Don't Feed the Geckos! Read online

  People skip or slouch down the steps of the bus and then go wait by the luggage hold with their eyes peeled for their bags. Carlos watches the passengers. No Bernardo. At least no one who looks like the Bernardo he remembers.

  Mami glances up at the bus’s number again. “Yes. This is it.” She watches the passengers as they go by, too. She checks her watch. Carlos glances down the rows between the idling buses. Then he feels a hand on his shoulder. When he turns around, there’s Bernardo. Same face, but on a much bigger body. Still plump and kind of a blockhead, but half a head taller than Carlos. He’s grinning widely.

  “Hey, Carlos,” he says. He’s got a small bag of popcorn in his hand that he shoves into his canvas carry-on. Carlos thinks that Bernardo probably doesn’t want to share. That’s okay. Carlos wasn’t in the mood for popcorn anyway.

  “Hey, Bernardo,” he says. Walking toward them is a woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a purple scarf around her neck, and lots of bags hooked onto both arms.

  “Mrs. Ruiz?” his mother says.

  The plump woman hugs Carlos’s mother lightly. “This must be Carlos,” she says, grinning down at him. “Boy, Bernardo’s sure been talking about you.”

  “Really?” Mami says.

  Carlos is surprised. He has only met Bernardo once—when he was five. What could Bernardo have been saying about him? They reach the parking lot, and Mrs. Ruiz sees the daughter who has come to pick her up. Mrs. Ruiz waves, hands Bernardo his luggage, and hurries to a small car. At one point, she looks back and says brightly, “He’s all yours.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? Carlos wonders. He looks over at Bernardo. He has a smug look on his face as if he’s amused by some private joke.

  Mami reaches down and gives Bernardo a hug. “My, what a big boy you’ve gotten to be,” Mami says. Then she frowns as if she hopes Bernardo isn’t taking that the wrong way—that he knows she was referring to height, not width. She turns to where she thinks she parked her car and leads the way, pressing the clicker thing on the key to sound the beep that will tell her where it is. Mami is always forgetting where she’s parked.

  Bernardo keeps grinning at Carlos and, with no warning, punches him in the arm—hard. It hurts. Carlos frowns and looks to his mother, but she’s already walking briskly toward their car in the middle of a far row. He rubs his sore arm. He looks to Mami again, but she’s no help. Somehow, that seems to signal the way it’s going to be.

  “Now, this is where you’re going to sleep, Bernardo,” Mami says. They’re standing in the middle of Carlos’s room while Mami pulls out the empty dresser drawer and shows Bernardo where he can put his clothes. She opens the closet and shoves Carlos’s clothes aside on the rod. “You can put your clothes that need to be hung up in this closet, and Carlos is giving you the top bunk.”

  Carlos looks up at his sanctuary. That’s his one spot—in the whole house. That’s where he gets to play Hay Day (a video game with farm animals) without being bothered by Issy or his mother noticing and telling him to put that thing down and get a book. His top bunk is where he searches for information about weird animals or weird insects on his tablet. That’s where he gets to imagine becoming either a zoologist or an entomologist when he grows up. Maybe both. That’s where he gets to look down on his world and dream.

  The world of his room, with the ant farm and the gecko aquarium and soon a butterfly habitat, is a reflection of him. It has Carlos written all over it. It contains everything he needs to relax . . . and to learn stuff that he can explain to Issy.

  “A butterfly pops out of the furry worm?” she’d asked, when he was trying to explain the stages of a butterfly.

  “No, there’s another stage called the chrysalis stage.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.” He didn’t know how to explain the chrysalis stage.

  His thoughts turn back to his future career. Maybe he can even get a Mason Bee house to hang from the maple tree in the backyard. He’ll have to convince Mami about that one. He’ll have to wait for the right time.

  Just before Mami goes back downstairs, she turns to Carlos and says, “Go get Bernardo a towel and washcloth.”

