Efrain's Secret (5 page)

Chingy and I always meet on the corner of St. Ann’s Avenue and 141st Street after I drop off my sister and walk together to school. But when I arrive, he’s nowhere to be found. I check my watch, and I’m right on time. Always am. Chingy, too. The first time Nestor made us late for first period was the last. I insisted that we give him a few minutes, and the next thing we knew, Chingy and I were running to beat the bell. After that, Chingy would bop through the intersection at exactly eight o’clock without breaking his stride. Whoever showed up just jumped in alongside him, and usually it was just me. Sometimes when we were halfway to AC, Nestor would come huffing and puffing behind us, yelling “Y’all niggas left me.” Eventually, he stopped appearing altogether, but it took Chingy and me a few weeks to realize that he had dropped out of high school.

Suddenly a man calls my name. It’s none other than Rubio sidling up to me in his Civic, and it’s too late to pretend that I don’t see or hear him. “You need ride to school?” he asks. I barely shake my head. Damn, Chingy, where you at? “Come on. I take you.”

“I’m waiting for somebody.”

“¿A quién? ¿A Nestor?”
I just suck my teeth and give him my back. “I have question about the paper you mother give me.”

Chingy finally races around the corner. “Thanks for waiting, cuz. If you had bounced, I wouldn’t’ve been mad at you.” Without noticing Rubio, he steps and rambles.

I fall in beside him as if nothing is unusual. “What happened, kid?”

“Man, I overslept. The Giants-Cowboys game went into overtime, yo. You know a brother had to stay up and watch it.”

Rubio creeps the Civic alongside us like a stalker. When we reach the corner, he turns right and blocks our path. A woman with a shopping cart curses at him in patois for blocking the curb cut. He ignores her and unlocks the car doors.

Chingy peers through the passenger window. “Yo, E., it’s your pops.” He throws open the back door and jumps inside.
“¿Cómo está, Señor Rodriguez?”

But Rubio’s eyes are only on me as I slide into the front passenger seat and slam the door behind me.
“Estoy bien. ¿Y tú …?”

This is mad embarrassing. “His name is Rashaan,” I bark. The guy has only been my best friend for twelve years. “Get it right already.”

“Chill, E. It’s cool.
Estoy muy chévere, señor. Gracias por preguntar.”

Rubio isn’t here to help Chingy practice his Spanish, so I finally turn to ask him what he wants with me.
“¿Y qué quiere conmigo?”

“¿Qué quiero yo contigo?”
he repeats sarcastically.
“Eres tú que m’está buscando sin venir a verme, mandando a tu mai.”
Me looking for him? Yeah, right. If I wanted to see him, I know where Awilda lives. I know where all his jump-offs live. And this is why I didn’t want my mother to call Rubio about the financial aid form in the first place.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to speak Spanish in front of people who don’t know it?” Of course, that’s Rubio’s point. He doesn’t want Chingy to understand what we’re talking about. On the real? Neither do I. I’d rather not have this conversation at all.

“Speak for yourself, son,” says Chingy. “I’m fluent.”

We arrive at AC, and I fly out of the Civic. “You come by my work,” says Rubio. “We talk about you papers for school.”

As Chingy thanks Rubio for the ride, I bound toward the school building. He double-times to catch up with me. “What’s up with you, man?”

“I told my moms to leave that alone.” As Chingy walks me to Spanish class, I explain how Rubio created static between my mother and me by blowing my chat with Nestor out of proportion. I can tell that Chingy doesn’t like the fact that I was parlaying with Nes, but he bites his tongue. “Then she calls him about some forms he needs to fill out so I can apply for financial aid, and he got it in his head that she used that as an excuse to talk to him, freakin’ narcissist. And now he’s trying to bypass her and come to me, fronting like he doesn’t understand the paperwork.”

“So?”

“So?”

“Even if he thinks that about your moms, what difference does it make?” says Chingy. “You know the truth; your moms knows the truth. Besides, your pops probably really doesn’t understand the forms. It’s not like English is his first language.”

