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  Accidental Love

  Gary Soto

  * * *

  HARCOURT, INC.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  * * *

  Copyright © 2006 by Gary Soto

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be

  mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Soto, Gary.

  Accidental love/Gary Soto,

  p. cm.

  Summary: After unexpectedly falling in love with a "nerdy" boy,

  fourteen-year-old Marisa works to change her life by transferring to

  another school, altering some of her behavior, and losing weight.

  [1. Love—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Overweight persons—Fiction.

  4. Hispanic Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S7242Acc 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2004029900

  ISBN-13: 978-0-15-205497-7 ISBN-10: 0-15-205497-9

  Text set in Melior

  Designed by April Ward

  C E G H F D

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  For Armando Ramirez

  and the good folks

  at Half Moon Bay Library

  Chapter 1

  At fourteen Marisa welcomed any excuse to miss school. But today she had a good reason for cutting class. Alicia, her best friend, lay in the hospital with a broken leg and a broken heart, all because her boyfriend had crashed his parents' car when a tire blew. The leg had broken in the crash, but her heart had broken when the glove compartment opened on impact and shot out a photo of stupid Roberto with his arm around another girl.

  Marisa was off to give her homegirl a meaningful hug. "He's such a shisty rat," she growled as she pictured that no-good Roberto, an average-looking fool whose fingers were always orange from Cheetos. She, too, savored that junk food snack, but—she argued—at least she always licked her fingers clean. But not him! Stupid jerk! Big pendejo! How could Alicia stand his face? She was always treating him to food and paying for gas for their car rides into the country.

  Marisa's anger was deflected to a passing station wagon that nearly hit her as she started across the street. "You estúpidol" she spat as she threw her hands into the air in anger. The pair of eyes she saw in the rearview mirror were old and could have belonged to any of her six aunts. Ay, Chihuahua, how Marisa's grandmother bore children, all female, all large, all different as pepper from salt. Marisa admonished herself for yelling at the elderly driver. "Maybe it was one of mis tías," she told herself, and her rage dissolved. Her thoughts returned to Alicia tucked away in a hospital bed and then quickly to Roberto, the rat. If my boyfriend was cheating on me... She was brooding when she remembered that she didn't have a boyfriend. So what was the worry? She found herself shrugging and thinking she'd never have a boyfriend as she peeked at her stomach with its roll of fat.

  "Room 438," she told herself as the salmon-colored hospital came into view. "That's where my homegirl is. She's gonna be hecka surprised." Marisa swallowed her fear. Hospitals were where you went to die. She remembered Grandma Olga's last days. Her grandmother, struggling with cancer, rolled from her side to her stomach to sitting on the bed and dangling her rope-thin legs. Dying, Marisa had thought then, was a matter of getting comfortable.

  Marisa rode up in an elevator between two male nurses with paper bootees on their shoes. She herself had considered becoming a nurse, but that was years before, when she had dolls whose arms would fall off, and she would stick the arms back on only to have them fall off again. The dolls, she remembered, lay under her bed, their eyes open but not taking in a whole lot.

  The elevator opened with a sigh. Marisa stepped out, glancing slowly left and then right. "Room 438," she muttered as she cut a glance to a man in a wheelchair pushing himself up the hallway by the strength of his thin arms. A bottle of clear fluid hung on a steel pole behind him, and clear tubes were delivering that fluid into his arms.

  Marisa grimaced. She would hate to have something stabbed in her all day. Does it hurt like a pinch? she wondered. A bee sting?

  When she located the room, Alicia was staring gloomily toward the ceiling. For a moment Marisa figured that Alicia was appealing to God in heaven. But as she stepped inside, she realized that Alicia's eyes were raised to a muted television. On the screen some carpenter was carrying a sheet of plywood over his head. It was a boring home-decorating show, the kind her mother liked to watch on Saturday afternoons.

  "Hey, girl!" Marisa greeted loudly.

