branch
Dro was falling asleep at his desk in Ms. Morgan’s classroom. He was going on nod #8 in the vicious cycle of nod/drift/snap back to it and I suspected that one was going to take him. He’d been up all night helping GJ make a last-minute family tree for school and I knew he was working with three hours of shut-eye, tops. I would’ve nudged him or thrown a shoe at his head but we sit on opposite sides of the room.
“Mr. Miceli?”
From the reflection in the window, I watched Sandro straighten, all faux-casual, and smile up at our AP English teacher.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Ms. Morgan only looked slightly amused. “Mr. Reyno just popcorned you to read?”
From the other corner of the room, Phil Reyno tried to contain his chuckle and flipped Sandro the subtlest of birds. I scoffed. Cheap shot. Sandro cleared his throat and nodded, committing to the reality that he wasn’t just caught napping. “Sorry. I was just...absorbing.”
He picked up his copy of Daniel: Last Forever and flipped around the pages. I sighed. The guy was completely lost. He caught me watching him in the window reflection and made a face. Just as subtly, I motioned to him like a third base coach.
1
1
9
Ms. Morgan was losing patience. “Mr. Miceli, we are on page—”
“Page 119, I know. I’m there. Just giving everyone...a moment.”
Sandro turned to the right page and stared at the book. Shit. How could I tell him what line Phil left off on?
“Miceli, Jesus Chriiiiiiiiiiiist.” I saw Ant Lewis’s blond bro-hawk whip around from the front row. “AP still stands for advanced placement, right, Ms. M?”
Sandro went completely still. I now know that’s his way of keeping himself from getting red. He’d much rather look like an unplugged robot collecting dust in some storeroom than give an overstuffed prick like Anthony Lewis the satisfaction of seeing him embarrassed. And he was embarrassed.
Ms. Morgan gave Ant a look. “Well, Mr. Lewis, if you’d like to run the show, why don’t we hear how you’d read it?”
Ant stifled his groan and got to it. Sandro gave Ms. Morgan a quick appreciative smile then buried his face in his book. I watched Dro in the window for another few popcorn rounds. Waiting for him to look at me. Waiting to give him a smile.
But he stayed in his book. Sandro is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met but will fold the second someone makes him feel stupid. He’s literally taken every single math class this school offers, aced them all, but I guess a GPA isn’t strong enough armor when you’re surrounded by people who call you the Italian Yeti. When you’re raised in a house that treats you like an unpaid intern. Sometimes your bad won’t let you hear your good.
When class let out, I headed for the door immediately. Sandro found us a nice post-English rendezvous spot beneath a stairwell that’s great for uninterrupted check-ins between classes.
But before I could get gone, Ant slipped right in front of me. “Yo, yo, amigo. You’re applying to Villanova, right?”
I froze up. My brain had already started transitioning from Diligent English Student Bash to When I’m With Sandro Bash and I couldn’t remember who I was around preppy assholes like Ant Lewis.
“Uh...maybe? Why?” Sandro was standing by the door, unsure if it’d be okay to wait for me.
Ant looked around and got in close. He smelt like the kind of cologne you don’t refer to by name but by price. “My dad’s tight with the alumni board and set up a lunch for me and the Nova coach last week. And he said he remembered you.”
I was confused. Did I remember a Villanova scout? I knew I put up some pretty solid sprints last spring and I remembered a lot of people wanting to talk to me afterward. But I only remembered the Rutgers scout. He was the only one that mattered to me.
“That’s...dope.”
“He said he doesn’t remember anyone. Seriously, bro, the man couldn’t stop talking about Bash the fucking Flash.”
“Great. That’s...why are you telling me this, Ant?”
I felt my phone buzz. I could see Sandro texting me from the hallway. I had to go. I needed to check in with him after all that bullshit with the reading. But Ant just laughed.
“I’m telling you ’cause that’d be sick, my guy! You and me, tearing it up in Nova next year? I’m sure you could get in easy.”
