Dream Things True (18 page)

Ay, Dios m
í
o.

“As I recall, your Evan is a senior, and a soccer star.”

How did she know so much about Evan?

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Do you expect that, come next fall, he's going to stay here in Gilberton and play soccer for North Georgia Technical College? Or maybe for the community college?”

“No, ma'am. He wants to go to Berkeley.”

“Well, that's a mighty fine school, isn't it? So, come September, he'll be clear across the country. And you two will be history.”

“But what if—”

“What? Are you gonna get on a plane and go visit him? Not without any identification, you're not. And you can't get a license, can you?”

“No, ma'am.” Alma figured she didn't need to add to the strength of Mrs. King's argument by explaining that she and every undocumented immigrant she knew were afraid to step foot inside an airport. Airports were swarming with border patrol agents.

“So let's move on to my final point.”

Alma was desperate. She took a gulp of vanilla hazelnut coffee and tried not to retch as the sweetness slid down her throat.

“Mrs. King,” she said, “Evan's important to me. He's
different
. I think we can make it work.”

“I don't want to hurt your feelings, sweetheart.” Mrs. King said, shaking her head slowly. “I want you to be happy. But I know this boy. I know his family. And you need to stay away.”

“Why? Because of his uncle?”

“You may not know this,” Mrs. King said, leaning back in her seat. “I came to Eastshore Middle School from Hines.”

Hines was on the other side of Gilberton—the rich side.

“Really?”

“Yes, ma'am. I gave that school thirty-seven years of my life. And in my thirty-seventh year, I got to know a brilliant young man by the name of Sexton Whitfield Prentiss the Third.”

“You mean Whit?” Alma asked. “He's Sexton Prentiss's son?”

How did Alma not put that together? She had so many cousins that she never thought to connect the only one of Evan's uncles she knew to the only cousin she had met.

“The very one,” Mrs. King said. “Whit was one of the smartest children ever to come through Hines Middle School, but come up around eighth grade, he started makin' some trouble.”

“Yeah,” Alma said. “I can believe that.”

“He was just a confused boy, afraid of who he was. But then he took a liking to alcohol, and pretty soon after that, he started stealing pills from his momma.” She paused and drew a long sip of iced tea through her straw. “I cared about that boy. I still do,” she said, looking past Alma, through the window, “like I care about you.” She carefully placed her tea back on the table. “So, naturally, I devised a plan.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Alma asked, grinning.

“Therapy, drug and alcohol treatment, regular meetings with the family—nothing extreme. But we were going to have to put together a team, and his parents would need to be involved in the process. They would need to accept who he was.”

She paused to take a sip of sweet tea.

“So what happened?” Alma felt pretty sure the plan hadn't worked.

“His momma and daddy—they wanted nothin' to do with it. One morning before school, the two of them marched on into my office and threatened me, telling me to mind my own business, and not to dare make any of their family's private concerns public.”

“Senator Prentiss did that? He marched into your office?”

“Yes, ma'am. And then they pulled him out of school, that very day. I went over to their house to try and talk some sense into them. They didn't hear a word I said. The next day, Whit was gone—shipped off to boarding school. No treatment. No counseling. Nothing at all but a big-name boarding school overflowing with drugs and alcohol.”

“Is that why you left Hines?” Alma asked.

“A couple weeks after I went to their house, I got my transfer notice. I was sent on over to Eastshore without a word of explanation.” She shook her head and exhaled slowly. “After thirty-seven years.”

“Oh, wow. You must have been furious!”

“Well, I met you on that first day. So it wasn't
all
bad.”

“Yeah,” Alma said. “I remember that—when you came into the cafeteria and handed out those little squares of peanut butter pie.”

“Mmm-hmm. The way to an eighth grader's heart is through her stomach.”

She took Alma's hand again and squeezed it tightly.

“Alma,” she said, looking directly into her eyes, “if that family made their own son disappear to keep up appearances, imagine what they'll do to you.”

