Brighter Than the Sun, page 17
“So… we’re stargazing?”
“We are,” he says, smiling. “You’re gonna be the director of NASA one day, remember?”
I almost choke on my beer, laughing. “Maybe not the director of NASA,” I say. “But… I do wanna be someone.”
“Who do you wanna be?” he asks.
“I mean, I keep telling people that I’m not sure, but… maybe I am. I’ve had engineering in the back of my mind for the longest time, and I just… I like the idea of knowing how to fix things, and build things, and… and change things, you know?”
“That makes sense,” Nick says. “But I didn’t ask what you wanna be. I asked who you wanna be.”
I take a swig of my beer, thinking. I used to be so certain I wanted to be Sol—and maybe I still do. Maybe I’ll never fully give up on that idea, never be able to grow comfortable with the thought of being Soledad for the rest of my life, no matter what I’ve been trying to convince myself of lately.
“I’m not sure,” I answer finally. “Someone different.”
“I think you’re already pretty great.”
A chill comes running down my back as I look into his deep brown eyes. I don’t think anyone has ever said this to me before. I’ve never really been satisfied with just being me. When it comes to my family, I’m always telling myself that I need to be less afraid, less overwhelmed by the pressure of having to succeed for them. Around Ari and her friends, I feel the need to be less quiet, less awkward, less shy. And during my toughest moments, I tell myself that I need to be less sad, less anxious, less like Soledad. But maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe I’ve been trying so hard to become less and less that now there’s hardly any of the real me left.
“It’s true,” he says. “And you should know it—even if I wasn’t here to tell you this.”
I nod slowly, noticing how it’s getting harder to make out his features. The light around us is shifting, bathing everything in a soft, muted glow.
“How about you?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“Who do you wanna be?”
Nick is silent for a long time. An insect screeches loudly somewhere nearby, but to me, the only sound that matters is that of Nick’s slow breathing.
“I used to think I wanted to be famous,” he says. “You know—be one of those singers who makes it. But after the last year, with my mom being sick, and having to push back my college plans, all I want is just… to have a boring life. I wanna be one of those people you see in movies who live in nice houses in the suburbs, and drive Toyotas, and go on vacation once a year to… like, Orlando, or something.”
I narrow my eyes at him slightly. “Why do you want that?”
“Because those boring people seem to at least have all the most important things. I mean… they’re not scrambling for money, they’re not worried about what other people think about them, they’re not trying to make impossible dreams come true. They have a job, a family, a friend group… and that’s all they need, really. And wouldn’t that be nice? To just have everything you need? To not spend your time wishing for things you can’t have?”
I think back to a time when that was my life—when I had everything I needed. When Mami was still here, and Papi hadn’t yet become as harsh as he is now, and everything was the way it was supposed to be. Nick may have a good point, but if I know him—and I think I’m starting to—a boring life won’t be enough for him. Not when he has dreams as big as the ones he told me about before.
“It could be nice,” I answer. “But… maybe you don’t have to become that person.”
He shrugs.
“I mean it. Maybe… your mom is gonna get the transplant. And maybe you’ll be able to go to college, and you’ll meet people who will believe in you, and who will help you get to where you want to go. And then, in a few years, you’ll be looking back thinking about how you almost gave up on your dreams before you even gave yourself a chance to go after them.”
He stares at me for a long time. I’m not sure what’s going through his head—if he thinks I’m crazy, or if he’s trying to convince himself that what I’m saying is true. Or maybe he’s realizing the same thing as I am: that he and I are much more similar than either of us knew—that we’re both harsh on ourselves sometimes, that we both want big things, and that we’re both terrified of what will happen if those things don’t become a reality.
Even though I keep waiting for him to speak up, he doesn’t, and before I know it, I’ve stopped waiting. I blink slowly in the soft light, taking small sips of beer and paying attention to the rhythmic sound of Nick’s breathing.
“Look,” he says suddenly, pointing upward. The sunlight is all but gone by now, so that the first stars are starting to appear, shining bright against the deep gray sky.
“How did you find this place?” I ask him softly.
“I was driving down the road one day, and I just… decided to stop.”
“Do you come here a lot?”
“Only sometimes. When I need to think about stuff,” he says. “After everything you told me the other day, I thought this would be a good spot to bring you. I figured you might like to have some peace and quiet—to be in a place where you can listen to your own thoughts again, you know?”
My heart flutters. Maybe it’s just the beer, but everything feels a lot simpler all of a sudden. With the stars shining above, the sounds of the night buzzing nearby, and the heat of Nick’s body right next to me, I feel like I have everything I could ever need.
“Thank you,” I say to him.
He meets my eyes, and just like that, I know something is about to happen. He leans toward me, and I lean toward him. Slowly, he kisses me, and the trees, and the chirping of insects, and the lights of cars driving up and down the highway disappear. All that matters in this moment is the feeling of Nick’s strong arms holding me and the tickle of his beard on my skin. And as I open my mouth slightly, allowing his lips to melt into mine, I can’t help but feel as though kissing him is the easiest thing in the world. It’s as if I’d memorized the shape of his mouth in another life, and now I’m just remembering, remembering, remembering.
