Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass Read online

  I sink into my seat as Ms. Shepherd picks her first volunteer: (you guessed it) Darlene. She’s written a sappy suicide note from Portia to Brutus and is doing a dramatic reading, complete with crocodile tears.

  I hope Ms. Shepherd doesn’t pick me to go today. Unfortunately, she calls on me all the time, and I can’t seem to dodge her. Last week I didn’t know what to write about for our descriptive essay. Finally, in desperation, I wrote about the crapping boxer from our old building. How it belongs to the Iraq War vet in 4C who looks like Jesus Christ. Ms. Shepherd made a big deal about it — writing long comments in the margins and reading out the part when the boxer gets to the stoop and sways on his old legs, with his nose in the air, like he’s trying remember better days. I almost died. Not that I’m not glad she liked it. But couldn’t she see my red face and know it was time to back off ? Let’s face it: standing out can only make a new kid public enemy number one. Then what? I’ll be accused of being stuck-up and a suck-up. Better to blend into the herd. (Elephant wisdom never fails.)

  I glance at the clock nervously, hoping she doesn’t pick me, even though I know Brutus’s speech by heart. I have more important things to worry about, namely, Yaqui Delgado.

  Luckily, lots of other people volunteer, so I lay low and page through the yearbook in my lap as the drone of voices fades into the background. One presentation moves to the next, but I’m barely listening. A few kids have produced newspapers reporting Caesar’s murder. Another kid made a diorama, although he could have used a little help from Mitzi and me. It’s got LEGO people stuck in place with Play-Doh, and the crooked columns are made of packing Styrofoam. He’s better at math, he explains. Not much of an art fan.

  Darlene is outraged. Her sharp voice makes me look up.

  “How can that [air quotes] ‘project’ even count for a grade?” she demands. “Anybody can stick dolls into clay. I did that in second grade!”

  “We all have our artistic strengths, Darlene.” Ms. Shepherd’s smile always gets a little tight when Darlene comments. “Who’s next? Anyone?”

  Sally Ngyuen makes her way to the front of the room. I’m about to start looking through the yearbook again when I notice something else for the first time.

  SKANK is scribbled in ballpoint pen on my desk. I don’t exactly know why my heart starts to thump. It’s not like there aren’t messages and other handiwork all over this school. Take auditorium seat J-8. I found out during last week’s Expectations of Excellence assembly that it’s got a faded image of a penis carved on the armrest. No one likes to sit in the Pecker Chair for an assembly. People make fun of you the whole day after that. Ask Rob.

  Am I sitting in the Skank Chair, and I didn’t even know it? Even when I cover the word with my binder, it feels like everyone knows, like the message was meant for me. That’s what Yaqui called me, isn’t it? Could she have spies in this very room? Could she be creeping on me? I glance around the room for suspects, but everyone has the same bored expression.

  I open the yearbook and start paging through it as fast as I can. Basketball games, Ping-Pong, Yearbook Club, Drama. I check the cover to make sure it’s not a mistake. It’s like I’m reading about another place entirely. The school in this book has nothing to do with the place where I spend my days, the place where three in ten of us won’t graduate. It doesn’t show the empty air around me as I wait alone in the school yard, the bathrooms I won’t go into, or the dead look I have to keep on my face as I go from class to class.

  I turn pages furiously, running my finger down each row until I finally find her.

  Yaquelin Moira Delgado. Moira? Quite a name, I note with satisfaction.

  She’s a thin girl with small eyes and hair pulled into a tight bun. She’s staring right into the camera, her head tilted in a silly photographer’s angle. Someone might call her pretty. I look closely, trying to memorize her grainy two-inch face. She sits at the lunch table with all the Latin kids. I remember her now.

  I hate you, her eyes say.

  “Earth to Piddy.”

  Ms. Shepherd is looking over her glasses, and the class is silent. She smiles with that hopeful look on her face, and I realize she’s been calling my name. I slide the yearbook back inside my desk and sit up taller.

  “Sorry.”

  It’s no use. I’m busted. She glances at my lap from where she’s standing midway up the aisle.

  “What have you got there?”

