Salvation (7 page)

But he couldn’t help thinking she had ditched the girls early on purpose so that he would have to call. And he wasn’t going there. When Char latched onto a tactic that helped her achieve what she wanted, she didn’t know when to quit.

He interrupted the third reprise of the Tale of the Friendship Bracelet to ask his sisters if they’d had dinner.

Both nodded.
At least Char didn’t sketch on that.

He pointed them toward an empty spot on the half-open bench across from him. “Okay, then go read,” he said, “or draw or make another set of bracelets. I have to study. If you’re good, I’ll make tacos for breakfast.” Their eyebrows rose, no doubt because Salva wasn’t so hot at cooking. He could fry up bacon, potatoes, chilies, and onions, though, and stick them in a tortilla.

“Or we could study this together.” He hefted the
Norton Anthology.

Both girls eyed the massive book with identical horror, then retreated.

Salva opened up the anthology.

Ten seconds later tween pop music came from the Laundromat radio.

His head flew up to see Casandra dancing, dangerously close to a vibrating dryer.

“Turn it off!” he yelled.

The mothers in the room began to whisper, and the peeling wall poster of the Virgen de Guadalupe seemed to frown at him.

But the sound lessened. Marginally. He rubbed his neck again. He shouldn’t have yelled. Lucia would hear about it, then scold him when she came home from community college. And he’d take it from his older sister because he deserved it.

But at least Casandra was sitting now.

He opened the book back to Emily Dickinson. She didn’t mess around like Frost—didn’t play with titles and pretend her poems were about something happy when they weren’t. Just started in with her own versions of brutality.

The words of the fourth poem drilled through the hard knot
in Salva’s stomach. He could hear that fly of death. He
had
heard it. It was the reason he was here. The reason his sisters had to be traded back and forth between houses in the evening. The reason
Papá
had to work such long hours.

He swallowed the F—digested the green felt-tip poison as soon as the graded paper landed on his desk.
Poems are about emotion,
the walking disaster area had told him.
Just write about the meaning and what it makes you feel.

He had ignored her, point-blank.

A second paper hit his desk. For a moment he thought maybe the Mercenary was assigning him extra work because he had failed so miserably.

But she passed out the same photocopy to the person in front of him and the person in front of that. They couldn’t all be as inept as he was.

“I thought,” the Mercenary said, her heels clicking as she continued down the rows, “that since most of you work harder to impress one another than your teachers, you might all benefit from seeing what one of your peers can accomplish. You may read it on your own. I assume all of you are capable of that, at least.”

Salva looked down at the photocopy. He couldn’t focus. He’d never in his life gotten an F. Maybe he should try retaking freshman lit. Markham couldn’t force him to stay here, could he?

Of course he can. One call to Papá and I’m a scorched enchilada stuck to the pan.

No friends. No football. Nothing except AP English.

The Mercenary was talking again, blathering about dark romantics versus bright romantics. Salva blocked her out.

And the printed words on the photocopy finally slid into focus. “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: A Song of Reincarnation.”

The paper was about death.

Not the death Dickinson wrote about but still real—the death of something so beautiful that the narrator could no longer stay the same person after witnessing the loss.

And the writer got it.

Not the poet—though Whitman probably did—but the author of the essay, who argued that the narrator had to change. Because that was how death worked. You couldn’t just go on being who you were before, after losing something that important.

“At least I can’t.” The paper ended.

Salva read through the conclusion twice.

She’d lost someone. Seen them die right before her eyes. Not the final moment, maybe, but all the moments leading up to it. And all the days after when that someone wasn’t there.

And she’d done exactly what she had told Salva to do—written about how it made her feel. He pulled his gaze away from the final line and found himself staring at Beth.

Who had she lost?

“An F?!” Beth gasped.
How could
you
have gotten an F?
The roll of masking tape dropped from her hands, and she checked her balance in her crouched position on the stage. Okay, she hadn’t had time to read his paper because of the tight deadline, but she’d given Salva all the advice that was necessary. “What did you write about?”

“‘Jabberwocky.’”

“What?!”

“The poem ‘Jabberwocky,’ from
Alice in Wonderland
—well,
Through the Looking-Glass
actually. Listen, it’s not your fault.”

It darn well wasn’t. She scooped up the tape and unrolled it in a sharp slash, forming the final X for drama club rehearsals, then began looking for her stuff. She hadn’t risked her mental health by agreeing to meet him here every Monday so that he could ignore her advice and write a three-page paper about a monster from a poem about nonsense.

“It was a stupid idea,” he said.

She was the one who had been stupid. Why had he bothered to ask for her help? Was this some dare like in the movies where the guy hung out with the loser girl only because his buddies said they’d pay up? Or because someone told him she was easy?

Right, Beth. Like he’d ever think of you in that context.

Notebook, pencils, folders—she gathered them from the
corners of the stage, stuffing the items into her backpack without regard for where they went.

“Look,” he said, “I got the grade I deserve, I know.”

Her copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s
North and South.

“I really do need your help.”

Sure he did. Maybe this situation was good. Maybe this would finally get through to her idiotic heart.

Beth shoved the book into her backpack, zipped the pocket as far as it would close, and headed for the multipurpose room exit.

“Hey, wait!” At last he seemed to catch on to the fact that she was leaving. “Please.”