When we finally lean away from each other, everything around me seems to come back to life gradually. Blinking a few times, I realize the night seems a lot brighter than it did before. The moon is nowhere to be found, but the stars glowing above are enough to light up everything around us.
Nick smiles at me, and I smile back, but we don’t say anything. For a brief moment, it’s as if neither of us knows what to do, but then Nick takes a swig of his beer, and I do the same, only to find that my bottle is empty.
“I’ll get us fresh drinks,” he says.
He gets up to grab another two drinks from the cooler—sodas this time—and he returns to sit next to me a second later. Even though the air is starting to get chilly, his body is still warm against mine. And as we sit in peaceful silence, I quickly stop thinking about the cold, or the insects, or the cars flashing past on the highway. All I could possibly care about is the glow of the stars and the feeling of our lips touching.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE FOLLOWING WEEK GOES BY IN A BLUR OF EATING dinner with Ari and Nancy, showing up at school, and spending my early mornings and late nights in the warehouse next to Nick.
Whenever we’re working around the big table, Lina, Kelly, and Marcos seem to make an effort to set up at the opposite end of wherever Nick and I are. I can’t help but suspect that they’ve noticed something has changed between me and him, but none of them says anything. They just focus on giving us space, and a part of me is grateful. Because during the hours I spend by his side in the stockroom, it’s easy for me to imagine us back at that clearing in the woods. It’s easy to block out everything except the feeling of him beside me and the sound of his deep voice.
“Can we hang out again this weekend?” he asks me during our shift on Thursday, staring at me with hopeful eyes.
“I have to go home,” I answer, my heart hurting a little. “But I’ll be around next weekend. I promise.”
At school, it becomes impossible to deny that the attempts I’ve been making at keeping up with my workload are not nearly good enough. I receive a history test back with a big, red D on the corner, and I walk into English to find that I was meant to have read several chapters of the new book we’ve been assigned, so I have no choice but to spend the entire period with my head down in a corner of the classroom, hoping that I won’t get called on for answers.
In between all the madness of the week, Diego calls me a few times. He doesn’t sound the same as he used to. He sounds more serious, more mature, but I can tell he’s trying his hardest—trying to reach out to me, trying to go back to being his old self, trying to heal from the wounds that losing Mami’s restaurant has reopened for all of us.
When I walk into the house on Saturday morning, he’s already awake and sitting at the kitchen table while Abuela makes breakfast.
“Hey,” I say, walking up to him. “How was your week?”
“It was okay,” he replies.
Before he can say anything else, Abuela turns to me and says, “Dios mío, it feels like forever since you were last here.”
“It’s only been two weeks.”
“It feels like much longer, mija.”
While I help her finish making breakfast, I notice that once again, we’re having nothing but scrambled eggs and coffee. There is no bacon, no chorizo, no pan dulce. Closing the restaurant was supposed to be for the best. It was supposed to help us put food on our own table, instead of spending the money on paying rent for the restaurant and buying ingredients from suppliers, but I haven’t yet seen any of the improvements Papi promised.
Once we’re done eating, I set up at the dining room table to do homework. What I truly want is to leave the house quietly, sneak into the restaurant using my key, and just be there for a while. After the stressful week I had at school, though, I know I can’t afford to waste any time. I have to focus on homework.
I keep hoping that Diego will come and join me at the table, but he doesn’t. He simply lies on the living room couch, staring up at the ceiling. Papi hasn’t stopped insisting that we need to keep the electricity bill down, so my brother doesn’t even turn on the TV. Instead, he keeps busy by throwing a small ball up and catching it, again and again.
“Do you have any homework?” I ask him after a while.
“I finished it all.”
“Really?”
He meets my eyes for the briefest second, nodding, but I’m not sure I believe him.
“Well, do you want me to look it over? Make sure it’s all good?”
“No,” he answers. “Should be okay.”
I don’t want to push him too hard, so I drop the subject. In the end, he puts the ball down on top of the center table in the living room and heads off into his bedroom.
A part of me wants to go after him, and keep him company, and find a way to get him to talk to me, but I don’t leave my seat at the dinner table. I stay focused on my schoolwork, hoping that by the end of the weekend, I’ll at least have made a dent on everything I need to get done.
I’m neck-deep into a reading for English, highlighting passages furiously and making notes, when I hear a door open down the hallway, and I look up, thinking Diego has finally emerged from his room. But instead, Luis walks out, staring at me with wide eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asks me. There’s something awkward about his voice, about his posture, as though he’s not quite sure how to approach me.
“Homework,” I say. “You?”
It’s a stupid question, really. I know he’s only just woken up, but I still wait to hear his response.
“I was, uh… gonna head out to work soon,” he says. “But… I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
My eyebrows shoot up. I can’t think of anything Luis could possibly want to say to me. I can’t even remember the last time we chatted, or the last time the two of us were alone together in the same room.
