Free Just The Pits (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 5) by Jinx Schwartz

groaned.
     
    Rosario wants to be, no longs to be, a nerd.
    A geek.
    Or, as they say in East LA, a beanerd.
    Not a nerdo , teto , tetaso , or raton de biblioteca —although being called a library rat wasn’t all that offensive to him, as it was true—as they taunted in Mexico, but an American nerd like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, his heroes. Like the gamers he met on the Internet. Nerds who were respected for their skills, not mocked.
    To fulfill his dream, he knew he had to cross the United States border. Not slink across in the night, although it might come to that, but hopefully get there legally. No easy task for an underpaid office worker, but he’d hit what he thought was pay dirt, his big chance to make a giant step in the right direction. Lady Luck had landed in his lap, or more correctly, his lap top .
    When, after working at low-level jobs in Mexico City he’d landed the entry-level clerical position at Mina Lucifer he was elated, for even though this was less than a promotion, he knew it was his shot to shine. He was also aware he had to be careful to conceal his dreams, and special skills, from his fellow Mexican workers. It was the American and Canadian supervisors he wanted to make an impression on, for it was with them he might get that all important passport to nerd-dom.
    Finally, after months of stultifying drudgery—
     
    I rolled my eyes, then gave them a rub. Stultifying drudgery?  How about stultifying prose? I forced myself to continue reading.
     
    —crap work any idiot could handle, had paid off. Not, of course, his forty-five hour a week for minimum payday job, but the titillating unpaid hours he volunteered for. Little by little, without drawing undue attention to himself, the office grunt had endeared himself by taking on others’ workloads, learning every aspect of everyone else’s job. Not that he couldn’t handle those mundane tasks with his eyes closed, but he tried not to make that fact too obvious.
    His fellow workers had no problem dumping their work on Rosario, because, after all, they knew he had no life. What they didn’t know was that having full access to fast computers and unlimited Internet in the evening hours was a hacker’s dream and a gamer’s paradise. He was an expert at both, and they were his ticket to America. So while others snoozed at the man camp, Rosario burned the midnight ether.
    Of course, no one had asked him to cyberpunk his way into the company systems, because no one knew he could. It was overhearing concerns of financial problems that set him on a personal mission to discover why unexplained costs were threatening layoffs and he was afraid he would be first on the list. This was his project. His ticket out of Mexico.
    His cyber sleuthing had paid off. He was sure he was on his way! He experienced a moment of sadness that threatened his joy of accomplishment, for he yearned to share his news with someone, anyone. His mother had died months before he got this coveted position, one he knew would make her proud and reward her years of hard struggles to get him through college. His only other known relative, an uncle who’d sneaked across the border years before, also died, but not before sending monthly checks back to his only sister so Rosario could attend private schools. It was to his mother and uncle’s credit that he wasn’t doomed to a dismal future in Mexico.
    He only wished they had shared their secret with him before they both passed on.
    Finding that stack of letters when he cleaned out his mother’s small house sent him into shock. The father he was told died, hadn't. Or at least not when he was told he did. Who knew now? Turns out Rosario is the result of the ages-old story, this one set in a steamy Puerto Vallartan summer, with even steamier teenaged hanky panky between a Gringo surfer dude and a beautiful waitress. He'd loaded a faded photo of the lovebirds in front of the beachbum bar onto his screen saver as a daily reminder of his