  My face is hot.

  “Nothing.”

  She waits for a minute and walks closer, holding out her hand.

  “It’s just the yearbook,” I say, handing it over. “I was just trying to . . .” My voice trails off.

  Ms. Shepherd tucks the book under her arm. Everyone has shifted around to look at me, and my stomach starts to twist.

  “Are you ready to present?” I can see she’s saved me for last today, like dessert.

  My hands feel heavy and wet. The clock says there are only seven minutes to the bell, almost time for the halls again, where Yaqui might be lurking.

  “Piddy?” Ms. Shepherd asks. “Are you prepared?”

  I keep my face blank as I push the bag with my costume farther beneath my desk. I don’t know if it’s stage fright or being in the Skank Chair or the fact that all at once Yaqui feels real. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I shake my head slowly as my fingers go to my necklace. The elephant goes back and forth, back and forth.

  “I have a knife,” a voice says from the other side of the room.

  Ms. Shepherd whips around, momentarily terrified. Then she sees Rob standing up. He lifts his foil dagger out of the bag and shows her.

  “Reynolds Wrap, I swear,” he says. “I can go next. I’m ready.”

  Everyone laughs. At Rob? With him? I’m not sure.

  “Very funny, Rob,” Ms. Shepherd says, relieved. “Quiet down, everybody.”

  She turns back to me and writes something in her grade book as Rob makes his way to the front of the room.

  “Come prepared tomorrow, or I’ll have to make it a permanent zero,” she whispers to me. “I don’t want to do that, okay? It’s killer on your average.”

  I stare straight ahead, trying to look like her disappointment doesn’t bother me. The truth is I’ve never been given a zero. I’ve been second in line to Student of the Year since, I don’t know, maybe third grade. (Mitzi always won.) Ma has all the honorable-mention certificates in a folder with her important papers.

  This zero makes me feel weird, though. A little ashamed, sure, but also a little tough, especially with Darlene and the others looking on.

  Soon Rob is stumbling over each line, murdering the soliloquy worse than Brutus did Caesar. He grips his dagger and jabs it hard in the air. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was talking right to me.

  “O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts. And men have lost their reason . . .”

  I grip my charm tighter. All I can think about is Yaqui Delgado’s eyes, about what kind of cloak she wears, what kind of dagger she’ll run through me.

  “Are you crazy? Crushing on Alfredo?” Darlene has me cornered at my locker. I can smell her Juicy Fruit gum. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

  “Alfredo? What is it with this place and people I don’t know?” I ask. “I’m not crushing on anybody.”

  That’s a bold-faced lie. It’s true that I have no idea who Alfredo is, but I do have a total crush on Mr. Grandusky, the student teacher in global history. He’s got hipster glasses and a SAVE THE ELEPHANTS tie. When he asked me, “What defines something as a revolution?” I nearly fainted.

  She crosses her arms. “Well, I heard you were talking to Alfredo in the school yard this morning. Just so you know, he’s been Yaqui Delgado’s boyfriend since, like, forever.”

  “I wasn’t talking to anyone in the school yard.” Then I think back to the two guys catcalling me. A sickening tug starts to work through my gut.

  “You look guilty,” she adds.

 
; “No, I look annoyed.” I slam my locker shut.

  Darlene shakes her head.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Darlene,” I say firmly. “I’ve never even spoken to Alfredo. Now, let’s go. We’ll be late.”

  “What?” Mitzi shouts into the phone. “You have to speak louder! I’m in the gym.”

  She’s at a badminton tournament, and I’m at the coin laundry down the street, trying to fill her in on my day.

  What’s wrong with this picture? Mitzi has always hated gym — until now. Unless I was the captain, she’d been picked last for every team except spelling bee since kindergarten. I should be happy for her, I guess, but I’m not. In fact, I’m irked. It’s stupid to swing around those little rackets.

  “You were right. It’s a guy!” I shout.

  “A lie?” she repeats.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Call me when you get home.”

  I hang up and stare miserably at the mesmerizing pinwheel of soapy clothes in the machine. Ma has picked up some more hours at Attronica, so now the laundry is on my plate, too.

