“Brother, watch it!” Emiliano shouts.
Brother Patricio slams on the brakes, just in time to avoid crashing into a truck ahead of them.
“Man, that would have been the end of all our seasons right there,” Pepe says.
“I just saw my life flash before my eyes,” Paco agrees, “and there were some very important things I didn’t get to do.”
Brother Patricio lets the truck gain some distance before he accelerates ever so slowly. “In response to your objections,” he says calmly, as if they hadn’t just barely escaped with their lives, “the first part of the pledge is important because so many of the kids we recruit have addiction problems. As to your second concern, we remain open to the possibility that girls will, at some point, want to be a part of the Jiparis. Women, after all, have as good or better capacity for enduring hardships, in the desert and elsewhere.”
“You have a lot of experience with women?” Paco quips.
“Laugh if you will,” Brother Patricio says with a mysterious grin.
Emiliano digs his cell phone out of his backpack and checks his messages. Perla Rubi’s texts are always short and sweet. The last one reads:
At library. Come by.
Then there are three messages from Sara.
Can you pick up eggs and milk on the way home?
No need to come by work today. I’ll take a bus.
Do you have money? I’ll pay you back tomorrow. Be good.
Emiliano smiles. Sara always tells him to be good. She knows he’ll have some money by the end of the day—assuming he can get to his bike while there’s still daylight. Once they get to school, he’ll head over to Javier’s house to pick up the piñatas the younger boy made. Then he’ll go to Taurus, where Memo’s grandmother sewed some kind of purse. Armando, the owner of the club, is usually there till noon, and it’s incredibly important that Emiliano talks to him. The kind of moneymaking opportunity he has in mind may not be around for long. But he’ll never make it to Taurus by noon the way Brother Patricio is driving, or crawling. Maybe Armando will wait for him. Emiliano looks up Armando’s number in his contacts and texts him:
Need to talk to you today. Got an idea that will be good for both of us. Be there a little after 12:00. Will you be there?
Afterward, he’ll take the piñatas and the purse over to Avenida Juárez and sell them to Lalo Torres, who will resell them to American tourists. All that will take Emiliano at least four hours, and then he needs to get home in time to shower and find a ride to Perla Rubi’s house for her mother’s birthday party. Oh, no. What about a present for Perla Rubi’s mother? Maybe he can stop by one of the jewelry stores on Insurgentes after Lalo pays him. There’s a ping on his phone. It is Armando’s response.
I was just thinking about you. I need to talk to you too. I’ll be here. But don’t be too much later than 12:00.
Emiliano smiles again. If Armando wants to talk to him, that means he has some kind of business proposition in mind. Perfect. They’re operating on the same wavelength. “Go, go, go,” he tells Brother Patricio, who is slowing down for another yellow light. “In Mexico, yellow means step on it, Brother!”
Brother Patricio stops. The car behind him honks. “We are in a big rush, are we?” he says with a knowing grin.
“His rush is waiting for him at school,” Paco says. “I keep telling him that he’s barking up the wrong tree. He doesn’t have a long-term chance with that kind of girl. She’s too rich for him. But he doesn’t listen.”
It takes a few moments for Emiliano to realize that Paco is talking about Perla Rubi.
“Why doesn’t Emiliano have a ‘long-term chance,’ as you say?” Brother Patricio asks. “She could do much worse than an honest, hardworking, law-abiding man like Emiliano.”
“Hardworking, maybe,” Paco says. “But honest and law-abiding? Just barely.”
Emiliano sees Brother Patricio smile at Paco’s words. Paco, Brother Patricio, and Emiliano all know about the time when Emiliano was not all that law-abiding. It’s okay. Paco is Emiliano’s best friend, and he’s allowed to allude to his shady past. And he’s used to Paco and Brother Patricio debating the “long-term” possibilities of his relationship with Perla Rubi. Paco’s wrong, but that’s okay too. Though they haven’t talked about it, Emiliano knows that Perla Rubi likes him just as much as he likes her.
Finally they turn onto the tree-lined street in front of the school. Brother Patricio honks twice, and Cristobal opens the iron gates of Colegio México. Cristobal has been the security guard since before the time when schools in Ciudad Juárez needed security guards. Emiliano sticks his hand out the window and slaps him a high five as they drive by. “Perla Rubi’s in the library,” Cristobal tells him with a wink.
“You’re living in la-la land,” Paco says. “It’s going to be painful to watch you crash.”
“You’re just jealous,” Emiliano says, clicking off his seat belt, getting ready to bolt out of the van.
“Would you mind waiting until I properly park this vehicle?” Brother Patricio says. “I’ll see you all here tomorrow at seven for the game against the Conquistadors. It’s in El Paso, remember, so we need to give ourselves enough time to get across the border.”
There’s a collective groan from every single boy in the van except Emiliano. He’s already sprinting to the library.
Emiliano knocks gently on the glass door of the library, and Chela, the cleaning lady, opens it for him. With a nod of her head and a smile, she points to where Perla Rubi is sitting.
“Thank you,” Emiliano whispers. He looks at the round clock behind the librarian’s desk as he enters. Ten forty-five. You can’t take too long talking to Perla Rubi, otherwise you’ll miss Armando, he reminds himself. He finds her at their usual table, tapping away on her laptop. She’s facing away from the door, so she didn’t see him walk in.
“Hello, Perla Rubi Esmeralda,” he says, trying not to sound out of breath. They like using their full names with each other because the names are both so ridiculous.
“Emiliano Zapata,” she says, suddenly beaming. “How was the game?”
“Okay. It was a practice game. No big deal.”
“Did you win?”
“Of course. Too bad you had to come in today. Volleyball practice again?”
“Yeah, in fifteen minutes. We need all the workouts we can get. No one really minds. I got here early to study for a physics test and … see you.”
Emiliano swallows. He tries to speak but he can’t. When he looks into Perla Rubi’s eyes, he is sometimes momentarily stunned. It’s as if he remembers how beautiful she is and how fortunate he is and both things happen all at once.
“Are you okay?” Perla Rubi asks, more amused than concerned.
“Yes, why?”
“You seem, I don’t know, strange, but in a good way.”
Emiliano takes a deep breath. “I have tons to do before the party tonight, and we play again tomorrow. Brother Patricio’s going a little overboard with the exhibition games.”