The Summer Prince (16 page)

“Stop.”

“You can’t do this, June! It’s been two years. You can’t claim the only right to think about him, talk about him,
miss
him —”

“He was
my
papai.”

“He was my husband.”

“And you’re the reason he’s dead!”

The birds are so loud I want to shoot them. Mother’s straight-ahead April eyes glitter, but they don’t even blink.

“You really believe that.”

I can’t speak. I don’t know what I believe, I only know that I want it to be true, I want it to be all her fault, because otherwise I can hardly bear to think about that man with his slow smile and long mustache and musician’s calluses. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, convinced that he isn’t really gone, that I just dreamed it all, thank God, and then I hear Mother and Auntie Yaha in the next room and I hate her all over again. He knew I loved art, but he will never know June, the best artist in Palmares Três.

My fono chirps. It’s Gil, saving me.

“I have to go,” I say. I don’t wait for a response. But she’s subsided, a straight-backed figure alone in the solitude of a garden, and when I think,
I miss you
, I don’t only mean my papai.

Gil is playing football by the falls in Gria Park. It’s not a game yet, just a few wakas kicking a ball around on the grass. Gil passes it to me and I kick it back so hard it sails past him.

“My team?” he says after he’s got it back again.

I grin. “Of course.”

The other wakas on the green divide themselves more or less evenly, and we start. Gil plays forward and I keep up with him, though I’m usually more comfortable as a defender. I’m in a mood to hit things, and no one seems inclined to stop me.

Gil scores our first goal, and the cheering is louder than I’d expect for some weekend pickup game. We’ve developed quite the audience. I hear the growing swarm of camera bots and realize: It’s Gil. With all the bot restrictions in school, it’s easy to forget that he’s become a minor celebrity. I jog with him on our way back to center field. “I thought you were with Enki?”

“He wanted to be alone.” He shrugs and slows down. “June, you know, if you and he are, I mean …”

“No!” I say, far too forcefully. Gil gives me a look that makes me swallow the rest of my denials.

“You know I wouldn’t mind it, right? If you did.”

“I don’t. We haven’t.”

The ball is back in play. Gil chases the opposing team’s forward hard down the field. I don’t try to keep up, just wait, open and forgotten until he passes me the ball between the legs of another player. I sprint back down the field, heart pumping madly. I trip in a tangle of legs, and when I look up, the goalie’s caught the ball.

Gil helps me up. “I think he’s working on your project.”

I had wondered what he would do now that the Aunties are keeping such a close watch, but I knew that he wouldn’t give up on it. I grin. “Mother will die when she realizes what I’ve been doing for the Queen’s Award.”

Gil glances at me. It isn’t hard to read his disapproval. “June … why won’t you just
tell her
?”

I sigh. “She might stop me.”

“You know she won’t.”

“Gil, come on!” one of the other players shouts. Gil shrugs and jogs away. We win, three to two, but not much thanks to me. I’m too confused, too unreasonably angry about Gil’s defense of my family to focus.

Gil and I walk under the falls with the other players when we’re done, hot and tired. None of the camera bots venture very close to
the mist and noise. It’s as private as we’re going to get, out here in the park.

“Gil, if you want to say something, then out with it.” He tilts his head up to the pouring water, which courses down his naked back. If there are a few wakas ogling him from the side of the falls, I don’t really blame them.

Gil purses his lips, not like he’s angry, like he’s frustrated. “It’s been more than two years,” he says. “Have you and your mamãe even talked about him since?”

“Well, it’s her fault —”

“No! It isn’t, and I’ll scream if you say it one more time. Your papai is dead because he chose it, June. You can’t blame your mamãe, you can’t blame Auntie Yaha. You can’t blame yourself. He’s dead because he felt it was his time and there’s
nothing any of you could do about it
.”

I might be shaking. I don’t know, but it feels good and tangible and safe when he puts his hands on my shoulders. “She loves you. Trust her.”

But I can never trust her again.

I wrench myself away from Gil. “If you think that, you don’t know me at all.”

Gil flexes his hands. “June … we’re … there’s no one I know better.”

“Then you should be on my side! Why do you always defend my mamãe when she … when you know …”

“You think I like seeing you like this? Tearing yourself apart, finding anyone else to blame when, really, a decision like your papai’s —”

“Gil.”

He stops. The water beads on my forehead and slides down my hairline. My breathing is fast and harsh. My chest hurts, I hurt, and more than anything I never want to cry again. He takes my hand. I let him.

I don’t know what the cameras or the casters make of the way he leads me off the field and out of the park. I feel like I might shatter, like my love for Gil is all that keeps the fissures from spreading.

