Muchacho (6 page)

I
USUALLY DON’T PAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO WHERE WORDS
come from because who cares anyway, but today I was thinking that now I know why somebody made up the word
girlfriend.
I only had a couple girlfriends before Lupe. Whenever I had one, she would be my girl but not really my friend. I would like her and want to touch her and think about her before I went to sleep, but if we weren’t making out, then I would rather be hanging with Jaime or my cousins, playing ball or shooting pool or just doing nothing. I never wanted to hang out and just do nothing with those girls because it was too boring and they always wanted to have a conversation about something stupid like why didn’t I notice their new haircut or what was I thinking.

I liked thinking about those girls more than I liked actually being with them most of the time and back then I couldn’t understand why so many guys wanted to get married when their girlfriends weren’t even pregnant.

Like my cousins. Most of them are older than me except a couple who are real little like Juanito, and most of the old ones are married, even the real badass ones who were too cool for school. I’ve been to so many weddings that Mami bought me a special suit to wear. I got more cousins than friends but that’s how it is if you’re Mexican in New Mexico. You don’t need a bunch of friends because if you need something, like your car or your toilet or your roof fixed, you call one of your cousins. Even if they aren’t a real cousin but they are married to your brother-in-law’s cousin, it still counts. Everybody is somebody’s cousin.

As soon as I met Lupe, I started to understand why all my old cousins got married. I used to think it was just so they could have sex all the time, which would be cool, but I never wanted to marry any other girls even though I would have had sex with them if they let me. Lupe won’t let me, but I still like to hang around with her because she’s like a friend that I want to kiss. Even when we’re not kissing or even touching, I still like talking to Lupe because she doesn’t ask me what am I thinking, she tells me what she’s thinking and then just looks at me. If I say what I’m thinking, she listens, but if I don’t say it, she doesn’t ask. She just smiles or else just sits real quiet. She’s the only person I ever met who can just sit and
be quiet and not have to listen to music or watch TV or talk. At first, it made me nervous when she got quiet, but after I got used to it, I started to like it because it calms me down.

Sometimes it feels like Lupe can read my mind. It’s probably a lot easier for a girl to read a boy’s mind than vice versa because we don’t have so many tracks like girls do. We have food and sex and then a couple options, like maybe music or TV or sports or sleeping. A few guys even think about getting an education. But girls have clothes and periods and babies and makeup and does their butt look fat in their new jeans and movies and homework and a hundred other things on their mind all the time. Lupe says she heard some science guy on the radio who said that guys think about sex every ten seconds, which sounds just about right. The guy didn’t say how often girls think about sex, but it’s probably every ten hours or ten days. Maybe even ten months after they get old and have some babies and a husband and too much work to do.

Primo doesn’t get why I like Lupe so much. He says she’s too bossy because she’s so smart and she isn’t afraid of anybody. If you talk some smack to her, she’ll smack you back better. But I think the real reason Primo doesn’t like Lupe is because she isn’t impressed with his Ray-Bans or his flash car or his pockets full of cash. And she says he should have figured out by now that his get-rich-quick plans are never going to work because he always gets busted or else he hooks up with some loser who rips him off or squeals on him to stay out of jail.

The first time Lupe met Primo, I was walking her home from school and he drove up in his new metallic blue Camaro with the chrome spinners and big red flames on the hood. He started flashing his cash, trying to get me to do a little “night project” with him. I told Primo thanks but no thanks. I don’t know why he keeps asking me to help him out because I never say yes anymore. He’s been asking me for five years and I been saying no all that time, but he keeps asking. He probably thinks he’s giving me the opportunity of a lifetime every time, but after I helped him steal this one car, I decided it wasn’t worth it. There’s no way I’m going to rob a truck full of cell phones or rip off people’s car stereos or make fake IDs on the computer. If I was going to take a chance on going to jail, it would have to be for some real smart crime like those guys who steal millions of dollars on the stock market and go to the golf course prison.

