Chapter Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
Derek
The fight with Jae yesterday. I try to think about something else besides that.
But it’s like those arcade moles that keep popping up every time you knock them down.
My thoughts are like moles on speed. Evil moles that call me names.
Mrs. Aldana said to explore the thoughts that are worth our time and let go of the thoughts that aren’t.
But it’s not that easy. Maybe the evil moles are right.
I’m on my bed, staring down at the blank lines in my poetry notebook, and I wonder what the others did today in Free Verse. If Jae wrote two poems. If she ever writes about me.
The shades are drawn, and the room swims with floating lights. I’m trying to create a mood, trying to make words materialize, but they don’t. The page is where we can re-create ourselves into who we want to be.
But who do I want to be? What do I want to be? Not alone.
These days, whether I’m with the guys or not, I’m alone.
My phone vibrates beside me. It’s an entry-level smartphone that cost me weeks of work to pay for. I look down at the blinking notification light, purple, which means it’s from the guys’ group chat. I ignore it, turn back to my poetry notebook. I still owe Mrs. Aldana two poems a week.
Explore the thoughts that are worth your time.
Something Jae said comes back to me. Something about an entrustment ceremony.
About not having closure. I push aside my notebook and pull out my phone.
Ignore the flashing notification and search: entrustment ceremony.
And I get it. Why she would want something like this.
Why this feels like the right way to give your kid to someone else.
I go down the rabbit hole. Pictures and videos and blogs of mothers and babies and adoptive families, lighting candles, singing songs, sharing hopes.
Then I’m ready to face the blank page again.
I’m pressing my pen into a deep well in the paper—the page is where we can re-create ourselves into who we want to be—when the phone buzzes again. And again. And again. The notifications come at quicker intervals until finally I pick it up to check the messages.
I scroll all the way to the top, where there’s a video and Miguel’s caption: Easy’s baby mama drama.
I clench my teeth at the cruel nickname.
Someone captured the scene at the Halloween party, and I think I might hurl when I see myself standing there in the background, watching everything unfold. Frozen. Standing there.
that’s hilarious
haha
shit u think she’s ever coming back to school? i wouldn’t
saw her today with her little gang of weirdos
Out of hiding now? She has balls
no, she just plays with them
pass me a soda
come get it yourself
ugh. feeling nauseous
Seconds later, I’m on my bike, riding toward Miguel’s house.
I enter the gate code in the keypad, wheel my bike inside, and drop it at the foot of a palm tree.
I’m walking past the house when I see Mrs. Montero waving from the kitchen window with a towel wrapped around her head.
I don’t wave back or smile or anything, because all I see is red.
When I round the corner, I see the Montero yacht out in the water. Henry’s outside on the deck with some girl I’ve never seen. He’s holding her waist with one hand and a can in the other.
“Derek!” He raises the can to me.
I tear off my sweatshirt and tuck my phone inside, feeling Henry’s gaze. I step to the edge of the dock and he yells, “Hey, didn’t you bring your trunks?”
No, I didn’t think about bringing my fucking trunks. I didn’t think about anything besides standing toe to toe with them.
I jump in with my jeans and swim toward the yacht. I grab the ladder and climb up. Henry reaches over to take my hand but I ignore it, pull myself up the last step.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” he says, patting my back.
“Don’t touch me, man,” I say.
“Oh my God,” the girl says with a thick vocal fry.
I make my way inside the cabin, which smells of sweet cigars.
I brush past Terry, a guy from the team who’s started hanging around the group a lot.
Right now, he and his girlfriend can’t keep their tentacles off each other.
Miguel is sprawled out on a red leather sofa, staring at the ceiling and blowing smoke rings.
A few of Valeria’s friends are lounging in chairs, glued to their phones, and Valeria’s sitting on the lap of some Vanilla Ice–looking character with frosted tips. She flips her hair when she sees me.
“Hey, Derek,” she says, her eyes flicking down to my bare chest. My jeans are dripping puddles of water on the floor.
Miguel jumps up and walks toward me, holding out his hand. I don’t take it. Our secret handshake is too old to mean anything now. “Hey, what’s up?” he says, furrowing his eyebrows. “Thought you were too busy to come today.”
“I was. But not too busy for this.”
“Wait. Are you mad about something?” His lip curls up.
I’m tired of the pretense. Like he doesn’t know I like Jae.
Like he forgot I was part of the group chat.
I step forward. “You knew I’d be pissed, Miguel.
You just didn’t think I’d do anything about it.
You guys were in the same fucking room texting each other.
You couldn’t just talk to each other? Did you forget how to talk? ”
Miguel laughs. “Talk? Dude. It’s not that serious, man. All that poetry’s gone to your head, you know?” He twirls his fingers by his ears.
“You knew I liked her from the beginning. You saw it. And you went after her like a hawk.”
His eyebrows shoot up and he laughs. I suddenly realize it gets on my nerves, that laugh that makes any serious moment irrelevant, that takes your emotions and ridicules them.
“A hawk? What is that, more poetry? A fucking, what, allegory?”
“God, Miguel,” Valeria says. “It’s a metaphor. Don’t you study?”
