Don't Feed the Geckos! Read online

  Mami will call out, “How you doing up there with Sign of the Arrow?”

  And he will say, “Fine.” But he won’t be doing fine, because Mami got the book from the library and read it herself, and there will be questions. Detailed questions.

  She’d loved The Sign of the Arrow when she was little and told him, “You’ll love it, too.” And he’d believed her. “For one thing, it’s a boy book, and it has a lot of adventure,” she’d said. Yeah, he could tell by the picture on the cover of a boy hiking along some mountain trail that it was going to have adventure.

  But the adventure has been slow to build up, and he keeps skipping pages, looking for the good part. He skips ahead for a few pages, goes back to where he left off, and tries to remember what happened.

  Soon, he’ll hear his mother call up to his room with, “Come here, Buddy Boy. I need you to summarize chapter three for me.” He’ll come down to the kitchen, taking his time, and sit across from her while she’s got her nose in chapter three, waiting for him to summarize it. And there he’ll be, trying hard to remember what happened in chapter three.

  “That’s what I thought,” she’ll eventually say. “Get back up there and read chapter three again,” and he’ll think, Ughhh. Why couldn’t books be like video games? Fast moving. Exciting. He doesn’t say that out loud, but that’s what he says in his head.

  “Who’s that guy?” Carlos hears Rosario ask. She sits across from him at Table Two. He follows her gaze to see Bernardo, Ms. Shelby-Ortiz, and Mami standing together near the door. Mami has Issy by the hand. She’s being extra good. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz and Mami are talking, and Bernardo looks like he’s sizing up the classroom. He moves over to the jigsaw table and stares at the puzzle of extinct species, which is nearly finished.

  Room Ten is proud of the one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. It’s the first time the class has worked on one with a thousand pieces. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz has promised that when it’s all finished, she’ll put that special jigsaw puzzle glue on it and then she’ll hang it on the wall—by the door, so all the kids from the other classes can see it when they walk by.

  “Class,” Ms. Shelby-Ortiz says. She holds up one hand and puts her finger over her mouth with the other. Everyone else does the same to show that they are listening, including Carlos. Then they all put their hands down. Everyone is quiet—showing Ms. Shelby-Ortiz that they have their listening ears on.

  “We have a new student.” She beams to drum up enthusiasm. “We’re all going to show Bernardo here what a great place Carver Elementary School is. Right?”

  Some kids nod slowly. Some say, “Yes, Ms. Shelby-Ortiz.” Some look at Bernardo skeptically. His T-shirt hangs out, and his hair looks a little messy. Carlos notices that, once again, he’s breathing through his mouth—and when he remembers to close it, it’s set in kind of a sneer. Carlos scoots down a little in his chair and looks out the window. But soon he hears his name.

  “Carlos, I’m going to let you take Bernardo under your wing and show him the ropes: where the bathroom is, the cafeteria, et cetera, et cetera. He can have one of the empty cubbies for his lunch and book bag, and”—she claps her hands and looks around—“the pencil sharpener rules . . . He’ll need to know those and also the rest of the class rules. In fact, Richard, switch to the empty desk across from Antonia and let Bernardo have yours.”

  Bernardo stands there waiting. His eyes look a little distant, as if he’s bored with all this introduction stuff.

  “That’s your cousin?” Carlos’s tablemate, Ralph, whispers to him.

  Carlos nods.

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “Texas.”

  “Where the cowboys live?”

  “I guess,” Carlos says, imagining cowboys and horses and lassos. He sees Mami and Issy leave.

  “How long is he going to be here?”

  Carlos had been putting rubber markings on the top of his desk with the edge of his pink eraser. Now he begins to clean them away. He looks up at Ralph. “For a while,” he says.

  Ms. Shelby-Ortiz begins pulling materials and books that Bernardo will need from the shelf near her desk. She signals for Carlos to give her a hand. She piles books into his arms, and Bernardo’s arms too. There are also workbooks and a cardboard pencil box and a morning journal and spiral notebooks. All of this is carried to Bernardo’s new desk right next to Carlos’s.