  “What? You have more important things to do?” Ma asked when I pointed out that I already make us dinner. “I’m making a living so we don’t starve, Piedad. It’s the least you could do.”

  Nobody is ever beating off starvation at Mitzi’s house. Her parents are so utterly boring, old-fashioned, and ordinary. Her dad works at the clinic, and her mom volunteers, does the laundry, and cooks. Everybody does his or her job — and Mitzi’s is only to study. I decide that annoys me, too. What would my life be like if my dad were still around? Easier, I bet, just like hers.

  When I was little, I played a private game called Who’s Papi? I could play it anywhere. The supermarket. The bus. Out on the street. I’d spot a man and imagine he was my dad in disguise, following me from a safe distance. I’d pretend he would introduce himself and say, “Piddy! I’m so sorry about everything. I’ve been thinking of you all these years.” One day when we were back-to-school shopping, I almost followed a stranger into the men’s room at a department store, pretending he was my father. “Where are you going?” Ma asked. She gave him a dirty look and ushered me away.

  When the washer stops, I realize that my unhooked bras have hopelessly tangled in the laundry. One strap is so tight around the agitator that I have to climb halfway inside to get my stuff free. I’ve forgotten Ma’s golden rule about hand-washing our personals. Somehow she’s always right, I think, and that makes me feel even angrier.

  The attendant looks up from her paper.

  “Trouble, honey?”

  “No. I’m fine,” I grunt.

  In the end, I don’t try to pick it all apart. Instead, I shove the ball of clothes in the dryer and stuff extra quarters in the slot, hoping it will all dry anyway.

  I open my history book and get to work. It’s hopeless, even when I try to think of other things, like Mr. Grandusky asking, “What constitutes a revolution? Who’s to blame for an uprising?”

  I stare at the dryer and lose myself in thoughts that are just as circular.

  What constitutes a crush? What constitutes talking to somebody? Who is to blame for my social failure?

  Two days later in the lunchroom, I learn a new game.

  Yaqui Delgado teaches me.

  It’s called fastball, and you play it when none of the teachers are looking. This is a sport that is not included in our yearbook, but it is very real just the same.

  Two teams: my lunch table vs. an enemy cloaked in invisibility. Equipment: a container of chocolate milk and a cinder-block wall. You don’t have to ask to play or wait in humiliation as teams are chosen. In fact, if you’re a loser, you’re picked first.

  Darlene is in the middle of complaining about our physics pop-quiz grades when an Elmhurst Dairy container comes whizzing through the air. It hits the wall right behind me and explodes like the big bang. Every genius at my table is doused in milk. For a second, no one moves. Rob looks as though he’s crying chocolate tears. Darlene, dripping, stares at her hands through murky lenses. People around us start to point; a few that have been splattered at nearby tables curse on their way out the door.

  I scan the blur of faces in the lunchroom, looking for the pitcher of today’s fastball, but I already know exactly who it is. Most of the girls at the Latin table have their backs to us. All, that is, but one.

  Yaqui.

  I recognize her immediately thanks to her yearbook picture. She doesn’t crack a smile as our eyes meet. She’s sitting next to Alfredo. After she’s stared me down, she turns back around slowly.

  Meanwhile, Miss Posey, the lunch aide, comes running before I’m even on my feet. She’s huffing with the effort of moving across the cafeteria so fast on her bunions. Chocolate milk is dripping down the walls, over the edges of the table, and onto the floor. She stares at the scene with disgust.

  “Who threw it?” she demands, as though we’re the guilty ones. None of us answers, too stunned to speak. “Custodian!” she barks into her walkie-talkie. “Custodian, do you copy?” She stops me from trying to get up. “Don’t move. Any of you.”

  Inside, I’m flipping her the bird. Chocolate milk seeps through my shirt and jeans to my underwear.

  The custodian rolls his bucket of murky water across the floor. His name is Jason, and he’s young enough to still have acne on his neck. I try not to look at him as he works. Not at him. Not at the guys all over the lunchroom who are pointing and cracking up. Milk drips from the ends of my hair. I’m a loser for all to see.

