Accidental Love (5 page)

"It's dark in here. I can't read the numbers. But, yeah, it's about fifty pounds, maybe more."

He did a set of ten lifts, got up smacking his hands, and announced, "I want to get me swolles, some muscle."

Marisa picked up the pen that had rolled from his shirt pocket.

"Every day I want to come here and pump iron!" Rene flexed his left, then right, biceps. "I want to be like the Terminator."

"If you want me to help you, then give me a kiss." Marisa couldn't believe she had said that!

His arms became as limp as wet noodles. "A kiss?" he asked weakly as he lowered his head. He
gazed down at the weights on the ground. "How about one more set first?"

He did two more sets, grunting through clenched teeth. They returned to the main quad of the campus just as the bell began to ring. Lunchtime was over, along with Marisa's opportunity to push her boy against the wall and force a kiss out of him. But she did blurt out, "Rene, you got to do something about your socks."

"They're clean."

"Nah, homeboy, your clothes ain't tight." She felt pity for the guy. "You can't wear white socks like you do."

Rene peeked at the lower extremities of his high-water pants.

"Your socks gotta match your pants."

"My mom never says anything." He offered his baffled face to her.

Marisa propped her hands on her hips and wiggled her bottom. "Big boy, do I look like your mama?"

Rene smiled as he tugged on his pants legs, trying to hide the blazing whiteness of his socks. "No, you look like..." He began his asthmatic laughter. "You look—
honk
—like—
honk—
my
—honk, honk—
my hot mama!"

They put their first kiss on hold.

***

It was early evening when Alicia called.

"Marisa, it's me."

Marisa closed her bedroom door to block out the sound of the mixer going at high speed in the kitchen. "What's going on?"

Silence.

"Are you mad at me?" Marisa asked.

Alicia didn't answer the question. "How come you're at that new school? You think you're better than us?" Her voice sounded forced and unnatural, as if she had been practicing the lines of a bad play and couldn't get them right.

"I never said I was better than you." Marisa was hurt. She raised a fingernail to her mouth and chewed.

"I didn't say that. Some other girl said that."

Marisa pictured her so-called friends cutting her up, calling her a coconut—brown on the outside but white at the core. They were probably calling her fat, tangle haired, smelly maybe, and extending their insults to her family.

"I don't care what other people think. They're stupid. I'm happier over there."

"How come you don't like it over here?"

"Here" was a school with no working drinking fountain, no nets on the basketball rims, no toilets
that flushed consistently, no teachers who hadn't had their cars keyed or tires poked with ice picks. "Here" was a school whose flag could only be hoisted halfway up.

"I'll be straight-up and tell you I don't like Washington," Marisa stated firmly. "It's nasty. I just want to do something different." To change the subject, she asked Alicia how her leg was. She almost asked about Roberto.

"When am I going to see you?" Alicia asked. "I'm going crazy in my room."

Marisa felt for her friend. "Yeah, you're stuck in bed."

"Nah, it hurts a little bit, but I can get around."

They made plans to get together at a school car wash at Marisa's
old
school, Washington.

"Heard from Roberto?" Marisa risked asking.

"He left some messages on my machine, but I'm not calling him back."

"Right on, girl." Marisa told her friend that she had to go, that her mother was screaming for help in the kitchen.

"I miss you," Alicia murmured.

Marisa was confused. First Alicia had called to say that a bunch of shanky classmates were talking about her. Then she was being all friendly.

"I'll call you," she told Alicia.

In the kitchen her mother was licking the blades of the hand mixer.

"You want some?" her mother asked. She handed Marisa a whirly blade white with frosting. Marisa took the blade and made a swipe with her fìnger. As she licked the frosting she warned herself, "That's twenty calories and more if I keep going!" She set the blade into the sink. "What did you want, Mom?"

"I want you to finish the cake." Her mother pointed at a lopsided cake that required a layer of frosting. "Use a plastic spatula."

Marisa plastered the cake with frosting and then helped make
frijoles.
She oiled a pan, set it on a burner, and after a long minute scooped beans into it. The beans, little troopers, sizzled and marched in the pan.

