Social media is a bunch of bullshit. Like, if you’re old or move to another state or you’ve been out of touch with people or whatever, then yeah, it makes sense. But people here just use it to promote this fake version of themselves. It’s sad. You get points depending on what you post and who you already are. This guy who went to my high school, Jonas Carrera, some kissass puñetón who was only on the football team because his dad was on the school board, got 352 likes on a picture of him standing by some fountain in Austin, caption saying Hispanic Pre-Law Association Co-Chair 2016 or some shit. It’s all HD and you can even see the pinche blackheads on his nose. Three hundred and fifty-two likes. No mames. All white people too, last names like Blanchard, Willis, Palmer and shit. That’s the dude they know from Mission, Texas. That’s their Mexican Friend. Their Hispanic Guy. El vato is Latino now all of a sudden. Like in high school homeboy said that ICE should come check out the soccer team after the state found out our goalie was 19. I swear, if his dad wasn’t a big local lawyer on the school board, el vato would have gotten jumped dirty at the Duck Park after school.
But whatever. I try to put time into my family instead of all that fake shit. My brother Moises and I share a room in the house we grew up in, same fire pit in the back, same basketball posters, same plain white sheets, but honestly, when you see how distant families can be, it makes me feel grateful. It’s cheaper here, plus it’s nice to have our parents cook and take care of things. Moises and I are sharing the room until August, when he gets married to Maritza Elizabeth Segovia and moves upstate for an oil field job drilling holes in the ground. Then it’ll just be me and my little brother, Efraín, who’s weird and quiet and 13.
We live on this P-shaped loop that juts off the old highway called Mireles Circle. It’s not like those new clean housing developments south of 83. Everything out here is uneven and mismatched. This neighborhood was scrapped together. My next-door neighbors to the right, the Barrientos, live in one of those rectangular, trailer-type wooden houses that you sometimes see eighteen-wheelers dragging up the highway. They got this swampy-ass blue stand-up pool outside, almost my height, still full of rank water from the hurricane-season rains. The mom’s a special ed teacher at our high school, Dad is in and out for months at a time, real scrawny sketchy guy, and then they got two kids, more or less our age, Rafa and Tony. They’re both super into raving and that whole scene. Rafa, the younger one, is trying to be a featherweight boxer and Tony sells molly and cocaine and heavier shit like that. Tony and my brother are kind of tight but my parents know what kind of stuff goes on over there. Cars stopping by all the time, Tony always barred out, dragging his feet down the street and slur-rapping out loud with his headphones on. My ma always says Death is sniffing out those boys and liking what she smells.
Tony and Rafa’s great-aunt, Señora Sandra, lives across the street in one of those little Mexican-type clay houses with the terra-cotta tile roof and lots of big dinosaur plants outside. Señora Sandra is an old-ass super deaf lady with a limp who is kinda just waiting to go. Growing up she would turn all her lights off on Halloween night and never open the door for us even though we could hear Primer Impacto blasting through the windows. She didn’t even come out in Christmas 2004 when it fucking snowed for the first time in the whole history of Valley Christmases — everybody was walking around that day saying hi, giving each other handshakes and kisses. Tony and Rafa go over to her house sometimes after she falls asleep and invite people to get high and bullshit around.
Across the highway there’s a gas station where you can get alright fried chicken and bean burritos, a fireworks warehouse open only in July and December, and a paintball field no one goes to anymore. Everything else is a good half-hour drive away.
What I’m saying is that when you grow up here it’s harder to take the shit you see on social media seriously. Like, for real, who the fuck cares about your big sushi date night in Dallas or whatever? What’s crazy too is that everybody knows they’re creating a false image of themselves, so everybody has to know that everyone else is doing that too. It’s like a big inside joke. It’s crazy. Especially now, with half the Tangelo High Class of 2013 up in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and one nerdyass tryhard in fucking New York, it just gets to me. All these goody-good-never-get-in-trouble type people who never stood up for anything they believed in (not like they believe in anything), put their heads down, stayed in on Friday nights, and now, three years later, stunting online like they’re kingpins, selfies from the tops of skyscrapers, at concerts and parties, throwing up ironic gang signs with a bunch of white people. It riles me the fuck up, to be honest.
Sometimes I’ll get high by the fire pit and realize that there’s no reason to get so angry about all this shit. Sometimes I spend entire days stressed as hell, trying to find what it is I’m really pissed off about. Maybe social media is just the easiest thing to blame.
Junior year, most of my friends quit the basketball team so they could start prepping for college, and I was left there on the JV pretty much by myself. After a few weeks I quit too because it wasn’t the same, playing with a bunch of fat scrubs and freshmen. My family had started going to this church, Nuestro Renascimiento up in Alton, Texas, on Wednesdays and Sundays. I wasn’t really into God at the time, but I did meet this girl there, Alyssa Enriquez. She lived out in Edinburg, no siblings or dad, just a mom who worked the register at Mik-Mart at night and at Bingo! Print Solutions in the mornings. Alyssa had these greasy glasses and crooked teeth all bent on top of each other, wore her black hair pulled back, basketball shorts everywhere, random heavy metal shirts, OK body, nothing crazy. We both had a different vibe than most of the kids at the church and after we met during youth group, I asked her out to see Prometheus since I could tell she would be into space shit. Afterward, we ended up staying in the car until midnight, going off about the movie.