  Carlos looks at Bernardo, who’s standing in the middle of the room, looking around. He hurries to the linen closet, grabs a washcloth and a towel, and when he comes back, he sees Bernardo peering into the terrarium.

  “What are those?” Bernardo asks.

  “Those are my geckos,” Carlos says, his heart beating in his ears.

  “Are they real?”

  “Of course they’re real.”

  “How come they’re not moving?”

  “That’s what they do. They kind of look like they’re posing. It’s a defensive thing.” He moves between the terrarium and Bernardo.

  “But what’s there to defend themselves from? There’s just the three of them.”

  “It’s just part of their behavior. They’re programmed that way.”

  “What do you mean ‘programmed’?”

  Carlos searches for the words. It’s difficult to explain.

  “So what are their names?” Bernardo presses on.

  “Darla is the one on the rock, Peaches is behind the rock, and Gizmo is probably in his little cave thing.”

  “What kind of names are those?” Bernardo turns to Carlos.

  “Well, two are females and one’s male. I just came up with those names.”

  Bernardo makes a grunting sound. “What do they eat?”

  “Crickets, mostly. We get them at the pet store.”

  “And that’s it? Sounds kind of boring.”

  Bernardo starts to reach into the terrarium, but Carlos stops him. “Just leave them alone for now. I’ll let you hold one later.”

  Bernardo looks at Carlos for a moment as if he’s deciding whether to do as Carlos says. He looks back at the terrarium, and a tiny smile plays on his lips.

  Then he moves to the bunk bed, climbs the ladder, and perches himself in the middle of Carlos’s bed. “Hey, I like it up here.”

  Carlos had hoped that since Bernardo was on the big side, he wouldn’t want to climb up and down the ladder. No such luck. He notices Bernardo is still wearing his shoes.

  “Hey . . . You have your shoes on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t sit on my bed with shoes on.”

  “How come?”

  “Just take them off before you get on my bed.”

  “It’s my bed now.”

  What can Carlos say to that? Thanks to Mami, it is his bed.

  “So, Bernardo,” Papi says at dinner, “you think you’ll like it here?”

  Bernardo takes a bite of his lime chicken. He chews and swallows. “My mom makes this with cilantro,” he says to Mami. Then he turns to Papi. “It’s okay. I guess I have to see. I’m going to miss my friends.”

  “Did you have a lot of friends in Texas?” Mami asks.

  “Yeah. I had a lot of friends.”

  Carlos glances at Mami, to see if she believes him. But Mami’s face doesn’t show much.

  “What else are you going to miss?”

  “I’m going to miss my soccer team.”

  “Oh. Soccer,” Mami says.

  “Yeah, and they’re going to miss me, too. ’Cause I score most of the goals.”

  “Wow,” Mami says. “Now, that’s interesting. We need a good soccer player for Carlos’s team.”

  What does Mami mean by that? Carlos wonders. Just because he’s had a few bad games, that doesn’t mean she should count him out.

  “Well . . . we’re going to try real hard to make you feel at home. Right, Carlos?” Mami says, turning to him.

  “Yeah,” Carlos agrees.

  Suddenly Bernardo is squirming in his seat. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he says.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Mami says.

  After Bernardo leaves the table, Mami turns to Carlos. “I’m going to talk to Coach Willis and see if Bernardo can be on the team. I think that w
ill make him feel even more at home. Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Carlos?”

  Carlos can’t really think just then. He’s busy listening to the sounds upstairs. Did Bernardo really need to go to the bathroom? Could he be in Carlos’s room, messing with his geckos or his ant farm?

  “Carlos?”

  “Huh?”

  “What do you think about Bernardo being on your soccer team?”

  “Yeah, yeah—okay.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Carlos is almost certain he hears steps above his head in his bedroom. “I mean, yeah, that’s fine, Mami.” He takes a sip of milk. “Can I go to the bathroom too?”

  “Wait until Bernardo comes back.”

  “But I can use your bathroom.”

  Mami sighs. “Okay,” she says. “Don’t be up there all year.”

