If my dad had been there, he would have called Fito a sweet guy. And lonely. That’s what I really noticed. He was lonely.
Finally he looked at the time on his cell. “I got to hit the downtown library. That’s where I study. That be my home away from home.”
After he left, I kept thinking that he deserved better.
And I wondered how Fito got to be so decent when there wasn’t anybody around teaching him how to be decent. I just didn’t understand the human heart. Fito’s heart should have been broken. But it wasn’t. And even though there were times when he texted me and told me that life sucked, I knew he didn’t believe it. It’s just that life hurt him sometimes.
I guess life hurt everybody. I didn’t understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.
Sam (and Me)
SAM CAME OVER (again). She brought her backpack, and we studied all afternoon. That was one of our things. Sam hadn't been much into studying when we were in grade school. But once we got into middle school, she got to be a really great student. Sam was extremely competitive. She liked to win. I mean, she was all about winning. She was always better at soccer than I was. Getting the good grades was all about winning. A lot of girls didn’t much like Sam. Not that Sam helped herself out on that count. “F all those bitches.”
I hated that word. “Have some self-respect, Sammy. The B word is the N word for girls. I hate that. What kind of a feminist are you, anyway?”
“Who said I was a feminist?”
“You did—when we were in eighth grade.”
“I didn’t know shit in eighth grade.”
“Look, just don’t use that word around me. It pisses me off.”
She stopped using that word around me. But sometimes she did say things like She’s such a B.
I’d shoot her a look.
So I had this theory that Sam competed with me. And it wasn’t just about grades. She wanted to prove to herself (and to me) that she was as smart as I was. And she was. Smarter, I’d say. A lot smarter. Sam didn’t have to prove a damn thing—not to me, anyway. But Sam was Sam. So we studied together. All the time. And it was because of her that I had A’s (well, two B’s) in my math and science classes. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have known a sine from a cosine. Trigonometry, biology, statistics—anything having to do with numbers and science was really hard for a guy like me.
But Sam, she was actually brilliant—frickin’ brilliant. And she was pretty, too. Really pretty. Well, more than pretty. She was beautiful. So she had a beautiful face and a beautiful mind. But there was more to the equation of being a person than a face, a body, and a mind. There was that other thing called a psychology. Sam’s psychological makeup was, well, complicated. When it came to schoolwork, Sam was all A’s. When it came to picking boyfriends, she was all F’s.
I read her paper on Macbeth. It was good. Really good. She had style, and I thought maybe she should become a writer. I had the feeling that her life was going to provide her with plenty of material.
“So what do you think?” She was smiling. She already knew her paper was good.
“Brilliant.”
“Are you mocking me?” She crossed her arms.
“Nope. And uncross your arms.”
She threw herself on my dad’s reading chair. “You’re quiet today.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Who, me? There’s nothing ever wrong with me. Don’t you know that?”
“Now I know there’s something really wrong. You’ve been a little different lately. Like there’s something eating at you.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m figuring a few things out.”
“Like what?”
“Like I don’t really want to go to college, for one thing.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Can we not talk about college? Please.” I combed my hair with my fingers and started biting one of my fingernails.
“You haven’t done that since fifth grade.”
“What?”
“Bite your nails.”
“It’s Mima,” I said.
“What?”
“Mima. Remember how she had cancer?”
“Yeah, I remember. That was a long time ago, Sally.”
“The cancer’s back. It’s metastasized. You know what that is?”
“Of course I do.”
“Of course you do.” I tried to smile.
“Is it serious?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“I guess we know how this is going to end. Dad’s not optimistic.”
“Aww, Sally—”
“Shit, Sam. I’m—I just am, hell, I don’t know.”
“Oh,” she said, “I get it. But— But I don’t know, ever since school started, you’ve been a little—I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either. But now this thing with Mima. Ouch.”
“Ouch,” she said.
All of a sudden she was sitting right next to me on the couch. She took my hand. “I know how much you love her,” she whispered. I was the one who should have been crying—but it was Sammy who had tears running down her face.
“Don’t cry, Sammy.”
“I love her too, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” And Sam did love her. She had a lot of empathy. Maybe that’s why she liked all those bad boys. They were outcasts. It was like she was picking up strays and taking them in. It’s like she could see past their rough exteriors and see the parts of them that hurt. Maybe she thought she could take away the hurt. She was wrong, of course. But I found it hard to fault her for her good heart.
“Sally, you know you’re going to have to be a man about this, don’t you?”
“I don’t think I know how to be a man,” I said.
“It sucks, I know, but sooner or later—”
“Yeah, sooner or later,” I said.
We were quiet for a long time.
“You want to throw the ball around?”
She smiled. “Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea.”
We did that, Sam and I—we’d take out the baseball gloves and play catch. One of the great things about Sam was that she didn’t throw like a girl. She had a good arm, and she knew how to handle a ball. My dad taught her that—he taught both of us. You know, for a gay guy, my dad was pretty straight.