We could talk real easy about a bunch of things. We would smoke at her house, talk about how God shows Himself in nature more than in any church, how wild it was that people dream, how humans can turn impossibly fucking strong in dangerous moments and lift cars off their kids and shit. Honestly, it felt like brother-sister sometimes when we would chill and hang out and play, like the little kid in us came out and we didn’t need anything else. Things were super easy and full.
But Alyssa was still pretty religious. She talked about Jesus a lot, especially when we were high. Like sometimes I felt insecure because she talked about him as if he were some older vato she was in love with.
No, pos, I’m not saying this world isn’t good. I love my life, Manny. But, like, imagine spending eternity in His arms, what His touch would feel like, what His voice would be like. Would He even move His mouth? Do we even need to hear anything in heaven or do we just learn it all once we get there, like it’s uploaded to our minds or something? I don’t know, but I’m OK with that. Knowing would ruin His Grace. I want to see Him. I’ll live a good life, don’t get it twisted, but I can’t wait, Manny. You know? I really can’t wait.
I said I felt the same.
So we would smoke and have these talks, draw together, watch documentaries about the government and shit, fool around sometimes, but she was never down for sex. Straight up, Alyssa would get on edge anytime I even joked about it. She’d end up so defensive and rattled that she’d start crying and wouldn’t talk to me for days.
I still don’t know if I meant it or if I was just trying to hit it or a little bit of both, but after a year together I told her I wanted to get married. Not like an engagement, but more like putting it out there, that I eventually wanted to be with her forever, that it was something I believed, and sometimes I think I did. She changed up her whole wardrobe after that, wearing sundresses, eyeliner, kissing me in public, more head, things like that. We were 18 and at this point there were no forces stopping us from signing those papers at the Hidalgo County Courthouse.
As shitty as I felt, I still had this muddy little hope that a miracle would come .
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One night, at her place, during one of her mom’s late shifts, things got freaky on the couch, and I asked her if she wanted to do it. She asked me if I would ever leave her. She was legit afraid. I said no, of course not. We didn’t have a condom, but I promised her I would pull out way before I even felt it. She said We’re already one in His eyes, right?
She was all rigid, not moaning or moving or anything. It didn’t feel good at all. After a few horrible minutes I stopped and neither of us said anything. I brought her hand to my dick and she sort of jerked me off, looking away the whole time, and then tears and wails and muffling herself with the pillow like I wasn’t even there. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be there anymore.
Finally, she got up, makeup smeared, hair messed up, smiled all big and said Let’s get married this summer.
I don’t even remember how I responded. I didn’t say fuck no or anything harsh like that, but I was very clear that that wouldn’t be smart or good. Alyssa went off. She grabbed me by the shirt collar and slapped me, no hesitation, calling me a liar, a puto, a pinche puñetón. She was so hurt and honestly I should have listened and waited for her to calm down, talked to her like a real person, like someone who was hurting deeply, like childhood pain exploding out and shit. But instead I shoved her off and left.
She called me thirty-eight times that night, no joke. I didn’t answer. I was pissed off. After a day, I felt bad and texted her. Called her back a bunch — nothing.
I drove my dad’s truck to her house in Edinburg to see what was up. Before I could get to the doorbell her mom came out yelling that I had manipulated her and violated her purity, that I was a piece of shit, that I would be left behind on Judgment Day to be swallowed by demons. I apologized over and over. I legit wanted to see Alyssa again and make things right. I knew that we had both reacted bad.
Nope.
Straight up, her mom took off her flip-flop, there in the front yard, and raised it as if I were some 5-year-old mocoso, chasing me back to my dad’s truck. I turned up the radio as soon as the car started so I couldn’t hear all the fucked up shit she was saying at me.
That night Ms. Enriquez called my ma and told her that I had corrupted her daughter (pinche Manny, hijo de la chingada!!!), that the family was going to leave the church, that Cristo would judge us both for our lust and selfishness. My parents knew that Alyssa and her mom were both on some loquito shit but they were still disappointed as fuck in me for making a mess in the congregation. They didn’t even have to ground me. I spent the rest of that year in my room, in bed, eating shitty, being lazy, ignoring my brother’s invitations to go ball up, doing schoolwork, smoking by the fire pit. I burned all of Alyssa’s drawings and love notes for abandoning me like she did.