My papai was João, from a long line of Joãos, and when I was younger I thought that meant Gilberto himself. When he was a waka, he dropped out of school and joined a shipping crew to Eurasia. He saw the great cube cities of Lisbon and Rome. He saw the ruins of London and the great string of Tokyos spilling into the Pacific Ocean like giant triangular dice. He learned guitar on that ship, and then cavaquinho and the laughing beat of the cuíca. Halfway around the world, my papai discovered his truest love was the music of old-Brazil, and so he came back home.

Until his anniversary trip, he never left. He just learned and played and taught, all in his own unassuming way. At the memorial, everyone described him as quiet, dependable, pleasant. Only I remembered him as passionate, occasionally joyous.

But a year before he died, he stopped playing guitar. The samba of my youth fell silent in the background, but I suppose I never noticed. I was too busy sneaking away with Gil to dance in the park and see the hottest new bloco. My father still taught, my mother still ran from university fund-raisers to board meetings, and as far as I knew, that’s the way it would be forever.

But there’s no such thing as forever. There’s only fifteen years and thirty-three days and a distracted kiss on your forehead before he walks away.

I’ve forgotten the music
, his only explanation. I was never good enough to give it back to him.

In the back of the practice room, I listen to Bebel and Pasqual rehearse with their band, and hardly think of anything at all. I can feel competitive later. Right now it’s too petty an emotion to sustain. In the middle of the song, Bebel curses and waves her arms. The band stops. They look about as confused as I feel: The music felt good to me, but she’s not satisfied.

“You’re coming in too slow,” she says to the flautist. “You’re the third voice in the round. You have to play like a
voice
, not a flute.”

The flautist mumbles something like an apology. I smile; Bebel isn’t so sweet when she’s intent on perfection. Pasqual gives her such a passionate look that I’m pretty sure Bebel’s offer of a threesome has turned to a duet.

They start again, a few measures before the carefully arranged vocal harmonies that make the increasingly frantic and enveloping final thirty seconds of “Roda Viva.” And as I listen to the flute merging with Bebel’s voice, I have an idea.

A wheel of life. The love that twines through our hearts and spins our worlds and ties us all together. The green of the verde, the lights of Palmares Três, the voices we hear and the ones we don’t.

What binds this city more than its music? More than the shuffling pandeiro we all learn to play before we can walk? More than the songs we know like prayers? And yet I’ve forgotten all about it, despite all the times Papai tried to tell me.

The song ends. I amble over to Bebel, who is still flushed from music and working and being perfect. I gesture and she walks off with me to the far corner of the room. Perhaps it’s reckless to trust even Bebel this far, but I don’t want the others to hear me.

“If I ask you to sing that in a month, would you?” I say.

She tilts her head. “But we’re planning to debut later.”

“I heard a rumor of something big. It’s happening soon. If you do this, no one will forget.”

Bebel knows I wouldn’t say something like this lightly. She leans in. “Where?”

“Anywhere. Here.”

“What should I tell the others?”

“Say someone passed you the information. But don’t mention me.”

Bebel touches my palm. “June, is
this
it? Your big secret project?”

“No,” I lie. “Just something I heard from some wakas in the verde.”

She nods slowly — not quite believing me, but willing to pretend. “All right,” she says. “I’ll do it. Will you tell them?”

“They’ll probably contact you. If you get any anonymous pings, that’s it.”

Pasqual walks over to the two of us. I’m struck again by how strange my life has become these last few months — it’s like all the boys I know are beautiful.

“Still working on that secret project, June?”

“I want to make it perfect,” I say.

“Well, don’t make it so perfect you forget to finish it in time.”

I match his patronizing smile with my own. “No,” I say. “I’ll just make it perfect enough to win.”

Bebel’s eyes crinkle in a smile that’s surprisingly genuine. “Believe her, Pasqual. Remember, June, that time in first year when you painted all the tables to look like a banquet?”

“And all the chairs were giant fruit! I’d forgotten about that.”

“Ieyascu was our teacher that year, remember? She sent you home and I swear I thought you were the coolest girl in the school.”

I stare at her. “I just thought you were competitive.”

“I learned from the best.”

I let out a surprised giggle. Bebel starts to laugh too, and I wonder how I never
noticed
her in all this time I struggled so hard to beat her.

Pasqual looks between the two of us. But the corners of his mouth turn up, as though anything that makes Bebel happy is good enough for him.

“We should get back,” he says gently. “I think we might need to slow down the intro a bit.”

Bebel lets her fingers stray into his thick, curly hair. “Of course, meu bombril,” she says.

Pasqual nods at me. “Good luck with the project, June.”

Bebel squeezes my hand and goes back to the waiting band with
Pasqual. I bite my lip and turn away before anyone can see my excitement.

The best art project ever? Just got a little bit better.