Joyride (15 page)

“Can I at least offer some advice?”

Oh here we go. “Sure.”

“Give it two weeks. I'll bet after two weeks, you'll be ready to quit the Breeze Mart.”

“I'm sure I will. But I can't.”

“Oh, come on, Carly. You can't carry the world on your shoulders. If, after two weeks, you're too tired, then promise me you'll quit the Breeze Mart. What have you got to lose? Minimum wage? Just ask to open and close on Saturday and Sunday at Uppity Rooster. You'll make up for your puny minimum wage easy.”

“You're just saying these things because you want me to go with you on little mini–crime sprees.”

“So?”

“So, what am I gaining by quitting one job only to go around stirring up trouble with you?”

He pulls over on the side of the road. Puts the truck in park. Puts his arm on the back of my seat. It's not intimate, the way he does it. But somehow I find it endearing. Oh geez.

“Life, Carly. You're gaining life.”

What can I say to that?

*   *   *

Julio is like Mama; he only speaks to me in Spanish. “How did your day go?” he says, flipping the chicken and cheese quesadilla he's making in the skillet. I sit at the counter on a bar stool, hovering over a jar of homemade salsa Julio made, trying not to actually drool.

“It was great.” This is the part I've been waiting for. This is the kind of cash I hand Julio after a week of work. Not one day. “Look what I've brought you.” When I've got his full attention, I pull the clump of cash from my apron pocket and let it splay out on the sideboard in front of me. “This is all for the jar.” Okay, so I kept five bucks for myself, but Julio will never know the difference.

His eyes grow as round as the quesadillas he's cooking. “What is this?” He says this as he gathers it up and starts arranging it by denomination. Licking his finger, he counts through it.
“Ay, Dios mio,”
he says. “I can't believe it. Where did you get this?”

I can't help but beam. Finally, Julio is happy with what I've given him. I know my paychecks from the Breeze probably look dreary compared to what he makes at his construction job. But not this. This is comparable, if anything. This is impressive. It's all over his face.

“I started working at the Uppity Rooster. Breakfast shifts on the weekends. I didn't want to say anything until I knew it would work out,” I tell him proudly. “Plus I'll get a paycheck in two weeks for the hourly wage. This is just tips.”

“Either you're a good waitress, sister, or those rich people feel sorry for you.” So he's heard of the Uppity Rooster. And he knows what kind of place it is. There are tears welling up in his eyes. He's relieved. Relieved that I'm finally pulling my own weight.

Which makes me feel like a molecule.

“Imagine how much you can make with both jobs,” he says. “You'll be up there with me, no?”

And that's when the guilt settles in and becomes a part of me.

I am smaller than a molecule. A molecule is twice my size.

Because I'm toying with the idea of cutting my shifts at the Breeze. The truth is, I'm tired. In the six hours I worked today I think I must have walked twenty miles. And how tired will I be after working six nights a week and two twenty-mile morning shifts on the weekends plus school?

Then I think of how tired Julio must be. And how he never mentions it.

Julio sees my hesitation and scowls. “You know Papi and Mama are counting on us. They need our help, Carlotta. This new job is great. But we need the income from the Breeze Mart too.”

“I know that. Did I say anything?”

“Your face does not hide things very well, little sister.”

“I just thought that with the cash I can bring in at the restaurant, maybe I can cut some shifts at the Breeze Mart.”

With deliberation, Julio pulls down two plates from the cabinet and sets one in front of him and one in front of me. He eases half the contents of the skillet onto each plate, then makes work of unscrewing the salsa jar. Julio is gearing up to be political with me.

He picks up a red pepper—probably from Señora Perez's miniscule garden—and a cutting board. Methodically, he begins to slice it into columns, then squares. “You're growing into a beautiful young woman. You are making money.” He eyes the cash on the counter. “Good money.” With the knife, he corrals the massacred pepper into a pile on the cutting board. “With money comes a certain amount of independence. I understand that.” He divides the peppers between us, even though he knows I don't like them. “You're a good girl, Carlotta. A smart girl. I know it seems like we're asking much from you right now. Mama and Papi will be so proud of you.”

