We Never Asked for Wings (14 page)

“You've got a steady job and eighty dollars, at least. It's not nothing.”

“Says the man whose parents live in Mission Heights.”
Who knows nothing about having nothing,
she thought.

He shrugged. “Whatever you think.”

“Whatever I think?” It was her worst quality: she could go from zero to sixty in five seconds flat, and she felt it happening now, her face reddening, the blood beating in her temples. She hid her clenched fists in her apron pockets. She
was
trying. She'd worked five days a week all summer with a six-year-old in the hall. Rick had watched her. He, of all people, should understand what she was up against.

“Whatever I think?” she repeated, but he said nothing, just turned on the faucet and began to rinse out the sink with a calm thoroughness she found maddening. “Hey. Don't act like I'm not even trying.”

“Well, are you?”

“Of course I am,” she said. Over the last month, after winning the war over the airport gift shop, she'd managed to save five hundred dollars—and that was
after
sending money to her parents. But it wasn't anywhere near enough to rent an apartment in Mission Hills. At least she didn't think it was—it was true she hadn't yet tried.

She threw her apron in the dirty laundry bin, all of a sudden anxious to leave. “I'm out of here.”

Rick spun away from the sink and stepped into her path. “Hey, I'm sorry,” he said. And then, abruptly: “Let me take you out sometime.”

“What?”

His eyes were glued to the rubber mat upon which they both stood, and he'd spoken so quickly and so quietly, she wasn't sure she'd heard him right. After a silence he repeated himself, louder this time: “Let me take you out.”

“Are you serious?”

Rick had seen her and Luna at their worst. He knew she lived at the Landing and that she was, as of today, officially a criminal.
She
certainly wouldn't want to take herself out.

“I like you,” he said finally, looking up and straight into her eyes. “You're a little defensive, not to mention a thief”—grinning, he spun her around, pulling
The Savoy Cocktail Book
from where she'd stashed it in her bag when she thought he wasn't looking—“but I still like you.”

Letty laughed. “You've seen my life. There's not a lot of room in it right now. You can have dinner with me and Luna, or you can take me to McDonald's on my lunch break.”

She'd meant it as a joke, but Rick smiled. “Done.”

And without meaning to, she heard herself agree to meet him at Gate 37 on Friday at noon.

Letty took a detour on the way to Luna's school, walking quickly down the frontage road toward the Landing and speeding over the pedestrian bridge. She knew exactly where she was going. If she had even the slightest chance of renting an apartment in Mission Hills proper, it would be in one of the high-rise buildings on the other side of the freeway from Mile Road. The apartments had an uninterrupted view of the Landing, and occasionally as teenagers, she and Sara had turned on the light in her bedroom and flashed an SOS with their breasts—so it was ironic that she would go there now, looking for a way out. But it was her best chance. For ten years,
NOW RENTING
signs had hung from the buildings, because really, who would want to live there, with the Bay Area's busiest freeway in the backyard? Letty wouldn't mind, though, not if it meant her kids wouldn't have to lie about where they lived.

The young man in the rental office didn't look much older than Alex, his red hair mostly covered with a baseball cap. He stared at his phone when she walked into the room. A sign on a desk said
PLEASE RING BELL FOR SERVICE
.
She rang it.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have any apartments for rent?”

“What are you looking for?”

“What do you have?”

Seeing that she wasn't going to be turned away by bad customer service, he shoved his phone into his pocket, rattling off the prices for one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments.

“One-bedroom,” Letty said. Hearing the price, her heart filled with hope. She didn't have enough money yet, but it was within her reach. Another week or two, and she could imagine walking in and paying the first month's rent in cash. Especially if she had a few more days like she'd had today.

He stood up and grabbed a key off the wall. Letty followed him in an elevator to the third floor and down a long hall. The dark corridor smelled faintly of beer and reminded Letty of the one time she'd visited Sara in college. He unlocked a door at the end.

