He says it three times, and I still don’t believe him.
REX
The house is freezing when I get home. My father must be here. With this house being so big and him being such a reclusive neat freak, the temperature of the house is one of the only ways I can tell the man is in. I never see his car because he keeps it parked in the garage, which is too small for my pickup truck.
My phone rings and it’s Nya.
“Hello,” I answer, and sit down on the concrete bench in the mudroom.
“Hey, heard about the game. Sorry you lost,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply, and take off my LeBrons. The cold stone floor shocks the bottoms of my feet, even through thick socks.
“Heard you still had thirty-six points, though.”
Did I? I think. Carli made me forget all about my stats.
“It never feels good losing, but at least that’s a positive,” she says.
Nya’s big on positives. I like that about her. “True,” I say, and store my shoes in a cubicle beneath the bench.
“So, did Danny have an off night?”
“Nah, not really.”
“Oh, Jason was ball hogging again?”
“No.”
“Well, what happened, then?”
I usually like that Nya asks a lot of questions. Keeps the conversation flowing, which I’ll admit, I’m not always the best at. But tonight, the only answer to her questions is Carli. How do I tell her that?
“Oh, well. Can’t win ’em all,” she says, letting me off the hook. “I figured since y’all lost, you wouldn’t feel like going to the movies.”
But I can tell by the hope in her voice that she still wants to go. Hope that’s making me feel terrible because I’m wondering what it would be like to take Carli to the movies. What it would be like to see her again. I have to see her again. “Yeah, it’s probably too late now.”
“Well, there’s actually a midnight showing if you want to make that?”
“Sorry, I’m too tired,” I lie, and make my way to the kitchen. When I get there, I open the fridge. “Arepas! Angie must’ve come today.”
“A-what-who?”
I take the Pyrex out of the fridge and put it on the counter. “Let me tell you, Angie’s arepas go so hard.”
“Who’s Angie?” Nya asks with a hint of she-bet’-not-be-a-side-piece in her voice, which doesn’t even make sense.
I’ve already told her that I don’t have time to waste trying to keep up with multiple girls. And even if I did, what kind of fool would I be telling her about one of them? “My babysitter,” I say, and get a plate out of the cabinet.
“Babysitter?” Now she sounds confused.
I start preparing a plate of Angie’s arepas and rosemary chicken (also bomb). “Well, she was my babysitter growing up.” Damn, I miss Angie. She was the only person I had to talk to around the house. She started looking after me when I was born and my father decided to become a heart surgeon. He took forever. Twelve years, to be exact. Twelve years of never being home and studying in his room whenever he was home. Finally finished his residency two years ago, but nothing’s changed. He’s still always gone or in his room. Only difference is that now we live in this big-ass house in the boonies and I have a team that hates me. I pop the plate in the microwave.
“Oh,” she sighs. “So she still comes by sometimes to make . . . wait, what’s it called?”
“Arepas. They’re these little corn pancake things filled with cheese,” I answer, thinking about how Angie used to come over every morning and make them for me. That is, until she had a kid of her own. I was about nine.
After that she’d come over two or three times a week to bring groceries, make meals, and take me to games. Man, I used to get so hyped the days I’d step off the bus and see her blue Corolla parked outside our house. Having her around lifted me out of my father’s cold silence.
But there’s no escaping it these days. Now that we live way out here in Woodside, I can drive, and Angie has three kids; she makes it when she can, which is usually once a month. And that’s if I’m lucky.
“They sound good. Maybe when you finally let me come over, I can try some.”
“Shi—oooot,” I say, catching myself, “these are as good as gone.”
“I heard that,” Nya says in a stern-mama type tone. See, she has this thing with cursing. Probably comes from going to church every Sunday. She’s always inviting me, but I like to spend my Sundays outside, taking in the glory of trees and sky. Anyway, every time I curse, I owe her a kiss (with tongue) in the hallway beside her locker at school.
“But I didn’t curse, though.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“I didn’t!”
“You almost did.”
“Almost doesn’t count,” I say. I mean it’s cool that I’ve had someone to walk the halls with the last few months, but I’m still not down with all that PDA stuff. I take out the apple juice and drink it straight from the jar. The sweet, cold liquid feels good running down my throat.
“What are you drinking?”
“Juice,” I answer, and pour myself a tall glass—straight up liquid gold.
“So first you want to curse, and now you’re over there sippin’ on gin and juice?”
I chuckle. It’s almost funny. I like how Nya can almost be funny sometimes. But I shouldn’t be laughing at all. Not when I have to tell her about Carli.
The microwave beeps, but I don’t get my food out.
“I have something I need to tell you,” I say.
“What?” she asks.
I don’t know why this feels so hard. I mean, what sixteen-year-old hasn’t left one person for another person or told someone I can’t do this anymore or straight up ignored someone until they stopped calling.
But Nya is the closest thing I’ve had to a friend since I’ve moved out here. Because I’m kind of quiet and mostly keep to myself, people are always making up stuff about me. Me being an arrogant asshole is my new team’s favorite.
The thing that people don’t understand is that when you spend a lot of time by yourself, you get used to keeping how you feel and what you think on the inside. But most people aren’t having that. They need words. Words to put them at ease. Words to validate them. Words to excite and entertain them. And when you’re not coming with the words they need, they’ll start trying to figure out what’s wrong with you. And when they can’t figure it out, they have no problem making stuff up.
Learned that early, when the kids in my hood started calling me Half-taco. They said I didn’t talk (barely said anything back then) because I could only speak Mexican. Used to piss me off so bad. First of all, Mexican is not a language. Second of all, Angie was Colombian and spoke better English than Spanish. If they wanted to be racist, they could’ve at least gotten their facts straight. But no.
So I’d fight. And when I got tired of that, I’d keep to myself. Had to walk a mile and a half to the basketball court at Emancipation Park, where all anyone cared about was ball, just to have some normal interaction with people. And by the time I was old enough to play ball for the school, I was used to keeping to myself. Used to being the dude everybody saw but nobody really knew. It felt safer that way.