The Book of Unknown Americans(36)

“Principal’s office for both of you,” Mr. Baker said, still working to corral Garrett. “And then we’re calling both of your parents.”

Garrett spat out a laugh.

“Something funny, Mr. Miller?”

“Good luck with that.”

“With what?”

“Listen, you talk to my dad, do me a favor and ask him where the f*ck he’s been. I haven’t seen him in three days.”

Mr. Baker took a deep breath. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to sort this all out.”


THE SCHOOL WANTED my parents to come in for a conference.

“What is this about?” my dad asked when my mom mentioned it that afternoon. She had intercepted him at the door when he got home from work.

“We need to go meet with his teachers,” my mom explained.

“All of his teachers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just the guidance counselor. But I told them we would come in as soon as you got home. Someone’s there waiting for us.”

I was standing by my bedroom door, out of view, but I could hear everything my parents were saying. I had gone straight to my room when I came home, holding my phone over my mouth as I walked through the apartment, trying to hide my swollen, cracked lip from my mom, and I hadn’t come out since. The school nurse had wanted to clean off the blood, but I’d begged her to leave it alone, and now I kept looking at it, dried and crusty, in the mirror, in amazement.

“Now?” my dad said.

“They want to see us as soon as possible.”

My dad sighed. “Is he in there?”

“He’s in his room. But he won’t tell me anything. We can talk to him when we get home. Come on, let’s go.”

“Don’t push me.”

“We need to go.”

I knew my mom was trying to guide my dad out the door, probably thumping him on the leg with her purse.

My dad shouted into the apartment, “What did you do, Mayor?” before I heard the door click shut.

An hour and a half later I was sitting on my bed, awaiting my fate, when my dad stomped down the hallway and swung open the door to my room. He wasn’t a huge guy, but he was breathing in a way that seemed to inflate him, and he stood there staring at me, his neck bent over, his arms down at his sides. I swallowed hard. In the time that he and my mom had been gone, I’d talked myself into the idea that maybe my dad would be proud of me—just a little bit—when he found out I’d gotten into a fight. Maybe it proved I had a little bit of machismo in me after all. Plus, it was something that not even Enrique had ever done, at least not that I knew of. But now, seeing my dad’s face, I could tell that idea was out the window. Silence festered in the room. I swallowed again, trying to get down the saliva that had collected in my mouth.

My dad closed the door behind him. He paced in front of me, breathing like a bull. I sat on my hands and stared at my knees.

After what must have been five full minutes, I said, “What?”

My dad stopped pacing and looked at me like I had just broken the first rule of engagement. Like I should have known that I wasn’t supposed to talk first.

“What?” my dad repeated incredulously. “What? I’ll tell you what. You punched someone.”

“He deserved it!”

My dad started pacing again and suddenly, somehow, I knew that the fight wasn’t the thing that was bothering him.

After another long stretch of silence, he said, “Your counselor told us your grades are slipping.”

I hung my head. So that’s what this was about. I’d been spending so much time with Maribel lately that I hadn’t really been focused on things like homework.

But then my dad said, “I asked her if it was because you were spending too much time at soccer.”

Something dropped through me like a runaway elevator. Shit, I thought. Shit, shit, shit. My dad was still pacing. I tried to steel myself for whatever was coming next. There was a distinct possibility, I thought, that he was going to hit me. Not that he’d ever done it before—he’d thrown things and kicked things—but I sometimes had the sense when he got angry that he was only about an inch away from getting physical, as if so far over the years, even though the thought might have crossed his mind, he’d been able to control himself, but that if he were pushed too far into the fire, there would be no stopping him.

“You lied,” he said.

I nodded.

“This whole time.”

I nodded again.

My dad worked his jaw from side to side. “This whole time!”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You made me look like a fool tonight! Is that what you think I am? A fool?”

“No,” I squeaked.

“I thought you were out there, every day, playing, part of the team. But what have you been doing instead? Drugs? Drinking?”

“No!”

“How can I know?”

“I’m not, Papi.”

“This whole time!” he screamed, and he lunged toward me, squeezing my shoulders between his hands like a vise, lifting me to my feet.

His nostrils flared and he looked me right in the eyes. “Goddamn it, Mayor!” He dug his fingertips into my skin like he was trying to carve his way down to my bone.