Amber Eyes (26 page)

My heartbeat slowed down. I finally controlled my need to laugh so I got to my knees and spied over the car’s hood. Edward removed his hands off Daniel’s shoulders and wiped his face with his right hand.

Daniel’s gleaming face had turned dull, almost shadowy. He now glared at Edward and had buried his hands deep in his pockets.

“So, it was because of his eyes, dude?” Daniel lowered his head. He talked to nobody in particular. “He has freakin’ awesome eyes, and I don’t.”

Edward wiped his face again. “You not paying attention to what I’m saying, are you?”

Daniel raised his head. His eyes sparkled in anger. He spat. “Of course I am, dude. You like Justin because he has cool eyes, and you don’t like me because I don’t.”

“Rats, Daniel! I’m not saying that.”

Daniel backed off some steps and pointed at Edward with an extended arm. “Yes, you are, dude. I was wary of Justin since he joined our patrol. I should have guessed it. You invited your boyfriend to our camp, dude. You wanted to be with him and not with me. He slept in our tent only to save your face. I thought you and I had a connection. I really believed it. How could you do all this crap to me?”

Edward advanced a step forward and offered Daniel an open palm. “I didn’t mean—” but Daniel sprinted down the empty dark street toward Lincoln Park. “Daniel, come back. Rats!”

“I’ll kill myself!” Daniel shouted.

“Wait! Don’t do anything stupid.” Edward bolted after him but tripped right after he’d started. He landed on the street, grating his arms and face against the pavement but jumped back to his feet almost immediately and sprinted down the street.

Meanwhile, my mind could only focus on one single fact. Edward liked me. Edward liked me as much as Jenny did. The idea stirred mixed feelings within me. Edward didn’t know I was a girl, but my eyes captivated him. Jenny was a girl and she’d said my eyes drove her crazy. Did people like me only because of my eyes or because of me? Should I envy my own eyes and their abilities?

July 4, 8:21 pm

I couldn’t run after Edward. He fled so fast he disappeared in matter of seconds. However, now that I knew so many things, I was confident it’d be easier to talk to him. First things first, I needed my disguise, so I headed back to Grandma’s house. I’d barely reached her street when a voice called behind me, “Hey, you!”

Omigod! It was Yago. I almost jumped thirty feet in the air. My stomach tightened but it relaxed when I saw Daniel instead, standing ten feet away of me. His closed fists hung beside him—his knuckles were red and his whole body shook feverishly. He ran forward, grabbed my arm and snarled, “You! I was looking for you, dude. It’s useless for you to hide.”

He seemed about to punch me again, which suddenly terrified me. I struggled until he released me. I backed off one step. “I wasn’t hiding. What’s wrong with you?”

He gnashed his teeth and pushed me with an open hand, causing me to back off another step. “Then tell me why you’re here, dude, away from everybody else?”

I rolled my eyes. “Long story. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Stop talking crap!” He spat at my feet and I jumped back. “I’m tired of you, dude. I’m gonna beat your ass up!”

He pushed me again and raised a fist in front of my face. His nostrils flared and his veins throbbed on his forehead.

I backed off several more steps. I could slap his face again but it would be useless. I knew I was no match for him. I raised my hands between us with my palms toward him. “Take it easy, Daniel. We’ve already had a discussion this morning. Edward and Jorge would freak out if they know we’re fighting again.”

I backed off even more behind a fire hydrant on the sidewalk. Daniel’s nostrils flared again when he pointed a finger at me. “Are you such a sissy coward that you’re afraid to fight me, dude?”

I shook my head. Of course I was not gonna fight him. Even less so because he’d gone mad as a hatter. He sneered. “You’re a stupid little fag! I’ll tell everybody you refused to fight me, dude. Everybody at school will know you’re a girl!”

If only he knew the truth, he would realize what a dumb threat that was. “Be my guest, Daniel.”

For some seconds, he stood speechless. His face turned almost violet. “You dumbass!” He made a lunge. I tilted my body backwards as fast as I could but not fast enough. He grabbed my sunglasses, tearing them away off my face.

“Aha!” He raised the sunglasses in his fist only to fling them down to the sidewalk. He spat on them and then crushed them under his foot. “How do you feel now without your precious—”

Our eyes met and locked. He froze, mesmerized like everybody else who stared into my eyes, which was good because maybe my eyes would do their thing and make him forget all about fighting me. His body tilted forward a bit and he squinted, like he was trying to focus. “There’s a movie in your eyes.”

I knew people saw weird things in my eyes, but I had no clue what he was talking about. “Don’t be silly.”

