I lie and tell Tomas I’m thirteen, so he doesn’t think I’m lame, but that’s the only lie I tell. He knows I like Taylor Swift, E. M. Forster books, and tennis (I like Federer; he likes Nadal), and my favorite movie is Jurassic Park. I tell him stories about me and Nani’s trip—he cracks up when I say she left me at La Mar Bella—and he says he wishes he had a grandmother as cool as mine. (Nani’s lips curl into a smile.)
We talk in our own chaotic Spanglish: a fluid version of English, Spanish, and body language that makes absolutely no sense, and yet we understand each other completely.
I never mention school.
I never even think about school.
Karolina returns, holding a cup of dark green ice cream, but this time she’s accompanied by a plump, grumpy old woman I take to be her grandmother, as if the only way to defuse my nani is with one of her own.
Tomas’s face clouds over, as if Grump Granny’s presence can only mean one thing: it’s time for him to go.
“?Hasta ma?ana?” he asks, looking into my eyes.
I shake my head miserably, about to tell him I’m going home—
“Hasta ma?ana,” Nani interjects, patting Tomas’s back as she pulls off him.
He looks right at me with a smile so happy and hopeful that my heart swells at the seams, throbbing against my ribs until I see the last of his shadow disappear behind a sandy slope.
“Why did you lie to him?” I turn to Nani. “Why did you tell him I’d see him tomorrow?”
The mischief evaporates from her face. Instead, there’s a veil of sadness, as if I’ve woken her from a beautiful dream. Nani doesn’t look vibrant and carefree anymore. She looks…old.
“To give him something to look forward to, Santosh,” she says quietly, before gazing out at the sea. “All of us need something to look forward to.”
I nestle into her arms as we watch the crash and spray of waves. Her arms are so warm I don’t want her to let go.
“Will you take me on another trip next year, Nani?” I ask, tight with emotion.
“Oh, Santosh, don’t you see?” she whispers, glassing with tears. “You’re the one taking me.”
For a moment, I don’t understand…and yet somewhere in my heart I do.
We’re the same, Nani and I.
Two caged birds, searching for a way out.
“Shouldn’t leave it behind,” she says, nodding at the cup of half-melted ice cream in the sand next to me.
The surface glints in the sun, dark and emerald as a forest.
It’s the same color as Tomas’s eyes.
“Go on, then,” I hear Nani whisper.
I slip a spoonful into my mouth and sweetness and tartness riot inside me, lighting my heart on fire.
Gasping, I turn back—
But Nani’s gone, and for a second, I look up, thinking she’s flown away.
Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents
A STORY-IN-VERSE
KWAME ALEXANDER
HOW TO WRITE A MEMOIR
After reading “Oranges”
by Gary Soto (who I like) Mr. Preston (who I don’t) asks us
if we liked it (which I did) then makes us write
(which I hate) our own memoirs.
Now, make it interesting
(which I’m not)
he adds, looking dead at me.
QUESTION ABOUT THE ASSIGNMENT
I know memoir is
based in fact, but can it have
a little fiction?
MY NAME IS MONK
which is not a terrible name (but certainly not a cool one).
Every single minute of every single school day I am two letters away from suffering
through the same lame jokes: “What’s up, MonkEY?”
“What’s up, FUnk?”
I can thank my mom for that.
You see, when she went into labor with me, she was listening to “Round Midnight”
by Thelonious Monk
I guess it could have been worse.
She could have been reading Moby-Dick.
ONCE UPON A TIME
I was uncool.
Useless.
An empty pool in the summer.
A pencil with no lead.
Macaroni without cheese.
You get the point….
I was nothing.
A nobody.
That was before.
I WAS THE KID
who spent his weekends reading Star Wars books and magazines and reciting lines from each movie with my best friend and fellow Star Wars junkie, Hervé, who
mows lawns
with me
so we can make money to buy more
Star Wars books so we can picture ourselves as Han Solo or Luke Skywalker flying off to some far-off universe to rescue
my wonder woman: Angel Carter.
ANGEL CARTER
should be a speeding ticket
’cause she is Fine.
THE POINT IS
I’ve never been cool.
The closest I’ve come to having a girlfriend was last year
when this sixth grader smiled at me with
her pearly-white gap teeth and asked if she could see my homework.
I said okay, she copied it, then split like a perpendicular bisector through an acute triangle.
No more smiles after that.
Just the same ol’ boring, uncool life that I’ve been living for the past 12 years.
Until something amazing occurred.
I don’t exactly know how I got to be the lucky one.
But I can tell you when it happened.
MY FATHER, JACK JACKSON,
is in the Air Force.
Most folks call him Major.
When Mom’s mad at him (like when he doesn’t put the toilet seat down), she calls him Major JackASS.
We’ve lived all over the country, and once in Bermuda
where I met Lisa Castillo the first crush
of my life.
LISA CASTILLO
My memory of her is a little vague.
I was eight.