Page 43 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
“You get back here right now!” Mami shouts at me when I turn on my heel and head for my room. I don’t stop. I just need to close the door and she’ll leave me alone. I don’t even process the squeak of her sneakers against the floor until she grabs meby the arm and whips me around. “You don’t walk away when I’m speaking to you!”
“No!” I wrench my arm out of her grip. Tears cloud the shape of her, but I can picture her clearly. Red in the face, wavy flyaway hairs breaking free from her bun, her lips slightly parted like she’s going to break out into a scream. “You don’t get to decide you want to bail on being a parent five nights a week! That’s not how this works. It’s not a part-time job.”
“Enough!” she shouts so loud her voice makes the ceiling lamp rattle. “You don’t understand what it’s been like for me since your father left. How lonely it’s been.”
“He left me too!” The tears fall freely now, streaming down my cheeks, clinging to my chin. “And I always thought things were fine because I still had you. But these days it feels like you can’t wait to leave me too.”
With that, I close the last of the distance between me and my room and slam the door with all of the anger I have left.
Chapter Fourteen
I don’t bother tolock my door. Not that it matters since Mamidoesn’t come after me. The silence hurts the most—that she has nothing left to say to me. The house is eerily quiet. The same as it’s been for months, but this time Mami is just down the hall.
Listening to music helps. I’m too emotionally fragile to focus on homework, so I bury my face in my pillows and listen to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” enough times that I can easily sing along with the lyrics before I move onto the digital version of Joaquin’s “Driving with Ive” mix CD (the only music we listen to in the car that’s from this decade) and lose myself in the memories of a thousand car rides.
A flash of light snaps me out of my daze, so bright I wince. The ray is gone as quickly as it appeared, only to reappear seconds later. And then disappear just as quickly. And then reappear. On repeat, four times.
I dig myself out of my blanket cocoon and walk on my kneesover to the window beside the edge of my bed. Across the darkness of our backyards, Joaquin waves from his bedroom window, flashlight in hand.
“What’re you doing?”I mouth. He makes a gesture I don’t understand before sighing and showing me his phone, pointing to the screen.
Vaguely getting the message, I reach for my phone, waving it for him to see. Within seconds, I have a new text.
sorry thought you might be grounded
wasn’t sure if you had your phone
I snuggle back under the covers, letting myself get comfortable before replying.
nope, still a free (wo)man
For now, at least.
why did you think I was grounded?
Three dots pop up more times than I can count. I’m prepared to call him out on it when a response finally comes through.
macaw
Oh shit. It’s been at least two years since Joaquin pulled the macaw card—a secret code word we came up with when wewere ten because we thought it sounded funny. Macaw means you drop everything, no questions asked. We each get one a year—a rule we came up with to stop ourselves from abusing our respective macaw privileges. I already used mine on one of the many nights I came home to discover an empty house, a note on the kitchen table from Mami telling me not to wait up, and her room a disaster of abandoned date-night outfit options.
I type outyou okay?before realizing that’s against the macaw rules. You don’t have to have a reason for using macaw, and that’s half the beauty of it. If he wants to tell me, he will.
all right, what’s the plan?
His reply comes almost instantly.
meet me outside in 10
Double shit. I’m not officially grounded, but I might as well be. Either way, sneaking out definitely won’t help whatever Mami and I have going on between us right now. But…you don’t say no to a macaw text. It’s against the Joaquin and Ivelisse Code of Ethics. Freshman year, Joaquin left midway through one of his baseball games to come meet me after I used my macaw on figuring out a way to keep Mami from finding out that I’d flunked my first ever midterm.
We always show up.Always.
Wiping off my cheeks and running a comb through my hair,I grab my purse and an emergency bag of candy—you never know what you’ll need when a macaw text comes along—and crack open my window as delicately as I can. I don’t make a habit of sneaking out—mostly because I hardly have anywhere to sneak out to—but the window is my safest bet. Mami is hopefully asleep, and I just have to make sure I don’t accidentally step on one of the neighborhood raccoons.
As promised, Joaquin is waiting for me in his driveway, leaning against the hood of his car. He’s dressed up, by his standards, wearing a pair of black jeans and an open flannel as opposed to sweats and a muscle tee. Suddenly I feel underdressed for the occasion in my knock-off Lululemon tights and purple hoodie.
“So, I was thinking—”
