Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
walking to the canal the next day, danny and i are very, very
awkward. Thankfully, Marisol does all the talking.
“It’s going to rain big-time,” she says, pointing at the dark clouds. “There better not be any lightning.” She looks at Danny. “I’m petrified of lightning.”
“Yeah?” Danny says. “Well, isn’t Florida like the lightning capital of the world?”
“It is,” I say, which is pretty much my entire contribution to the conversation.
Then Marisol talks about her first-period class (chemistry) and moves all the way to sixth period (algebra II), and Danny and I listen and listen and listen.
“Do you know Ms. Morris?” Marisol asks Danny. She walks between us, trying to connect the distance that has left us one hundred miles apart in a two-second radius. “She’s crazy. She made us do fifty math problems in class yesterday without being able to resharpen our pencils. She says the noise irritates her and that our parents can afford mechanical pencils. Then she got mad when the entire class only made it to problem twenty-two before their pencils were dull. You should have seen her face….”
She waits for us to laugh, but we don’t. “It was really funny.” Marisol plops down on the grass and unwraps her sub. “I guess you had to be there.”
Danny and I stare down at Marisol. I’m waiting for Danny to sit before I sit. And Danny is waiting for something. What it is, I don’t know.
“You know,” Danny says, listening to the thunder rolling across the canal, “I live right over there.”
“Which one is it?” Marisol asks, looking nervously at the sky.
“The one with the three mango trees.” He points five houses over. “Right there.”
“Do you have a microwave?” Marisol asks, when lightning cracks overhead. She holds up her chicken parmesan, nervously. “This is cold.”
“I do,” Danny answers rather redundantly.
“Let’s go.”
we make it to danny’s house before the rain hits.
“Wow,” Marisol says ducking in through the sliding glass door. “That’s going to be bad.”
The three of us stand in the doorway, watching the rain pour down. Lightning zigzags across the sky.
“Maybe we shouldn’t use electrical appliances.” Marisol stares at her sub. I can tell she’s wondering whether the sandwich is worth being electrocuted.
“Here.” Danny takes it from her, tosses it in the microwave, and turns back to me. When the microwave dings, he hands the sub back to Marisol and she takes it to the family sofa, where she’s already started reading the first of ten
Us
magazines stacked on the coffee table.
“Marisol’s addicted to
Us,
” I tell Danny.
“So is Dalia. She’s got a subscription.”
Danny and I eat at the bar. He sips noisily from his glass of water, but I don’t mind. I like knowing that in some way he is flawed, even if it’s a little flaw.
“That really does look bad.” Danny nods his head toward the sliding glass door. Outside the rain is falling sideways, with lightning cracking every five minutes.
Danny looks at the clock on the microwave. We have thirty minutes left for lunch. “I don’t know if that’s going to stop,” he says.
“Maybe we should check the Weather Channel,” I suggest.
“I vote for the Weather Channel,” Marisol screeches from the sofa, visibly rising when the next bolt hits. “Definitely Weather Channel.”
We settle in front of the TV. Marisol moves as deep into the sofa cushions as humanly possible.
“Oh, tornado watch,” Marisol announces over the announcer. “That’s not good.”
“No, not in this county,” Danny says, trumping Marisol. “Palm Beach and Broward,” he reads.
“But hello?” Marisol’s voice is filled with dread. “Lightning. Do you want to walk in that?”
“We could try. We have twenty minutes to make it,” I point out. And then the television goes black.
“Electricity went out,” Danny observes.
“Where is your grandpa?” I ask. “Maybe he can drive us?”
“Aunt Ana’s day.” Danny ruffles his hair with his fingers. “We should stay,” he decides. “That’s bad. Hope nobody has a test or anything.”
“Nope,” Marisol says, wrapping a knitted blanket from the corner of the couch around her, and pulling her
Us
magazines closer. “I’m good.”
“You?” Danny asks me.
“Nope,” I say. “But won’t we get in trouble?” I’ve never actually skipped before. What if my dad finds out?
“Maybe,” Marisol says, “but look at that.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking at the rain falling sideways, and the water on the canal growing a little choppy, “look at that.” I guess some things are just out of my control.
“how long?” danny watches me through hooded eyes. he
says the rain always makes him tired.
The carpet in Danny’s bedroom is soft. We are lying side by side, not touching, yet sharing each other’s space. In the family room, Marisol reads on, oblivious to all that I have learned about Danny.
“Three weeks, but it sucked. I had to stick a pencil in it because it itched so much. And then, one time, I had Marisol scratch underneath it with a short ruler, and we lost it. It just slid right to the middle and we couldn’t get it out.”
Danny laughs, and I smile because he thinks I’m funny.
“Look. There you go again, proving you can smile.”
“Shut up.” I turn on my side to face him. “I told you I can smile.”
“Yeah.” Danny smiles back at me. “I remember that.” He turns on his side. “Okay, check this out. One time I broke my ankle, and I had to wear a cast, and Dalia thought it would be funny to shove M&M’s down it while I was sleeping. When I woke up I thought something was in there but I didn’t know what. I just felt like there were all these small balls in my cast. So,” Danny laughs, “I went outside to get my mom and she was talking to my grandfather. By the time she got to look at my ankle, the M&M’s had melted and there was chocolate oozing onto my toes.”
“You and Dalia really like each other, don’t you?” I ask.
“Yeah, we’re twins, so that goes a long way.”
“I wish I had a twin,” I tell him.
“You do.” He smiles sleepily. “Marisol.”