It got to the point where I just felt numb and saggy. I graduated high school without distinctions, applied half-assed to the community college (where you can’t get rejected even if you ask nicely for it), and was waiting for something big to happen. As shitty as I felt, I still had this muddy little hope that a miracle would come — Moises would move up in the oil company from driller to manager to CEO or something and move us to a condo in Houston, or I would meet a better girl who was also into making comics and we’d sell them and then travel all over. I think having that hope made the end of every day even shittier.
On the first Friday night of June, Moises came into our room around one, grinny and drunk.
Ey. Whatchu doing, fool? Moises whispered.
Reading.
Moises snorted.
Reading what, wey? It’s the summer.
Comics.
Pfft. And you got all the lights off, pinche weirdo.
The light from the TV is enough. Plus, it’s a vibe.
No mames, Manny. Get your ass out here.
Out where?
Moises looked back to make sure he hadn’t woken anyone up.
To Señora Sandra’s. With Rafa and Tony. There’s some funny ass dudes over. People been asking about you.
For real?
Yes, fool. Let’s go.
I put on some sweats and we snuck out the back door, walked far enough to the side of the yard that our parents wouldn’t hear our steps crunching in the grass.
Like most of Tony and Rafa’s parties, there were random guys getting high in the living room, Tony playing some trance playlist with trippy visuals on a laptop, and one girl from some other school sitting quietly in the corner. I said what’s up to people and kind of hung out to the side. Rafa swung the backyard door open and leaned in. His eyes were pink and glazy.
Manny! You showed up, bro?
I nodded, I think. I didn’t know what to say.
Come finish this fat blunt with us, huerquillo!
Things felt better in the night. It was me and Rafa and Paco Guzmán, this dude from school who always looked worn out from helping out his mechanic dad.
So wassup with you, Manny? You been missing out, my dude. Been a fucking minute since you came out.
Paco hit the blunt.
Yeah, I don’t know. Just tired all the time.
Eee, bro. Sometimes we get chingos of bitches out here and shit gets nasty.
For real?
Hell yeah.
Dope.
So you just smoking a lot or what? Hanging out alone by your bonfire como un pinche caveman?
Sometimes.
Este vato. Rafa shoved me a bit. You in love again or what?
Nah, man. Fuck that shit.
Paco passed me the blunt, bobbing to the bass muffling out from inside. I took a little one and passed it to Rafa.
You still boxing? I asked.
Ya tú sabes, bro. Just joined a new gym in Edinburg. Fitmaxx. They got a little studio up there with sparring on Fridays. Good competition too. But I still fuck ’em up. Ah! He shoves me again, tongue all the way out, and shadow-jabs me twice. No, but yeah, I could take you sometime, bro. Get you out and sweat a bit. Neta.
I don’t know, man. I think I’m good.
We stood around getting high all quiet. The weed was strong and making me feel soft. Above us were surreal-ass clusters of stars, super clear and hard to believe.
Oh, and bro. The bitches there. This one — holy shit, carnal. Ass like a Puerto Rican girl, but neta, Mexicana for sure, real light skinned, long hair, hot as hell. She’s always taking pictures of herself flexing and squatting and shit. All the dudes there know about her, talk about her. Turns out she’s a fucking Instagram model, wey. Al chile. From the fucking Valley. Look.
Rafa was excited and proud, like he was about to show off a new tattoo. He pulled out his phone and clicked at the bottom button a bunch of times. It was dead.
Eeeee. Nah, bro, nah, nah, you have to see it. Let’s go inside. You have to see this — right, Paco?
Paco nodded slowly, giggling. Rafa took the last hit, his face wretched, squinting in pain. He coughed out a lash of smoke. You’re not gonna believe it, he said. I’mma pull her up on Tony’s phone with the good fucking pixels.
We’d barely busted inside when Rafa said, Tony, lemme see that spaceship-ass phone of yours.
For what?
To see @elenchita.
Tony stuck out his tongue and nodded, handed Rafa the iPhone and reached for Moises, jerked him by the sleeve.
Bro, you know @elenchita?
Who?
No mames, wey. Hottest girl in the Valley. Hands down.
Rafa pulled her up and everybody in the room got quiet, huddling around the phone, even the one girl, who looked on stoned.
@elenchita was unreal. She was unreal in her dresser mirror, wearing pajamas, even with the unmade bed in the back. Unreal at the gym, squatting exaggerated in purple yoga pants, acting like there wasn’t a camera set up right behind her. Unreal in a swimsuit, wet and shiny, the skin on her thighs prickled with goose bumps. She was even unreal at the ranch, kneeling in long-sleeve camo and cargo pants, holding up the head of a dead, cross-eyed peccary.
They went through half of @elenchita’s profile and were just looking at her ass. It made me angry, you know, with how pretty she was and shit, how these guys, all wrapped up in being machos pendejos, couldn’t even appreciate more of her, but no mames — her body was something I’d honestly never seen, like pro athlete but also sexy mom. It was insane. @elenchita knew it too. Pictures of her trying on dresses at the mall, in jean shorts and boots, biting her finger in the mirror with little white headphones on and glasses, wearing some cotton sweats that still, somehow, were stretched tight around her. All her pictures were of her, by herself.