It stings, the words “will be.” Because it means that right now, they aren't. Despite everything. I wonder what the conversations between Julio and Mama are like. I wonder if they talk about me, how lazy I am. What an underachiever I am. I wonder what Julio truly thinks of me. He never put much stock in school—only work. He's worked full-time hours since the age of fifteen, and taken care of me since our parents got deported three years ago. He was only seventeen at the time, and taking care of someone else.

I wonder if Julio is jealous that I only have myself to worry about. That he didn't have anyone to look after him when he was my age.

Julio is the oldest twenty-year-old on the planet.

And looks at me with chastising eyes. “Think, Carlotta. Think if the tables were turned. Don't you think Mama and Papi would do everything they could to get us over here? Do you think they'd be talking about cutting their shifts at work?”

Of course they wouldn't. They want our family to be together. And don't I want that? Or do I? Guilt pillages through my insides. It's not whether or not I want us to be together. I do. It's at what cost, that's the thing. “They wouldn't cut shifts,” I concede. But I'm angry. I want to rebel against his reasoning, no matter how sound it is. “Maybe it would help if I knew how far off we were. How much do we owe
El Libertador
? How much longer do I need to work like this?” I don't expect him to answer. I don't. But his body language, the way he moves with deliberate ease? It makes me realize he's going to give me an explanation. And I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

The only thing I'm sure of is that I want my parents back. I want them here, with us.

Julio walks to the sink and turns the faucet on, holding the knife under the running water for a long time. He opens the drawer in front of him and pulls out a coffee filter—we use them for everything, since they're cheaper than paper towels—and wipes the knife dry. After setting the knife down, he turns to face me, palms on the sink behind him. Slowly, he nods. “Mama says we shouldn't tell you how much. That it would only stress you. But I think differently. I think that if we are asking these things of you, then, yes, Carlotta, I think you have the right to ask how much. And I think you can handle much more than Mama realizes.”

I hold my breath. Maybe I can't handle more. What if this number, this ransom we owe
El Libertador
to bring my parents back, is so huge that it's unattainable? It would mean that I'm trapped. It would mean that this small morsel of freedom I've had with Arden these past few days has just been a cruel tease. It would mean that living life, actually
living
it, is a pastime enjoyed only by those whose lives are not indentured by the need for money.

I am an American. And yet I am a slave.

“How much?” I choke out.

“
El Libertador
requires fifteen thousand US dollars for each person he smuggles across the border.” Julio says this as if he's talking about the number of cracks in the ceiling or the variety of scuffs on our linoleum floor. He even shrugs a little, as if the blast radius of the bomb he just dropped wasn't catastrophic.

Mama. Papi. My brother and sister.

Sixty thousand dollars.

I swallow. Once. Twice. But the bile slides up and down my throat like an enraged serpent. I try to translate sixty thousand dollars into shifts worked at the Uppity Rooster and Breeze Mart but my brain won't do the math.

“Was I wrong?” Julio says softly. “Was I wrong to tell you? That price includes getting them across the desert, you know.”

I shake my head and brace my forearms on the counter in front of me. I wonder whether this sideboard can hold me up, what with this new weight of the world on my shoulders. “How … How much do we already have saved?”

At this, Julio perks up. “We have nearly fifty thousand saved,
bonita.
You see how much progress we've already made?” There is a flash of pride in his eyes, and why shouldn't there be? He's the reason we've got even that saved up. I'm impressed. My Breeze Mart checks hardly buy groceries each week. And that's stretching each deflated dollar to its death.

Plus, we send money home every week. So all of that savings came from Julio. He is the true slave.

Julio seems relieved to have shared this with me. As if by sharing the information, the actual accounting of it, he's also sharing the burden of responsibility. This should feel like a privilege and I know it. Julio has deemed me fit to speak about adult things with him. He's truly making us a team, instead of just saying it all the time. He's bringing me into the proverbial loop. I should see it as an opportunity to prove myself.