“O-okay,” I say, pushing my books aside. “We can talk.”
He pulls a chair back and sits down in front of me. Perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve seen him from up close, because he looks different. His scruff is getting thicker, the lines around his eyes and forehead deeper. Long gone is the moody nineteen-year-old who would wear the same leather jacket every day and sneak out to meet some girl he was dating. Sitting in front of me is a full-grown man.
“I need a new job,” he says, staring straight into my eyes.
“I thought you liked working at the casino.”
“It’s not bad,” he says. “But the money’s not enough. Fifty dollars a week isn’t gonna help us get out of this mess.”
I look down at the table. Papi has been trying to avoid talking about his debts, so I haven’t asked him how big they are, but I do know most of the money we’re bringing in is going toward paying them off. It’s the reason we still can’t turn on the TV for longer than an hour in the evening, the reason the fridge is still empty and our plates still not full enough.
“What are you thinking of doing?” I ask my brother.
“Well, that’s the thing,” he answers. “I thought you could help me. Maybe I could find a job in the US.”
“Luis, I don’t—”
“If I worked the same amount of hours right across the border, I’d be making over two thousand dollars a month, Sol,” he says, leaning closer to me. “Two thousand dollars. That would be more than enough for all of us—enough for you to stop working, enough to pay off Papi’s debts, enough to save money for my college tuition.”
“But I can’t help you get a work permit. I don’t know how I could—”
“Then think of something,” he says to me. “Maybe—maybe you could help me find a job at the store where you work, and they wouldn’t need to find out I’m not a citizen.”
“They will ask,” I answer. “They’ll ask for your social security number, and then what will you say?”
Luis leans back in his chair, staring at me with narrowed eyes. Suddenly, everything about his attitude changes. He becomes serious, cold, as if he’s put up a wall from one second to the next.
“You just don’t wanna help me, do you?”
“Of course I want to help you! But I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.”
“What are we meant to do, then? Are we supposed to keep living like this?”
“I know we need more money,” I say. “I just… I don’t have the answers you want. I don’t know how to get the money any more than you do.”
The truth is, maybe there is a way. I could work enough hours at the store to make the two thousand dollars a month Luis is talking about, which would save our family once and for all. I just don’t see how I’d be able to work at Wallen’s full time and keep up with school. When I think about dropping out of Orangeville, about not graduating next to Ari next year, about throwing away my college dreams, my throat starts getting tighter and tighter, until I can barely breathe.
“I get it,” Luis says after a moment of silence. “You’re not around most of the time, so you don’t care. As long as you get your fancy high school degree, and your college acceptance letter, and all the food you could possibly need at your friend’s house, it doesn’t make a difference to you how the rest of us have to live.”
“You know that’s not true,” I say sharply, looking into his eyes. “You know I care.”
“You don’t really act like it sometimes.”
“That’s not fair.” I don’t mean to raise my voice, but all of a sudden I’m yelling, and I can’t stop myself. “I know we need more money. I know it. But I’m already giving everything I can, and I can’t just help you find a job across the border. It’s not that easy.”
Luis’s jaw tightens, his cheeks become redder. I’m almost certain that he’s about to start yelling back, but when he speaks, his voice is no louder than a whisper.
“It was easy enough for you.”
His words cut through me like a knife, because maybe there’s a part of him that’s right. It’s getting harder and harder to make sense of the reasons why I’m an American citizen when he isn’t, why I have a future to look forward to when he doesn’t, why I’m able to get food, and electricity, and everything I need at Ari’s when the rest of them have been struggling.
I wish I could speak up, but I can’t think of anything to say, can’t even remember how to use my voice. All I can do is sit still and watch as Luis pushes his chair back and storms out of the house without so much as throwing me another glance.
My brother’s words stick with me for the rest of the weekend. I can’t seem to find a way to run away from them, even though I don’t even see him again during my remaining time in Tijuana. By the time Papi, Abuela, Diego, and I sit down to have dinner on Saturday night, he’s still at work, and the next morning, he sneaks out of the house without anyone noticing.
“We’ll find a way, mija,” Papi says when I tell him about the things Luis said to me.
“But he’s right, Papi. We need more money. At some point, we’re gonna need to—”
“You don’t have to worry. Your brother might not be able to see it, but I can—I can see how hard you’ve been working.”
I don’t ask the question I’m most afraid to bring up. I don’t ask what he thinks about the idea of me starting to work full time, because maybe I don’t want to hear his answer.
Later in the evening, however, while I’m sitting in the living room next to Abuela and Diego playing Chinese checkers, a part of me wonders if Luis has a point. I’m the only person in our family who can work in the US—the only one who can get us out of this mess once and for all. So if I was truly as selfless as I claim to be, wouldn’t I put my family before everything else? Wouldn’t I be willing to postpone my education and my dreams so I could make sure they’ll be okay? Wouldn’t I make the decision that needs to be made all by myself, drop out of Orangeville, and ask Bill for full-time hours?
