The F Factor (12 page)

Javier ignored the tease and said, “I just showered, that's all.”

His dad chuckled. “If you say so.”

Now Javier wondered if he had overdone the cologne, but he had wanted to get Feliz's attention, especially if they sat together at the game.

The doorbell rang, and Javier was quick to open the door. “Hi, Pat.” Only it wasn't just Pat standing there, but also Feliz and another pretty girl with long red hair, who appeared to be crying. “Oh! Hello, is something wrong?”

Feliz frantically pushed herself inside the house. Javier stumbled backwards like an idiot. No men's cologne was going to help him now.

She had pulled the red-haired girl inside with her. “Brittany's having trouble with her contacts. Can she use your bathroom?”

“Yes, sure.” Javier gestured behind him. “It's down the hall. I'll show you.”

But the girls didn't wait; they just rushed out, leaving Javier holding out his arm.

“Don't worry. They'll find it,” Javier's dad said. He had put aside his book and stood up. “Women have special radar for bathrooms. It's part of their genetic disposition.”

“Hi, Javier.” Pat closed the door behind him and then shook his head. “Sorry about the stampede. Brittany's been having fits all the way over here. Man, I'm glad I only have one sister.”

“Be
very
glad,” Javier said. “I have
two
sisters. When they get together, they make us double crazy.”

“I usually wear a referee whistle when my daughters are home,” his dad said and offered his hand to Pat. “You must be Pat Berlanga. I'm Marc Ávila.”

Pat shook his hand. “Hello, Mr. Ávila. I'm glad to meet you.”

“Javier said you two have been seen on school TV the past three days. I asked him to steal one of the teacher's tapes so we can see the program, but my son is too honest to do it, I think.” He grinned. “Tell me, Pat, do you have any larceny in you?”

Pat blinked rapidly. “I don't know.”

“My dad kids around a lot. He doesn't want you to do anything bad, Pat.” Javier sighed. Andy and Ignacio were used to Javier's dad, but Pat looked confused. “Besides, if
I got suspended because
my father
wanted me to steal something from a teacher, my mom would kill us both! Right, Dad?”

“Okay, okay.” He started laughing and waved toward the sofa. “Pat, come and sit down.”

They started to move, but Javier's mom came into the living room. She wore a casual yellow shirt and black shorts. Her eyebrows were raised above laughing eyes. “I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation why two pretty girls just ran down the hall, one of them laughing and one of them crying.” Then she noticed Pat and said, “Hello. You must be Pat Berlanga. It's so nice to finally meet you. I'm Nivia Ávila.” She extended her hand and shook Pat's. “I guess you and Javier know about the girls?”

“One's my sister, and the other is her friend with contact lens problems.” Pat answered. He shrugged at Javier's mom. “Sorry. They needed to use your bathroom, Mrs. Ávila.”

“Oh, goodness! Anyone can use our bathroom. I just wish it was cleaner. I'll start doing some cleaning tomorrow. We're having a big party next week for Javier's birthday,” his mom replied. She turned to Pat and asked about his grandmother. Had she lived in the neighborhood a long time? Where was her house? Then the girls came back into the room, and more introductions were made. His mom asked the girls which school they attended. She asked Feliz where she bought her sandals. She asked Brittany about her contact lenses. She questioned Pat again, “How do you like your new teachers this year?”

After an embarrassed sigh, Javier said, “Mom, we need to go. I promised Andy and Ignacio I'd be there for the pre-game concert.”

“Who's driving tonight?” Javier's mom asked as she walked them to the door.

“Feliz is driving,” Javier told her and prayed she wouldn't start with more questions. “She's given me a ride home before, and it's still daylight outside.”

“Do you know where the stadium is?” she asked Feliz.

The girl frowned. “Uh, yeah, it's at the school. I know where
that
is.”

“We need to go!” Javier repeated and opened the front door. “Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.”

“Javier, will you call me if you need a ride home? And be sure to thank Mrs. Berlanga for letting you stay over,” his mom added. “Do you have some ‘goody clothes'? Do you need any money? Did you remember your allergy pills?”

