Breathe and Count Back from Ten, page 2
“Maybe I can tell my mom,” he says.
“Your mom?”
“To add more sand?” His lips curve into a hopeful smile.
“Oh my God. Right. Of course!”
“Speaking of, I should probably head back. Just to see how things are going.”
“Right.”
And to think I was just starting to enjoy this whole tour guide thing. I make up for it getting cut short by pointing out small things on the way back to the pool, like the community bulletin board and the one apartment balcony that always goes all-out with a music-accompanied light show around Christmas. Nothing is really that impressive at Palmview Lakes, but Alex seems intrigued by everything I show him. I can’t tell if he’s sincere or just being nice, but I think it’s endearing either way. He has a polite air about him, like he knows he’s a guest in someone else’s home. Even though this is now his home, too.
“Let me just check in to see if she needs anything,” he says as we near his apartment. I wait by the sidewalk as he goes in and out. Even though it’s been barely a few minutes when he returns, something about him seems different—sad, almost. I ask if everything’s okay, and he nods and makes some vague comment about his mom before letting his voice trail off. We head back to the pool to pick up my towel.
“Do a lot of kids from your school—our school—live here?” he asks.
I sweep one foot over a large grey stain that marks the path from the pool to the hot tub. “Some of them do. And a bunch of them who don’t live here come over for the pool parties. See this? It’s from the shaving cream fight a bunch of the juniors and seniors had on the night of the last day of school, a few weeks ago. It was huge.”
“Shaving cream,” he deadpans. “Sounds . . . slippery?”
“A total lawsuit waiting to happen,” I say, echoing what Leslie said as a bunch of guys ran circles around our loungers. They had the whole deck reeking of a mixture of beer and Barbasol. When they finally settled down, a group of us got into the hot tub. Slowly, as the night wore on, people started leaving, until it was just me and Jeremy. Leslie was the last to go; she gave me a silent “you okay?” look, and I gave her a micronod while Jeremy wasn’t looking. The hot tub is sectioned off from the rest of the pool by a wall, so I never saw what was coming before my parents stormed in and pulled me out of the water.
“Is that why the pool hours are . . . that?” Alex points at the RULES sign that hangs over the main gate. It’s brown with white lettering, but the top line has a white patch of paper taped over it with new hours. Management used to look the other way, but leave it to our class to ruin a years-long tradition of parties by getting sloppy with the underage drinking and toiletry pranks.
I fold my towel and stuff it into my bag now that it’s dried under the sun. “Basically, yeah. So now no one can swim past nine, just in time for summer.” Not like my parents would let me swim at night anyway, after what happened. “You thirsty?”
We go to the vending machines that hug the wall of the leasing office, just outside the pool entrance. Unsurprisingly, they’re all out of order, so I take him up to the second floor of the building, where there’s a gym and a newish set of machines.
“The thing you should know about this place is nothing ever really works right,” I say as we climb the stairs. My voice bounces off the cement walls, mixed with the sound of our steps.
“That’s okay. I’m used to dysfunction.”
I stop. With him standing only two steps behind me, Alex’s eyes are almost level with mine and closer than I thought they’d be. They’re the brown of an old wooden chair we have in our apartment, all these thin streaks of grain and light flooding through them.
“What part of Texas did you say you’re from again?”
“I didn’t. But Houston.”
“And your mom’s in charge of this place now?”
“Yeah. She wants to do all this community-building stuff. Happy hours and get-togethers, things like that. To help everyone feel more ‘connected.’” His voice changes when he says that, as if he’s imitating something she’s said. He doesn’t sound very convinced by it, or even happy, for that matter. I think of all the complaints my parents have ever brought to management. That there aren’t enough guest parking spots. That there isn’t even a few days’ grace period for rent. That our front door doesn’t have a ramp, so every time I’ve been in a wheelchair after my surgeries, getting in and out has been that much more difficult.
They’re going to be so pissed if Palmview Lakes ends up hosting happy hours instead of addressing people’s actual needs.