  Alicia lowered her eyes to her friend, and for a few seconds her face was expressionless. Then it slowly blossomed with a smile. Her eyes narrowed into little slits of light.

  "Marisa," Alicia greeted in return. She raised a feeble hand and Marisa grasped her friend's hand and gave it a loving squeeze, then smothered Alicia with a hug.

  "How's it? Your pata?" Marisa asked as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  "It's not my leg," Alicia replied, and rapped her heart as if it were a door. "It's this that's hurting."

  Marisa's eyes flashed as her mind fluttered with the image of Roberto. Sure, he got in trouble with his parents for crashing the car, but wasn't Alicia worse off?

  "I told you he was no good," Marisa offered in judgment. "Is your mom really mad?" Alicia's mother was an accountant and was not only good at numbers but also at keeping tabs on her daughter's whereabouts.

  "A little bit. Actually, a lot," Alicia answered weakly. Her tiny hands squeezed her blanket. Marisa, a big girl whose shadow covered other people's when they walked together, couldn't help but think of Alicia as a little doll. She couldn't keep herself from saying, "You look so tiny, girl."

  "I am tiny."

  This truth made Marisa smolder. How dare Roberto cheat on my little homegirl! How she would love to get him into a headlock and bounce his head off a wall. She had watched enough wrestling on TV to know how to do it.

  "My mom says I can't see him anymore."

  "My mom would be hecka mad," Marisa said. "And my dad—" She shrugged. She wasn't clear how her dad would view such a tragedy. He was a lot more carefree. But her mom? She pictured her mother at the stove smashing beans into refritos and yelling over the radio that her daughter was headed down the wrong road, blah, blah, blah.

  "What are you doing here? How come you're not at school?" Alicia asked.

  "Seeing you," Marisa replied. "I just walked right out of school and two miles to get here." She pinched her stomach. "I'm gonna start losing weight."

  "You look good."

  "¡Mentirosa!" Marisa swiped a light slap on her friend's arm. She repeated how she had bounced down the stairs of second-floor East Hall and walked out of Washington High School during morning break. The security guard had even waved good-bye. That was how much they didn't care.

  Alicia placed a hand over her mouth and laughed. "You're mala. Your mom and dad's going to find out."

  "So?" But Marisa was worried. Her mom had threatened that if she got in trouble again at school—she had been suspended for a week for fighting over lip gloss she had lent some girl—she was going to send her away to live with one of her aunts. Marisa didn't want to get in trouble again, but the idea of going to a new school appealed
to her. She knew that she would miss a few friends, but she could always depend on her cell phone. Each month she was loaded with free minutes.

  Alicia's eyes suddenly filled and two lines of tears raced down her cheeks.

  Marisa thumbed the salty track making its way down to the left side of Alicia's chin, and she was amazed how cool the tear was. If she were crying, her tears would be as hot as motor oil.

  "Do you want me to hit him?" Marisa asked. Her hand was closed into a rock-hard fist.

  "Who?" Alicia asked, sounding like a sad owl.

  "Roberto!" Roberto was tall but lanky. Marisa imagined that she could lower her shoulder and bulldoze him into the lockers and follow up with a smacking slap to his face. This, too, she had learned from watching wrestling. Who said TV was a waste of time?

  "No," Alicia said, then pouted like a fish. "I don't need him."

  "You go, girl." Marisa smiled and leaned her face into her friend's shoulder. They hugged and told each other how they couldn't depend on anyone except each other. Marisa's own tears began to roll hot from her eyes. But the girls stopped hugging when Marisa heard a voice behind her. The voice belonged to someone Marisa knew. Her mother!

  Busted! Marisa thought as she swiped away the tears from her eyes and sat up.

  "Hi, Mrs. Rodriguez," Alicia greeted. "I asked Marisa to come and see me."

  Marisa's mother stood with her hands propped on her hips. Her eyes narrowed darkly. She seemed to weigh whether Alicia was telling the truth. She shook her head, jangling her earrings, and made her judgment. "You girls are lying. Marisa's skipping school. You think I was born yesterday?"

