Not a Chance Read online

  * * *

  Dad’s away with Nerick for a long time, and Mom and I are sitting down to supper when he pedals home. His pant legs are covered in orange dust up to the knees, and his shirt is drenched with sweat and is sticking to him. “I guess you can’t make either of those old clunkers any easier to ride, can you?” he asks after he puts the bike away.

  I shake my head and ask what happened.

  “His brother Wilkens was clearing land. The machete went through his foot, he lost a lot of blood, and he passed out. I think it was more shock than blood loss that made him pass out though. I’ve got him on antibiotics, and I hope I’ve scared him into resting for the next few days. I’ll go back tomorrow to check in.”

  I nod. Things like this happen a lot here. Usually my parents hear about it long afterward, when the gash is infected because people can’t afford to stop working in the fields. I’m glad Nerick came for help, and I hope his brother gets better soon. At moments like this, I feel like a spoiled brat for ever complaining about anything.

  Six

  "I want to learn how to do that.” Nerick is wearing tight jeans and a white T-shirt without a streak of orange earth on it anywhere. Since I saw him yesterday, he’s lost that terrified look. He’s looking down at me, his hands in his pockets, like a model in one of the teen magazines I see at the library.

  My hands are covered in bike grease. Some of it’s probably smudged across my cheek. My hair is in a messy ponytail, and my outfit is one of the worst in the whole donation pile (a shirt with yellow stripes and little orange smiley-faces, and baggy, bright red shorts). And, of course, I’m squatting between a bicycle and an outhouse, fiddling with a derailleur, surrounded by stench. “Learn what?” I ask.

  “What you’re doing.” His eyes meet mine but then dart away. “Your dad says you know how to fix bikes, and I want to learn.”

  I blink at him, not sure what’s most stunning: that my father—Dr. “Keep the Bikes Hidden or Woe to You”—has told Nerick I’m working on them; that a teenage guy wants me to teach him to fix bikes; or that Nerick wants to learn to fix something he’s probably never ridden before. The emergency bike might be the only one he’s ever seen.

  I feel my face pull into a smile. Ever since I started work at the bike shop back home, my friend Emily has worried about my romantic future. She’s even suggested I wear rubber gloves to prevent blackening of nail beds and cuticles, and now I get to tell her that the hottest guy in Cucubano wants to spend time with me because I’m a grease monkey.

  He frowns and crosses his arms. “Look, if you don’t want to teach me, that’s—”

  “No, no!” I say before he gets the wrong idea. Sometimes I get so lost in my own thoughts that people assume I disagree with them. It happens with Emily all the time, and it drives her crazy. “Sure, I’ll teach you.”

  He grins and crouches down beside me. “Good. I could give you a few pointers on tree climbing in exchange, if you like.”

  I laugh. I love that he’s teasing me again like he used to. “Deal.”

  He pulls a red handkerchief out of his back pocket and unwraps two small pieces of sugarcane. “Want some? It fell off one of the trucks going by.”

  I know this is payment for the bike-repair lessons, and I smile. Sugarcane grows almost everywhere in the country except here. The mountains get too cold for it to grow, so it’s a rare treat. He peels back the dark outer skin and hands me a piece. I suck on it, pulling the sweet juice into my mouth, and thank him.

  “De nada.” He waves a hand at the bike. “Go back to what you were doing.”

  I show him the derailleur and how it helps move the chain to different gears. I explain how the gears make it easier or harder to pedal the bike. He nods and chews on his lip, concentrating as if I might quiz him on this later. I wonder if any of this makes sense to someone who’s never ridden a bike before, but there’s no point asking because I can’t offer to let him ride anyway. My parents would flip. They might even flip about him being back here with me, learning this. Right now, they’re in the clinic. The back window is closed, and with all the chatter at the front of the clinic, I doubt they can hear us. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

  I finish explaining how the bike works. Nerick nods slowly and smiles.

  “So why do you want to learn?” I ask.

  “A guy came by the house a few months ago,” Nerick says. “He was riding a bicycle that had bags hanging off the front and the back, and he asked if he could pitch a tent near our place. He ate with us and left us a bit of money, and he said he wants to build a big house near here for travelers who are riding their bicycles through the mountains. He’ll need all kinds of workers for his business, including bike mechanics. Last night, your papá said you know about fixing bikes. If you teach me, I can be ready when the man shows up again.”

  I try to look happy for him, but I’m already hoping he doesn’t get hurt. I’d hate for Nerick to spend his whole summer learning bike mechanics and dreaming of this guy coming back, only to be disappointed.

  At first, I’m surprised that no one else has mentioned this bicycle tourist. Then again, no one talks to Nerick’s family much. Their house is at the bottom of the hill, and the only reason they have to come up here is for the medical clinic. Even then, people don’t treat them the way they treat my family and other families in the village. When they look at Nerick, all they see is the color of his skin, and that’s enough to stop them from having anything to do with him.

  “Are you going to the market on Saturday?” he asks, and I yank myself out of my thoughts.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  The market is in the next town over, about an hour’s walk away. People go there to sell their vegetables and to buy things they can’t get at the colmado. My parents usually pay Aracely’s mom to go for them if they need anything. I’ve been a few times with Aracely’s family but not often. I don’t know why Nerick thinks I would go now.

