The Alliance (2 page)

Mr. Ballard looked at his wife, then pulled me aside like he wanted to make sure she didn't hear. “The police are investigating. Jamie was being bullied. He got threatening text messages, people harassed him on Twitter. They're trying to figure out who it was.”

He gave me a pat on the back, then got into his car. I stood there for a second, numb. No way was Jamie being bullied. I would know. He was my best friend. He would have told me, and I would have straightened it out.

But Mr. Ballard wouldn't have contacted the police if he didn't have some evidence. I felt my stomach knot up. Jamie had been hiding this from me. We told each other everything. How could he not tell me?

I walked back to my car to find Cory in the passenger seat, smearing gloss on her lips. “You okay?” she asked as I slid into the driver's seat.

No. I wasn't. My best friend was dead. Bullied to death. And I hadn't known anything about it. My knuckles went white as I squeezed the steering wheel. As the funeral procession pulled away from the parking lot on its way to the cemetery, I fell in line. But I was hardly paying attention the entire drive there. Jamie's face kept appearing no matter where I looked.

I couldn't let his death be for nothing. Jamie had always been there for me. No matter what I did or how stupid I acted, he defended me to anyone. I couldn't just let this pass. I had to find out who was giving him a hard time. And more important, I had to make sure this didn't happen to anybody else at school.

But how?

“iD

ios mío!”

I decided a long time ago that hearing Ma utter that every morning when she saw how I'd dressed was pretty much like her saying, “I love you, my precious daughter.” Kind of.

I stood at the stove, making my famous huevos rancheros for breakfast. She'd barely set foot in the kitchen before her eyes raked over me. It was hard to tell what was offending her fashion sense this time. The baggy pants. The holes in the baggy pants. The combat boots. The sleeveless shirt. The henna tattoos up and down my arms. She clicked her tongue. Same routine every day.

To finish off, she narrowed her eyes and gave a long, hard look at the lip ring. Always the lip ring. It probably bothered her more than my entire wardrobe combined.

“You are the daughter of two very successful attorneys,” Ma said, pouring us each a cup of coffee. “People are going to think we don't buy you real clothes.” She, of course, had on her beige power suit, ready for another day in court.

“I am the daughter of two very successful attorneys who spend every working minute fighting for the rights and freedoms of the little guy,” I said, teasing her with a smile. “That means me.”

My parents were way too cool to tell me how to dress or how many piercings I could or couldn't have. But that didn't mean they had to like my choices in either department. And if good-natured sparring with Ma every morning was the price I had to pay not to wear dresses, so be it.

“I swear I won't do anything to soil the name of the House Mendoza,” I said dramatically, throwing the back of my hand to my forehead. Ma grumbled. I could tell she was regretting sending me to Shakespeare Summer Camp two years ago.

Ma took plates from the cupboard and started setting the table. “You were out late last night. You and Sara go to the movies?”

I turned my back and smothered the eggs in an extra portion of black beans. I didn't have the heart to tell her that Sara and I broke up at the beginning of the summer. My parents liked her a lot. She was my first serious girlfriend. We'd been together a year. Right now, I didn't feel like explaining the whys and hows of the breakup. So, if she thought I was at a movie with Sara, I'd let her believe that. It beat explaining that I'd been hanging out at Loco Cacao, sipping lattes with Ricky and bemoaning the fact that I was single again.

“Sorry,” I said. “Movie ran later than I thought.”

“Just so long as you don't make it a habit,” she said. “Senior year's not the time to let your grades slip.”

I saluted her with my spatula. It was three weeks into the school year. They hadn't even started assigning
real
homework yet. Besides, my transcripts had already gone out to all the colleges I was interested in. A slip in my senior-year grades wasn't going to matter much.

Papa walked in, staring at the morning edition of the
Houston Chronicle
on his iPad. He kissed my cheek, goosed Ma, and poured orange juice for everyone. “
Chica
,” he said to me, “did you know this boy at school? The one who committed suicide?” He tapped the iPad.

I shrugged. “Not really. I knew who he was. He got picked on a lot.”

Papa nodded. “So it would seem.” He tilted the screen so I could read it. The headline read: POLICE INVESTIGATE SOUTHSIDE HIGH SUICIDE AS HATE CRIME.

