Getting It Read Free Page A

TV off, and ambled toward his bedroom. After pulling off his sweatshirt, he peered in the mirror again. Squinting, he blurred his vision as though underwater and tried to imagine himself as handsome and confident.
    No luck. Maybe after a super-size makeover. Dismayed by the reflection staring back at him, he draped his sweatshirt over the mirror. Then he kicked aside a plastic soda bottle, stripped to his briefs, and climbed beneath the tangle of bedcovers. But he couldn’t stop thinking about that crazy idea.

Five
    O N S ATURDAY MORNING, while Carlos scrounged through piles of clothes for a clean shirt, he thought again about asking for Sal’s help, but once again discarded the idea.
    A little after noon, his pa picked him up for their weekend visit, along with his wife, Lupita, and their toddler son, Henry.
    Carlos had first met Lupita when he was little, at his pa’s construction office. His pa had often taken him to job sites to show him off, propping a hard hat on Carlos that nearly slid over his eyes. Lupita, the site office secretary, had smiled and taught Carlos how to volley jellybeans and catch them in his mouth. Not until she got pregnant did Carlos realize she and his pa had been having an affair.
    Then Carlos felt painfully torn. He overheard his parents’ arguments and watched his ma cry, yet he didn’t want his pa to leave. The divorce had been wildly confusing. Carlos resolved that his own relationship with a girl would be different—committed and faithful.
    In the meantime, like now at McDonald’s, he politely tried to once again like Lupita. But how could he? She’d broken up his family.
    He also tried to like his little half brother, but he missed having his pa to himself. To make matters worse, today Henry pooped in his diaper, making an awful smell.
    After lunch the four of them drove to the city park. When Carlos was a boy, his pa used to help him catch all types of insects in jars and nets, taught him to preserve them in lighter fluid, and showed him how to carefully pin them to Styrofoam without breaking them apart. Carlos had amassed an awesome collection of butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, and, his prize possession, a female praying mantis.
    After the divorce, the bug collection had gotten lost piece by piece in the ever-mounting mess of Carlos’s room. He now felt too old to chase insects. Instead, he scratched a stick among the initials and dates on a wood bench and wished he could go back in time, as he watched his pa and Lupita push Henry on the merry-go-round.
    In the middle of the playground, amid the brown-skinned Mexican families, Carlos noticed a pair of white adult guys with an Asian toddler girl.
    â€œI think they’re
maricones,”
his pa muttered as he sat beside Carlos on the bench.
    His pas Spanish word for “queer” made Carlos recall Sal and the wild idea of asking for his help with Roxy. Maybe he should ask his pa what he thought.
    â€œDo you, um, know anyone who’s gay?”
    â€œNo.” His pa crossed his arms, giving Carlos a sidelong glance. “Why would I?”
    His pa often got macho that way—like the time his ma had tried to teach Carlos how to resew a loose button on a shirt, causing his pa to protest, “You trying to turn him into a girl?”
    Recalling that, Carlos decided best not to mention Sal. Nonetheless, the makeover idea kept worming its way through his brain.

Six
    A S THE WEEKEND progressed, Carlos began pondering: If he were to approach Sal, how could he do so without anybody seeing him? After all, probably part of the reason Sal always hung with girls was because no guy wanted to be caught talking to him—at least no
straight
guy
    At school on Monday, Carlos began tracking Sal’s moves, piecing together his schedule. Sal’s bold-colored shirts—magenta, turquoise, pink—and shiny hoop earrings made him easy to follow down hallways. Every so often, Carlos thought he