Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass (17 page)

Monday.

I watch the sun come up between the buildings and sidewalk trees, thinking about school. There’s no way to hide what’s happened, not enough makeup in the world that can cover up what people at school already know.

Yaqui Delgado kicked my ass.

How many people have seen the video by now, I wonder. When I checked last night, there were already comments posted, mostly about my “fine rack.” One kid called me a slut. I squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying again. I imagine walking into DJ. Everyone will whisper, make fun of me, or else feel bad. Maybe even hit me, too, since I’m clearly an easy target.

Ma starts shuffling around the apartment. The shower water rushes through the pipes, and soon after, she snaps on the hall light and opens my door. Her hair is still wet; she smells sickeningly of almond lotion. I lie still as a corpse and squeeze the elephant charm in my palm until it hurts. Finally, she shakes my leg to wake me.

“Time for school,” she whispers.

Squinting into the light, I sit up slowly. Everything hurts. The scab on my elbow cracks open.

“You were so restless last night,” she says. “You were talking in your sleep.”

“Just dreams,” I say. One thing is for sure, though.

I’m
not
going back to DJ. Not ever.

“Can you help me or not?”

I’m at Joey’s bedroom window. It’s an old trick we used when we were little. I was too afraid of his pink-faced father coming to the door. And Joey’s mother, so sad and quiet, reminded me of a ghost. Throwing pebbles on the glass was our signal that I was outside and ready to play.

I know it’s crazy to be here where Lila might spot me, but I’m counting on the fact that Salón Corazón opens at noon on Mondays, and she’s never up before nine if she can help it.

Besides, Joey’s my only hope. He’s an expert at cutting school for days at a time without too much hassle — which is exactly what I plan to do. Nobody even bothers to report his absences anymore. “They’re pretty glad when I don’t show up” is how he once bragged about it. Maybe he’ll keep me company.

Barely awake, he rakes his fingers through his blond head stubble. I can see he’s got circles under his eyes almost as bad as mine. It’s probably been another night of fireworks between his parents.

Joey gets a good look at my face and cocks his head.

“Who messed you up?” he asks.

I look away, thinking back to all the times I’ve seen Joey scabbed over, never once asking about it. How many times his mom waited on the hall steps, red-eyed and shivering. I said hi and stepped past, minding my own business each time.

“Forget it,” I say.

“Wait.”

A few minutes later, he joins me at the back of the building. He pulls a can of cat food from his pocket, pops it open, and runs downstairs to the basement. He’s back in a flash, tosses away the can, and cracks his knuckles.

“You like the city?” he asks.

The subway smells of dust and pee. Joey doesn’t seem to mind — not the stink or the cold. The air is chilly enough to make my nose run, and my swollen cheeks feel stiff. A couple of little kids stare at my mashed face from behind their nanny’s legs, which Joey finds hilarious.

“I always knew you were a freak, Toad,” he says as he ushers me to the end of the platform. Mice dart along the tracks. Six hundred volts are beneath their grimy paws, and still they look carefree.

“Maybe we’ll see one fry,” Joey says hopefully. “We could bring home barbecue for the kittens.”

“Don’t be gross.” I watch for a minute, remembering something our science teacher told us in eighth grade. “Besides, it won’t happen. Their bodies are too small to touch the rail and the ground at the same time. You need a complete circuit.”

“Thanks, professor,” he says.

The platform is getting crowded, and soon we’re squeezed close. He smells faintly of soap, and I’m so tired that I close my eyes and rest my head on his chest. He doesn’t shrug me off. Instead, he keeps me warm. If nothing else, being with him helps me avoid weird men with staring problems. You’ve got to watch your ass in the subway — literally — even one that’s been kicked in like mine. I’ve heard plenty of stories from Lila.

The trains are slow this morning, and people are getting nastier about it by the second. Sighs and pacing, a few people shaking their heads. It’s crowded even here at the end, so naturally it doesn’t take long before somebody gets rude.

“Get your greasy backpack off me, man!”

