Muchacho (17 page)

Sometimes me and Lupe talk about that stuff, but she has more questions than I do and she’s so smart that her questions are real hard, like if something kills one person but saves a thousand people, is it all right to kill that one person.

I wish I could kill the guy who crashed into Lupe’s mother. I would kill him in a heartbeat. But I never told Lupe that because she already forgave the guy and she said it made her feel a lot better and I don’t want to make her feel bad again. She said she used to cry every single night for four years after her mother died because she didn’t get to kiss her goodbye, but now she feels better because she had this dream that sounds a little bit creepy in a good way.

She told me about the dream one day at her house when we were practicing for dance class. We danced for about an hour which was actually pretty fun when there was no teacher to count one and two three or tell you to put your arm here or your foot there. When you get the hang of dancing, it’s almost as good as making out which is what we usually do after we finish practicing.

“I have to tell you something,” Lupe said, right after this one really long kiss that almost made me lose my mind. At first, I thought, Oh no, here it comes. I didn’t have any special
“it” in mind, but whenever a girl says “I have to tell you something” in that certain voice, it’s usually something you wish they didn’t have to tell you.

“It’s kind of weird,” Lupe said, “so maybe I shouldn’t tell you. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy,” I said, just kidding, but Lupe pinched me on the stomach anyway. I grabbed her hands and she switched them real fast and spun around and wrapped my hands around her waist so I was standing behind her, my front to her back, and we were both hugging her.

“We have ways of making you talk,” I whispered into her ear.

“Okay. Last night I dreamed I was at the airport,” Lupe said, “and I was waiting to get on a plane. When they called our group to board, I couldn’t find my boarding pass. I started to cry, but the ticket counter lady told me not to worry. She said she would print me up a new boarding pass after she checked everybody in. All the other passengers went down the ramp except this one lady who turned around and smiled at me. She was much taller than the other passengers, about seven feet tall, and very beautiful. She was wearing a silver cape and when she turned around, the cape swirled open and I could see that she was dressed all in silver, a long dress with sequins on the bodice so she sparkled.”

Lupe twisted around so she could see my face and said, “Is this too weird?” and I said no. She let go of my hands and sat down on the couch and pulled me down beside her and
tucked her feet under my legs which is her favorite way to sit when her dad isn’t home. My favorite way for us to sit is laying down, but Lupe’s the one who gets to pick the sitting formations because she’s the one with the good self-control.

Lupe settled herself real comfortable and then she said, “Okay, so I was crying and the tall lady said, ‘Did you lose something, honey?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I lost my boarding pass,’ and I started to cry harder. She put her hand under my chin and lifted it up and kissed my face. She kissed my tears and when she kissed them, each tear turned into a tiny white butterfly. And the lady said, ‘You can have my boarding pass,
mija.’
”

Lupe stopped talking for a second and her eyes filled up with tears. Then she said, “After she kissed my face, she opened her arms and wrapped her cape around us both and hugged me. It was the most wonderful hug, so filled with love, and it was so warm and so real and in the middle of the hug, I realized she was my mother and I said, ‘Oh, Mama, I miss you so much,’ and she said, ‘I miss you, too,
mija.’
”

Lupe had to stop and get a tissue to blow her nose. I needed a tissue, too.

“Don’t be sad, Eddie,” Lupe said. “When I woke up, I could still feel that hug. It was so real. And I knew it was my mother and she’s watching out for me. So now I won’t be sad when I think of her.”

I know it’s good that Lupe won’t be sad anymore. And I know you can’t change the past and you have to learn your
lessons and then let go and stop worrying or it can make you crazy. But I still wish I could fix it so that guy didn’t kill Lupe’s mother—even if it meant that Lupe would never move to Rosablanca to be my girlfriend. It would probably kill me, but I would give up Lupe if it would mean that she would have her mother and not a broken heart.

