Brighter Than the Sun, page 22
“I signed the petition,” I say, breaking the heavy silence that has fallen between us.
Bruno glances into my eyes briefly. “Thanks.”
“Is it true that there’s a different petition going around with the parents?”
He meets my eyes again, pressing his lips together. And then, he nods.
“They’re gonna win,” he says. “I already know.”
“Maybe they won’t. Maybe we can still find a way to—”
“Jack’s parents have the school board in their pocket. They’ve been putting so much pressure, and… there’s nothing I can do about it. I kinda just want it to be over already so I can move on with my life.”
“What will you do?” I ask as the line moves and we take a few steps forward. “If they…”
“I’ll probably have to skip the rest of the school year.”
His words hit me straight in the heart, because this is exactly what I was considering up until a couple of days ago. I can feel the same type of dread he’s feeling right now—the regret, the fear that all these years of working hard for his education will have been for nothing.
He shrugs. “No other school is gonna take me right now—especially not with… you know, my track record.”
Anger rises in my chest—anger at Jack, who will carry on after this as if nothing happened. Anger at his parents, who are taking this much further than they should. Anger at the principal, who’s put Jack’s version of the story above Bruno’s, and at everyone who has signed that stupid petition to kick Bruno out of school.
“I’ll probably find a job—same as you, so I can help my parents out for a bit,” Bruno says. “And then I’ll sign up for school in Tijuana—someplace where they have no way to find out about what happened at Orangeville.”
The anger keeps getting hotter and hotter—especially when I realize I’m angry at myself, too. I’m angry at the fact that I turned down Irwin when he asked me if I could speak up for Bruno at the hearing.
I want to apologize to him. I want to tell Bruno all the reasons why I simply can’t put myself in the spotlight, but I can’t bring myself to say any of that.
“Bruno, I—”
“I wanna hear about you,” he says. “Tell me what’s new.”
I can see the exhaustion on his face, the dark circles under his eyes. I can’t imagine anyone has wanted to talk to him about much other than the disciplinary hearing lately, and he must be desperate to talk about something else.
“I’m looking for a new job,” I reply. I tell him about the type of job that I’m searching for—something entry-level, near the border, with good hours, which sounds more and more impossible to find with every word I say.
While we move slowly with the line, though, I start to realize it—how it’s not too late yet for me to help him, for me to speak up about what really happened on the day he got into a fight with Jack.
“I’m sorry, Bruno,” I say suddenly, once we’re getting close to the room with shiny floors where border agents are waiting to check our passports.
He turns toward me, frowning. “What are you—”
“When your friend Irwin asked me if I was willing to speak in front of the school board, I told him that I couldn’t, but I was just scared. I’ll do it, though. I’ll be there, if you still want me to.”
His expression shifts. His frown disappears, his eyes widen, and the corner of his mouth twists into something that could almost pass for a smile.
“Do you mean that?”
“I do. The hearing’s this Friday, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he answers. “But, Sol, I’m not sure if the board will let you be in the room, or if they’ll even be willing to listen to—”
“We need to try. Maybe… maybe there’s someone we can talk to. We can ask if they’ll let me be there, and I’ll tell them all the truth about what happened that day in the cafeteria.”
Bruno lets out a long sigh, turning to face the front of the line. I can tell that he’s trying not to get his hopes up, but that he also can’t help but think about what a difference this could make. If the school board was just willing to listen to our side of the story, then maybe not everything will be lost. Maybe there’ll still be a way for him to remain at Orangeville.
For the last few minutes of waiting in line, neither of us says much. But right before we step up to talk to the border agents and we’re forced to go our separate ways, he turns to me and nods once.
“Thank you, Sol. For being willing to help.”
I can’t find any words to say back to him, because the truth is that I should’ve done this much sooner. I should’ve been brave enough to agree when Irwin first asked me. I should’ve been there for Bruno from the start.
Over the next couple of days, all I can hear inside my mind while I walk through the hallways at school is Ari’s voice saying, No one’s looking at you, Sol!
No matter where I go, or which way I turn, I can’t help but feel as though there’s a pair of eyes staring right back at me. At first, I’m convinced that it’s all in my mind, that I’m having flashbacks of what it used to feel like to walk into the cafeteria. But then, by the time Wednesday rolls around, it becomes harder to fool myself into believing that this isn’t real.
No one’s looking at you, Sol! I try to tell myself as I make my way to the cafeteria. Except that they are—everyone is staring.
In the gazes that surround me, there’s curiosity, and wonder, and anticipation. People seem to be waiting for me to say or do something, but I don’t. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, carrying my heavy backpack over my shoulders.
“Everyone’s talking about you, Sol,” Ari says to me once I’m sitting beside her.
Olivia nods. “Everyone.”
“Why?” I ask. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Rumor has it that you’re gonna speak at Bruno’s hearing on Friday,” Camila says. “People are dying to hear your side of the story.”
