Burro Hills Read online

  “Like shit,” I said. “You?”

  “Not too bad,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t drink nearly as much as you did. I didn’t even know it was possible for a human being to drink that much.”

  He was grinning, but I turned away.

  “Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you still pissed about that girl at the party, Skye, or whatever her name is?”

  I must have looked surprised, because he laughed. “I saw you eyeballing us from across the room. I swear, we didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, whatever, man.” As soon as the marijuana filled my lungs, a calm rush took over my body. I handed it back to him.

  “You don’t believe me? I had to do something while you were downstairs chasing after chicks.”

  I snorted. “That was them, not me.”

  He took a long drag and held out the joint, but when I reached for it, he pulled it away. “Then how come all I’ve heard these past twelve hours is how Jessica Velez is now in with Skye Russo’s group because they all think you tried to force your tongue down her throat last night?”

  I coughed so hard I thought my lungs might burst open. “What? What are you talking about?”

  He shrugged. “Word travels fast. Apparently, they feel so bad for her that they’ve taken her under their wing, whatever that means.”

  Skye and Jess had been good friends in middle school. But the summer before high school, Jess went to visit family in Colombia. She came back confused about the rules and the convoluted new social hierarchy of Burro Hills High. She would cry to me every day while I tried my best to listen. There would always be a new fumble she’d made; the humiliating mistake of wearing a sparkly Hello Kitty backpack, singing Disney songs to herself in the halls, or raising her hand too often in class. It made me dizzy to hear it all. How did girls come up with these rules? Soon the whispers started, just low enough so the teachers wouldn’t pick up on it, but loud enough so that Jess could hear. I wanted to stop it, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I didn’t understand why these girls who’d once been her closest friends were now treating her like the enemy. Notes were passed, rumors started about her being a secret slut, even sluttier than Kellie. Girls would trip her in the halls, girls that used to braid her hair and make her friendship bracelets. Someone even slammed her into a locker once and ran away laughing. Skye orchestrated it all, the puppet master behind the scenes. I even confronted her at one point, asking her why she was such a bitch, but that made the girls even madder at me, and they punished Jess even harder. So I kept quiet, stayed in my lane.

  But Jess was a warrior. She never let them see her falter, keeping her face stoic at school, holding her head high in the hallway just like I’d encouraged her to. She ate lunch with me and the guys, pretending it didn’t bother her that even the most unpopular of girls wouldn’t go near her. But after school, after we’d make it back to my house and the safety of my room, she’d collapse into tears and bury her head into my pillows, letting out animal screams. It wasn’t until she met these new girls, Anna and Lizzie and their wind-up bimbo friends, that she started to smile again.

  After all of that, all that she’d been through, how could I have treated her like I had? I not only didn’t deserve to get out of bed and see the sunlight and stand here and smoke with the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen, I didn’t deserve to breathe.

  I stared at Connor, a very beautiful, very cocky new kid, this kid who hadn’t even been here for a full four months and suddenly had all the intel. “How do you know all of this? How do you even know these people?”

  He just shrugged. “What happened between you and Jess?”

  “Nothing happened. Hand me that.”

  He held it out of reach, then finished it off and stomped the roach out on the pavement. “Bullshit, something always happens or no one would say anything. Especially not with Jess. Isn’t she like, your best friend?”

  I watched the homeless woman—or was she a vagabond?—accept a dollar from a homeless man from across the street. A businessman yapping into his phone passed her by without a second glance. “I…I don’t know. I was really drunk, and Toby and Max wouldn’t shut up, and I don’t know why I did that. I don’t even know who I was in that moment.”

  “That’s very existential of you, Jack,” Connor said. He sidled up closer to me. “It’s alright. You guys just need to talk it out. And anyway, it was a really terrible party.”

  I said nothing.

  “Look,” he said. “It wasn’t cool what you did to Jess, but you should talk to her, clear things up. Tell her about Toby and Max and why you were acting like such a dick that night.” He leaned in, and I could smell his cologne, feel the heat of his body. The steel drumming in my head moved down to my chest. “Now can we just go back to being friends or bros or whatever?” His fingers were on my neck, a danger zone.

  “Knock it off,” I said, pushing his hand away, fighting a smile. “We’re in public.”

  “We don’t have a very captive audience, if you haven’t noticed.”

  It was true. Aside from the vagabond woman and the homeless man, there was only the occasional pedestrian absorbed in their own lives.

  And he smelled too good, way too good. It should be illegal to smell that good.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “How you smell,” I answered, way too honestly. Nice, Jack. “I mean, your cologne. It smells nice.”

  “You smell nice,” he countered. Now his fingers were in my hair. Shit. He was practically purring in my ear. “You always smell nice.” Mayday.

  He tasted like peppermint and pot when his lips touched mine. The world around me dissolved for a moment, and I all I could taste was his mouth, but then I remembered kissing Jess and had to pull away.

  I was pond scum. I was lower than pond scum.

  But Connor didn’t seem to mind, let alone notice. My stomach growled so loudly I thought passersby might hear it.

