The Truth Is

by Nonieqa Ramos

  Advance praise for

  The Truth Is

  “In her luminous, raw, and open-hearted exploration of identity, grief and first love, NoNieqa Ramos has created an unforgettable character in Verdad. The Truth Is offers a complex look at a brilliant, queer, neurodifferent girl, the mother who loves but doesn’t understand her, and a fabulously drawn group of street kids who can’t save themselves but just might save her. A brilliantly written breathtaking book. I couldn’t put it down!”

  —Michelle Ruiz-Keil, author of All of Us with Wings

  Text copyright © 2019 by NoNieqa Ramos

  Carolrhoda Lab™ is a trademark of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Lab™

  An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Image credits: Milkos/Getty Images (hands); njavka/Shutterstock.com (bananas); Magnia/Shutterstock.com (herringbone); Stephen Rees/Shutterstock.com (paper);

  Creativika Graphics/Shutterstock.com (scribbles); mhatzapa/Shutterstock.com (speech bubbles); Ursa Major/Shutterstock.com (waves); Vera Holera/Shutterstock .com (title font).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ramos, NoNieqa, author.

  Title: The truth is / by NoNieqa Ramos.

  Description: Minneapolis, MN : Carolrhoda Lab, [2019] | Summary: Closed off and grieving her best friend, fifteen-year-old overachiever Verdad faces prejudices at school and from her traditional mother, her father’s distance since his remarriage, and her attraction to a transgender classmate.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018042053 (print) | LCCN 2018049450 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541561038 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541528772 (th : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction. | Transgender people—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R3656 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.R3656 Tru 2020 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042053

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-44717-35554-1/25/2019

  To Miguel, Susan, Abuelita/Gaga, Dad, Christine, and Becca for being my Ride or Die so I could tell this story.

  1

  The Book of Love is blaring on my alarm radio app and I know to turn that shit off before my moms hears it. Once upon a time in a land ten years from divorce court, my parents danced to it at their wedding. They had met during study hall when they realized they were the only ones studying, and the rest is history. Now it’s all math: who owes what to whom, an endless game of long division. I’m still playing the song though, because I don’t get it.

  Because seriously, who wrote the Book of Love? Who gets to decide whom, and why, and when? I’m fifteen and I’m supposed to fall in love like any minute now. It’s biology. My moms is a nurse, so she knows this better than anyone.

  I don’t know what scares me more, falling in love with someone or my mother finding out.

  The way I see it, love is just like your period. One day you’re bleeding out of nowhere and it hurts, and that mess goes on for mostly the rest of your life.

  My best friend, Blanca, didn’t see it that way though. Blanca had been waiting to fall in love her whole life. If you can call fourteen years of living “whole.”

  She always thought we’d get married at the same time in Central Park. Honeymoon together in San Juan.

  My moms flicks the lights that are already on. “¡Despierta, levántate y brilla! Thank God for a new day. Wakey-wakey,” she sings, opening and shutting my bedroom door fast.

  I hurl my chancla at the door. Mornings to me are like holy water to the devil.

  Standing up, I trip over the baseball bat that my mother has always insisted I keep by my bed. What can a bat do against a bullet?

  A holographic Jesus screensaver watches over me from across the room. I gasp. “Ma! What the hell?”

  “You toss and turn so much,” my moms shouts from the kitchen, where the rich aroma of coffee calls my name. “He’s protecting you from bad dreams.”

  I scowl. Hurl my sheet over the computer, making Jesus a ghost. Fling open the door. “So let me get this straight. Like the white dude in the dress with the giant thorny bleeding heart glowing out of his skin is going to get rid of my bad dreams?”

  I know Mami is signing the cross: “Forgive her smart-ass mouth, Lord. She gets it from her father.”

  Anything that’s right with me comes from my mother’s side, anything wrong from my dad’s.

  I lock myself in my bathroom and shed my favorite vintage West Side Story T-shirt that I will wear until it disintegrates. Ah—cough, gag—she’s been burning incense again. Patchouli. To protect me from bad spirits. With all this protection, I’ll be lucky if I don’t die of asphyxiation before I leave the house.

  Modern Christian music blares on the kitchen radio. Dudes are full of uber emotion singing about Jesus. I wish I could feel all pumped up like that about religion. But like how long has it been since Jesus has been here? Two thousand years. I remember waiting for my dad on the porch for hours when he didn’t show up for a visit. Two thousand years is a long time to wait on a porch. Yeah, I’m bitter a little bit.

  When the water is steaming hot, I step into the shower stall full of lotions and creams Mami stocks in here so I will smell like the botanical gardens. Because all girls are supposed to want to smell like flowers. Be a flower. It’s true I got stems. Like my moms, I got the mile-long legs. She had to wear flats around my dad so she didn’t tower over him. But just like stems, I’m hairy. I don’t like sharp, stabby, prickly legs. Blanca’s legs always felt like a cheese grater if it got cold. Mami keeps threatening to wax me, por que we girls can take natural too far, she says.

