Six Lunch

I don’t know why I wasn’t dialed into it before. Maybe because I hate this time of year in general? But it’s truly inescapable, if you’re paying attention. All anyone talks about is prom.

Regular prom. Pure Prom. In class. Down the hall between periods. Walking across the commons toward my locker.

“Is it weird that my dress is purple and he wants his tux to be all silver? Does that even work?”

“What are you doing with your hair?”

“I’m having these three fingers done in gold chrome, this one done in burgundy chrome, and the pinkies will stay sheer with pink glitter tips.”

I’m over it. Screw prom. Screw prom posters. Screw prom announcements piped into class through the loudspeakers. Now happening. Every. Single. Morning.

And screw people talking about tickets and dresses and tuxes and hair and makeup in every class too.

B’Rad spots me in the commons on my way to lunch.

He goes, “Where you headed?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I might go over to Sonic. My dad just put some money in my account, so.”

B’Rad doesn’t move for long enough to feel like a hint.

“Want to come?” I add.

“I brought my lunch from home.”

“No one will care,” I tell him. “Come hang out with me.”

Sonic is just across the street and down one block from school. When we get there, B’Rad nabs us a table while I place my order, and by the time I come back to join him, he’s pulled a brown bag out of his backpack that’s so well used it looks more like suede than paper. He dumps out the contents: a sandwich that looks mostly like ketchup seeping through two slices of doughy white bread, a store-brand juice box, and a handful of chips wrapped in a napkin that’s twisted shut.

The patio quickly fills up with kids from school, laughing, shoving, throwing french fries and ice cubes at each other. B’Rad doesn’t seem fazed by the chaos. He doesn’t seem to notice the way some people stare at his food as they walk by. But I do. I’m not an aggressive person, generally speaking, and I’m used to ignoring the way people look at me a lot of the time. But I definitely want to kick some of these people in the tots for the way they side-eye B’Rad’s lunch. I saw how he lives. Not everyone’s dad can load allowance money onto a debit card so they can eat out once in a while. Not everyone gets to buy lunch at Sonic on a random Monday.

The girl who roller-skates my order out looks familiar, but she doesn’t acknowledge me as she puts my food on the table and rolls away.

It seems kind of extravagant to eat this in front of B’Rad, under the circumstances.

“You want half my burger?” I ask.

“I’m good, thanks,” he says, sinking his teeth into his sandwich. A huge gob of ketchup oozes out the side.

“Dude,” I tell him. “I hate to say this, but... you got ketchup-spooged.”

“Where?”

“Right there.” I signal which side of his mouth to hit, and B’Rad snags one of my napkins so he can wipe it off.

“Did I get it all?”

“You did not. On the positive, nobody rocks this zombie-cannibal vibe better than you.”

He snort-laughs, then goes overkill on the napkins to make sure it’s all gone.

After a few minutes of eating in silence, he goes, “So how’s the urn?”

I groan.

“Can we not talk about that?” I say, pushing my cheesy tots into the middle of the table. He takes one.

“How’d your estate sale go?” I ask.

“My granddad came home early, so...”

I’m hit with the image of B’Rad’s grandpa rolling up to a bunch of strangers in his yard, buying all his shit, and I have to force myself not to laugh out loud.

“So, that probably didn’t go over well,” I say with a snort.

“Not at all. Yeah, that may be my last one for a while. Which sucks, because prom’s coming up, and—”

“God,” I groan, even louder this time.

“Wait, that’s also off-limits?”

“Absolutely, completely off-limits.”

“Okay, so no urn, no prom. What’s still on the table?”

I stab three cheesy tots and shove them into my mouth as an answer, but B’Rad, being B’Rad, won’t drop the subject.

“Why so bitter?” he asks. “No date?”

“No. Because prom is stupid, and it hasn’t even happened yet and I’m already sick of it. Aren’t you sick of it? Don’t you feel like it’s a lot of unnecessary pressure?”

He says, “Yeah,” like he has to, not like he believes it. He stops talking long enough to take a few more bites of his sandwich, wiping his mouth every time now, just to be on the safe side.

“Would you want to go, though?” he asks. “If someone wanted to go with you?”

I stop chewing the bite of hamburger I just took and blink at him. He knows, right? I mean... he must know I don’t date guys.

He goes, “I’m just asking because we’ve already gone to one dance together, so. It’ll be like old times.”

“Uh-uh,” I say with my mouth full. “We did not go to a dance together. We danced together one time. And that was just awkward.”

“Awkward how?”

