Read Surviving Santiago Online
Authors: Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Surviving Santiago (16 page)
Sofia names a company, but I don't listen. How could Frankie do this to me? But two days ago he asked me to choose between Papá and Evan. Maybe that was his way of saying he wanted to choose, too.
The girl holds out her right hand, but I stick mine behind my back. She shrugs and looks at Frankie, as if to say,
Let's get rid of this little twit and do our thing together.
I notice her bright red lipstick and eyelashes three times
thicker than any normal eyelashes. None of my friends at home wear makeup like that, unless they're going for total Goth. This Sofia looks at least twenty years old, and going for total skank.
Frankie glances at his watch and frowns at me. “I hope I don't have a ticket.”
“Good luck, Pepe,” Sofia says.
Pepe?
What the hell is that? Some pet name?
She stands on her tiptoes and hugs him. He kisses her on the cheek.
Frankie runs back to the
moto
, leaving me to follow. There's a ticket attached to the handlebars. “
Mier . . . colés!
” he shouts, shoving the paper into his pocket.
“I didn't come to be your ticket insurance while you go off with your girlfriend,” I yell at him.
“She's not my girlfriend. Just an old school friend,” Frankie says.
“Old is right. She's, like, twenty.”
“She's eighteen. Same as me.”
“Right. And what's this âPepe'? What your sweetheart calls you?”
Frankie stammers. I can't make out what he's saying. He shakes his head.
My voice breaks. “I thought you cared about me. We were going out.”
But he never said,
I love you.
Neither did I, though I couldn't stop thinking of him. Maybe I should have said
the words. Maybe it would have made the difference.
“I'm sorry, Tina. You and I are . . . going out.”
“You like her more.” That's the way it always is. Papá likes Daniel more than me. Max dumped me for a freshman at the beginning of our sophomore year. Their romance lasted six weeks, but it killed ours forever.
Frankie reaches for my arm. I yank it away.
“You go back to her. I'm leaving!” Pedestrians stop to watch us, but I don't care.
“It's nothing. I mean it. She's just a friend,” Frankie says.
“How can I believe you? You spend two days a week with me. What are you doing Mondays? Because we never get together Mondays.” I do the math in my head. Two days, me. Five days,
her
.
Frankie squeezes the handlebar of his motorcycle. But he's looking at his hands. He won't look me in the eye because he's lying. I know it. “I can't. It's a family thing.”
“Yeah, right. And how about the other days? The weekends?”
“You're the one who went out of town last weekend. Remember?” He stares up at the hazy purple sky. “You don't know how good you got it, you selfish little brat.”
I rip Frankie's precious leather jacket off and hurl it into the milk crate. “Jerk!”
Sofia's tits and butt are bigger. She isn't a brat.
She calls him by another name.
Pepe.
Pepe is normally a nickname for José, but who knows what they have going?
“I'm sorry.” Frankie steps toward me, and I back away. “I'm just dealing with a lot, Tina.”
“That's right. A lot of girlfriends.” I turn from him and fast-walk to the end of the block, where I let the crowd push me around the corner. He doesn't follow me.
Thursday, June 29: 53 days until I go home
T
he afternoon's purple-gray haze has darkened to charcoal. Streetlamps flicker on. Shivering without Frankie's jacket, I hunt for a bus stop. The sign lists at least a dozen linesâwhich one goes to my house? People surround me, sharks circling a drowning person. I pat my pocket to make sure my money is still there. Did any pickpockets see me? See that my money's in the right front pocket of my jeans?
Next to the bus stop is a pay phone. I drop the coins into the slot and dial TÃa Ileana's office number.
Please be there.
A receptionist puts me through. “Is everything all right?” TÃa Ileana asks. On hearing her voice, I let out my breath.
“Frankie and I had a fight and broke up. I'm stuck downtown.” I read off the nearest street signs.
“I'll be right there.”
Ten minutes later, she pulls up to the corner. As soon as I
get in, she hugs me. Tears run down my face and soak into her blazer. She waits until I stop crying before letting go.
“I'm sorry.” She pats my leg. “It was nice to have a friend your age.”
“He wanted to choose between me and someone else. Someone in his class at school.” I snuff back a wad of snot. “Her name is Sofia Méndez.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“He didn't have to tell me anything. I saw them hugging and kissing. And a couple of days ago, he asked me who I'd pick if I had to choose between Papá and Evan.”
“That's not right,” TÃa Ileana says. “First of all, your father and Evan are family.”
“Mamá chose.” Maybe that's how half of me is Papá. People love others more than they love us. Papá doesn't even love himself, so he's already lost.
And me? I'm sick of always coming in second.