“Don’t defend him.”

“I’m not trying to defend him. I’m trying to look out for you.” We reach my classroom. “Look, E., I know your pops did some foul stuff, and I understand how you feel about him, you know, using you to hide his dirt. But if the guy wants to step up and help you with your grind, let him. Maybe that’s his way of making it up to you. Don’t get in your own way just to spite him, cuz. That’s mad stupid.”

That’s what I mean about Chingy being oblivious. I don’t question that he’s trying to look out for me, but, obviously, he
doesn’t understand at all to say something like that. The bell rings, and I tell Chingy to peace out and go into my classroom.

Giving in to Stevie’s incessant reminders that she hasn’t shown us a movie all month, Señorita Polanco plays a documentary about the Young Lords called
¡Palante, Siempre Palante!
As she dims the lights and the credits roll, my mind is still on Chingy’s advice. If I were anything like Rubio, I’d do exactly what Chingy says. I’d use him to get what I needed regardless of how it might make anyone feel. But just because Rubio’s my father doesn’t make me his son. I’m my own man. A man unlike him.

Brazen
(adj.)
excessively bold, brash

Ten minutes into physics class, Chingy throws a folded piece of pink paper on my desk. I look at him like he’s crazy, and he tilts his head toward the front of the room. GiGi González waves to me from where she sits in the first seat in the same row as Chingy. Her French manicure is hot. Way better than all the colors and hardware Leti likes to pile on her nails. I unfold her note.

I look up and mouth
Work
. She mouths back
Oh
. Then she pouts and rubs a fist over her eye like she’s crying. I drop my head behind my notebook before she can catch me smiling. But Chingy throws a peanut or raisin or whatever they gave out at lunch at me, so I flip him the bird.

A few minutes later he throws another piece of whatever at me. When Mr. Harris turns his back to write the work-energy theorem on the board, I jump up from my desk, chop Chingy in the neck, and rush to sit back down. The other kids in the class snicker at us, and Mr. Harris whirls around. “What the heck’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” a few people mumble.

“I guarantee you this will be on the Regents, so I’d stop messing around and pay attention if I were you.”

When I look down to copy the notes from the board, I find another folded pink note on my desk. I hesitate to open it. GiGi’s the business, but I have to bust my ass for my measly seventy-two average in physics. Leti is the current salutatorian and is only five points behind me. I know homegirl’s gunning for me, and I’m not mad at her for that, but I
have
to be valedictorian if I want to go to any Ivy League school, especially if I don’t score a 2100 or more when I retake the SAT in January. No either/or, man. I have to do both, which means finding a way to take that prep class at Fordham that starts in a few weeks.

Chingy lets out a big
ahem
to remind me that GiGi awaits. I can’t resist anymore and open her note. Under what she had already written in blue, she wrote in red:

She drew a bunch of lines under the word
more
and drew a face with the tongue sticking out.

“Efrain Rodriguez?” I snap up my head. “If a skier glides from the top of mountain A down the slope and back up to the top of mountain B, and there is no friction in the ice,” says Mr. Harris, “is that potential energy to kinetic energy or vice versa?”

I can’t even front. “I don’t know.”

“Georgina González?”

The whole class snickers again, and someone starts squealing
Georgina
like a farmer calling his pig. GiGi’s never liked her real name, and that’s why she’s had everybody calling her “GiGi” since
elementary school. These herbs are only laughing at her now because they could never get a hottie like GiGi.

She says, “It’s PE to KE.”

“Why?”

“Because as he’s going down mountain A, the skier’s losing height and gaining speed. Gravity’s changing the energy from the height, which is stored energy—potential energy—into energy from the speed, which is motion or kinetic energy. So it’s PE to KE.”

The funky look on Mr. Harris’s face tells us that GiGi’s right, and some of the kids clown him. So what does Mr. Harris do? He says, “Since you didn’t know that, Mr. Rodriguez, you can answer all the questions at the end of the chapter in addition to the homework assignment.”