  Ms. Shelby-Ortiz comes over with a brand-new name tag for Bernardo. She removes Richard’s name tag and tapes Bernardo’s to the upper right-hand corner of his desk. It’s as if Bernardo has even moved into Carlos’s space at school. It’s like they’re joined at the hip, the way some identical twins are born. Carlos just can’t get away from him.

  Ms. Shelby-Ortiz consults her plan book. “Okay . . . We still have time to finish up our morning journals before reading. Carlos, will you explain to Bernardo what we do with our morning journals?”

  Carlos pulls the fresh new journal out from the pile of books—books Bernardo has made no effort to place inside his desk—and says, “This is your morning journal. Every day after we put all our stuff away, we check the board for the topic, and then we write on that topic.” Carlos points to the board. Bernardo glances toward it. His face is blank. He looks as if he didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Which is strange, because Carlos is the one who didn’t get enough sleep. He had to listen to Bernardo snoring almost all night long.

  “See, today is open topic. That means you can write about anything you want.”

  Bernardo suddenly perks up. “What did you write about so far?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Carlos doesn’t really want to say. There’s some stuff that Bernardo might not find too flattering. “Oh . . . I just wrote some stuff, you know. About the weekend.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Uh, we don’t have that much time, and sometimes Ms. Shelby-Ortiz has us pass them in so she can check them over. Better get started.”

  Bernardo opens his brand-new morning journal. He looks over at Carlos’s. Carlos has decorated his with bugs and animals. Bernardo sits there, staring.

  Then he picks up his pencil and looks at the lead. He tests its sharpness on his finger. He opens his journal to the first page.

  “Put today’s date in the upper right-hand corner. That’s what Ms. Shelby-Ortiz tells us to do.”

  Bernardo looks up at the board to see the date, then proceeds to write it in the upper right-hand corner of the page. He has to look up several times to get the spelling right. Carlos can hear him breathing through his mouth. Carlos takes out his book that he’s “reading for pleasure” and opens to where he left off.

  A few minutes later, Ms. Shelby-Ortiz is saying, “Okay, class, pencils down. Rosario, collect the journals for me.” Carlos looks over at Bernardo’s open journal. There are only a few lines written in large, messy print. He’s not surprised.

  Six

  All the Best Kickers

  Recess is better, because Room Ten has the kickball and jump rope areas, and Carlos doesn’t have to watch over Bernardo. He only has to point out the boys’ bathroom when Bernardo needs it and send him on his way.

  Carlos wants to be on Ralph’s team. If Ralph played soccer, he’d be one of the best kickers on the Miller’s Park soccer team. Calvin Vickers is the other team captain, and somehow Carlos knows Calvin’s going to pick him.

  As Room Ten’s players stand in a group, waiting for Calvin to pick his first teammate, Carlos mutters quietly, “Don’t pick me . . . Don’t pick me.”

  “Carlos,” Calvin Vickers says.

  Carlos sighs and goes to stand behind him.

  Ralph calls out, “Emilio.”

  Another good kicker, Carlos thinks.

  Calvin calls out, “Gavin.”

  “Shoot,” Carlos says under his breath, and watches while Gavin makes his way over and gets behind him. Gavin may be good on his skateboard, but he’s only so-so at kickball.

  Rich
ard gets on Ralph’s team, and that gives Ralph’s team the advantage with three good players. Calvin spies Bernardo walking across the yard, returning from the boys’ bathroom.

  “Okay, we’ll get the new guy,” he says.

  Carlos looks to see Bernardo lumbering across the yard to the baseball diamond they use for kickball. Oh, no, he thinks. This is not good.

  Bernardo trudges up to Carlos. “What are you guys doing?”

  “Choosing up sides for kickball,” Carlos says. “You’re on my team.”

  “Cool,” Bernardo says. He looks confident.

  Ralph and Calvin keep choosing up sides until each team has six players.

  “Play ball!” Bernardo yells, and everyone turns to stare at him.

  “I just like saying that,” he explains, and then looks down, grinning at the ground.

  The teams flip a coin to see which will kick first. Ralph’s team wins. More bad luck, Carlos thinks. Ralph chooses himself to be the first kicker. No surprise there. He wants to start off the game with his team on top.

