Mayte
“THIS IS NOT GOOD,” ABUELITA SAYS THROUGH A MOUTHFUL OF A mildly stale, grocery-store turkey sandwich. The bread is hard on the outside and soggy on the inside, complete with slimy turkey, tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, and American cheese.
We’ve received two more trays of these.
“Obviously,” I say. “But what are we going to do? Just let them go bad?”
“Yes,” Abuelita says.
“No,” I fight back.
I’ve learned that if I hold my breath while I eat them, I only have to worry about the bad texture and not both the bad texture and the bad taste.
We’ve gotten a lot of sandwich platters, a lot of casseroles, but nothing for breakfast, so mostly we’ve been skipping morning meals.
Not that I really ate breakfast much before school anyway, but I did on weekends.
Lately I’ve just been sleeping in and going straight for whatever’s for lunch.
Abuelita has been staying with us since Aida died and it doesn’t sound like she’s going anywhere anytime soon, which I don’t mind. My mom and dad are running errands, which leaves Abuelita and me home alone.
A situation we haven’t really found ourselves in since Aida died.
I still haven’t figured out how to talk about all of this with anyone, but especially my family, and so I’ve made sure to keep myself out of situations where it could come up.
My mom will only talk to her sisters or Abuelita about Aida, so I don’t have to worry about that one, and I haven’t heard my dad even mention Aida’s name since the funeral.
Abuelita talks about her pretty openly, but not directly to me, though I do think that’s mostly because of my one-on-one time avoidance.
I’ve spent the past couple weeks of free time with Auggie, Auggie and Kate, or Auggie and Claire, none of whom have tried to talk about her.
Well, Auggie tried, but I shut him down enough times that I think he got the message.
“How’s school?” Abuelita asks. She’s not looking at me but glaring down at the sandwich.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Just fine?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Working on making up English essays, mostly.”
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
I don’t like the tension here, but I don’t like the alternative either: Mayte, how do you feel about your sister’s death?
Mayte, do you feel like you can actually, truthfully call yourself an only child now?
Mayte, do you think it’s fair that you get to grieve your “sister” the same way the rest of us do when you never actually had a real relationship with her?
I reach for my phone and send a text to Auggie.
ME: Hey. Can I come over?
I get a response before I even put my phone down.
AUGGIE: My family and I are driving up to the mountains to go hiking today. Sorry.
His message comes alongside a window-blurred picture of fluttering roadside aspens. So that means Kate’s out too.
I text Claire the same message.
CLAIRE: Working on college apps right now. I might be free later tonight though.
There’s a jolt of jealousy that runs through me, an irritation that Claire didn’t seem to get the message after I lost my shit on Leo at the party the night… the night that…
But at least the one good thing about not going to college is I’m not stressing about applications like everyone else.
“Mayte?” Abuelita asks. When I look up, she’s staring at me, and I can already see the question forming on her tongue. “Are you doing okay?” she asks. “With… with everything?”
I can’t do this right now. I grab my phone and jump up from where I’m sitting.
“I’m so sorry, Abuelita,” I say. “Leo is calling. Let me answer real quick and I’ll be right back.
” I put the phone to my ear and talk to no one on the other end.
“Hey, Leo,” I say, walking quickly to my bedroom, closing the door, and collapsing on my bed.
I can’t hide in here forever. And if Abuelita doesn’t already know I’m bullshitting her, which she probably does, she will figure it out for sure if I stay in here until the rest of our family gets home.
I sigh and open my message thread with Leo.
ME: Hey. I know this is a long shot, but can I by any chance come over?
I hold my breath and put my phone down. I’m not mad at Leo, and I don’t resent the fact that she hasn’t been around.
I’m happy she’s found Janko, I really am.
Every guy who sees Leo falls in love with her, and I’ve never thought one of them was good enough for her until I met Janko.
He’s nice and he’s hot and he’s funny and he’s absolutely head over heels for her. He’s everything she’s always deserved.
But I also miss my best friend. My best prima. My whatever Leo is to me. My best person.
My phone buzzes and I prepare for disappointment.
LEO: It’s not a long shot. Please come over. I miss you so much.
I leap up from my bed, grabbing my phone and my purse, and head out of my bedroom.
“Hey, Abuelita,” I call from the front door. “I’m going to Leo’s. I’ll probably spend the night, so can you let my parents know?”
There’s silence for a beat before Abuelita responds. “Of course, Angelita,” she says.
“Love you,” I call back to her before I leave.
As soon as Leo opens the door, she pulls me inside, wrapping her arms tight around me and squeezing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?” I ask.
“I’ve been a terrible prima and an even worse best friend.”
I wriggle out of her embrace and grab a mango White Claw from the fridge. “No, you haven’t.” I hold it out to her and she takes it. I grab my own and we make our way to the couch.
“I have,” she says. “I’ve been putting a guy before you and we always said we’d never do that and now here I am. And, like, not only that, but I’ve left you alone right after Aida died, which is just horrible of me and—”
“Hey,” I say, and this time I’m wrapping her in my arms. “It happens, right? As we get older? It’ll happen.”