  “Want to go get lunch?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t. I’m broke.”

  “I’m buying,” he said. “Seeing as though I deprived you of those last few hits of pot, I figure I owe you.”

  “Okay. I just have one question.” I inhaled him again as he leaned in closer to hear it. “What the hell does existential mean?”

  24.

  “Is security outside?”

  “Nope, we’re good.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said.

  We drove off-campus in the middle of the day, something that could get you suspended at Burro Hills High, but we needed our fast-food runs. The best lunch deals were always at White Crest Plaza, just a mile up the road. Usually it was just one of us who went and grabbed food for everyone—it was safer that way, less risk of getting caught—but it was so nice out that morning that we all decided to just fuck it and go as a group. Connor was doing his pay-for-tutoring thing that period and raking in some mad cash for almost no work on his part. He’d hired some bored brainiac kids to secure test answers beforehand and sell them out. Connor was like the Don of the group; you had to visit him, pay upfront, and then your answers would be distributed to you at a designated time and place.

  “See, I don’t give them all the right answers, at least not their first time. That would make it too obvious,” Connor had explained to us that morning before school. “Teachers would get suspicious. Things would go under really quick. You give ’em like seventy to eighty percent correct, and suddenly kids who are flunking Algebra are doing fairly well, little by little, and who do they thank? Me. Me and the guys in the tutoring room while we get paid under the table.”

  “That’s fucking awesome, man!” Max had said.

  “But what if they snitched?” Toby asked. He rolled his eyes in my direction.

  “Why would they?” Connor asked.

  “Maybe they feel ripped off. Maybe they think fifteen dollars a test isn’t good enough. Maybe they threaten
to crack the system unless you lower your price.”

  Connor’s smile curved at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t get it, Toby. These kids aren’t that smart. They’re desperate. This is their first taste of power and control. Why would they ruin it? And if they did, they’d be outcast, blackballed. No one would talk to them. It’s foolproof.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  It was a pretty sneaky, well-executed operation, and one of the coolest things someone had ever pulled off at our school. And it had kept him busy all semester.

  Now it was just me and the guys grabbing some food, and after listening to lectures all day, I was ready for some much-needed peace and quiet in my day.

  “Whoa, whoa, look at that!” Max said as we pulled into the parking lot. He pointed to my neck.

  No such luck.

  “Damn, Jack,” Toby said.

  “What?” I said, my hand instinctively going to my throat.

  “Is that a hickey?”

  “Oh shit, that’s huge,” Toby said, stomping out his cigarette and looking closely. I flinched and moved away from him, my face growing warm.

  “Come on Jack, don’t be shy. Let us see!” Max said.

  “Who’s that from?” Toby asked.

  “Did Jess give that to you?”

  “Shut up,” I said, walking ahead of them. “You guys are such perverts.”

  “We’re the perverts? She was pretty upset the other night,” said Max.

  “Yeah, what did you do to her, man?” Toby asked. “If I had Jess, I’d treat her real nice. Real nice, you feel me?” I heard Max laugh.

  “I said shut the fuck up,” I said. They went silent, as if stunned by my tone and the way I’d said it. I didn’t care; I just wanted them to leave me alone.

  We got our food and drove back to campus, Max and Toby ignoring me the whole way back. I felt restless, and all I wanted to do was get the fuck away from them, away from everyone.

  So when the bell rang, I snuck outside and grabbed my bike, making sure security wasn’t on the lookout for assholes like me. I biked up the street, down into my neighborhood, past my house where Mom was probably inside watching trash TV, down past the strip mall where Dad was working the day shift at the local bar, and then onto San Juan Boulevard, where the creeps and addicts were out.

  I parked and locked my bike next to Bazingo, which was strange to see in broad daylight, with no shining marquee lights or long line at the front. Inside, with its depressing black floors and black walls, I found Toby’s uncle who owned the club. He sold me something that I snorted in the bathroom stall. It helped ease the anxiety gnawing away at my insides and quieted the thoughts racing each other in my head.

  Once I was high enough, I stepped outside into the cool night and sat against the side of the nightclub. I’d finally gotten the courage to dial Jess’s number. She’d been ignoring all my texts and calls, all my repetitions of “hey” and “I’m sorry about the other night.” She’d been ghosting me, and I knew she was ghosting me, because I could see whenever she was online.

  The phone rang and rang, and I kept on redialing until she finally answered.

  “What do you want?”

  I rubbed at my eyes. I could feel a splitting headache coming on. “Hey Jess. Listen, I know you’re mad, and I’m really, really sorry. About the party. About what I did. And—”

  “What exactly did you do?” she asked sharply.

  “I…well, you know. I kind of, accidentally came onto you, and—”

  “And? And what, Jack? Listen, I don’t want to talk to you right now. I don’t want to see you. I mean, I can’t risk having you accidentally slide your hands up my skirt again.”

  A car swerved by and splashed dirty water on me. I deserved that.

  “What was that about, anyway?” she asked. “Do you like me or something? Because that’s a really fucked up way to show it.”

