Ambitious (4 page)

“I would love to sit here and chitchat with you guys all day, but duty calls,” Jasmine announced.

“You got a job?” Preston asked.

“Yeah, babysitting my bratty little brother while my parents go to work at New York Methodist Hospital,” she said.

“Are they doctors?”

“No. My dad’s a janitor, and my mom’s a nurse. Like I always say, at least if he passes out from cleaning all the toilets, she’ll be there to revive him.” She giggled and then turned to me. “You ready, Marisol?”

“Yeah,” I said and grabbed my bag from underneath the table. “Catch you guys later.”

“Later,” Drew said.

“See ya, ladies,” said Preston, as he stood in a gentleman-like manner. It wasn’t often that boys actually treated girls like ladies. He was a rare breed. “You need me to walk you guys to the subway?”

“Nah, I think we can manage, dude, but thanks for asking,” said Jasmine as she pushed her way through the crowd at Manny’s.

I followed. And soon we were sitting side by side on a train Brooklyn-bound. My mind began to wander to the possibilities of competing for Dance America. I knew I could dance. And I had just as much of a chance as anyone at making it into the competition. I just needed the cour
age to compete, and my parents’ permission, of course—which was even more of a challenge than the competition itself.

As Jasmine’s head bounced against the window, her mouth opened and light snores crept from her lips. I smiled, glad I’d run into her at my dance class. I gave her a nudge as we approached her station in Bedford-Stuy. She straightened in her seat, gathered herself. As she stood to exit the train, she pulled the package of cigarettes from her purse and gave me a grin.

“See you tomorrow. Bright and early. I’ll text you when I get up.”

“Okay.”

She hopped from the train, her backpack in tow. Suddenly she was lost in the crowd. I gazed out the window. Day one started off badly, but it hadn’t ended too badly at all.

Marisol

As
I made my way around the corner of my block, Luz, Kristina and Grace stood in front of Luz’s house, stretching their necks my way. Within moments, my three friends were there, Luz grabbing my bag from my shoulder.

“How was your train ride from Manhattan?” she asked.

“It wasn’t too bad. I met a new friend. Jasmine…she lives in Bed-Stuy.”

“With a name like Jasmine, she’s not Mexican,” Grace announced, as if I didn’t already know.

“No, she’s not,” I said.

“Well, what is she?” Grace asked.

“She’s mixed.”

“So how was your first day at Bourgeois High?” Luz asked.

“Oh, Luz, it was so wonderful. There were so many kids there you could barely make it through the hallways. And everyone is a dancer, musician or actor.” I’d waited all day just to share my excitement with them. “I was late
to my dance class this morning. My alarm clock didn’t go off. That’s how I met Jasmine…”

“Jasmine?” asked Kristina.

“Yeah, the girl that I rode home with on the subway.”

“Oh, yeah, the mixed girl,” Grace said.

“We’re gonna ride into Manhattan together every morning. And she’s gonna text me every morning so that I don’t oversleep anymore,” I said. “And you guys should see her dance. She’s an awesome dancer!”

“Well, isn’t that sweet?” Luz said sarcastically. She wasn’t fond of anyone she thought might replace her as my best friend. “Are you gonna do my hair today or what?”

“Yeah, of course.” I’d forgotten all about agreeing to do Luz’s hair. I’d promised to do it as soon as I made it home from school. What I really wanted to do was lie across my bed, reminisce about my first day of school and then get a jump start on my homework. There was no room for relaxation. My grades were a priority, especially since they determined my future at Premiere.

“Where you been all day? We all got home like two hours ago,” Grace said.

“All of the kids hang out at Manny’s after school.”

“Is this going to be an everyday thing or what?”

“Probably so. Everybody hangs out there.” I grabbed my bag from Luz’s shoulder and started up the stairs to my house. “Let me go inside and say hello to my parents. I’ll be at your house in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, Chica. Hurry up. Your mom’s been talking to
my mom again—about eating together as a family and all that stuff about bonding as a family. It’s been months since we had an official dinnertime, but thanks to Isabel Garcia, now my mom insists that the whole family eat together again. She thinks that’s why my dad and her are having marital problems—because we stopped eating together. How silly is that?” Luz asked and then walked across the street toward her house. Kristina and Grace followed.

It was no secret that my mom and Luz’s mom were the best of friends. Often, they shared ideas about raising us and about how we acted as families. Because of their friendship, Luz and I were raised pretty much the same—same values and same rules. Sometimes their friendship got in the way, especially when they put their heads together about something that affected Luz and me.

My mom stood in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist and her long hair pulled back into a ponytail. Isabel Garcia gave me a bright, unexpected smile.

“Hola, bebé. ¿Cómo es hoy?”
She asked how my day was in her Spanish dialect. We were a bilingual family and used a mixture of Spanish and English at home.

