Accidental Love (7 page)

"You got to have a secret."

Rene touched his chin and looked skyward dramatically. He then shivered once as his gaze leveled and directed a soft kiss on her lips.

"I like that," purred Marisa, who had accepted the kiss with her eyes open.

"That was one of my secrets. That was the kind of kiss I used to plant on my pillow."

"You kissed your pillow?"

"I slobbered all over it." He laughed with his hand over his mouth.

After his giggling subsided, he opened the copy of
Romeo and Juliet
and said, "Let's practice."

So they sang, out of tune,

"That fair for which love groan'd for and would die,
With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair.
Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
Alike bewitched by the charm of looks..."

They sang the long chorus three times, and before the fourth time Rene brought out his recorder from his backpack.

"With music," Rene suggested. He licked his lips and began to play.

"I'm in love," Marisa told herself. Poetry and music! Her life had changed all because of Alicia and Roberto. If they hadn't got into the car accident, none of this would have happened. This was one of her secrets. Another was that she had liked Roberto a lot, but that was a long, long time ago.

Aunt Sara came over for dinner. She arrived lugging a bag of oranges from the tree in her yard. Marisa gave her aunt a kiss and pried the bag from her.

That night they ate the tamales Marisa's mother had defrosted.

Her mother couldn't help saying, "A young man came by to see Marisa today."

"Mom!" Marisa scolded. She felt her cheeks burn.

"But it's true," her mother remarked.

Marisa's father shook his head at his wife, who grumbled, "Okay, I won't say anything." She parted her tamale and pretended to be hurt.

They ate in silence for only a few minutes before Marisa said, "He's a boy from school. We're in a play."

Her aunt's eyes shone. "That's nice."

"We're going to be in a performance at school. You should come and see it."

"I will." Her aunt reached for the basket filled with tortillas wrapped in a dish towel. "What play, sweetheart?"

Marisa pinched up a glob of
frijoles
in a piece of tortilla and shoved the untidy portion into her mouth. She chewed and chewed and wondered whether she should tell them—they were all waiting for her answer. She swallowed, drank from her water glass, and answered,
"Romeo and Juliet."

"Oh!" her mother squealed. "How romantic!"

When Marisa's mother said she didn't have to go to work the next day—something about the office building being fumigated—Aunt Sara suggested that her niece stay with her overnight. This way her mother wouldn't have to get up early and drive
across town. Marisa could wake up and walk the three blocks to Hamilton Magnet.

"That'll be fun," Marisa said, and ran to her room to get her things. When she snatched her cell phone from the chest of drawers, she saw that she had two messages. She pocketed the cell phone and went to the bathroom for her toothbrush and brush.

Aunt Sara didn't risk asking about Rene, whether he was a friend or if their friendship had advanced to the level of boyfriend and girlfriend. She drove her Volvo station wagon with both hands on the wheel and her eyes flitting up to the rearview mirror every few seconds. She was a cautious driver.

"His name is Rene," Marisa braved.

"That's a nice name. I knew a girl from school named Renée."

They drove in silence for two blocks before her aunt said, "I saw you had a lot of grass on your sweatshirt."

"We were sitting on the grass." Marisa relived the two kisses and had to smile at the image of Rene playing the recorder. "My mom is so embarrassing."

Aunt Sara chuckled. "She is funny."

Marisa reached into her front pocket and brought out her cell phone. She had two more messages.

"But he's your
novio, qué no?
"

Novio.
Marisa hadn't applied that Spanish-language distinction. But, yes, she answered her favorite aunt, he was her
novio.

"And you're really going to be in this play,
verdad?
" Her aunt braked as the light turned yellow.

"Yeah, but we don't have any lines. We just sing in the chorus." She shoved her cell phone back into her pocket.

'"Just sing'? Singing is everything." She gunned the engine when the light turned green. Aunt Sara began to sing a Mexican song, and Marisa was lulled by the song of a young woman who loses her boyfriend to another girl.

That won't happen to me,
Marissa thought.
Rene will always be mine.

At Aunt Sara's house, Marisa showered and then put on her jeans and a T-shirt with the Simpsons on the front. In the steamy bathroom, she checked her messages.

