“I am!” I said.
“No. Like, I’d grab whoever did that and just—” She made a fist.
Dustin. I pictured his face, his bangs in his eyes. Ugh. I’d gone over this a million times, so much that I could actually feel my brain pulsing. No one else here knew about my dad.
Then, get this: Dustin actually walked over to my table. For a second, I thought I was imagining it.
“Hey,” he said, looking mad awkward. “Can we talk?”
“Actually, I need to talk to you,” I said, willing calm into my voice.
As his friends two tables over stifled laughs and coughs, I snatched the closest carton of milk and lifted it in the air. So much for calm.
“Lili!” he yelped.
I was seriously about to pour it over his head. “How could you, Dustin?”
“What are you doing?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” My calm had fled, and I’d switched to trying not to cry. His friends were now flat-out howling.
“Know what?” he asked.
“God! At least have the cojones to admit it—the meme? Of me?”
“Have the what?”
“BALLS!” I yelled. One tilt of my hand, and the contents of the carton would be all over his head.
“Whoa, calm down!” he said, reaching up to take the carton from my hand. He placed it back on the table. “I didn’t, Lili. It wasn’t me, I swear. That’s what I came here to say. I knew you would think it was me.” His face was dead serious as he leaned in and whispered, “I would never do that to you. Never. You know me better than that.”
I gave him some real side-eye and sat back down.
“Lili!” He started to say something else, but he hesitated.
“Wait.” I pivoted. “You know who did it.”
“Shit.” Dustin looked back at his table. “Over here,” he said, waving me over to the windows.
“It was Steve, wasn’t it?” I asked. Of course! I couldn’t even bring myself to look at his table. If I met eyes with him, I would officially lose it.
“Lili, I swear, I never told him. I knew you were going to think that, too. But he doesn’t know about your father—”
“Oh, okay! I’m really supposed to believe that.” The bile rose up in my throat once more. “So… how then? How did he find out?”
“I don’t know. He was just being a jerk, I guess. He’s always making memes. But I swear to you—”
I was only half listening, because I was thinking back… back to the times when Steve had acted totally jealous every time Dustin hung out with me instead of him. Like I was taking his best friend away. Wow. Maybe Dustin was telling the truth. Because deep down, did I really believe that Dustin would do something as awful as tell Steve about my dad? Steve must have been really pissed about the whole Erin drama in Mr. Phelps’s class too.… Yeah, it all made sense. And—is this pathetic?—I actually felt a little bit better—that it wasn’t Dustin. But that only lasted for a second, because then I realized that Dustin was still friends with Steve even after he’d made the meme. Had Dustin just let it slide? I glanced over. Dustin was gnawing his thumbnail so hard, I thought he might bite off his entire thumb. Let me guess—he hadn’t said squat.
“Whatever, Dustin,” I said, and walked away.
Despite the fact that half the cafeteria was probably watching, I didn’t care. I couldn’t even figure out how I felt about anything because it was like I was feeling everything. Confused, pissed, relieved, embarrassed, sad. Dustin so wasn’t the person I’d thought he was! And that sucked in a major way.
As I sat down, hard, I could see Holly three tables over. She was on her phone. Her new thing was an SAT vocab app; she was obsessed. I stood back up and tossed my lunch into the trash can.
I caught Brianna’s eye. “Later,” I said.
“You bet.”
I walked toward Holly. “Hey,” I said. “Mind if I interrupt your SAT vocab app for a minute?”
She looked up. “Fuck yeah,” she said. “I hate this bullshit. I hate tests. I hate it all. But how are you?”
* * *
I came home to find Mom sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. I raced over, dropped to my knees. “Mom! What’s wrong? Is it Dad?”
“No, mija,” she said, her voice so deflated, eerie almost.
“What is it, then?”
“The school called.”
Oh. Oh.
“Liliana…” She hesitated. Then, like someone had lit a match inside her, she bolted up. “Liliana, I’ve been sitting here thinking, Could my daughter really be this irresponsible? Could she really not understand the situation we are in?”
“Mom, wait—”
“No! You wait. You listen. Liliana, the school counselor told me about the picture of your face on a piñata, con esa palabra, ‘wetback.’ My first thought was, who would do that to my DAUGHTER? And as I sat here, getting angrier and angrier, I started wondering how someone would know to do that— So how would they know that? Pues, you’re not one, but I’m just trying to think about how they would make that connection. They must know about your father and me, then. Right? How? Any ideas?” She was on fire.
“Mom—”
“So who did you tell? That Holly girl?”
“No!”
“What were you thinking! What if someone over there had called ICE? Can you… Did you even… If ICE found out…” She couldn’t finish a single sentence, she was so mad.
“Mom, no one is going to do that!” I couldn’t even bring myself to say “ICE.”
Her eyes bulged. “You. Don’t. Know. That!”
Maybe she was right. Oh… no. But, no. “Mom, it was just some stupid kid who was being racist because you and Dad are from Central America. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Mom repeated. She massaged the gold cross on her neck. “Mija, I’ve been thinking,” she said at last. “Maybe you shouldn’t go to that school anymore.… If you don’t feel safe… If someone goes and tells…” Again with the unfinished sentences.
“No,” I said, my voice all deep like I was the parent. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting some ignorant people say where I go or don’t go.”
For a split second she looked at me, wondering if maybe I was talking about her. Which wasn’t what I meant at all!
“Mom. No one knows anything specific. I’m fine. We’re fine. Nothing is going to happen.” That’s what I was saying. In my head, I was praying that Dustin had actually told the truth at lunch earlier, that Steve didn’t actually know about my dad or my family. He’d just hit a nerve.… Yeah, hit it with a sledgehammer.
Mom’s eyes glassed. She reached for me, and I sat on her lap even though we were the same size now. I can’t remember the last time I’d done that.
* * *
Next, she dropped this news on me: we were going to spend Christmas with my aunt in Lynn this year. For the first time in the history of my life, I didn’t want Christmas break to come. Ugh. Usually it was like my favorite time of the year. But with everything at school—plus, hello, the assembly that was happening in like three seconds, not to mention Dad not being here… The holidays—and our Christmas tree—well, they sucked. “Sucked” was clearly my word of the month. In fact, we’d only put up a small plastic tree in the living room, the one that usually went on the counter in the kitchen. We didn’t bother lugging up the big one stored in the basement. So, yeah, we’d still be staying up until midnight and eating tamales and opening presents on Christmas Eve, but this time we’d be using sleeping bags at my aunt’s. Double ugh.