The guys started talking all nasty about her. I kept on looking over at the girl on the couch, but she seemed chill. Tony pulled up a picture of her in a thong and Moises, by accident, trying to zoom in, tapped on her picture and liked it. Everybody laughed. A flash of hot went up from my stomach to my face. I told them I was tired and dipped.
I looked her up in bed. As of that night, @elenchita had 60.2K followers, hundreds of likes per picture. I’m talking like basic selfies, a jacket and jeans, side view in the community college bathroom mirror, 4,004 likes. Comments like oye chqta estas bn sexii and what is your nutrition plan? Do you take a pre-workout? and ur an inspiration! Love you.
Her profile picture was a close-up of her sweaty abs. The bio said: haters don’t matter, homies don’t mind. Tejana. Palms HS 2014.
I couldn’t tell what kind of person she was, really, what she valued or who her friends were, what she enjoyed doing apart from being on the app and lifting. I know it’s all raro, but I looked through every single one of her pictures that night, down to the end of the profile where the pictures got all filtered and she was in high school with emo bangs. There were before and after pics of her when she used to be skinny next to one of her wearing a military T-shirt with a leg on a bench, flexing in the mirror, looking like she had just emerged clean and victorious from killing a coyote with her bare hands. The caption said:
ALL YALL WHO FOLLOW MY EVERY MOVE, DMING ME VENOM, WISHING I SLIP . . . NOT GONNA WASTE MY TIME W U ANYMORE . . . . . . CLEAR TO ME YALL DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO W URSELVES . . . MAYBE U NEED A REMINDER: U TALK, I GRIND!!! U SCROLL, I GROW!!!
There were little fights in the comments on a lot of pictures. A girl would call her an attention whore or whatever and @elenchita would go off. Like a bigass paragraph of the most intense, vicious insults I’d ever seen — pinche whitegirl shut your pink fishy pussy up and go back to fckn Kansas City or wherever tha fck u come from pinche gusana . . u deep down mad cuz u don’t have any friends OR an ass bitch . . xD xD . . it’s too bad your daddy moved down here huh, (#trailerparkho) well we all laughin at u rn tryna put your insecurities on me fckn whitebitch.
And she was relentless with the dudes too. I don’t think she responded nicely to any comments a guy put, even if they never mentioned her body.
I’m not gonna lie and pretend I didn’t end up touching myself to her. I was trying to talk myself out of it, but it was almost sunrise and Moises had stayed across the street. I did it, but romantically, like picturing us doing it real slow and kissing afterward as the ocean waves gently lapped the sand outside our tent. I deleted the app and turned off my phone. I couldn’t sleep and the morning was creeping through the window.
At the end of the extra-hot summer, Moises and Maritza got married at South Padre Island, on the beach, under a little makeshift altar my ma and Maritza’s mom designed and then built with my Tío Porfis. They decorated it with white and gold lace they had bought in supposedly the best textile warehouse south of the Falfurrias checkpoint. The day was gray and muggy and, honestly, not to be all negative, but everyone was restless waiting for that ceremony to end. Not like I would ever say this out loud to anyone, but who the fuck gets married outside unless they’re some richass gringo influencer couple from California and they can afford a mountain chateau or some shit? But Maritza was insistent. Wanted something real and natural. I mean I agree with her that the ocean is more God’s than some ratchet wannabe cathedral in the Valley but damn, who wants to be smelling like trapo usado at the after-party when it’s all packed and you have to dance with your tias, you know?
They were honestly super happy to finally get married, though. They’d been together since junior high, no joke, and even since then we all knew it was a forever thing. My ma never treated any of the girls I liked like she treated Maritza — asking her to go shopping at the outlets just them two, doing volunteer hours in the colonias together. Like, they give me the vibe, with how they are with each other, that they tell each other shit my pops and Moises don’t even know. Deep, deep stuff. Sometimes I think they’re going to escape together forever and not even tell us why.
Moises cried at the altar in front of everyone. I couldn’t believe it. First I thought it was fake, but his face was all scrunched up, breathing ragged, trying to hold it down, pinching the top part of his nose. It was the most I’d seen come out of him since we were kids.
The after-party was at a one-story house we rented for the weekend since that’s the cheapest venue you can get on the island. The house was packed, everyone swimming through each other to get to the kitchen, a line by the bathroom, cousins cheering every time they ran into each other and me just trying to chill and drink in the corner. Moises came over at one point all drunk and lifted me out of my chair from behind with a bigass linebacker hug and planted a wet one on my cheek. Then he whispered in this intense, trembling voice, I’m so fucking happy right now, Manny.
Even when I catch myself, I just let myself scroll, because it’ll for sure be the last time ever anyway.
