The F Factor (22 page)

J
avier looked out the backseat window of his mom's car. They were on their way to eleven-o'clock Mass, his father taking the route he favored around the lake toward the basilica. How many Sundays they had followed the routine of church, cooking hamburgers on the grill, and the family eating together, and watching the Cowboys football game. He didn't know how to tell them he had other plans for the afternoon.

An uneasy itch crawled down his back and he rubbed it against the backseat. He tried to recover the positive feelings from last night. Even though the team had lost, he had come home feeling like a winner. His showdown with Kenny made him proud, and having a girl beside him at the game felt good too. Natalie's presence helped take pressure off Javier and Amanda to act like a couple, especially when Pat and Carrie took off and stayed out of the stands for most of the fourth quarter. Natalie had kept them laughing with stories about elementary school, and when Pat and Carrie finally came back, it was Natalie who had a suggestion for getting together again.

“Be sure to invite Ignacio and Drummer Boy!” Natalie had called out before she walked away with Amanda and Carrie after the game.

Javier smiled as he thought about his funny cousin and suddenly remembered what Natalie had said.
You can blame anything on family
. “Hey, Mom, did I tell you that Natalie was at the game last night? She invited me to a Diez y Seis festival. I told her I'd go downtown later and meet her.”

“Just you and Natalie?”

“Ignacio and Andy are going to meet us there. Pat too.”

His mom lowered the visor as if she was checking her appearance in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her brown hair, but Javier saw her sharp gaze checking out the backseat. “And those girls Natalie brought to your party? Will they be going too?”

“I suppose,” he said, shrugging like it was unimportant.

His father suddenly straightened up in the seat. He glanced into the rearview mirror as he called, “Has Natalie gone into the matchmaker business on the side? Do I need to start negotiating for goats with another girl's father?”

Javier swallowed his embarrassment, thought quickly, and replied, “If you can't get at least six horses, don't make a deal. Mom wants to plant a bigger garden next year.”

When his parents laughed, he gave a confident smile to an invisible TV audience.

And it was a good thing he kept practicing that TV audience smile, because on Monday morning when Javier walked into the media classroom, he was told to substitute in the anchor chair for Ram, who had a terrible cough. After Mr. Seneca told Ram, “You can't be coughing during the broadcast. Go to the library and
come back after announcements are over,” he told Javier to take his place beside Dylan.

“But what about editing the film and using the switcher?” Javier replied.

The teacher merely raised an eyebrow. “Get your priorities straight, Mr. Ávila. We can add bells and whistles later. Get busy on the scripts now.”

Javier took a deep breath and mentally switched hats from editor to broadcaster. He walked over to the desk area and started reading over the announcement papers. He didn't even notice Kenny had come up to him.

“I shot all that film, and now you're not going to use it?” he complained.

Javier felt his own irritation coming to the surface. “I've got something else to do this morning. I'll get to it after school.”

“Why can't Porky do it?”

“What did you say, you jerk? You can't be talking about my friend Pat, can you?” Javier's head shot up. His eyes burned holes into Kenny García. “Omar's letting Pat work the camera this morning. We'll get to it after school. Now go away.”

He looked back at the announcements, ignoring the string of profanity Kenny muttered under his breath as he walked off.

Dylan came back to the desk area with other papers. “Okay, Ávila, let's do this right. My team lost the game. I don't want to look like a loser on TV.”

“That makes two of us,” Javier answered, sounding more efficient than he felt. “Let's start practicing, Dylan. We're going to be the first sophomore-senior team, and I want us to sound good.” He glanced over at Pat and saw
him listening intently to Omar. He whispered a prayer to Saint Peter and took his seat beside a new partner.

“
Y
ou and Dylan weren't too bad on announcements this morning,” Ignacio told Javier as they walked with Andy out of the building after second-period.

“Except he's tall and you're not,” Andy said. He gestured with his pencils, pointing one of them below his knee. “Jack, you looked
really
short on TV.”