The apartment was as dark as the hall, even after he flipped on the dim yellow light. Stepping inside, she found a square room opening up into a small kitchen. The only window in the room was over the sink. Light seeped around the edges of the drawn blind. Letty crossed the room and pulled the blind, pushing the window open. The freeway was shockingly close, and on the third floor she was at eye level with the drivers: she watched a woman check her phone as she flew past, another apply makeup. She felt her jaw shake as a semitruck rattled by.

“You won't even notice it after a day or two.”

“Is that because I'll get used to it, or because I'll go deaf?”

He shrugged. It didn't matter to him how she got used to it, or if she did at all. It was what he was paid to say. But the price was right, and she could picture them there, leaving all the trappings of her mother's rules behind and moving over with nothing but what fit in the back of Sara's car. Alex would walk Luna to school and then keep walking, and they would really belong there. No lies.

“I'll take it,” Letty said. “Can you hold it until next week? I can pay then.”

“You have to fill out an application.”

Because there is such a high demand for the apartment next to the slow lane,
Letty thought. But she followed him back to the office and sat down at the desk, filling out the long application as quickly as she could.

“I'll need first month's rent and a cleaning deposit, but we can waive the deposit if you have good credit.”

It was better than she thought. She'd heard some apartments required first and last, and some even had an application fee. First month she could do. She passed him her application and her driver's license. He took it and typed something into the computer. Checking the application, he typed the same thing again.

“Are you sure this is right?”

He pointed to the line where she'd written her Social Security number. She double-checked it.

“That's right.”

Typing it a third time, he waited, and then he shook his head. “You don't have any credit.”

“What do you mean I don't have any credit?”

“I mean you don't have any credit. Do you have a credit card? A car loan? A lease or utility bill in your name?”

Letty shook her head: no, no, no.

“What about your phone?”

“It's a pay-as-you-go.” Every month she used her tips to buy more minutes.

He handed her back her application.

“You don't have any credit, I can't rent to you.”

“But I'll pay cash.” There was a note of desperation in her voice that she regretted. She took her time digging her wallet out of her bag and opening it up. “See?”

A wrinkled stack of twenty-dollar bills sat like a dirty offering between them. He looked from the bills to Letty, interested in her for the first time. His watery eyes traveled from her face down her neck. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I'm a bartender.”

He nodded slowly, unbelieving.

“I make plenty of money to pay the rent on time. And we both know there isn't anyone who wants to live in that apartment. It probably hasn't been rented since the place was built.”

He moved his seat closer to the desk and leaned in.
“Believe me,”
he said, his eyes trolling her body. “If I could rent the apartment to you, I would. But no credit, no lease. Those are the rules.”

Letty stood up. As she exhaled, all hope left her body. She would grow old and die in the Landing; it was stupid of her to even think it could be any other way, and stupid of Rick to suggest it.

There were rules, and those rules, as always, kept Letty out.

On the bus to Luna's school, Letty slouched underneath a heavy sadness. They weren't going anywhere, that much was clear, and as she rode her mind wandered to the big, sunny, open-to-the-elements estate in Oro del Hidalgo, where she'd left her parents. She missed them. For the first time it wasn't out of desperation or panic—she was okay, and her children were okay. But what did they have here? New schools based on documented lies and an old apartment they could never escape. It wasn't enough to call a life.

She'd done what her parents had wanted. She'd stepped up. Her children were fed and clothed and had gotten to school on time. So wasn't that enough? Did she also have to live out the rest of her life in a country where she wasn't wanted, a country even her parents had abandoned? An alternative started to form in her mind. They didn't have to stay. She could pack their suitcases full of new clothes and books and toys and buy three bus tickets south, and when they arrived in Mexico, clean and groomed and eager, with money in their pockets, she could tell her parents she wanted Alex and Luna to learn Spanish, and to grow up with family. Could they really argue with that?