Lupe didn’t say anything to Primo that first time, but she checked him out real good and after he left, she asked me was he my role model. I said no, he’s just my cousin, and she said he looks like a gangster. I told her Primo isn’t a gangster because he isn’t in a gang, but he is kind of a criminal. She asked me how could somebody be “kind of” a criminal and I explained that he steals car stereos and iPods and stuff like that, but he doesn’t sell drugs or mug people. Plus, he mostly steals from rich people who could get new stuff real easy.

Lupe said, “Don’t you think rich people feel bad when somebody takes their stuff?” I said, “Yeah, but not as bad as
somebody who is poor and can’t go get some new stuff.” Lupe said stealing is stealing, period, and you can’t be “kind of” a criminal, just like you can’t be “kind of” pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t. I didn’t say anything after that because it’s real hard to win any argument with a smart girl whose father is a lawyer and I knew I wasn’t going to win that one.

Lupe says Primo is unethical and lazy because he steals instead of getting some kind of legal job. If anybody else insulted my family like that, I wouldn’t like them, but Lupe doesn’t say that stuff to make Primo look bad or to make me not like him. She just has real high ethics. I told her she’s only half right because maybe Primo doesn’t have such good ethics but he isn’t lazy. He works real hard at being a criminal. Lupe said if he worked half as hard at a job as he did at being slick and ripping people off, he’d probably make a lot more money and he wouldn’t have to worry about going to prison if he gets caught.

Primo can’t work at a regular job where he has a boss who can yell at him and he can’t punch the guy. He always gets fired after one or two days. It must run in the family or something because Papi has a hard time working at a job where somebody tells him what to do and what to wear and when to eat lunch and he better watch his mouth or else. If he didn’t have Mami and us kids to take care of, he would probably be in jail for fighting or else working out on some ranch as a cowboy who doesn’t have to pretend to respect dumb people just to get a paycheck. And I’m the same way, which is why I
have so many problems in school. If they would just let you read the books and take the tests, I probably would have graduated by now or at least I would like school. But they can’t just let you learn. They have to make up all those stupid rules, like you can’t wear your baseball cap sideways and you can’t listen to your music on a headset even if you have good grades and you aren’t bothering anybody, and you can’t walk around with your shoes untied or your pants sagging which isn’t hurting anybody unless you fall down and then it’s your own fault so you can’t sue them anyways.

Lupe loves school. She doesn’t care how many rules they make up. She just goes around thinking about her plan of being a doctor. And she doesn’t care if she’s popular, either. She’s the only girl I ever met who didn’t care if the other girls liked her or if they said bad things about her. She only cares if they hit her because then she gets suspended and that interferes with her academic plan of getting a perfect GPA so she can go to whatever college she picks instead of whatever college picks her.

I remember this one day we were coming out of the gym after ballroom dance class and a couple guys looked at Lupe too long and then one of them said something about dancing. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but I got his message. I was thinking I should go smack that guy, but Lupe read my mind and said don’t waste your time because who cares about those people and they probably can’t dance, anyway, so they’re just jealous.

I told Lupe I don’t care if other kids don’t like me but if some guy disrespects me, I have to hit him if I want to maintain my reputation. She said, “Why?” and I said, “Because,” but I didn’t have anything to go with it. When you say “Because” and you don’t add anything, you sound like a little kid, but Lupe didn’t laugh at me. She just said, “I don’t worry about what people think unless they are my friends and I respect them.”

I wished I could be like her because I don’t really respect too many people except Jaime and Henry Dominguez and a couple old people and some of my cousins. If I didn’t have to worry about what everybody else thinks, it would make life a lot easier. I told Lupe maybe I would try having her attitude and see how it worked, but even if I said I didn’t care what people think about me, I would probably still care. It’s one thing to say something and another thing to do it.

“High school is an artificial social construct,” Lupe told me. “You only get to choose your friends from among the people your own age who live within a certain geographic area. Maybe there isn’t anybody in that group who can appreciate you. Except me, of course.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the nose, which I liked, but I still looked around to make sure nobody else saw.

