks so obvious now.

  But I don’t get to tell Neo these things at ESL, because he doesn’t show up.

  I walk the halls between classes looking for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. I do see Harrison, but he doesn’t want to talk to me. Even Altagracia is home with a cold, so I can’t talk to her about what a mess I’ve made. I end the day completely wiped out. And now all that’s left to do is go home to the dingy apartment where my parents are furious at me.

  At the final bell, I step out toward the parking lot. The day is sleet gray, like even the sky wants to be unfriendly. Suddenly, I see a blur, someone sprinting. Then someone else. Then someone screams, “Hey, come on!” A deep voice shouts, “Go back to where you came from!”

  I take a step back. There’s a group forming near the door where I just came out, a cluster of people.