Free The Painted Boy by Charles DeLint Page B

talk about it because I think she’d rather just pretend the whole thing didn’t exist. I’m not sure if she believes in it or not, but either way it kind of scares her. I see it in her eyes. I’m either nuts or I’m dangerous.
    Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like she’s unfriendly or anything. But she also makes sure that we’re never alone. It’s never just the two of us, and how do you talk about this kind of thing in a crowd?
    Maybe I’ll surprise her one day and just blurt out how I feel in front of everybody.
    I don’t know. Girls are just a total mystery to me.
    I didn’t lie to Rosalie about how I’ve never gone out with a girl. It’s the sad truth. I’m like any other guy. I obsess over them all the time. The problem is that I’ve always had to do it from a distance. Now that I don’t have Paupau looking over my shoulder—grilling me about some girl I’d been seen talking to at school, or whatever—I could hook up with anybody and nobody could say different. But the only girl I want to be with in Santo del Vado Viejo is Anna.
    Maybe the real problem is that I’m just not cool enough to be her boyfriend. Rosalie’s taken me to some band rehearsals and now I’ve also seen Malo Malo onstage. Let me tell you, Anna really is a total rock goddess, while I’m just a guy who’s never going to be much more than a cook from Chicago’s Chinatown.
    The band plays this weird mix of garage rock, surf guitar, rap, and mariachi music. I’ve never run into anything like it before. A lot of the songs feel instantly recognizable and hooky, but they’re still fresh, while some of them are so unexpected that it just makes you grin because they all come together so perfectly. And while you just want to dance—especially to the instrumentals—it’s not all party time, either. A few songs are updated versions of those traditional corridos that Rosalie told me about, but most of them are ones that Ramon has written about the border problems and growing up in the barrio. Some of those are justifiably angry, and some just break your heart.
    They’re seriously good. Ramon plays trumpet and guitar and does all the lead vocals. There’s Margarita on drums, Luis on bass. Gilbert plays both keyboards and trumpet, and sometimes a whole horn section on those keys of his. Hector’s on the turntable. But good as they are, Anna just blows them out of the water. She’s sexy as hell up there, but she’s not using it, she doesn’t even need it, the way she can play. I’ve never heard sounds like she gets out of her Les Paul, and she’s all over the stage, even while she’s cutting loose with some blistering lead.
    But I’m not crazy about her just because she’s hot. I mean, it doesn’t hurt, but there’s something else there for me . . . some, I don’t know, connection, though I guess that’s what everybody thinks about the person up onstage that sends their pulse into double time.
    I’m not the only guy standing there, mouth open and totally in love. I look at some of them just oozing cool, and I think about me, and I know I don’t have a chance. But I’m not ready to give up just yet. Like the I Ching says, “Perseverance furthers. It furthers one to have somewhere to go.” Or as my dad puts it: “You can’t win if you don’t play,” though he was talking about lottery tickets.
     
     
    Rosalie asked how the writing’s going again tonight and I was able to tell her “fine.” She gave me a kind of a look, but what? I’m going to show her what I’ve written? Like that’s going to happen. I feel weird enough blathering all over those pages the way I do without actually showing them to somebody else.
     
     
    El Tigre was true to his word—the bandas have left me alone. I’m not saying they’ve suddenly started to like me or anything. Whenever I see one of them on the street they give me what Tío calls a “thousand-yard stare.” He says it’s a prison term, but I know what it means. It’s