“After we get out of school, we can choose our friends from all the people in the world,” Lupe said. “We might meet somebody from Egypt or Japan or Santa Fe who is eighty-five or eight, but we won’t care where they live or how old they
are or how they dress. We’ll just care about who they are. We can be friends with people who are interesting and who think we’re interesting.”

That’s why Lupe is my girl and my friend and my girlfriend. Not just because she’s smart and beautiful and interesting, but she thinks I’m interesting, too. Not because of what I do or what I have, but just because of who I am.

W
HEN
MI PRIMO
E
NRIQUE FIRST TRIED TO GET ME TO DITCH
school and go to Mexico with him, I said no because I been doing pretty good on turning over my new leaf. I figured he was just going there to drink margaritas and visit this girl he knows there named Adelberta who dances in a nightclub which is good because she probably looks a lot better in the dark, but he said he was going to the dentist to get his new tooth. He opened his mouth and pulled his lip down so I could see this one broken tooth. He said he broke it eating some peanuts. I didn’t remind him that he already told me this guy broke it with a beer bottle after Primo sold him some broken speakers for his car stereo. I just told Primo I didn’t like Juárez and he didn’t need me to help him get a tooth glued on.

“Yes, I do,” Primo said. “What if they give me a shot and knock me out and steal my wallet and my truck? And then they might sell me as a sex slave because I’m so
guapo.
You know you can’t trust those
méxicanos
, muchacho
.
” He tipped his head down and grinned at me over the top of his sunglasses. I told him have a nice time and let me know when he got back.

“Come on, Preem,” he said. “I’m serious. I could get sick from the anesthetic. You don’t want me to die in a car crash, do you? Then you’d have to put a big white cross and a bunch of plastic flowers beside the road and you’d have to go visit me all the time and it’s a long drive, especially with gas prices these days. Plus, I’m talking Palomas, not Juárez.”

I started to say no again, but he said, “Hey, I’m family. You can’t let me down.”

I knew if I got caught and told Papi I did it for family, he would still be mad, but he probably wouldn’t even ground me. And Lupe was on a field trip to visit New Mexico State to see if she wanted to go to college there in case she didn’t get accepted at some place good, so she wouldn’t find out and get mad as long as I didn’t tell Jaime who would tell Lena who can’t keep her mouth shut.

“If I go, I don’t want to visit any hookers,” I told Primo, “just go to the dentist and come right back.”

“I keep telling you Berta isn’t a hooker,” he said. “She’s an exotic dancer. There’s a big difference, which you would know if you knew anything about women. If they give it away, they aren’t
putas.
They’re just friendly, like me. I never charge
women. I could probably make a lot of money if I did, though.”

He grinned at me again, so I said, “Are you high? Because if you are, I’m not riding with you.” I was standing on the curb, a couple blocks from school. Primo was sitting in his old truck with the engine idling. He sat up straight and stopped smiling.

“Yo, bro, I’m straight as an arrow. But you can drive if it makes you feel better.” He got out of his truck and walked around and moved me away from the passenger door. He got inside, put on his seat belt and looked at me real serious until I got behind the wheel.

We just cranked up the speakers and didn’t talk too much until we got to Cruces. We stopped to get some gas and a couple bottles of iced tea which I thought Primo would add something to, but he didn’t. He just climbed back into the passenger seat and waited until we were on I-10 and then he said, “I never thanked you for not ratting me out that day.”

He didn’t have to tell me which day. We both knew.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to do anything. I didn’t eat or talk for a couple days. I even got a fever. Mami took me to the doctor and he said I probably had laryngitis or something. He said sometimes kids yell so much when they’re playing outside that they lose their voice. Nothing to worry about, he said. After a couple days, I could eat a little bit, but I had nightmares every night for a whole year. I tried to erase that day from my brain and I never said anything about it to
anybody, including Primo. He never said anything about it, either. Not for eight years up till now. I thought Primo must have forgot about it, even though I didn’t, but it isn’t the kind of thing you could forget, especially if you were the one who pulled the trigger.