“I mean, I’m kind of set with my college choice—”
“You wouldn’t even need that affirmative action bull, dude, you’re a fucking beast.”
I felt my phone buzz again. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe the buzzing was me. Maybe I’d been buzzing our whole talk. This whole class. You know, I think I’d started buzzing the second that silver-spooned, boat-shoed, yacht-clubbed dick decided to embarrass my friend.
I cocked my head a little. Completely unbothered. “Why would Nova track want a guy who couldn’t make captain his senior year?”
Ant’s mouth closed. “...What?”
I didn’t blink. I didn’t shrug. I didn’t let that racist fuck off the hook. “Your dad bought you a playdate with the head of a D1 track program, and he couldn’t stop talking about me? Wow, Ant. Sounds like you got your money’s worth.”
Ant looked around the empty room, assuming someone would be there to back him up. But we were alone in there. Just Ant Lewis and a teammate who’d heard enough of his shit.
“That’s...a really messed-up thing to say to me, Villeda.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a messed-up guy. See you at practice, amigo.”
I brushed by him and headed out to meet Sandro. He looked concerned. “What was that?”
I shrugged and walked clean past our stairwell. “You know. Just bros being bros.”
I held open one of the double doors leading out to the parking lot. “Skip Guitar today. Let’s get food.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’re a senior. Call it a privilege.”
Sandro raised a brow and looked around for teachers, scandalized by the potential rule breaking. “I mean...what about your run? The cross-country guys? It’s Thursday.”
I shrugged. “I don’t wanna run. I just wanna talk to you.”
Sandro smiled.
With an open afternoon of endless possibilities, Sandro and I found ourselves back at our usual favorite spot doing our usual favorite shit. Chilling in the ditch, eating some Wawa, and reading Daniel: Last Forever. Well, trying to read. We’d been distracted by our new game and it was my turn.
“...My eyebrows. They’re too bushy.”
“They give you character. The hair on my shoulders.”
“It’s cool. Real macho-like.”
Sandro smiled at his shoulders through the neck of his sweatshirt. “Yeah?”
“Like a bear or some shit.”
“Nice.”
I sipped my Wawa coffee, happy for the warmth, and tried to think of something else I didn’t like about myself. “Hmmm... My laugh.”
“I’ll always be able to find you in a crowd.”
“I don’t laugh like that in crowds.”
“You should. It’s a good laugh.”
“Maybe people should just be funnier, then.”
“Maybe.”
Sandro stared up at the trees. The squirrels watched us, curious why these two humans were intruding in their space so deep into October. “...My smile.”
“You don’t like your smile?”
“It’s goofy.”
“Says who?”
“My brothers. Teachers. That yearbook photographer. This priest, one time.”
He wasn’t looking at me then, but I wished he would. Or maybe I didn’t. I still wasn’t sure if I wanted Sandro looking at me. “...I don’t think it’s goofy.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
He yawned and his eyebrows started to get heavy. What he barely survived in Ms. Morgan’s class was coming back with a vengeance. Before I could even say goodbye, he was out.
I cracked my book back open and found my spot. I’d been taking my time with Daniel, trying to go at Dro’s speed, but I’ve always had a bad time pacing myself. Sandro’s snoring scored the painfully anticlimactic last pages of Daniel: Last Forever and I closed the book for good. There’s nothing more disappointing than reaching the end of an unsatisfying book. You always hope it can pull itself together and make all the time you spent reading worth it but then you turn that last page and wonder why you bothered.
“Meh.”
I didn’t want to wake Sandro up so I settled for watching him sleep. You know, like a creep. I thought about napping too but I can’t do it like him. In nature. In class. In public. If I don’t feel safe when I’m trying to sleep, that’s all I’ll think about.
I watched Sandro’s chest rise and fall and rise and I thought about putting my head there. Maybe his chest was comfortable. I thought I might be able to sleep there and I wondered why I might think something like that.