"It's me," the first one said. "Me" was Alicia, asking why Marisa wanted to keep fighting Roberto. The second was from Alicia, too, saying she was sorry for the first phone call.

"Oh, god," Marisa moaned. Couldn't Alicia see that Roberto was no good?

She checked the third message.

"It's me!" It was Rene, who told her about a PBS program on television about volcanoes until his mother's voice—the voice was harsh—told him to get off the phone.

The fourth message was Rene, too. He was singing a made-up tune for "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite."

Marisa clicked off the phone feeling happy. But she had to wonder about Rene's mother, a dragon by the sound of her voice. Was this his secret? She played back the last message of Rene singing, and then she joined her aunt in the living room for an evening of chess—Marisa was determined to learn a few moves to improve her game.

Because they didn't have speaking parts in
Romeo and Juliet,
Marisa and Rene didn't have to show up at many rehearsals. Rene introduced her to chess club and science club meetings, where she clamped her mouth shut and tried to keep from yawning. Bored, she did her homework during the meetings and started a journal that she kept for three days. One day she wrote, "I'm hungry, I mean, really hungry." She mused about food all day. She sensed weakness in her fingers when she wrote that line and later used her famished state as an excuse to give up her journal. She just couldn't write. She was delirious from hunger. How she would have loved to poke a straw into a thick strawberry shake and suck to her heart's content.

She had gone on a diet of fruit and cereal, though when her mother served heavy dishes like lasagna, her nostrils flared and her mouth watered. She would ask her mother to serve her a small portion, and then complain that she meant small but not
that
small. She avoided potato chips and cookies, two temptations that appeared in her dreams. She avoided that tub of chocolate ice cream in the freezer and the crumbly Mexican
queso de cotija.
Instead, she ate apples and oranges, and cracked open pomegranates full of jewels that bled bittersweet juice as she chewed. She bought an overpriced bag of unsalted sunflower seeds, ate a portion of its contents, and threw the rest to the sparrows.

She was losing weight, but her resolve to stay on the diet was tested when Rene suggested trick-or-treating together. She had given up that fall ritual two years ago—too babyish. But she missed dressing up in costumes that she assembled from boxes of clothes in the garage, and missed the sound of candy falling into a grocery bag.

"I'm going to go as a nerd," Rene said, straight-faced, before he erupted in laughter.

"But, Rene, you're a nerd all the time!" Marisa laughed and begged him to please keep his cell phone in his pocket, not on his belt. She hugged
him, called him "my precious
nerdito,
" and told him how proud she was that he had retired his white socks.

But neither went trick-or-treating. Rene had to hand out candy at his house, and Aunt Sara asked Marisa to do the same at her place. Aunt Sara was working the night shift at the hospital and didn't want to leave her house empty on a night when not only goblins and spirits but downright nasty thieves broke into homes. She left Marisa with a pizza and three bags of candy to hand out.

"I shouldn't," she told herself as she pulled a cheesy slice of pizza toward her mouth. "I really shouldn't." But her tongue rolled out, and she bit into the slice. Her eyes fluttered closed. It was too delicious. She took a second and third bite and then wiped her fingers on a paper napkin when she heard the shuffling of little feet at the front door. When the doorbell rang, she snatched a bag of candy from the coffee table.

"Trick or treat!" screamed three girls, all princesses.

Marisa rained big chunky candies into their bags, and showered more into the bags of the next herd of trick-or-treaters.

She was kept busy. When the hordes finally stopped coming, she returned to the kitchen with
her mouth watering for her half-eaten slice of pizza. It had grown cold and gooey, so she popped it in the microwave and returned to the front door when the bell rang.

"Trick or treat," a crew of three guys croaked, their deep voices sounding like frogs.

"Hey," one of them said after he grabbed three fistfuls of candy. "Ain't you Marisa?"

They're from Washington,
she guessed.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

The guy stripped off his mask. It was a screaming face, modeled after a painting that had been popular since he was a baby. But he was no longer little, though his pants were riding low. He had a faint mustache and his teeth were yellowish from cigarette smoke.