PART TWO

THIRTEEN

Lovefool

Alma glanced around, making sure she was alone, and stepped out of a pair of silver Manolo Blahnik pumps. Her calves relaxed, and her bare heels sank into the satisfying softness of the carpet. A sigh of relief escaped her lips.

Four-inch heels.

She felt like the lead character in a bad movie—one of those flicks that play on cable all the time. Girl from the wrong side of the tracks uses her ingenuity (or, in Alma's case, her connections with a rich friend and her mother's closet) to achieve a total makeover. She finds herself standing in front of a gilt-edged mirror, staring at the reflection of someone who looks like she belongs in a place like this.

There was no shortage of mirrors in the ladies' lounge of the Chickamauga Country Club. Seeing her reflection was utterly unavoidable. Alma had to admit that this little black dress, with fitted bodice and tulip skirt, was fantastic in its simplicity. The strand of pearls around her neck, the small pearl studs in her ears, and the smooth twist that Mary Catherine had produced with three quick sweeping motions all created a look that M.C. called “classic beauty.”

Alma just called it strange.

It was March 14, 2008—Evan's eighteenth birthday. In a week, Alma and Evan would celebrate their six-month anniversary. Since one of Alma's cousins always had to tag along on dates—if they wanted to go to a movie, or the mall, or even to get coffee—they spent most of their time together at Alma's house. Evan was an amazingly good sport about it, and he loved the food.

Alma's
abuela
Lupe was living with them now. As predicted,
la Virgencita
came through and scored a tourist visa, and she had arrived just in time for
Las Posadas
. Evan tried every food
Abuela
Lupe put in front of him, even
patitas de puerco
. When Ra
ú
l showed him how to pick up the pigs' hooves and suck the marrow between the toes, Evan launched right in. He and
Abuela
Lupe were incapable of communicating in words, but he found other ways to express appreciation for her food. In all this time, Alma had been inside Evan's house twice, and aside from his mom and Whit, she had met none of his family.

It was a compromise. Incapable of staying away from Evan, Alma had decided to quietly avoid Mrs. King. She assured herself that there was plenty of time to worry about scholarships and college—she was only a junior. She told herself that it was OK, for once, just to let herself be happy. She was still taking honors and AP classes, and she was still keeping up her GPA. But she could not set aside Mrs. King's warnings entirely. So she had invited Evan into her world but stayed far away from his.

Until tonight.

She heard the heavy door swing open and rushed to shove her feet back into the pumps. Whit's sister Lucy lurched into the room, balancing her rail-thin arms ever so gently against the door frame. They had been together all evening, sitting at the same table for dinner.

“Oh, my God, Alma. Look at those Manolos!”

Apparently, Lucy liked the little torture devices.

“I borrowed them from Mary Catherine's mom,” Alma said, rinsing her hands under the faucet, “and the dress, too.”

“It all looks perfect—just like it was made for you,” Lucy said. She flung herself into a cushy upholstered chair. “Oh, God. My head's, like, spinning. I think I had too much champagne.”

Lucy's eyes fluttered shut for a moment, giving Alma a chance to scan the marble countertop around the basin in search of something to dry her hands. Its contents were baffling. She saw a cut glass decanter filled with bright green liquid. It stood next to lotions, combs, and neatly folded towels. Her hands dangled, dripping over the sink, until she noticed a neat hole cut into the countertop. She peeked through the hole to see a pile of used white towels. It seemed a little extravagant, but Alma went for it. She grasped at a towel just as Lucy lurched forward from the chair and stumbled toward the row of solid oak doors separating each toilet from the ladies' lounge. A moment later, Alma heard the unmistakable sound of retching.

“Are you OK?” she called out tentatively, tossing a damp towel through the hole.

Lucy stepped out of the stall.

“Way better, now,” she announced, reaching toward the decanter filled with mysterious green liquid.

Alma watched as Lucy poured the liquid into a paper cup, tossed her head back, lifted it to her lips, and swished it around her mouth. Lucy grasped her tastefully highlighted hair and leaned over the sink, aiming the green liquid toward the drain.

