When he wobbles toward me I finish him with a roundhouse that knocks him out cold.
“Whatcha doing?”
The question makes me jump. Puts an end to my triumph. Once again I’m in my bedroom, alone.
Okay, not alone. My little sister, Gaby, is in the doorway. I turn. Confusion is bunching up her face, making her round cheeks even plumper.
Well, this is awkward. You don’t want your eight-year-old sister thinking you’re some weirdo.
I need to remember to shut my tricky door hard enough. Yet again it has clicked away and swung open. So it’s my bad. Gaby actually respects my knocking rule. I finally got Dad to start knocking too, which wasn’t easy. He’s a small-town Mexican who struggles to understand the concept of privacy the way the rest of us struggle with physics.
“Me?” I ask Gaby. “I was dancing.”
“For real?” Gaby’s eyes go wide. “What kind of crazy dancing was that?”
I snatch up the tie in case she wants to jump on my bed. “I was trying some moves for the party.”
She takes a seat on my desk chair instead and swivels, considering what I said.
With Gaby around, the anger has drained from me. I’m back to being chill, ready to give this tie another attempt.
“I’ve never been to a night party,” Gaby says, “but you should probably not dance like you were dancing.”
That makes me smile. “How do you suggest I dance?”
She stops swiveling to think this through, hands clasped to the sides of the chair.
She says, “You should look at how Karina and others are dancing, and dance that way.”
I stop messing with my tie to look at her.
“Good advice,” I say, putting out my fist.
Her four small knuckles press against mine.
Hanging out with Gaby is the best. Over the years, little by little, she’s turned into a real person. Gone from clueless and whiny to smart and fun.
We cook together and play games and watch enough animal documentaries and Pixar movies to qualify as buddies. Sometimes I wonder if she isn’t my actual best friend. If not, she’s a close second to Miguel.
Dad calls me a good brother for how tight we are, but the truth is I need her as much as she needs me. More than ever since Mom died fifteen months ago.
Cancer—a thought I push outta my head right now. Tonight, I’m all about positive thoughts.
I slide the tie knot up again, feeling good about it.
Yes! The bottom points to the top of my belt, as Dad says it should.
I turn to face Gaby and punch my fists high in the air, like I won a marathon or something.
“You look fancy,” she says.
“I am fancy,” I tell her. “Dad’s the one who fired the butler, sold the mansion, and moved us to this part of town.”
Gaby smiles and says, “At least we still have the yacht!”
I laugh, but Gaby cracks up for a good ten seconds, slapping her knee and everything. She’s the only person I know who laughs hardest at her own jokes.
As she takes a slow spin in the chair, her single thick rope of black hair trails behind her. Despite a few loose strands, the French braid I did for her this morning is holding up. What can I say? My braiding game is tight.
Gaby stops. She hops down from the chair, croaks “ribbit,” and hops onto the bed, landing on all fours. Frogs are her thing—learning about them and sometimes, when she’s in a goofy mood, hopping like them. After a hard rain, I sometimes take her to Collins Park to look for some.
Her favorite shirt is one with this cartoon frog face on it. Her second favorite is a solid green T-shirt, which she calls frog-colored.
I don’t know why, but silly stuff like that coming from her weird brain makes me love her even more.
I sit on the chair to put on my shoes.
Dad walks in, sees me, and asks in Spanish, “Has anybody seen my son, David?” Pronounces it Dah-VID.
Though his English is near perfect, it’s always Spanish with him. Gaby and I switch when he’s around.
Gaby points to me. “I think that’s him dressed up all fancy.”
Dad and I are now the same height and we both have short, barely combable hair. That’s where the similarities between us end. I have brown hair instead of black, lighter skin like my mom had, and the skinniness that runs deep on that side of the family.
He’s brought me his suit jacket, which is my last hope to appear bigger, but the shoulder pads curve down the sides all clownish.
“I’m way too skinny,” I say, handing it back.
“Skinny or fat doesn’t matter,” Dad says, setting a hand on my shoulder. “Being a man has nothing to do with how you look. A real man is honest, hardworking, and takes care of the people he loves.”
Ever since I turned seventeen two months ago, he’s been talking about what it means to be a real man.
“I still think I should go and meet the parents,” he says, sitting on the bed.
“Nobody does that here, Dad.”
“Fine, but you’re going to come home if there’s anything weird going on at this party,” he says, in a way that makes it sound like a question.
“Straight home,” I assure him.
I probably got permission because I made the honor roll again this semester. It also helps that I’m going with Karina, who my dad seems to love as much as me.
“Be careful driving,” he says, starting to launch into a lecture. “Check blind spots and remember to park on—”
“I remember, Dad.”
The trick for his ancient Pathfinder is to park in such a way that you don’t gotta put it in reverse. The noisy transmission, grinding for months now, is pretty much shot. You’d think a mechanic with his own auto shop would have replaced it. Dad, however, is broke. He’s paying off the house, most of the shop equipment, and there’s the rent of the place, of course.
If I hadn’t created a GoFundMe account when Mom died, the small funeral would have put us on the street.
Dad runs down the list of instructions.
I’m to use the center lane, which is the safest due to the choice of lanes if you need to steer to avoid an accident.
I’m to park along the curb, the front end of the car almost at the corner so nobody can block me.
“Be polite to everybody, especially the parents, and don’t slouch.”
It’s true I slouch a lot. Like right now, for instance. I straighten up.
The whole time Dad talks, Gaby is standing behind him on the bed, mouthing the words and wagging her finger. If I look directly at her I’ll laugh.
Dad’s always lecturing her on what to do or not do, so she gets a kick outta witnessing it happen to me.
Helicopter parent is a term I caught on the TV this one time and it describes him perfectly. Whenever I hear a helicopter overhead, the propellers beating the air around, I picture him up there with binoculars pointing at me, his grease-stained mechanic clothes ruffling in the wind.
“And no drinking!” he says now, lifting a calloused finger.
Gaby has stopped imitating him to put both hands on her hips and look at me. “There’s going to be beer?”
“There won’t be beer,” I assure them. “And I wouldn’t drink alcohol anyway.”
I’m totally drinking. Just enough to fit in.