“I just want you,” she said. “That’s all I know. And I need you.”
Rick sighed, his body relaxing under her touch. “What do you need?”
Standing close enough to feel his scratchy chin on the top of her head, her mind filled with all the things she needed and couldn’t say. She needed him to teach her how to be with her children, how to distract and redirect and laugh; she needed him to teach her how to make drinks, how to set a goal and work toward it; more than anything, she needed him in her home, needed him to press her hands against his chest, needed to feel his heart beat under her hands, a slow, steady rhythm.
“I need you to come to my Christmas party,” she said quietly. Rick looked at her hard, and Letty hoped he could see in her eyes everything else she needed and couldn’t say. “I need you to cook dinner.”
Rick’s face was a jumble of indecision. Finally, he spoke, his voice rough with conflict: “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll be there.”
Grabbing his shirt, he buttoned it quietly and slipped on his shoes. In the garden he said good-bye to Luna, who jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and begging him to stay while Letty watched, wishing desperately she was six years old again and could do the same.
But she couldn’t.
She was thirty-three, a woman and a mother, and all she could do was sit, silent, and watch him go.
He needed to borrow Mr. Everett’s keys. As Alex worked on his project, he tracked his teacher’s whereabouts in relation to his keys in relation to the eyes of everyone else in the class. But a week before school let out for winter break, he was still watching and waiting, no closer to achieving his goal.
Today the classroom was especially noisy and chaotic, students arguing over glue sticks and permanent markers as they put the finishing touches on their science posters. Alex had left his at home, the row of feathers he’d glued on still drying, and so he sat at his desk, his attention divided between a book on hummingbird migration and his cell phone. He was waiting for a text from Wes. Mr. Everett allowed cell phones (as long as they were used as tools of science, not tools of gossip or romance), so he didn’t have to hide it, like he did in some of his other classes. Picking it up, he scrolled through the history of his texts with his father.
Their first exchanges were short and awkward: Doing? Nothing. And then two days of silence before: Dinner? Yes. They’d picked up, though, as his project had picked up. The first time Alex had sent his father a science question, Wes had responded with eight texts, two photos, and a link to a website for a lab at Purdue, and their exchange had continued, almost without pause, for days after. Once, Wes had even texted him in the middle of the night: We need to talk about statistical significance—and then I’m sorry—I didn’t realize the time! to which Alex had replied: I was awake! And thinking the same thing!
He had just set down his phone and turned back to his book when the phone buzzed on the desk. It was the text he had been waiting for. Wes had located a scientist known for his isoscapes—maps that showed the stable isotope ratio of the water in every region on the planet—and had sent Alex a link to the most recent map of the Americas. Alex clicked the link and zoomed in on the coast of California. He opened his notebook to check his own numbers—Wes had paid to have a few samples run, while he was waiting to see if they could get access to the lab.
“Yes,” Alex said, when he saw the numbers matched. “Yes!”
Mr. Everett chuckled from where he stood behind him. Alex didn’t know he’d been speaking aloud.
“Carry on, carry on,” Mr. Everett said. “Don’t mind me.”
His teacher turned back to the bookshelf, a heavy-looking box in his arms and his keys clutched in his hands underneath. Setting the keys on the shelf, he began to empty the box, lining up a row of shining Erlenmeyer flasks before returning to his desk with the empty box.
He’d left his keys.
Alex stood up to go to the bathroom, swiping the key ring and walking immediately out the door.
—
As soon as the last bell rang he called Yesenia, and he kept calling until she got home from school and answered.
“I have them.”
She didn’t say Finally! Even though he knew she was thinking it. He was too. It had felt like forever, those weeks. He’d thought it would be easier, with everyone focused on their projects, but it was already the week before Christmas vacation—their big presentations would take place the next day.
“Where should I meet you?” she asked.
“At the top of the pedestrian bridge. At eleven?”
She agreed and they hung up. Full of nervous energy, he decided to cook something for his mother and sister and tore the kitchen apart looking for something he knew how to make. Settling on fried eggs and bacon and fruit salad, he made heaping plates before he realized he’d never cooked dinner for his mother, not once, and so instead of setting the table he dumped all three plates in the garbage, took out the trash, and lit ten matches in every room to mask the smell of cooking. Nothing could be out of the ordinary when Letty got home—he didn’t want her to think for even one second that he was up to something.
But if Letty noticed the smell, she didn’t say anything. She came home late with Chinese takeout and they ate from Styrofoam containers on the front porch, Letty exhausted but trying to ask Alex questions about his project, to prepare him for the next day. It wasn’t necessary; Alex was prepared. He answered them all and then started his homework for his other classes while his mom put Luna to bed. Letty fell asleep mid-song, and Alex left the house right then, not wanting Yesenia to get to the bridge first and have to wait for him alone in the dark.
It took him over an hour to walk from his new house, though, and when he arrived she was already there, leaning against the wire cage. She wore all black—a good idea, he realized now, although he hadn’t thought of it. He hadn’t thought of it because until that very moment he hadn’t thought of what they were doing as breaking the law. He wasn’t hurting anything, wasn’t stealing anything—just borrowing the keys and borrowing his teacher’s password and borrowing his computer. Still, he knew it was probably illegal.