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The party got rowdier and my pops was loose and swigging bubbly straight from the bottle, stomping around and pouring it down people’s throats, getting it all over their chins and shit, Tío Porfis cackling and recording it all on his phone. Ma was being weird and loud and touchy with people’s faces, my little brother had disappeared somewhere, and I wasn’t down anymore to just be there, drunk and alone, watching. I left out the front door and walked down the empty street of shuttered condos, stepped onto the boardwalk to the beach, tossed off my shoes and socks.
The sand was a good cold. I made my way down to the water to watch the waves but the water was black and I could only hear a hard sloshing at the shore. I felt this screaming pull in my stomach to run into the water and tread so far out that I wouldn’t be able to come back.
I sat on the sand and breathed deep for some time until I felt I had a little more space inside me. The moon got bright and soft and the clouds drifted slow over it. I watched it while the feeling lasted, and then I downloaded Instagram again. Looked up @elenchita.
She was platinum blonde now, living it up in Miami with some dude, some Cubano with crinkly hair and blue eyes, posting like seven times a day. Their meals. Their hotels. Them in bed. His bare chest and the tattoo of the Cuban flag with the star drawn over the nipple. Her at the beach. Her in a bikini, fine and ripped, leaning against a mangrove. The caption:
RULE # 1: DREAM BIG WORK HARD AND U WILL GET IT. LOVE EXISTS. NEVER GIVE UP ON WHAT U KNOW U DESERVE. GOD PULLS THROUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She looked so happy, like she could see the future opening up wide just ahead of her. I couldn’t even be mad to be honest. But her vato was a chump. A liar and a piece of shit. It was the way he held his face, like he thought he knew something no one else did. I know these types when I see them. I tried to find her old photos, the ones I knew, but she’d deleted them all. I sat there for a while scrolling through everything I’d missed.
When I got back to the party, there was a wine bottle busted and splattered on the kitchen floor. The only people around were the same old stragglers from every family party, leaning on the counters, yelling at each other about nothing.
It’s not like I see anyone around me who knows what the fuck they’re doing with life. Like, my ma is the best substitute teacher in the whole Tangelo School District. She’s long-term heavy-duty, the type of sub they call in when someone has a baby or dies in a car accident. She’ll take a class in for a whole semester and in the first week, I swear to God, kids are bringing her tacos, asking her for pictures in the hallway. But she doesn’t bring that energy here at home, at least not anymore. I haven’t seen that mom since I was small and she had her hair down to her waist, wore loud-ass colorful clothes. We’d go on walks at the butterfly center right on the Rio Grande and she’d teach me how to tell all those fuckers apart, what their routes were all over the world. Now, at home, it’s just cheery-uppy shit straight off an inspirational hallway poster — don’t worry, be happy, aim for the moon, land among the stars.
Pops is nice and pats us on the back, doesn’t let me stress about moving out or paying for groceries, but his thing is that he’s quiet and flat-eyed, like he’s not looking forward to anything. At least Ma gives us life advice, even if it’s irrelevant. Pops is all the way checked out. I guess things have happened that I don’t know about. All I know is that I don’t want to end up sunk like them.
The phone is the thing that’s holding me down. I fiend on it for like two, three hours straight until my head feels stunned, as if I’ve been thrown into the passenger seat of a car in a high-speed chase, and then knowing that all those hours were spent on nothing and there’s no way to undo it. My passwords of the past year:
StopItManny666
AnnihilatorOfTimePleaseDONT
LiesDelusionsAddictionLiesDelusionsAddictionLiesDelusionAddiction
Puropinchedistortionandbullshitallthefuckingtime1994
When I deactivate my account I spend the rest of the day triumphant and light. These nights, I sleep deep. But when I wake up, like I’m scratching a bugbite, I pick up the phone and log into the app. Even when I catch myself, I just let myself scroll, because it’ll for sure be the last time ever anyway.
Even though it’s September, it’s been getting fat hot at ten in the morning, chicharras hissing their asses off like they’re announcing the pinche apocalypse. If you go outside and stay there, you get straight cooked, and if you don’t have your hair buzzed off already you’ll feel your scalp itch-crack apart. But I couldn’t stay inside today. The empty house felt like it was alive and watching me, accusing me again of being a worthless little meco splat. Moises upstate for weeks now without calling, Efraín in school. Pa working. Ma who knows where.
Plus, @elenchita has been posting for the first time after two weeks, back in the Valley, no more pics of her Cubano, or of Miami. All deleted as if it never happened. One hundred percent gone, again. She posted a video of herself doing those hardcore box jumps, up and down and push-up, up and down and push-up, so fast and intense that it freaked me the fuck out, to be honest. I forced myself to put the phone in Efraín’s T-shirt drawer after he left with Pa to school.
The air was cleaner outside, even under the wet heat. I sat on the ground by the fire pit, closed my eyes, breathed deep, trying to align my chakras, but I just couldn’t fucking relax. The sun got fiercer. The chicharras and their end-of-days screeching. The smell of someone’s trash cooking. But if I went back inside I knew I would dig the phone out of Efraín’s drawer and end up stalking @elenchita all obsesivo again and feel even more like a crooked little ant.