It made me wanna hurl.
Of course
it was a hate crime. You had to be blind not to see how often that Jamie kid was getting shoved in the hall and taunted. Last year I'd chased off a couple guys who had backed him into a corner. Probably a dumb move on my part. I'm sure he never heard the end of it, getting saved by a girl. But I couldn't just let them do it. I kept thinking,
That could be me.
And I know I'd want somebody to have my back if that was the case.

“I wonder if his parents have a lawyer,” Ma mused, scanning the article. She put her hand on Papa's arm. I smiled. They couldn't resist doing a pro bono case when they smelled injustice. God, I love my parents.

“You see this sort of thing a lot?” Papa asked.

I served eggs to everyone. “Every day.”

I said it without thinking. It was true. But suddenly, Ma and Papa got
that
look in their eyes. That concerned look.

“To you?” Ma asked as I joined them at the table.

I waved it off. “Sometimes. Nothing physical. Just name-calling. I give as good as I get. But that's me.”

“Do you feel safe at school?” Papa asked.

“I guess,” I said. “But I've got a lot of friends who've got my back. Not everybody who gets bullied has friends like mine.”

“Why don't the teachers do anything?”

“They do. Sometimes. But a lot of what happens, they never see. It's in the halls, after school, online.”

Ma tsked. “No one should have to put up with that.”

As we ate breakfast, I kept sneaking glances at the story on Papa's iPad. I caught words like “death threats” and “intimidation.” Wow. Jamie Ballard had it worse than I thought. I knew all about the intimidation. I heard the names he was called. But I never knew someone had threatened to kill him.

You hear that kind of trash talk in the halls all the time: “I'm gonna kill you, man.” But you never take it seriously. If the police were looking into it, Jamie must have been getting worse than some tough-
hombre
words shouted at him between classes. And it must have been bad enough to make him take his own life.

Ma must have seen me deep in thought. She reached across the table and took my hand. “Promise me, Carmen, that if anyone threatens you like that, you'll tell us.”

“Sure, yeah, I promise.”

I said it because I knew that's what she wanted to hear. But really, I was thinking,
Anyone who threatens me better be ready to back it up, because I don't take that crap from no one.

Even so, a small part of me couldn't stop looking at the article on the iPad and thinking,
Am I really safe?

“A

what?”

Ren and I were the last two in the showers after football practice. He was doing that thing he always did, sticking his head under the water and pretending he couldn't hear me.

I threw my shampoo bottle at him. “It's called a GSA, jerkwad. It stands for Gay–Straight Alliance. I was reading about them online. It's a group where gay and straight students can get together.”

Ren shut off the water and grabbed his towel. “Sounds lame to me.”

“It's not lame. It's so gay kids can feel safe.” I followed him into the locker room, towel around my waist. The rest of the team was finishing up getting dressed. This was my first year on varsity. Jon Renquist was the only guy I knew well. We weren't exactly close, but we'd come up from JV together. I figured he might understand my idea. Guess I was wrong.

“Safe?” he asked, flicking the dial on his locker's combination lock. “Like, from ninjas?”

I snapped him with my towel. “Would you be serious? I want to start one here at Southside. I think it's important.”

“But you're a dude, right? I mean, you don't like other dudes. Or are you trying to tell me something?”

I rolled my eyes. “That's why it's a Gay–
Straight
Alliance. You don't have to be gay to join.”

“But why would a straight guy wanna join? All the fags would just sit there and think about doing it with you. Gross.”

I was about to tell him not to use the word
fag
, but I figured why bother? Morons like Ren would never figure it out. “In your dreams, Renquist. Not every gay guy wants to have sex with you. Besides, the group's not about that. It's about finding ways to fight homophobia.”

Ren shook his head. “Whatever, man. Let somebody else do this. You shouldn't be the one starting it.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. People will think you're into dudes.
I
just thought you were into dudes.”

Not everyone's as dumb as you, Ren,
I thought. But I said, “Everybody knows I'm dating Cory Walton.”

“So? God, they'll think you're bi or something. That's even worse.”

I clenched my teeth and tried not to blow up. This was exactly why our school needed a GSA. To educate people. To fight this kind of ignorance. Getting mad at Ren wasn't going to help.

“There's nothing wrong with being gay,” I told him calmly. “A GSA would make people understand that.”

Ren pulled on his high-tops and laced them up. “Why do you care all of a sudden? I never heard you standing up for the fairies before. When did you go all soft?”