  Marisa opened her mouth, forging the image of a daughter shocked that a parent—a mother, of all people!—didn't believe her. She raised her hands to hex chest as if to say, "You mean me?" She would have stamped her foot dramatically in protest to her mother's verdict, but she was sitting on the edge of the high hospital bed. Her feet didn't touch the floor.

  "Don't say anything that I can use against you later," her mother warned, a storm beginning to rage inside her.

  Her mother sounded like the police. And to Marisa, she was the police with her own court and punishment.

  "It's my fault, Mrs. Rodriguez," Alicia piped up. "I told her to come."

  Marisa's mother ignored her as she repeated the lie, obvious because Marisa volunteered a truth: "Nah, I came on my own, Mom. It's my fault."

  "I'll be talking to you later," her mother told Marisa. "Aren't you sorry I decided to come visit Alicia myself?" She turned her hard gaze from her daughter to Alicia. Her mother's eyes softened, the storm inside subsiding. "How are you, mi'ja?"

  "It's only a fracture," Alicia replied with her hand on her heart. "The doctor is releasing me tomorrow."

  "Cool!" Marisa crowed.

  Marisa's mother frowned at her daughter. She then turned her attention back to Alicia and asked if the doctor had prescribed pain pills and how long the leg would be in a cast. She didn't ask about the boy who had been driving the car when the accident occurred.

  "I got some pills and it really don't hurt so bad. It's just that it itches." Alica pulled up the bedsheet and revealed a blue cast that came up to her thigh. She knocked on the cast. "It's really hard."

  Marisa was curious how Alicia would shower. Wouldn't the cast get soggy and fall off? Instead she asked, "Did they get you some getaway sticks, some crutches?"

  "Not yet. Someone's going to teach me to use them today."

  They talked mainly about school and family. When Alicia mentioned the fall dance and a tide of tears rose in her eyes, Marisa's mother patted her hand. She produced from her purse a small package of miniature white-powdered doughnuts.

  "I know that sweets aren't very good for you," her mother whispered after she gazed back at the door, where occasionally a nurse passed in the hallway. "But these will make you feel better. They're better than pain pills. And forget about the dance. There'll be others."

  Marisa was going to snap, "You never buy me doughnuts like that!" But her mouth, which often got her into trouble, closed as quickly as it had opened. She realized that Alicia was hurt and that her mother was displaying her concern.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Rodriguez. I love these!" Alicia said. She opened up the package and offered the first doughnut to Marisa.

  Marisa was moved. "She's a true friend," she told herself. She took a bite and then offered the rest to Alicia, who opened her mouth and closed it around the doughnut. Some crumbs fell onto the front of Alicia's hospital gown, but she scooped them up. She sucked them down like a vacuum, something Marisa knew that she would do in private but never with anyone looking on. The intimate gesture convinced her that Alicia was the best friend ever.

  Marisa's mother refused the doughnuts, but the girls ate until they were gone and both were wishing for glasses of milk to wash them down.

  "Okay, let's go," Marisa's mother ordered her daughter as she got off the bed, smoothing her dress.

  Marisa raised a hand, as if holding a cell phone to her ear. "Call you later."

  Alicia blew her friend a kiss.

  Mother and daughter rode the noiseless elevator down. Marisa expected her mother to yell at her, but her mother, looking into a compact and dabbing her mouth with red, red lipstick, instead told her that they had to stop at a repair shop—she had discovered a nail in the front left tire.

  Marisa was baffled. Roberto's parents' car had had something wrong with a tire. Now a nail was protruding from a tire on their car. Were tire problems more common than she realized? She was mulling this new mystery when the elevator opened.

  Marisa gasped. In front of her stood Roberto, who looked like damaged goods because of the bandages on his head and right forearm. In his good arm he cradled flowers that were at least a day old and already starting to sag. "You shanky dude," she caught herself cursing in her mind. She pushed aside the guy who was with Roberto, both of her hands closed into fists. She couldn't help herself, even as her mother pulled on her and warned, "Marisa, stop!"

