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  This time Cletus sits up fully and motions for Arden to sit beside him. He takes a swig and waits for the burn to subside before saying, “That kid was a moron. Thought I was driving drunk. Said he was trying to help me.”

  “And were you?”

  “Was I what?”

  “Driving drunk.”

  “Now you sound like your mother. It takes a lot to get me drunk, boy. You know that.”

  Arden doesn’t want to have this conversation. Not face-to-face. It was different when he was anonymously scaring him out of getting behind the wheel. But having a serious conversation with Uncle Cletus feels wrong. What business did a seventeen-year-old boy have telling a seventy-three-year-old man how to live his life? At least, that’s what his uncle would say. And Arden would have no answer. Time for a subject change.

  “Mom said the clerk came out with a shotgun, threatened to shoot the guy’s balls off or something.”

  Cletus chuckles. “That Carly. She’s a spitfire if I ever saw one.”

  Arden would have to agree. “So you know her pretty well then?”

  Uncle Cletus’s mouth tugs into a scowl. “I know her parents don’t have the sense God gave a billy goat. Letting a girl her age work alone at a convenience store on the graveyard shift. I can’t help but check in on her every night. I’ve spent a fortune on vodka I’ll never drink. Too bad that stingy old Bagget won’t stock whiskey but he’ll stock something as useless as vodka. But I guess when you’re old enough, that’ll be part of your inheritance.”

  Arden remembers being surprised when Cletus had dropped the bottle of vodka on the ground last night. Cletus hated vodka, said it tastes like tap water. Arden had just assumed the old man’s taste buds had changed. He never guessed his uncle would buy vodka every night just to see Carly.

  Cletus takes a sizeable gulp from the bottle, then points at Arden. “You’d learn something from that one, boy. She’s a hard worker. A survivor. Gets things done. That girl doesn’t know it, but she’s going places in life.”

  Not what Arden wants to hear. Why is everyone obsessed with going places in life instead of just living life? “Maybe I’ll come with you one night and meet her.” Arden grins. “Sounds like my kind of girl.”

  Cletus wipes the excess liquor off his chin with the back of his hand. “She’s way out of your league, boy. You won’t be good enough for her until you get yourself straightened out. Hell, you might not ever be good enough for her.”

  This stings more than Arden expects. Even Cletus thinks he’s wasting his life. His uncle is the one person who always thought Arden could do anything. What changed? His quitting the football team? What exactly has his mother been telling Cletus? And what’s so wrong about slowing down and enjoying life? “I will eventually. Get straightened out, I mean.” But the words fall as flat as they feel. Because to Arden, he is straightened out. More than he’s ever been.

  “It’s been a year, Arden. It’s time to let her go.”

  Arden balls his fists. “Amber has nothing to do with it.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He comes here to check on his uncle and now all of a sudden he’s under attack. And what if he’s not ready to let Amber go? She would want him to move on, he knows. But she doesn’t get what she wants. His bending to Amber’s will ended when she took her own life.

  “Everyone deals with things differently, son. But you don’t seem to be dealing with it at all. Your mother says you don’t sleep. That you’re out gallivanting, stirring up trouble every night. Says your grades are crap. That’s not going to get you into FSU.”

  Nice. He comes over here to check on his uncle and suddenly his baggage is getting checked. “Who says I want to go to FSU?”

  “Things are expected of you, boy. You can’t run from that forever. You could get counseling. Heard that helps some folks.”

  Arden isn’t going to discuss expectations with his uncle. Not in a million years. “Sure,” he grounds out. “Maybe we could go to counseling together. Me for Amber, and you for Aunt Dorothy.”

  Cletus opens his mouth to fire back but closes it again. Anger flashes across his face like a strike of lightning. He takes a long drag from the bottle, his way of hosing the fire in his temper. Then another. Each calculated sip would have scalded a lesser man’s throat. But not a pro like Cletus Shackleford. When he’s done, his face is calm again. “I can see why you think that. But we’re different, you and me. I’m an old washed-up man who’s done everything I’ve wanted to do in life. I’ve got a bank account to prove it.” He waves his hand in a grandiose gesture of the room. “A big, useless house and more land than you could hunt in decades. I was married to the woman of my dreams for forty-three years.”