B
EECHER SENT MY COPY OF HER LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION
to our house in Rosablanca because when I talked to her, I didn’t tell her I was staying with Tío on account of getting in so much trouble. I was just over there for a visit when I asked her, so she probably thought I was still at home where I should have been.

Anyway, my mother opened the letter because it was addressed to Eduardo Corazon which is my father’s name, too. He’s the senior and I’m the junior which used to be my nickname except I didn’t like being called Junior because it sounds like a baby, so I would never answer when anybody called me that. Then they started calling me Eddie and I’ve been Eddie all these years until lately when I told the teachers and kids here in Truth or Consequences that my name is Eduardo.

For a long time, I didn’t want the same name as Papi, and then for another long time, he probably didn’t want me to have the same name as him, neither. Now I wouldn’t mind having the same name, but who knows what he’s thinking.

I don’t know if Papi would want to share his name with me now, but he might, because Mami said he took a copy of Beecher’s letter and folded it up and stuck it in his wallet. Beecher sent the letter and a note that said she made me ten copies so I would have enough to use for jobs and college applications. All those copies made me wonder does she think it’s going to take me ten tries to find someplace that wants me or was she just being nice. I decided she was just being nice because if she thought I was a nine-time loser, she wouldn’t have written me a letter in the first place.

Mami read me the whole letter over the phone. She had to start over twice because she started crying the first two times and her voice got all froggy. The letter started out by saying “To Whom It May Concern” which didn’t sound too good to me, but Mami said that means the letter is for everybody in the world who wants to know what kind of character I have. Then Beecher wrote that she would recommend me as a student or an employee because I’m real smart and I’m not afraid to work hard.

That’s not how she said it, though. She said, “I wholeheartedly recommend Eduardo Corazon for any course of study or profession he chooses. He is one of those students who make the sometimes difficult task of teaching high school
worthwhile—he has an inquisitive mind, a quick intelligence, natural analytical ability, and a wry sense of humor. He is creative, persistent, and ethical. His self-confidence and leadership abilities will serve him well in any endeavor. Should you require further reference as to his character, please feel free to contact me at the address or phone number below.”

I memorized the whole thing after Mami sent me a copy of the letter to show to Tío. And after Tío read the letter, I sent it to Lupe. I didn’t ask her to show it to her father, but I knew she would. And then maybe he would stop looking at me like that the next time I see him. Maybe now he would shake my hand and say,
“Con mucho gusto,
” like he means it instead of like he would have much
gusto
if I would get lost and forget about his beautiful, brilliant daughter.

After Tío read Beecher’s letter, he said, “Uh-oh. Now the pressure’s on, eh, bud?” and then real quick he said, “Just kidding.” But I don’t think Tío was kidding because it really is some kind of pressure to live up to a letter of recommendation. Kind of like you have a new reputation to maintain.

It’s actually a lot easier to maintain a reputation as a intellectual than it is to keep on being a badass. When you’re a badass, you have to fight a lot of guys or at least act like you will if they don’t quit dogging you, and you have to watch your back 24-7 because you can’t leave yourself open for even a couple seconds because that’s long enough for somebody to take you down. You can never relax or let your guard down and if you ever cry, it’s over.

You can maintain a reputation as a intellectual pretty easy because there’s only a few kind of guys who will always try to cause you some trouble. Mostly they pick on you a couple times to see will you fight and if you won’t, then they go fight with the badass guys to show how tough they are. So you don’t have to fight as much as you would think once you start getting good grades and go down in the books as a brainiac. Most of the time, you don’t have to do anything, just walk around and be yourself, not showing that you’re smart or anything. Like if you have a really killer knife in your pocket, you don’t have to go around flashing it all the time. You just relax because you know it’s there if you have a real emergency and you need to whip it out and show it to somebody to make them back off.

But there is a certain kind of pressure after somebody writes a letter of recommendation about you. It’s one thing for somebody to go around and say good things about you. That happens all the time and people forget real quick because who cares anyway. It’s a whole nother thing for somebody to write that good stuff in a letter and address it To Whom It May Concern and sign their name so that letter will stand forever like a good kind of rap sheet. Even if you never saw that person again, their recommendation would still be out there someplace, waiting for anybody in the whole world to read about you in case they forgot all the good stuff the person said.