A tall guy at the very edge of the platform gives a nasty look to somebody behind him. The tips of his shoes are hanging over the yellow line. I hold my breath, wondering what’s next. The two guys he’s insulted don’t look like the types to back down. One wrong shove and somebody’s through. Joey could get more of a show than he bargained for.

Luckily, the platform begins to rumble, and the headlights of the Express draw everyone’s attention. As the train pulls into the station, the crowd starts pushing for the doors, not even waiting for the riders to get off. I’m about to join the crowd, when Joey slips his arm around my waist and holds me back. His touch hurts a tender spot near my ribs. It takes my breath away.

“Wait for the next train,” he says in my ear, and I shiver. His fingers make a strangely pleasant ache against my bruises as I wait.

The Local arrives a few minutes later — much emptier, and we snag the end seats, where it’s just the two of us, our legs touching.

Neither one of us says much as we squeak and sway our way out of Queens. My face is so ugly right now, I don’t want him to look at me, but I can feel him staring just the same. I keep my eyes on his boots one stop after the next.

The train starts to go underground to get us across the East River. Everything gets darker and darker as we go. Joey suddenly stands up.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

He opens the back door of our train car — exactly the way the sign says not to. Before I can say anything else, he steps out, putting one foot on the metal platform of each moving car, straddling the open space beneath. He holds out his hand from the darkness. One of his tattoos is a little swollen, infected.

“Let’s ride out here,” he says.

I know it’s stupid, but at this point, what’s
not
stupid? I step out carefully and position myself opposite him. With a sudden lurch of the train, the door slams shut like a guillotine, and we’re outside in the darkness. The train gathers speed, and soon we’re hurtling through the dark, sparks flying from the wheels as we go. I grip the handles as tight as I can and let my hips go loose enough to sway with the movement of the car, its own cha-cha-cha.

It’s just the two of us out here in the dark, and the sound is deafening. Dust and grime fill my nose and mouth as the air rushes past, and every few seconds a tunnel light illuminates us as though we’re under strobes. Even in the dark, I can see that Joey doesn’t hold on. He just lets out a laugh, taking in my fear as he pretends to lose his footing.

“Let go!” he shouts as we head around a curve.

My hands are sweaty, but I can’t let him have the satisfaction of scaring me, even as the train leans and screeches into the turn. Kids do this every day, I tell myself. I’ve heard of some who even ride the roof like Spider-Man, invincible. I let my fingers go slack and do my best not to get pitched onto the tracks.

It feels like forever, but we finally pull into the station. My hair is windblown and my heart is racing, but as we stop, Joey leans toward me. He rubs one of his fingers along my swollen lip. Eyes open and fixed on mine, he gives me a kiss.

Even when the train climbs back out to the daylight, I’m still breathless with fright and something like love.

Where did the day go? It’s all a jumble. People were scrambling to work in every direction, and we had to move fast, even though we had nowhere to be. It’s like we were homeless, with a million places to go and not one place we belonged. My head still rings with the sounds of cabs and bikes, the blinking billboards. The dark window at the entrance to Madame Tussauds, where neither one of us had the thirty-six dollars to get in. A smoky pretzel on the library steps, just like with Mitzi. Every preschooler in Manhattan at Toys“R”Us as we roamed the aisles.

“You’re dead,” Joey said, pretending to shoot me with the green-and-yellow gun he’d made at the LEGO table. I don’t mind. Over the years, he’s murdered me with all kinds of things: branches, fingers, empty toilet-paper rolls. It gets old.

It’s two thirty by the time we get back, hungry and cold. Ma will be calling soon to see how my day was.
Fine
, I’ll say.
No problems. Yes, I feel much better
.

I fumble for the keys as Joey waits, chewing his nails. For once, Mrs. Boika is nowhere to be found. I open the door and turn around to say thanks and bye, but he steps inside. If Ma could see this, she’d die — or I would.

“You can’t stay,” I tell him.

“Why not?”

“My mother would kill me.”

“She won’t know.”

