It’s “Chelle” for my name plus the song “Cell Block Tango” from the musical Chicago. Have you seen it?
Gabe:
You know I haven’t.
Michelle:
Cool. We can watch it this weekend.
Gabe:
Can’t wait . . .
Michelle:
Is that sarcasm? From someone with the username Bronx Gamer 15 years old? Why don’t you add your social security number while you’re at it?
Gabe:
I take it back. Your username is awesome. Let’s move on.
Michelle:
Where should we start?
Gabe:
Zack escaped when he was young, so we should pick up where he is now, since we saw that glimpse of him right before the cliffhanger ending.
Michelle:
Did they ever say where he’d been hiding?
Gabe:
No. I guess they were going to show it as flashbacks in season 2?
Michelle:
Okay, well, if YOU were a prince with a murderous dad whose mom had just faked her own death, where would you go?
Gabe:
Hmm . . . The Mos Eisley Cantina.
Michelle:
LOL this isn’t Star Wars! They’re not in a galaxy far, far away!
Gabe:
Yeah, but somewhere like Tatooine seems like a good place to disappear. Worked for Obi-Wan, right? Everyone has secrets and no one’s gonna ask too many questions. Maybe Zack became a bartender. He hears all the gossip but he’s basically invisible to everyone around him.
Michelle:
Can Riva be a bounty hunter now? And Queen Seravida, who is also in hiding, hires her to find Zack.
Gabe:
Does Zack recognize Riva?
Michelle:
Maybe not immediately, but they were best friends, even though she was a commoner. Part of him would recognize her, right? I mean, I’d recognize you, even if years had passed.
Gabe:
Same. Riva finds him, but he doesn’t go quietly. He thinks his father is the one who hired her.
Michelle:
Then Riva tackles him, stuns him, and drags him to her ship.
Gabe:
Um, Zack is a trained fighter. And the actor is like half a foot taller. How is Riva doing all that?
Michelle:
Hello, she’s a badass bounty hunter who never loses a target. Besides, she’s his BFF, so his guards are down.
Gabe:
Fine. So he’s like, “Tell my father I’m never going back.” And she’s like, “I would, but it was your mother who hired me.”
Michelle:
And then he’s like, “AY DIOS MÍO, my mami is alive?!”
Gabe:
Uh, maybe not exactly like that.
Michelle:
And Riva stuns him anyway!
Gabe:
Of course she does . . .
Chapter 5
Gabe kept his gaze glued to the windows as they exited the highway at Pelham Parkway and drove down the tree-lined avenue through the streets of the Bronx to their old neighborhood. Faded memories clashed with the reality lit by yellow streetlights. There was something disconcerting about being back—an underlying sense of comfort, but also of wrongness. He didn’t belong here.
As they turned off Eastchester Road onto Morris Park, he twisted in his seat to look out the window at a familiar green-and-white logo.
“Was that a Starbucks?”
Michelle let out a muffled snicker. “Yes, Gabe. Even the Bronx has Starbucks now.”
As they crossed Williamsbridge Road, Gabe was hit with a pang of grief. That was where his father’s stationery store had been before it’d closed, shortly after Gabe left for college in California.
That move—along with the way he’d dropped the news—had been the beginning of the end of his relationship with his parents.
It had been right after Michelle ripped up his flight printout and kicked him out of her room. He’d gone home to pack and make dinner, and he’d blurted it out the second his dad was done eating.
I’m going to California.
His parents hadn’t been happy, to say the least. The shouting match that followed had spanned two languages and countless old arguments about school, Gabe’s choices, and family obligations. His father had dismissed Gabe’s accomplishments—like graduating with honors and getting a scholarship to UCLA were nothing—and his mother had called Gabe ungrateful.
And then he and his father had their last big fight about the stationery shop.
You are part of a family, Gabriel. Families make decisions together. You need to stay here and help with the store.
Pop, the store is going under. It’s only a matter of time.
The store will be fine if you help—
Nothing I do is going to help the store!
It would if you tried!
The store is your dream, Pop. I’m going after mine.
To do what? Play baseball? What are you going to do, join the Yankees?
I don’t know. But it’s not working at a card shop in the Bronx. I’m leaving. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
Gabe had seen them a few more times after that, but it had only gotten worse. After the incident at his sister’s wedding, he’d been done with his parents for good.
Michelle turned on their street, and Gabe’s pulse spiked. Familiar houses, barely changed in the last decade, pinged his memory one after the other, each a little pinprick of grief.
No. There was no way he could spend four days here. It would kill him.
Who was it who’d said “You can never go home again”? Whoever it was, they were right. This wasn’t his home anymore. And he couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back.
The Amato and Aguilar families lived on a block with a few small stand-alone houses—a combo of red brick and aluminum siding—that had driveways, but no garages. Predominantly an Italian neighborhood, the demographic had shifted a bit over the years Gabe had lived there. He had no idea what it was like now, except that his Puerto Rican and Mexican parents and Michelle’s Puerto Rican and Italian parents still lived there. Michelle’s mother was one of the reasons his own mom felt comfortable moving next door.
After Gabe left for the last time, the only person he’d stayed in touch with was his older sister, Nicole.
Nikki was a mom now, with two children—Oliver, who was seven, and Lucy, who was nine and had transitioned two years earlier. Gabe had met his niece and nephew for the first time when Nikki had taken the kids to Disneyland. Gabe bought their tickets, since they’d made the longer flight to Disneyland in California, as opposed to Walt Disney World in Florida, just to see him. It was the first time he’d seen Nikki in person since her wedding, and he’d had fun with her and the kids. And when Nikki and her husband, Patrick, took a family trip to Colorado, Gabe had flown out to join them.
He FaceTimed with Lucy and Oliver regularly, but when he thought about his own uncles, he couldn’t help but feel like he was remiss in his Tío Duties. Tío Marco, Gabe’s godfather, had always been around when he was a kid. His father’s younger brother, Marco, had helped Gabe’s parents when they’d moved to this neighborhood, had picked Gabe up from baseball practice and gone to his games, and intervened when Gabe’s dad got on his case about working more hours in the stationery store.
Stop thinking about the store, Gabe told himself. It would only make this worse.
As Michelle pulled into the driveway of her family’s house, Gabe scrunched down as much as he was able to. He peeked out the car window at his parents’ house, to the right of Michelle’s. It was too close, the car and steps too visible from the front windows.