  Four

  You Can’t Feed a Gecko Popcorn!

  Carlos takes the stairs two at a time. He nearly bumps into Bernardo just as he reaches the landing. Bernardo smiles and reaches back as if to give Carlos a punch. Then he drops his hand and laughs.

  Carlos watches after him until he disappears down the stairs, and then ducks into his own room. He checks the ant farm. All the tunnels seem to be undisturbed. The ants are still busy doing ant things. Then he turns to the terrarium and spots several kernels of popcorn on its floor. A kernel has been placed on top of Gizmo’s cave!

  His breath quickens; his fists clench. He can’t believe it. Popcorn! Luckily, the geckos have ignored the food. Probably because they can’t chase it around the terrarium. Maybe they thought the popcorn was some kind of plant.

  Whatever the case, Carlos storms down the stairs, marches into the dining room, and says to Bernardo, “You can’t feed a gecko popcorn!” He feels his face grow warm. He knows he must be red from the neck up.

  “What?” Bernardo turns to him, his eyes wide with innocence.

  “Don’t say you didn’t put popcorn in the geckos’ terrarium.” Carlos waits. He can’t believe Bernardo would try to lie.

  Bernardo looks at Mami. Mami is looking back and forth between Carlos and Bernardo. He drops his head and raises his eyebrows forlornly. “I thought they’d like it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I was feeling kind of sorry for them, ’cause all they ever get is crickets. Crickets, crickets, crickets. I know I’d get tired if all I ever got was crickets.”

  “You’re not a gecko! They’re very special creatures. You can’t just give them any ol’ thing!”

  Carlos looks to Mami with a helpless expression.

  “Carlos, don’t make such a big deal of it. No harm done,” she says.

  Carlos looks to his father. Papi shrugs. “They’re still alive, right?”

  Carlos takes a big, deep breath and lets it out slowly. He can’t bring himself to speak. He hunches over his plate and resumes eating, but he’s lost his appetite.

  Later, while Mami does the dishes, Papi takes Bernardo out in the backyard so Bernardo can show him what he’s got . . . soccerwise. Though Carlos is all the way up in his room studying his multiplication facts, he can hear Papi and Bernardo dribbling the soccer ball back and forth between them.

  “In this dribble, remember to connect with the ball using the inside of your foot, and stay on your toes,” Papi is saying to Bernardo. Then Carlos hears, “Good! You’re a natural.”

  Carlos marches over to his open window and closes it. He doesn’t want to hear anything positive about Bernardo just now.

  Later, after homework and his shower, when Carlos goes downstairs to get ice cream and watch basketball with Papi, he hears Mami saying to Bernardo, “Yeah, the team is kind of struggling right now, and I have a feeling you’ll be a great addition.”

  She and Papi and Bernardo are sitting in front of the basketball game, eating ice cream. Carlos doesn’t get it. Is anyone going to notice that he’s there? Even Issy, sitting cross-legged on the floor, doesn’t look up from her coloring book. What’s wrong with this family?

  And what does Mami mean that the team’s been struggling? He flops down into the easy chair facing the TV. He pokes out his lower lip a little bit—enough to let everyone know that he’s still annoyed about the popcorn. The problem is, no one seems to notice.

  Bernardo just won’t go to sleep. He hasn’t bothered to take his shower yet or brush his teeth, and now he’s up there on the top bunk, playing his loud video game, with his legs hanging down practically in Carlos’s face. Carlos has to get to sleep. He’s exhausted, and he doesn’t want to be tired at school the next day.

  “Are you going to take your shower and brush your teeth? I’m finished with the bathroom.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “You don’t brush your teeth before you go to bed?”

  “No. I brush ’em in the morning. If I have time.”

  “Oh,” Carlos says. He waits a few minutes, then says, “How long you think you’re going to play that video game?”

  “Asphalt Eight? I don’t know. I’m not sleepy, so . . .”

  “But you’re tired, right?”

  “Not really.”