"Joel," Marisa said. "Aren't you too old for trick-or-treating?"

"
¡Chale!
I could do it two more years." He threw two fingers up like a pitchfork. "After that I'll give it a rest, and then when I get my kids, I'll push them in the stroller."

"¡Qué gacho, carnal!"
one of the friends cried with laughter.

Joel's friends stripped off their masks. Marisa recognized one of them, and the other was someone she had never met and would rather not know—a chain of bluish tattooed tears fell from the corner of his right eye.

"You moved,
qué no?
Is this your crib?" Joel asked as he leaned around Marisa and peered in. "I like the couch.
Es muy firme
for,
tú sabes,
a little action."

"It's my aunt's place."

"Your
tía
home?"

"Yeah, she's home." Marisa's heart began to thump. Joel wasn't the worst guy in the world, but he wasn't an altar boy, either.

"Too bad," Joel crowed as he wiggled his hips and threw his arms into the air. "We coulda partied. You feel me?" He brought a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit up. "Hey, how come you moved to that
gabacho
school? Don't you like us losers?"

Marisa thought fast and conjured up a lie. "My mom made me. She said I was messing up."

"I'm messing up, but my mom don't move me." Joel giggled. "But that's smart of your mom, caring about you and everything." He sucked on his cigarette and let out a wafer of smoke. "The word is you're all stuck-up, too good for us." Joel's face became slick with meanness, his teeth like rows of corn. He turned his face slightly and spit out a flake of tobacco.

"People spew all kinds of nasty rumors," Marisa said with a sneer that had no feeling behind it. She was praying for a group of trick-or-treaters to come up the walk, but none did.

"I heard about you and Roberto. You two threw some
pleitos
and you messed him up good. He's a weak
pendejo,
but you're tight, girl." He turned to his friends. "She's tight, huh?"

The friends nodded like those toy Chihuahuas in the back windows of cars. One took the cigarette from Joel and used it to light his own. The tip of the cigarette caught and glowed red as sin.

Marisa couldn't think of a smooth escape. She looked back into the living room and said, "My aunt wants me."

"You all right, girl," Joel slurred. He turned to his friends. "She's all right, huh?"

Their heads did the toy-Chihuahua nod.

They left tripping down the walk and unwrapping candy bars, their masks sitting on top of their heads.
They don't need masks,
Marisa thought.
They're already scary.

"You're tight, girl!"
All the next day the phrase played in Marisa's mind and made her hate Joel and his low-life Mends.
"You're tight, girl!"
echoed again
like a refrain and made her hate the world.
You want to be happy
; she thought,
and then a weasel-neck like Joel shows up to make you feel bad. To make you think nothing has changed at all.

When Rene and Marisa went to rehearsals for
Romeo and Juliet,
Marisa felt out of place. Everyone was so cheerful, hugging one another and clasping hands. They were
so
touchy-feely.

"They're a bunch of fakes," Marisa muttered. She had just watched the scene when Juliet discovers Romeo dead—Marisa could see the dead Romeo's eyes fluttering. And he had crossed his legs. A dead person crossing his legs? Even their love for each other seemed fake.

"No, they're not. They're as genuine as you or me." Rene pouted with his head down, as if he were mad at his shoes. He asked, "What's wrong with you? How come you're so negative?"

Marisa was hurt. She could take a punch from Roberto, or a slap from a girl with a bad attitude. She could take her mother's scolding voice about her not cleaning up her bedroom. But the questions from Rene hurt. So he thought she had a bad attitude?

"Nothing's wrong with me." Her back stiffened with anger.

"I know that you went to a bad high school—"

Marisa cut Rene off with a bitter stare. She got
up and left the auditorium, her backpack feeling like it carried something heavier than books.

"These Hamilton kids don't know the real world," she muttered as she stood in the autumn sunlight, the wind flicking her hair about her. She took out her cell phone and checked the time: 4:17
P.M.
Her mother was going to pick her up at 5:00 in front of the school. Marisa turned, faced the auditorium door where she had exited, and waited for Rene to come out, apologizing on his knees. But the door didn't swing open. She made out laughter coming from inside. Were they laughing at her?