Colonel Franco put his fingers to his mustache and whistled loud enough to blow a lung. He raised his left hand and counted down from five using his fingers. Everyone stopped. “Go grab anything you can find with wheels so we can start.”
“We don’t have driver’s licenses,” Josefina said.
“Grab anything that doesn’t require a driver’s license. Meet me in my back yard,” he barked.
I elbowed Josefina. “Quit it. He’s already annoyed. He’ll send us all back home.”
“I wish,” Josefina said. “He won’t send us away. He wants our help.”
I didn’t want to take that chance. “Let’s just do what he says anyway. This isn’t so bad,” I said.
“It isn’t so great.” Josefina rolled her eyes. “It’s just more work on top of our chores at home.”
“At least we get to be out here together.”
Her mouth formed a small o as if she hadn’t thought of it herself. “I guess you’re right,” she said.
We borrowed a cart from the Nowak Grocery Store and pushed it to Colonel Franco’s backyard. Colonel Franco’s entire fence was lined with rows of brick like the back lot of one of those home improvement stores. I looked twice just to take it all in. “I wonder where all this stuff came from.”
“I bet he was building a bomb shelter.” Josefina stepped closer.
Iker walked up next to us with a wheelbarrow. “It’s old Army surplus. Grampa doesn’t like to see anyone throw anything away,” he said
“Okay,” Colonel Franco called from the back stoop where he sat smoking a cigar, knee propped up on a well-worn phonebook. “Now, load the brick and run it over to the park.”
“You heard the boss,” Pedro Wong said. He appointed himself second-in-command. He wasn’t even second-in-command at Wong’s Taco Shop, but having grown a paltry mustache over the last year, turning eighteen and being the oldest in our group gave him delusions of authority. He picked up a stack of bricks and started an assembly line of sorts. “Iker and the Sanchez sisters, you guys man the carts. Push the bricks to the park, and bring the carts back. The Fernandez brothers and I will come along and stay at the park to unload. The rest of you stay here and continue loading for the next pick up.”
“I don’t want to get dirty,” Casey, the older and plumper Sanchez sister, said.
“Don’t worry. I got this,” Iker said. He puffed up his posture to make himself seem bigger and grabbed the wheelbarrow once it was full. He pushed the wheelbarrow away. The Sanchez sisters followed— their two thick silhouettes sashayed close behind him.
Marcos bent down and picked up some bricks. He handed first Josefina and then me a stack. We loaded them onto the grocery store cart. We repeated the process. I lifted heavy trays onto the racks at the bakery. Josefina and Marcos were used to lifting product crates and kitchen stock. Our new task should’ve been easy, but the sun was relentless. It shone brighter and hotter with each brick. Even an Olympic weightlifter couldn’t have muscled away the hot sticky air. I blotted the sweat off my brow with my shoulder. At least I wasn’t feeling self-conscious on top of it all. There was too much other discomfort for that, right? We’d all seen each other sweat before anyway.
“You’d think the sun was trying to burst out of the sky,” I said.
Josefina huffed. “Ugh, this is terrible,” she said.
“We all smell like Marcos’ gym socks.”
“Like flowers.” Marcos grinned and handed me another stack of bricks. “Dumb sun.”
“No. I don’t mind the sun. I mean, we need the sun, especially if we’re going to pass for Aztecs,” Josefina said. She held up a sun-ripened arm. Her face contorted into a smile. Marcos and I broke into laughter. Josefina had the complexion of a dinner roll. Even under all the layers of sun, sweat and dirt, she was several shades lighter than Marcos and me.
I smiled at Marcos and Josefina. The sun softened us up like butter on a frying pan. There was more laughter and less complaining as the day wore on.
Chapter 5
I squinted at the two large flowers in full bloom moving towards us in the distance. There wasn’t a single rumple on the Sanchez sisters’ sundresses. It was quitting time, and the sisters had obviously done little work. Casey’s surprisingly lithe hand flew in the air and waved a box of paletas. Josefina ignored her and dragged the cart toward the grocery store.
Marcos sprinted across the street towards Casey and Stacey. They cooed and giggled at him. He chatted them up and returned holding a popsicle. “You want some, Masi?” He licked it and pushed it toward me.
“You already put your tongue all over it.” I pushed his hand away. He devoured the rest of the popsicle and stuck the stick in the back pocket of his overalls. “That’s gross,” I added for good measure.
“Roll us home.” Josefina nudged the cart in Marcos’ direction.
“No, you’ll break it,” he said. I gave him a dirty look. Josefina gave him something even dirtier than my look. It involved a finger. Marcos shoved past Josefina. “Come on, Masi. Let’s race,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head, but thought better of it. Marcos had asked, and I had nothing better to do than to go home and stew in my own worry.
Take that other letter in my parents’ letter drawer that I didn’t want to think about. The school district had sent out a notice at the beginning of summer informing my parents that they were closing down American Academy. We would be bused to the next nearest school in the fall. Most kids might think there was nothing better than having their school close down. On test days, I wished it would.
But I didn’t want a new school or new friends. I already had a best friend.
Josefina and I had chosen each other to begin with. On the first day of kindergarten, I’d stuck to my mom’s side like a grease stain. “Look, don’t you want to make friends?” my mom had asked. Josefina noticed me crying beside my mom and came up to me. She grabbed my hand, and we walked into school together. We’d been as good as sisters ever since. As for Marcos, some days he was really nice. Some days he was unbearable. Josefina said that’s exactly what having a brother was like. I’d never told either of them about my sometimes crush. So he treated me no different than his sister. I tried not to think about how much I would miss the Nowaks if we didn’t save Pig Park.
“Wait,” I said to Marcos.
“Races don’t wait, Masi. That’s like asking the wind to wait.” Marcos tugged on my hair and sprinted past me toward the American Lard Company’s immense fenced-in parking lot, which sat barren as a desert on the north side of Pig Park.
“Whatever,” I yelled. I took hold of the cart’s plastic handlebar, tightened my grip and barreled after him.
My shirt clung to my skin as I ran. The gap between us grew wider and wider. He looked back and mouthed the words “toooooo sloooow.” It was as if to say that there was no point in chasing him—and, of course, that was true on more than one level. Marcos became a dot, then nothing. He was halfway to the equator. I gave up and stopped. That’s the way it always went with Marcos. I flipped the cart on its side and boosted myself up to grab hold of the windowsill of one of the company’s buildings. I peered into the darkness. I yelled my name through a broken pane, “Maaaasi!” Nothing came back, not even an echo.
“I don’t know