We tossed the ball around until twilight. Sam and I didn’t always talk when we played catch. It was like we could be together and be alone all at the same time. After we put the gloves away, I told her about Fito. “Did you know he was gay?”
“No, but I’ve seen him and Angel together, and I thought it was kind of an odd pair. I mean, Angel’s such a pretty boy. And Fito’s such a schizophrenic dork. I mean, they don’t make a good couple.”
“Like you really know. You don’t like Fito.”
“Look, I like him better now that I know he’s gay.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“In your world, I guess so. He’s just a guy, Sammy. A lost soul. I like him.”
“Oh, so you’re into picking up strays.”
“No, Sam, that would be your specialty.” I gave her a look.
“I don’t want to have this discussion.”
“I know you don’t. Then you’d have to explain your obsession with bad boys.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to anyone.”
“Wrong. Sometimes you have to explain things to yourself.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Touché.”
Sam laughed. “Well, now that we’ve agreed not to talk about what really matters, what shall we talk about next?”
I shrugged.
But then she said, “You know the other day, when you showed up at my door and there was something going on with you and I let you off the hook by changing the subject
to my shoes?”
“Yeah. And?”
“What happened?”
Sam. She really knew me. “I punched a guy in the stomach,” I said. Like it was nothing.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why?”
“He called me a pinche gringo, and I just, hell, I punched him.”
“What’s that about, Sally? You planning on becoming a boxer?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She was wearing a question on her face, but she didn’t say anything.
I walked her home. That was my dad’s idea. He said he didn’t like the idea of Sam walking by herself at night. “You never know,” he said. Sometimes I thought he cared more about Sam than her own mother did.
As we were standing in front of Sam’s front door, she looked at me and said, “There’s something different about you, Sally.”
I shrugged.
“You’re a lot more complicated than I thought you were.”
I didn’t know why I was hanging my head.
She put her hand on my chin and gently raised my head and looked straight into my eyes. “Whatever it is that’s going through that pretty little head of yours, well, you can’t hide it from me.”
I didn’t say a word.
She kissed me on the cheek—and then she said, “I’ll love you till the day I die, Sally.”
I cried all the way home.
What If
SAM AND I had this game. I think it started as a cell phone game when we both got phones in the ninth grade. The game was called “What If.” We’d be talking or texting, and one of us would say something like What if hummingbirds lost their wings? And the other person would have to think of an answer that began with Then. In fact that was one of the first questions I texted Sam: What if hummingbirds lost their wings? We had twenty-four hours to come back with an answer, and it took her precisely ten hours and seven minutes to text me back: Then it would rain for days and the world would know the rage of the grieving sky. I mean, it took her a while to get back to me—but her answer was brilliant. At least I thought it was.
Once, when we were walking to school, I asked her, “What if we’d never met?”
“Then we wouldn’t be best friends.”
“Not,” I said. Not meant that the answer was unacceptable. You only got three nots and you were out. Like in baseball.
“You shit.” She hated getting notted. Then she smiled. I knew she’d come up with something. “If we’d never met, then there would be only three seasons.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Am I supposed to guess which season?”
“Yup.”
I thought a moment—then I smiled. “Spring. Then there would be no spring.”
“Spring,” she said.
“Sometimes you’re really, really awesome, Sam.”
“You too,” she said.
It was a good game, but it was serious. Sometimes, what ifs could make us sad. And I thought, What if I hadn’t punched Enrique? Then—then what? Then things would be the way they always were? Not. Not, not, not. Things weren’t going to be the way they were. Senior year. College. Change. And what if Mima’s cancer hadn’t come back? Then I would have her forever. Not.
Dad and Me and Silence
DAD CALLED ME on my cell. He was still at Mima’s. “You going out tonight?”
“Nah.”
“Want pizza?”
“Yup.”
“Eat in or out?”
“In. Let’s watch a movie.”
“Be there in an hour. Order the pizza.”
As soon as I finished talking to my dad, Sam texted me: Should I wear red or black?
Me: Red. Out w/ Eddie?
Sam: Jealous?
Me: Lol have fun
Sam: I think I’ll wear black
Me: Tht’s wht I’d wear if I were going out w/ him
Sam: Dn’t be a shit
Me: Try & b gd
Sam: Ur no fn
Me: Fn is overrated
Sam: Get a girlfrnd
Me: Been there done tht
Sam: Try try again oh gotta go
Sam, she always had to have a guy. Me, well, the last girl I was with, she was all about me. I sort of felt like she’d been in a race and I was the trophy she’d won. I was way into her—way, way into her. Turns out she was also seeing some guy who went to Cathedral High School. Her nice way of dumping me was by telling me, “You know, Sal, you’re just way too smart for me.” Melissa—that was her name—she liked her guys dumb and good-looking. Not that I was ugly. It’s just that, well, Melissa needed to be the smart one in a relationship. Do we have relationships in high school? Maybe so. Anyway, I’m not into playing dumb. And besides, she hated Sam. And before Melissa, there was Yolanda. She told me it was either her or Sam. “Sam?” I said. “I’ve known her since I was five. We’re just friends.” She dropped me like a water balloon. I went splat. I’m not sure what I was looking for in a girl. Some guys just wanted sex. Not that I didn’t want sex, but, well, that wasn’t happening for me. Not yet. Well, there was always hope.
