Confetti Girl (9 page)

When I hear the mumbled tones of a conversation, I figure a salesperson called. Then, I close my eyes for a nap, but my dad
calls me to the living room before I drift off.

“Apolonia!” I hear.

“What?” I call back.

“Get over here,” he says. He sounds mad. He uses my full name only when I’ve done something wrong. So either I’m in trouble
or a real pushy telemarketer bullied him into buying something like snow boots or a year’s supply of mascara.

When I get to the living room, I catch him going through my backpack!

“Hey, that’s private property,” I say, but I’m too late. He’s already found what he was looking for—my vocabulary test with
the big fat zero.

He says, “Mrs. Huerta just called.”

I can’t believe it. It’s like she read my mind, like she
knew
I was going to forge my dad’s name. I am so busted. This must be what it means to get caught with egg on your face.

“She told me the real reason you’re not at soccer practice.”

What can I say? I just stand there waiting for my punishment like a sandcastle waiting for the tide to roll in.

He looks over the test. “How could you get a zero?” he asks. “Did you fail this on purpose? And why would you do such a thing?”

I can only shrug.

“‘Felicity,’” he reads, “‘a city for cats.’” He shakes his head. “How could you get ‘felicity’ wrong?”

“I did what
you
always do,” I say in my defense.

“And that is?”

“I took apart the word to figure out its meaning.”

“But, Lina, ‘felicity’ is like the Spanish word
feliz,
remember?
Feliz Navidad. Feliz Cumpleaños.
We use it all the time. It means ‘happy.’”

“I tried Spanish with
marsupial,
” I explain, “and I got that one wrong too. How am I supposed to know whether to think about Spanish or Greek or Latin or
prefixes or suffixes or roots? And who cares about vocabulary anyway?”

My dad winces. He’s really mad, but I don’t feel guilty at all. Who cares if I let him down? We’re even as far as I’m concerned.

“I just don’t understand how you could be failing your favorite class,” he says.

“English is
not
my favorite class. It’s
your
favorite class.”

He rubs his forehead. Good. I hope I’m giving him a headache.

“So what is your favorite class?” he asks.

“I talk about it
all the time.
”

“Volleyball?”

“Volleyball isn’t a class,” I say. “It’s an after-school activity. Besides, it’s soccer season now, remember?”

“Math, then?”

“Math’s okay, but it’s not my favorite class.”

I can’t believe it. He’s stumped.

“Science,” I say. “I like science.”

He nods. “I should have known.
Cada cabeza es un mundo.
Everyone has his own way of thinking. At least now I know why you dressed as a fish devil for Halloween.”

“I was not a fish devil! I was the
red tide!
You never listen, do you?!”

I’m about to stomp to my room when the doorbell rings. Before we get to it, we hear Vanessa on the other side.

“Hurry, Mr. Flores! Hurry!”

“What is it?” my dad asks, opening the door.

“It’s my mom,” Vanessa says. “She fell down. She’s really hurt!”

El silencio es oro –
Silence is golden

W
e chase Vanessa to her kitchen. As soon as I see Ms. Cantu, I think of the time I pretended my Barbie was Gail Devers, an
Olympic track star. I had put her into the hurdling position and SNAP! her leg came off.

“Ay, Homero!” Ms. Cantu cries when she sees my dad. “I can’t move!”

“Now, now,” my dad says.

“I came home from practice and found her like this,” Vanessa explains. “I think she’s been here for
hours
!”

“It sure feels like hours,” Ms. Cantu cries.

“Now, now,” my dad says again.

“Someone gave me
el mal ojo,
the evil eye—someone who’s jealous of my beautiful
cascarones.
Now I have to call
la curandera
and tell her to put the egg under my bed.”

A
curandera
is a folk healer. She can get rid of a curse from the evil eye by breaking an egg into a bowl of water and leaving it under
the bed while the victim sleeps.

“You don’t need a
curandera,
” Vanessa says. “You need a doctor. Please, Mr. Flores. Please talk some sense into my mom.”

My dad reaches in his pocket for his keys. “I guess we have to go to the emergency room. That leg probably needs a cast.”

