Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass (22 page)

The walk to school is silent that Monday. Lila is with me. “Just in case,” she says, but I’m not sure if she means “Just in case Yaqui is around” or “Just in case you don’t go.”

It’s not even December, and the air already smells like cold metal and snow. I wonder if it’s like this to walk to your death. You know, like in prison. Empty. Ready for everything to stop with a prick of a needle, a jolt. Like you’re walking in a dream. All I’ve got to make me feel better today is my broken elephant charm in my pocket — and it’s not working too well. The closer we get to school, the worse I feel. I know I’m either going to get beaten up by Yaqui again — or I’m going to have to narc like a loser and probably get beaten up even worse when she finds out.

At the attendance office, the secretary glances tiredly before opening the passbook. Then she gives Lila the once-over, her eyes lingering on her zebra-print pumps.

“Sign her in, please.”

Lila is studying the posters on the bulletin board. She smiles innocently and peruses the sign-in log like it’s one of her glossy catalogs.

“We’ve both been a little sick, but it’s nothing contagious — don’t worry.” She signs Ma’s name with a flourish. “Have a good day,
hija
.” She winks at me, but I won’t crack a smile.

Instead, I grab the pass from the secretary and slip away as fast as I can. The clicks of Lila’s heels fade in the other direction as I go.

“You’ll need this to have any hope in U.S. History next year,” Mr. Fink says to the class. He pauses from his explanation of nationalism when I come in and drop the pass on his desk. I try to act like no one’s staring, but all eyes are on me as I find my seat, especially Darlene’s. I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking. Are they making fun of me? Are they remembering me naked in that stupid video? Or can they see that I’m something foreign now, different, a curiosity that doesn’t belong in this little bubble of smart kids who still care? They’ve probably seen the video, gawked at me naked, and been grateful it wasn’t them. Maybe some of them think I’m something dangerous that has to be amputated for the sake of the whole.

Sally Ngyuen sits up straight and looks ahead when I sit down next to her.

“Discussion questions, page two hundred and two,” Mr. Fink tells us. “And I want answers in complete sentences.”

Book, notebook, pencil, I think slowly — the motions of a normal day for normal people. The words at the top of the page blur up, though. I read the words again and again, trying to remember anything at all about how the world connects.

“Piddy.
Piddy
.” Darlene’s voice is a whisper.

I don’t turn her way. When class ends, I dart out before she can reach me and head out to my next class alone.

That afternoon, Ms. Shepherd pretends not to make a big deal about my return, although she stares at me for a beat too long when I come in. Lila’s makeup isn’t fooling anybody. Add that to my plucked eyebrows and tired face, and I’m probably a dead ringer for someone from what she calls her sixth-period “zoo.”

“Okay, everyone,” she says, handing out pages of the literary magazine in layouts. “We were finalizing layouts before the break. I hope you remember that our deadline for the magazine is this Friday. You need to work in your groups to make the final edits for your assigned pages.” She looks up at me. “Why don’t you join Rob’s group, Piddy?”

Rob’s group consists of Rob.

I take the empty seat beside him as everyone moves their desks into clusters and gets busy.

“I guess it’s lonely at the top,” I say, trying to break the ice.

“I’m not lonely,” he says. The awkward silence that follows makes me feel like an idiot.

“Look, Rob,” I finally say. “I’m sorry I yelled at you that day after lunch. I was freaked out the story was up and —”

“You were scared,” he says as he unfolds the layout page for the introduction. “Your eyes were doing that weird jumping thing.”

The open page catches my attention immediately. A gorgeous sketch takes up most of the page, and beneath it is his name. When I look closely, I see that it has been done in tireless pinpoints — almost as tiny as pixels. When you hold it at arm’s length, the image is of three wolf-faced kids writing on a locker. On the back of their jackets, the word
LOSER
is written in white letters. I think back to the day somebody wrote on his locker. I guess I wasn’t fast enough to spare him, after all.