“Dude, I was there with Coley Salazar and Araceli Guzmán, who—by the way—saw you kiss me and would not shut up about it for two whole weeks.”

“That’s not on me.” He takes another tot from the paper basket. “I asked if I could kiss you and you leaned in.”

“I leaned in because you said something, and I couldn’t hear you.”

“Damn,” he says, chewing on that tot until it’s nothing but a memory. “That is awkward.”

“It’s the actual definition of awkward.”

B’Rad’s glasses start slipping. He pushes them up and I see for the first time how the earpiece is attached to the frame with electrical tape. He’s freaking MacGyver—that shit blends in so well, I almost didn’t notice.

He finishes off his sandwich, checks in with me about the ketchup situation, then says, “At least the kiss was okay.”

My head tips heavy to one side, but I try to keep my voice soft.

“Dude...”

He flat-palms me and winces. “Don’t do that, Daya. Not pity-face. Not from you.”

At least he’s still smiling.

Oh, B’Rad. Someday, some nerdy girl with a collection of unicorn-cat T-shirts and a cool retro gaming system will be the happiest person alive to have you as a boyfriend.

I pile up my trash, reach for his lunch bag, but he slips it out from under me.

“I got it,” he says.

As I get up to throw my trash away, I catch him stuffing the paper bag into his backpack.

We make it back to campus within seconds of the tardy bell. But before heading off to fifth period, B’Rad turns to me and makes one last-ditch effort.

“Hey. If you change your mind about prom, let me know.”

I point at him. “You’ll be the first.”

I head toward class with my unicorn-cat-T-shirt radar on high alert. I’m not above girl-scouting on B’Rad’s behalf, for a prom date or otherwise.

“Escuchen bien, estudiantes.”

Here it comes. Se?ora Mu?oz is about to give instructions for our end-of-the-year project.

All in Spanish, she explains how we’re supposed to give a presentation on a Latin American figure—who they are or were, and what their impacts on history and culture have been. Halfway through Se?ora’s explanation, Beckett’s hand goes up, and I smile in private, because of course her hand would go up before Se?ora Mu?oz is even finished explaining. Beckett is a super-student. She crosses all her t’s, dots all her i’s, squiggles all her ?’s.

“?Sí, Se?orita Wild?” Se?ora Mu?oz says.

“Is this a partner thing? Can we pick our own partners?”

“?Buena pregunta!” Se?ora Mu?oz pulls a plastic cup off her desk, filled with crafting sticks that she’s written our names on. She tells us, again en espa?ol, that yes, it’s a partner project, and yes, we can choose our own partner if we like, or she can choose one for us at random using the sticks.

Gustavo Meza blurts out, “What if there’s an odd number of people in class?” because that’s what Gustavo Meza always does, and Beckett turns backward in her seat and looks at me. She smiles, flips her lime-green-tipped finger between us.

My heart does the zapateado again. I never fully understood it when Stella would say, “That girl makes my insides do the zapateado,” until she tried to show me the dance moves once. The footwork was too fast and fancy for me to keep up. But I get it now. My heart is racing way ahead of my brain.

I stutter-nod a yes at her.

Beckett raises her hand again.

“I choose Daya,” she says.

The word choose dances in my stomach.

Se?ora Mu?oz scribbles our names in her plan book, and the guy behind me leans forward and makes kissing noises in my ear, just soft enough for the teacher not to hear.

An uncomfortable heat fans out across my face.

Once all the pairs are recorded, Se?ora Mu?oz projects the rest of the information onto the board so we can copy it into our notes. I’m mostly finished when a folded piece of paper lands on my desk, and when I look up, Oscar Díaz tips his head in Beckett’s direction.

“From her,” he says.

She’s smiling at me again. Or maybe she’s smiling still, I don’t know. Smiling comes so easy to her.

I open the note.

Talk after class for a minute?

She’s watching me. Waiting.

I look around, wondering if anyone else will make kissing noises, before turning back to her. I give a single nod as my answer.

I spend the rest of the period counting the clicks of the second hand as it drags excruciatingly slow around the dial toward the bell.

When it finally rings, Beckett comes over to my desk. She sits in Oscar Díaz’s empty seat as I pack up my bag.

“So that’s cool,” she says. “Right?”

“Definitely,” I say, trying to keep from losing all my chill right in front of her. I know it doesn’t mean the same thing to her as it does to me that we’ll be working together for the next two weeks. She’s just doing a Spanish project. I’ll have to constantly remind myself that, once the project is over, it’ll just be... over.

No one, especially Beckett Wild, will ever have to know how I feel about her.