Sam had this to say about my dating behavior: “You’re way too invested in your identity as a good boy.”
Shit, I couldn’t pull off the bad-boy thing. I did think Jeff Buckley singing “Hallelujah” was badass. Didn’t that count for something?
And I wasn’t a good boy. Not a real good boy. And what was that whole good-boy, bad-boy thing anyway? What did any of it mean?
My dad was a little low-key when he got back. “Your Aunt Evie and I are taking Mima to the Mayo Clinic.”
“Where’s that?” I said.
“In Scottsdale.”
“Scottsdale?”
“It’s a suburb of Phoenix. It’s about seven hours from here. If you’re driving.”
I nodded. “When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“That’s soon,” I said.
“Time is something we don’t have,” he said. He had a can-we-talk-about-this-in-the-morning look on his face. Some days I gave that same look to him. Guess he was entitled.
We ate pizza and watched an old movie—To Kill a Mockingbird. Dad loved old movies. He liked Gregory Peck. Definitely old-school. Nobody at El Paso High even knew who Gregory Peck was. Well, except for Sam. She was all about movie trivia. That had been one of her phases—between her hummingbird phase and her famous architects phase, then back to hummingbirds. She was currently in her shoe phase. For a while before that, she’d worn only flip-flops and tennis shoes. I thought the shoe phase was probably here to stay.
It was a quiet night. Before I went to bed, I asked Dad, “Are we still making lunch for Mima tomorrow?”
“Well, we’re going over. But your Mima said nobody was going to cook in her kitchen except her.”
We both smiled. That’s how she loved people—by feeding them.
Before I went to bed, I studied a photograph of Mima and me. We were sitting on her front porch, and we were both laughing at something. All the pictures I had of Mima and me together were happy pictures. I wondered if happiness would go away when she died. But maybe she wouldn’t die. Maybe she wouldn’t.
I opened my laptop and looked up the Mayo Clinic. It seemed as if those people knew what they were doing. And then I looked up cancer. Serious business. But I had no idea what stage Mima’s cancer was in. Stage one: lots of hope. Stage four: not so much. Not that I was about to throw hope out the window. I didn’t consider myself a very serious Catholic. I mean, my dad was gay, and the Catholic Church was not big on gay people. Guess you could say I held a grudge even if my father didn’t. But Mima and the Catholic Church got along just fine. I took out my rosary and prayed. Mima had given it to me when I made my First Communion. So I prayed. Maybe it would help.
Sam
WHEN MY CELL phone rang, I was still clutching my rosary. My phone kept ringing and ringing, but by the time I found it in my pants pocket, it
had stopped. Maggie was growling. She hated cell phones. I looked at the time: 1:17 a.m. The call had been from Sam. Then the phone rang again.
“Sam?”
“Oh, God,” she said. “Sally, Sally, Sally—” She was sobbing into her phone.
“Sammy? Where are you? What’s wrong?”
Finally she calmed down enough to spit out, “Can you come get me?”
“Where are you?”
She started crying again.
“Where are you, Sam?” I think I was almost yelling. “Where are you? Where are you?”
“I’m just outside the Walgreens.”
“Which Walgreens, Sam? Shit! Which one?” I was getting scared. “Are you hurt, Sam? Are you hurt?”
“Just come get me, Sally?” God, she sounded hurt.
“Sam? Sam, are you okay?” She was crying again. “Sam? Hang on, Sam. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right there. Just hang on.”
Part Two
We’d been so sure of ourselves, but now we were lost.
Sometimes in the Night
“DAD? DAD!” I was glad he was a light sleeper.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Sam.”
He reached over and turned on the lamp on his nightstand. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. She couldn’t stop crying. She sounds really scared.”
“Where is she?”
“Walgreens.”
“I’m driving.”
I didn’t argue with him.
She was sitting on the sidewalk, her head down. My dad saw her as soon as we drove up. Walgreens wasn’t exactly crowded at that hour of the morning. He jumped out of the car, and I was right behind him. “Sam?”
She ran into his arms, sobbing.
Dad put his arms around her. “Shhh. It’s okay. I gotcha, Sam. I gotcha.”
Sam and I sat in the back seat as my dad drove. I squeezed her hand. She’d stopped crying, but she was still shaking. Almost as if she was cold. I pulled her closer, and I could feel her shivering against my shoulder.