“But I don’t want it to,” she says. “You’re my best friend, Mayte. I should’ve been there for you.”
“And done what?” I ask. “I don’t want to talk about her. About Aida. I can’t talk about her.”
“Why not? Holding everything in like that has to be destroying you.”
“There’s nothing to hold in,” I say. “She’s dead. She barely even lived with me for that long and I was always annoyed that I couldn’t go out when I had to take care of her after school. It’s sad, obviously, but I just need to keep moving, you know?”
“Mayte—”
“I don’t want to talk about that, Leo. Please.”
Leo shrugs. “Whatever. But I hope you’re talking to someone.”
“I’m not. But I don’t need to.” I grab her hands in mine. “What I do need to talk about is you and Janko.”
“Ay, mi corazón.” A smile crawls onto her face and she falls backward onto the couch. “Mayte, he’s so amazing.”
I laugh and release the tension in my shoulders. This. This I can handle. The cute and the sweet and the light. This is where I want to sit. Not in the dark and the pain and the grief that doesn’t feel particularly valid in my body anyway.
“Must be if you traded me out for him,” I say, and she sits up, smacking me with a pillow. “Kidding! Kidding! I’m kidding!”
“He used the L-word,” she says, covering her mouth with her hands, her giggling still making its way through.
“He did not!” I scream.
“He did too!” she screams back.
“And what did you say?”
She removes her hands from her face to reveal the sunniest smile I’ve ever seen. “I said it back.”
I scream again, but this time with no words, just a purely animalistic shriek.
“You love a boy!”
“I love a boy!”
We’re in hysterics now and I feel light, I feel like I’m floating, I feel the way I want to feel always, but the more I grasp for it, the more I try to hold the feeling close, to swallow and inhale and absorb it, the more it seems to dissipate, and I can see the place where I know I will return once I’m alone in my room tomorrow.
“So, what have you been doing while I’ve been falling in love?” Leo asks. “I know Claire’s been in college app panic.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve hung out with her a couple times, but not much. Which I guess is senior year.”
“Fair,” Leo says.
“But I’ve actually been hanging out with, well, you know Janko’s weird friend, Auggie?”
“No!”
I laugh. “Yeah. He’s… he’s actually kind of cool. Definitely a weirdo, but in a kinda cool way, if that makes sense. And then he has a sister who’s a couple years younger than us, Kate Peterson, if you know her.”
“Do you like him?” Leo asks.
“What?” I ask, my tongue tripping over itself and tying up in a knot. “I didn’t… I never said…”
“You didn’t, but it’s the way you say his name.” She clambers onto her knees and squeezes the pillow she was just beating me with. “Oh my gosh, you like Janko’s weird friend, Auggie.”
My face is red. I can feel it. She can see it. There is sweat in my palms. This is so stupid.
And she doesn’t even know about the makeover moment at his house.
I still don’t know what to make of that.
Of the way he was looking at me and the kind of thoughts that were crossing my mind while I looked at him.
We’re friends. Just friends. But my entire body was buzzing.
Even thinking of it now makes my insides feel like they’re on fire.
Friends aren’t supposed to look at friends and think of nothing but kissing and touching and—
“I don’t know if I like him per se.”
“So what?” Leo says. “Is he, like, such a good kisser that it overruled the middle part and the polos or—”
“No!” I say. “I mean, I don’t know, I mean—”
“Have you been falling in love while I’ve been falling in love?” Her big brown eyes look like full moons.
“No!” I say again. “I’m not in love with him or anything.”
And then I have to put into words what I’ve been pushing away from my mind and what I know has been sitting in the pit of my stomach.
“Okay. I don’t know. Like, I was at his house the other day and Kate and I dressed him up and fixed his hair and stuff and…
” I can tell I’m wriggling around in my seat like I’m trying to shed my own skin.
“He’s got those blue, blue eyes and, like, really nice hands. And I don’t know. He looked kinda hot.”
“Weird friend Auggie’s secretly hot?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And, like, he’s really cool.
With his writing and stuff. I’ve read some of his stories and they’re all kind of upsetting and about, like, dogs and writers dying in New York, but they’re really pretty.
He’s, like, artsy and quirky, and he’s been really nice.
He was the one who took me home the night Aida… when she, like, died and—”
“Oh,” Leo says, her smile dropping. “Do you think it’s, like, trauma bonding or something?” she asks. “Or, like, that nurse thing?”
“What nurse thing?”
“Like when soldiers would fall in love with their nurses because they took care of them.”
“I’m the soldier?” I ask.
“He’s the nurse,” she says. “Fixing your broken heart.”
I sigh and grab the pillow from her, burying my face into it and screaming. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s probably nothing. Of course it’s nothing. We’re friends. It’s nothing.”
Leo raises an eyebrow at me in silence.
“Okay, but you have to see him in a sweater with his hair all messed up,” I say, swooning backward onto the couch.
Okay.
So.
I might have a little teeny tiny crush on Weird Friend Auggie Peterson.
Shit.