“What kind of drink do you want? It’s on me. As a thank-you for showing me around,” he says.
I push the buttons for a La Croix and he gets one, too, then we sit at the top of the stairwell sipping them. Knowing that my shorts will ride up and reveal the scar on my left hip, I sit to the right of him.
Our bodies are still warm from the sun. We’re not even touching, but we radiate heat across the small space between us. I look at his hands and arms, the way he rubs them together nervously and squeezes them between his thighs like he’s cold, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. It must be ninety-nine degrees outside. His skin is a subtle bronze, but judging by how awkwardly he stretched out on the pool deck earlier, I’m guessing it’s not from the sun. I want to ask where else he’s from, but I don’t. I figure he’ll tell me eventually if we become friends, and besides, I hate it when that question is flung at me out of the blue. Our town’s not even two hours from Orlando, but our population is barely a fifth its size, and being born and bred here is like a rallying cry of pride for some folks, a flag staked in the ground. The way our neighbors slip Peru into every and any conversation with us, pronouncing it PAY-ru, like it’s a bouncy animal we owe money to, you’d think we’re the exotic attraction here instead of the springs down the road filled with mermaids.
Beautiful. Wondrous. Mermaids.
Alex keeps his gaze fixed straight ahead. Through the slits of the stairs, we have a perfect view across the pool of the movers unloading the truck. They’re maneuvering a large yellow leather sectional off the ramp and yelling directions at each other in Spanish. I try to catch glimpses of his parents, but they must be inside the apartment.
“God, I hate moving.”
“Have you moved around a lot?”
He nods and takes a sip of his water, still not looking at me. “Within Houston, yeah. But this is the first time I’ve gone out of state. The drive was fifteen hours straight. And I did most of it.”
There’s a heaviness in his eyes I hadn’t caught until now. When he blinks, he leaves them closed just a millisecond longer than most people, the way Papi does when he’s covering the night shifts for another security guard at the university. Like he’s just searching for one moment of calm.
“Do you have time for another mini tour?” I ask.
His face lights up with exaggerated glee. “There’s more?”
“Just . . . trust me.”
There are man-made ponds all over our complex, and sometimes I think our apartment buildings were constructed around them instead of the other way around, like bread crumbs scattered down a winding path. Each pond—or lake, as management insists on calling them—has a fountain at the center, but the one that’s just across the way from my bedroom window has two. I take Alex to the small hill that overlooks it.
“Sometimes I fall asleep with the windows open just so I can hear the water.”
“I can see why. It’s nice.” He takes off his shirt, revealing a white ribbed undershirt splotched with sweat, and uses it as a pillow while he lies down on the grass with both his hands behind his head.
I check my phone again. It’s barely past noon. No way my parents are anywhere near home, but my fear of getting caught in the vicinity of another boy runs deep. I stretch my towel several inches away from him and prop myself up on my elbows instead of lying all the way down.
The sky is a blanket of blue settling over our bodies. I can tell Alex is drifting into sleep by how his breath deepens, and after ten minutes or so, he stirs awake.
“Sorry about that. We’ve barely met, and I’ve already passed out in front of you.”
I shrug. “The water has that effect on people. And it’s much more peaceful here than by the pool.” The wind picks up and blows the fountain’s mist in our direction.
“God, that feels nice. I thought the Houston humidity was bad, but it’s like y’all live in a swamp.”
“I mean, we do. A few months ago, we even had a baby alligator living in this lake.”
“Wait, what?” He looks around, startled.
“Yeah. It was, like, maybe three or four feet?” I demonstrate by holding my hands apart. “It was really cute.”
“Cute? Those things can kill you.”
“Rarely,” I say, relishing how much Alex is so not from Central Florida. “Anyways, one time, my sister and I waved at it from my parents’ car, and it moved its little leg, like it was waving back.”
“Y’all are weird.”
