“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Nina asked her.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Of course it is. You’re a Rios, girl. We’re hot-blooded.”
“Well, okay, fine,” Elena said. She launched into a long, overheated harangue about everything that had happened tonight. The smoothie, the horrible, tense conversation in which Jake sat there and petulantly criticized her for talking to Harlow, and then that song, that unbelievably angry and just plain mean song.
“Can you believe that, Nina? Suddenly he’s got all kinds of money and he moves across town and what happens? He turns into somebody I don’t even know.”
Nina just smiled at her like it was all a joke, but if so, Elena wanted to ask, What’s the punch line? She didn’t get what was so funny about it.
“I want my Jaybird back,” she said. “The one who makes me laugh. The one who encourages me to dream big. Not the one who dogs me for talking to guys online and treats me like I’m an idiot.”
Nina tipped her head, still smiling that smile, still acting like it was all just so, so funny.
“What?” Elena asked.
Nina kept on smiling.
“What’s so funny? Why do you keep looking at me that way?”
They’d come out for this walk in part because Nina felt like she was up for it for once, and in part because Elena hadn’t been able to sit still at home, where her father had demanded total quiet while he did the books for his Laundromat empire. It was ten thirty at night and most of the bungalows in the neighborhood were closed up, the lights completely off, or at most, a pale flicker of TV peeking out of an arched window.
“You really don’t know,” Nina said.
“Would I be asking if I did?”
Nina sighed and rested herself against a white fire hydrant.
“He’s in love with you, mami.”
“Come on. Be serious,” Elena said. Hearing this at any other time, she would have laughed, but tonight she was in too much of a mood for laughter.
Nina shrugged. “Don’t believe me. I couldn’t care less.”
“He’s like my brother,” Elena said. She scrunched up her nose and gagged at the thought.
“Your brother who wants to get all gooney goo-goo with you.” Gooney goo-goo was their sisterly code for hot, sweaty sex. “What did you expect,” Nina went on. “You think guys just decide they want to be friends with you? That’s not how guys think.” She’d worked up a sweat despite the cool night air and she wiped her brow with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “They all want the same thing. Especially the ones who pretend not to.”
“God,” said Elena. Then she thought about the vision of the world her sister had just described. It was so cynical. It made her angry. “No,” she said. “You know what? Maybe the dirtbags you pal around with think that way. Maybe Matty and his narco friends—”
“Matty’s not no narco.”
Elena couldn’t tolerate the idea of her sister dragging Jake down into the mud where she lived. Not tonight. Tonight had been bad enough already. She said it again. “Matty and his narco friends. Maybe they think like that, but Jake doesn’t. Jake’s got class.”
“Whatever you say, Elena.” Nina kept on smiling that secret smile, like she knew better and nothing Elena would say was going to change it.
“Will you stop it?”
“Stop what?” There it went again.
“Stop smiling!”
“I’m not smiling.”
But Nina was. She wouldn’t stop. And as long as she was smiling in that way, Elena knew, she was implying she thought Elena was naïve.
“Just …,” Elena said. “You know what? Screw you.”
She stalked off, knowing her sister wouldn’t be able to keep up.
She heard her sister call after her, “Elena, wait for me. I might need your help getting back,” but she didn’t care. Or she did care, but she couldn’t stand being in Nina’s presence any longer.
Elena picked up her pace.
The houses in their neighborhood all looked the same, Spanish-style stucco bungalows. The only way to differentiate them was by the varying colors they’d been painted. Elena knew that they were almost half-way around the block because they were coming up on the crazy glossy purple house directly catty-corner from their backyard. It would be a long walk for Nina.
Now the guilt set in. She couldn’t leave her sister behind. Propping herself on a fire hydrant, Elena stopped and waited.
She longed to call Jake. To ask him if Nina’s suspicions were true. But what would she say? Anyway, it was absurd. Jake wasn’t in love with her. He’d seen her belch. He’d heard her fart. He’d laughed with her as she worked out why she felt so bored and unfulfilled by Ricky Thomas and Brandon Stram, the two boys she’d dated briefly during freshman and sophomore year. They’d talked about what a relief it was not to have to try and impress each other—not to have to deal with the other person trying and failing to impress you—how they could actually be themselves with each other.
No way would he betray her by falling in love with her.
A bright, warm
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