“Hi,” Yesenia said, her face full of fear and excitement.
“Are you ready?” Alex asked.
“I think so.”
“You don’t have to come, you know.” He’d been thinking this on the way over—that if anything about Operation Enroll Yesenia started to feel dangerous, he’d make her wait down the street.
“I want to, though.”
They were quiet on the walk to school, apprehension growing with each step. Alex tried to calm himself by listing all the reasons they wouldn’t get caught: it was the middle of the night, it was dark, and he had the key. He knew the password and knew exactly how the computer system worked. The whole thing would take ten minutes, at the most.
The lights were on in the art wing; through ten-foot windows Alex could see Mr. Mendoza, with his rolling trash can, moving through the ceramics studio. Alex was glad he was there—it meant the alarm wouldn’t be set, if there was one. He hadn’t thought of an alarm until that moment either, and the possibility made his heart beat faster—what else hadn’t he thought of? He kept going, leading Yesenia around the side of the building, past the tables where he ate lunch every day and to the long, open-air halls of the science wing.
Yesenia stood guard at the end of the hall while Alex unlocked the door. With a nod of his head, he summoned her, and they slipped inside together. She clutched his waist hard as he felt his way to the front of the room from memory and reached underneath Mr. Everett’s desk to push the power button on his desktop.
It took forever for the computer to turn on. The screen went from black to blue, and then there was a moment that stretched on indefinitely, when everything looked as it should but the cursor wouldn’t move. When it finally did, Alex opened PowerSchool and clicked through the enrollment tab to create a new student profile: Yesenia Lopez-Vazque
z, gender: female, age: 15, address: 7 Woodbridge Court; where he should have put her phone number, he made up a ten-digit number. The form was much longer than he’d expected, and required information he didn’t have, including immunization records and dates. He entered a date beside each vaccine listed, at first trying to remember at what age he’d gotten certain shots and then, when that took too long, entering dates at random. Beneath the immunization records was a blank field in which to describe medical conditions. He looked at Yesenia for direction, and when she shook her head he wrote: none. Her profile complete, he was directed to choose her classes, and he entered his own spring schedule in order: first-period English to last-period gym. He’d already told her she’d have to wait in the library for zero period—it would be too risky to put her in honors science without prior consent from Mr. Everett.
She would start in January, the first day after break. No one would ask questions. They would walk from class to class and he would introduce her to everyone and tell his friends she’d just moved here and no one would wonder why or where she’d come from, because no one had ever wondered why or where he had come from. He was just there, and soon, she would be too. Finished, he pressed PRINT; the single sheet of paper slipped out the printer on the far wall. Alex retrieved it and handed it to Yesenia.
“That’s it?” she whispered.
He nodded and closed himself out of PowerSchool. In the cold light of the computer screen, they made their way silently to the door, closing it firmly and locking it behind them.
—
They sprinted all the way back to Bayshore, Yesenia running as fast as she’d ever run in her life. When they reached the pedestrian bridge they were panting but full of adrenaline, their silence turning to loud laughter. They’d done it. Yesenia pressed her schedule flat against the wire fence of the bridge and read it in the pulsing light of the headlights passing below.
“Thank you,” she said, but it was unnecessary; they had done it together.
“Are you tired?”
Yesenia shook her head no. There was no one waiting for her at home, and no one was awake to miss Alex either. Holding hands, they walked down the stairs and straight up Mile Road, past the Landing to the water.
It had been a long time since they’d been to the pier together, and the ocean air was colder than he remembered it, and damp. They sat down, and Alex peeled off his jacket and then, pausing, took off his shirt too. He spread the sweatshirt out on the pier and lay down on top of it.
“Aren’t you cold?” Yesenia asked.
“I won’t be.” He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her down on top of him and covering them both with his jacket. He was warm but would be warmer if she would take her shirt off too, if they were skin against skin. She must have thought the same thing, because she pulled off layers of clothing until she was wearing only a bra before lying back down on top of him. She pressed her body against his.
“What’s that?” Mr. Everett’s keys were still in his pocket. He adjusted her until he could slip his hand inside his pocket and pull them out.
“I meant to put these back where I found them before we left.”
“But what about the fingerprints?” she asked. “Better to destroy the evidence.”
“You watch too much TV,” he said and thought of Maria Elena, her disapproval hitting him hard and unexpected.
“I’m right, though.” She nodded toward the bay.
Maybe she was. He didn’t want to cause Mr. Everett the trouble of having to make new keys, but he wanted even less to get caught. Before he changed his mind, he sat up and threw them into the water, watching the surface until the ripples became waves and the keys had sunk to the bottom of the bay.
When he turned back to Yesenia, she was naked from the waist up. He was equal parts excited and terrified, to see her chest exposed in the moonlight. Her breasts and belly were perfect above the line of her black jeans, without the scars that crisscrossed her lower back and legs, and as much as he wanted to look at her, he wanted to cover her too, wanted to hide her away where no one but him could look at her body this way again, ever. He pulled her down and rolled over on top of her, kissing her hard while she worked at the button on his jeans. She’d never been so bold, but he didn’t stop her, tried to follow her lead, pulling on the clasp of her pants for what seemed like an indefinite stretch of embarrassment before she got his pants off and pulled her own off too.