Pulling up to the stop across the street from the school, the bus blew its doors open. When Letty stepped off, Luna let go of her teacher's hand and sprinted down the sidewalk. A smile beamed from her lips. Encircled in her daughter's arms, Letty felt an involuntary smile twitch at the corners of her mouth.

“I love my new school,” Luna sighed into her mother's stomach.

“Oh, yeah?” Letty asked. She swallowed hard, trying to bury her overwhelming desire to run away from it all. “Tell me about it.”

“Well,” Luna said slowly and then, grinning, exclaimed: “I got to blue!” Letty had no idea what that meant, but Luna explained. Blue was the top level of their classroom behavior chart, a rare accomplishment that resulted in a trip to the prize box. “And I chose this.”

Shoving a hand deep into the pocket of her corduroy dress, she pulled out a half-eaten, lint-covered lollipop, and before Letty could stop her, she shoved the sharp sliver of candy between her mother's protesting lips.

Turning an involuntary gag into a not-quite-believable laugh, Letty sucked the cottony, sweat-salty layer off the lollipop, until a shock of cherry revealed itself.

“I saved it for you,” Luna said, her eyes wide and hopeful, awaiting her mother's approval, and Letty felt the heavy sadness melt away like the candy inside her mouth. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” Letty said, kissing Luna's cherry lips and wondering how a half-eaten lollipop could somehow taste like a reason to stay.

A
lex's new shoes squeaked on the polished linoleum. In his hand he held a slip of paper with the number of an assigned locker—676—and a combination—10–20–7—which he'd already memorized. He took a deep breath, his lungs filling with sweet air. The girls who moved past him in clusters smelled strongly of citrus, or peaches, or maybe it was cotton candy—and the boys radiated something slightly less sweet but equally intoxicating. He was already excited, and the smell went directly to his head, turning his anticipation into a giddiness that he knew could only end in embarrassment. So he curled both lips inside his mouth and bit down hard, thinking
pain pain pain
to combat the
joy joy joy
he felt from being there on the first day of school, en route to zero period, honors science, with Mr. Everett.

Ten times that morning his mother had made him repeat Sara's address, just in case anyone asked, but no one would. With Yesenia's help, he looked like he belonged there. Gone were his khakis and white button-downs, replaced by jeans and a graphic T-shirt and the Nikes she'd bought him with her entire school clothes allowance. The remaining few dollars she'd spent on a scattering of buttons to decorate his backpack. His favorite, a cherry red circle with the word
Jenius,
had an arrow that she'd angled right to his head, but he also liked one with two rows of birds sitting on telephone wires, which made him think of his grandfather. He'd pinned only one button onto the strap of his backpack where he could see it, a reminder he fingered as he walked:
PEOPLE SAY I'M INDIFFERENT BUT I DON'T CARE.

The science wing was in the front of the school, a row of labs on one side of the breezeway with classrooms on the other. Mr. Everett's door was open. It was still early—the clock above the teacher's desk read 6:45—and only one student sat folded into a small desk at the front of the room. He immediately stood up, a gesture of such excessive politeness that Alex thought he was mocking him. But the boy smiled, a skinny grin on a lightly pocked face, and held out his hand.

“Jeremy Coker,” he said.

Alex took his hand and gripped it as hard as his grandmother had taught him, shaking it so enthusiastically he could almost imagine Yesenia's frown of disapproval. She'd told him to act cool.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm Alex. Alex Espinosa.”

“Nice to meet you. You new here?” Jeremy asked.

“I'm a freshman.”

He bit down on his upper lip as soon as he'd said it. The simple (and still truthful) answer would have been: yes. Yes, yes, yes! It was all he'd needed to say, but instead he'd admitted to being the lowest form of high school life, a monad with no link to the complex social structures of the world around him.

Jeremy turned to the teacher. “Hey, Mr. E—since when do you let freshmen into this class?”

