Getting It (2 page)

“What you need,” Toro now told Carlos, “is to get laid.”

Toro claimed to have lost his virgin status last summer with a girl from another school named Leticia, though he was sketchy about details. That left only Carlos as a definite virgin. In fact, he'd never even mouth-kissed a girl.

“Duh!” Carlos slouched down in his cafeteria chair. “I
know
I need to get laid.”

“Find a babe from another school,” Playboy suggested. “If you screw someone from here, the whole school will know. Don't shit where you eat. That's my motto.” He gave a loud, punctuating burp.

Carlos gazed from beneath his olive-green hood across the lunchroom at Roxy. Couldn't his friends understand he wanted more than a hookup? He wanted a girlfriend: someone he could talk to and do stuff with, who would listen and not make fun of him; someone he could count on. In his dreams, that girl was Roxy. Plus, she was incredibly hot.

“I'll go talk to her for you,” Toro volunteered.

At least Carlos trusted Toro more than Playboy. But Toro had the jock muscles Carlos lacked. What if Roxy liked him better? Besides … “That's, like, so elementary school.”

“Well,” Pulga scolded, “high school isn't the place for anything serious. Wait till you're thirty and no one hot wants you anymore.”

No one hot wants me now,
Carlos thought.

When the bell rang, Playboy suggested, “Wrap your sweatshirt around your waist or everyone's going to laugh at you.”

“I've got some shorts in my locker you can change into,” Toro offered.

“Uh-oh,” Pulga warned Carlos, “lies trying to get you out of your pants.”

“Shut up.” Toro swung at him, but Pulga ducked away

As the boys carried their trays to the return line, they found themselves alongside Salvador “Sal” EncarnaciÓn, a senior who everybody said was gay—though that didn't mean it was true. He was a tall, thin guy, about the same build as Carlos, with spiky brown hair and shiny little hoop earrings in both ears.

“Watch your backsides,” Playboy cautioned his group.

“Screw you!” Sal shot back.

“Yeah, you'd like that,” Pulga snickered.

Carlos had never understood why guys harped so much on the gay thing. But even though he felt sorry for Sal, he didn't stop his friends. He knew that if he spoke up, his buds would give him endless crap too, like “Woo-hoo, Carlos has a boyfriend!”

Instead, he turned away, watching Roxy strut out of the lunchroom and feeling a little less like a hero than he had before.

T
HAT AFTERNOON,
C
ARLOS
followed his English class to the school library to choose a book to report on. He selected
The Virgin Suicides—
a story he thought he'd relate to.

While waiting to return to class, he noticed a table full of girls whispering and laughing softly about starting some club. Among them was Pulga's benefit-friend, Carlotta, who waved to him. Beside her, a girl wearing an orange hoodie also smiled at him. And sitting with the girls was Sal, the alleged gay guy.

As Carlos began to read his book, he occasionally noticed how relaxed and comfortable Sal seemed with the girls, displaying none of that guy show-off-ness that Carlos's buds got into around chicks. How come? Was Sal really gay? How could he be, with all those girls practically swarming over him? Maybe that was the real reason guys called him queer: They were jealous.

On the bus ride home after school, Playboy returned his attention to Carlos's lunchtime ketchup incident: “How's your flow?”

Pulga and Toro laughed like a couple of delighted hyenas.

“Shut up,” Carlos told them. “You bunch of
pendejos.”

“Pendejo” was the boys' favorite put-down for each other. Literally, it meant a pubic hair, though in Mexican slang it was like saying “moron” or “dumb ass.”

Playboy gloated about a girl from another school he was hooking up with that afternoon.

As though not to be outdone, Pulga announced, “I've got my matinee with Carlotta.”

And Toro followed suit, as if not to be left out: “I wish Leticia lived closer—or that I had a car. She e-mailed me saying she's crazy-horny for me.”

Carlos sat up in his seat. “Would you guys shut it?”

“What's your problem?” Playboy asked.

Pulga smirked. “He's just stressed 'cause he ain't getting any.”

Toro gave Carlos a sympathetic nod. “I know how you feel, man.”