I chuckle and throw a handful of grass at him. It’s nice, for once, to be called weird for being from Florida. Not for being born in a country that evokes nothing but llama jokes from everyone at school. Or for bringing “weird” leftovers to school for lunch instead of just buying from the cafeteria. Or for walking in a way that makes people look twice, think twice, as if something about me is just . . . off. Now that we’re sitting up and I was careless about which side to sit on, I know Alex sees my scar. I know his eyes have caught on it the way a chipped nail catches on a new shirt, tugging at the most delicate thread in the fabric.
And yet he hasn’t asked. Hasn’t glanced my way like there’s something wrong with me.
“Whatever. Animal control came and took the little guy eventually. Which sucked because he had become kind of like the Palmview Lakes mascot.”
“Didn’t an alligator kill a kid at Disney World a few years ago?”
“At one of their resorts. And yeah . . . that was a really horrible and isolated incident. We don’t like to talk about it,” I say. “It’s too morbid and bizarre.”
“Sorry. I won’t bring it up again.” He smiles apologetically and turns onto his side, head resting on his elbow.
“So, um . . . this town is pretty obsessed with water stuff, huh?”
“What?”
“The gators, the mermaid memorabilia everywhere. All the things that are shell shaped. The school mascot.”
“Oh God, I was wondering if you’d seen that yet!”
“On our way into town? Oh yeah. It’s kind of hard to miss a marquee with the Greek god of the ocean on it.”
“So you’re not a fan?”
He looks down and raises his eyebrows as he shrugs. They’re so thick and dark, they make the whites of his eyes pop with intensity. I bring my knees as close to my chest as I can. He does the same, only he crosses his legs in front of him first. He makes it look so effortlessly comfortable, this twisting into a human pretzel.
“It’s your mascot too now,” I say, bopping my shoulder into his.
I actually used to love it, but then three years of pep rallies and our vice principal telling us to “show some Poseidon spirit” over the PA every morning made those vibes wear off real fast. There’s nothing more tragic than describing a football team that’s zero for twelve as the Mighty Poseidons. It doesn’t even make sense. The god of the ocean, but in Central Florida, we’re landlocked. The nearest body of water is the freshwater springs. Mami always jokes that it’s unnatural; our family was born on the Pacific, and its cold salt water might as well run through our veins, yet we ended up here, in a town where the nearest body of water is a fresh spring.
“It’s all because of Mermaid Cove,” I say. “It’s kind of this place’s claim to fame. Your parents have to have known that before you moved here.” Everything in our town is either water- or mermaid-themed, and generally, people either embrace it or can’t wait to get away from it the second they graduate. Me, I’m obsessed. Right down to my tote that rests between us. It says I WANT TO BE WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE on one side and NOT on the other. It was a birthday gift from Leslie, the perfect blend of my Ariel obsession and her quirky snark.
“My mom,” Alex says. “It’s just me and my mom.” His smile disappears into a grimace, as if he’s stretching a sore muscle.
“Oh.” I don’t ask for the same reason he probably hasn’t asked about my scar. Why push down on a place that’s hurting? Instead I barrel through the silence, trying to bring the lightness back to our conversation. “Well, Mermaid Cove’s been around since the fifties. It’s a whole production. There’s this troupe of women who dress up as mermaids and dance in the springs, and people view them through a glass in an underground cave.” I’m about to tell him about the first time I saw them perform when he sighs.
“It sounds to me like another Florida-theme-parkmanufactured fantasy.”
He pronounces it Floe-ri-da, like my parents do, like each syllable’s its own entity instead of sounds that run into each other. I want to tell him he’s wrong: the mermaids and the dreams are real—at least to me they are.
But it’s such a huge part of me to trust him with. I say the next best thing. “It’s not as corny as it sounds. Believe me.”
“If you say so. I mean, you’re my guide. And I like everything you’ve shown me on the Verónica tour so far.”
My cheeks flush. Did he mean the Verónica tour as in what I’ve shown him of the apartments, or the Verónica tour as in . . . me?
