“¡Cálmate! Don’t get all dramatic. You have me, too,” José said, sighing and pulling Zoey in for a side hug. “I just don’t want you to think bouncing around like Dad is okay. Someday you’ll have to choose one thing and work hard for it, like me. I studied. I tutored seventh grade math on the weekends to save up. I earned scholarships.…”
Zoey pulled away. “At least I’m not going to miss you putting down Dad all the time,” she muttered under her breath. José didn’t seem to hear though. He was deep into his lecture and sounded like he was reading one of his college essays about perseverance in the face of adversity.
Zoey tuned him out. She’d heard this spiel from her brother before. And she hated it when José called her “dramatic,” like she was blowing some silly thing out of proportion. Her concerns about Dad were real, and with good reason. Zoey remembered how pale and dull Dad’s bright blue eyes had gone after their mother suddenly passed away five years ago. Sometimes he still got that look—randomly at the mall when they walked by one of Mami’s favorite stores or after coming home from an awful day at work, grunting about an evil coworker or a new boss who knew less about customer service than he did. And it wasn’t just Dad’s eyes that went sad. His face and shoulders would droop too. Then he’d lock himself in his room to watch a sports channel, barely talking to Zoey or José. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for weeks.
When he got into his funks, Zoey was always terrified that Dad might have a heart attack out of the blue, like Mami, or maybe just slowly waste away in front of his basketball game. And then what would she and José do? They’d be orphans. Would they have to go to foster care? Would a new family adopt them? Were they too old to be adopted? Zoey had heard once that babies got adopted more often than bigger kids.
So Zoey was always relieved when a shiny new dream put the twinkle back in Dad’s eyes. Dad needed his dreams, and they needed Dad, so Zoey and José had to support Dad’s dreams. Why was that so hard for José to understand? It seemed like the straightforward logic that was usually right up his alley.
Suddenly, all the muscles below Zoey’s belly button seemed to tighten, the way her calf muscles cramped sometimes after she ran a mile in gym class. Zoey winced, doubling over the cart in pain.
José abruptly stopped mid-rant. “Zoey? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly alarmed.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Zoey whimpered, resting her head on the green twin XL sheet set. “My stomach is killing me, and…” She trailed off as, all at once, the pressure and pain eased. Except Zoey was suddenly aware of a wet sensation between her legs, as if she’d peed her pants. Oh no!
“Zo? What is it?” José asked again.
“It feels wet down there,” she whispered miserably.
“You probably just got your period,” José said. He pulled out his phone. “I’ll wait here while you go to the bathroom.”
Zoey’s eyes widened as her heartbeat sped up. She’d given up on experiencing this rite of passage. Already five-foot-four, she’d been filling out sports bras for a while. But since no period ever came she figured her body had just decided not to menstruate. The same way some people just couldn’t roll their Rs. But now that La Tia Rojita (Mami had always cheerily rolled the R when referring to her own period as “The Little Red Aunt”) had finally decided to visit, Zoey felt anything but relieved.
What should she do? Was there time to run back to Poppy’s house? Had she already bled through her shorts? Zoey spun in a circle in the middle of the aisle like a dog chasing its tail, trying to see if there were any dark stains on her butt.
José raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”
Zoey didn’t answer right away, but she stopped moving and hugged her arms to her chest.
“It’s. My. First. Period,” she said, panic seeping into her voice. Her whole body suddenly felt too warm and she looked down at her flip-flops, on the verge of tears. “And. I. Don’t. Know. What. To. Do.”
“What? I thought we talked about this, like, two years ago,” José said. He sounded annoyed, like he’d crossed Zoey’s first period off some mental list a while back and preferred not to revisit the subject.
It was true they had talked about her period almost two years ago—after watching this awful cartoon in fifth grade that made puberty sound like the zombie apocalypse, Zoey had come home with Questions. And, for lack of better options, asked José and Dad to explain the logistics the video had left out. What a mistake that turned out to be! Dad had awkwardly compared La Tia Rojita to a “really private paper cut that bleeds like heck once a month,” while José read her the Wikipedia summary on menstruation. And then one about elephant shrews, because, apparently, they menstruate too. But none of that seemed to have prepared Zoey because she was freaking out right now.
“Just because we talked about getting my period doesn’t mean I actually got my period then!” Zoey gawked at her brother and began to hyperventilate.
José’s expression softened. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Okay, breathe,” he said. “I’ll go get you the, ah, the supplies you need, and then you’ll go to the bathroom. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Zoey nodded, swallowing hard.
She forced herself to take deep breaths until she spotted José walking briskly back from the feminine hygiene aisle with a package cradled under his arm like a football.
“Got it,” José said, tossing the package to her.
She took one look at it before staring back at him in horror.
“Tampons?”
She batted the package back at him like a volleyball. José caught it easily.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t these the same brand Mami used?” José looked confused.
“Yeah, but Mami’s not here to show me how to put one in,” Zoey hissed, missing her mother more than ever. She took another deep breath. “And they look like they’re the size of crayons. What if it doesn’t absorb enough? Or what if it gets, you know, stuck? Can’t you just get me pads instead?”
José squinted at the lettering on the box, searching for instructions.
“They’re specially designed to be absorbent enough to do the job and small enough to be comfortable. I really don’t think these are that hard to use. You just put—”
“José!” Zoey shouted, then quickly lowered her volume when she saw a few people in the aisle glancing their way. Ugh. The last thing Zoey wanted was for strangers to hear her talking about her period. “I don’t want you to explain this. Especially in public! Just please get me the pads, okay?” she asked, feeling wretched.
“Yeah, okay,” José agreed, glancing around the crowded aisle. “I get what you mean.”
He returned with the pads, and, feeling slightly calmer, Zoey headed to the women’s restroom alone.
Inside the bathroom stall, she saw that a bright scarlet mark the size of a credit card stained her underwear, and there were red dime-shaped spots on her shorts, too. Should she take them off and wash them and her underwear before she put on the pad? But then she’d be standing in front of the sink naked from the waist down in a public bathroom.