5. Deck - Age 16 #2
I wouldn’t have known that. Mamá always made popcorn using kernels in the big pot on the stove, adding melted butter and a pinch of chili pepper.
But even if I had known, I would have forgotten, because the sight of Cori sucking her finger between her pink lips had my full attention.
Dammit! I needed to stop noticing that shit.
“You can share this,” she said, pulling the bag at the corners to open it. “I’m sorry I don’t have more to offer. I haven’t been to the store yet this weekend.”
Cori and Johnny’s mom never bought groceries. Just left them money when she remembered. Meanwhile, Mamá barely let the rest of us cook in her kitchen.
I pffted. “All good. You know you don’t have to, like, host me.” I stood on the opposite side of the counter, using it to keep some distance between us as I grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Were you at the Center?”
“Uh-huh. Chuck organized some Saturday baseball for the kids whose parents couldn’t enroll them in Little League. I told Rosa I’d help him out.”
“Why couldn’t they do Little League?”
“Lots of reasons. But mostly because it costs money, and Chuck said getting a scholarship is kind of a grind.”
With seven kids, I’d heard my parents gripe many times about having to fill out scholarship forms for this or that. But they’d always done it. “How’d it go?”
She shrugged. “I mean…I’m pretty good at carrying water bottles, and I can operate that scoreboard like a boss, but Chuck is gonna have to be the one to teach them to do fancy stuff like hold a bat or catch a ball.”
I chuckled. “Whatever. They’re lucky to have you.” Opening my mouth, I made a motion for her to throw a piece of popcorn in the air. She did, and I caught it, snapping my jaw shut before grinning in victory.
Dios , the microwave stuff tasted like shit.
It was no shock to realize I’d spent my morning sleeping off a massive hangover while Cori had been volunteering.
I admired that she seemed to have different priorities than everyone else but still knew how to get along in the neighborhood.
Her red hair made her stand out—no help for that—but she did her best not to attract attention.
She knew how to avoid a beatdown from other girls in our school by staying off their radars.
Yet, somehow, in keeping herself safe, she hadn’t grown hard.
I worried about that. It was dangerous for her to have such a big heart.
But not so big it stopped her from throwing a piece of popcorn at my eye.
“Ouch!” I put my hand to my chest and would have fallen over dramatically, except there was no room to do so.
With only two bedrooms in the double-wide, Johnny slept on the couch. His things were everywhere. I flicked a pair of boxers off a chair so Cori and I could sit down at the tiny round table that passed for a dining area.
“Sorry it’s messy,” Cori said, closing some schoolbooks and stuffing them in her backpack.
“It's fine. I know Johnny is basically a tornado.” I winked, and her cheeks turned red again.
An ear-splitting sound wafted through the hallway. At first, I thought Bastardo had gone into heat and prowled too far from our house. But it wasn’t my demented cat.
Cori groaned as her brother’s voice rose over the noise of the shower. “Is he…singing Beyoncé?” She put her face in her hands as Johnny botched a high note. “Why is he such a weirdo?”
I laughed. “And tone deaf.”
“And loud.”
We listened, silently consoling one another when Johnny launched into Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” As we finished off the popcorn, my eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door at the back of the trailer.
“Your mom been around?”
Cori flicked the zipper on her backpack and shook her head slowly. “Nope. She might have come by while we were in school, but I haven’t seen her in a few days. She has a friend she’s been staying with lately.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
It was an open secret that the Raneys’ mom, Jill, was an addict who tricked when she needed to.
Johnny never tried to hide it. He usually played it off like it was hilarious, but I knew he and his sister worried about her.
Jill had gotten clean and taken decent care of her kids plenty of times over the years.
She just couldn’t seem to make it stick.
At least Cori was close to Rosa, not to mention my parents, so she had other people if she needed someone.
And Johnny had me, Cruz, and Eliazar. We were boys. Brothers for life.
“What are you reading these days?” I attempted to change the subject.
Cori rolled her eyes. “Do you really want to hear? Or are you just asking because you know I don’t want to talk about my mom?”
Now that she asked, I realized I wanted to hear. “I like it when you talk to me about what you’re reading. It’s hard for me…the words…you know. But I like it when you tell me.”
She still didn’t seem too sure. “Do you want to know what I’m reading in school or for fun?”
Fuck. This girl. She read for fun . “Both?”
Cori nodded. “Well, for school, my honors class is reading Great Expectations . I wish I liked it a bit more, but we just started, so maybe it’ll pick up.
” She glanced downward. “For fun…don’t laugh at me, okay?
” I made the cross my heart gesture with my finger.
“I guess you’d call it a…small-town romance.
With cowboys and stuff…” She took a breath before adding quickly, “It’s not like porn or anything.
Not even close. I got it in the teen section at the library. But, yeah, it’s, um, it’s…good.”
I didn’t laugh as she stammered through her description—I’d crossed my heart after all—but I did smile and bite my lip.
We lived in a neighborhood where couples regularly shouted at each other in the streets, and you had to kick over a couple of meth heads to lock your bike at 7-Eleven, so of course Cori was reading about small-town cowboys.
It made me feel even more guilty for noticing her in a new way, considering my plans for the evening.
I thought about how excited my friends and I were to have our brand-new fake IDs. No more begging adults to buy for us outside the corner store. We’d be purchasing our own Rolling Rocks tonight, muchas gracias .
I would have been embarrassed if Cori knew most of what we’d been getting up to lately. She probably had her suspicions, but the fact that I didn’t want her to know only proved that I would never deserve her. She didn’t need me dirtying up her life.
Johnny turned off the water, mercifully ending his off-key rendition of “Umbrella.” He exited the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Before I could stop him, he came over and shook his soaking wet hair like a dog, spraying our clothes and faces as we held up our hands.
Cori giggled. “Knock it off!”
“Showers for everyone!” Johnny declared.
“Fucker.” I wiped the water drops from my jaw. “Go put some clothes on.”
Johnny cackled and turned around before releasing the towel, shaking his bare ass at us as he grabbed some wadded-up jeans off the floor and headed back into the bathroom.
“That’s my crazy brother. He’s on offer if you want him,” Cori said, still laughing.
“At least he didn’t give us full frontal.”
“True.” Cori reached over and ran a thumb across my forehead before snatching her hand back. “Sorry,” she said. “The water…”
I captured her wrist before she could pull it away completely. Brushing my thumb across the sensitive skin, I fixed my gaze on her. “It’s okay.”
Our eyes locked. A gulp worked its way down her throat as I touched her.
I knew I needed to let go, but I didn’t want to.
Fuck, I didn’t want to.
“C’mon, bro.” Johnny reappeared wearing the jeans and a gray zip-up. “Cruz just pulled up outside.”
I released Cori and stood. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to stay there and talk about small-town cowboys. To eat shitty popcorn. To lean forward and beg her to touch my forehead again. To do whatever I needed to do to be good enough for her.
But Johnny was already pushing me out the door.