  I lather up with my loofah, covering up the scar above my knee with bubbles. I rub and rub, imagining the scar—the hole torn in my leg and my life—has disappeared.

  I step out of the shower into the mist. I love looking in the mirror and seeing me in the clouds, immaterial. They don’t got homework in the clouds, do they?

  I picture my moms and me sitting on clouds after we both die. “Pero, like, if you take one more class, you could be an archangel.”

  Once my hair—which Blanca used to call The Entity, like she was one to talk—is braided to my satisfaction, I head to the kitchen, where my moms is waiting for me with cafe con leche. She likes to have a convo with me before she’s off to work. She always sits straight, rigid, like a beautiful statue that survived the volcano but got left alone in the ruins.

  “Morning.”

  “Good morning, Verdad.”

  I pull out my chair—across from Mami’s and next to the place that’s been set for Abuelo for the past three years—and collapse in it. “Couldn’t God put morning later in the day?” I prop my head on my right hand and stir my coffee with my left.

  “Did you get any sleep, mija?”

  “Couple of hours. Did you get any sleep?”

  “Verdad! This isn’t healthy for a young girl. You’re not going to grow properly. You’re going to get acne.”

  This from the woman who hasn’t slept since
2000, who works at three different hospitals and builds Habitat for Humanity houses in her so-called spare time. “Mom, this isn’t healthy for a grown-ass woman. You’re going to start shrinking. You’re going to get wrinkles.”

  My moms stirs her coffee into a whirlpool that would suck in the Titanic. “Verdad! Listen.” She grabs my hand and holds me prisoner with her eyes. “A lot has happened. That we can’t control. But what we can control is ourselves.”

  That’s bullshit. I break free from her gaze and look away.

  There are certain things you want to be true. My moms wants it to be true that if you work your ass off, you’re gonna have this great life. You’ll have the house, the car, the vacations. I mean, I know I have it good. Mami is a nurse, but everyone in the family calls her doc and hits her up for advice when they so much as have a sniffle. She bought us a house and made sure I had my own room and bathroom. We’re the ones the family descends on for barbecues because we’re the only ones with a yard. We got a car that runs most of the time. We got a YMCA membership. But like what’s the point of a house if you’re never in it? A bed if you never freakin sleep in it? My moms works 24/7 to keep us in the house we’re in. The only place the damn car takes her is to work.

  Mami sighs. She squeezes my hand and releases me. “You know you need to play a sport . . .” I lift my eyebrows. This is like telling an ostrich he should dance the tango.

  “No no no!” she clarifies, images of me attempting volleyball flashing across her eyes. “I mean you should . . . run. With those long legs. You know, your dad used to run—”

  “Used to?” He left us for another life. Got himself a new house, a new wife, a stepdaughter. But most of the time it feels like he’s still fleeing the scene of his earlier crimes. My dad’s present does not have room for his past. I haven’t seen him in weeks.

  “Verdad! I’m just saying. You run after school. Do your homework. That’ll get you tired. Get you to sleep.”

  What my mother fails to comprehend is that I’m tired all the time. Of everything. Tired isn’t the problem.

  I nod. So she’ll stop talking and also because I’m falling asleep.

  “Okay!” She slams her hands on the table.

  My eyes pop open. I droop from one side to the other like a rag doll.

  “So I got to get to work. Give me the highlights from last night.”

  She got no time for details. I don’t have any details anyway. I don’t have no problems. I have no friends. Anymore. I don’t want any. I have nothing to do except school and nowhere to be except home. That’s fine with me. The real problem is my moms will lecture me for the above lack of problems.

  I shrug. “Violin practice was fine.” I have a school recital tomorrow—my first without Blanca. “And yes, I aced my history test.”

  “Music to my ears!” My moms slaps the table again, making the coffee cups dance.

  “But I almost wish I hadn’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, this girl Nelly who’s in my class calls it the history of propaganda. Yesterday she went off about how all we ever learn about is Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Rattled off a bunch of names of African Americans I never heard of.”

  My moms walks her coffee cup to the sink and rinses it. “What does this have to do with your grade?”

  “Nothing? It’s just. I mean think about it. What about us? All we ever learn about is Cesar Chavez. And no offense, but . . .”

  “We ain’t Mexican.”

  “Word. There’s over a million Puerto Ricans in New York alone, but they ain’t one single one who did anything worth writing about in any textbook?”

  “What about that Sonia Sotomayor?”

  “That’s one, Ma. White people get a thousand. We get one?”

  She turns, leans against the counter, and folds her arms. “Well, after you get your college education you could rewrite all the textbooks if you like. And if you took another class, you could get to college faster. Today could be the day you change everything. Make a decision to move in the right direction.”

  “Right.” Rewrite history. If only.

  I stand up and push my chair in, careful not to scrape against the wood. My moms is super proud of taking out the nasty linoleum and installing the wood herself.

