“YOU KNOW, I was thinking hard about this, and I can’t believe Wilfrido didn’t include La Cocina de la Isla. ¡Qué presumido! He doesn’t have the authority to do that!” Carmen didn’t normally speak Spanish to me. That was how I could tell she was really upset.
We walked around Canal Grove, and my brain fired off more thoughts than I could handle. Pipo Place was huge. It was clear that Wilfrido wanted it to take up more space on Main Street. The only place to expand was into La Cocina. Wilfrido couldn’t kick us out, but what if my family couldn’t renew our lease for some reason? What if Wilfrido knew our lease was up soon and was willing to wait it out?
“We need to tell your mom, right?” Carmen snapped me out of this very depressing game of What If.
“I dunno,” I said. When we got to the light at the crossing, I turned to Carmen. “I think we should tell Abuela.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Arturo. It might upset her too much.”
“It’s Abuela’s restaurant. She has more right to know than anybody.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to tell her, Arturo. She was coughing pretty bad the other day.”
It was a little after eight o’clock. The sky was beginning to turn into a mix of orange, pink, and gray, with clouds interrupting in patches all over the horizon. I needed time to clear my head, so we took the long way home and stopped at one of my favorite canals. It had a massive tree next to it, with long vines that you could use to plunge into the water.
“This place is really cool,” Carmen said as we sat at the edge of the little hill overlooking the canal. The vines from the banyan tree hung over us like they were waiting to turn us into puppets.
“Can you really swing on those?” she asked.
“You have to know the right moment to let go or you’ll flop backward into the water and hurt yourself.”
“Is it safe in there?” she asked. “Do any animals live in the water?”
The canals that ran through town twisted and turned and eventually dumped out into the bay. That was how the neighborhood had gotten its name.
“Yeah, manatees. If you have a water hose, they come right up and drink from it. They have whiskers and a nose like an elephant whose trunk didn’t fully grow.”
“And they’re not dangerous?”
“Nah, they’re kind of goofy-looking, actually. I don’t get why people love them so much.”
“Maybe because they know they’re not dangerous. It’s nice knowing an animal that big isn’t going to hurt you.”
“I guess so,” I said. “It’s usually the smaller animals that are dangerous around here. Like barracudas. Those things are nasty.”
“I’ve heard of those! They have huge teeth and really slick bodies and nasty, beady eyes.”
“Have you seen one?”
“On an animal show once.”
We sat in silence a bit while watching the water reflect the pink and orange sky on its surface. I threw in little clumps of dirt that broke up as soon as they met the water. They burst into little clouds that slowly sank to the bottom of the canal, and I wondered how many creatures would come out once night had fallen.
“I’m sorry about everything,” Carmen said.
I didn’t look up from the water.
“You really want to tell Abuela?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, digging my hands into the grass and tugging at the blades to pull them free.
“I miss my mom so much,” she offered suddenly, and I looked up to see her staring off into space. “I’m tired of being positive about it all the time. It actually really stinks, you know?”
I nodded.
“My mom was amazing,” Carmen continued. “She was one of the most respected food writers anywhere.”
“Her articles are what got La Cocina de la Isla recognized internationally,” I said, because I had read Carmen’s mom’s food blog. She had been really funny but never snarky when judging food or restaurants.
Carmen’s lip twitched like it was charged with electricity. Her face turned red and she let out a breath that sounded like a horse exhaling.
“My dad tells me to think of the good moments,” she said, managing a smile.
“What was it like, living in Madrid?” I asked.
“Fine, I guess,” she said. “We used to travel so much, you know? Then my mom suddenly started feeling bad and then we stopped traveling.”
“When did she, you know, get sick?”
“It happened so fast. She was fine just last year; then it spread so quickly, there was nothing that could be done.”
“Food and writing are how our moms met,” I said, trying to change the subject.
Carmen smiled. “They were both young and creative and more interested in focusing on the good things that food can be rather than all the criticisms.”