  “Hey, let me pitch!” Carlos yells to Calvin, who’s looking over his team. “I always get it over the base.” Calvin checks him for a second, then tosses the ball to Gerald. “You pitch, Gerald.”

  Carlos’s shoulders slump. He knows Calvin is still mad because Carlos didn’t let him cheat off his paper last week during the spelling test. Carlos shrugs and finds a place near first base. Bernardo saunters to third. The other team members spread out over the field.

  Gerald pitches a slow, easy roll, and Ralph kicks a high ball straight between second and third. It lands right in Bernardo’s outstretched arms. “Out!” he cries.

  Ralph looks at Bernardo for a moment and then slinks over to the bench. He seems a little surprised.

  Before Ralph sits down, he switches places with Emilio so that he can quickly have another shot at kicking. For some reason, Emilio doesn’t seem to mind. The other players let this go as well. Too many squabbles can cut into play time. The next ball Gerald rolls is a bit wobbly and goes a foot to the left of home base. Carlos would have done better at pitching.

  “Ball!” Ralph yells out, using a baseball term.

  Gerald pitches again. The ball rolls wide of the mark once more, and Ralph doesn’t even try to kick it.

  “Ball two!” he yells out.

  Carlos slaps his forehead. What a team! “Hey, Gerald! How about getting it over the base?”

  Gerald whips around and bounces the ball once—hard. “You think you can do better?”

  “Yeah!”

  Gerald ignores him and pitches the ball fast and wild. It doesn’t even go near home base.

  Carlos takes in a deep breath. “Ball three!” Ralph cries. “One more and I walk!”

  “Let me pitch, Calvin!”

  Calvin looks Carlos up and down. “Okay.” He turns toward Gerald. “You’re on first!”

  Gerald bounces the ball low and hard to Carlos and stomps to first base. Carlos grabs it like he doesn’t even notice his fingertips are stinging, then takes his place at the pitcher’s spot and rolls the ball fast—with no bounces—and catches Ralph by surprise. Ralph is all ready to call out “Ball four,” but he doesn’t have a chance. The ball is crossing the base, leaving him barely enough time to get into position.

  His foot slips across the ball, and he nearly stumbles kicking it. It goes nowhere, but Ralph runs toward first base anyway. Erik Castillo, behind home plate, grabs the ball and throws it toward Bernardo, just as Ralph is rounding first and heading toward second base. Bernardo is right where he needs to be. He catches the ball, runs to second, and stomps on the base before Ralph can reach it.

  “That’s two outs!” Bernardo cries. He bounces the ball once—hard—to emphasize his point. Carlos is impressed, but not really surprised. Even though Bernardo’s kind of big, that doesn’t always mean a person won’t be athletic. Bernardo’s big—and a good kickball player.

  That’s what Carlos tells Papi in the car after school. Usually Mami picks him up, but she has a dentist appointment, and Papi has a day off from work for some reason.

  Carlos goes on. “If it wasn’t for Bernardo, we would have lost. Because not only was Bernardo good in the field, he was a good kicker.”

  “Really?” Papi says. He checks Bernardo in the rearview mirror. Bernardo’s busy looking out the window, as if he has other things on his mind.

  Carlos is a little disappointed. He thought pumping up Bernardo to Papi would make Bernardo act nicer later—at home. But Bernardo doesn’t even seem to notice.

  “Wow,” Papi says, seemingly impressed.

  “I’m good at all sports,” Bernardo says out of the blue. Carlos feels a bit irritated.

  “You can’t be good at all sports,” Papi says.

  “Well, the important ones.”

  Carlos glances at the back of Papi’s head, wondering what the expression on his face is right now. Carlos is sure that Papi will have a response to that.

  “Every sport is important to the people who play them,” Papi says.

  “Well, I’m talking about the main sports, like baseball and football and basketball . . . and soccer. I’ll probably play on Carlos’s team. I think they’re going to need me.”

  Carlos thinks maybe Bernardo’s gotten his hopes up too quickly. “Mami hasn’t spoken to Coach Willis yet,” he says.

  Bernardo just shrugs. “You’ll see.”