If somebody does that for you, then you have to walk
straight and be careful what you do because you don’t want to mess it up even though the person probably wouldn’t ask for their letter back and burn it if you did mess up. And they probably wouldn’t write a different letter To Whom It May Concern to say they changed their mind and you’re a freakin’ loser and not somebody they can recommend with their whole heart.

If you did mess up, they would probably feel real bad for a while, and then they would shake their head and say, “I thought that kid had what it takes, but I guess I was wrong.” And they might forget about you after a while. But you would never forget about them. And you would never forget that letter. After you memorize a letter like that, even if it doesn’t stick to your brain forever, it will stick to your heart.

T
ODAY
I’
M FEELING PRETTY LUCKY TO BE ME WHICH ISN’T WHAT
I ever used to feel, but after last night I changed my mind. Tío dropped me off at the Black Cat and I bought some books to give to Lupe—
The Four Agreements
and
The Secret
and
Ten Little Indians
—but there was a bunch of old people in there arguing about politics and a lady in the corner with a red tablecloth wrapped around her head who had a big deck of cards with pictures on them. She kept shuffling and shuffling those cards and then somebody would go over and sit down and she would tell them pick seven cards. The person would look real serious like if they picked the wrong cards their life would be over. Then the lady would nod her head and make her big earrings jingle and she’d say a bunch of horoscope
stuff to them, like “Your moon is in Venus and your star is in heaven and you’re going to meet somebody real nice and get rich,” and they fell for it.

So I took my books outside and went over to sit on the bench beside the river to wait for Tío. I already read all those books, but they’re the kind of book you can read a lot of times and you don’t get tired of them. When I’m reading, my brain goes right into the book so I don’t hear stuff going on around me, so I didn’t hear T.J. coming. All of a sudden, this big boot stomped down on the bench beside me and knocked me right out of my book.

“Hey, asshole, what’s up?” T.J. said, but I didn’t answer him because sometimes if you ignore him he will just go away like a dog that finally figures out you aren’t going to give it a bite of your burrito. But T.J. didn’t leave. He shoved my books with his foot and knocked them on the ground.

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry,” he said and I said, “What are you doing in T or C?” and he said, “Business.”

“You want to make some money?” he asked me. “Some real money?” and I said, “No thanks.” T.J. spit a wet one on the ground and said, “The cops might be interested in knowing that you made a certain delivery a few months ago.”

“Go ahead and call them,” I said. I didn’t think he would call them, but I figured if he did I would call Sgt. Cabrera and tell her what happened and maybe her and Tío could figure out something. Or else I would tell my T or C cousins and
they would tell our other cousins from Albuquerque, who would beat the shit out of T.J. or maybe kill him.

“You ain’t fooling anybody, Corazon,” T.J. said. I told him I wasn’t trying to fool anybody and he said oh yes, I was, trying to act all intellectual and upright and responsible. He kicked
The Secret
real hard and it flew into a mesquite bush.

“You want to know a secret?” T.J. said. “I’ll tell you a secret. Your girlfriend is screwing around on you over in Rosablanca.”

For about half a second, I wondered if it was true, because that was the first week I didn’t get an envelope of letters from Lupe. But then I decided to be impeccable and not think negative thoughts about Lupe because I knew it would turn out to be some guy from the post office who got tired of eating dust all day long and ditched all the mail in a Dumpster, so I didn’t say anything. I just looked at T.J. and I was thinking what a loser he was—that’s when he kicked me in the head and knocked me off the bench. I sat up on the ground, but I didn’t stand up and fight him because I already fought T.J. so many times and he always wins. He’s a lot bigger than me, plus he fights real dirty, too, like he would rather die than lose a fight even if the fight is over some stupid little thing like not letting him copy your math homework.