“It’s a…” She stops. “What is it?”
It’s a guitar.
It’s an electric guitar, and it’s real. According to the writing on the box, it comes with its own case, plugs, wires, and a small amplifier. I draw in my breath. “Oh, I love it,” I whisper.
“You’ll be a real kickass now,” Natalia says. Our mom looks, but she doesn’t reprimand my sister for her language.
My dad is already cleaning up the wrapping paper. “You’ll have to take lessons,” he says. “But now you can play and sing along with yourself.”
I want to sing. I do. I used to sing a lot. All the time.
“They told us at the music store that it’s actually easier to play an electric guitar,” my mom is explaining. “Something about the weight of the strings. But if you want, we can return it and get the other kind. Whatever you want.”
I take it out of the box, and it’s resting in my hands like it belongs there. It’s red and shiny and skinny and totally awesome. Davy reaches up and plucks one of the strings. It makes a muted, whiny sound, not much like music.
“You’re a natural, Davy,” I tell him. He looks at me and grins. He might not talk a lot, but he’s got a great sense of humor.
More presents.
Natalia got me an Ariana Grande easy-chord songbook. We both love Ariana. Isabel hands me a little box of psychedelic guitar picks. And everyone has a handmade birthday card for me, and suddenly it all becomes too much, too much for one person.
It’s not that all this love is too much for one person—like me—and it’s not because I’m too sensitive or I cry too easily; it’s because, for some people, life is so unfair.
I heard your story before I even knew who you were.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there is another kid with a summer birthday, a boy, and he is standing next to me, and I am holding cupcakes. The boy is little as I am, but he already comes with a big story, a story I had heard around the neighborhood, about his family, about him, about his older brother. I heard a story from kids at school, from my own sister, and believe me, it wasn’t a good one. I wasn’t looking straight at him and he hadn’t even spoken to me yet, but I already knew the story wasn’t true.
“Hey, Lukas, you too?” Joy said, following me to the front of the room, where Mr. Carter was motioning for us.
“Me too, what?” I asked, even though I should have known, but this was way back in second grade.
“August,” she said. “Both of us! See?”
“Oh yeah, right.” She was talking about our birthdays.
“What day is yours?” she asked, and when I said mine and it turned out to be only two days after hers, she said, “How weird is that? What are the chances?”
All of this happened on the last day of school, because Mr. Carter, our teacher, had told us he’d use the last day of school for summer birthdays. That way, we’d get the same treats and attention the other kids got. No one even stood up when he called July. Then he called August, and her and me both stood up and headed to the front of the room.
I knew her name well, of course—Joy Fonseca. But even though we’d been in class together a whole year, and even though her family’s apartment was in the building right next to ours in Dolphin Gardens, that was the first real thing she ever said to me, the first time it seemed like she wanted to be talking to me on purpose, at least.
Hey, Lukas, you too?…What are the chances?
I remember it all perfectly, how she was skinny and small, and had this gigantic Tupperware container filled with homemade cupcakes, vanilla and chocolate, all swirled with thick tie-dye frosting, she was trying to maneuver. And I had a shoebox of slice-and-bake cookies I had made with my brother’s help, because I hadn’t told Mom my birthday was going to be celebrated.
Weird how those few seconds stay in my head. The sugar smell of her cupcakes wafting up, the way she said her words all stiff and formal, which can still sound more like a grown-up’s than a kid’s.
What are the chances? Both of us in August, she had said, or something like that.
I had answered with math. Or tried to. “Well, twenty-two kids divided by twelve months is…” But I couldn’t finish the problem that was forming in my head.
“You’ve got the right idea, Lukas,” Mr. Carter had said, stepping up to pat me on the back. “There’s definitely a math problem to be solved here.”
But not by me, at least not back then. Luckily, Joy didn’t care. She just laughed, getting what I was trying to do.
I still got embarrassed, and my words trailed off, and my face went hot, and my hands got all gross and clammy.
“You good at math, Lukas?” Joy had said, but it was more like she was telling me than asking. Then she had reached a hand up to flip her thick brown hair off her face and nearly dropped her container, with all the pretty rainbow cupcakes about to spill out. I quickly hoisted my shoebox under my arm so I could help her. “But it must be less than that, right?” she added once we’d secured things. “Because we’re both in August, so that makes it out of eleven months, not twelve.”
She had giggled, unsure of herself, but we knew right then that we both liked math pretty good, which is part of what got us hanging out together. For the rest of that whole summer, and after that. Math and word puzzles and riddles and scavenger hunts and playing outside the Dolphin Garden Apartments on the strip of grass with the swings. Even in the years that came after, when we didn’t actually wind up in classes together.
That day, in Mr. Carter’s class, was the day that sealed it. I had put my shoebox down and took her big plastic container for her, holding it while we walked the rows of desks together, her doling out those tie-dye-swirl cupcakes.
Afterward, she’d said, “Thanks, Lukas, you’re nice,” her voice rising on those last two words, almost like she was surprised or asking a question.
Like it took her a whole school year to realize it.
Later she explained how everyone talked about us—Mom and Justin and me—because my dad was dead and my mom worked so much, and so Justin and me were alone a lot of the time, off in the playground or skateboarding down Main Street, and younger than other kids whose parents might let them hang out alone. Except I wasn’t alone, because Justin was always watching me. But probably from the corner or something sometimes, so he could talk to his friends and I didn’t have to feel like such a baby anymore.
“Not to be mean or gossipy or anything,” Joy had cleared up. “More like because people worry about you and your brother…because you have no dad and all.”