“You’re an artist,” I say. “I can’t draw anything, especially not animals, no matter how hard I try.”

“What kind do you try to draw?” he asks.

“Well, elephants.” Which is true. They never look realistic; they always look like Babar. Rob is staring at me, so I keep blabbering. “But these wolves are great,” I add. I put down the sheet and look at him. So far I’ve only known him as a brain in every subject. Now I see he’s got other talents, too. “Rob, what don’t you do well?”

“People,” he blurts out.

“Well, yeah, that’s true.”

He doesn’t crack a smile, and another awkward silence wraps around us.

I start to proof his essay for mistakes, but it’s hard to worry about commas. Turns out, Rob’s bluntness is funny on paper. I’m almost done when he puts his hand over the text.

“Wait — I’m not finished,” I say. “It’s really good.”

“Your stuff would be better than most of what we picked,” he says quickly.

This is not a conversation I want to have, much less with people listening in near us.

“We should edit the rest of this stuff,” I mumble, reaching for the next page of layout.

“I hate Darlene’s sappy poem, for instance,” he says a little too loudly. “I put it near the end.”

“Did you say my name, Rob?” Darlene gives us a dirty look from across the room.

“She can be such an ass,” I say.

“Everyone is sort of an ass now and then,” he says, shrugging. “Sometimes even nice people.” He blinks. “You’re absent a lot. That’s ass-ish.”

“You’re the one who is being pretty ass-ish right now,” I point out.

“See? It happens.”

That’s when there’s a knock at the door. A slant of light comes in through the opening, and Mr. Flatwell steps inside and scans the room. He motions to Ms. Shepherd. I close my eyes and duck down. Maybe I can play dead like a possum near the trash cans. No luck. His rubber-bottomed shoes barely make a sound as he comes near. I feel him standing next to my desk.

“Hello, Mr. Allen,” he says to Rob, who goes from red to purple. Then he turns to me. “Miss Sanchez,” he whispers. “Please come with me.”

A teacher I’ve never seen before is waiting in his office when we get there. She glances at me from a seat at a student desk he keeps in the corner.

“Thank you for coming, Miss Castenado,” Mr. Flatwell tells her. When he shuts the door, I realize she’s probably there as a witness. The thought of Mr. Flatwell getting funny with me is gross, but I guess you never know.

He leans back in his chair and takes me in.

“You’ve been out for several days, Miss Sanchez. I understand your mother wasn’t aware you weren’t in school.”

I shift in my seat. “She knows now,” I say. “And here I am.”

“It’s nice to have you back,” he says without a trace of sarcasm. He’s quiet for a while. It’s like he’s waiting for me to say something else.

“Am I here for a reason?” I ask.

The teacher looks over at me and then at Mr. Flatwell. My tone must be a problem again.

“I’ve received a report,” Mr. Flatwell says. “It has to do with you.”

“My mother already knows about my absences,” I tell him.

Mr. Flatwell leans forward and folds his hands. “Have you heard of SUSO?”

For a second, I’m confused. “What?”

“SUSO. Miss Castenado runs it,” he says, pointing at the teacher. “It’s a new program this year. It means Stand Up/Speak Out.” He hands me a flyer with a bulldog on it. I recognize it from the guidance office. “Bully-Free Zone,” it says.

Miss Castenado clears her throat and rolls her chair closer to us.

“It’s an anonymous way for people to report bullying,” she explains. “Anyone can send us a form, no questions asked.”

The room fills with a silence that hurts my ears. Mr. Flatwell picks up a sheet of paper from his desk, but I don’t move my eyes from his face.

“I’ve received a SUSO report that says someone at this school has been bullying you.” He looks over his glasses at me. “Is that true?”

“Who filed that report?” I pull my sleeves down over my wrists nervously. Darlene made it clear she didn’t want to get involved. But I can’t think of anyone else who would even know there was a no-bullying program in place.

“The report was made anonymously, but it’s obviously somebody who’s concerned about you.”