“Oh.”
“Is it true?” Ari asks me. “Are you really gonna speak in front of the school board?”
“I don’t know yet,” I answer. “I—I mean, I said to Bruno I would, but I haven’t talked to him since Monday. I’m not sure if the school board’s gonna be willing to hear what I have to say.”
“Well… you can ask Bruno himself,” Olivia says.
I turn around in my chair to find Bruno and Irwin walking toward our table, looking slightly nervous.
“It worked, Sol,” Bruno says. “The board said that you can come speak on Friday.”
For a moment, my ears buzz with the sound of different voices. Everyone around the table starts talking at the same time while I take small breaths through my mouth, only vaguely aware of the fact that Ari is touching my shoulder.
“Sol, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “That—that’s good.”
“This is changing things already,” Bruno says. “Everyone knows you saw what actually happened, so now that you’ve agreed to speak up, some people are starting to question whether Jack’s gonna win. They’re starting to question his version of the story.”
Irwin nods beside him. “A lot more people have signed up for Friday since yesterday.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“We’re getting a group of us together to go to the school district’s offices,” Irwin answers. “I—I mean, we’re not allowed inside the room while the board is discussing, but we wanna organize a silent protest outside the building. We’re meeting right after school, and we’re gonna make signs, and everything.”
“Do you think that’ll help?” Olivia asks.
It’s Bruno who nods. “The more people who show up, the better,” he says. “We gotta prove that there’s more people on our side than on Jack’s—especially with all the pressure his parents have been putting on the board.”
“We’ll be there,” Ari says beside me. “All of us.”
While the rest of the table nods, I turn toward Bruno, feeling tightness in my throat as I remember the hearing’s only two days away.
“Bruno, what should I say?” I ask him. “When I’m in front of the board, what do you think I should—”
“Just tell them the truth,” he replies. “That’ll be enough.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “I can do that.”
Bruno smiles, and suddenly, he looks a lot more like the kid who used to join me on the bridge before any of this even started—like the kid who used to love talking about music, and his sister, and his dog. For the first time in a long time, I see him—the real him, and not the kid everyone’s been whispering about lately.
Throughout the rest of the day, I try my best to keep to the sidelines, even though the spotlight seems to be following me everywhere I go. Every time I look up, I find someone new staring at me.
After years of being invisible, of moving through school as quietly as a shadow, I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m not sure what to do with all this attention, or how to feel. In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is what a part of me has wanted all along—being seen, being heard—and whether I’d rather go back to being Soledad, at least for a little while.
Whenever I walk into a classroom, I try my best to find a seat toward the back so people will find it a bit more difficult to stare at me. And while I push myself to pay attention, and take notes, and catch up with everything I didn’t bother to learn over the past couple of weeks, there’s something about what Abuela said to me the other night that fills my entire body with hope. Because, as impossible as this all seems—getting through the rest of the week with the eyes of the entire school on me, and sitting in front of the school board on Friday, and finding a way to help Bruno—perhaps it’s true that I’ll be able to find the strength within me to do it.
When the bell finally rings at the end of the day, I rush straight toward the school doors, eager to get home and be with my family. I’ve barely made it halfway down the front steps, however, when I look down at my phone screen and see something that makes me stop in my tracks—a missed call from a San Diego area code.
My first instinct is to think about all the job applications I’ve sent out over the past week. Maybe someone is finally reaching out to schedule an interview, or to offer me a position. But then, when I think of Helen and Bill and how they must also have San Diego area codes, my entire body seems to turn to stone.
I am still frozen on the steps, debating what to do, when my phone starts buzzing with a call from the exact same number.
With shaking hands, I press the answer button and lift the phone up to my ear.
“H-hello?”
“María de la Soledad?”
“Yes,” I answer, my mind racing. “Yes, it’s me.”
“This is Helen, from Wallen’s Department Store,” she says. “I’m wondering if you’d be able to stop by this afternoon.”
I mumble a response. Between the adrenaline rushing through my veins and the fear of what this might mean, I can’t even think clearly, but I’m able to register all the most important details—four o’clock today. Helen wants to talk. She has important news.
The second I hang up, I start to follow the crowd that’s rushing toward the MTS station. And when I get there, instead of heading toward the San Ysidro platform, I go to the San Diego one and hop on the northbound trolley, my heart beating fast as my hopes, and my dreams, and my entire future seem to flash past the windows.
Helen didn’t tell me where to meet her—or, if she did, I can’t remember—so I go stand near the entrance to the staff room.
I’ve only been waiting here for a couple of minutes before the door opens and Helen steps out. “María,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”
She holds the door open for me, and I follow her toward the office. I wish she would’ve just told me what’s going on when we spoke on the phone, or that I could at least read her expression and get a sense of what’s coming, because the anxiety of not knowing is killing me.