TÃa Ileana steers with one hand and squeezes my hand with her other. “Your parents loved each other. That they cared about each other and were faithful to each other despite everything that happened is a beautiful testimony to their love.” We stop at a light, and my aunt's hazel eyes connect with mine.
Beautiful
isn't a word that I'd use to describe what happened between Mamá and Papá, but I want to hear moreâsuch as why TÃa Ileana doesn't totally hate my mother.
“But they still got divorced. So Mamá could marry Evan.” Which is why I'm here, getting my heart broken.
The light changes. TÃa Ileana breaks her gaze to watch the road. Several months after coming back from prison, Papá got into a huge argument with Mamá and accused her of having a boyfriend, which she didn'tâat least not then. That night she threw him out of the bedroom and he slept on the living room sofa until he went back to Chile.
“That prison changed your father so much.” TÃa Ileana reaches for a tissue from the box in the center console. I grab one, too, and wipe my dripping nose. “And your mother also changed, going back to school and raising you and Daniel on her own. They weren't the same people anymore.”
She's right. My old
papá
is dead, drowned in flashbacks and anger and alcohol and his obsession with his work like in the title of that book. It's as if my mother became a widow.
“But I didn't change. Frankie doesn't have that excuse. He just doesn't love me.” I blow my nose. “He may have acted sweet, and we had a lot in common, but he only pretended to care about me. And he certainly wasn't faithful.”
My aunt laughs. “Two weeks is a bit early to be talking about love.”
“What about love at first sight? Mamá said it happened to her when she met Papá.” I fold my arms across my chest.
“Well, it's over now. I have nothing to look forward to.”
My aunt's expression goes from amused to stricken. I wait for her to yell at me for being ungrateful. She comes home every day to eat with me. She drove me around ValparaÃso last weekend. She just left work early to pick me up, and she talked about my parents' divorce even though it made her sad.
She slows the car. Maybe she's going to kick me out and make me walk home, like Mamá sometimes did when I was in middle school and pissed her off.
“You know what I look forward to?” TÃa Ileana says at the next light.
I shake my head.
“You being here.” She sighs. “Getting to know you after all these years.” She squeezes into a parking space in front of a pizza shop with a funky hand-lettered sign that reads
LA PIZZA PELLEGRINO
. “We can do some things together, too.”
“Like what?” I say.
“Don't you like movies?”
I nod to be polite. And because there might be take-out pizza in my future.
I slouch into the store behind her, hood over my head. The menu board has the same hand lettering, lines alternating red, black, and green.
What flavor for a girl who's had her heart broken?
TÃa Ileana says Papá likes mushroom, so I pick sausage.
But when we get home, the lukewarm pizza tastes like dirt. I ask to be excused.
Papá glances at TÃa Ileana. “What's wrong with her?”
“Boyfriend trouble,” my aunt answers. I don't want my father into my business but at least she told him so I don't have to talk to him.
Papá shrugs one shoulder. If I had any hope of getting insight from him on the male species, I'd better forget it.
“You encouraged her, Chelo. I warned you that she'd get hurt.”
“So says the queen of âI told you so.'” My father picks a piece of sausage from his slice and throws it on the table. It stains the tablecloth next to his quarter-full glass, and I suddenly feel guilty for not enjoying the flavor he won't eat. Frankie's words,
selfish little brat
, gnaw at me.
“Go on upstairs, Tina,” my aunt says, nodding at me. Papá's face twists ugly. “She's had a hard day, so if she doesn't want to sit for dessert, we shouldn't make her.”
I jump in to reassure Papá. “It's not going to happen again, I promise.”
No more boys for me.
And a gazillion weeks more of two crabby old people who fight with each other and know nothing at all about me.
I give them both a good-night hug and apologize for leaving early. TÃa Ileana pats the top of my head. Papá grunts, but at least he's not scowling at me.
Upstairs, I shut the door and turn up the volume on the TV. Yesterday, Papá and Mamá talked on the phone.
He drank himself unconscious in record time afterward, and she probably cried again. I don't know why those two keep picking at old wounds until they bleed and throb. When it's over, it needs to be over.
On top of my desk is the Metallica cassette that I bought the day I met Frankie. I rip out the tape, twist it up, and leave it in tangles on the floor.
Wednesday, July 5: 47 days until I go home
T
he phone rings while I'm cleaning up from supper. I expect my mother again. As I dry my hands, I debate whether to beg her for a plane ticket home, or if going shopping and seeing movies with my aunt is enough to keep me here. TÃa Ileana is trying hardâmaybe too hard. I can't imagine she really likes
The Naked Gun
, which has the stupid and meaningless title
¿Y dónde está la policÃa?
because the censors don't like anything having to do with sex.
Papá, on the other hand, hasn't tried at all. He spent much of the weekend at meetings to plan the demonstration next Tuesday. Until it's over, I know I'm not going to see him.