Javier wanted to plop his sleeping bag over his head. He just nodded and felt grateful his parents didn't follow him out to the porch.

The girls giggled all the way down the sidewalk. Javier knew they were laughing at him.

“Gosh, my parents!” Javier said to no one in particular. “Could my mom get any more embarrassing?” He fumbled with the sleeping bag, almost dropping it. Pat caught it and swung it under his arm.

“Your mom's nice.” Pat smiled at Javier. “I know a lot of guys who'd love to have a mom like yours.”

“Not unless they like to be interrogated every day by the Mom's Bureau of Investigations,” Javier replied.

T
he football game was a disappointment in every way. As soon as they arrived, Feliz and Brittany ran off
with their girlfriends to the other side of the stadium. The half-time show was canceled after a man in the stands complained of chest pains. Two police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance blocked the holding area where the band members and flag leaders waited to go on the field. Then the team from St. Gabriel's trampled across the Guardians, leaving no chance for a touchdown. The final score was 21–0. The only good thing was that Feliz's scary driving didn't kill any of them going to or from the stadium.

After the game, she drove a long time down the interstate. Pat and Javier had seen almost half the movie on the backseat monitors when Feliz finally exited and drove toward a gated community outside the city limits. The winding streets led from hillsides to cul-de-sacs, with a variety of two- and three-story homes and carefully crafted lawns and gardens.

Javier recognized the neighborhood immediately as one where his father's company had built houses. He remembered many summer nights when his father would drive Javier and his mom to a new subdivision in the city and proudly show them what Ávila Construction had built. Once Javier had asked his dad, “Why don't
we
live in one of these beautiful houses?” and his father said, “We live in a house built by my grandfather. Nothing is more beautiful, Son … nothing.”

Finally, Feliz drove onto a cement path and parked in front of a three-car garage. Javier got out and stared at a modern palace with stone columns and large windows. The girls ran ahead while Pat and Javier took his things from the car. The guys walked up thick granite steps to the open front doors, illuminated by a pair of ornamental lanterns. The girls had rushed up the winding staircase
that filled the entryway like a grand waterfall. The rooms had high ceilings, and all the furniture was perfectly matched, but Javier thought he had walked into an exclusive store, not somebody's home.

“Are you hungry?” Pat asked. He left Javier's sleeping bag on the first stair. “Let's see what's in the fridge.”

Javier put down his gym bag and followed Pat behind the stairs, through a narrow door, and into a large kitchen. Every appliance was polished chrome, and the cabinets were painted with bright shades of turquoise and brown. A variety of painted clay bowls decorated the countertops and the narrow wooden table with six chairs near the windows. He had never seen such a bare kitchen. Didn't anyone cook or eat in there?

Pat opened up one side door of the tall chrome refrigerator. “Ugh! Way too much diet soda, tofu, and brown rice. But I do see bread, cheese, and—” He paused and unwrapped something in aluminum foil. “Bingo! We got turkey. Want a sandwich?”

“Sure,” Javier said. He joined Pat and helped pull out from the refrigerator what they needed for sandwiches. “Man, it's too bad about the game. I'm going to hate announcing the score on Monday morning.”

“Even worse, we have to sit in a classroom with angry football players all week.” Pat squirted brown mustard on bread. “Poor Dylan and Omar. The defense just ran all over them. And Ram? Whoa! Did he eat dirt all night or what?”

“I feel bad for Ignacio and Andy. I know the band guys practiced their feet off. Lousy breaks for everyone. Too bad about the guy with the heart attack.” Javier reached for two slices of bread. “I wonder who he was.”

They talked about ways to word Monday's broadcast in a more positive way as they finished making the sandwiches. Pat found two regular sodas in a small refrigerator under the sink and led the way up to his bedroom.

With such thick carpeting, Javier couldn't even hear their footsteps. “Where are your parents?” he asked as they reached the top of the stairs.

Pat shrugged. “Mom's probably in her room reading or sleeping. My dad goes to a lot of meetings. People are always asking him to be on the board of this or that club. He eats it up, that whole big-shot personality.”

