52 Reasons to Hate My Father (20 page)

“Nuh-uh,” Rolando interjects, extending his arm out in front of his mother as though he’s attempting to halt her from flying through the windshield of a suddenly braking car. “I draw the line at childhood stories.”

The table erupts with laughter and Mrs. Castaño presses her lips together tightly with a wry smile, obliging his request.

“How do you do it, though?” I inquire eagerly. “How do you show up there day after day and act like it’s your dream job?”

“Ha!” he exclaims. “That is
so
not my dream job. Do you really think I
like
hawking ninety-nine-cent tacos every day? I hate it there! The only thing I want to do is coach NBA basketball.”

“Really?” I ask, somewhat surprised. “That’s what you want to do?”

Rolando nods earnestly. “Absolutely. It’s been my dream since I was a kid. I’ve been coaching basketball from in front of my TV since I was five. And for the past three years I’ve been volunteer coaching in an intercity kids’ league.”

“He’s very passionate about it,” Mr. Castaño puts in proudly. “One year for Christmas we got him one of those dry-erase boards and he sat and watched basketball nonstop for a week, drawing those
X
s and
O
s and dotted lines all over the board. It was the best gift we ever got him.”

I shake my head, baffled. “But you’re always so upbeat when you’re at Don Juan’s,” I say. “How can you be that way when you clearly want to be doing something else? How can you be so happy doing something you hate?”

“Happiness doesn’t come from a job,” Mrs. Castaño answers patiently, her thick Spanish accent turning the words into a poem. “Otherwise most of the world would be unhappy.”

I want to counter with the argument that most of the world
is
unhappy. At least from what I’ve seen. But something compels me to keep quiet. To refrain from crashing the party with my cynicism.

“In Spanish we have an expression,” Mr. Castaño elaborates.
“No hay mal que por bien no venga.”

“There is no bad,” I translate slowly, “that doesn’t come with good?”

“Sí,”
he replies, flashing me a strange look that I can’t interpret. It takes a moment for me to realize what it is. And I only recognize it because I saw it a few minutes ago. When he looked at Rolando the same way.

It’s pride.

Fatherly
pride.

“It means,” he continues, “there are always two sides to everything. Where there is bad, there is also good. I think in English they call it the gold lining.”

“Silver,” Rolando corrects.

“
Sí
, silver,” he repeats. “Sometimes you have to look very hard to find this silver lining.”

I have to smile at Mr. Castaño’s little anecdote. The kindhearted tone of his voice. The way he describes it with such certainty. Such faith. It’s endearing. In the same way Rolando’s blind optimism about everything is endearing. But deep down, I find it hard to believe. Impossible, even. At least for me.

But a sudden disheartening realization brings me back to my cold, harsh reality.

Because the truth is, I can try to hide out in this simple, normal world where silver linings are a dime a dozen and happiness grows on trees. I can don a wig and a hand-me-down hoodie and pretend to fit in here. I can laugh with the other half and eat the local food and drink the supermarket coffee. But in the back of my mind, I know I’m only a visitor on this planet. I can’t stay.

Eventually my kind will come looking for me. My world will catch up with me. Someone will knock on that front door and drag me back to where I came from.

To where I belong.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The summoning comes in the form of a phone call. Evidently when I didn’t answer my cell, Luke found out from an eyewitness that I was last seen leaving the parking lot of Don Juan’s with Rolando, tracked down his number from Javier, and called him instead.

After I’ve endured five minutes of Luke’s angry rants and tried, for the sake of Rolando’s family, not to let any of it show on my face, Luke finally hangs up. But not before warning me that he’s coming to get me.

Not wanting him to barge in here and destroy this safe place that I’ve managed to create for myself, I say a fond farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Castaño, thank them profusely for the dinner and conversation, and opt to wait outside for my ride.

Rolando accompanies me, claiming that it’s not safe for me to stand outside alone in this neighborhood. And as soon as I reach the curb and realize how much scarier this place is at night, I’m glad that he insisted.

“So, where do you go after the end of this week?” Rolando asks me, leaning casually against a streetlamp.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to check the list when I get home. But you can be sure it will suck. That seems to be the prerequisite.”

“Well,” he says with a half smile, “I guess you’ll have to figure out a way to make it
un
suck.”

I shake my head. “That’s your strength. Not mine. The rest of us just have to endure it.”

“I don’t know,” he says thoughtfully. “I think you’re gonna be okay. I have a lot of faith in you, girl.”

I scoff at this. “You’re probably the only one in the world who does.”

He raises his eyebrows inquisitively.

“It’s like this morning in the restaurant,” I explain, tucking my hands into the pocket of my borrowed hoodie. “You were the only one who bet that I would make it longer than a day.”

“And I won,” he’s quick to mention.

“That’s not the point,” I counter. “The point is my entire life has been like that. People betting against me. No one has ever expected anything of me. Except failure. Sometimes it feels as though the whole world is waiting on the edge of their seat for my next screw-up. And my father is the worst of them all. I honestly think he set up this whole arrangement—this whole fifty-two-jobs thing—just to watch me fall on my face.”