They lay naked, then, for the first time. Their bare legs stuck out from underneath the jacket, his own long and pale and hairy, and hers short and dark and perfect only to him. He was shy all of a sudden, but his body wasn’t, was in fact the opposite, bold and reaching toward her. He arched away, but she rolled him over on his back and pulled herself on top of him again, so there was nothing to do but let himself be pressed up against her belly.
She held his face and kissed him, softly, and he kissed her back, and he wanted to cry it was all so perfect, and he wanted to do what she expected him to do, but he also had no idea what that was. And he hoped it wasn’t everything. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t have sex, not only until he was married but until he wanted a baby, so that a child of his would never, not even for one moment, not even at conception, feel unwanted; but he would, if she wanted to, to show her there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
She was squirming on top of him, rubbing herself against him in a wet, rhythmic way, and he couldn’t tell if she was trying to get him inside her or trying to keep him out. She kissed his ear, and he opened his eyes and tried to think about the stars, about the birds, about his project, anything but the feel of her against him. He reached down, thinking there was maybe something he was supposed to do, something that might feel good to her, but when he touched her she rolled off, all at once, and took a breath.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? No, no, it’s not that. It’s not anything.”
She was trying to say something else, he could tell. He hoped it wasn’t that he was doing everything wrong, because he might be. He’d been thinking only about himself from the moment he saw her naked, and he should have been focused on her all along.
Finally she turned away from the sky and looked at him. “Do you want to?”
He didn’t. But he would; for her, he would do anything. “Do you?”
She shook her head no, slowly. “I will, though.”
He kissed her hard, relieved, but also curious, and still worried that maybe he’d done something wrong, something to turn her off.
“Is it God?” he asked.
She smiled big, and he saw Carmen in her face, the sly confidence at the dinner table, as if something had long ago been decided between mother and daughter and God.
“No,” she said. “It’s babies.”
It made sense, that in this way they were the same: two unwanted children scared to create the next generation under similar circumstances. He kissed her again. “Let’s wait,” he said into Yesenia’s mouth as she kissed him again: his lips, his cheek, his ear.
She pulled away just enough to look him in the eyes, her expression mischievous. “There are other things we can do, you know.”
Alex’s heart dropped as she dropped, her head disappearing underneath his jacket.
—
Alex wore a suit to school the next day. Yesenia had found it in the alley, along with a white shirt and lime green tie. He thought he’d be the only one dressed up, but he was wrong. The girls wore skirts and blouses or serious, high-necked dresses, and the only boy not wearing a suit was Jeremy, who was instead sporting a bow tie, suspenders, and an open white lab coat. It would take more than an eye-catching outfit for Jeremy to win, though; his project was one of the worst in the class.
Wes had picked Alex up and dropped him off that morning, his trifold presentation tucked safely in the trunk and sample feathers pressed into a glass frame. Alex expected his father to drop him off at the curb nearest the science wing, but instead Wes parked in the student lot
and walked Alex all the way to class.
They were twenty minutes early, but already the classroom was crowded with students and parents and judges. The desks had been pushed to the center of the room to make space for tables that had been brought in and pushed against the classroom walls. Alex found his name and set his project down just as Miraya walked up with a box full of donuts. Alex took two, handing one to Wes, and together they ate apple fritters while setting up Alex’s board. In the center was the title, which they’d come up with over a series of texts the weekend before, and which had gotten longer with each additional text: “Using Stable Isotope Signatures to Investigate the Effect of Climate Change on the Migration Patterns of Allen’s Hummingbird.” And below the title were the hypothesis and a photograph of his grandfather’s file cabinet, open to the reds and showcasing his organization system. There was almost too much to fit onto the board—the description of the process of creating isotope signatures, photos of the mass spectrometer, and isoscapes of California and Mexico—in addition to the framed feathers, marked for where they would sample. The board was so crowded that Alex had had to print his expected results (If my hypothesis is correct, feathers from earlier years will have a more southern signature) in eight-point font and glue it to the very bottom right-hand corner, where he was now sure the judges would miss it.
But it was the best that he could do, and he was proud of it, and he could tell that Wes—who’d taken a quick tour of the room and given him a giant pat on the back upon his return—was proud too. Alex gave his father a hug good-bye and thanked him, and then he wandered the classroom himself, surveying the final presentations for the ideas he’d heard bits and pieces of over the last semester.
In the front of the room, a professional-looking poster was taped to the whiteboard. Julianna Skye’s was the project everyone was talking about. Apparently she’d started a makeshift lab in her basement, trying to create a strain of algae high enough in oil content to be an economically feasible biofuel. An environmental lab had somehow gotten wind of the project (the other students said her dad ran the lab, but looking at the man in jeans and flip-flops who had accompanied her, it was hard to believe that was true) and had given her a budget and space to work. Already her results looked promising. It was an amazing idea, the kind of thing that not only made a great science project but, if successful, would make an actual, real-life contribution to the world. She would win for sure.