Getting It Read Free

and slim figure—although she seemed so short since he’d spurted past her in the last year.
    â€œâ€™S’up?” he now greeted her, prying his headphones off.
    From the bedroom doorway she scanned the chaos of his room and gave a smile of resignation.
“Mi amor,
how can you work in this mess?”
    Carlos shrugged. At least once a week his ma hassled him to clean his room, but she never actually made him do it. Since the divorce, she’d pretty much stopped making him do anything.
    She pulled the pins from her hair so it cascaded over her shoulders. “How was school today?”
    Although Roxy remained foremost on Carlos’s mind, he felt uneasy telling his ma about her. In contrast to his friends and his pa, who shared guy horniness about females, it felt too weird to think of his own ma feeling anything like that.
    â€œUm, school was fine, except I need your help with math.”
    Fortunately, his ma worked as the accountant for an auto parts chain. “Let’s go over it after dinner. Remember, Raúl is coming over.”
    Raúl was her boyfriend—actually her third since the divorce—a tall, brawny car mechanic, nothing like Carlos’s short, skinny pa.Twice a week he came over for dinner, bringing dessert, after which he watched TV with Carlos’s ma and stayed the night.
    Tonight he brought over flan, a favorite of both Carlos and his ma. After dinner, his ma helped Carlos with his geometry, sitting close beside him at the dining table.
    Carlos recalled how when he was a boy his ma would drape her arm around him, stroking her fingertips through his hair as she cradled his head into the warm soft cushion of her chest. But since starting high school it made him feel weird to sit so close to her, and he now scooted his chair away.
    After they finished with his math, Carlos returned to IM-ing his friends, playing computer games, and thinking about Roxy. Around nine thirty, his ma knocked on the door to say good night. “Don’t stay up too late, okay?”
    She kissed him on the back of the neck and Raúl waved. “Sleep well.”
    Carlos waved back. He liked Raúl, except for one thing: Even though his ma closed her bedroom door, Carlos could still hear the faint squeak of bedsprings as she and Raul went at it. It was a little gross. No, it was
truly
gross. Carlos didn’t want to think about his ma getting it on, especially with someone she wasn’t even married to. But how could he tell her that? Besides, he knew how hurt she’d been by the divorce. He wanted her to be happy. So, he put his headphones on and cranked up the volume.
    Around ten thirty, he went to finish up the flan and watch TV. First he turned on an episode of
Cops
where they busted some toothless eighty-six-year-old who’d hooked up with a thirteen-year-old girl. Then he switched to a reality show in which eight college guys and girls shared a house, fighting all day but secretly boning each other at night. Was there
any
program that wouldn’t remind Carlos he was the only person on the planet not getting laid?
    Last he clicked on
Queer Eye,
a show where five gay dudes gave some grungy straight guy a makeover—plucking his nose hairs, redecorating his apartment, and teaching him to bake a quiche—so he could confidently propose marriage to his girlfriend and she’d tell him “yes.” Which, of course, she did. On TV, the guy always gets the girl.
    As Carlos watched, he recalled Sal, the supposedly gay guy at school. It was then that the idea first popped into his brain: If Sal truly were queer … Could he possibly help Carlos? … Not to propose to Roxy, of course—at least not yet—but to get her to maybe like him?
    Immediately, he chucked the thought. This was real life, not some dumb TV show. Roxy wasn’t his girlfriend. And Sal wasn’t some makeover star.
    Around eleven o’clock, Carlos gave a huge yawn, shut the