Eventually, the chicharra screech tuned down to a soothing, static hiss. It was good to sit in that, almost quiet, the whoosh of the highway and these fat repetitive booms far away but also close, like a subwoofer kicking.
I breathed for a long time, eyes closed. I felt a warm honey feeling in my gut, like how it feels when you fall asleep on your mom’s lap at a restaurant and you’re not super super asleep because you can hear all the family chatter and shit but you still act asleep because being there is the best thing that exists. I let that honey feeling grow to my face and fingers. It felt so good, like I could start levitating.
I heard a bigass splash. I was feeling so chill that I thought I imagined it. Then, gagging, someone fighting water. I turned toward the Barrientos’ lot. Someone was in that stankass pool. Maybe it was a possum, or some Mireles Circle kid clowning. I called out, Ey. All good? No response.
I stood up, shouting, Yo. Quit playing around. All good? Only water thrashing. Definitely a fucking person. I ran over, climbed the ladder, looked down into the gangrene water, the rot smell almost blurring my vision. A hand waving under. I jumped in, flung around, grabbed and pulled up, tried to lift them over the tarpy wall but the pool tore, flushing us onto the dirt. Rafa coughing, dark water marshing around us, flowing out to the street. I tried to sit him up, but his body was slumped and heavy.
Bro. What the fuck. What happened?
Rafa shook his head violently.
Fuck is Tony? Are you good?
He was retching, gunk all in his lungs.
Is he inside?
Rafa nodded. I laid him down and ran to their house, straight through the wide-open door. Clothes, wrappers, boxes all over, hard techno blasting, rattling the floor. Their room was locked. I pounded on it, yelled for Tony to open the fuck up, but the music was too loud and I thought about kicking the door in and grabbing that puto by the curls and smashing his face into the stereo for leaving his own brother out to drown in a shit vat all alone.
But obviously I didn’t. No point. I came back out to Rafa. He was on his side, breathing more normal now. I sat with him. His eyes were shut. He was shaking.
What happened? Shit isn’t even deep.
It was so ugly, bro.
Are you on something, vato?
It wanted to get me.
What are you talking about?
Rafa tried to sit up but lay back down, pulled himself onto my lap, pawing at my shirt.
What happened?
I don’t know, bro. I like being here with you. Good vibes. Good vibes.
We sat for a while, drying in the sun. We smelled like roadkill and bog. Rafa opened his mouth to say something but stopped himself.
What is it?
It was so ugly, bro. I don’t know how to say. It was just, like, black and wet. Floating in the corner of the room. I don’t know how to say. It grabbed my neck, wey, I couldn’t get it off, I don’t know, I tried, bro, I just couldn’t fight it. When it touched me I felt so sick. I don’t remember. Stay with me, please.
Rafa pushed his head into my forearm.
I don’t wanna talk about it. Just stay here, please.
I stayed with him in the mud, Tony’s music muffled but pulsing all the way out to us. I didn’t really know what to do, if I should stay there with someone who needed help or if this is just what happens to druggy bums like Rafa Barrientos and holding them is the kind of thing that ends up making their problem even worse. I held Rafa’s wet head and we waited in the sun. No clouds or anything, the veins of water drying in the street.
Maybe fifteen minutes or an hour later, I honestly can’t say, Rafa’s scrawny-ass dad pulled up in his truck, parked in the lawn, got out and scanned the scene. He looked at me, Rafa napping on my lap, shook his head, and walked into the house.
Rafa high as shit on some bunkass Valley acid and almost drowning in shallow decade-old sludge while his brother is also high and locked up in a room blasting techno is fucked up. But, honestly, what’s worse is that I straight up thought about posting the story, maybe even with pictures of the torn-up pool for proof of how forgotten, lazy, worthless Manny had saved an innocent person from their gruesome death. Like, ¿qué chingados es eso, dude? I swear, I almost did it the next day. Drafted up a caption and everything.
Was just chillin in da back, takin in that mean 956 sun when I heard sum strange noises, like panic and water splashes. Right away I knew someone was in danger and only I could respond. I jumped up from my chair and zoomed hella quick to the edge of the pool and, neta, my boy was drowning in sludge water. It was disgusting but I went in because it was what I would have wanted someone to do for me. My boy was flapping around, gasping, but I got a hold . . .
Obviously, I didn’t post. Would have looked like a fool. And it’s not like I care what anyone thinks. I just wish @elenchita had been there to see. She would have been blown away by my instinct. She would have seen right away who I am.