“Maybe,” he admits, pushing himself from the streetlamp and walking over to me, “or maybe you’ve never succeeded because you
think
no one expects you to.”

My eyebrows knit together as I try to follow his backward logic. “Huh?”

“I mean, maybe you’ve only been giving them what you think they want.”

I shake my head adamantly. “No way. I would never knowingly
choose
to give my father what he wants.”

“Exactly,” he replies cryptically.

“Okay, Rolando. You’re starting to get weird on me now.”

“Sorry,” he says with a soft laugh. Then his face turns somewhat serious again. “I’m just saying, instead of constantly living up to everyone’s expectations, why not destroy them?”

“Destroy them?” I repeat with uncertainty.

He gives a small, unassuming shrug. “Yeah. If everyone expects you to fail, why not do exactly the opposite?”

“Succeed?” I take a shot in the dark.

“Not just succeed,” he amends. “Blow them away. Shock the heck out of them. Be
awesome
.”

A horn honks behind me and I look up to see Luke glaring at me through the windshield of his Honda Civic.

Rolando squints against the blinding headlights. “Boyfriend?” he guesses.

I roll my eyes. “Worse. Babysitter.”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“Thanks for everything,” I say.

“You got it, girl.” He takes a step forward, opens his arms, and wraps me in a tight hug. I sink into him, feeling safe and warm there. Like he’s an extension of his tiny apartment.

Luke honks again—this guy has
got
to think of a better way to get my attention—and I reluctantly pull away from Rolando’s embrace and reach for the door handle. I stop when I realize I’m still wearing his sweatshirt. “Oh, here.” I start to take it off.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rolando says. “You can give it back to me tomorrow. Or better yet, just keep it.”

I hesitate but he insists. “You’ll need it as part of your disguise if you ever want to come back here to visit.”

“Well, I guess that’s true. Thanks.” I open the car door and drop into the passenger seat. “See you tomorrow at work!”

Rolando watches us pull away from the curb before turning back to his apartment building.

“New boyfriend?” Luke speculates snidely.

I can’t help but laugh at his tone. It’s not playful and fun like Rolando’s was when he asked me the same question. It’s more spiteful.

“No. Just a friend,” I answer, buckling my seat belt. “I am allowed to make friends, aren’t I? Or is that against the rules?”

Luke grunts and shakes his head, evidently opting out of the argument. “Just tell me next time you wanna go home with some guy.”

I snicker at how ridiculous and overprotective he sounds. Like a jealous boyfriend. “Yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

*   *   *

The house is quiet and empty when I get home. Most of the staff have retired for the evening and Horatio has the night off. I stand in the middle of the entry hall and marvel at the stark difference between the home I just left and the one I stand in now. The one I supposedly call my own.

Like with all of our houses stashed around the globe, there’s a hollow coldness that I never really noticed before—at least not consciously. An emptiness that’s never really filled, even with a guest list of four hundred people.

I aimlessly wander through the various rooms of the first floor—the library, the billiard room, the salon. It doesn’t take long for me to pinpoint what the Castaños’ small, run-down apartment has that this fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion in Bel Air doesn’t.

It’s not something you can buy in an expensive designer furniture boutique. It’s not something you can hire an interior decorator to paint into the walls. It’s not even something you can photograph and put on display in a home-and-garden magazine.

What the Castaños have made is a
home
. A place you return to not because of
what
is there waiting for you but because of
who
.

This is nothing but a pile of expensive bricks and imported fabrics.

And even though I’m grateful to have been able to catch just a fleeting glimpse of what I’ve missed out on my entire life, it also fills me with a sense of despair that runs deep. Deeper than I usually let anything go. I feel it sinking into me. Spreading out. I feel it being absorbed by my blood. Seeping into distant, back corners that are impossible to reach. Impossible to clean.

I feel cheated. Robbed. Like I got some kind of raw deal. And I’m not talking about the fifty-two jobs. I’m talking about my entire existence. Yes, I’ve been given everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ve been dressed in the most expensive clothes, slept in the most lavish hotels, eaten the most delectable foods since I was a baby, and yet I still feel like I got the short end of whatever stick is used to measure a life.

Numbly, I pour myself a drink from the bar in the library. I slosh the clear liquid around, listening to the familiar clink of the ice against the glass. But I don’t drink it. I don’t even bring it to my lips to taste. I abandon it on a table and head for the stairs.

With a sigh, I drag my tired body up the long, spiral staircase and down the hall to my bedroom. I slide the wig from my head, pull off Rolando’s comfy black sweatshirt, slip on a pair of clean cotton pajamas, and wash the makeup from my face.

When I climb into bed and pull the covers up to my chin, I know that something has changed tonight. A switch has been flipped. A fuse has been lit.

And I know that, unlike so many other times in my life—so many other moments of bleakness—this time it won’t be as easy to bury. It won’t be as easy to suppress. I won’t be able to pop a pill or down a drink and make it all fade into black.

But the most frightening thought of all, as I shut off the light and hug the pillow to my chest, is realizing that, this time, I’m not sure I want to.