I hesitate just long enough for him to spot the stairs. His eyes look gray in this light, his cheeks flushed. He is, I realize, as beautiful right now as I am ugly.

“It’s too early to go home, Toad,” he points out. Then he smiles one of his crazy grins and heads upstairs without another word.

Joey never set foot in my old apartment — and I was forbidden to go inside his. Ma declared his place off-limits the first time we heard Mr. Halper smack his wife around. No words, just the rumble of his voice, with her yelps:
Stop it, Frank!

“No man puts his hands on you ever, you understand?” Ma whispered to me every time they started up.

In the end, she said Joey and I had to be “on-the-block” friends, period, and even then Ma didn’t like it. “Like father, like son,” she’d say.

I wonder what kind of friends Joey and I are now. I feel like one of those commuters from this morning staring into the black tunnel, unsure of what’s coming or when.

I can’t say I really mind having him here, even though he looks strange among our things, like something foreign and wrong for the room. He pokes around cautiously, the way a rescued dog might sniff around his new home, wondering whether to trust it.

Then he spots the piano.

“You play?” He throws open the keys and starts his rendition of “Chopsticks.”

“No,” I say. “Shhh! The lady downstairs will hear.”

He makes a rumble on the lowest keys in protest before I close the piano on his tattooed fingers.

I go to the kitchen and put the water on for tea. When I come back, I find him on the couch, toying with my cell phone.

“You got a message, Toad.” He props his feet up on one of the boxes we’re using as a coffee table. That’s when I realize he’s not talking about my cell phone but the house phone. It’s blinking, and the caller ID reads:
DANIEL JONES HIGH SCHOOL
. A weariness takes hold of me. The lies I’ll have to tell. The plan that doesn’t exist for what happens tomorrow or the day after.

Joey follows my gaze to the machine. For a second, neither one of us moves.

“Observe,” he says.

I take a deep breath as he presses
DELETE
to make the words disappear.

Then he stands up and takes my hand.

“Where’s your room?” he asks.

I haven’t made the bed. The sheets have spots of blood and still stink from ointment. My floor is littered with dirty jeans, sweaty bras. Joey sits down on the edge of my bed and smiles.

I close my eyes as he pulls me close. Or maybe it’s not me, but this new girl with the pummeled face and the mouth full of lies. Inside my head, I can hear Ma talking about decency. Lila’s words dance there, too.
It’s not a game
. But Joey knows what it’s like to have to coarsen your hide against someone’s punches. Who else can keep me from Yaqui, if only for this day?

He slides me back onto the bed and climbs on top of me. I tell myself that I’m ready for anything, that this lump in my throat is nothing at all. I picture myself in my tight hair and skinny brows.

He takes my face in his hands and kisses each eyelid and my scabbed mouth. He closes his eyes and runs his fingers under my shirt. His touch makes the skin on my arms go to gooseflesh. I don’t stop him from working the buttons of my blouse or the hook on my bra. In a moment, my bruised shoulders are bare. I keep my hands at my sides, too frightened and tired to even move as his lips brush my skin at the top of my breasts. His hand moves across my ribs, and before I can stop myself, I wince in pain.

Joey opens his eyes.

“What?” he asks.

His face goes dark as my shirt falls away and he sees all that has happened to my body. I’m mottled in purples and greens, tattooed in crusty scabs. I have bumps and swells where they don’t belong.

The corner of his eye twitches, and his mouth turns down as he studies me. After a long minute, he circles the bite marks on my shoulders and chest with his finger, tracing them as though he’s following a road map to a place he doesn’t want to find. He looks pale, and for a second, I swear he’s going to be sick.

I am ashamed under his gaze. There are tears in my eyes, so I squeeze them shut, wanting him to get on top of me again and press me close, wondering what this will be, what it will feel like to have Joey inside me. There will be no way back, but would I want one? I’m nearly a woman, right? Maybe I’ll laugh about it lightly the way the ladies at Salón Corazón do. I will make it No Big Deal.
Tears are stupid, a thing of little girls
, I tell myself.