His older sister stood behind the table. Her black hair, a foot shorter than Mamá’s, was pushed back in a straightforward ponytail. She wore an apron over her shirt, and her forehead was frosted with sweat, or perhaps steam, as she wielded a simple kitchen knife with the speed of a cook who’d paid her dues in a Mexican restaurant. A pile of minced tomatoes covered the cutting board.
“¡Todavía no!” She swatted Casandra’s pointing finger away from the nearby pan of rolled corn husks, then covered them over with a towel. “The salad isn’t ready yet, so unless you want to help…”
His younger sisters hightailed it.
Salva scowled. “Lucia, what are you doing here? It’s the week before your finals.”
She was supposed to be two hours away, studying her ass off at the local community college. Her grades hadn’t been so hot last quarter.
She handed over a metal bowl and a head of romaine lettuce. “I did the laundry. Shred that.”
“Papá will lose it if he finds you here in the middle of the week.”
“No te preocupes. His shift’s not over till ten. I’ll be long gone, and then I’ll pass my finals before coming home for Christmas.” She pushed aside the tomatoes and removed the stem from a yellow pepper. “What were you not doing here?”
Like it was any of her business. But Lucia’s opinion had always had more influence over Salva than he cared to admit. Even his name. It was her fault he was called Salva, instead of the common and more masculine Salvino, because when Lucia was two, she’d thought everyone’s name should end with an a—Papá, Mamá, and Salva. Only his older brother, Miguel, had escaped.
“Salva,” she continued to pry, “why are you so late?”
It was a Tuesday, which wasn’t much of an excuse. The deal with Char was supposed to be on an as-needed basis, but he had needed to submit the applications. And Beth had agreed to stay after school today to look at them one last time.
He thought about trying to explain but could already hear Lucia’s response. So you could live up to a dare? Is that more important than your sisters?
It wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. His mother would never have been okay with the whole arrangement with Char. And clearly, Lucia wasn’t either.
She finished chopping up the yellow pepper. “I thought you were supposed to be home earlier now,” she said, reaching for the half-filled bowl of lettuce. There was a brief tug-of-war over the bowl, which she won. “Since you’re free of all your celebrity football engagements.” She cracked a smile.
He couldn’t help grinning. He knew she’d read every press article about the team.
She swiped the chopped-up pepper and tomatoes into the salad.
He snagged a large spoon from a drawer and held it out to her, yanked it away, then offered it back. And lost it.
“Where were you?” she repeated the question as she tossed the vegetables.
“School,” he replied. “Someone was helping me with homework.”
The spoon clattered against the side of the bowl. “What’s her name?”
¡Ay! Too late, he realized his mistake. If he’d told her he was working with a friend, she wouldn’t have thought much of it, but his friends typically needed Salva’s help, not the other way around. “Look, we have a project together,” he said. Though, technically, the project hadn’t started yet, but he didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about Beth.
Which would be what, exactly?
He’d spent more time than was necessary over the past month studying the shade of his study partner’s hair in different angles of light. During those two weeks before the state championship, he’d almost convinced himself that his sudden attraction to her on homecoming was a complete deviation. That Char’s comment had instigated some kind of gut reaction to defend Beth as a victim. And totally skewed his view of reality.
In class, he’d seen nothing but the walking disaster area. Same mess. Same common brown eyes and frizz. And then he’d woken up that one day after school to find her, inches away, staring at him with those wide doe’s eyes and that rare glitter of red in her hair.
Salva had almost bolted. Yet ten minutes later he had found himself in the middle of a stupid, commitment-filled dare.
Which was none of his older sister’s business.
“Casandra! Talia!” he called, “¡A cenar!”
The pounding of feet answered.
Lucia crumbled the queso fresco over the top of the salad. “Poorly done, hermano.” She gave him a look that turned serious. “And here I thought it was just Mamá you wouldn’t talk about.”
He opened the fridge, took out the milk, and closed the door with more force than was necessary. They weren’t doing this.
His younger sisters arrived, talking over each other.
“You’ll never believe—”
“Guess what happened today!”
He let the nine-year-old voices drown out the anger he didn’t have a right to feel.
The dinner discussion was all girl stuff. If only Miguel would move back to balance things out, but after three and a half years, that wasn’t going to happen. Salva should have known, maybe, from the beginning, considering the circumstances. The fights between his older brother and Papá. And everything Miguel had had to give up for la familia.
He had been Salva’s hero, their parents’ pride. The first child to graduate—to get accepted into college. El futuro, Papá had called him. A future sucked into the swirling pit of hospital and funeral bills. Miguel had given up everything—his tuition, school, an entire year of his life—to work and take care of la familia.
And then the fights had started: Papá ordering Miguel to go back to school; Miguel arguing that there wasn’t any money; Papá in denial, trying to fulfill the promise he had made to his wife that all her children would get an education—slamming that shredded, impossible dream into his oldest son’s chest, pushing Miguel away when the last thing any of them could afford to lose was another family member.
The entire year had been like a chasm.
Salva felt his stomach roll backward as he took a bite of his mother’s tamales. I can’t eat this.
He stood.
Then froze as his father walked in.