“Whatever. Look. Sit down and have a drink or something. Chill out. Try and see the humor in this. I mean, can you imagine being a stepfather?” He looks around the room and they all laugh.
I clench my teeth, feel the muscles in my temple pulse. My jeans are hanging heavy on my hips and getting colder with each passing second, and that pisses me off even more.
“Did you actually read the letter, Valeria?” I turn to her. “Did any of it sink in? None of it landed? You didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her? You know what it feels like to have your family torn apart.”
“Hey, don’t bring up our family,” Miguel says, tipping his chin up so his eyebrow ring comes out of the shadows of his hat, glinting.
“Yeah. Don’t, Derek,” Valeria says, standing up now with fists on hips, stringy red bikini hanging loose.
“I can keep talking about your family. The fighting. The divorce. I can poke and poke and poke just like you keep doing with Jae.”
“Fucking try me,” Miguel says, stepping close.
“You fucking try me,” I respond, and now we’re nose to nose. “You say Jae’s name one more time. You call her Easy one more fucking time. I’ll make you feel it.”
“Oh yeah?” Miguel snickers. “You know where Jae was at the Halloween party? Before you saw her?” His voice is taunting. “Upstairs. With me.”
I step back. Crack him across the jaw.
Valeria screams and hurries to pick him up off the ground. He’s grabbing the side of his face.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” He looks at me in confusion.
“I warned you.” The blood is pounding in my ears.
“Fuck you, Derek,” he spits, and red saliva splatters onto the polished wooden floors. “You chose a girl from the dweebs’ club over us. What the hell happened to you?”
I look at Miguel holding his jaw, and I have to tell myself that one punch is good enough.
“No. What the hell happened to you? You look for the easiest targets so you can beat them down and feel like a god. Do you even know you do that? Jae’s the sweetest person in the world and you’re not going to take advantage of that anymore. ”
Miguel pushes Valeria away and walks over to the sofa, where he collapses. “We’re done with you, man.”
I nod. “Yeah. I figured.” I look around the room one last time. The place we used to laugh in. Play cards in. Family nights.
“There’s nothing here,” I say.
“Get the fuck out of here.” Miguel scowls.
“There’s just nothing here.”
I climb up to the deck, brushing past Henry and his girl, who hold on to each other like I’m about to throw them overboard.
I take in a deep breath as the air hits my face, look across the water, across the houses, in the direction of Jae’s house. I wonder if she would disapprove of what I did. Using my fists instead of my words and all that. Well. I might be a poet now, but I’m not a saint.
At once, the water swallows me whole. I fight my way to the surface and swim to the dock.
I don’t make it far before I hear a splash in the water behind me. I turn around to see Henry making his way over with smooth, easy strokes. He pulls himself up onto solid ground and flips his wet Mohawk to one side.
“Hey,” he says, shaking the water out of his ears. “Hold on.”
“I’m done, Henry,” I say, picking up my phone and my sweatshirt and pulling it over my head. “Done.”
He steps in line with me as I turn to walk through the yard.
“You got him good,” he says. “I don’t blame you. But …”
“What?”
“You’ve been friends since elementary school. You’re not gonna let a girl come between you guys, are you?”
I stop. Glare at him. “Elementary school? Come on. People change.” I turn around, try to leave him behind.
He follows. “I should have said something a long time ago, the first time he called her that stupid name. I let it go. I was tired of fighting everybody. I can hardly go a day without pissing my mom off somehow. Her boyfriend’s a jackass.
And then I have to worry about my friends, too?
Some friends.” I shake my head. “I did everything I could to stay in line with Miguel and the whole stupid group. It’s bullshit. ”
I open the gate to the front yard and let it slam behind me. Henry scales it.
“Miguel and Valeria, they’ve got issues too, you know that,” he says. “I’m probably the only one with a seminormal family. Except my grandpa exercises on the front lawn every morning since he got home from the hospital.”
I try to smile at him. It doesn’t work. Instead of feeling lighter, I feel empty.
“Look, we didn’t know you cared so much about Jae. We thought it was just a thing. You know. We thought you’d get over it.”
“I’m not over it.” My voice breaks and I quickly clear my throat.
I’m hit with this heavy feeling of missing her.
And just as suddenly, I’m relieved that she has friends in Free Verse to take care of her.
William, with his thick English accent and obsessive love of poetry.
And savage Swan. And even CJ, nerd supreme. They’re not so bad after all.
“I hurt her. Really bad,” I say. “And it’s not gonna happen again. So. I’m done.”
I pick up my bike and when I turn around, Henry’s eyes are wide.
“What?” I ask.
“Do you, like, love her or something?” He immediately shakes his head, throws the question away.
I jump onto my bike, the question ringing in my head. Do you love her or something? Do you love her? I look at Henry. “Don’t bother coming to my house. We moved out months ago.”
A knot forms in my throat as I pedal away as fast as I can, leaving all the friends I ever had behind.
Explore the thoughts that are worth your time, I tell myself. Because even though everything hurts, I don’t have time now to dwell on it.
A few houses down, I jump off my bike, pull out my phone, and call Mr. Oakland, glad I actually saved his number before tossing the business card. “Sir, I’d like to see you,” I say when he picks up. “No. It’s not about that.”