When the bell rings, I grab my books and race out of the classroom. Chingy chases me as I run down the steps to the school library. “You’re trippin’, cuz,” he says to me. “Not a dude in this school that wouldn’t give up ten years of his life to get with GiGi González, and you go and dis her.”

I say, “That chick’s nothing but trouble.” What does GiGi want with me all of a sudden anyway? I fling open the library door. Some of the kids who need tutoring are already there.

“E., I know this is gonna sound bugged out, but you gotta listen to me.” Chingy puts his hand on my shoulder like he’s my favorite uncle. “There’s just some kind of trouble that does the body good.”

I laugh. “Man, that’s just, like, the stupidest—”

“Yo, who’s the Halle, son?” Chingy interrupts, his eyes following Candace as she walks from the door to a table. “And why were you keeping her a secret from a brother?”

“Candace?” I say it with the same attitude she gave me yesterday.

“Damn, it’s like that?” Chingy puts his hand to his heart as if he’s trying to hold the pieces together.

“Just like that.” At least GiGi’s got a smile for you. All Candace has is a chip on her shoulder. She can keep that. “Remember what Leti told you about that transfer student? The one from K-Ville?”

GiGi walks into the library. All the guys—even the ones who weren’t checking for Candace—turn to watch her strut. “Hey, Efrain.” She comes toward Chingy and me, and I can feel the hate swarm us like a biblical plague. “Can I speak to you?” She slides her arm through mine and pulls me aside.

Lefty yells out, “Yo, GiGi, you work here now?” GiGi rolls her eyes at him. “Aw, man.”

Chingy says, “Sorry, bro. That was your last chance to graduate before 2020.” Everyone laughs, no one harder than me. When Mr. Sweren assigned Lefty to Candace, I thought,
That’s what you call justice
.

GiGi tugs at my sleeve to get my attention. “Look, Efrain, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble with Mr. Harris.” I wouldn’t have minded so much if it were English or some other class I’m killing. But physics is killing me, and possibly my chances of attending an elite college. “Let me make it up to you.” Now she smoothes her hand over my collar. “I’ll do your physics homework for you.”

“Yeah, right.” For a second, I thought GiGi was going to suggest something else, and if she had not got me caught out there in physics, I would have been disappointed that she didn’t. Thank God Chingy’s obtuse because he would never let me hear the end of it.

GiGi punches me in the arm. “I’m serious. Drop by my house around eight tonight to come get it.” She winks at me and starts to walk to the door. She yells over her shoulder, “Just call me first when you’re on the way ’cause a lady likes to prepare for her visitors.”

The millisecond the door taps the frame, Chingy starts. “That’s what’s up, player! You heard that? She said,
Come get IT
. My boy Efrain’s, like, the pimp of the honor roll.” He laughs at his own joke until he catches the look on my face. Then he immediately stops. “You know what I mean.”

“Whatever,” I say. This is why we’re boys. Once he has a clue, Chingy always does the right thing.

“Better not do nothing until I get there ’cause clearly you’re going to need my help,” he says, popping his collar. “I’ll be the Cyrano to your Christian, cuz.”

I may not take French, but I know damn well how that tragedy ends. Chingy’s first “tutee” walks into the library, so I point and say, “Go help somebody who actually needs it.” Mine is late, so I wander over to the rack where the librarian keeps her recommendations. I get caught up in a directory of college scholarships when I overhear Lefty giving Candace a hard time.

She says, “Focus, Dominic, please. Let’s break the problem down using smaller numbers to make sure we understand it.” If it were anyone else, I’d feel sorry for her, but since it’s Ms. Like That, I just snicker to myself. “It says the jeweler charges double the amount it costs him to get the merchandise. So let’s pretend that he gets a diamond ring for five thousand dollars. How much does it mean he would sell it for?”

“You like diamonds, boo?” says Lefty the Lamest. “I can get you a diamond ring if you want one.”