Alex had been so focused on trying—and failing—to make a good impression, that he hadn't yet noticed Mr. Everett. He stood at the front of the classroom, brown hair silver-streaked and shaggy, an olive polo shirt untucked over slacks, and boots muddy enough for Alex to wonder if he'd spent the morning patrolling the Landing. His beard gave his face a friendly look, and the binoculars around his neck reminded Alex of a birder. Alex liked him immediately. He took a step forward, and Alex thought he might be coming to shake his hand too, that perhaps it was a requisite of Mr. Everett's zero period and one that he would have to learn to do more casually, but as he got closer he saw that his teacher was trying to read the button on the strap of his backpack. Alex moved one hand quickly to cover it.

Mr. Everett met his eyes. “Alex Espinosa?”

He nodded. “Yes, sir. You taught my mother.”

The first thing Letty had done after enrolling Alex at Mission Hills was to call Mr. Everett directly and ask him to request Alex in his honors science class.

“I did indeed.”

Jeremy gawked. “What? Mr. E, you aren't
that
old.”

“It's a fact. A smart woman, Letty Espinosa.”

Was she? It was the first time anyone had ever said that to him, and Alex wondered if it could be true. He'd always assumed he'd gotten his brains from his father, or maybe his grandfather—an insult to his mother, he realized now. He retreated to the back of the classroom and found a seat.

He'd never sat at the back of any class, and as the room filled, he saw that it had its advantages: he could take furious notes without being teased, he could stare at his classmates without them noticing, and (although he wouldn't on the first day, he'd promised himself this) he could even raise his hand and pull it down as he was called on, so that by the time the other students turned around to look it would seem as if he'd been called on without volunteering himself. But as the students filtered in, Alex began to understand just how different life at Mission Hills would be. Every student was on time. A girl in the front row pulled out a fat, worn book titled
Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology
and opened it to an earmarked page close to the end; the two boys next to him were discussing
Atlas Shrugged
and
The Fountainhead,
which they'd both read over the summer (seemingly for pleasure) and whose merits they fiercely disagreed about. For the first time in his life, Alex wouldn't be the only kid in class who knew the answer. In fact, he might be the only one who didn't.

When the bell rang, Alex counted the students in class: sixteen. In his previous life he hadn't even known sixteen kids who could wake up before 7:00
A.M
., let alone get to class with their books open, and smelling good too. Not that Alex blamed them—why rush to get to school, just to see another substitute or a photocopied worksheet? Everything was different here, and the class hadn't even started yet.

“Good morning,” Mr. Everett said, standing up. “And a very early one.”

There was a collection of nods and muffled yawns as the class agreed with him.

“It's nice to see you all. I'd tell you I had a fabulous summer, but you know I was just counting down the days until school started.” He was being facetious—wasn't he? Alex was terrible at understanding humor. But he knew one thing for sure: whether or not he'd had a good summer, Mr. Everett was genuinely glad to see them.

“Those of you who've taken my class before know what's coming. I've been giving the same speech on the first day of school every year for almost twenty years.” Mr. Everett caught Alex's eye when he said this, and Alex knew he was thinking about Letty, sitting through what must have been one of the first of these speeches. “So if you know what I'm going to say before I say it, please chime in. After I'm done I'll take roll for the first and only time this year, and then we'll get to work. So: first things first. This class is an elective—which means? Rachel.”

Rachel looked up from a hardbound notebook that lay open on her desk. “Which means you're here because you want to be here.”

“Exactly. Which means I expect you to act like you want to be here: every day, on time, acting and thinking like a scientist. I have a zero-tolerance policy for sulkers, as I also do for hoarders. Hoarding of information, that is. You learn it, you share it. Which brings me to my next point.”