  “I thought Aracely might have asked you,” he says, “to help her with the herbs.”

  I swallow, wishing I knew what he was talking about. Aracely’s been learning about herbs from her abuela for as long as I can remember, but I don’t know what that has to do with the market. Her abuela has always insisted that healing herbs can’t be bought and sold. It goes against some kind of basic philosophy about the right to health or something.

  “Her bag on the way there is getting bigger and bigger, and it always comes back close to empty.” Nerick frowns. “You didn’t know about this? She didn’t tell you?”

  I feel my face going hot. “It never came up.” The only thing she told me about was the marriage, and as soon as I said what I thought of that, she stopped talking to me. But this market thing could be my in. “I might go with Aracely on Saturday. I’ll ask her later if she wants help.”

  “I’ll see you there then. Or tomorrow, if you’re working on the bike again.”

  “I’ll be here.” I wave a hand at the outhouses and the crummy old bike. “Come whenever you want.”

  I know I shouldn’t be so available. Emily, who never even speaks to guys she likes, would be appalled. And even Aracely says to be careful about showing too much interest. But the guy Emily likes doesn’t even know she exists, and Aracely is getting married at fifteen, so I’m not going to follow their guy advice. From now on, I’ll invent my own. It’s not like he’s interested in me anyway. It’s the bikes. So who cares if I look desperate for friendship? Anyone can see it’s the truth.

  Seven

  I’m not desperate enough to talk to Aracely though. In fact, I avoid her. When she comes up the hill with her sister, I dash into the clinic. If I’m on the road and I hear her voice around the curve, I jump onto a trail in the bush. Which-ever children are with me think it’s a hilarious new game I’ve invented, and they stay stock-still among the leaves and th
en burst into giggles the second Aracely’s out of earshot. Each time this happens, I’m hiding almost before I notice what I’m doing. I feel like a coward, but I tell myself I need time to think.

  Meanwhile, all over the village, people are asking questions. The first few days we were here, they kept asking where Aracely was and looked shocked when I said I didn’t know. We used to be inseparable. So I made up some lame excuse about both of us being busy, and people nodded and talked about the responsibilities of growing up, but they still looked suspicious.

  Ten days have passed, and the questions are more blunt. Yesterday, Miralis Vargas asked me if Aracely and I are fighting. Miralis lives across the road from us, and Aracely and I call her the Eye because she’s always watching everybody and spreading stories about everything she sees. I’m sure she didn’t believe my line about both Aracely and me being very busy, but no way would I tell her anything else.

  Even my parents want to know what’s going on. “You’re very quiet lately,” Mom says at supper one night. “What’s up?”

  “Not much.” I spend my days running errands for my parents, working in the garden and teaching Nerick about bikes whenever he shows up. (One Saturday has gone by since his first visit, when he asked if I was going to market. I’m sure he noticed that I didn’t go, but he hasn’t brought it up again. Maybe he knows Aracely and I are fighting, but he, at least, figures it’s none of his business.)

  My parents found out right away about Nerick’s visits. They said they’re happy we’re friends again but can’t understand why he wants to learn bike mechanics. I haven’t told them about the cycling tourist Nerick met. I love the fact that no one in Cucubano knows about this yet, and I don’t want to be the one to start the gossip flying.

  Mom watches the oregano leaves float around in her soup and says nothing. Since our fight about my friend the day after we got here, no one has mentioned Aracely. My parents give me enough work to keep me busy, and I try not to be around when Aracely’s mother comes to deliver our meals. My parents pretend this is all normal and never mention it, in case I start shouting again and make the neighbors talk. (I never expected my family to worry about that kind of thing, since they have no trouble making a spectacle of themselves for a worthy cause at home. But I guess different rules apply when it comes to me making a scene for something I care about.)

  Mom’s voice is hushed, almost a whisper, when she asks about Aracely tonight. “You don’t see her much anymore, do you?”

  I shake my head and give my standard line, although I know they’ll see right through it. “Too busy, I guess.”

  Mom reaches over and touches my hand. “I’m sorry, Dian.” She sounds like she means it. I could point out why it’s pointless to be sorry when she could actually be doing something to fix the situation, but I’m tired. Tired of thinking about this all the time. Tired of being the only one to fight for Aracely’s rights.

  “Thanks,” I mumble and slurp my soup.

  Dad looks between the two of us. Mom sighs, and Dad hesitates before he says, “We’re thinking of going up to the finca this Saturday morning.” I snap from tiredness to self-preservation. I hate the finca, and I feel guilty for hating it. Everyone there does the best they can in their situation, but their situation makes me too sad for words. I’ve only gone once, when I was about eight, and I’ve refused to go back since.