I let Sandro hold my hand a couple nights ago and I’m regretting it. I mean, he held my wrist and it was more a sign of support than interest but still. Maybe I’m making a bigger deal out of it than it is. He was essentially just taking my pulse, and it probably didn’t mean much to him. But still. I keep thinking about it. How he was so quick to reach out after I said all that about my mom. Even though I was mad at him for the shit with Matty, he knew what was more important. It’s like he could tell how badly I was hurting. It made me wonder if I’d know when he was hurting. If I’d take his pulse.
Sandro had some dirt on his cheek and I thought it would be pretty harmless to flick it off. I ran through my list to see what number “Touching Sandro’s Cheek” would be.
times i touched dro:
1. When he drew the MEXICO on my shirt. (Hand on Back)
2. Feeling his beer-soaked tank at the Olympics. (Hand on Chest)
3. Holding him up running through the Sticks. (Arm over Shoulder)
4. When he thought I was making fun of Bumpin’ Grinders. (Pat on Shoulder)
5. The Kiss. (Lips on Lips, Lips on Neck, Hands on Hips)
6. The Kiss: Part 2. (Lips on Lips, Teeth on Teeth, Hands pushing Chest)
7. Slap-fight over radio outside B-Town. (Hands on Various)
8. Living room couch during The Ring Two. (Knee on Knee)
9. Carrying my high ass up the stairs. (Chest on Back)
10. High-five after he fixed Birdie’s coolant tank. (Palm on Palm)
11. Hitting him when he picked up Matty. (Palm on Back)
12. When he calmed me down. (Hand on Wrist)
Number 13. Unlucky. But interesting. With Sandro’s thing about touching, I guess I thought it would be less. Look at me, respecting personal spaces. I flicked the dirt off his cheek and he smiled, eyes still closed. “Can I help you?”
“I finished.”
“On my face?”
That cracked both of us up. He sat up and thumbed through his book. “Please tell me Daniel gets swallowed by a whale at the end.”
“That sailor lady finds him and he returns to school.”
“That’s all?”
“Completely unchanged.”
Sandro Frisbee-flung his book across the ditch. It hit a tree. “Fuck you, Daniel.”
“Oh, and you know that light in the sky? In chapter three?”
“The mirage?”
“Not a mirage. Lighthouse.”
“Oh, my God. So—”
“He could’ve been saved right away if he wasn’t stubborn trash? Yup.”
Sandro groaned and turned on his belly. He took my readers and tried them on, letting out this big yawn. “How long was I asleep?”
“Not long. I can’t do that. Fall asleep in public. Well, in places that aren’t my bed.”
“I do it anywhere. Here, school, bleachers. It’s how I fell off my roof actually.”
“Fuck, Dro. You were sleeping on your roof?”
“I didn’t mean to. There was all this screaming in my house one night and it was lasting longer than usual so I went up there with my old guitar and...yeah. Woke up on the ground with a broken foot. I felt so...so stupid.”
“God. You and that word. You’re not stupid.”
Sandro took off my glasses. “I don’t know.”
“You’re in AP trigonometry, Dro. I can barely spell trigonometry.”
“It’s not a school thing. I just feel stupid sometimes. A lot of times. Like any time I mess up or forget something, my family’ll be like What a Sandro thing to do. Get the wrong milk? Classic Sandro. Spill paint in the garage? That’s Sandro. Break my foot?”
“Talking about you like you’re not there.”
“Yeah. It’s just a lot. Everything. All the time.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry.”
I don’t know how someone so decent came from such a miserable group of people. Sandro’s not like me. He’s not so confused about the things that hurt him. He knows every wound on his body. But just because you know what’s hurting you doesn’t make it hurt any less. I wished I could do more for him than sucks and sorry.
He shrugged and gave me back my glasses. “Anywho. Them’s the breaks. Here’s hoping I’m not too stupid for Northwestern.”
“That’s your top choice?”