As soon as Carlos got to his apartment, he unrolled the ketchup-stained jeans from his backpack, brought them to his nose, took a deep breath, and thought,
For the rest of my life, whenever I smell ketchup I'll think of Roxy.

Then he gazed into the mirror—not exactly his favorite pastime. He pulled his sweatshirt hood down and ticked through his mental checklist of things he didn't like about himself:

BODY PARTS THAT ARE FREAKISHLY BIG

PARTS THAT ARE PATHETICALLY SMALL

He thought his eyebrows looked like fat caterpillars, while his face was a pimple party. His brown hair hung like an unruly mop, and his teeth seemed more dingy than white. And yet …

He pulled off his sweatshirt, rolled up his shirtsleeve, and flexed his arm. A small lump—barely tennis-ball size—swelled in his biceps. Could it truly have impressed Roxy?

Yeah, right.
No wonder the girls had laughed.

He tugged his soft, well-worn hoodie back on and went to the kitchen for a Coke, chips, and cheese curls. Then he phoned his pa, a construction foreman, at his cell number.

“Hey, mi'jo!”
his pa answered.

In the background, Carlos could hear the banging hammers, beeping equipment, and shouting voices at the construction site.

“How were the girls today?” his pa asked. Ever since Carlos had begun grade school, his pa had always asked about the girls, like he expected Carlos to be some big Casanova.

“The girls were good,” Carlos replied proudly, eager to tell him how Roxy had spoken to him and squeezed his arm. Maybe his pa could give him some advice.

“Today I talked to—”

His pa interrupted. “I bet they're good! God, I wish I were your age again. Those were the best years of my life.”

“Uh-huh.” Carlos tried to continue. “Today I talked to this girl named—”

“Hold on a sec.” His pa cut him off again. Carlos listened as a man yelled something and his pa shouted back. Then he returned to Carlos: “Look,
mi'jo,
I'm a little busy now. See you Saturday.
Te quiero.”
He hung up as Carlos whispered, “Love you too.”

A familiar ache stirred in his chest. He wished he could talk more with his pa, but ever since the divorce three years ago he only got to see him once a week. Even then he had to share him with the beautiful young secretary his pa had left his ma for, and their toddler son.

Carlos tossed the receiver onto its cradle. What good would it do, anyway, to get advice about girls from a man who'd thrown away his marriage?

Carlos waded across the bedroom carpet, past discarded candy bar wrappers, strewn clothes, and video game cartridges to his computer. After pulling out his homework assignments, he put on his headphones, cranked a Tejano mix full blast, and returned his thoughts to Roxy.

C
ARLOS EKED OUT
his homework in between thinking about Roxy and IM-ing friends, till his ma arrived home.

“You're lucky to have a mom so pretty,” people always commented. Carlos agreed that she was beautiful, with her cinnamon-colored eyes and slim figure—although she seemed so short since he'd spurted past her in the last year.

“'S'up?” he now greeted her, prying his headphones off.

From the bedroom doorway she scanned the chaos of his room and gave a smile of resignation.
“Mi amor,
how can you work in this mess?”

Carlos shrugged. At least once a week his ma hassled him to clean his room, but she never actually made him do it. Since the divorce, she'd pretty much stopped making him do anything.

She pulled the pins from her hair so it cascaded over her shoulders. “How was school today?”

Although Roxy remained foremost on Carlos's mind, he felt uneasy telling his ma about her. In contrast to his friends and his pa, who shared guy horniness about females, it felt too weird to think of his own ma feeling anything like that.

“Um, school was fine, except I need your help with math.”

Fortunately, his ma worked as the accountant for an auto parts chain. “Let's go over it after dinner. Remember, Raúl is coming over.”

Raúl was her boyfriend—actually her third since the divorce—a tall, brawny car mechanic, nothing like Carlos's short, skinny pa.
Twice a week he came over for dinner, bringing dessert, after which he watched TV with Carlos's ma and stayed the night.

Tonight he brought over flan, a favorite of both Carlos and his ma. After dinner, his ma helped Carlos with his geometry, sitting close beside him at the dining table.

Carlos recalled how when he was a boy his ma would drape her arm around him, stroking her fingertips through his hair as she cradled his head into the warm soft cushion of her chest. But since starting high school it made him feel weird to sit so close to her, and he now scooted his chair away.