“I’m really glad you’re my partner, Daya,” she says.

“Yeah?” I smile just enough to seem friendly, but not enough to let her know that her words are alchemy. That all I have to do is be near her and I’m transformed.

She nods, smiles even wider. “Yeah.”

I tell myself not to be weird about it as I push the flap of my bag closed, realizing too late that the entire front of my bag is covered in feminist fury patches.

She doesn’t seem to notice. She just goes, “So anyway, I kind of want to get started right away. Would that be cool with you?”

The question makes me smile. Of course Miss A+ in every class would want to get started right away.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

“Awesome.” She pulls her phone out of her bag. “What time?”

I blink and go, “What time, what?”

“Should I come over.”

“Come over?” I say. “Like, to my house?”

This time, Beckett smiles. “How else are we supposed to work on our project?”

My mouth goes desert-dry all of a sudden. “I just—I guess I figured we’d go to your house. Because. I mean. You probably have snacks. And internet. All the modern amenities, y’know?”

“You’re so funny, Daya.” She throws a playful nudge against me. “We’re just brainstorming ideas. We don’t need anything for that.”

She holds her phone out to me.

“Type in your deets,” she says, and I reel between euphoria and dread as I key in my address and phone number.

“Great,” she says. “I’ll see you at three thirty.”

I’ll see you at three thirty. Beckett’s words have been on repeat in my head since fifth period, but the closer I get to my house, the faster they spin. I shimmy the back door open, and hurry down the hall to my room to put my things away and straighten up a bit. If she’s on time, I’ve got maybe ten minutes to pull myself together before she gets here.

And please God let Joanna work late tonight so she doesn’t come home and crop-dust our study session with her negativity.

I hit the brakes crossing from the living room to the kitchen when I spot the used urn Joanna bought over the weekend. Something like that could freak a person out. My grandpa’s ashes aren’t even in it yet, so I pull it down and stash it in the front hall closet.

There are so many other things I wish I could change about our house before she gets here, but thanks to a rip in the fabric of the universe, Beckett Wild is ringing my doorbell right this very second. I take a deep breath and open the door.

She’s standing there, smiling as always, radiating color and light. Man, how does she do that?

Over her shoulder, I see the brightly colored scooter she must have ridden here, plus the neighbor from across the street, who’s pretending not to look our way as she checks her mailbox.

Beckett says, “Hey,” real soft, and my gaze rolls back to her.

“Hey. Hi. Come in.”

This is so surreal. Friday night, I was chatting with Beckett Wild at a house party, wondering if she’d ever willingly have another conversation with me. Now she’s standing inside my house. She smells like flowers. Like the kind of flowers you’d find growing in an open field just off a hiking trail, not the bogus ones they sell in stores that smell like scented bathroom cleaner.

She drifts into the living room, taking in everything around her while my heart moshes in the pit of my chest. I wonder what she must be thinking.

But all she says is, “Cool.”

And all I say is, “Yeah.”

And then she says, “Anyway,” and the air in the room coagulates for a few seconds.

“I’m kind of dying to know what your room looks like,” Beckett finally says.

I feel like a helium balloon she’s holding on to as we head down the hallway.

I open the door.

“Oh wow, this is cool.” She stops to pick up a bronze statuette off my dresser. She studies it like it’s going to be on the test. “Did you make this?”

“My grandfather did,” I say.

I watch close as her fingers trace the lines and curves of the woman’s skirt.

“He wanted to do a whole series of, like, rebellious women from history. But he only did two or three before he died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Beckett says.

“Thanks. This one’s an Adelita,” I add, moving in a little closer. “She’s a soldier from the Mexican Revolution.”

Her eyes pivot from the figurine in her hands to me, then back again. “I don’t remember hearing about women soldiers in the Mexican Revolution.”

“Yeah, they don’t like to teach us about badass women in history,” I say. “But they should, because these women were amazing. Even the ones who didn’t fight in battle, but especially the ones who did.”

“Wow,” she says again. The word floats, light and soft, into my room.

I look at the patinaed surface of the Adelita sculpture.

“That’s what I loved about my grandfather, though. He shared those stories with me. He always told me how art should say something, and... he made me want to make art so I could say something.”

I reach over, run my fingertip along the bandolier of bullets across the Adelita’s chest, careful not to touch Beckett’s fingers as she cradles the statue.

I take my hand away before that can happen.

“My grandpa had a lot of respect for women who fought for what was right,” I say. “Especially when it was seen as not being their place at the time. I think he understood that kind of fight better than a lot of men. I mean...” I laugh. “The dude had a Joan of Arc quote tattooed on his arm.”