"Mom, do you think I should be going to Hamilton instead of staying at Washington?" Marisa mashed the beans and added a handful of yellow cheese.

Wearing mismatched oven mitts, her mother slowly brought a pan of red enchiladas out of the oven and set it on the counter. "
Claro.
Of course you should." She took off the mitts and peeled back the aluminum foil. Steam rose against her face. "Why? Don't you like it there?"

"Yeah, I do, except I just got a call from Alicia."

"
Pobrecita.
How's her leg?"

"She's home and she's getting around on crutches." Marisa hesitated but finally informed her mother that some shisty girls were talking about her.

"So let those
cholas
talk about you like that!" Her mother was furious, like a blender on high. "Just because you're going to a better school. They're jealous!" She cupped her hands and yelled to the den, "Rafael! It's dinner."

"I like it at my new school," Marisa said.

"I know you do. You're going to do well." She cupped her hands and called out a second time, "Rafael—
ven!
We're waiting for you."

Marisa poured iced tea from a pitcher, and instead of doctoring hers with scoops of sugar, she took it plain. When she cut into her enchilada, steam rose and moistened her forehead. She blew on a forkful and told her father, "Dad, I'm trying out for a play."

"¿Cómo?"
His big mustache went up and down as he chewed.

"I'm going out for
Romeo and Juliet.
"

He chewed and chewed, cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with his napkin, picked up a grain
of
arroz
that had fallen from his fork onto the table, and remarked, "I used to know Romeo and Juliet."

"Dad, get out of here," Marisa said in disbelief.

"No, really," he said as one hand absently rubbed the front of his stomach. "Back in high school. There was a guy, Romeo Garcia, and his girlfriend was Julieta Mendoza. They were an item."

As she drank, Marisa stared at her father through the bottom of her glass of iced tea. Her father seldom veered far from the truth. She listened as he told her how Romeo loved his Julieta until this other guy came along.

"Who was this other dude?"

He looked her straight in his eye. "It was me."

Marisa's mother slapped his arm. "
Mentiroso.
You were too busy chopping cotton to have a girlfriend."

"Chopping cotton." He chuckled with both hands on the ball of his stomach. "That's how I met Julieta." He winked at his daughter and went for a second helping.

Marisa was in bed, near the edge of sleep with her math book in her face, when her cell phone rang. She rose up onto her elbows and plucked her phone from the headboard, where she kept her stuffed animals.

"Yeah?" she asked, face draped with her hair. She swept it out of her eyes, which were still closed but suddenly opened when the voice asked, "How's Alicia?"

Roberto—the rat,
la rata.

"Why are you calling?" Marisa glared at the clock on her chest of drawers. The clock glowed
10:18.

"I'm calling because Alicia won't answer her phone."

"She don't want to see you. You broke her leg. Worse, you cheated on her and Alicia told me that girl in the photo was
muy fea.
" She snapped closed her math book and set it roughly onto the floor.

Marisa could hear Roberto swallow. He muttered, "How come our school ain't good enough for you?"

She clicked off the phone as she muttered, "
Tonto
jerk." But a second later the phone rang again. She picked it up and roared a frosty, "I said she don't want to talk to you."

"You don't want to talk to me?"

It was Rene, a lamb with no sins except bad taste in clothes.

"Oh, Rene, it's you! I'm sorry." Marisa sat up and rubbed the hammer of her right fist against her sleepy eyes.

"I'm calling you because..."

"Because you like me?" Marisa risked. "You're so sweet."

"Yeah—" He giggled. "And because I got up to doing fifteen push-ups without stopping."

"My Terminator!" Marisa crowed.

"Oh, come on, Marisa, I'm not really that strong yet."

Marisa could see him bashfully lowering his face. She pictured him doing each of the fifteen push-ups and shaking from the pain as he touched his nose to the floor.

"Yes, you are!"

"Oh, my," Rene whispered and then told her that his mother had bought him a pack of blue socks.

After school Marisa leafed through a worn copy of
Romeo and Juliet
and was smart enough to figure out that neither she nor Rene could play the leads, though she had a faint inkling that perhaps they could bring a new angle to those roles. After all, couldn't Juliet be fat and Romeo skinny? And weren't they in love?