Ms. Cantu almost faints. “
¡Ay, Dios mío!
A cast?”

When we get to the emergency room at Spohn Hospital, my dad helps Ms. Cantu to the check-in window.

“Why weren’t you at soccer practice?” Vanessa asks. “Are you still trying to avoid me?”

“No.”

“Then where were you?”

“Long story.”

“I fell down in the kitchen,” we hear Ms. Cantu say. “And I was
all alone
because my husband, that good-for-nothing, left me three years ago.”

“Does she have to tell
everyone
she’s divorced?” Vanessa says.

“Give her a break. She’s in a lot of pain right now.”

“I know, but I
hate
when she complains about my dad.”

“At least she isn’t mean to his face,” I say.

“Are you talking about my mom or me?” she asks. “Are you still mad about me using your phone last night?”

“No, I’m mad about you making fun of Luís.”

“So I said something sassy. I didn’t mean it, and I told you I was sorry, didn’t I? What else am I supposed to do?”

I don’t have an answer, so I do the only thing I
can
do—sit in the chair and sulk.

Ms. Cantu says she can’t do the paperwork because of the pain. So my dad takes the clipboard and fills it out for her. Then
he turns it in, and while he’s talking to the receptionist, I have a vivid memory of this same emergency room, this same arrangement
of chairs, this same everything from the night we brought my mom. They didn’t make her wait. They took her temperature, and
in ten minutes, she was in the ICU. I can’t believe I’m here again—at this hospital where she died—from that germ that looked
like a bunch of grapes.

Suddenly, I realize that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate after school is still in my stomach, jumping as if my
stomach’s one of those inflatable castles people rent for birthday parties.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I say, leaving everyone in the waiting room.

I go straight to a stall and throw up. Then I cry, blowing my nose with the toilet paper. This is the second time I’ve cried
today. The first time was my fault. I admit it. I deserve to be off the soccer team. But did I deserve to lose my mom? There
are people meaner than me, people like Jason who still has
his
mom. This is when I wish life were like math, when I wish I could put numbers into an equation and get answers.

When I leave the stall, Vanessa’s waiting for me by the sink.

“Have you been here the whole time?” I ask.

“Most of it. I figured you were thinking about your mom.”

“Sometimes our telepathy scares me.”

“And sometimes the way we’re mean scares me. What I said about Luís was terrible,” she admits. “I’m just
sooo
sorry. I hate when we fight.”

“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have been rude when you tried to apologize this morning.”

“No,
I’m
the one who’s sorry.”

“No, really, Vanessa,
I
am.”

We smile a little.

“Is this a Lifetime show or what?” she says.

I nod. And then I laugh. We both laugh. Then we give each other a let’s-make-up hug and go back to the waiting room, best
friends again.

“Where’s my mom?” Vanessa asks my dad.

He points to a hallway. “She took some X-rays. Now she’s waiting in a room for the results. You can wait with her if you’d
like.”

“X-rays?” I say. “I
love
X-rays. I bet I could name all the leg bones after spending so much time with my
Gray’s Anatomy
book—the tibia, the femur, the patella.”

“Wait a minute,” my dad says. “We’re not finished, young lady. We still need to talk about your English grade.”

I look longingly after Vanessa, wishing I could join her and the X-rays. When I look at my dad, he’s pointing for me to sit
down, so I take a seat, wondering if I should fake a seizure because having a needle in my arm and a tube up my nose is better
than getting scolded.

“I was thinking about what you said,” he begins.

Oh, no. What did I say? When will I remember my mom’s favorite advice?
El silencio es oro,
or silence is golden. If I accidentally said a cuss word, I’m in really,
really
bad trouble. I could be grounded for a year. Once I used a cuss word, and my dad said, “Get thee to a nunnery!” He was serious.
I straightened up fast. Nuns are really sweet and I’m sure they’re happy knowing they’ve got tickets to heaven, but they can’t
be athletes and they can’t date boys.

“Maybe you’re right,” my dad says, pulling me back to the moment. “How can I expect you to show an interest in the things
I like when I’m not showing an interest in the things
you
like?”

I nod, remembering how he read a book at my volleyball game, how he left the dinner table to search for
Watership Down.