  “You tell me all the time that wealth doesn’t matter. That material possessions are just more things to take care of. Now you’re telling me to go to college so I can get stuff?”

  “I’m telling you that you only think you’re happy doing what you’re doing. You used to have drive, son. I don’t care if you’re as poor as a church mouse when you get to be my age. Find something that matters to you. Even when it’s gone.” At this, his uncle’s eyes glisten with threatening tears.

  Arden swallows. This house has eighteen rooms. Eighteen rooms full of expensive furniture. Expensive carpets and tapestries and paintings and antique décor. But this house is empty. Empty without Aunt Dorothy.

  I don’t want anything that matters, Arden wants to say. I don’t want anything else to lose. The pain isn’t worth it.

  “I was thinking I could bring over Dad’s pressure washer and get your steps in front cleaned up,” Arden says. “And your azalea bushes need more trimming than your ear hair, and that’s saying something.”

  Cletus huffs. “They could use a trimming, now that you mention it. The azalea bushes too.”

  Arden grins. “I’ll be back this weekend. Anything else you need done?”

  His uncle thinks for a moment. “I can’t find my spare keys to the truck—had to have it towed home, did your mom tell you? Maybe since you’re not going to be sleeping anyway you could swing by the Breeze Mart and check on Carly. I’m sure she’ll be there even after what happened. Did I tell you that girl’s a spitfire?”

  “I’ll try to make time for it,” Arden says, delighted that now he actually has an excuse to see her again. He could tell she wasn’t feeling the whole friendship scenario.

  She’ll get used to it after a while.

  On his way out the door, Arden hangs the keys to his uncle’s truck on the coatrack. It’ll be a while before he finds them there. Especially because he’s probably already looked.

  Nine

  I brace myself on the metal steps to the trailer; the door tends to stick when you open it and a few weeks ago I pulled too hard and found myself sprawled onto the broken concrete slab we call a porch. When I step inside, the aroma of whatever Julio’s cooking in the slow cooker hits me like a spicy snake slithering up my nose.

  Julio insists on doing the cooking because whenever I cook, I make things like hamburgers and pizza or pasta—what he calls American food. Which, of course, I’m proud of. It’s something that’s mine. Our trailer might be the tiniest version of Mexico you ever saw, but at least my cooking—and my bedroom—are the one place you can experience American culture. Or, you know, whatever American culture I can find at garage sales and thrift stores.

  Since Julio won’t be home for another hour or so, I set my backpack down and head over to Señora Perez’s to see if her washer is available. I knock on the door and am greeted with an invisible wall of stale cigarette smoke when she opens it.

  Señora Perez is in her usual pink matching sweat suit with a magazine rolled up in her hands. She’s obsessed with keeping flies out of her house; that particular issue of People en Español probably has the guts of hundreds of flies on it. “Que?” she says.

  I wouldn’t call us friends, Señora Perez and I. We have an arrangement, one that benefits us both. I’m not even sure i
f Señora Perez has any friends, anyone who comes over regularly to gossip about the celebrity drama she’s obviously so fond of. I never see anyone in our mostly Mexican trailer park coming or going from her door. Some say that she’s not one of us, because she had an American husband who died a few years ago. I wonder what they say about me, and my taste for American culture. Either way, Señora Perez and I are not so different. Probably if we were both more friendly, we might be friends.

  “I was wondering if I could wash a load or two in your washing machine,” I say in Spanish. “I noticed you had some weeds that needed pulling in your garden.”

  Garden is hardly the word for the hodgepodge mess of plants Señora Perez keeps in the sunny part of her lot. There is a stone bench, around it some seasonal flowers, and then for some reason she planted bell peppers, which she doesn’t even eat. Maybe her husband used to love them. She sells them to my brother for dirt cheap though, so who am I to complain?