  “Pick up your feet,” he says.

  I know what he thinks as he starts pushing his Pine-Sol mop in circles: we’re easy targets. Weak. Weakness means that you deserve to be hated, that you deserve everything you get.

  My fists are clenched; I want to punch someone. Rob is perfectly still, like his spirit has risen out of his body and nothing is left. Darlene rummages through her bag for her striped gym-suit top.

  “My shirt is ruined,” she fumes. “It was expensive, and now I’m going to clash.”

  I grab her arm before she storms off to the lockers.

  “What?” she snaps.

  My voice is almost a growl.

  “I need to find out more about Yaqui Delgado.”

  Darlene rolls her eyes and cocks her head.

  “Gee, ya think?”

  I walk home that afternoon in a daze. My shirt smells like baby vomit, and my hair has stiffened to peaks that I can’t comb through. Chocolate milk is one of those things I remember loving as a kid. Now that memory’s ruined.

  “Hey.”

  When I look up, I’m surprised to find myself in front of the old building. My feet must have gone on autopilot. I’m like one of those African elephants that finds her way home, no matter how far she’s roamed.

  Joey Halper is sitting on the stoop, eating a frozen Popsicle, even though the October cold is biting through my jacket. He’s grinning at me in that way of his. He has a new haircut — buzzed close to the scalp like a prisoner. He tries to look vicious, but it never really works. Even the day the cop car brought him home for shoplifting, he looked like a scared little kid to me. I’m pretty sure he was crying. I never asked him about it, though. I don’t ask Joey about a lot of things. And now his hair is so wispy that it looks like duck down, so soft you want to touch it. I know better, though. It’s been a long time since Joey and I sat around catching caterpillars on the ends of twigs.

  “Hey back,” I tell him.

  He squints, like it’s an effort just to think about me, but at least he doesn’t make any crack about my stained clothes.

  “Didn’t you move?” he asks.

  “You noticed.”

  I can see the damaged staircase through the dingy glass. A plywood ramp covers the steps. Yellow CAUTION tape is pulled tightly all around, as if it’s a murder scene. An unopened box of tiles is stacked in the corner.

  “They still haven’t fixed the steps?” I ask.

  He shrugs.
/>   “Who cares? But don’t think I forgot that you owe me five bucks. I won the bet.”

  This makes us both smile. The day before the stairs went kaput, Joey and I had swayed on them like surfers.

  “Five bucks says they don’t last more than a week,” he’d said as we rocked. It was like we were little again, back before Ma labeled him trouble and forbid me to cross the threshold to his apartment. I should have known that a kid like Joey could predict disaster better than I could. He has had a lot of practice watching for it. His dad drinks and drinks until his anger explodes. For Joey, timing a disaster is a science.

  “So why are you back?” He chomps off a bit of Popsicle. “You miss me or something?”

  My cheeks flush. He’s cute for a future convict — even Mitzi used to think so — and the question catches me off-guard. Joey does that sometimes. Like the time he said, “What’s worse? Having no dad or having a mean son of a bitch like mine?”

  “Well?”

  His question makes me feel especially silly in my chocolate-milk shirt. I think fast and point at the row of dented mailboxes inside.

  “I came to pick up our mail and stuff.”

  He flashes a big smile. One of his front teeth has a tiny chip that I like.

  “No way. People write to you, Toad?”

  “Funny. Who writes to you besides your JD officer?”

  “Ribbit,” he says.

  So much for a homecoming.

  I step past him and press Lila’s bell, but I can feel him watching me. Maybe it’s my shaky ass at work again. I don’t mind, though.

  “Who is it?” Lila’s voice is breaking up through the static.

  “Piddy. Buzz me in,” I say into the intercom. It feels weird not to live here anymore, not to have a key to unlock the lobby doors. I’m about to say so to Joey, the one kid I’ve known my whole life besides Mitzi, but when I look back through the glass doors, he’s already gone.

  The TV is blaring in Lila’s apartment. She’s a novela junkie, and Los Diablos y el Amor is her favorite. Three p.m., Monday through Friday, she’s tuned in.