But all I see is how much work it will be, how much work it's already been.

And I don't know how much longer I can do this.

But my family is worth the sacrifice.

 

Sixteen

Arden slips into his seat in social studies and tries not to look at Carly, who is already doing a fantastic job of pretending that he doesn't exist. He's come to accept this weird relationship of theirs, that they aren't to acknowledge each other in school. She claims to not want the attention, and he can't help but feel relieved at that. The more questions people ask him about their relationship, the more questions he would have to ask himself.

Because the truth of the matter is, he's not sure what it all means yet. Or if it means anything more than the sum of the parts: They hang out. They cause trouble. They laugh while doing it.

Still, he can't ignore that these past few weeks he's felt like he's been having an affair with life. He thought he'd been truly living before Carly Vega. He thought Amber's death had scared life into him, had stirred up the need to do more than just exist. But he's coming to realize that life can be lived in fractions and he has been portioning some of it out to merely existing after all, despite his best intentions.

All those nights riding around in the police car with Deputy Glass, when the conversation fell quiet and so did the incoming calls. Staring out the window as Glass drove round after round throughout town. He would have called that living; it was rare, something only an insomniac had the pleasure of seeing, the world at rest. At peace with itself.

Even when he'd devised his own entertainment, the fun was lacking by exactly half. He just didn't know it at the time. But now he does. And he can't stop thinking about why.

And he can't stop thinking about why it even matters, but the answer whispers back at him almost immediately:
Because what if you lose this too
?

He pushes the thought aside, all thoughts in fact, until class is over and he can finally align himself with Carly in the hallway and pretend not to be talking to her. She stops at her locker to shift books and folders around, which is her version of appearing too busy to notice him.

She opens her locker and proceeds to shuffle the contents in an almost predictable way. He leans against the locker to her left. “Is this even necessary anymore?” he says, keeping his voice low. “Everyone thinks we're a couple. Maybe we should act like one. Then all the mystery and curiosity is gone and they'll eventually stop talking about it.
Poof.
No more attention. Isn't that what you want?”

Carly raises a well-defined brow at him, briefly giving him the pleasure of looking directly into her mischievous eyes. “If they thought we were actually a couple, they'd feel obligated to talk to me and invite me to their stupid parties and sit at their secret society table at lunch.
Poof
. Ten times the attention. You'd put me through that?”

Yes, in a heartbeat, if it meant his friends would stop wondering if Carly Vega is taken or not.
Is this what a crush feels like?
“I don't even go to their parties anymore. And I don't eat lunch here, remember?” He still drives to Taco City, even though he'd stay and eat the palatably challenged cafeteria food if she asked him to.

But she never does.

“How can I forget that you waste five bucks a day on lunch?”

“Three ninety-nine. The special is three dollars and ninety-nine cents. Geez.”

“Speaking of three ninety-nine,” she says, slamming the locker shut. A brilliant smile shimmers across her face. “Are we still on for this afternoon?” Arden can't help but smile himself. He promised to take her to Best Buy in Destin. She'd finally skimmed enough cream off the top of her tips to buy a laptop—without Julio ever questioning where the money had gone. Now she won't need to borrow the school's laptop anymore—something Arden knows means a lot to her.

“Are we ever off?”

She scowls. “Maybe I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't hide things from Julio.”

Arden rolls his eyes. Little hypocrite. She's already hiding the fact that she cut her shifts at the Breeze Mart. “Really? You think now's the time to grow a conscience? Besides, you've given him enough freaking money to buy a Lamborghini. Oh, I know,” he says, waving his hand at her. “You don't want to talk about what he's doing with it.” He covers her mouth with his hand, to prevent the usual
well-it's-not-your-business
remark, which she says with a stinging effortlessness. It's true, it's not his business, but who likes hearing that? And especially in the way she says it? All hoity-toity.