  She leans against the doorframe. I wonder how small she really is under those big baggy clothes. I wonder if Señora Perez is secretly sick, and that’s why she’s grouchy all the time. “I suppose. But you’ll have to come back in an hour. I’ve already got a load washing. And bring your own detergent. I’m not a Laundromat here.” With that she shuts the door.

  I’ve got to find a cheap washer one of these days. I bought one a few months ago for fifty bucks but it broke after a week and Julio was so pissed for me wasting the money when we can use Señora Perez’s most of the time. But Julio isn’t the one who has to deal with Señora Perez. And most of the time doesn’t cut it when you’re out of clean panties.

  I get back home just in time to answer the phone. I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s Mama. “Carlotta, what are you doing home this time of day? Shouldn’t you be working?” Mama only speaks Spanish to me. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I’ll forget where I came from—even though I’ve never actually been there. I want to tell her that Julio is making sure that I don’t forget.

  “I miss you too, Mama.”

  “Carlottta, shame on you. You know I miss you. I miss you so much that I’m trying to get back to you. So we can be a family again. I just thought you’d be working since you’re out of school.”

  I wince. “Sorry, Mama. I do work today. My shift doesn’t start until ten o’clock tonight.”

  “Oh, my child, please tell me you’re not still working at that convenience store?”

  “I am.”

  “I thought you were looking for a different job that gives you more hours or at least better than minimum wage. We talked about this last week.”

  And the week before. I bite my lip before answering. “It’s just that the Breeze Mart is easy. I can do my homework there and my shift ends in time for school.”

  I do miss Mama fiercely. I just wish we could talk about something else when she calls. But we have to get this business of work out of the way first. Money is, after all, the main thing that’s separating us right now.

  “Homework?” She makes a tsking sound into the phone. “Carlotta Jasmine Vega. We’ve talked about this. The most important thing right now is getting your family back. Then you can finally meet your brother and sister.”

  “I know.” Of course I want my family back. Of course I want to meet my brother and sister. But keeping my grades up and getting a scholarship is the only way I’m making something of myself. And isn’t that what they were trying to do when they came to the States? To make something better of themselves?

  She wants me to find a job with more hours, to save more money, to get her here sooner. But more hours means less time for homework. Less time for homework means my grades get flushed. I’m not the kind of student who can pass without studying. I’m the kind of student who barely holds on by her teeth and almost cries when she gets an A. The Breeze Mart keeps me on the honor roll, in a way.

  And without the honor roll, I’m not getting any scholarships. Without scholarships, I don’t get to be the first person in my family to go to college. All I have to do is survive this thing called high school—and keep up my grade point average while doing it. One day, with a degree, I’ll be able to provide for my entire family.

  Besides, it’s not like I’m not contributing to the family fund now. I keep ten dollars of my paycheck—a girl needs nail polish sometimes—then I hand the rest to Julio every single week. Bringing that up again is not going to win me any points. “I’ll keep looking for a new job,” I tell her obediently. What I don’t tell her is that it has to be exactly like the Breeze Mart only with more pay or I’m not taking it.

  “That’s my good girl. When I get back, you can cut your work hours and I’ll teach you how to cook. How does that sound?”

  When I get back sounds delightful. “You need to teach Julio too. You should smell what he’s got in the slow cooker right now.”

  Mama laughs.

  Feelings of selfishness and guilt knead knots in my stomach, making me question whether or not I’m doing the right thing by not finding a better job. I’ve missed Mama’s laugh. Her eyes almost disappear into her face when she smiles. It’s beautiful. I know it’s important to have my family back. I’ve been yearning to hug my mother since the day she was deported three years ago.

  But it’s important that we have security when they get here too. And an education can provide that security.

  Mama chatters on then about the latest antics of Juanita and Hugo, my younger twin siblings (she was pregnant when she got deported), about her neighbor’s daughter getting married, about a house down the street catching fire. Some things are new, some things are repeats from last week’s conversation, but I relish it all, because the sound of Mama’s voice soothes me. It always has.

