Chapter 2
Mayte
“SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS THE STORY EVEN ABOUT?” CLAIRE ASKS. “I’M still kind of confused about that part.”
Lunch is coming to an end and there is still no sign of Auggie.
It had been awkward last week when we were all in the cafeteria but none of us were sitting with him.
Then the weekend happened, and we’d done the same thing on Monday and Tuesday.
The awkwardness apparently got to be too much for him, which is fair.
I wonder if he’s sitting in a bathroom stall like in the movies, but I know more than likely he’s just sitting in his car.
“I don’t think she knows,” Leo says.
I shake my head. “I read the first paragraph or so, which was about me and Abuelita, and then I skimmed through and saw a part about Aida’s funeral.”
“What the hell?” Claire says. “That’s such an invasion of privacy.”
“You’re telling me,” I say, taking a bite of my sandwich.
“Not to mention kinda creepy,” Leo says.
Janko groans. “I don’t think he was trying to be creepy. I just think he went overboard with his passion for his work. You know how much he cares about his writing.”
“Yeah, but we thought he also cared about Mayte,” Leo says.
“I’m not defending him,” Janko says. “What he did was fucked up. I just don’t think it was malicious or stalkerish or anything like that.”
The bell rings for the end of lunch and we all throw our trash away, heading down the hall.
I have Lit & Comp, which means I have to take the long way to class, because I would typically pass by Auggie in the library during his free period to get there.
I say my goodbyes to the rest of the crew and start my avoidance trek.
When I open the front door after school, Abuelita is standing there, staring at me.
“Hola, Angelita,” she says, without even giving me a chance to walk in.
“Hola, Abuelita.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Can I come in?”
“Sí,” she says. “Pero—” She pulls me inside and takes my bag, slinging it onto the floor, and then closes the door behind us. She leads me to the couch. “Siéntate.”
“Okay,” I say, sitting down and then looking around the house. Nothing seems out of place or strange. Except for Abuelita, who is slowly typing the password into my mom’s laptop. “What’s going on?”
“I have a presentación,” she says, turning the laptop to face me. “For you.”
Pulled up on the screen is a slideshow presentation. Mayte at University, the title slide reads.
“Abuelita, no,” I say, attempting to stand up, but the glare she gives me keeps me in my seat.
“I had cancer,” she says. “You must listen to my presentación.”
“How long are you going to use that excuse?” I ask.
“Por el resto de mi vida.” She clicks to the next slide and begins to read from it. “You are a very smart girl. I was a very smart girl, but I did not go to university. Your mother was a very smart girl, but she did not go to university. You can be the first smart girl to go to university.”
“Plenty of smart girls go to university,” I say.
“In our family,” she says.
“Leo’s probably going to college.”
I would assume. But I guess we stopped talking about our after-graduation plans sometime in the last few months.
It hits me that she knows that I’m not going to college because I complain about it and picked a fight with her over it and she knows my parents’ financial situation, but I have no idea what her plans are.
I’ve never asked. Because then I’d have to accept just how little control of my future I actually have and how much control others have.
They’re making the future happen while everything is just happening to me.
I’m not jealous that Claire and Leo are going to college.
I’m jealous that they have a choice. Plus, if we actually talked about the future, we’d have to admit that our three musketeers might eventually be broken up.
“Then we will have two smart girls in university,” Abuelita says. She clicks to the next slide, which is just photos of colleges. “There are very nice buildings at the universities, and very nice nature.”
“Abuelita, stop,” I say. I put my hand on top of hers. “I appreciate this. I do. I just don’t think college is for me.”
She looks at me. “Angelita, what do you mean?”
“I mean, I just don’t think I can do that right now.
Like, just get up and leave everyone. Leave my mom and my dad and…
and you.” I blink my eyes a few times. Don’t cry.
Don’t do that to her. “You know how my mom is. She needs me right now. And, after I graduate, I can get a job and then I’ll be able to help them with money stuff. ”
Abuelita takes my hand, squeezes it, brings it to her mouth and kisses it. “Amor, you are just a girl. Why are you trying to carry everyone? I did not mean for you to—”
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” I say. “No one has done anything wrong. No one has forced me to carry everything. I want to. I want to help. I want to be here for my family. Not just run away to have my own happy little life and leave you all here to struggle and—”
“No one has to do wrong for it to be a difficult time. Your mami and your papi are working so hard to give you a good life, a life they didn’t get to have.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m not trying to be ungrateful.”
“You are not ungrateful,” Abuelita says. She tilts my chin up to meet her eyes. “You are wonderful, Mayte. You are so helpful and so good.” She kisses my head. “It is time for you to grow, mi nieta. It is time for you to be wonderful and helpful and good for the rest of the world.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“If things were different, if we weren’t how we are now, would you want to go to university?” Abuelita asks.
I sigh and look up at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”
When I look back at her, she has the laptop again and is clicking to the next slide.