He paused and looked around the classroom, giving the students time to catch up or interrupt, Alex wasn't sure which. To Alex's right, a girl with a dark tan and a bright yellow tank top nodded as if keeping time with Mr. Everett's words. She'd twisted her curly brown hair into a loose braid, and it fell over her shoulder and settled on top of her desk. The girls in the class were almost as distracting as the science, all beautiful. He thought of Yesenia and felt guilty.

The girl, who'd scrawled
Julianna Skye
on the top of her notebook, finally spoke up: “Competition.”

“Thank you. Competition.” Mr. Everett nodded. “There is none here. There's no bell curve, no grade race. Everyone in my class gets an A. You're graded on one thing, and one thing only: your love of science. And for those of you who are new and/or haven't yet caught the science bug, here's a foolproof method to a straight A in my class: if you don't feel it, fake it. Pretend to love it, hard, and one day you'll start to love it for real and you won't notice the day you stopped pretending. So that's it: come to class and love science—or pretend to love science—and you get an A. There will be no Bs, and no A pluses—so don't ask.” He looked pointedly around the room, pausing to lift his eyebrows at a thin blond girl in the front row, who Alex thought had probably already asked.

“Okay.” He hesitated here, and all around the room students dug into their backpacks, pulling out stacks of science books, each one different from the next. Alex wondered if he'd missed something—if there was some kind of summer project, a letter sent to Sara's, maybe, that she hadn't forwarded. “Hold on, now. We're almost there. This usually doesn't come up until December, but I've started addressing it up front, to preempt. Help me out, Jeremy, will you?”

Jeremy closed the book he'd opened midway through the grades lecture. “Sure,” he said. “The question is: how can you say there's no competition, when this class exists for the sole purpose of entering—and winning—the state science fair?”

It was a good question, Alex thought. He waited for Mr. Everett to answer.

“So here's how it goes. We'll have an in-class competition in December. This won't be for the best results—it will be for the best project idea. Three of you will win, and everyone in the class will be assigned to one of those three project teams. Everyone competes in the state contest.”

There was a silence while the class took in this information, and then Jeremy added, in the voice of an overenthusiastic game-show host: “And the money goes to…”

“The project lead,” Mr. Everett said. “If a team wins a scholarship at the state competition, the money goes to the lead scientist on the project. Now, let's get started.”

Alex was less focused on the money than on the title:
lead scientist
. He liked the idea of having a team of students—all of them older than he was—working to solve a puzzle he'd designed, but looking around, and then listening to roll, Alex knew he had a lot of catching up to do.

In the front of the room, Miraya Ahmed—first on the class list—was talking about executive function disorder, something that Alex had never heard of, but on which, from the sound of it, Miraya was an expert. As Mr. Everett went down the roll, each student spoke about his or her scientific interests, and Alex listened gap-mouthed as Nathan Allen described his idea to use the wasted heat energy of a motor to power a car and Rachel Burke talked about her interest in the effects of processing style on standardized test scores and Sophia Joyce Chen outlined her plan to treat hypercholesterolemic rats with something called HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors.

Alex should have been planning what to say, but he was so busy listening that he didn't even think for a moment about his own scientific interests. When Mr. Everett called his name, he sat in stunned silence. The class turned to look at him, and for the first time in his entire school career, he felt his face turn red, wishing that his teacher hadn't called on him. Everyone waited. He had to say something.

“I love science,” he managed.

The class laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, but an amused one, and he remembered then what Mr. Everett had said about loving science. The class thought it was a joke. He looked to the front of the room, hoping Mr. Everett didn't think he was trying to be funny. The teacher didn't look amused, but he didn't look mad either.

Alex took a deep breath. “I love birds too.” He thought hard, trying to pull up some kind of elaborate language that would impress them, but all he could think of was the birds of the bay. He recited them in alphabetical order, as his grandfather would have done. “Acorn woodpecker, Allen's hummingbird, American avocet, American goldfinch, ash-throated flycatcher, barn swallow. Bewick's wren, black turnstone, black-bellied plover, burrowing owl—you know.”