  With a frown, I remember the way Julio hung up the phone the day he got the devastating news that my parents had been in a car accident. My father had rear-ended another vehicle, and though no one was hurt, it was a major ordeal because he didn’t have a driver’s license—or insurance. What’s worse was that they were stuck on a traffic-jammed bridge and had nowhere to flee. The responding cop picked them up and called Immigration as soon as he found out they were here without proper documentation. We didn’t even get the chance to say good-bye in person. My parents didn’t want to risk the Department of Children and Families taking me from Julio, so they didn’t mention that they had kids at home. And besides, that was the rule: If you get caught, you don’t give any names. You just suck it up, and go back to Mexico.

  And then you try to get back again.

  “Has Julio mentioned how much is in the fund?” Mama asks, drawing me away from my bitter line of thought.

  “Julio never tells me how much we have.” And I don’t want to know, mainly because I know that however much we have to pay El Libertador—that’s what the guy calls himself to keep his real identity a secret, I guess—to get my family across the border will make me sick. Thousands of dollars each, but how many thousands I’m not sure. And that’s just ensuring they get across the border. Getting them across the Chihuahuan Desert safely is all up to us—unless we want to pay extra.

  “Tell him to call his mama when he gets home from work, yes?”

  “I’ll tell him.” Julio misses Mama too. It’s evident by how much he tries not to show it.

  “Your brother is a hard worker, Carlotta. You could learn a lot from him.”

  I know he’s a hard worker. He works five days a week in construction and then washes dishes at a seafood restaurant on Highway 98 in the evenings and on weekends. Tuesdays are his only nights off. And even on his night off, he feels the need to prepare something in the slow cooker for us to eat and scrolls the Internet on the computer I borrow from school for odd jobs to pick up.

  I want to be more like my brother. I do. And I’m trying to be—just in a different way. I can’t wait for the day when I can come home to Mama and Papi and tell them I’ve got a high-paying job that will get us out of this trailer park and into a brick house on a
real foundation—maybe even in a gated community. One day she’ll see that all my hard work in school will have paid off. She’ll see it, and Julio will see it. He quit high school to take care of me. One day I will pay him back.

  “I am learning from him, Mama.”

  “Good. You’re a smart girl, Carlotta. I’m sure you’ll find a way to help out more. I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  I end the call and place the phone back on the charger. It would be nice to have a cell phone, so I could talk to her more often instead of leaving it up to chance that I’ll be home when she calls. It’s not like I would waste minutes on it talking to someone else. Only two people call us. Mama, when she’s really missing us—or she wants to know how much money we’ve saved up—and Julio’s restaurant manager, who wants to know if he can work late or come in on his day off. But Julio won’t even pay for cable, let alone a cell phone. Not when we have a perfectly working landline. He wouldn’t even pay for that if it wasn’t essential to our cause.

  I walk to the couch and fold the clean towels in the laundry basket next to me, then I gather Julio’s and my dirty clothes and get them ready to take to Señora Perez’s. I wash the few dishes in the sink, then wipe down the counters. The closer to the slow cooker I get, the worse it smells. I open it up to get a peek.

  Then I take a pizza out of the freezer and preheat the oven.

  The phone rings again, while I’m opening the box of my dinner. I wonder what Mama forgot to say. But it’s Julio who greets me on the other end. He must be borrowing a friend’s cell phone. “Carlotta, do you work tonight?”

  “Yes, I’m getting some things done, then I’m going to try to sleep before my shift. Why?”

  “Make sure you turn the slow cooker off before you go to sleep. Does it smell good?”

  “Nope.”

  He snickers. “Pick me up a candy bar at the store? I’ve been craving one of those nutty chocolate things. The ones with the red wrapper.”

  I gasp. “Spend money on candy? Julio, where is your head?” I’m only teasing, but this seems to actually get under his skin.