“Yuppo. Just gotta get in, get out, and restart. Get a nickname, maybe some tattoos. An apartment all to myself.”
“Right above Bumpin’ Grinders?”
“Hell yeah.”
He smiled and we just stared at the sky. It was silent. The birds, the wind, everything decided to take a moment. Silence.
This connection I feel to Sandro is something else. I thought it was just the communication thing but I feel just as heard in silence. I think he feels it too. So maybe I am doing more. More than sucks and sorry. Because our lives are loud. I thought I needed the noise. Because silence never felt right before Sandro.
I got a text.
M: gotta pick costumes dude
Matty. God. I took a moment to scroll up our texts together. I’d gone a few days not texting him back and he still hadn’t noticed. My last genuine response was last weekend. Matty hit me up all hyped ’cause his older brother got us a hookup for fake IDs. All we had to do was fill out some forms and send in a picture and we’d have the IDs by January. We’d been talking about doing it for years, but it took me forever to agree to a time. Because other than work and the occasional run, I haven’t been hanging out with Matty much lately. I just don’t know what to say to him anymore. I don’t know who to be around him now. Some part of me is growing, I can feel it, and that part doesn’t speak Matty’s language. Hanging out with him, sitting on his couch, listening to his bullshit, it feels like one of those bad dreams where I’m in a play and I can’t remember any of my lines. I’ve been getting stage fright around my best friend and I want more than that. After the weight room, after how we treated Sandro, I wanted more.
That’s why last weekend, when I finally agreed to a time for our fake ID photoshoot, I invited my good ol’ workout bud.
It had been mostly funny but somewhat jarring to see Dro sitting on my milk crates behind the diner that day. Using my dumpster to fill out his ID form. He had officially, irrevocably invaded my bubble, the only place that felt truly mine, and I didn’t care.
“How about Gino Natoli? I wanna stay Italian but maybe more subtle than Alessandro Miceli.”
“Dominic Natoli. I feel like Gino’s half a step away from Luigi Pizza-Pie.”
“Fair. I got a cousin Dominic, down by the shore.”
“Wow. What a New Jersey sentence.”
“Garden State, baby. How ’bout you, whatchu feeling?”
I wrote out my freshly chosen name, all pretty in pen. “I’m thinking Daniel. Daniel Branch.”
“Daniel like the book?”
“And Branch like my mom.”
“Hm. Doesn’t feel very Latino.”
“I guess I don’t feel very Latino.”
Sandro gave me a nod so I committed. At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter much. These were for the sole use of purchasing booze, maybe getting into concerts. But I liked the idea of Daniel. And I really liked the idea of Branch.
I never felt like a Villeda. How could I? My dad gave me his name, some eyebrows, then bounced. I barely remember the guy. But it was my legal name and by the time I even considered dropping it, my mom was Mrs. Branch. I liked Daniel too. The character in the book is a jerk but I sort of identified with him. He’s a lonely guy. Pissed. More angry that no one notices he’s missing than he is about being lost. All these misplaced emotions when really he’s just mad at himself. All he needed to do was trust the lighthouse. No one should want to be alone.
Matty wasn’t happy that I brought along the guy who made him look like a Tickle Me Elmo in front of the field team. Sandro did the honorable thing and apologized but even after they shook hands, I knew the memory was still eating Matty up. He stomped out of the diner with his mom’s camera and a rejected Beer Olympics poster board.
“Let’s make this quick. Miceli first.”
The picture needed a white backdrop, so I held up the blank side of the poster board and Sandro stood against it. He smiled. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Just his normal, earnest smile.
But Matty grumbled. “No dumb faces. They gotta look legit.”
“This is just how I smile.”
“Well, fix it.”
Sandro’s smile dropped. Faded away into something passive and stung.
What a fucking asshole.
I don’t think there’s a worse thing you can tell someone—that their smile is “dumb.” Or their laugh is “weird.” ’Cause smiles are smiles. Laughs are laughs. We don’t plan them. They happen when we’re too surprised or happy to care about what we look like. And to make someone question that? I think that’s a really cruel thing to do.