“So tell me,” he says, “how can I help you with science? I’m sure I’ve got some interesting books in my library.”

I’m flabbergasted. I can’t believe my luck. I expected prison chains and a dungeon with roaches climbing the walls. Instead,
my dad wants to help me with my project. That’s great.

On second thought, maybe it isn’t so great. How’s he supposed to help? In some ways, my dad is really smart, but if we’re
talking about things that don’t rhyme, he’s lost.

“Any ideas?” he asks, still wanting info on my science class.

“I have to do a project,” I offer. “On whooping cranes. The first birds have already started to arrive. Every autumn, they
fly all the way from Canada to the Gulf Coast.”

“That’s a long trip,” my dad says. “I think I’ve got a bird-watching book. Maybe we can make some posters.”

“I was thinking we could see the birds in person at the Aransas Pass Wildlife Refuge. You won’t see them around our beaches.
They’re very picky about their environment.”

“You want to drive to the middle of nowhere and hike?”

I nod.

He thinks about it. I can tell he doesn’t want to go, but after a few seconds, he says, “If that’s what you really want. I
can take you there the Friday after Thanksgiving.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“You can’t act like a sailor from
Moby Dick
or like the god-of-the-sea guy.”

“You mean Poseidon?”

“Yeah, Poseidon.”

“What about Santiago from
The Old Man and the Sea
?” he teases. “Can I act like him?”

“No. No Santiago, whoever he is. And no
chupacabra
or donkey lady, either.” Since we’re going to look at whooping cranes, I add, “And no famous birds!”

I can tell this pains him, but he takes it like a man. “Okay,” he says. “I promise. No sea or bird stories. No ghost stories
either.”

I can’t help smiling. He smiles too and playfully tugs at my ear. Everything’s going to be okay. I can’t believe it.

A while later, Vanessa and Ms. Cantu, who’s in a wheelchair, come out from the back room.

“How long will you need the wheelchair?” I ask.

The nurse answers for her, “Just till we get to the car.”

“They’re worried I’ll trip over this big thing and sue them,” Ms. Cantu explains, pointing to a cast on her leg.

When we get home, I ask Dad if I can go to Vanessa’s for a little while. “She’s going to help me correct my vocabulary test,”
I say.

He agrees. With Vanessa’s help, I learn that a marsupial is an animal that keeps its baby in a pocket—a kangaroo, for example—and
a trifle is something that is unimportant.

“Let’s check the Corpus Connection,” I say when we finish the corrections. “Maybe another dork posted his profile. At least
we’ll have something to laugh about.”

We go to the laptop, and Vanessa gets on the net. Sure enough, there are lots of new profiles, but instead of finding a funny
one, Vanessa finds one that grabs her attention.

“This guy calls himself the Silver Fox,” she says.

We read. Under interests, he’s written “traveling and cruising down Ocean Drive in my Hummer.” Under job, he’s written “businessman.”

“He’s got to have money if he’s a businessman,” I say.

“And if he can afford a Hummer.”

“Click on his picture. The suspense is killing me.”

Vanessa clicks on the picture icon, and the Silver Fox pops on the screen. He’s got tanned skin, gray eyes, the whitest and
straightest teeth, and silvering hair, of course.

“He looks like a soap opera star,” I say.

“Yeah, the kind of soap star who plays the owner of a big company and buys his girlfriend flowers and takes her to Italy on
his private jet.” Vanessa stares at the Silver Fox for a moment. “This is it,” she decides. “This is the guy who will make
my mom forget she hates men.”

“You can’t actually contact him, Vanessa. That’s dangerous.”

“I’m not going to write to him. I’m going to steal his identity.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mom needs a secret admirer in order to feel special again,” she says. “The Silver Fox is the perfect secret admirer. So
I’ll pretend to be him when I write her love notes. What do you think?”

“I think she’s going to hate men even more once she finds out he’s a fake.”

“But in the meantime, she’ll feel better about herself,” Vanessa says. “My mom wouldn’t go out with some guy she doesn’t know.
But if she starts seeing herself as attractive, then maybe she’ll be open to new relationships. See what I mean?”

“I guess,” I say, still doubtful.