“There are many ways to get money for university. You can get the scholarships, the grants, and the fellowships. You can write essays to get this money.” She motions to me.
“Like the writing that El Doggy Chico helped you to do.”
El Doggy Chico. Auggie. My stomach drops, but I try not to let it show in my face.
“That is the end of mi presentación.” Abuelita picks up her phone. “And now I will send you a text message,” she says, beginning to type. “It is information about universities and how you can get the money.”
After a few minutes of typing—I realize far too late that Abuelita has been inputting an entire URL from a scrap of paper into a text message—she sends it to me and then gets up to start on dinner. I click the link.
There are scholarship and grant applications, quizzes to see what major could be right for you, a search engine that helps you find colleges based on different categories.
All the choices and options and paths are overwhelming.
But also exciting? Apparently, some colleges have programs specifically for Hispanic students and some even have free therapy.
Also, there are way more colleges close to here than I realized, and not all of them are as expensive as I expected.
I scroll back to the top of the website. “Supplying you with options to reach the future you want.”
The future I want. What is the future I want?
What’s next in my story?
And even later, after the web page is shut and my mom is home and not looking at me again and Abuelita isn’t mentioning our conversation, the thoughts are still running through my mind: What is the future I want? What’s next in my story?
And so I go to my room to call the only other person I can think of who may have thought harder about these questions than I have.
“Mayte, I’m so sorry—” Auggie starts as soon as he answers, but I cut him off.
“I want to read it.”
“What?” he asks.
“The story. If it’s my story, then I deserve to read it,” I say.
“I don’t… but you… are you sure you want that?” he asks.
“I’m positive. You owe me that at least, Auggie.”
He’s silent for a moment. Then, “Okay. I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.” There’s silence again. “I still don’t want to talk to you.”
“I understand,” he says. “But I will. I’ll get it to you. And—” Silence. “I’m just sorry. And I hope you’re okay.”
I hang up.
I lie in my bed and open my email. I know he wouldn’t have sent it that quickly, but I refresh it. Refresh it again. Refresh it again. Refresh it again.
I hear a knock on the front door. Silence. Another knock. I put my phone in my pocket and get up. Abuelita is in the kitchen and my mom is nowhere to be seen. I open the door.
“Oh, Tía Val.”
She hands me a Crock-Pot and kisses me on the cheek, walking inside. “Hola, mi reina. Where’s your mom?”
I shut the door and follow Tía Val into the kitchen, where she’s hugging Abuelita and kissing her on the cheek. “I didn’t realize you were coming over.”
“Didn’t want your mom to have to make dinner on her own,” she says. “Is she home?”
“Yeah, I just don’t know where—”
“Val!” my mom says, coming out of her room. She wraps her arms around her sister and the two seem to sink into each other. “I love you so much. Thank you for coming over.”
“Always,” Tía Val says. She pulls the lid off the Crock-Pot. “Solamente frijoles y yuca y cerdo.”
Beans, yuca, and…
“Abuelita?” I whisper, coming up behind her. “What’s cerdo?”
“Pork.” She winks at me.
Once we’ve all served ourselves, we sit at the dinner table.
Abuelita says a prayer, and the two of us dig in.
My mom and Tía Val just start talking, though, barely touching their food.
I have nothing to contribute, and even if I did, they leave no openings for me.
So I just continue to shovel beans into my mouth until inevitably Aida comes up.
“Have you heard back from the doctors about what happened?” Tía Val asks.
“There’s still nothing,” my mom says. “I still don’t know how my daughter died. I don’t know what to do.” She begins to cry. “I just sit here in the dark all alone.”
I’m here, I want to scream. I’m here and I’m in the dark too. I don’t know what to do either. We’re not alone here.
Instead, I run to the bathroom and grab a wad of toilet paper. I bring it to my mom.
“Thank you, baby,” she says. She turns to Tía Val. “I’m just so glad you’re here and that Mami is staying with me. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise. The house just felt so empty after she was gone.”
I stare into my bowl. This is not about me. Do not make it about you, I tell myself. She’s sad. Her time to be sad is not your time to be sad.
When I look up, Abuelita is staring at me. Her eyes are wet. She gives me a sad smile, and I look away, pulling out my phone. I refresh my email. Nothing.
We’re all still at the table when my dad gets home. He’s already eaten, he says as he goes directly to his room. He comes out again after a few minutes, changed out of his work clothes and into sweatpants and a T-shirt, carrying a manila envelope.
“Here,” he says, handing it to me. “Looks like someone left you something on the porch.”
The envelope has my name scrawled across it in awkward, boyish handwriting.
I jump out of my seat, taking the envelope with me, opening it as I walk. Sure enough, there it is. I turn the envelope upside down to help the story slide its way out, and something else falls to the floor. A plastic bag of pink Starbursts and red Skittles.
“What is it, Angelita?” Abuelita asks.
“It’s nothing,” I say, scooping up the candy and the story.
I run to my room, lock my door, climb into bed, and start to read.