“Mouthwash,” whispered Alma, pleased that she had solved
this
mystery at least.

Lucy leaned against the flowery wallpaper.

“God, I so hate puking.” Lucy said. “But on the upside, now I can dive back into the desert table without any guilt.”

Gross.

There was a lot that Alma wanted to say to that stupid comment, but she kept her mouth shut.

Over the past three and a half hours, Alma had become an expert in avoiding judgment, anxiety, shame, and bafflement. She promised herself that, for Evan, she would do her best to blend in, to appear as if she were perfectly comfortable in the grand ballroom of an exclusive country club. She forced herself not to gawk at the crystal chandeliers, the elaborate ice sculptures, the balls of roses on a stick that she had learned were called topiaries. Alma, always the master at observation, discerned the purpose of each of the six utensils framing her gold-rimmed plate. She barely skipped a beat when the waiter, a black man in his fifties with whom Evan seemed chummy, whisked the white napkin from her hands and placed a black one on her lap.

Alma became an anthropologist—a “participant observer.” She viewed the party as a form of cultural learning, with the added bonus of picking up a few new vocabulary words.

Senator Prentiss, to her initial horror, sat next to her at the head table. But he was actually perfectly pleasant. She chatted amiably with the senator and his wife throughout the dinner. Watching how he grasped Evan's shoulder lovingly and offered his careful attention whenever Evan spoke, she even began to appreciate Evan's uncle. It was easy, really, to separate this kind man from the “catch and return” senator she had seen on a Web site so many months ago.

“Soooo,” Lucy said loudly, stepping forward to wash her hands, “everybody is talking about you—especially my parents.”

Alma let out some sort of squeak in response. The calm escaped her body, replaced by a prickly anxiety.

“‘Isn't she beautiful? So exotic! Her hair is like silk! Just look at the way Evan gazes at her. Young love. So sweet.'”

Lucy paused to let her words settle.

“And that's just Mom. My dad was totally lecturing Whit about you: ‘What a gal! So well mannered and polite. And smart as a whip, too. Lord, son. Why can't you find yourself a girl like that?'”

Alma laughed at Lucy's perfect impersonation of Senator Prentiss's deep Southern drawl. Plus, if she laughed, she wouldn't have to reply.

“Poor Daddy. I don't think he's figured out that girls aren't Whit's type.” Lucy said, and then she burst into laughter.

Lucy was right. Whit didn't seem to be into girls, but he wasn't showing many signs of being all that into boys either. Alma was pretty sure that, at this point in his life, Whit was just really confused.

The door flew open and a silver-haired lady tottered in. “Let's get out of here,” Lucy mumbled under her breath. “I'm so ready for the after-party.”

Evan was waiting in his tuxedo and gleaming black shoes when Alma stepped into the hallway. His hair was pushed back from his forehead, and his smiling eyes locked in on hers.

Swoon.

Alma's heart fluttered and her fingertips tingled. She felt the blush rising to her face. But her cynical mind was starting to find ways to crash the hormone fiesta. How long was this blundering idiocy was going to last? How many times would she have to see Evan walking toward her before she quit feeling weak in the knees? Apparently a half year was not long enough.

He glanced around, pulled her into the corner, and drew her into a kiss that sent electricity all the way down to her toes.

 

 

Evan's phone vibrated in his pocket.

He pulled away from Alma reluctantly and glanced at the screen. Then he grabbed Alma's hand to lead her outside through a set of French doors.

“It's your brother,” he said. “We're not supposed to have cell phones in here.”

Alma leaned against the wall, hugging her chest. She looked jaw-dropping in that short black dress. She also looked cold. He pulled her toward him and wrapped his tuxedo jacket around them both.

“What's up, Ra
ú
l?” He felt her arms encircle his waist.

“Not much, man. Are you anywhere near my sister?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Evan replied. Alma giggled, which made him smile and hug her in tight. He loved to hear her laugh.

“Ask her where the hell her cell phone is.”