We stop talking for a while, lie back, and listen to the rain. I think of a list of questions that I would like to ask Danny:
Beside me, Danny seems less bothered by the unknown and more willing to meditate to the hypnotic pulse of the thunderstorm. He breathes deeply and then, without warning, there is a twitch. A quick movement of his hand followed by a lifting of shoulders. I roll on my side to watch him. He is sleeping, mouth open, drooling. His hand a second away from mine.
I decide to take the plunge.
I scoot toward him until I can scoot no more, and then, very quietly, I roll myself into his arms.
an hour later, i roll over on my side and collide with a solid
object. I open my eyes and find myself nose to nose with Danny.
“Hey,” he says casually.
“Mm-hmm,” I mutter.
“You fell asleep. It’s two thirty.” His breath curls around my face, and I want to nuzzle farther into him. I’ve never been this close to anyone in my life.
“Mm-hmm,” I mutter. My eyes fall shut and I’m dangerously close to falling back to sleep.
“You have to go.” He nudges me. “School’s out. And my mom gets off work early today.”
“Oh crap.” I stand.
“Slow down,” Danny says. “You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
“But what if your mom finds us here?” I run around the room, looking for evidence that I’ve been here.
“What are you looking for?” Danny asks lazily from the floor.
“Evidence.” Pieces of me, I think. “Where are my socks?” I ask perplexed.
“On your feet.” He smiles up at me as if I’m insane.
“Oh.” I stare down at my socks. I wonder if they’ve just returned from the witness protection program.
“Where’s Marisol?”
“In the bathroom,” he says. “I just saw her walk in there like two minutes ago.”
“Oh, okay.” I step over Danny and race toward the sound of water splashing.
“Hey—” Danny moans from the floor. His hand snakes out and grabs hold of my ankle. “Wait,” he pleads.
“But I have to leave before your mom gets home.”
“I know,” he says gently. “But this will only take a second.”
“What?” I shake my ankle from his reach.
“I like you,” he says quickly. I stop in my tracks.
“I—” My words falter before they leave the starting gate. I try again, but I can’t think clearly. Words are not part of this.
“She likes you, too,” Marisol says from the doorway. And then with a wicked smile, she grabs my hand and drags me to safety.
“i have something to tell you,” marisol says. we’re sitting on
my bed, wrapped in separate comforters, half talking, half lying around and being lazy.
“What?” My voice is muffled by the pillow. I’m still a bit sleepy.
“Well, when I had that talk with Danny during homecoming while Tamara was in the bathroom,” she says, “I might have given him the impression that you liked him.”
“Marisol…” My voice is calm, but I’m not. At least not inside. “Tell me exactly what you said.”
“Nothing.” She lifts the comforter over her face so that one eye peeks out. “I just thought that it was so obvious that you two liked each other and well…I wanted to move things along for you. Are you mad?” she asks hesitantly.
“Mad,” I huff. “Mad,” I repeat more deflated. Why should I be? Danny liked me. I couldn’t have asked for better results.
“Just tell me everything you told him.”
“Okay.” The blanket slides off her face and she shimmies up, so that she’s sitting straight. She pulls her wet hair into a bun and uses a rubber band from my nightstand table to secure it. She clears her throat. “Okay, first I asked him whether Tamara had asked him to homecoming or if he had asked her.”
Is it possible that he didn’t even ask her?
“Well, he
had
asked her.” Marisol touches my hand, her way of softening the blow. “But he also said it was a direct result of you”—Marisol points her finger at me accusingly—“telling him that Tamara liked him. Otherwise, he would have never thought of inviting her. And then he said that he really wanted to invite someone else.”
“Someone else? Who?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I just wanted him to talk—and, by the way, can I say thank God that Tamara was taking her good old sweet time in the bathroom, and Ryan had trouble getting the zipper on his rented tux back up, because if not, the conversation would have been super-brief, but”—Marisol takes a huge gulp of air as if she’s about to let out a major secret—“he did say that the person he wanted to ask said that she didn’t really want to be asked, anyway.”
“You think he was talking about me?” I ask nervously.
“What other girl in America would tell someone as hot as Danny that they didn’t want to go to homecoming?” Marisol raises both of her eyebrows accusingly.
“But then why invite Tamara at all?” I think about him slow dancing with Tamara and my heart skips a beat. Then I think about rolling myself into Danny’s arms. The two images collide, and suddenly I feel nauseated.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But didn’t you say that Mrs. Diaz said Dalia bought the tickets way in advance? Maybe he already had the extra ticket? It’s possible.” Marisol shrugs her shoulders.
“Wow. Oh, wow. You think?” I ask. How cool would that be if it were true? That would mean that Tamara was his date by DEFAULT!
“Maybe,” Marisol says. “You never know.”
“Okay, so get to the part where you tell Danny that I like him.”
“Give me some credit.” Marisol gives me a dirty look. “I didn’t exactly say, ‘Oh, and by the way did you know that my best friend likes you?’ I just said that I wished Susie were here, but she’s so shy about guys that anyone who probably wanted to ask her would have thought that she didn’t want to be asked, but that that wasn’t necessarily the case. And then I thanked him for the Beatles CD and that was it.” Done with her story, Marisol snuggles back into the covers.
“That’s it?” I lean my head against the wall. That wasn’t nearly enough! I wanted more, and more, and more. I wanted it all.
“So,” Marisol mutters sleepily, “what do you think?”
“I think,” I tell Marisol, “that you did good.”
“I know.” She sighs. “I always do.”