At the top of my feed, she’d posted a picture of herself at a beach sunset. The light was on her so that you could only see her silhouette, flexing both arms at the sun. Her caption was:
ALL YALL THINK DIS SOME EASY SHIT I JUST LUV DOIN EVRYDAY??? SOMETIMES I HATE DIS . . . . . . . . . . WONDER Y DA FUCK IM PUTTING MY BODY THRU IT . . . . . . . . SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE QUITTIN, HIDIN IN MY ROOM W CHINGOS OF CHAMOYADAS N BOTANAS N CREPES N JUST GET W SOME VATO WHO HAS THE CA$H TO TAKE CARE OF ME . . . . . . . . BUT THEN I IMAGINE MYSELF LIVIN 20 YEARS IN THAT AND I REMEMBER . . . . . . . . RULE #2: UR THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN GIVE U A BODY . . . . . . . UR THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN GIVE U UR LIFE . . . . . . . . THE ONLY ONE. HOW DO U SAVE YOURSELF?:
U HAVE TO BOLDLY FUCKING LEAP.
#keepfightin #onlythestrong #allugotisu #nobullshit #elenchita #boldlyfuckingleap
Today the doorbell rang around two. I was still in bed, no one else home. Typically the mailman leaves shit on the step and people text me, so I had no idea what it could be. Through the window I could see it was Rafa. He looked uncomfortable, like he was hesitating. He was holding some highlighter-yellow paper. I opened the door.
Wassup Rafa?
Hey Manny. How you doin, man?
Not much. Chillin. Maybe gonna start making a comic today. I don’t know.
Oh. For real? What about?
Some dude discovers he has, like, perfect instinct. Like, he can know right away what is coming and how to react.
What, fool? That’s badass. And then?
Then what?
Like what does he do with his powers?
I don’t know yet.
Oh. Alright. It’s cool, though. I support it.
So what’s up? You doin’ alright after —
Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine.
He looked down, scratching at his nose, then raised up the yellow paper. It had enormous black block letters on it saying Hercules Pass. Next to it, a toasted-red looking man, flexing and screaming like a possessed bear. He held it out toward my chest.
So, yeah, bro. Thanks for the other day. I was fucked up, man. You saw. You pulled through. You didn’t have to, you know?
Nah, man. It’s all good.
For real though. He looked at me serious. You pulled through.
I don’t know. I just did what I thought —
So, like, I get these coupons every now and then from Fitmaxx. Like a pass for a day. For free. I wanted you to have it. If I had money, I would give you some, but — you know. They have a basketball court, maybe if you wanna shoot around or something. Or we could do a boxing session or whatever, no pressure. For whatever you want. Weights, treadmill, I don’t know. But yeah, here, bro. It’s for real the least I can do.
Neta? I can have that?
Of course. For sure. Here. He handed the pass over, magazine-paper type, softened by sweat. Just let me know if you wanna pull up together. But if not, that’s all good too. It expires in a year, so you have time.
Damn, yeah. I’ll take it if you’re sure about it.
Of course, bro. Who the fuck else would I give it to?
OK. Thanks, man.
Ya tú sabes.
Yeah.
We both looked at the welcome mat.
Alright, Manny. Rafa clapped his hands together and held them. I’mma let you get back to your comics and shit. But, yeah, I don’t know, if you’re free sometime we should go and do something. Watch a movie at the new theater in Edinburg. Apparently they have waiters bringing you burgers and milkshakes y todo la verga.
Alright, man. We’ll see.
OK, bro. Cuídate.
Take care.
I waited until Rafa walked down my driveway and onto Mireles Circle, until he crossed the dead grass between our houses, past the blue rags of the pool, and went inside. I busted into my room, put on my shorts, ankle socks, old basketball shoes, slipped the ticket to @elenchita’s fucking gym into my pocket, threw on a sleeveless muscle shirt, then changed to a normal T-shirt because my arms looked flabby as fuck. It’s not like I was going to stun @elenchita with my physique anyway. It was gonna be all about the vibe, the backstory, the insights. I got my dad’s truck keys from the counter. No backing out now.
I wanted to tell Ma I was ready to go do this — not meet @elenchita, but begin living again, finally, after all this time. I called her.
Hello? Manny?
Ma!
Pasa algo, Manny? I’m in class right now.
Nothing. Guess what?
What, mijo? Are you OK?
I’m about to go work out.
Oh, yeah? ¿Para dónde vas?
Fitmaxx. The new gym.
O, qué bueno, mijo. How are you gonna pay for it?
I got a free pass in the mail.
Wow. Cool, mijo. I need to get back, OK?
Yeah. I think I’m gonna start going, like, every day. Get back into it.
Good, mijo.
You think so?
Claro que sí. Wait — how are you gonna get there?
Dad’s truck. He went to work with Tío Porfis today, right?
I guess, mijo. I don’t know.
Are you super busy?
Yes. The chamacos are doing a worksheet.
OK, Ma.
You’re gonna take the truck, then?
Yeah.
OK. Aguas, Manuel. We don’t need tickets right now, OK?
OK, Ma.
Gotta go, mijo.
Ma.
What, Manny?
I love you.
Me too. Bye.
Fitmaxx is enormous. It takes up half the old Canales strip mall, spanning between Atlantis: Fish and Reptile Galore! and VCRoyale.
