Here the Whole Time(28)
Caio listens to the story with a smile and strokes her shoulder.
“And what did the fortune say?” he asks, looking at me.
“ ‘The world is yours,’ ” I answer, a little emotionally, which always happens when I think about Grandma Thereza.
The three of us go quiet for a few seconds, but my mom gets up, grabs the three fortune cookies from the coffee table, and distributes them among us.
“It’s time to see what Grandma Thereza has to tell us. Let’s go, one at a time. Caio can go first, since he’s the guest.”
Caio opens the cookie, removes the slip of paper, and reads his fortune.
“ ‘Fate can be a shield or a sword. It’s up to you to decide.’ ”
The three of us start laughing, because that doesn’t make any sense.
“Sometimes Grandma gets a little confused,” my mom says. Then she opens her cookie, takes out the slip of paper, and reads, “ ‘The bird doesn’t sing for a reason. It sings for a song.’ ”
The three of us say, “Aww,” because it is a cute fortune. Then Caio and my mom turn to me, waiting for me to read mine. This is always an important moment to me, even though I know that most of the time the sentences in these cookies seem like they were pulled from a tacky Facebook page. I open my cookie, look down at the slip of paper, take a deep breath, and read out loud:
“ ‘Amazing things might happen if you just begin to talk.’ ”
I swallow hard when I’m done reading, because if my grandmother is really communicating with me via fortune cookie, she could at least try to be a little more subtle, am I right?
When it’s finally bedtime, I’m excited to wear my new pajamas. I mean, really excited. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way over a new item of clothing.
I shower, put on the pajamas, and look in the mirror. Unfortunately, it’s not like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries, where she lived her entire life feeling awkward and ugly and suddenly discovers she was pretty the whole time. I’d need a lot more than new pj’s for that to happen to me. But when I see my reflection, despite seeing the same old me wearing a Batman outfit, I feel better. Not good-looking. But better.
I leave the bathroom, and when I enter my room, I find Caio sitting on his mattress, looking as if he just had an argument. He’s staring at his phone, his eyebrows scrunched together, his face red with anger, and if I listen carefully, I think I can hear him growling a little. He sees me walk in and forces a smile.
“The new pj’s are cool. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” he says.
“That’s Superman,” I answer.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know much about superheroes,” Caio says, wiping a tear from his face.
“What happened?” I ask, changing the subject completely because A) the Batman vs. Superman conversation wasn’t gonna go anywhere, and B) apparently the poor guy has been crying.
“I had a fight with my mom. Again.”
I let out a long breath, trying to come up with the right thing to say. I close the door, turn off the lights, and lie down on my side, seeing Caio in the light filtering through the window.
“Do you want to talk about it? I don’t know what to say most of the time, but I’m good at listening.”
“Today at the mall I took a photo with Becky and posted it on Instagram,” says Caio.
“Right,” I say, and I actually already knew about that. My phone sends notifications every time Caio posts something. Don’t judge me, please and thank you.
“My mom saw the picture, then immediately called and scolded me so hard. She said horrible things I wish I didn’t have to hear. She made it into the biggest deal—yelled at my dad, told him to cancel the rest of the trip because she wanted to come back right away. They won’t cancel the trip, of course, but my mom loves making a scene. My dad grabbed the phone from her, said he’d deal with me, and asked me to avoid causing any more uncomfortable situations,” he says, and I don’t quite see where he’s going with this yet.
Caio clears his throat and still his voice is a little teary when he continues the story.
“My mom doesn’t like Becky. Because she’s a lesbian. She thinks Becky is a bad influence, and that her mission is to drag me with her toward damnation, or something. Of course, my mom has never said any of this out loud, but I know because I’m not stupid. And I just wish she knew that, without Becky in my life, things could be much worse. I’d be much more miserable than I am already.”
This information catches me by surprise. Because never, under any circumstances, have I ever imagined the remote possibility of Caio being unhappy. He’s always smiling, always good-humored, and, let’s be honest, freaking gorgeous.
“What makes you unhappy?” I ask, because I really want to know.
“School is hell,” he answers, and for a second it feels like we’re the same person. “Becky has always been my best friend. Best and only. The other kids at school started picking on me from day one. Because of my voice and the way I talk. Because I don’t play soccer and don’t talk to other guys. I’ve always faced it in silence. The teasing, the jokes, the shoves in the hallway. I even kept to myself when they wrote Caio sucks dick in the boys’ bathroom,” he says, his voice shaking as if he still needs a bit more crying.