Someone concerned about me? At DJ? That’s a laugh. But as he waits for my answer, I suddenly think of Rob. How he’s gotten me out of tough spots before without me even realizing it.

“What you tell us in this room is confidential,” Miss Castenado says. “We can help before things get out of hand.”

A poster of a kitten hanging from a tree limb is tacked to the wall behind her.
HANG IN THERE
, it says. My throat tightens into a wad of sadness. Things are already so out of hand, she has no idea. I’m thinking all at once of Joey and Mrs. Halper and all the days we heard her through the pipes. All those times the cops came and left, empty-handed.
It’s all right
, she’d say.
Nothing happened
. She didn’t accept help, but maybe she was just too afraid to take it.

Miss Castenado goes to the water cooler and fills a cup of water for me. She puts a box of tissues in front of me, too. I don’t touch either one.

“Sometimes we can get the people involved talking,” she begins, “and we can help them solve their differences.”

“No.” My voice is sudden, firm.

Mr. Flatwell clears his throat.

“Last year, you were an A student at your old school.” He unclips a wallet-size school picture of me from inside a file folder. I recognize the old school portrait. Ma has one floating in her photo box somewhere. It was taken last September at my old school. I must have missed this year’s Picture Day when I was playing hooky. He considers the girl carefully. “I’ve read your records. It says you were in advanced sciences and language arts. Ms. Shepherd agrees that you have talent.” He leans forward. “What’s happening here, Miss Sanchez? Something isn’t right.”

Last year? I can barely remember it. That was when I could sleep at night, dreaming of my elephants and the Sahara. I could feel the rhythm of old salsa records in my bones. I could laugh with Mitzi and plan what we would wear. Agustín Sanchez was my mystery father, someone I wanted to know about. Now I can’t lift my eyes or walk the way I want. I have no friends. Not even my own father wanted to get to know me. If there is a way to get that smiling girl back, I don’t see it.

The room is spinning now. Talking about a secret is like finding a way out of a cave, isn’t it? You can’t be sure whether you’re going deeper in or climbing free. What’s the sunlight and what’s just a mirage?

I close my eyes to think as hard as I ever have. It’s Lila’s voice again in my head.

It’s you that has the
real
strength in all this, Piddy. You just don’t know it yet. One day you’ll be so far away from Parsons Boulevard, you’ll think you dreamed this hellhole
. Her aspirations for me are blinking above like fireflies just out of reach.

“Miss Sanchez? Is someone bullying you?”

I’m thinking, too, of Rob and his wolf picture for all to see, the way he’s still standing despite all the abuse that’s heaped his way, even from people who should know better. He sucks at people, and yet he’s the most humane.

“If you would give us the name . . .”

The question is, What kind of person will you be?
I hear Ma in my ear.

Finally, I pull out my elephant charm and put it on Mr. Flatwell’s desk. It has no trunk. The sides are chalky and ruined. It’s nothing more than a trinket.

“Yes,” I say. “Yaqui Delgado.”

Miss Castenado keeps me company through the lunch period until Mr. Flatwell returns. I had a choice to leave the room, but what’s the difference? Yaqui is going to know I told, either way. At least now, when Mr. Flatwell brings her in, I’ll see her face up close — and she’ll have to see mine. We can fight even, for once. The crazy thing is that I may never know what we’re actually fighting about. Was it because a boy looked at me? My swishy butt? Or maybe because she’s worried I’m better than she is? It hardly matters anymore. All this time, I’ve been afraid of Yaqui Delgado hurting me, and now it’s time to confront her — not in a school yard but in a way that I choose. No matter how she fights, I’ll make sure I win in the way that matters to me.

It takes a long time for Mr. Flatwell to return. When he comes back, he has the school cop, Officer Roan, along, too. As soon as Yaqui sees me, she shakes her head, as if she’s already thinking about everything she’s going to do to me. I still can’t quite look at Yaqui directly, but I look
by
her — like looking through a windshield instead of focusing on what’s stuck on the glass.