He was blinking little. “You’re in the movie, in a bathroom. Wait a sec. Isn’t that the bathroom in the mansion where we found shit in the toilet? Weird, it looks brand new.” He narrowed his eyes even more. “Why are you taking your clothes off? Gosh, you’re a girl, dude!”

# # #

“Of course, I’m a girl!” I cried. Now I was the one whose nostrils flared. I was fed up with Daniel. Even though I now understood what drove his animosity against me—jealousy—it didn’t mean that I approved of it. I couldn’t help Edward had rejected him for me. I hadn’t even flirted with Edward as he’d suggested before. This was the right time to clear things up. “What’s wrong with you?”

Daniel’s eyes were still locked with mine. It was as if his soul had left his body and wandered in outer space. Were my eyes doing that to him?

“Who’s Jennifer, dude?” Daniel asked me out of the blue. He had stopped blinking. His cheeks were somehow rosy, and he talked like a robot. All the previous anger was gone as if by magic.

“Jennifer?” I tilted backwards but didn’t break out eye contact. “She’s my girlfriend. How do you know about her?”

“The movie… the movie in your eyes. You keep moaning her name,” Daniel whispered, still sounding robotic. He tipped his head a bit sideways and smiled. “You were having big time fun playing with yourself, weren’t you, dude?”

“What the—”

“You’re good at it!”

I panicked. Had he spied on me
that
night? If so, why hadn’t he told everybody I was a girl. I gasped, “How do you know about that?”

Daniel’s gaze was totally lost and blurry. “So you have a girlfriend. Have you told your family and friends you’re gay, dude? I haven’t. Everybody at school hates gay guys, and Edward just said it isn’t cool. It’s so difficult. Sometimes, I can’t sleep because of it and I just cry all night long.”

“How do you know about what I did in the mansion’s bathroom?” I yelled.

“Told you, it’s all in the movie in your eyes.”

The movie in my eyes? What the hell did he mean? Heck, was it some sort of billboard telling everyone everything about me? For one second, I considered running away in the opposite direction so whatever my eyes were disclosing would stop.

I didn’t escape, though. Daniel looked so worried I felt bad for him. He was no longer sarcastic or showing off, but himself. I could see it. Suddenly, he’d turned from yet another bully into a person I could sympathize with. My reputation at school was so wrecked it didn’t matter much if people like Clara Benson kept saying I was a freak or a lesbo—they said it even before I discovered my feelings for Jenny and furnished them with actual grounds for their claim. I wondered what it would be like for Daniel if he was discovered. It was hard for me, but I bet it was harder for a guy. I knew guys hated gays—I’d even heard of gays beaten nearly to death by school bullies. Daniel not only seemed terrified but lonely, just like I’d been before I met Jenny. He deserved to find someone who’d understand and love him.

Daniel sighed. “I wish I could tell somebody how I feel.”

I had to say something to encourage him. “I dunno if I’m gay, or if being gay is cool or not. I still need to understand what it means to be Jenny’s girlfriend. If you have feelings for somebody, it’s okay. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

Daniel didn’t talk. He remained silent, still frozen with his mouth half open and his eyes all glassy. I wondered if he’d heard me. He tilted his body a li’l bit toward me and squinted.

“Daniel, are you okay?” I asked him. I couldn’t break our eye contact. The movie-in-my-eyes thing was so weird that I wouldn’t leave until I got to the bottom of it.

“That man… I saw him earlier today at the parade,” he whispered.

“What man?” I almost shouted. When he said ‘that man’, Yago’s picture came immediately to my mind. “What are you talking about?”

“The man in the movie in your eyes,” Daniel murmured—the damned You Tube post in my eyes. He raised again a finger and pointed at my eyes as if I could see whatever he was seeing in them. “That blond, large man. I saw him today in the park. He has these stitches all over his face. Tons of them, like Frankenstein. I thought he’d been run over by a car. Gosh, it wasn’t a car! Why did you hit him with a TV, dude?”

My stomach sank. The situation had turned officially creepy. I felt a desperate urge to break our eye contact, but it wasn’t needed because Daniel sorta woke up with a start.

“You’re a girl!” he cried again—he’d already said that. “Crap! Edward’s not gay, he’s straight. He kissed a girl.” He took a pair of shaky hands to his head and pulled his hair. His anger and despair were back. “What am I gonna do? Everybody will know! I’m fu–”

However weird, Daniel had seen Yago in my eyes and had confirmed he spotted him at Lincoln Park earlier today. “Daniel, talk to me about the blonde man, the one you saw in the park and in the movie in my eyes. Tell me about the guy like Frankenstein.”