They were straddling a bench under a tree that had given up all its leaves. The school campus was nearly empty. Somewhere a janitor was vacuuming a classroom. Somewhere kids were playing football on a brownish field.

"I could be a really, really skinny Romeo," Rene remarked. He handed Marisa a stick of gum.

"Then I'm Juliet." Marisa unwrapped the gum from its silvery foil and folded it into her mouth. "Thanks for the gum, Romeo." She turned her attention momentarily to a lone skateboarder riding halfway up a cement wall nicked with wheel skids.

"The gum is from my trick-or-treat candy."

Marisa shoved him. "Getta outta here! You didn't go trick-or-treating. Anyway, Halloween ain't for another week."

"It's from my last year's stash."

Marisa rolled the gum onto the carpet of her tongue and was ready to deposit it into her hand when Rene said, "Just kidding."

"What's your mother like?" Marisa asked.

"Tall and kind of strict." He chewed his gum loudly. "What's yours like?"

"Short and sometimes really angry about things." In truth, her mother had softened. She was glad about her daughter's new school, though Marisa had told her nothing about Rene. "What's your dad like?"

"Short," Rene answered. "But my parents are divorced." He looked into the distance as if his father was somewhere far away and he was trying to catch a glimpse of him. Marisa sighed and wished she hadn't asked the question. They laced their hands together and wiggled their fingers.

"What about the play?" Marisa asked. "I don't know any of these characters." She ran down the cast: Mercutio, Escalus, Benvolio, Nurse. Marisa tapped the word
nurse.

"I'll play the nurse, like you said earlier. I could play a person helping other people."

"Marisa, it's not like a
nurse,
nurse. This character is sort of like ... a babysitter."

Marisa wrinkled her forehead, confused.

"In the play, the nurse is Juliet's helper, you know, like someone who helps her dress and stuff. She's like a confidante."

"Where did you learn to talk like that?" Marisa asked. "I never use words like that one you said."

"The word is
confidante.
It means someone you tell your innermost thoughts to without worrying. What you tell that person is kept between you two."

"Oh, so if I tell you something really private, you'll keep it to yourself?"

"That's right." Rene tapped the toe of his shoe. "So what are you going to tell me?"

"I'm not going to tell you anything. You'll tell somebody in your chess club."

"I won't! I'm your confidant." He made a large swooping crossing motion across his heart. His Adam's apple rode up and down as he waited for her to deliver a secret. "So what is it?"

Right then the skateboarder rolled back, hands in his pockets, and taunted, "Hey, doofus!"

Marisa's fists clenched. "What did you say?" She pulled her leg over the bench like she was getting off a horse, ready to smack him one.

The skateboarder sailed away, shirttail flapping. His greenish hair was like a horn on top of his head.

"He's a pimply
güey
." Her chest was heaving. She was aware that her new classmates were sizing the two of them up, and earlier in the week she had heard snickers when they'd passed by together in the hallway. But this was the first direct verbal strike.
What is it to him, that ugly fool?

"I don't care," Rene said. "So what's your secret?"

Marisa breathed in and out several times as she calmed herself. She assembled nice thoughts and, nervously turning the ring on her thumb, announced, "Well, Mr. Confidence, I have never had a
beso
laid on me."

"What?"

"A kiss, homeboy."

"You mean your grandmother never kissed you?"

"No, not like that! You know what I mean." She closed her eyes and waited for Rene to bring his face toward hers. She waited and waited, then peeked through the shadows of her eyelashes. Her eyes sprang open. Rene was no longer next to her.

From the corner of her eye she could see the skateboarder who had taunted Rene. He was on his back, his legs fanning in and out, hurt by a spill. He meant nothing to her. "What are you doing?" she called to Rene, who was at a nearby trash can.

"Getting rid of my chewing gum," he hollered in return as he tried to shake the gum into the trash can. The gum was stuck to his fingers.

Oh, he's such a nerd,
she thought, then closed her eyes and waited for him to return.

Rene tasted of Juicy Fruit when Marisa finally got her first
beso.