“It was okay,” I said, and asked what she was cooking.
“¿Qué estás cocinando?”

“Chicken. Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Not really. I had a slice at Manny’s, a pizza joint in Manhattan.”

“You went there after school?”

“All the kids do,” I explained.

“According to my sources, she was hanging out with some cute girl, with curly hair and light brown eyes,” my brother, Nico, said as he entered the kitchen, grabbed a chunk of papaya from the kitchen counter and popped it into his mouth, then grabbed another one. “Rode the subway with her.”

“What, are you stalking me?” I asked Nico.

“I have my spies.” He grinned. “So watch your back.”

“You made a new friend?” Mom asked.

“Her name’s Jasmine,” I said to my mother.

“Can I meet her?” Nico asked. “I hear she’s hot.”

My brother was the spitting image of my father, with dark hair. We both had Poppy’s eyes and smile. Nico was handsome, and the girls in the neighborhood usually made a fuss over him. I wasn’t quite sure why. He was my brother, but I didn’t see him as the sexy eye candy that my friends thought he was. Nico was somewhat shy and only recently started becoming more flirtatious with girls.

“No, she doesn’t want to meet you.” I snatched the papaya from Nico’s fingertips and popped it into my mouth.

“How do you know she doesn’t? I’m good-looking, I’m smart…”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” I said and headed out of the kitchen.

I took the stairs up to my room, tossed my bag across my bed and searched for a pair of sweatpants. I found the blue ones with AEROPOSTALE written across the butt in bold white letters; pulled them on. I also changed into
a white AEROPOSTALE T-shirt. I pulled my long black hair into a ponytail and slipped on a pair of white flip-flops. I searched for my shampoo, conditioner and blow-dryer; tossed the stuff into a bag and headed downstairs.

“Mami, I’m going to Luz’s.”

Mami was at the kitchen table, wrapped up in one of her celebrity-gossip tabloids. She tried to hide it as I entered the room, but I knew that she read those things. She left them all over the house. They were filled with stories of fallen stars—celebrities who’d gotten caught up in scandals, strung out on drugs and alcohol and all sorts of things that I thought were mostly lies. But Mami believed all of the smut that she read in those magazines. It was obvious that she enjoyed reading about how stardom had led some celebrity down a road of destruction, and it was why she didn’t want me to become a star. She was afraid that I’d get caught up in a glamorous Hollywood lifestyle, and before long I’d sell my soul to the devil, lose all self-esteem and get strung out on drugs. She didn’t want me to end up the same as the people she read about in those magazines.

“Look at that child star, Miley Cyrus. Look what happened to her.” That was always her favorite argument. “Her father just tossed her to the wolves.”

I had to make her see that not all celebrities were fallen—they weren’t all involved in scandals and they didn’t all need rehab. Some of them actually made something of their lives and had wonderful careers. It was going to be hard to convince her, but I would if it took the rest of my life.

She walked over to the stove and stirred something in a pot. “Be back before dinner.”

Dinner was ritually at six o’clock. My father usually made it home from the construction site by five-thirty, took a long shower and came straight to the dinner table, where the rest of us awaited. Since my mother worked only part-time as an elementary school teacher, she spent most of her days keeping house and preparing meals for us. It was important to my parents that we ate dinner together as a family. Around the dining room table, we prayed and then shared food and the details of our day. For Nico and me, being late was punishable, so we made it a point of making it on time every single day. My parents taught us that our time together as a family should be a priority, and nothing was more important.

As I made my way across the street, Nico was already in a game of basketball with Alejandro, Fernando and a few boys from another neighborhood.

“Hey, Mari,” Fernando said and grinned. He’d had a crush on me since the beginning of time. Although he was cute, he was more like a brother to me. He had spent too many nights at my house with Nico. I could never date him.

“
Hola,
Fernando,” I said.

“What’s it like at that artsy school?” he asked.

“Are you gonna start acting like you’re better than all of us now?” asked Alejandro.

“I’ll always be the same Mari.”

“You were always a little stuck-up. You’re gonna continue to be that girl?” Alejandro asked with a grin. He had always been a thorn in my side.

“Leave her alone, and take the ball out, man.” Nico tossed Alejandro the ball.

“It was nice to see you, Mari,” Fernando said with dreamy eyes. “You look as beautiful as ever.”

“Spell
beautiful,
stupid,” said Alejandro as he threw the ball at Fernando, slamming it into his chest.

Soon they were all lost in the game. I stepped onto Luz’s porch, rang the doorbell.

“What took you so long?” Luz asked and yanked me inside before I could answer.

The smell of something burning hit me in the nose as we walked past the kitchen. Luz’s mom was fanning smoke with a dish towel.

“
Hola,
Mrs. Hernandez.”

“Hola, Mari. ¿Cómo estás?”
Luz’s mom asked how I was doing as she opened the back door and let the smoke out.

