The Mare

Velvet

This bullshit went on all week. I would sit at the end of the long table in the cafeteria trying to ignore Marisol while Strawberry and Alicia sat together laughing and basically ignoring me. It finally blew up when I told my mom what was happening and she gave me some dates with powdered sugar on them to offer at lunch. I brought out the dates and before I could even share them, Alicia said, “Gross!” and they laughed and somebody made a fart noise. I didn’t even get what she meant until we were sitting down in class and then I realized and I grabbed the wastebasket and emptied it on Alicia’s dirty-mouth head. Everybody laughed and she waved her arms around like a jackass and Ms. Rodriguez yelled, “Velvet, that is it! You get a week of detention and also you will sit separate from the rest of the class!”

But I didn’t care because when I did that to Alicia, Strawberry turned and looked at me, smiling with her eyes for the first time since school started.

A few days later, she found me during recess. Recess was in two different courtyards, one for the real little kids like Dante and another one for us. Both of them had bars to balance on and there was a jungle gym for the little kids, but most boys chased each other or threw crushed-up paper at the bended-up basketball hoop because there was no ball. Girls mostly listened to their music and styled their hair and told stories. Usually I twirled on the bars or messed around with somebody so I could listen to their radio, but that day I was in the cafeteria reading this book I found about a girl who had a weird disease when she was little. I didn’t want to read in front of people messing around, and anyway I liked the cafeteria when it was quiet and everything was echo-y and the old food smelled sad in a nice way.

I don’t know how she knew I was there, but she came and asked if she could sit with me. She asked me what I did in the summer and I opened my notebook and showed her me on Joker and Reesa. And she took the book and her eyes got big. “Marisol told me you rode horses,” she said, “but I didn’t believe her.”

So I told her about Ginger and Paul and the barn. The only thing I held back on was Fugly Girl. I don’t know why. I even showed her the picture of Ginger. Strawberry looked at her and said, “She looks nice. Is she?” I said, “Yeah. She would get me anything I wanted.”

Strawberry handed me back the notebook and started talking about going to Puerto Rico and how her cousin there had a big house and birds that could talk. I started to ask her about her brother, if he was really in Puerto Rico or if he was really dead but I didn’t; like she could hear my thought, she looked down and turned away. When she turned back she asked if maybe she could come with me and ride the horses, too. I wanted to say, How’re you gonna do that if you can’t even talk to me at school? Instead I said I could ask Ginger. And she said, “Thanks. But don’t tell Alicia and them, okay?” I didn’t answer, I just looked away from her thinking, How could she look in my eyes and say that? She knew, ’cause she got up to go back to the courtyard. Then she stopped and turned and said, “Maybe you could come to my house sometime?”

If it was anybody else I would’ve said, Fuck you. You think you can use me like that? But she was Strawberry. So I said, “Okay.”