Signal to Noise(13)

Daniela, for her part, was busy writing in her diary. Well, writing was an exaggeration. She just drew lots of little hearts with arrows going through them.

Meche snatched the diary away and hit Sebastian on the back of the head with it.

The boy looked at her, irritated.

“What?”

“I said we should do the spell tonight.”

“I can’t go out tonight,” Daniela said.

“Who are you kidding, you can never go out,” Meche muttered.

“No, I mean it.”

“Then we’ll go to your place.”

“Okay,” Daniel said demurely. “Can I have my notebook back, please?”

Meche looked at the diary and tapped her finger against the page.

“This is what we need,” she told Sebastian.

“My diary?” Daniela asked.

“No, dummy. A place where we write down what we do. A grimoire.”

“What’s a gri-moy-re?” Daniela asked.

“You should pay more attention when we watch horror movies,” Meche admonished her. “It’s like a recipe book for witches. We’ve got to have one. If we’re going to do this right.”

“There’s really no point in explaining it to her right now when she’s so distracted,” Sebastian said. “We’ll do it later.”

Daniela pouted, but Sebastian was right. Daniela was always going off on a tangent, dreaming away, getting distracted. The only thing Daniela’s brain was able to retain was the cheesy dialogue from those romance novels she borrowed from her sister.

Sebastian extended a hand towards Meche’s juice box. She frowned, but gave it to him in the end. Sebastian was constantly broke, this despite his attempts to earn a few extra pesos by bagging groceries at the supermarket, a job, which, by the way, he was getting too old for: everyone preferred very young baggers and he was reaching the end of his career as a bag boy.

Sebastian sipped the juice, his eyes fixed on Isadora again. Isadora, probably feeling the weight of his gaze, turned her head and looked in their direction.

Sebastian immediately dropped his head, staring at the juice box between his hands. Meche smirked and jabbed him on the ribs.





LITERATURE WAS LIKE having needles pushed under her eyelids. Meche could not understand or even remotely pay attention to what was happening on the blackboard; she rested her head against the desk and tried to add numbers in her head, repeat lyrics of songs. She wondered what she would eat that afternoon.

Daniela, however, was in love with the teacher and she sat all perky and straight next to Meche, with a docile smile on her face, nodding periodically while Rodriguez—the youngest of the faculty, but no prize pie in the looks department—strolled by, babbling on about Cervantes. Windmills. Some Spanish * who was nuts and a fat guy on a donkey.

“What are we going to wish for?” Sebastian asked.

He wasn’t taking notes either, but he didn’t have to take notes. Sebastian knew all this stuff. He liked it. Hell, he had read Moby Dick which was as thick as a damned brick. You could maim someone with that book.

“I’m not sure,” Meche said. “Something big. What do you want to wish for?”

“I’m making a list.”

“God, won’t he shut up,” Meche whispered.

“Then he couldn’t listen to himself.”

Meche smirked.

“What is amusing you today, Mercedes?”

She hated it when people called her by her full name. She’d told Rodriguez this, but he refused to ever use her nickname. Meche did not reply, staring down at her book and pretending she was reading.

“No, really. I’m interested. Because you two lovebirds have been whispering for about half an hour.”

The class erupted into laughter at the word ‘lovebirds,’ making Meche blush with mortification.

“Maybe Sebastian Soto is not such a fag,” someone yelled from the back of the room.

Rodriguez let them chuckle, then gave her a twisted smile. “Extra homework for you. Stay at the end of class.”

“Can hardly wait,” she whispered.





MECHE GRABBED HER backpack and shuffled to the front of the class, stopping before Rodriguez’s desk. She could see Daniela standing outside the door, waiting for her.

The teacher raised his eyes and nodded at her.

“You were disruptive today. Again.”

“Sorry, Mr. Rodriguez.”

“You know, I can’t really tell if you do it on purpose, Mercedes,” he said, lacing his hands together, trying to look stern although his incipient moustache made him more comical than scary. “Is it just the sugar from all those cereals coursing through your body?”

“My brain is stuck from shooting glue,” she said.

Rodriguez did not get the Ramones reference. He just raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s a song,” she explained, fearing he’d take it seriously and call the principal.

“That’s your problem, Mercedes. Your head is filled with songs. If you spent less time watching music videos and more time doing your readings, you wouldn’t be failing my class.”

He shuffled a stack of papers and put them in a folder.

“You need to do some extra work.”