  “I…”

  “All those years we were friends,” she went on, and I could hear, the way she was holding back tears. Shit. “All those times you came over, hung out with me in my bed. Were you just waiting to make a move on me?”

  “No! Jess, I don’t like you like that,” I said. “I just—”

  She laughed like it was the dumbest thing I’d ever said to her. “Oh, so you’re not even attracted to me? You just wanted someone easy to hook up with that night? Is that it? That is so impossibly pathetic.”

  “Listen, please. Toby was goading me all night, he wouldn’t shut up, and I was really drunk and—”

  She scoffed. “Oh, so now it’s Toby’s fault? Are you fucking serious, Jack? You know, he actually came to comfort me afterwards. I was a crying, drunken mess in Skye Russo’s basement bathroom, and unlike you, he came to see if I was alright.”

  I’ll bet he did, I wanted to say.

  “Jess, please just let me—”

  “I really can’t deal with you right now,” she said, cutting me off. “Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Just leave it, Jack. I need some time.”

  Now it was me that felt like crying.

  “Okay,” was all I could say before she hung up, the dial tone painful in my ear.

  25.

  The doorbell rang, and we could see him through the window.

  “You didn’t tell me your friend was Mexican,” Dad said.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Or handsome, at that,” said Mom.

  “You’re both disgusting,” I said.

  I opened the door to Connor, all bright-eyed in a fitted navy blue tank top, thin gray cardigan, and his signature board shorts. His hair was slicked back in a way that looked purposeful yet effortless. “Hey,” he said to me. I studied the way his lips formed the word.

  Dad shook hands with him, squeezing a little too hard around the knuckles. “Nice to meet you.”

  Mom continued the weirdness, extending her hand like some twentieth-century debutante. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Connor took her hand and kissed it gently, playing along with ease. “The pleasure’s all mine, Madame.” Mom practically swooned, giggling and attempting to light her next cigarette seductively. I had to look away; I just couldn’t deal with it. It was like something out of a bad movie.

  “Alright, my room’s this way, and—”

  “Now hang on a minute, Jack.” Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “You hungry, Connor?”

  “Dad, I don’t think he’s—”

  “Um, sure, what do you got?” Connor said. He turned and grinned at me over his shoulder before following Dad into the kitchen.

  “Mom.” I stretched the word into a groan.

  “What?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  She waved her cigarette around dramatically. “Do what?”

  “You know, act weird…around my friends.”

  “Well it’s not every day you bring a hot little number home.” She smirked.

  “Okay, now I’m definitely going upstairs.”

  “You like chili, Connor? We got some nice black beans here too somewhere…”

  “Alright, Dad,” I said, coming into the kitchen. “You’ve been a very gracious host. Connor, let’s go to my room.”

  “Nice to meet you!” Connor called out as I practically dragged him out.

  Upstairs in my room he sprawled out on my bed, put his arms behind his head, and grinned up at me.

  “Your dad thinks I’m Mexican.”

  I closed the door and locked it. “I know. He’s a racist asshole. They’re super weird, and I apologize on their behalf. But uh, what are you, anyway? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Chilean, as far as I know. Maybe a little bit of Colombian too. And no…I don’t mind you asking. You can ask me anything.”

  I sat down beside him.

  “Jess is too,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Jess is Colombian too. At least, I think she is.”

  “Think? Isn’t she your best friend?” he asked, tossing a pillow at me.


  I tossed it back, thinking back to the awful conversation from last night when I was high out of my mind. “I honestly don’t know anymore.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not particularly,” I said. I reached for my bong.

  “Fair enough. So um…vous avez du feu?” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said, can I get a light?” He pulled a cigarette from his pack.

  “You know French?”

  “Enough to borrow a lighter,” Connor grinned, sticking the cigarette behind his ear. He sat up and edged closer to me on the bed. “And enough to maybe try to impress you, a little.”

  I tried to conceive a universe where Connor Orellana had to try to impress me.

  He shrugged off the cardigan. His lips on my neck broke my next thoughts, dissolving them like mist until my head was empty and open and all I felt was him. He reached out and tenderly stroked down my cheek, trailing his finger across the bone. Something just below his hand caught my attention.

  “What’s this?” I asked, gently touching a deep scar on his wrist. He pulled his arm away quickly, like I’d burned him.

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head and moving his mouth to mine. “Just an accident.”

  I let him unbutton my shirt and slide it off me. I shivered as he kissed up my chest to my throat, flicking his tongue against my ear. I felt wired and restless, an awkward puppet without control of its own strings.

  “Are you nervous?” he whispered.

  “What?” I said. “For what?”

  He laughed a little at the tenseness in my voice. “Nothing,” he said, kissing me. “Just relax. Unless…you want me to stop.”

  “No, please don’t,” I said, feeling unsure. “I just…I can’t. Not here.” I nodded at the door.

  “Then let’s go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “My place. Don’t worry, no one’s home.”

  I must have seemed anxious, because he followed it with: “And don’t worry, I’m not going to tie you up and skin you alive in my basement or anything. Not unless you want me to, that is.”