  Marisa shrugged out of her mother's grip.

  "You cheater! She loved you so much!" Marisa yelled. She hauled off and fired a stiff punch into Roberto's iron-flat stomach—she had always suspected that a tapeworm lay curled in there devouring all those bags of Cheetos. The flowers popped out of his arms. She stomped on them and began to thrash him from all angles. Watching all that wrestling on TV was beginning to pay off.

  Chapter 2

  It had been six years since Marisa had last been sentenced by her mother to the confines of her bedroom, six years since she had taken a pair of scissors and cut her sleeping cousin's pigtails. She had cut the pigtails because ... Marisa couldn't remember why exactly. She could only recall how she'd sat by her bedroom window and watched rain slide down the glass. Her sadness was like the rain—gray, cold, and constant. She was eight then, with a little baby fat that rolled over the elastic waistband of her Cinderella pajamas.

  Now that she was fourteen, the baby fat had spread. She lay on her unmade bed bathing her legs in the afternoon sun that cut through the window. She wiggled her toes, their painted red nails chipped in places. She debated with herself whether thumping Roberto had been the right thing to do. But after she took a sip of cream soda, she concluded that the sorry rat deserved such punishment, and then some. He had cheated on her best friend in the whole world.

  Her cell phone began to ring, and she searched wildly about her bedroom. Her eyes raked over the chest of drawers cluttered with soda cans, unused bottles of perfume, lipsticks squat as silver bullets, candy wrappers, burger wrappers, CDs of rockers she never listened to anymore, a single sock, a dried bouquet from a wedding, and other assorted trash that she knew she should cram into paper bags before the short journey to the garbage can. Her room was a mess.

  "It's probably Alicia," she told herself. However, when she picked up the phone, she heard a guy say, "Rene, it's me, Trung. I can't figure out the problem."

  The problem?
Marisa was at a loss as to what to say, a new sensation because her mouth was always ready to gush out words.

  "You there?" the voice asked. "Rene? You there? Your batteries dead?"

  She clicked off her cell phone and looked at it. "Dang," she muttered as she let it roll from her fingers onto her bed, as if it were a gun and she had just committed a horrible act. The cell phone wasn't hers. She bit her lower lip and raised her eyes toward the ceiling. "I bet it belongs to that other guy," she told herself. She recalled the boy who had been with Roberto, the one who had finally pulled her away from him and whose eyeglasses had come off. During the tussle their cell phones had fallen and each must have walked away with the other's.

  She called her own cell number, wiggling her toes as she waited for that guy to pick up. But her own rushed voice came on rudely: "YOU leave a message and you speak clearly, you know WHAT I mean?" Marisa grimaced at the awkward cadence of her message and the attitude behind her voice. "That's me?" she uttered in disbelief and hung up. She promised herself that once she got her cell phone back she was going to change the greeting.

  Her mother rattled the door with a heavy knock.

  "Marisa!" she yelled.

  Marisa sucked her breath and held it.

  "MA-RI-SA! It's time to eat!"

  Marisa pocketed the cell phone, let her breath out like a deflating balloon, and yelled, "Okay, okay!" She brushed her hair behind her ears, checked her face in the mirror on the wall, and muttered, "She's always on me."

  Dinnertime. Marisa's father sat at one end of the table. He had the eyes of a worker who wakes up before dawn and starts off for the day just as the pinkish sun appears in the east. They were tired, puffy, and half closed. Her father was a carpenter, a man who often returned home with flakes of wood in his thin graying hair. His rough hands were sometimes bleeding, his fingertips puffed from hits with his hammer.

  Marisa plopped onto a chair at the kitchen table. The fourth chair, where her brother Ralphie used to sit, held a basket of clean laundry. Her brother had gone away to Bakersfield State. Now it was usually only the three of them, and sometimes Alicia, and sometimes one of the many aunts.