It feels as though I’m holding my breath up until we’re sitting across from each other at her desk, and she says, “We’ve finalized the internal investigation.”
I lean forward in my chair, wanting to say something, but my words get caught in my throat.
“We have come to the conclusion that the dress must’ve been left inside one of the shipment crates. Either that, or the supplier never sent it.”
“Wh-what does this mean?” I ask in a small voice.
“It means that we were wrong to assume you were to blame,” Helen says. Somewhere underneath her collected front, I can tell that she is embarrassed, but she’s trying her hardest not to let it show. “We owe you an apology, María de la Soledad. And you can return to work, if you wish.”
Yes, I almost say. Of course I’d like to come back. But there’s something stopping me—something that keeps me frozen in my seat. After what she and Bill put me through, after the way they so easily accused me of something I didn’t do, a part of me wants more. I want more than a job at a place that will turn its back on me from one moment to the next, more than what Helen is offering me right now.
But then I think of all the job applications I’ve sent and haven’t heard back from, and the grim silence that has filled the house during dinner since I stopped working, and I come back to the same answer I was going to give her. At least for now, this is my best and only option.
“I do,” I reply, nodding slowly. “I want to return.”
“Great,” Helen says. “I’ll add you to the schedule for next Monday, if that sounds good to you.”
“Yeah.” I’ll have to talk to Ari and Nancy, ask if they’d be okay with me coming back to their house next week, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t agree. “That should work.”
Helen makes a note on a piece of paper, and then, with a small smile on her face, she tells me she’s looking forward to having me rejoin the team.
As soon as I walk out of the store and into the soft November sun, my resentment toward Helen starts to fade away, and instead I think about all the people I need to tell about this news. I’ll need to tell Papi, and Abuela, and Ari, but my first instinct isn’t to call any of them. I pick up my phone and, as my chest swells with hope and pure relief, I look for Nick’s number among my contacts.
“Sol,” he says when he answers. “How are you?”
“I’m…” I let out a long sigh. “I’m great, actually. I—I have news.”
“Did you find a job?” he asks, sounding a lot more alert.
“No,” I answer. “But I just talked to Helen.”
Even through the phone, I can tell that Nick has stopped breathing. “What did she say?”
“She apologized for what happened with the dress… and then she asked if I want to come back to work next week.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said yes. I—I’m coming back on Monday, and I just—”
“That’s great!” Nick replies, and something explodes inside of me—the ray of light that only he is capable of bringing into my chest. “Sol, I’m excited to see you.”
“I’m excited to see you, too.”
I hold the phone tight against my ear, thinking about what this means—that I’ll be able to go back to seeing him every day, that I’ll get to have dinner with Nancy and Ari in the evenings, that I’ll be able to hand Papi a check every two weeks once again.
“Maybe… I don’t know. We could have that second date this weekend?” he asks me.
“I—I’ll be in Tijuana. But we can hang out next week. We could even—”
“We’ll figure something out,” he says to me. “Just… focus on coming back.”
We stay on the line for a little while, until he tells me that he needs to go. As I walk up the street toward the trolley, I tell myself that all I have to do now is get through Bruno’s hearing on Friday, and then I’ll be able to breathe normally again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ON THURSDAY NIGHT, LUIS BRINGS BACK LEFTOVERS from the casino again—more chicken fingers and cold fries—so we all eat quickly, eagerly, as we do whenever our plates are full enough that we don’t have to play around with our food to make it last as long as possible.
When I got home yesterday and told them all that I’d gotten my job at Wallen’s back, we had a near-celebration. Papi gave me a big hug, sighing into my shoulder in a way that made his lungs deflate and his entire body feel heavy as I held him. Abuela made quesadillas for dinner with a block of cheese she’d been saving, and Diego and I turned the TV on for a while before it was time for him to go to bed.
“I’m glad it all worked out in the end,” Luis said to me.
“Thanks,” I replied. There was something in his voice that made it sound as though he was struggling to get the words out, as though there were other things he wanted to say. But I could tell that, deep down, he was feeling relieved, because it’ll no longer be up to just him to bring money in.
Tonight, some of that victory still lingers in the air, but there’s something else, too—a silence that seems to have fallen all around us after I mentioned that I’ll be speaking at Bruno’s hearing tomorrow.
“¿Estás segura de que esto es lo correcto, Sol?” Papi asks me suddenly.
I look up from my plate and meet his eyes. He’s asking if I’m sure—if speaking in front of the board is the right thing to do.
“Sí,” I reply. “Estoy segura.”
“But what if…” His voice trails off, but I know exactly what he’s not saying. I know he and Abuela have been thinking about this all through dinner—about the fact that the people from the board might ask about my proof of residency documents, about the possibility that I might only get myself in trouble by walking into this situation.
“I need to do this, Papi,” I say. “Because if it was my future being decided instead of Bruno’s, I’d want someone to speak up for me. I’d want to know that I’m not alone.”