I go in and hand the attendant my Hercules Pass. I feel so nervous, like I’m about to jack a jewel from a store full of guards. The hip-hop is loud as fuck. I put my hands in my pockets. Two times the sweaty crumpled-up barcode doesn’t scan. Third time is good. I say sorry and she says have a good Fitmaxx workout and hands me a towel.
The gym is half dead. One dude’s grunts, clanking metal, cancer lights. I don’t see @elenchita though the afternoon is for sure her time. Barely even any girls apart from two on treadmills, the cleaning lady, and the front desk attendant.
Without thinking I’m sitting down at the dorsal pull-down machine, in the far back corner. I think if I’m just straight up — Yo. You @elenchita? What’s up? I respect you. I know we don’t know each other, but you’ve honestly shown me more about life than anyone I’ve ever known. After you’re done, let’s go to the top level of the Terrace & Suites parking garage and see a citrus-tint sunset over some raspas, or what? I think if we talk a little while, you’ll see we have a lot of things in common. She’ll be down. Impressed by the boldness.
I keep pulling this lever down. Not so much weight to hurt, but also not so light that I look like a total bug to these roided-up bulls. The song ends and the next one is techno. I get up and go to the free weights. From there I have a wider angle of the gym. No @elenchita. I pretend to find the right weight. Then, past the water fountains and to the locker room without knowing why.
I’m starting to feel embarrassed. There’s a bald dude pinching at his gut and stretching it out in the mirror. An older guy with a fat stache sitting on a bench exhausted and staring out at nothing. A worker is wiping the counters down. A bunch of the showers running. Someone’s musk spray burning my throat.
I go to the nook farthest back and pump myself up. This is how you save your life. Thirty minutes more. If it doesn’t happen, if she doesn’t show up, fine. But you’ll know you weren’t scared. You’ll know that you didn’t back down. You fought so long to crawl out of the muck and you are finally fucking here, in @elenchita’s gym, ready to meet her and show her who you really are. Everything that happened happened for this. This is the moment it all changes. You got this, Manny. This is your time. No backing out. No postponing. You can fucking leap.
I breathe till my heart slows a bit. Then I head back out to the gym.
@elenchita is filling a bottle at the water fountain. I’m standing in the doorway. It is really her. She is shorter in person, with a long surgical scar on her shoulder. She has boy hands and is mouthing along to a song with her earbuds in. Her look is so focused, like she isn’t even thinking. I don’t know whether to move forward or back. She shakes her bottle, then drinks for a long moment.
She senses me and turns. Her eyes are dark and sharp. @elenchita raises her chin.
Yeah, bro?
I think I shake my head no. She makes a confused face.
I’m Manny Romero. Just checking out the gym with my Hercules Pass.
She smiles real acidic to herself, caps the bottle, and then walks away. She chooses a squat rack, hangs a towel over the bar, and sets up a tripod for her phone. I feel nauseous.
I’m walking out of the gym, still with the towel, almost jogging, straight for my dad’s truck.
I feel better on the road. I drive slow. If I wanted to, if I needed to, I could just head up the highway, clear the checkpoint and leave the Valley, find somewhere to start again in this bigass country, like the others have. Better to go and figure it out rather than staying here, considering I’m done now. The sun is a beam. I drive to McAllen, through Edinburg, up to the brush, and then finally back to Mireles Circle. When I get home my mom asks how the workout went but I go straight to the shower.
I would sink down this drain, hide in the pipes if I could. I only get out when I notice the sky darkening through the window. I think people can make themselves forget days like this if they try hard enough. But probably @elenchita is roasting me live, telling the world about the creepy fuck who, after years holed up like some mole, scrolling all day, headed nowhere, showed up just now, during a session, and all he had to say was his own name — Manny Romero, a stumbling dunce who should have just stayed home, buried in his pit.
I log in.
There is a new post. It is a set of three pictures: her deadlifting a fuckton, from bend to pull to drop. Her muscles are blasting and the blood is all at her face. The caption says:
RULE #3: DONT GIVE A FUCK BOUT WAT THEY SAY AND FCKN GET IT SHOW THEM U RUN THIS SHIT N THEYLL NEVER B ON UR LEVEL THE CRAZIEST PART IS SOMETIMES THEYRE NOT EVN REAL JUST LITTLE GOBLINS IN UR HEAD U WONT BELEVE HOW MUCH SHIT CHANGES WHEN U SAY 2 URSELF THAT UR WORTH IT CUZ U KNOW WHAT THIS SHIT SHORT AS FCK THERES TOO MUCH TO SEE N DO NO MATTER WHAT U CANT BE THE ONE 2 FCK UR OWN SHIT UP N NO MATTER WHAT U CANT GIVE UP EVER U KEEP GOIN EVEN IF THEY TAKE EVRYTHING FROM U CUZ THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY UR MOTHRFUCKING FIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#keepfightin #onlythestrong # allugotisu #nobullshit #elenchita # worthit