“¡Papá!” the younger girls shouted. “You’re home early!”
Salva’s gaze shot toward Lucia.
She didn’t raise an eyebrow, though she must have been stunned. Instead, she pushed the tamales toward the empty plate she had set out for whenever Papá came home. “¿A cenar?” she asked.
“Claro.” Señor Resendez made a great show of inhaling the aroma, then seated himself. He swallowed his first tamale in three bites. “Sit down, Salvador.”
Salva sat.
And watched as his father bit into his next masa wrap. “Storm is coming,” the older man said. “We had to shut down the plant. I do not think you will be able to return to school tomorrow, Lucita.”
“Está bien,” she replied.
It wasn’t bien, but Salva had to hand it to his sister. She wasn’t the type to freak in the face of an impending lecture.
Papá had a gift with people. Everyone liked him: the neighbors, the workers at the plant, the owners who had made him manager. Señor Resendez was open, friendly—the type of person who could make a perfect stranger spill the details of his or her life in a matter a minutes. He had a reputation for being a guy who’d laugh off your mistakes, get you out of a mess, and charge nothing but his own pleasure in retelling the story.
Unless you happened to be one of his own children.
In which case, you’d better succeed.
Their father finished his third tamale, then started in on his favorite topic. “So what did you learn today?”
Casandra and Talia reeled off a song with all the state capitals in it. Both girls were graced with praise.
“And you, Salva?” Señor Resendez started his fourth tamale.
Salva hadn’t learned much. With all the random Christmas stuff—the b-ball
tournament, winter concert, drama production—academics at the high school had pretty much crumbled to a halt. He told about the food bank drive he was running through ASB.
“Sí, bien.” Papá took a drink of water, then finally turned his attention to Lucia. “And what are you doing home before finals, Lucita?” He set down his glass. “Did your power go out again?”
That was the excuse she had tried last time.
“I didn’t have class this afternoon.” She lowered her own glass.
“And now you will not be back for class in the morning. You will not gain a transfer into a four-year college with bad grades, Lucita.”
She sat perfectly still, meeting his eyes, then said, “I don’t need a four-year degree.”
My God. Had she learned nothing from Miguel’s experience?
Lucia continued, “I can get my certification to give meds right now, and as soon as I graduate, I can extend my hours at the local retirement home.”
“That is nada.” Señor Resendez brushed off the statement as if she hadn’t even bothered to talk.
“It’s a good job,” she said.
“There is no future there. Your mother and I, we bring you here so you can get an education. This is all that matters.”
“Really?” she snapped back. “What about la familia? I picked the girls up from school and spent the last two hours with them. Why don’t you ask Salva why he wasn’t here until after five?” She torqued the conversation.
No way. Salva didn’t know why she was pushing this argument. As he saw it, she was lucky Papá wasn’t taking her seriously. It was lousy timing on her part. Or maybe not. Maybe the tamales were part of the plan. But Salva wasn’t taking this hit for her. She didn’t have to live here. “I was at school,” he said, “studying.”
Which was a lie.
“Is there something I should know, Salvador?” His father’s voice was calm, the tone used when expecting a truthful answer. If there was anything more important to Papá than education, it was honesty.
Salva felt his throat tighten. He could tell his father about the Ivy League applications, but what would be the point? Deep down, Salva kind of wanted to know if he could get in. Just for the sake of knowing. But even if he won every local five-hundred and thousand-dollar scholarship, he couldn’t afford one of those schools. And Papá didn’t need to feel bad about not being able to send his son anywhere he wanted to go. Plus, there was no point having the whole what-do-you-mean-you-want-to-move-to-the-East-Coast argument.
“No,” Salva answered his father, then took a bite of the salad and almost wept. Jesús Cristo. The peppers were hot.
10
HEROES
Winter featured snow, freezing rain, and three months of cold wind that would have stripped the wings off every butterfly in Salva’s birth state of Michoacán. Then March rolled in with a pile of ditched snow tires and the mingled odors of solvent, oil, and grease.
Salva sat on a stack of new tires in the machine shop. The place had an overflow of work. Which meant Tosa had had to come in to help his old man even on a Sunday afternoon. And Pepe had magnanimously decided he and his best friend should go along. To provide a distraction.
Fortunately, the owner almost never stuck his head out of the office. And Tosa’s father, who was out back most of the time anyway, didn’t have enough English to follow the shop talk. “So what’s the deal with the blonde?” Pepe asked, leaning casually against a busted-up fender. He flicked a string of aluminum bottle tops at Tosa, who was defenseless on a creeper under a dented-up Chevy. “Any action yet?”
In Pepe’s vocab, action required all four bases.
Metal clanged from under the car, followed by soft swearing and a squeal as the rollers of the creeper shifted. “We’re off for the moment,” Tosa said.
“Man, you weren’t ever on.” Pepe smirked.
Tosa’s hand came out from under the vehicle and patted the ground, about a foot from a half-inch wrench. Salva got up and handed over the tool, then went back to his perch.
“What about you, Real?” The question shot from under the Chevy. “You’re the one with the steady girlfriend.” There came the sound of metal screeching against the floor.