“Which blonde man, dude? I don’t care about any blonde Frankenstein! I don’t care about you either, dude… girl.” Daniel’s eyes were red, very red. He tore at his hair as he talked. “You’re Edward’s girlfriend, aren’t you? What’s your real name? He invited you to our camp because you guys wanted to have sex away from your folks, didn’t you? The camping was the perfect cover, wasn’t it? Oh my god. What am I gonna do? I need to convince Edward I was joking.”

Daniel dragged his nails down his cheeks and then started to pace the sidewalk in front of the hydrant between us. “A joke, yes, I’ll tell him it was all a joke. I’m always sorta cynical, so he’ll believe me… No. That won’t hold water. I was talking way too seriously to be joking… Crap! Why can’t he be gay?”

I pitied Daniel, but because of his previous comment about Yago—which was freakin’ me out—I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t find the right words to make him feel better now that he seemed fully conscious. I could only say, “Edward’s not gay.”

Daniel’s face flushed. “Of course he’s not, dude! But I just told him I love him because I thought he was. I saw you guys making out and got it all wrong!”

I opened my mouth to say something, but I refrained. To be honest, I was clueless. I couldn’t figure out what to say besides asking him again about Yago.

Daniel paced the sidewalk once more. “I told him about the tight clothes, about swaying my hips, and I showed him my hands.” Both of them flew to his face. “God! What am I gonna do? Everybody at school will know. They’ll bully me. They’ll call me names and the seniors will beat me up in the restrooms like they did with Hernandez.”

Apparently, my junior high was not the only place were kids got bullied in the restrooms. My heart felt his pain, his anguish. I wished I could help him. I ventured, “Edward won’t tell anybody.”

“It’s none of your business, girl! I hate you. I hate Edward and everybody else.” Daniel sprinted away from me down the street. “I’ll kill myself!”

“Daniel, wait!”

I totally needed to know where he’d seen Yago so I ran after him. Unfortunately, he ran faster. I lost him after two blocks. I stopped. My heart beat like crazy and I was panting. I then realized I’d just done something stupid. Yago was in this town and I’d exposed myself in the middle of Abbeville’s streets without checking who was about. I collapsed on the sidewalk by a parked car, leaning on one of its front tires until I caught my breath. Then I got to my feet and, careful not to be seen, I retraced my steps until I arrived at my grandma’s house. There was a police line preventing access to the house—this yellow tape they place at crime scenes with “
Do not cross
” written on it. No cop watched the house though so I crossed the line—some stupid tape wasn’t gonna stop me. I strode past the flower garden to the back of the house, then I discovered that the kitchen’s back door was missing. Yes, missing, vanished, poofed. The full door. I wondered if Yago had blasted it off.

Inside, the house was a hell of a mess. All the furniture was knocked over and drawers and cabinets had been emptied on the floor. Yago had trashed the place. I rushed right to my grandma’s bedroom and searched for her hair extension. I found it under the bed. The box with the clothes for the street children had also been emptied, but all the clothes were in a single pile on the bed. This time, rather than baggy, boy’s clothes, I frantically looked for tight, girly stuff. I tried on every tee one or two sizes smaller than mine, ending up with a black Lycra shirt that made my boobs appear larger than they actually were—much larger. Okay, they still looked tiny, but at least it was evident I had boobs.

I also found a black skirt that fit low around my waist—it exposed my bellybutton. It looked sorta sexy, so I kept it. The shoes were a problem. I only had the tight sneakers I’d been wearing since three days ago, which I discarded because they weren’t ‘girly enough’. So, I tried on every pair of shoes I found in Grandma’s closet—she owned over 20 pairs of them. All of them fitted tight, but after three days inside sixth-grader-size sneakers, fitted heels were no biggie at all.

Note to self:
Walking on heels requires practice. Don’t try it without adult supervision.

Finally, the lip gloss and the mascara. Applying them is quite a complicated operation when you do it for the first time ever, but after some trial and error, and a full bottle of L’Oréal makeup remover, I finally managed to accomplish it without looking clownish. The funny thing is that I actually enjoyed it. Laura had a lot of makeup, way too much, and she used to apply layer over layer of stuff on her face, but I never asked her to teach me. Now, while I tried to figure out how to keep the lip-gloss within my lips and the mascara on my eyelashes only, I got euphoric. I was wearing makeup for the first time ever. Make up like any other girl. Suddenly, dressing tomboyish seemed
sooo
lame, and I wondered why I’d preferred to hide behind an androgynous facade. Not because it kept me safe—it actually attracted bullies in every school I’d attended.