Flying Lessons & Other Stories(35)

He didn’t look at me after that.

Blond Girl nudges him in the chest and says something that makes him laugh.

I hate that girl.

I hate her stupid blond hair and stupid mousy face.

Hot guilt flushes through me.

That girl is his friend. She actually knows Tomas. I don’t. And I hate her why?

Why am I even here? What did I think would happen if I came back to the beach? That I’d get a do-over? That Tomas would hit me with a ball again and ask me to play? Or that he’d bound over and say hi like we’re best friends?

You’re not just a loser, I think. You’re delusional. You’re sick—

“Hello, darling,” chimes a singsong voice, and I look up sharply to see a striking older woman barrel by in a glittering gold one-piece swimsuit, a hotel towel wrapped around her head like a turban. “Getting your reading done, I see.”

“Nani?” I chase her, hopping like a frog because the sand is so hot. “What are you doing here?”

“Yamila called me, knowing full well I don’t sleep late, and told me a cabdriver dropped you at the beach,” she wisps. “If only you’d given me a bit more time to get my hair done…Luckily, I found a swimsuit at the hotel boutique that didn’t look too tawdry. I hope your friend likes it.”

“Nani, look, I just wanted to…Wait. What friend?”

But now I see where Nani is walking. She’s headed straight for Tomas.

“No—no—no—no,” I stammer, but she trips me with a swift kick and I face-plant in sand as she motors ahead.

“Better keep up, darling,” I hear her chirp.

I scramble to my feet, staggering after her, but she’s closing in on Tomas now. He’s raising his neck…he’s looking at her…he’s looking at me right behind her, and just as he and Nani make eye contact—

Nani faints.

She crumples to the ground in Tomas’s lap, so exquisitely, so dramatically, that I know at once I’m doomed.

In a flash, Tomas props up Nani’s head, while Blond Girl flutters about in useless panic. I stay right where I am, scowling with arms crossed, fully aware of what’s coming next.

Nani’s eyelids crack open. “Santosh? Santosh, sweetie pie?” she rasps with a quivery lip, playing it so thick she practically holds for applause. “Santosh, where are you?”

“Right here, Lady Macbeth,” I snap, glowering down at her.

Tomas looks up at me, confused. “?Concoces?”

I’m about to say, No, I’ve never seen this woman in my life, and run for the parking lot, but Nani preempts me by lifting herself gingerly and clinging to Tomas’s arm like a raft.

“Come, Santosh, darling,” she wheezes, adding a few hacking coughs, as if while fake fainting she also happened to contract tuberculosis. “Stay with your nani and this handsome boy who rescued me.”

Nani stabs out her hand, seizes my wrist, and with the strength of a sumo wrestler, drags me down into the sand next to Tomas, boxing Blond Girl out completely.

“Agua…,” she heaves to the girl, as if on her last breaths. “Necesito…agua…”

Blond Girl wrinkles her little freckled nose at me as if getting the woman water should be my job since I’m the one who knows her, but Tomas clears his throat and glares at her until she lets out an audible huff and stomps off.

Nani musters another ludicrous cough. “Now let me have a rest, while you two boys get to know each other,” she says, before laying her head on Tomas’s shoulder and gripping him by the waist, as if to trap him in place.

Tomas looks at me wide-eyed.

Yesterday, he hit me with a ball. Today, I hit him with Nani.

I snicker at the thought. Tomas snorts too, though again, I’m not sure what he’s laughing at.

“Soy Tomas,” he says finally.

“Soy Santosh,” I say.

“Santosh Americano.” He smiles.

I nod, blushing hot pink. “Santosh Americano.”

An hour later, I know a lot more about Tomas. For starters, he’s thirteen. The blond girl is his sister Karolina, whom he finds a bit clingy and annoying. (Indeed, he doesn’t intervene when she comes back with water and Nani orders her away again to get ice cream.) He lives in Barcelona, but he wants to go to college in America (either Duke or UCLA). He’s hoping to become a sports therapist—the kind that run onto soccer fields when a goalie hurts his knee, he says—but he doesn’t like American food, so he jokes that if he comes to America, he needs someone who can make him Spanish meals. (Nani jolts up from her slumber to say she’ll teach me to cook for him, but I elbow her hard and she closes her eyes.) He likes jazz music, Lord of the Rings, and bike riding, and his favorite movie is Aliens.

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.