“Estoy, bien.”
I told her that I was okay.

Luz quickly ushered me upstairs to her room, for fear that her mother might ask us to help in the kitchen. Grace was reclined on Luz’s bed, flipping through a Latina teen magazine. Demi Lovato graced the cover. Kristina was sitting at the foot of the bed, snacking on potato chips.

“She can’t cook!” Luz exclaimed after we were behind her closed bedroom door. “My dad is the cook in the family. I don’t even know why she insists on trying. She’s burn
ing things up, and then she’ll insist that we all sit at the table together and eat it.”

“Give her a break. At least she’s trying.” I felt sorry for Mrs. Hernandez.

“Your mother did this to me!” Luz exclaimed. “Talking about how you guys eat dinner around the freaking table every day and discuss your problems. Now my mom wants us to do it again! Nobody wants to eat together. And I don’t care how anybody’s day went. I’d much rather just grab a bowl of Froot Loops and eat it in my room.”

I laughed.

“Where’s my blue eye shadow!” Anarosa, Luz’s younger sister, burst through the door.

“I didn’t have it,” Luz snapped.

“Well, it’s not where I left it, and I want it back now!” Anarosa demanded.

It was always lively at Luz’s house. She argued a lot with her younger sister, and their parents argued a lot with each other, too. If they weren’t devout Catholics, they probably would’ve divorced years ago. When they were in public, they pretended to be this normal, happy family. But behind closed doors, they were far from normal. Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez believed that their daughters were good, wholesome teenagers who could do no wrong. But the truth was, Anarosa was the girl whom the football team and basketball team had tossed around since she was twelve. If Carlos Hernandez knew that his baby girl climbed out of her bedroom window on a regular basis, he’d probably have a
heart attack and die. And Luz—who was a tomboy—totally transformed into a different person when her parents weren’t around. She loved to challenge authority and take the wrong kinds of risks that the rest of us weren’t comfortable with taking. It was Luz who’d convinced us all to take the subway into the Bronx when we were ten years old. We weren’t even allowed to leave our neighborhood, let alone ride the subway into another borough.

“Get out of my room,” Luz commanded. “You look like a natural-born
puta
when you wear that stuff on your eyes.”

“You’re a whore!” Anarosa returned the sentiment, and then stormed out of Luz’s room, slamming the door behind her.

“Puta!”
Luz yelled. “Come on, Mari, let’s get started before Senora Loca starts calling me for dinner.”

I washed Luz’s hair in their bathtub, and then blow-dried and curled it. When I was done, she checked it out in the mirror.

“You missed this part,” she said, holding on to a small piece of hair that I’d missed.

“You’re so hard to please, Luz,” I said and grabbed the curling iron to finish her hair.

“You wouldn’t leave your hair undone, Chica. So don’t leave mine that way,” she said. “Whatever.”

“Guess what?” She changed the subject. “Pedro Vargas is walking me to class tomorrow.”

“What?” I was surprised. Luz never gave any boy the time of day. Several boys liked her. Why wouldn’t they? She was gorgeous: a perfect size seven, long legs, shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful olive-colored skin. “Nerdy Pedro?”

“He’s not so nerdy this year. You should see him, Mari. He grew a few inches taller over the summer. And it really looks like he’s been working out.”

“Pedro Vargas has been working out?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Grace laughed, too.

“Okay, laugh, you two. But he’s different. He’s not the same Pedro that you remember,” she said. “We were in American history class this morning and he asked me if I had an extra pencil. As I handed him the pencil, I looked into those eyes. I don’t know…I never knew that his eyes were so beautiful until then.”

It was weird hearing my best friend talk about a boy this way. She usually described boys as being stupid, brainless or ugly. Never in a romantic sense. And definitely not Pedro Vargas, who was shorter than average and wore thick glasses. I couldn’t understand how she could’ve possibly seen his eyes through those bifocals.

“Remember those thick glasses he used to wear?” she asked. “Well, he got contacts.”

“Wow” is all I could say. “Well, let’s get your hair done right then, girlfriend.”

“That’s what I said in the beginning,” she said with a smile. “So, any cuties at your school, Mari?”

“I haven’t really been looking. I mean…I don’t know. There’s this one guy that I bumped into at the auditions. Drew Bishop. He’s a drama major. Good-looking,” I told her. I was surprised at my own assessment of Drew.

“You like him, don’t you?” Luz asked and grinned.

“He’s okay,” I lied.

“He’s okay? Seriously? Come on, Chica, it’s me…Luz. Don’t lie to me!”

“Okay, I like him. But he doesn’t know it,” I said. “Besides, I’m sure he has a girlfriend. She showed up at Manny’s one day. She’s tall and beautiful…”

“So?”

“And then there’s this girl, Celine.”