Javier let the teasing go because as soon as he had seen himself on tape, he knew how to fix the visual imbalance. “Tomorrow we're going to lower Dylan's chair and raise mine so we're equal height on the screen. Pat should have spotted that during rehearsal, but it was his first time on the camera,” Javier replied. “Dylan's reading better, and the juniors got all the visuals right this morning.”

“Didn't Kenny shoot film at the game? When are you going to use it?” Andy asked as they climbed up the steps of Mr. Seneca's classroom.

“Pat and I are going to edit this afternoon.” A secretive grin appeared on Javier's face. “We have a surprise for morning announcements tomorrow … just wait.”

Kenny had started basketball practice after school so it was only Javier, Pat, Landry, and Steve who worked together on editing for Tuesday's broadcast. They planned carefully how to use rock music behind the film clips. The next morning, Javier expected to feel like he had stepped into a scorpion's nest, but sitting beside Dylan, he felt tall and proud, and not just because their chairs were better balanced, but because the team of sophomores had produced a music video.

“Cool highlights!” a freshman said as Javier walked down the hall after first period, and he even gave Javier a quick high-five. So did a half-dozen other guys.

“Javier, what a great video you sophomores made!” Ms. Maloney told him when he walked into English class. “Did you know there are student film contests you can enter? You could win a scholarship.”

“Your video was so good that nobody noticed that the team lost!” one of the football players told Javier and Pat at lunchtime.

Compliments from random students and all his teachers about the new-and-improved look of announcements on Guardian TV left Javier smiling all day long.

Ram was back in the anchor chair by Wednesday, and he asked Javier, “What do you think of me and Dylan taking a camera during first period and interviewing Coach Delgado about the next game? Can you use that for Friday's announcements?”

“Why can't we show the girls running for Homecoming Queen on Guardian TV?” one of the juniors asked after Wednesday's broadcast. “We could make a video of them.”

“If we do that, I know the perfect music we could use for audio,” Landry said.

“Nothing too loud,” Mr. Seneca replied. He almost smiled when he said, “Brother Lendell said that music we used on Tuesday almost took the paint off the walls.”

“Alright!” they all cheered, slapping each other on the back.

“W
e should start painting a new backdrop,” Pat said as they left Mr. Seneca's room that afternoon. “Javier, can we haul the compressor and my paints in your truck over to my grandma's house this weekend?”

“Sure,” Javier replied, learning to welcome new ideas as fast as they appeared. His cluttered mind shuffled between visuals images, script writing, and new technology, as well as algebra problems, chemistry equations, American poets, ancient cultures, and world religions. He always did his homework, but any “extra” time now involved reading about new software or watching amateur films online.

As Javier sat in front of a big chemistry test on a Thursday afternoon, he tried to clear his head of the funny film showing chimpanzees riding miniature ponies. He had described it in detail to Pat, Ignacio, and Andy at lunch. He began to read the exam directions. Mrs. Alejandro had given them a two-part test: a section of multiple-choice questions and the major part that began with one large reaction that had to be repeated with different concentrations of reactants.

He tapped his pencil against the second page, flipped back, and got started on page one. The teacher's multiple-choice questions stumped him at first, but he felt confident about all but two of his answers as he completed Part One of the test. He turned to page two and started reading. He wrote down a couple of numbers, shook his head, and erased them. He nodded when he had settled into a comfortable pace for working through the chemical equations.

When Mrs. Alejandro called for the tests at two minutes before the bell rang, Javier ignored the itch between his toes and told himself,
Even if I missed a couple of
questions on page one, I should still get a high grade. No worries
.

Andy's pencil tapped his shoulder and he turned around to see his friend frowning. “I hate those kinds of tests when it's all or nothing. What if I didn't start with the right equation on the reaction? It'll screw up everything.”

“Don't worry about it. Mrs. Alejandro's one of those teachers who gives extra points when you show your work,” Javier answered, offering his usual pep talk.