  The finca is a coffee plantation far off the road. It takes two hours to walk there: up the road that leads to a path through a dozen fields to another road, and then along another path and up another mountain. The views over the valley could sell a million postcards (if anyone was crazy enough to make postcards of Cucubano), and each time we go up that remote road, people stop to talk or to offer us everything from bananas to tomatoes to yams. The first time my family went to the finca, Donal Marte, the owner, showed us how they dry the coffee, pack it into sacks, sew the sacks shut and then haul out the beans on the backs of donkeys. It sounded just like the coffee commercials I’d seen on Grandma’s TV, and I couldn’t wait to tell her that places like this really exist. I borrowed Dad’s camera and took dozens of photos of the yellowed beans and the sacks, and even a few close-ups of the donkey.

  Then the owner took us over to the cookshack, and we met his wife. She gave me a sweet orange, and I was happily munching away on it when Donal led us to another small building. If I’d been listening to what he was saying, I might have been ready for what was inside, but when he pushed the door open, I was shocked. Inside, slumping on chairs in the darkness, were two teenagers, drooling on themselves and smelling of pee.

  I started crying, and Mom had to take me out and explain to me that the parents were doing the best they could. These kids had developmental problems, and no one had expected them to survive infancy. They couldn’t go to special schools like we have in Canada because that kind of school doesn’t exist around here. The best their parents could do was keep them healthy and safe by locking them inside so they couldn’t wander off into the bush.

  None of that made me feel any better, and I cried all the way home. I still get tears in my eyes when I think about it. How can life be so random that I was born healthy into a Canadian family with money when those teenagers have to spend their whole lives alone in a dark hut?

  My parents go see them every year and tend to any health issues the family might have. I always stay with Aracely, and I bet my parents are disappointed in me because they want me to be the kind of person who sees terrible things and helps solve the problem, but that’s not me. I can’t go back. I won’t.

  “I’m going to the market this Saturday,” I tell my parents now. “Nerick said Aracely usually brings a lot of stuff to sell, and I thought I’d offer to help.”

  “Well done, Di.” Dad claps me on the back. “I knew you’d find a way to work through this stuff. I’m very proud of you.”

  My face gets hot, and I look away. It’s been a long time since he’s said that.

  Mom is smiling at me. “You’re a good kid, you know that?”

  I drain the last of my soup and try not to think of the conversation I now have to have with my former friend.

  * * *

  “If you’re going to keep ranting at me, I don’t want to hear it.”

  Aracely is in the garden patch behind her house that afternoon. I’ve told my little friends that I need to talk to her alone, which they thought was weird, but they’ve gone off to play up the road. Aracely’s wearing a tight green skirt and a white blouse. Her hair’s pulled back in a neat ponytail at the base of her neck, and she doesn’t look at me as she snatches at weeds between the tomato plants. I hate how grown-up she looks, as if she’s trying to play the part of the almost-married woman.

  I banish that thought and focus on what I have to say. By now, I’ve replayed our fight so often in my mind that I’m starting to think she has every right to be mad at me. I’m the one who scared her out of coming to Canada, after all. If I hadn’t talked so much about all the stuff we’d do together—stuff that was very exciting to me but probably terrifying to her—she might still be planning to come.

  It’s my job to unscare her, I’ve decided. To reassure her that she doesn’t have to learn everything immediately, that I’ll be with her every step of the way. We could even start practicing English together. Before any of that happens, though, we’ve got to be friends again. “I’m not going to rant,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” That’s true, at least.

  She stops weeding and stands to face me. Her eyes are narrowed and her lips are tight, but her eyes meet mine. For a terrible moment, I think she’ll demand that I take back everything I said that day by the river, but she dusts off her hands and steps forward to kiss my cheeks. “Thank you for coming, Dian. Would you like something to drink?”

  I flinch at her formal tone. Is she doing this because she still doesn’t trust me, or
is this part of her new soon-to-be-a-married-woman personality?

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I tell her. “I was wondering if you want help bringing your herbs to the market on Saturday.”

  She smiles and doesn’t bother asking how I know about the herbs since she never got around to telling me. She’s used to everyone knowing everyone’s business. “Yes, please. It’ll be easier with two.”

  “You usually do it by yourself?”

  She nods and bends down to pinch a sucker off a tomato plant. “My parents are too busy, and you know what Abuela is like. She’s never accepted money for herbs—just food and whatever people want to give her—and she refuses to help me if money is involved. She doesn’t have any problem eating the food that the money buys though.” Aracely’s face softens into a smile. She could forgive her grandmother anything, I know. In that way, we’re a lot alike. Our grandmothers have always had more time for us than our parents have, and we could argue with our grandmothers until we’d run out of breath but still know we’d be completely lost without them.

  I ask her what time I should show up, and she says six in the morning. At home, I’d never dream of waking up so early on a Saturday, but here it’s normal.

  “It’ll be fun!” I say in Spanish, and then, heart racing, I say the same thing in English. This is part of my plan, but I don’t know how she’ll take it. I’ve never spoken English around her, but if I start now, she’ll learn plenty of phrases by the end of the summer. Life in Canada won’t seem as scary if she knows some of the language. “I’ve been thinking I could teach you some English this summer. I mean, you taught me Spanish when we were kids. I’d like to give something back to you.”

  She laughs. “Thanks, I guess, but what on earth am I going to use English for?” Her eyes fix on mine. I swallow hard, and she must see my nervousness, because the smile slides off her face. “What am I going to need English for, Dian?”