He looks down at his hands. “I was thinking maybe next time I’m trying to find my way around, I can text you?”
I tell him that’s fine, and we exchange numbers. I do my best to act like it’s no big deal. It’s just me showing a new neighbor around to be nice, like Bob asked me to.
“So you come here a lot?” he asks, raising his eyebrows toward the lake.
“Not really.” I shrug. “Just when I’m tired of my latest boy toy and need a hungry alligator to help dispose of the body.”
“Wait, so I’m your . . . Interesting.” And he leaves it at that.
I can’t believe what I just said. I can’t believe he called me on it. I was trying so hard to stay casual that the words sort of tumbled out of me like marbles in classic pseudo-flirt fashion—so clumsily I can’t even pick them back up. I’m almost lightheaded from thinking of eight million comebacks when he smiles and lets out a little huff.
“I mean. I’m not objecting, is what I’m saying.”
It grows so quiet, we actually hear a fish poke its tail out of the surface, quick as a shooting star.
“I gotta go,” I say, getting up so fast I’m momentarily dizzy.
I wish he wouldn’t watch me as I walk away.
Sirena: si·re·na
(n.) a half-fish, half-human creature of the sea
(n. VR) a calling that reverberates inside you, impossible to ignore
Chapter 3
THE FIRST TIME I SAW THE mermaids, I was seven and wearing a cast from my chest to the toes on my left foot. They wore tails with fins as delicate as algae, and each time they flipped or twirled, I imagined millions of microbubbles tickling my own skin. I held my breath watching them—at moments from the pure awe of it, at others, out of a desire to be them. They seemed mythical then, like they’d come from some faraway land. Sitting in a hospital-rented wheelchair in the front row of an underwater amphitheater carved out of limestone, I felt, for the first time, that I was in the right place.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t move. The surgeons said it would be at least six weeks until they removed my cast, and months more of physical therapy. Unable to see my legs, I felt a kinship with the mermaids. My cast covered my left leg in its entirety and my right down to my knee. It created a dividing line between the upper and lower parts of my body that I could and couldn’t use. Like the mermaids, I, too, was a hybrid creature with two halves that didn’t match. Until I first encountered them, I’d never considered that this could be beautiful.
“Do they breathe like fish?” Dani asked, loud enough to be heard over the fading finale music. She was sitting between my dad and my mom, and from the end of the row I tried to tune out Mami’s sharp whispers as she leaned in to explain the mermaids’ secrets to my little sister. I knew—of course I did—but every twenty or thirty seconds, when a mermaid twirled and quickly sipped on an air hose she oh-so-subtly reached for, I’d look away. I wanted to pretend, just a little longer, that it was all real.
There were seven of them, and they were dancing some thirty-four feet underwater, according to the brochure we’d gotten at the entrance. The clear water springs and the limestone caves had been here for millennia, carved by the force of the current. The underground theater we sat in had been built in the late ’40s. We watched the mermaids from behind eight large panels of glass the length of a school bus. Instead of a curtain, every once in a while gusts of bubbles would shoot out from below the glass, and suddenly the mermaids would be in a new formation or they’d be holding new props. That day’s show was a tribute to Mermaid Cove’s seventieth anniversary; with each new song, they’d go through the decades, recreating routines that the mermaids performed as far back as the early ’50s. There was a pirate-themed fight, an underwater picnic sketch, and for the very last one, a simple ballet-like dance to classical music. Everything slowed down—the sounds, their movement, my breath.
“¿Por qué esa mueca? You look angry,” Mami said. I relaxed my cheeks and forehead and assured her I was fine, though I was so awestruck my face had probably contorted into some expression caught between a sob and a smile. I envied the way gravity seemed like a plaything for them. Their hair jellyfished around their faces, pulsating in slow motion.
When it was over, the four of us waited by the end of the front row, letting everyone else leave before we cleared out. We always did this, because it was easier than having Papi try to push my wheelchair through a moving crowd. “¿Te gustó?” Mami asked.