“If you
think
—” She stopped at the door, reining herself in. There was no point in yelling. Really. He had no inkling of what she had risked by being here. She exhaled, then continued, “I’m sure you can find someone else to help you with your homework.”

Whom had she been kidding? Of course he could.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Beth pushed the handle on the door.

And something hit the floor behind her.

That dumb calculator!
He beat her to it. “Listen,” he said, palming the device. “I just wanted to say, well…”

She didn’t want to listen—didn’t need to listen. Let him flunk the class!

“That took guts,” he said.

Walking away from you?

“The paper,” he clarified. “The one the Mercenary shared with us today. You wrote it, didn’t you?”

All the certainty in Beth’s flight deflated. How had he known the paper was hers? The teacher had folded over the name in the top corner before running copies.

But, of course, Beth had told
him
she was writing about Whitman.

“Who was it?” he asked softly. “The person who died?”

And Beth breathed. “My grandma.”

He tilted his head. “The one who lived with you?”

That was a surprise. Beth hadn’t expected him to remember her grandmother. “Yes.”

“When did she die?” he asked.

Beth would have backed away, except the door was right behind her, and…walking out on someone who was asking about Grandma wasn’t okay. “This summer.”

He reached out slowly. Then instead of handing over Beth’s calculator, he lifted the strap of her backpack off her shoulder and pulled the pack from her arm. “She used to come to the school sometimes, right?” he asked.

“Yes.” Beth blinked. Grandma had always been the one to find time to attend plays and conferences.

He sat down, crossed his legs on the floor, and slid the calculator into the back pocket, then tried, futilely, to close the zipper. All the zippers were bad. “What was she like?”

“She was awesome.”

He unzipped the main section of the backpack and started ripping out the cheap vinyl seam binding that always caught on the metal teeth before the zipper would close. “What was awesome about her?”

And Beth found herself spilling. About the silliest things: the snappy comments her grandmother had used to wake Beth when she forgot to set the alarm, the mystery dessert Grandma had packed when they had picnicked down by the river, the way she used to stun the braggarts at the tavern by correcting them when they misquoted rodeo stats.

Salva listened. Politely. Though Beth couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. It was the strangest thing, but he actually seemed to want to hear.

No one else did. Her mother always took offense. Like Beth’s missing her grandmother was some kind of personal attack. And Ni—Beth could tell when her friend was uncomfortable. Death wasn’t something a whole lot of people wanted to talk about.

Not that Salva was talking, just asking a few questions as, one by one, he opened all the pockets on the backpack and fixed the zippers. He didn’t return the pack until Beth stopped spilling memories.

Then he glanced at his wristwatch, an action that made her look at the clock: 6:35
P.M.
She’d talked all the way through a normal tutoring session! “So,” he said, his eyes back on her face, “next Monday? Same time? Same place?”

Beth hesitated, then nodded slowly. She wanted to forgive him. Because he had listened. Today. But he had still ignored her advice about the poetry analysis. “Why do you want my help if you’re going to disregard it?” she asked.

His gaze remained unreadable. “That essay about your grandmother—that took guts to write. I couldn’t.”

He couldn’t what?

“What did she die of?” he asked.

“Cancer.”

The wince on his face was so sharp Beth finally read the emotion.
Pain.

Oh God
, she was an idiot.

She’d totally forgotten about his mother.

God had probably, Beth told herself, given her a brain so she could avoid spending the last Friday night in October freezing her ass off on the bleachers. Her eyes hinged on the number 8, the blue print on the gold jersey still visible under the lights of the football field. Barely. The fog had begun to sink early in the homecoming game. Her legs and arms were numb beneath her grandmother’s chiffon vintage dress, and huddling closer to Nalani did nothing to decrease the chill.

Ni was watching number 12, Luka, who had finally gotten up the guts to ask her out a week ago, which meant
she
had a date to the dance after the game and, therefore, was compelled to watch him play.

So why am I here?

Nalani had pleaded with her best friend to come, and, despite Beth’s apathy toward football, a few hours of sipping hot chocolate above the stands in Ni’s parents’ Blazer had seemed
like a reasonable request. But it had been too foggy to see from the bluff, and Ni, afraid she might miss Luka’s touchdowns, had insisted both she and her friend move down to the stands, where they could watch their breath fog.

Which really was going too far.

No rule in the bond of friendship had demanded Beth exit that warm Blazer to freeze.

Though she had. To be honest, the choice had nothing to do with Nalani. And everything to do with Beth’s own sick compulsion to watch that distant number 8 hurl a ball.

Her teeth chattered. “What time…is the dance?” she asked.

“Oh, about ten o’clock,” Ni replied, hugging herself despite a thick burgundy sweater. “Whenever the game is over and the guys are ready. You’re coming, aren’t you?” She glanced at her friend. “You’re already dressed.”

Beth shook her head. She didn’t know why she had put on the thin gown. Except that everyone thought of the game as a celebration. It had seemed like a good excuse to wear her grandmother’s dress—at least that had been Beth’s line of thinking this afternoon when she had gone home to a pile of dirty laundry. And a clothes dryer that required three separate starts to complete a load. “I don’t like school dances,” she said.
If you don’t have a date, you just watch everyone else dance. And pray you get asked once or twice.

Beth was incapable of asking a guy to dance.

Besides, I’m busy mooning over the one I most definitely can
not
have.