“My mom can be pretty critical,” I said, and Carmen laughed.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
Carmen took out a pack of gum and offered a piece to me.
“No, thanks,” I said, and looked up to see night quickly closing in. “We should get going,” I added. “It’s going to get dark soon.”
Carmen pulled herself up. The only thing that broke our silence on the walk home was Carmen chewing gum. It wasn’t obnoxiously loud or anything. It’s just that the neighborhood was really quiet. I thought about how that could change with so many people moving into Pipo Place.
We walked through the gates of our complex, and I stopped just in front of Abuela’s apartment. When Abuela had moved in, my mom and dad had wanted to give her a quieter unit away from the gate so she wouldn’t have to hear everyone coming in and out. But Abuela refused. She wanted to see everyone. Practically every family member stopped into Abuela’s on their way home from work or school or wherever.
On the way to Carmen’s, we passed the floribunda bush that hadn’t sprouted a bud. Carmen dug into her pockets for keys.
“Here they are,” she said, then unlocked the door. She opened and called for her dad, but he wasn’t there. Carmen shrugged, turned on the lights, and walked to the kitchen.
“Want to come in for a sec for some chocolate?” she asked, opening the cupboard and pulling out a huge bar wrapped in foil.
“Um, sure. Thanks,” I said, wondering if it was okay that her dad wasn’t home.
“Seventy-two percent cocoa and raspberry. That’s my weakness,” she said.
I took the piece she offered and practically swallowed the whole thing.
“Whoa! Monster bite! If I did that, I’d get chocolate stuck in every one of my braces.”
“Oh, sorry. I guess I was hungry or something.”
“Don’t be sorry. I could probably eat chocolate all day long if my dad let me.”
The living room smelled like mint and licorice, and I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Maybe it was one of those strange wooden boxes hanging from the corner of her ceiling? They had little holes in them and looked like someone had put dried leaves inside.
They had put a few pictures up too, and there was a stack of CDs on top of the credenza.
“My dad loves jazz CDs,” she said, shuffling through the collection.
“Why doesn’t he just download music?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess he likes actually putting the CD in a player and waiting for it to cue up to a song. He put all these into a box and checked it on the plane along with all our pictures and a few things from home.”
Carmen picked up a frame next to her dad’s CD collection and stared. She turned and showed me a photo of her and her parents by the ocean.
“That’s the same beach we went to when we visited you guys.”
“Yeah,” she said, putting the photograph back down and giving me a sad sideways look. “I totally understand why you want to tell Abuela.”
I rubbed the edges of a little vase that sat on the counter.
“But you know,” Carmen said, “she hasn’t been feeling that well, from what my dad tells me.”
“That doesn’t mean she can’t still know things,” I said, feeling frustrated.
It suddenly became really hard to be in the same room with Carmen.
“Look, I should get going,” I said, starting for the door. “I don’t want your dad to come in when we’re here by ourselves.”
“You’re right,” she said.
I walked out carrying the fancy leather tote from Wilfrido’s office. Then I took out my mask and Hulk bodysuit and tossed the tote into the trash bin. I made my way to Abuela’s apartment to talk to her. Through the window, I could see she had fallen asleep on her recliner while watching her favorite telenovela, El comandante y la duquesa.
That show was crazy. It was about a wealthy English duchess whose spoiled kids pretended they loved her but were really just trying to cheat her out of her money. But then the duchess married el comandante, a former general in the Chilean army who wore his uniform every day. One of the duchess’s kids killed him, but then his twin brother, a commander in the Uruguayan air force who nobody knew existed, showed up and fell in love with the duchess. Now the kids were plotting to kill him, too. That was all I knew, because it wasn’t like I watched La duquesa regularly.
Anyway, Abuela looked so peaceful, and I hated the idea of causing her stress. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, maybe Carmen was right.
What I really needed was to talk to my best friends. Tomorrow was their last day in town before Mop went to camp and Bren left on his family vacation to the Dominican Republic. They’d know what I should do. I ran straight to my room and climbed into bed early so this terrible day would end.