7. Nuts
“You told her what?”
“That I had fallen in love with her.”
Barry chuckled. “What did she say?”
“I don’t know; she stood there looking at me.”
Her face was like a short story. It began with a smile, then her eyes opened very wide, then she wrinkled her forehead and looked deeply sad, then I don’t know because I just walked away.
My mom shouts from the living room to hang up the phone. I hold to it like it’s my life line before I die in a painful, unknown way.
“What happened to Miss Mariela?”
“My Mom came to pick me up before I could see her.”
“I’m coming over.” Barry hung up the phone.
“No!” But it’s too late. He’s already gone. Barry is going to know now that I’m leaving, that this was all a lie, that I wasn’t going to go to the prom and that my intentions all along were to cut all my life in San Cristóbal in one swift move, like a Ninja cutting off the head of his enemy. He will think I don’t appreciate all the times we were together, the late nights in the printing machine assembling the school newspaper, the tape mixes he made me to score the chicks, the super awesome Ghostbuster-themed party we threw in the basketball court, with the permission of Professor Emmanuel, the school principal, who really liked me for all the activities I was helping with at school and the funny caricature I made for him in the first issue of the school newspaper, who Barry and the other editors told me was going to mean expulsion, but that Professor Emmanuel picked up from my hand and while I waited the strike, laughed so hard, put his arm around my shoulder and demanded to the secretary to frame it immediately for his office. Barry wasn’t going to appreciate any of it. But Barry would get over it. He had probably slept with half of San Cristóbal already, without even owning a car, and the way he did it was by appearing to be a very fragile, shy person, who could barely talk to women and waited for them to feel sorry for him and cuddle him and that’s when he struck back, lunged to their lips, put his hands on the right place and after that it was history, the woman would become another stripe in his tiger body wearing a lamb costume. Barry had tried to teach me “the B-move”, as he called it, but of course I was really shy, I could never lunge to a woman’s lips (that seemed so improper) and I could never put my hands anywhere on a woman’s body, much less the ones he was telling me to grab on the practice pillow (he first suggested we practice on his older sister Leonor but, to my great disappointment, his boyfriend had already picked her up, and Leonor would have been perfect he said because she had taught him all he knew about sex, love and rock and roll (and the word in the street was that Leonor was a slut and did cocaine and had the worst boyfriends and her white skin was covered with tattoos in the most intimate places and I had fantasized about Leonor many, many times, especially after what happened the first time I met her at Barry’s house, when we listening to U2’s “Joshua Tree”, an album that to be honest I didn’t understand, but thankfully Barry liked Billy Idol as well, which I found more entertaining and he especially liked Genesis’ “Mama” which had a killer drum part, and Leonor came in and asked “Who is this?”, like looking at a little baby in his crib, and Barry had answered non-importantly “Julio” and Leonor had looked back at me, ran her eyes up and down and extended her hand as to say hi and I extended mine and she passed it and went straight to my bottom, grabbed one cheek and blurted “Nice ass!”).
My Mom announced Barry was outside.
“What the fuck is all this?”
“We’re leaving. Tonight.”
“What?”
“Look, I was going to tell you.” Of course he didn’t believe me.
Barry grabbed my arm and we went outside.