  “All I’m saying,” my moms says, grabbing my hand, “is have a good day. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I wash our mugs and set them in the dishwasher, our industrial-sized drying rack. I tie up the bread and reach up onto the fridge. Hurling the bread into the microwave on top, I expertly catch the bag of chips that falls out and toss it into my backpack. Time to catch the bus. On my way out the door, my moms sticks a piece of buttered toast in my mouth. And I head to school wishing I could go back in time, to this day a year ago, before what happened—happened. Back to when everything made sense. I made sense.

  2

  It’s dead silent in homeroom when I walk in. Everybody’s heads are down like they’re praying. But in reality they’re texting. I mean, kids are sitting right next to each other, but texting each other anyway. Blanca and I were rebels. In middle school we used to pass notes. Paper notes. Those you can keep. I have them all. I’m a freak.

  I have two seats saved in the back of every classroom. One for me. One for Blanca. From both, you can clearly see the door. From both, you could clearly duck behind the piles of textbooks if necessary. Because it can happen anywhere. In a school, in a church, in a mall, in—anywhere. White dudes are pissed and packin. I mean a POC may kill you for your wallet. But at least they are not killing you for your existence.

  I sit down and read a book. Like one made of paper. Yeah, paper. You know that shit that comes from trees? I wish life were like these books. They have one central theme. There’s a quota on how much could happen to you. My life’s got too many freakin plotlines.

  Ms. Moore: “Verdad? Wish you were here.”

  I look up from my book. I missed roll call.

  Me, dog-earing my book: “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  As much as my vocabulary is off the charts, using words with actual people is my Achilles’ heel. I never know what to say to anybody. My conversation starters are generally like this:

  Day 1: Freshman Year

  The kind of guy that a girl dreams would ask her out looks at me and smiles.

  Him: “Hey, girl. What’s poppin?”

  Me: “What do you want?”

  The guy who will never speak to me again holds up his hands and turns away.

  The nice girl from homeroom, who could be the person I sit with at lunch, looking over my shoulder: “So who you got for math?”

  Me: “Why?”

  The girl flares her nostrils and whispers to someone beside her.

  So it’s week four of freshman year at my new school and I have the same three friends, me, myself, and I. And even they sometimes don’t speak to each other. Funny how Blanca’s a ghost and I’m the one who’s invisible. But with books you’re never alone. And the characters never have to die. Because when you reread you resurrect people. Or like you could read up till the part that breaks your heart and just stop. Books are time machines.

  Someone knocks on the door. My body clenches like a fist. I’ve already mapped out the room. Every room I sit in. I know where to hide. What to use as a shield, what to use as a weapon.

  Ms. Perez, the vice principal, sticks her face in the glass and my brain registers how a normal person should act. Which makes things worse. Because now I’m all amped up with nowhere to redirect my terror. No matter what my brain knows, my body can’t dial it back. I dig my nails into my palms, redirecting myself from terror to pain.

  Ms. Moore opens the door for Ms. Perez. There’s somebody with her: a new student. White, wearing a baggy hoodie and tight jeans, half a head of light blond hair and the other half shaved bald.

  “Welcome,” Ms. Moore says to him—her?—huh—after Ms. Perez hands the kid off. “Why don’t you bring your paperwork over and
we’ll get you settled.”

  He/she/they doesn’t go directly to Ms. Moore’s desk, though. They stop in front of me, search my eyes like they’re looking for a set of keys dropped in the dark.

  I feel like when you’ve been dragging your feet against a carpet. Shock.

  “You good?”

  I exhale. How long have I been holding my breath? “Enough. Yeah.”

  He/she/they nods and moves on. While Ms. Moore is having a quiet one-on-one with the new kid, my phone buzzes. The group message on my phone is lighting up. The only reason I’m on it is because Nelly from my history class insisted nobody got left out. I never reply to any texts, but I can’t help watching them roll in.

  @ShutupU2: Can I ask it out or not? #thestruggleisreal.

  A collective silence falls over the classroom, but the harder everybody tries to eavesdrop on the conversation, the lower Ms. Moore speaks.

  @macncheesedaddy: My dude. That’s a dude! I seen him before at the park. No girl throws a ball like that.

  @Kidsister: That’s sexist.

  @ShutupU2: Name one girl we know that can. It’s bc you have those itty bitty hands.

  @Kidsister smacks @ShutUpU2 with her itty bitty white hands.

  @ShutUpU2 out loud: “But I can’t hit you back right?”

  Kidsister: “No. That’s domestic violence.”

  @shutupU2: “That’s not sexist?!”

  @XoXo: “I’m so confused.”

  @frodown: Wait. Those lashes. She’s definitely wearing eyeliner.

  @macncheesedaddy: Guyliner.

  @rican_havok: Good point

  @ShutUpU2: Check for stubble.

  @macncheesedaddy: That don’t mean it’s a guy. I mean Mrs. Perez.

  @blerdsneedluvtoo: LOL

  @ShutUpU2: Can’t see any tetas.

  @frodown: That doesn’t mean it’s a guy neither.

  @ShutUpU2: Guess not. I mean, what are you, anyway? An A cup? You need to do them exercises.