Javier glanced around at his surroundings and felt a strange chill down his back. He couldn't even sense the presence of Feliz and Brittany in the house—the place was that big and felt
that
empty.

Pat's room, however, had the lived-in comfort of messy and junky. His double bed was neatly made, but there were magazines on the floor, game cartridges and movie cases scattered on the desk, and his school clothes piled up near the closet. The shelves above his computer were filled with books, CD cases, and picture frames in no special order. Sports posters lined one wall, and across the room were several movie posters. It took a moment before Javier realized that every one of them had an autograph of someone famous across the bottom. They ate sandwiches, finished up a bag of chips Pat had hidden under the bed, watched a movie, and fell asleep sometime after midnight.

When Javier opened his eyes and remembered where he was, it worried him that Pat, who could fall asleep so easily in class, might not want to wake up on a Saturday morning. Luckily, Pat murmured, “Hey, you hungry?”

Javier reached for his backpack. If there weren't two pretty girls in the house, he would stay in the clothes he had slept in. He pulled out a green T-shirt and some old shorts.

“You did bring some clothes you can paint in, didn't you?” Pat said, rising up on one elbow to watch him.

“Yeah, I did. I grabbed them from the box my mom calls ‘goody clothes'. Comes from a mispronunciation my big brother Eric used when he was a kid … never mind. I can't explain it without sounding stupid.” He sat up. “Basically, it's a box where we toss worn-out T-shirts that can be still be used for dirty jobs. It comes in handy if your family is in the construction business.”

“Do
you
get to build stuff?” Pat asked. He sat up and kicked his sheet off.

“Not me,” Javier said, shaking his head. “My job is washing the company trucks or sweeping the job site. Nobody trusts me with tools. I'm a klutz.” His face grew warm as he realized what he had said. He quickly started to fold up his sleeping bag.

“So, what kind of things does your dad build?”

Javier felt proud to say, “Big fancy houses like yours.”

“No way!” Pat's face opened up with surprise. “Did your dad build our house?”

“He built many of the houses out here. I'd have to ask him.”

“That's impressive, Jack. Wait ‘til I tell my dad.”

When they came downstairs, Javier found it odd not to smell food cooking. His mother always fixed a big breakfast on Saturdays, and it was normal to find his two brothers with some of their kids eating at the table.

They walked toward the kitchen, and the aroma of coffee hinted that someone else was awake. At the table
by the kitchen windows sat a woman in a flowing purple robe decorated with swirls of colors. She had short, curly hair and dark skin and when she looked up from the newspaper she was reading, Javier could tell immediately it was Pat's mom. They had the same dark eyes and high forehead.

“Hey, Mom, this is Javier. He's going to help me with a school project,” Pat said by way of an introduction. “Do we have any breakfast?”

She nodded at Javier and then looked down at her paper. “Your father hasn't left yet, Patricio. When he goes, I will fix your breakfast.”

“Oh, okay. Then I'll show Javier where we can paint. Come on, Javier.”

He followed Pat out of the kitchen, feeling strangely out of place in this family's house. He wanted to ask Pat why his mother didn't cook until
after
his father left but caught himself thinking too much like
his
mother with all her questions. They had just arrived back at the stairs when a thin man with wide shoulders came down. He was dressed in white slacks and a light green golf shirt. He stopped when he saw Pat and Javier. His sudden frown was identical to one Javier had seen on Feliz's face. The man had her skin tone and the same light brown eyes.

“Can't you and your friend find something presentable to wear? I know it's Saturday, but you don't have to look like you wear the same clothes you sleep in, Son.”

“Dad, this is my friend, Javier Ávila. I found out his dad might have built our house. Do you know if Marc Ávila built this place?”

His father sighed. “I don't keep track of the trade workers who come and go. I do business with architects and engineers.” He nodded at Javier. “I'm sure your
father is a very handy man. It'll be good if you can learn his trade, Son.” He raised his wrist and looked at an expensive-looking gold watch. “I've got to go. I'm golfing with the mayor this morning.” He walked through the living room and disappeared.