I was up next and didn’t try smiling. I just wanted to get Dro away from my dick coworker. Back to the ditch. Get him smiling again. But I had the rest of my shift and Sandro had to pick up GJ at karate. We still had lives outside of our talks and I’d have to wait. Hope something else got him smiling.
Dro finished up and started off on his crutches.
“Text you later, Bash. Thanks a bunch, Matt.”
I stifled a laugh. Matty despises “Matt.” Says “Matt” is a boring-ass white guy who drinks LaCroix and Frisbee golfs. I couldn’t remember if I’d told Dro that but it was the perfect dig for the situation. We watched Dro go and, once he had some distance, Matty huffed. “Some guys can’t take the fucking hint, eh?”
“Whatchu mean?”
He ignored my question. “Hey, you get a costume for Spooktacular yet? I’m thinking we do this Greek gods thing. Really show off the abs.”
Spooktacular. His Halloween party. I tried bringing him back to what he meant about “the fucking hint” but he had moved on. “I heard Ronny DiSario’s doing some haunted house shit at her place and, honestly, it feels like an attack. Our party’s gotta kick ass. I got kegs, got us E, we’re going hard. I’m only inviting track guys and soccer girls. Maybe basketball girls.”
“Oh. No field guys?”
I knew what Matty was doing. Matty knew what he was doing. He had this look I recognized but couldn’t place right away. “Bashy. You got your friends, then you got your teammates. That’s what went wrong with the Olympics. Too many guys we didn’t know. Not really.”
It took a twitch of his brow for me to place his look. It was the same one I saw in my rearview that night. When I drove Dro home from the Olympics and did everything I could to keep the emotion off my face. Matty was thinking loud about something and trying not to show it. I wanted to figure it out but Avi barked at us to get back to work.
We didn’t talk about it again and I spent the rest of the week avoiding him. But even in the ditch, with Sandro snoring beside me, Matty’s texts could still find me.
M: gotta pick costumes dude
My fingers moved to respond but none of the letters looked right. I didn’t know what to say. Stage fright. The wrong kind of silence.
I’ve known for a long time that I didn’t love hanging out with Matty anymore, but it’s new that I can’t stand being around him at all. He’s this cackling reminder that I’ve spent the last four years being a dick to people. Being a loud, showy asshole so people wouldn’t notice what I was really feeling. How much I was feeling.
I heard Sandro clear his throat then he sat up with me. “Sup?”
I guess nap time was over. I showed him my phone. “Matty’s big Halloween party’s this weekend.”
“Mm. Mateo Silva Presents: Spooktacular?”
“Mateo Silva Presents: Spooktacular 3: Son of Spooktacular.”
“Ah. My secretary musta lost my invite.”
“I was thinking about skipping it.”
Sandro rubbed the crap out of his eyes and stretched out like a cat. “Really? Bash the Flash skipping a classic Matty S. throwdown?”
“Yeah. Thought we could hang out.”
“We’re hanging out right now.”
“But we could be hanging out in costumes. With a full liquor cabinet. In my empty house. Real spooky shit.”
“I do like spooky. But no Ouija boards. I got a functions exam coming up and really can’t afford gettin’ possessed right now.”
“Deal.”
I extended a hand. He looked at it and made a face. Like he was acknowledging my unspoken rule. This rule about touching that I thought I made for his sake but was maybe always more for me. I guess Sandro knew. But he shook my hand anyway.
14. When we shook on it. (Palm on Palm)
We shook for a good long while. Maybe too long. It was funny. Because we were getting so close. I felt close to this person. Yet I was still kicking up all this sand about touching him. Something as simple as a handshake. Or his hand on my wrist. He laughed and pulled his hand away and I felt like Daniel again. Lost at sea. Ignoring the lighthouse. Too stubborn to accept a helping hand.
And I decided it was time to come in from the sea.