Salva cringed. After all the years he’d spent as Char’s protector, he wasn’t too keen on hearing about his best friend’s exploits with her.
Pepe lifted a bad bolt from the discard can. “Yeah, well, we aren’t wasting our time. It’d be a hell of a lot easier, though, if Mr. Super Genius over here”—he chucked the bolt in Salva’s direction—“didn’t keep leaving his little sisters at the place for Char to babysit.”
Salva caught the bolt and flung it back. There better not be any action while his sisters were over there.
“Speakin’ of whom,” Pepe added, “what’s up with you, Resendez? I ain’t seen you with a chick all winter. You turnin’ into the pope or something?”
Salva knew his dearth of a sex life was crazy. He hadn’t been dateless for this long since he’d entered Liberty High, but—well, he kept having dreams about the wrong girl.
Tosa rolled out from under the Chevy and chucked a half-dozen bottle caps back at Pepe. “Better watch yourself, Real! You wouldn’t want to wind up stuck here with Charla while Resendez cleans up all the college girls next fall.”
Salva grinned and tossed his tall friend a water bottle. “You mean, both you and I clean them up; right, Tos?”
“Nah.” Tosa unscrewed the lid and gulped about half the contents of the bottle, then stared down into it. “I’m not going to college.”
“What?” Pepe came off the fender.
“Um…” Tosa screwed on the bottle lid, then unscrewed it again. “I’m thinkin’ maybe the army.”
A hail of bolts fell from Pepe’s fingers. “What the H would you wanta do that for?”
Salva didn’t care much for the idea either—the thought of his big, easygoing friend killing someone. But then—short of a trade school, which there was no way Tosa’s family was going to be able to afford—the military was a real option.
The tall guy looked up at Salva as if for approval. “Well, it’d be easier, you know.”
Meaning the whole citizenship process. There was no way either of Tosa’s parents was going to pass the English test before he turned eighteen. Though, as Salva saw it, there were a heck of a lot better ways to become a citizen than to get yourself killed. But he didn’t have a right to talk. His father had passed the test two years ago, and Salva didn’t have to deal with the whole visa mess. Lucky. He knew that. Just one more thing he owed Papá, because Salva never could have applied for the same scholarships if he’d had to fill in the wrong bubble on all those forms.
He slid off the tires and clapped Tosa on the back. “The army’d be lucky to have you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pepe demanded.
Salva knew his best friend was still under the illusion the three of them were going to spend the next four years together. Which wasn’t going to happen. No way Tosa would have gotten into a better school than Community. And Salva had already received a yes from Regional at least, not that Regional was at the top of his list.
He and Pepe needed to talk.
But not here. And not now. What was needed now was action.
“It means,” Salva said, “I bet they could use a half-decent mechanic.” He glanced around behind him. No sign of the shop owner. Or Tosa’s father. “Especially one we’ve primed so well for battle, don’t you think?” Salva picked up a grease rag, wadded it tight, and hurled it at Pepe.
“Oh, man,” Pepe said, ducking the rag and crouching down behind the busted fender, “are you sure you wanta go there?”
“Definitely,” Tosa answered instead, snagging the box of remaining rags and dodging behind the fresh stack of tires.
Which meant Salva had to dive for cover behind the cabinet by the open office door.
“Incoming!” Pepe shouted, and what followed was a barrage: aluminum cans,
bottle tops, rags, the empty water bottle, a container of glue, lubricant. The rules were simple. No nuts, bolts, or wrenches. Nothing that would leave a hole in your head. And when you ran out of stuff to throw, you were out.
Salva gave up first. The other guys, closer to each other, kept trading ammo.
During a brief lull in the combat, he heard the customer bell ring and moved to close the door, but he paused as he caught sight of the hopeless look on Tosa’s father’s face. The owner, who should have been manning the desk, must have slacked off early. Salva stepped through the doorway and shut out the sounds of renewed warfare.
Señor Tosa was the inverse of his son, nearly as tall but scary skinny and a total introvert. He was also a brilliant mechanic. But no way was he going to be able to follow the diatribe being flung at him from the guy who’d just entered the shop.
The customer, a white guy maybe in his thirties, though it was hard to tell under the patchy facial hair, railed away about his Jeep losing horsepower. The damn thing had been running fine, he claimed, when he’d got it two months ago. He plucked at his tight T-shirt, not a good look on a guy with a gut, then slammed his chewed-up baseball cap down on the counter and demanded a quote.
“En-engine no work.” Señor Tosa glanced nervously toward the yellow invoices by the hat.
“What the hell you think I’ve been sayin’?” The customer spat a wad of chew onto the floor.
Real classy. “Just a sec,” Salva said to the jerk, then turned and did his best to translate the problem without wasting his breath.
“Change oil?” Señor Tosa asked.
The customer was turning purple. “What do I look like, some teenager?”
I’m guessing you’ve trashed a lot more vehicles than I have.
“Air filter?” asked Tosa’s father.
The guy scoffed and hitched his thumbs through his belt loops.
Señor Tosa dropped into Spanish.
“If the air filter was installed incorrectly,” Salva translated, “the dirt might come straight in and damage the engine.”