  The snoring continues—right above Carlos’s head. He sits up. He rubs his eyes. How’s he going to live with that noise? Now it kind of sounds like an animal’s low growl with something choppy at the end. There’s a little bit of smacking, too. Carlos waits. He knows it’s not going to stop. How can Bernardo sleep through his own snoring?

  After fifteen minutes of staring at the bottom of the upper bunk, fifteen minutes of waiting for it to stop, Carlos reaches under his bed for his hockey stick. He jams the underside of the bunk, hard.

  It takes a couple of jabs before Bernardo sits up. “What, what? What’s going on?”

  “You’re snoring!”

  “What?”

  “You’re snoring and waking me up!”

  Bernardo drops his head over the edge of the bunk. “No, I’m not. I don’t snore.”

  “Yes, you do!”

  “I don’t see how that’s keeping you awake.”

  “It’s loud!”

  “Then just close your ears.”

  Carlos jumps out of bed and stomps to the bathroom, not caring if he wakes up the rest of the family. He grabs some toilet paper, pulls it apart, then balls up each half and stuffs it into his ears. He climbs back in bed and lies there for a moment, listening. Quiet . . . it seems at first, but then the snoring gets through the tissue. It’s muffled, but still there. He stares at the underside of the top bunk. Bernardo’s back to sleep. How can that be? How long is Carlos going to have to put up with him?

  Seven

  The Care and Feeding of Geckos

  The next thing Carlos knows, Bernardo is shaking him awake and saying, “Let me feed the geckos.”

  It’s morning. Carlos covers his eyes. “Let me wake up.” He yawns.

  “Come on, come on!”

  Carlos pulls himself up and climbs slowly out of bed. He moves to the terrarium and stands there a moment, still waking up. Bernardo bends down to look through the glass. “Let me hold one.”

  “I have to give you the rules first.”

  “Okay, give me the rules, then.”

  “First, I need to tell you about geckos.”

  Bernardo seems suddenly bored. He looks as if he just wants to get his hand into the terrarium.

  “First of all,” Carlos says, “you don’t play with geckos more than thirty minutes a day, and that’s mainly just holding them.”

  Bernardo says, “Yeah, yeah . . . okay.”

  Carlos studies him for a few seconds. “We’ll take turns feeding them. I always feed them in the morning, so you can watch me.”

 
“Just show me how it’s done,” Bernardo says.

  “I’m going to tell you about the geckos and the ants. And you better listen.” This is going to be hard—keeping Bernardo from traumatizing his geckos or causing tunnel collapse in his ant farm.

  “I’m going to start with the ant farm because it’s the most . . . Well, things can happen.”

  “Like what?” Bernardo asks.

  “Well, see all those tunnels they’ve made?”

  Bernardo practically drools as he peers through the glass.

  “They go to a lot of trouble to make them. That’s why even Issy is careful when she’s near the ant farm table. If this table is jiggled, you can collapse their tunnels. And they’ll get buried.”

  “How long do they live, anyway?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering how long an ant lives.”

  Carlos looks at Bernardo suspiciously. The question bothers him.

  “Well, that’s the thing. They don’t live all that long.” He points out a small section of the farm near the surface. “See this here?”

  Bernardo lowers himself some more, but then wobbles a little on his feet. Carlos yanks him back by his shirt collar.

  “Hey!”

  “I said you have to be careful around the farm!”

  “I’m being careful!” Bernardo straightens.

  “I was going to say, that little section is like their graveyard. It’s called a midden. They carry the dead ants to it.”

  “An ant graveyard?” Bernardo’s eyes widen. He looks back at the geckos. “Do the geckos have a graveyard?”

  “No. They live longer. Pay attention.”

  Bernardo stares into Carlos’s eyes to show he’s paying attention, but an expression crosses over his face that makes Carlos feel a little uneasy.

  Carlos explains how the ants in the farm are western harvester ants, and they eat just about anything, but a little bit of cracker crumbs and some drops of water dripped onto the sand will do. Also, whatever they don’t eat has to be taken out of the farm because it will get all moldy. Bernardo is beginning to look bored. Carlos knows Bernardo’s just waiting for him to finish.