After they finished with his math, Carlos returned to IM-ing his friends, playing computer games, and thinking about Roxy. Around nine thirty, his ma knocked on the door to say good night. “Don't stay up too late, okay?”

She kissed him on the back of the neck and Raúl waved. “Sleep well.”

Carlos waved back. He liked Raúl, except for one thing: Even though his ma closed her bedroom door, Carlos could still hear the faint squeak of bedsprings as she and Raul went at it. It was a little gross. No, it was
truly
gross. Carlos didn't want to think about his ma getting it on, especially with someone she wasn't even married to. But how could he tell her that? Besides, he knew how hurt she'd been by the divorce. He wanted her to be happy. So, he put his headphones on and cranked up the volume.

Around ten thirty, he went to finish up the flan and watch TV. First he turned on an episode of
Cops
where they busted some toothless eighty-six-year-old who'd hooked up with a thirteen-year-old girl. Then he switched to a reality show in which eight college guys and girls shared a house, fighting all day but secretly boning each other at night. Was there
any
program that wouldn't remind Carlos he was the only person on the planet not getting laid?

Last he clicked on
Queer Eye,
a show where five gay dudes gave some grungy straight guy a makeover—plucking his nose hairs, redecorating his apartment, and teaching him to bake a quiche—so he could confidently propose marriage to his girlfriend and she'd tell him “yes.” Which, of course, she did. On TV, the guy always gets the girl.

As Carlos watched, he recalled Sal, the supposedly gay guy at school. It was then that the idea first popped into his brain: If Sal truly were queer … Could he possibly help Carlos? … Not to propose to Roxy, of course—at least not yet—but to get her to maybe like him?

Immediately, he chucked the thought. This was real life, not some dumb TV show. Roxy wasn't his girlfriend. And Sal wasn't some makeover star.

Around eleven o'clock, Carlos gave a huge yawn, shut the TV off, and ambled toward his bedroom. After pulling off his sweatshirt, he peered in the mirror again. Squinting, he blurred his vision as though underwater and tried to imagine himself as handsome and confident.

No luck. Maybe after a super-size makeover. Dismayed by the reflection staring back at him, he draped his sweatshirt over the mirror. Then he kicked aside a plastic soda bottle, stripped to his briefs, and climbed beneath the tangle of bedcovers. But he couldn't stop thinking about that crazy idea.

O
N
S
ATURDAY MORNING,
while Carlos scrounged through piles of clothes for a clean shirt, he thought again about asking for Sal's help, but once again discarded the idea.

A little after noon, his pa picked him up for their weekend visit, along with his wife, Lupita, and their toddler son, Henry.

Carlos had first met Lupita when he was little, at his pa's construction office. His pa had often taken him to job sites to show him off, propping a hard hat on Carlos that nearly slid over his eyes. Lupita, the site office secretary, had smiled and taught Carlos how to volley jellybeans and catch them in his mouth. Not until she got pregnant did Carlos realize she and his pa had been having an affair.

Then Carlos felt painfully torn. He overheard his parents' arguments and watched his ma cry, yet he didn't want his pa to leave. The divorce had been wildly confusing. Carlos resolved that his own relationship with a girl would be different—committed and faithful.

In the meantime, like now at McDonald's, he politely tried to once again like Lupita. But how could he? She'd broken up his family.

He also tried to like his little half brother, but he missed having his pa to himself. To make matters worse, today Henry pooped in his diaper, making an awful smell.

After lunch the four of them drove to the city park. When Carlos was a boy, his pa used to help him catch all types of insects in jars and nets, taught him to preserve them in lighter fluid, and showed him how to carefully pin them to Styrofoam without breaking them apart. Carlos had amassed an awesome collection of butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, and, his prize possession, a female praying mantis.

After the divorce, the bug collection had gotten lost piece by piece in the ever-mounting mess of Carlos's room. He now felt too old to chase insects. Instead, he scratched a stick among the initials and dates on a wood bench and wished he could go back in time, as he watched his pa and Lupita push Henry on the merry-go-round.