Free The Alliance by Gabriel Goodman Page B

sparring with Ma every morning was the price I had to pay not to wear dresses, so be it.
    â€œI swear I won’t do anything to soil the name of the House Mendoza,” I said dramatically, throwing the back of my hand to my forehead. Ma grumbled. I could tell she was regretting sending me to Shakespeare Summer Camp two years ago.
    Ma took plates from the cupboard and started setting the table. “You were out late last night. You and Sara go to the movies?”
    I turned my back and smothered the eggs in an extra portion of black beans. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Sara and I broke up at the beginning of the summer. My parents liked her a lot. She was my first serious girlfriend. We’d been together a year. Right now, I didn’t feel like explaining the whys and hows of the breakup. So, if she thought I was at a movie with Sara, I’d let her believe that. It beat explaining that I’d been hanging out at Loco Cacao, sipping lattes with Ricky and bemoaning the fact that I was single again.
    â€œSorry,” I said. “Movie ran later than I thought.”
    â€œJust so long as you don’t make it a habit,” she said. “Senior year’s not the time to let your grades slip.”
    I saluted her with my spatula. It was three weeks into the school year. They hadn’t even started assigning
real
homework yet. Besides, my transcripts had already gone out to all the colleges I was interested in. A slip in my senior-year grades wasn’t going to matter much.
    Papa walked in, staring at the morning edition of the
Houston Chronicle
on his iPad. He kissed my cheek, goosed Ma, and poured orange juice for everyone. “
Chica
,” he said to me, “did you know this boy at school? The one who committed suicide?” He tapped the iPad.
    I shrugged. “Not really. I knew who he was. He got picked on a lot.”
    Papa nodded. “So it would seem.” He tilted the screen so I could read it. The headline read: POLICE INVESTIGATE SOUTHSIDE HIGH SUICIDE AS HATE CRIME.
    It made me wanna hurl.
Of course
it was a hate crime. You had to be blind not to see how often that Jamie kid was getting shoved in the hall and taunted. Last year I’d chased off a couple guys who had backed him into a corner. Probably a dumb move on my part. I’m sure he never heard the end of it, getting saved by a girl. But I couldn’t just let them do it. I kept thinking,
That could be me.
And I know I’d want somebody to have my back if that was the case.
    â€œI wonder if his parents have a lawyer,” Ma mused, scanning the article. She put her hand on Papa’s arm. I smiled. They couldn’t resist doing a pro bono case when they smelled injustice. God, I love my parents.
    â€œYou see this sort of thing a lot?” Papa asked.
    I served eggs to everyone. “Every day.”
    I said it without thinking. It was true. But suddenly, Ma and Papa got
that
look in their eyes. That concerned look.
    â€œTo you?” Ma asked as I joined them at the table.
    I waved it off. “Sometimes. Nothing physical. Just name-calling. I give as good as I get. But that’s me.”
    â€œDo you feel safe at school?” Papa asked.
    â€œI guess,” I said. “But I’ve got a lot of friends who’ve got my back. Not everybody who gets bullied has friends like mine.”
    â€œWhy don’t the teachers do anything?”
    â€œThey do. Sometimes. But a lot of what happens, they never see. It’s in the halls, after school, online.”
    Ma tsked. “No one should have to put up with that.”
    As we ate breakfast, I kept sneaking glances at the story on Papa’s iPad. I caught words like “death threats” and “intimidation.” Wow. Jamie Ballard had it worse than I thought. I knew all about the intimidation. I heard the names he was called. But I never knew someone had threatened to kill him.
    You hear that kind of trash