I take a breath.
“Have you checked your bank account lately?”
“What?”
For the first time in this conversation, I seem to have surprised him.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you, Jek. I heard...” I’m not sure how much to say. I don’t want to break Maia’s or Natalie’s confidence. “Something happened at a kegger, with a girl. I don’t know what, exactly, but I heard Hyde paid her to drop the issue. Paid her a lot.”
Jek looks away. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Because he transferred the money from your account.”
Jek looks up sharply. “Who told you that?” He sounds agitated, maybe even nervous. Not the disbelief and anger I was expecting.
I look steadily into his face, trying to read him.
“Is it true? Did you already know about this?”
He leans his head back against the wall. “It’s fine, Lu. It’s... Look, I appreciate your concern, but you don’t need to worry about it. I’ve got it under control.”
“Oh.” I’m baffled. I had expected Jek to be shocked by my revelation, or to offer some totally reasonable explanation for it at least. Not to brush me off. “Okay then.” I feel my temper rise along with my confusion. “I guess that’s cool. I just didn’t realize that your new hobby was bankrolling rapists.”
I stand to leave, fuming, but he stops me with a hand on my arm.
“Lu, I swear. That’s not what it is. You don’t have the whole story.”
“All right,” I say. “So tell me.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t. But I... Look, just trust me, okay? It was a misunderstanding. A mix-up. It’s all taken care of.”
“Why can’t you explain it, then?”
“Because it’s none of your business!” he explodes, rising to his feet. I take a step back from him, surprised and hurt by his outburst. The pattering rain fills in the silence between us. Finally Jek lets out a slow breath and rubs his face. “Jesus, Lu,” he says more quietly. “Just stay out of it, all right? If I tell you it’s fine, it’s fine.”
“Fine,” I mutter, moving toward the exit. “Sorry to bother you.” He calls my name as I head out into the rain, but I am about 300 percent done with him right now. Why do I even bother? Let him clean up his own messes.
I fume about Jek on the entire drive home, and it’s only when I pull into the driveway and I’m hit with the scent of my mom’s carnitas emanating from the house that my mood starts to improve. Whatever psychodrama Jek is involved in, it’s not my problem to deal with—especially now that he’s told me to stay out of it.
I park and go in through the back door, which leads directly into the kitchen. My house may not be big like the ones in Jek’s neighborhood, but it’s clean and comfortable—Mom always says, a small house means less to clean. I guess she would know, given how much of her life she has spent scrubbing the big houses on the hill. I used to dream of living in a house with a second story, but Jek pointed out that having a bedroom at ground level meant we could crawl in and out of my window without my mom knowing. Not that either of us have made use of that feature recently.
Moving stealthily through the kitchen, I pull a fork from the drying rack and dip it into the simmering pot.
“Lulu?” My mom’s voice comes from the living room. “You better not be touching that pot before it’s done.”
“I’m not,” I call back, then shove a chunk of meat in my mouth.
“And you’re late,” my mom continues. “You promised to fix my computer right after school.”
With a sigh, I drop my fork in the sink and follow her voice into the living room. A couple of lamps are lit, but as usual the room is dominated by the bluish glow emanating from the large-screen TV that perpetually plays Spanish-language sports and news, thanks to a satellite hookup. My uncle is pretty much always lying on the couch in front of it under a pile of wool blankets—he says it helps distract him from his joint pain.
He’s lying there now, watching a soccer game with the sound off, while my mom occupies her usual spot in the recliner, her laptop on her lap. She passes it off to me before I can even sit down in the remaining seat—a stiff-backed chair that no one likes. Sometimes I wish I’d hidden my interest in computers from the family so they wouldn’t badger me all the time for help with theirs, but just like Jek’s circumstances fostered his love of chemistry, I have my family to thank for my talent—mostly because every laptop, phone and tablet I’ve ever owned has been a hand-me-down or a thrift-shop find. They’ve always been junked up with spyware when I got them, or hopelessly out-of-date. I had no choice but to teach myself how to fix them up.
“I bet you burned yourself,” Mom mutters as I poke gently at the blistered roof of my mouth with my tongue. “You never learn.”
“What’s wrong with it this time?” I say, ignoring the dig.
“Keeps freezing,” she says. “I have to shut down the whole thing, and I lose my place.”
She gets up to tend to the pot in the kitchen, and I start in on the usual troubleshooting steps even though I’m almost positive she’s let her hard drive get cluttered with malware again.
“Remind me why you play this game,” I call out to her as I work. It’s the most boring game I’ve ever seen: your character has to do all these real-life things like go shopping and plant vegetables and pay taxes, but my mom’s obsessed with it for some reason. “You have to do all these things in real life, so why would you do them in your free time?”
“It’s more fun when it’s someone else’s life,” she calls back.
“Plus,” my uncle Carlos says, “when she screws up in the game, she can just start the level over.” He giggles. “Can’t do that in real life.”
“I heard that,” Mom yells from the kitchen, and Carlos rolls his eyes and returns his attention to the soccer match. He used to be a big soccer player and thought about going pro, though you’d never know it to look at him now. He decided to stay here and put his energy into the family business instead, working his way up from farm labor to running his own feed store. But now he can’t do much. He’s lost so much weight that his skin sags off him, and he feels dizzy whenever he stands up. I remember how he used to pick me up and throw me in the air when I was a little girl. Now he gets winded just walking to the refrigerator. We all know it’s because of the chemicals he worked with every day, but he won’t talk about it. Doesn’t want to admit that the business he built with his own hands is slowly killing him, and the rest of the family, too.
“Where were you all afternoon?” Mom nags, coming back from the kitchen and standing behind my chair to watch my progress with her computer. “You’re always going out after school, when you know it’s the only time I get to see you.”
Mom used to clean for people like Puloma when I was a kid, but a few years ago she took a job cleaning the offices and labs for London Chem. It means she has to work nights, but the pay’s better and it’s steady. And the most important part is it keeps her away from the farm chemicals. Ever since Uncle Carlos got sick, Mom has lived in terror of all the products used on the crops around here.
“I