—You know I’m just playing, he said. Though you do have to come see my mom at some point or she’s gonna think something’s wrong with you too.
The skyline zoomed outside my window, and I felt the alcohol seep into my fingertips and calf muscles, felt my chest expanding underneath my skin. It must’ve been that tingling coupled with the city, that double dose of booze and what felt like every light in Miami showing off like a rainbow, that made me not register the you too until later, after we’d parked, chugged, paid, and made it through the line, past the velvet rope—the cans refilled with Bacardi tucked into my purse—onto the middle of the packed dance floor. The bass shattered inside my body, every joint and bone humming, and when it moved up from my heart into my brain, when I felt it bounce back to me off the arms and hips of strangers pressed around me, those little words—you too—lodged themselves in my mouth and had to come out.
I lashed my arms around Omar’s shoulders and screamed into his ear, You too! Wait! Who’s too!
—What? he yelled in my face.
I read the word more than heard it, the music screeching around us. I stood on my tiptoes and put my mouth on his ear, his diamond stud scratching my bottom lip, Your mom! What you said in the car! Who’s the too! Who does she think something’s wrong with!
He shook his head no, winced while he did it. I fake-pouted and put one hand on each side of the V of his collar, bunched up the material and yelled—little fist pounds on his chest partnering up with each word—Tell me now! Tell me now!
He looked up at the club’s ceiling soaring high overhead, mirror-paneled in places to multiply the strobes and colored lights freaking out around us. I watched his throat—he swallowed—as lights danced over his neck, bounced off his new silver chain and flashed into my eyes. Omar leaned forward, his whole face pressed against the side of mine.
—Your mom, he screamed down at me.
He leaned away, made the universal symbol for crazy—pointer finger looping by his temple—and then came back close and said, Ariel Hernandez.
The DJ’s voice boomed around the room, and I jerked my head around, searching the mirrors above us, thinking for an instant that God was yelling.
—We got thirty minutes left before Y2K, people! Make it count in case we all fucking die at MIIIIIIIIIDNIIIIIIIGHT!
The crowd cheered over his drawn-out vowels, everyone throwing up their hands as a siren blared at the same pitch as the song.
—Are you serious, I screamed at Omar.
He came closer because he couldn’t hear me, but I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away, then plowed through the churning mob toward what I thought were the bathrooms. It turned out not to be the bathrooms at all, but a freaky black-lit and people-stuffed hallway leading to a semi-hazardous stairwell that came out at another dance area of the club, this one on the roof and playing remixed Spanish music. Smokers congregated by a railing far from the speakers that looked out over the back side of downtown, and I headed there, grateful for the bites of cooler air prickling my arms and shoulders.
—El! Omar eventually yelled from behind me, his hand clamping onto my arm. You can’t just take off like that, there’s a million people here.
I whipped away from his grip.
—Leave me alone, I said. Why does your mom think that?
—You asked, okay? You can’t be pissed at me.
—How’s she more crazy than anybody else!
I paced around in the small square I’d claimed by the railing. I didn’t know why people like my dad and Omar were freaking out over my mom acting and responding like a typical Cuban mother to this kid. Wasn’t she supposed to do that? Weren’t we supposed to be loud and cry when someone put a camera in front of us? Weren’t we supposed to fight, to see ourselves in Ariel’s face and fate, to act our part? I put my hands over my eyes and dragged them down, likely smearing my makeup the way Jillian always did when she was too drunk. I wiped my palms on my capri pants with a smack and said, Isn’t your mom watching this Ariel shit?
—Of course she is, he said.
He seized the railing with both hands and hung back from it, looked out at the city.
—But your mom started saying some weird shit, he said. And on TV. My mom doesn’t like what your mom’s doing, how she plays shit up for the cameras.
—My mom fucking cares, okay? Maybe she’s a little overzealous about it, but who fucking isn’t right now?
—Overzealous, he said, buzzed enough to repeat the word spelling-bee style, to come that close to admitting he didn’t know what it meant. And I was drunk enough to skip right over disappointment or frustration or surprise and say, It means like obsessed with something, like hard-core obsessed.