  Carlos closes his eyes and tries his best to go to sleep. Just when he thinks he can’t stand the noise of the game any longer, Bernardo turns it off and falls back on the bed. It’s quiet. Finally.

  But before long, just as Carlos is drifting off, he hears snoring. Bernardo has fallen asleep, but he’s snoring like a bear.

  Oh, no, Carlos thinks. This is torture.

  He has to admit that so far Bernardo is kind of a disappointment. And Carlos cannot forget that punch.

  Five

  First Day

  As soon as they enter the schoolyard, Mami, Issy, and Bernardo go one way, to the office, and Carlos goes another, to his line. He feels relieved.

  “That your cousin?” Gavin asks as Carlos slips into the line behind him. They have to wait for Ms. Shelby-Ortiz to pick them up from the yard. They’re supposed to be standing like soldiers, hands to themselves, mouths zipped, facing straight ahead. Gavin, Richard, and Carlos watch Carlos’s mom walk Bernardo into the school building.

  “He’s kinda . . . big,” Gavin says.

  “Yeah,” Carlos agrees, rubbing his shoulder absently.

  “What’s he like?” Richard asks.

  “Hard to say.”

  “He’s going to be in our class?”

  Carlos nods. “Uh-huh.”

  The first thing Carlos notices when he enters the classroom is that there’s an open topic for morning journal. “Yes!” he says under his breath. He’s got a lot to say. Stuff he wants to get out. He’s probably the only one of the four students at Table Two who likes to write. In the past, writing was always a big groan. A struggle. But for some reason, it’s getting easier and easier. He simply writes what he’d say if he was explaining out loud something that happened to him. He just has to remind himself to go over his work to see if it’s okay. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz has told everyone that they should read their journal entries to themselves when they think they’re finished. That’s the way to catch the mistakes and to see if what they’ve written is clear. It will help them get rid of all those pesky run-on sentences and confusion.

  Carlos takes out his pencil and begins:

  My cousin Bernardo is here. At my house. He’s going to stay with us a while until his mother gets here and picks him up. I don’t think Bernardo has a father anymore. I want to ask him, but I think I’ll wait. Mami will just tell me its not my bizness. Maybe he was in the army or something and didnt make it. Or something. I don’t know if I like Bernardo. He has a funny personallity. I think hes kind of sneaky. And I don’t like that he gave me a punch on the arm for nothing when I first met him. I didnt do nothing to him. Nothing. And he just punched me hard on the arm. My arm is still sore. I didn’t tell because I didnt want him too get in trouble but he better not do that again just because hes bigger than me. I dont know how long he’s going to be with us. W
ell, that all I got to say about Bernardo. Oh and hes bigger than I am and a little older than I am. Oh and he fed popcorn to my geckos. He could have made them choke. Now I’m kind of worried about my geckos. Because he’s in my room and he has the top bunk. Thats not even fair.

  Carlos reads over what he’s written under his breath. It sounds good. He looks around. Almost everyone is still writing. He knows he should take out his Sustained Silent Reading book, but he chose the wrong one. It’s really boring. He’d like to get another book, but Ms. Shelby-Ortiz says you need to give some of them a chance. Stick with them, because they can start out boring and then get good later.

  Sometimes Mami will say, “Go in your room and read and don’t come out for thirty minutes.” Then she’ll warn, “And if I catch you playing with a video game or looking up something about some animal, I’m going to have you sit at the kitchen table and read right in front of me. And I’m going to take that video game and you won’t see it for a month.”

  Sometimes he wonders if mothers just think up stuff to make kids miserable. When she says this to him, he’ll go into his room, feeling like he’s being punished. He’ll start reading, but before long his mind will be wandering all over the place. Just on its own. He’ll think of soccer—the different ways to pass the ball—then he’ll start looking at the video game on his dresser, wanting to play it so bad.

  While he’s reading, the video game will keep popping into his mind. Or he’ll remember a pass he messed up during the last soccer game.