Asking for It

Page 5

“Then get in here and work, girl. ”

As I walk in, I see Carmen’s younger brother Arturo with a hammer in one hand. “Vivienne! I can’t believe we didn’t scare you off for good on moving day. ”

I give him a hug. “Not yet, anyway. ”

Carmen and I were randomly assigned as roommates freshman year, because I didn’t have any friends attending UT Austin, and because her best friend from high school changed her college choice at the last minute. We were wary of each other at the start, because two people more different would be hard to find. I’m from New Orleans, from what my mother likes to call “old money” even though not much of the money is left anymore. Carmen is from a small town not far from San Antonio, the daughter of immigrants who worked their way out of poverty. I’m slightly taller than average, slender, and, as Carmen has told me many times, the whitest white girl in the world. She’s short, curvy, and proud of her Mexican heritage. My hair is honey-brown with just enough wave to defy any style I attempt, and my eyes are an uncertain shade of hazel, like they can’t decide whether to be brown or green or gold. Carmen’s hair is a deep, shining, perfectly straight blue-black that I covet nearly as much as her dark brown eyes. I love literature and history, and I littered our dorm room with paperbacks. She loves mathematics, the harder and more abstract the better, and loathes clutter. We hardly dared talk to each other for the first few weeks—but somehow by Christmas break we’d become best friends.

When her younger sibling, Arturo, followed her to UT Austin two years later, I adopted him too. We took him to parties, made sure he studied for finals, even got him a fake ID. By now he’s the little brother I’ve never had.

So I understood how protective Carmen felt when Arturo got involved with his first serious girlfriend. I just can’t share her dismay about how it’s turning out.

“Hey, Vivienne. ” Shay waddles down the stairs, her hands on the small of her back. Her Australian accent makes my name sound like Viv-yin. “Want a Coke?”

“Maybe in a minute, once I’m hot and sweaty,” I say. “Then I’ll be craving one. ”

Shay laughs. “Just get them out of the fridge! I swear, the cans are taunting me. ”

Shay’s doctor told her caffeine was a bad idea during her pregnancy.

Yeah, Arturo and Shay are young to become parents—only twenty-two years old, still undergraduates. But it’s as though they glow every time they look at each other. I don’t think they got engaged because she got pregnant; I assumed a wedding was inevitable from the first time I saw them together. Sometimes you just know. Whenever I see Arturo and Shay together, I smile.

Carmen, on the other hand, scowls.

After we work in the kitchen for a while, unpacking dishes, I glance sideways at Carmen. She’s staring out the window above the sink into the narrow backyard, where Shay and Arturo are giggling as they set up the charcoal grill. I say, “If you’re not careful, your face will freeze like that. ”

She rolls her eyes at my dumb joke. “I’m just worried. That’s all. A baby . . . I mean, Arturo used to forget to feed our dog. ”

I laugh. “He’s not a little kid anymore! And he’s got Shay to help him. ”

“Vivienne, get real. They’re young. They don’t have a dime. Even with their part-time jobs, they can only barely afford to rent a place big enough for a nursery. ” Carmen gestures around us.

The town house is modest, and I know Arturo and Shay already have to scrimp. That will only get tougher when the baby arrives in three months. Still—“Listen, if money solved every problem, my family would be the happiest in the world. ”

“I’m not being materialistic. I’m being realistic. Marrying young, before he gets his degree—it scares me. ”

“A lot of guys might drop out under that kind of pressure,” I admit. “But Arturo’s not ‘most guys. ’ He’d never let anything stop him from taking care of Shay and the baby. ”

Carmen presses her full lips together. “I like Shay—I’m trying to love her, as a sister—but I resent what she’s done to Arturo’s life. ”

“She didn’t make the baby on her own, you know. Remember, it takes two to tango. ”

“Oh, oh, gross. ‘Tango’ in that sentence means ‘have sex,’ and I know you didn’t suggest my baby brother actually had sex. ” Carmen’s smiling now, which counts as a positive sign. “They got pregnant via . . . osmosis. ”