For as long as they had been friends, Andy's grades had been up and down, but he usually pulled off a solid B average at the end of the year. Ignacio was the same way.

He knew both guys wanted a music scholarship to get them into a major Texas university. Andy and Ignacio worked hard enough to earn decent grades but took their true enjoyment from band instruments they played so well.

As the bell rang to end sixth period, Javier realized he finally understood his friends' attitude. Now that he had felt the excitement of writing words people listened to and putting together images that told a story, he couldn't wait to do again. It had to be the same feeling when Ignacio and Andy played an instrument or when Pat painted with his airbrushes. He walked out of the classroom feeling like he had stopped thinking in only black and white. Shades of color, light, and sound had filtered into his mind as different options to explore, combine, and discard in any way he wanted.

Javier was in a great mood when he walked into Mr. Seneca's room and couldn't wait to get started on the next project for Guardian TV.

“I
gnacio, you think I can
read
that lab report? Maybe Mr. Seneca knows about hieroglyphics, but I don't. Erase those numbers and start all over!” Mrs. Alejandro's loud voice echoed around the chemistry lab. “And you two juniors better have your calculations right this time, or I'll make you both buy new calculators!”

“Man, she's in a bad mood,” Andy whispered as he stood beside Javier working on a chemistry lab Friday afternoon. “You think it's PMS?”

“Shut up,” Javier mumbled as he wrote down the results of the experiment the two of them conducted. At least he had gotten that stupid penmanship award in fourth grade, and he used a new scientific calculator that he won in a raffle at prep camp. He and Andy usually had no trouble with Mrs. Alejandro.

She came around to their table, glanced at their lab report, and then grunted. She said, “Well, at least there's hope. I wondered after what I saw on your test last night.”

As she walked away, Andy looked like he might wet his pants. “I knew it,” Andy whispered. “I blew it on the test. My mom's gonna kill me.”

“It can't be that bad,” Javier spoke very quietly, “and it's only the first test. Come on … let's get this finished up. Just tell your mom you can always raise your average with good lab grades.”

Minutes before the bell rang, Mrs. Alejandro started passing back the tests, turning them face down in front of each student. She started with the juniors in the back and moved up to where Javier and his friends sat.

At the next table, Javier saw Ignacio wipe the sweat off his forehead before he turned over his test and sighed, “Seventy-two. Well, at least I passed.” And Javier had to smile when he saw Andy receive his test, look at it, and
suddenly flop his upper body across the top of the lab table with relief. “Thank you, God, an eighty!”

Then Mrs. Alejandro stopped in front of Javier. On the first day of school when Javier had helped her with the microscopes, she was quick to carry on a friendly conversation, and she always seemed pleased with his answers in class. But at this moment, staring at Javier with her dark eyes peering over her pink reading glasses, she didn't look friendly or pleased. “I'm incredibly disappointed, Mr. Ávila.” Her words clicked like high heels on a hardwood floor. “I can't believe you could be this careless—you, of all people.” She set the paper face down with a firm thump on Javier's desk. Her red polished nails rapped upon it as she said, “I expect corrections first thing on Monday morning.” Then Mrs. Alejandro said even louder, “I expect all of you to turn in corrections to me before first period on Monday, and those who
failed
this exam know my policy. Your parents need to sign the test.” She gave his paper one last tap and walked away.

Javier sat frozen to his chair, unable to move. He stared down at the test paper, trying to ignore an imaginary drumroll in his head.
Ready … aim … fire!

The sound of the bell almost shook Javier off the lab stool. Several guys around him started laughing. Others commented as they left the room.

“Whoa, Javier flunked a test!”

“The smart guy got shot down!”

“How does it feel to be like the rest of us flunkies?”

It felt like he had a relapse of the chicken pox, that's how it felt. He reached out with an itchy hand and finally turned over the test paper. He stared at a two-inch red 45.