I wish I could read her face, or her mind. I have no idea what she’s thinking.

But all she says is, “Seriously cool,” before she puts the Adelita back on top of my dresser and moves over to the bed.

My. Bed.

Of all the places in the universe she could be right now, she’s on my DC Comics blanket, leaning back against my wall. She slips a pencil out of her backpack, then her notebook. She’s fully prepared to start on what she came here to do.

I roll my desk chair out, but the seat part falls off like always, and I fumble for a few seconds to reattach it.

“Shit,” I mumble, then realize what I said. “Shoot. I’m sorry.” I tuck the broken-off seat bottom under my desk. “It happens all the time. It’s fixable. I know how to fix it.”

I’m rambling.

She goes, “Just sit here. I don’t mind.”

But I do. I mind. I don’t want to be that close to her. I don’t want to feel the warmth of her body just inches away from mine because that would make her seem real, and she’s not real. None of this is real. This is Spanish class with a change of venue. Friends without benefits. Barely friends.

“I promise I won’t bite,” she says.

Jesus, my mouth is so dry. I ease down on the foot of the bed, the lower half of Wonder Woman visible between us, while the string lights across my ceiling catch the prism of colors in her hair. She smiles at me through her freckles, smiles with her eyes, not just her mouth. Beckett Wild belongs in a museum. She’s an impressionist masterpiece, a kaleidoscope of randomness. Only... not. Nothing about her is random, except for the fact that she’s here.

The sight of her eye-line sloped in my direction snaps me back to reality. But it’s not reality, because every time I breathe, I smell flowers. Just like in eighth grade, when she dyed her hair with blue Kool-Aid, and I asked our art teacher if I could move seats next to her. I made up a lie about why I wanted to move, because the truth was, Beckett Wild smelled like blue Kool-Aid and all I had to do to be part of it was sit next to her and breathe.

“You know what bugs me about Spanish?” she asks out of the blue. “I always feel like I’m doing it wrong because there’s always a different way I could’ve said something. Like, why does every question have so many ways to answer when they only teach us one kind of formula?”

Beckett Wild has just summed up my entire life in a single, perfect sentence.

“I know what you mean,” I tell her. “But... it’s also true in every language. Y’know? There’s always more than one way to say something.”

She leans back. “I get that. Language is definitely fluid.”

“Yeah, but I mean...” Our feet touch, and I stare down at them as I add, “Everything is fluid.”

Beckett pulls herself into a lotus position and looks around, stopping every place I’ve hung a piece of my art, and I feel suddenly self-conscious. I stretch my legs out, throw one over the other to keep from touching her again, but she’s still so close. Too close.

Close enough for her to notice the doodles on my jeans. To touch them as she asks, “So, how come we haven’t had an art class together since, like, junior high?”

“I don’t know,” I say, still tripping on the statistical improbability that Beckett Wild would ever be in my room, on my bed, and yet... here she is.

In the silence, things go awkward again. My eyes drift, trying to see things through her POV... my broken desk chair, the ceiling full of string lights, the figurine on my dresser. I pan in close on the Adelita’s face. On the determination of her expression.

I go, “Hey, what if...?”

She sits up tall, does her super-student lean-in.

“What if we did our report on la Adelita?”

Beckett follows my gaze to my grandfather’s figurine.

“You already know a lot about her,” she says.

“Actually, it wasn’t really a her. It was a whole movement of women who cooked and took care of the men, and eventually fought alongside them. They inspired all kinds of music and art too.”

Beckett’s already got her phone out and scrolling.

“Adelita’s bravery and revolutionary spirit are lost to the fatalism and insecurities of male soldiers who focused on passion, love, and desire,” she reads. “Well, that’s bogus.”

I can’t believe this is my life right now. Even if this moment just turns out to be one small patch of color on a giant blank canvas, it doesn’t matter. Because we’re here now.

She’s here now.

And then she’s gone.

After Beckett leaves, I stretch out on the bed, try to match my body to where her body had been. Stretch my legs where her legs were. Lean my head where her head was. I take a deep breath. My room smells like whatever she uses to wash her hair. I press back against my pillow, imagine Beckett and me, filling up that blank white canvas with an explosion of color.

Alone, in my room, I let thoughts of Beckett Wild take me somewhere else.

Somewhere bigger than here.

Where someone like her could be with someone like me, and no one would have anything to say about it.

Somewhere that’s not Escondido.

And I wouldn’t have to worry about what happens when my mother gets home.