To top it all off, my ñaño Toto said I had to be “the bigger person” and apologize. That words are just words. But he’s wrong because I know words can hurt just as badly as any punch.
When she came over, Lily and I had to sit in the living room with Ronaldo and Horacia as “chaperones” because Horacia’s mom would only let her come over if they “chillaxed” with us. And if Ronaldo wanted to show Horacia his FIFA World Cup collection (no one wants to see that, Ronaldo) then I had to be in his room, too, like a chastity ghost or something. Ecuadorian parents—Latinx parents really—always have their minds in the gutter. No, not even the gutter. They’re where the gutter empties out in a pit of perverted thoughts. I swear that all they think about is sex. Even if you’re not having sex. I’m definitely not having sex, but it seems like everyone around me is obsessed with it. My mother and grandmother won’t even say the word. They just talk around it. For instance, if there’s a boy too close to me at the bus stop, my mom glares at him until he leaves, and dead ass, her eyes bulge out of her head like a scene from Beetlejuice. The first time I invited friends over, she might as well have shined a light in their eyes and swabbed the inside of their mouths for some DNA.
Oh, I have friends now, by the way. We’re the weirdos who hang out at the abandoned bus stop across the street from the school.
Anyways, she was dating Ronaldo, so Horacia took over my personal space and we had a Cold War going on over the TV and stereo all summer. She wanted to listen to Britney Spears and I wanted to listen to Green Day. I thought I was going to win this war, but after what happened yesterday, I’m not so sure.
That brings me to 9th grade—Part B: I ruined my cousin Gabriela’s quinceañera last night and my family hates me. I did something bad. Like real bad.
It all started eight months before the quince. It was the coldest fall I can remember and the day I met the girl who would become my best friend. Alyssa Aragon was standing at the abandoned bus stop and so was I. The problem was, neither of us knew that the bus stop didn’t work. We thought that all the punk and skater kids were there because they were also trying to get home.
There was a particular boy there dressed in a black hoodie and combat boots. Even though he was scowling and SMOKING A CIGARETTE, I enjoyed staring at him. He didn’t look too much older than me, maybe fifteen or sixteen. He caught me looking and smiled. I felt like something amazing had slammed into me and I immediately became obsessed with him.
Enter Horacia with her two friends in matching new low-rise jeans and the same North Face jacket that everyone in school seemed to have. My jacket and most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from ñaño Toto. I had on an ugly corduroy jacket and boots that were half a size too big so I wore two pairs of socks to make them fit.
Horacia saw me and rolled her eyes. We’d had a ceasefire after the last time she told the Spanish teacher that I didn’t speak any English. Poor Mrs. Hunter. She spoke REAL SLOWLY and turned tomato red when I opened my mouth and proved Horacia wrong. She didn’t even get in trouble. Then, I left my gum on her seat and she told my mom. We had to buy her a new pair of jeans. Gabby told me I have to get better at revenge.
“Hey, freak,” Horacia said to Alyssa.
Alyssa didn’t look up from her journal. She also has a diary, but she hasn’t named hers the way I did.
“I’m talking to you,” Horacia said. “You’re a Satan worshiper aren’t you?”
Alyssa snapped her notebook shut and looked up. She had the prettiest oval eyes with long black lashes. Her raven dark hair reached down to her waist, ending at bright bleached tips. When she tucked loose strands behind her ear, I could see that the whole cartilage was studded with glittering piercings.
“Actually, I am,” Alyssa said and grinned.
Horacia and her friends stopped laughing. Alyssa stood up and started speaking in tongues. She shook her body, thrashing her arms around, and flipped her hair over to look like La Llorona. Then she held her fist out, opened her palm, and blew invisible dust in Horacia’s startled face.
Some of the other kids were watching. The brooding boy with the combat boots smirked and kept smoking his cigarette. I was ready to applaud and everything.
“Now let me wait for the bus in peace,” Alyssa said.
Horacia must have realized by then that Alyssa was not, in fact, a Satanist. “You do know this isn’t a real bus stop? Dorks.” For some reason she thought it was hilarious. I could see the moment a light flicked on in her head. “The Devil and the EcuaDORKian.”
There was a chorus of “Haha Ecuadorkian” all around us.
Then she and her friends left and I sat there staring at the tops of my sneakers wishing Alyssa really were a Satanist so the ground beneath me would open up and swallow me whole.
“So, this is not a bus stop,” Alyssa said. “I just transferred here. What’s your excuse?”
“I missed the cheese bus. I’ve never taken the public one before.”
“At this point we might as well walk. I’m Alyssa.”
“Paola,” I said.
Who knew I’d have a reason to thank Horacia? If not for her, I might not have talked to Alyssa and realized that she was just as lonely as I was. Friendships are forged through tough times. Like Sam and Frodo. Han and Chewbacca. Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts.
As
