*Please note that for the sake of privacy, initials will be used for some names, as this is not a work of fiction, but real life events.
Saturday Nights
I can't really remember much of my early life. Emotional trauma and anxiety created a coping mechanism in me that caused me to block out darker memories. My only memories of my early childhood are blurry glimpses of a red brick house in the Mexican slums, my few friends and neighbors, and the few times I visited my extended family in Michoacán. I never really had anything too important to leave behind when I left to move to the states, only bringing with me the clothes on my back and a doll in my hand. My little brother was barely a year old then, I was 8, and we were to cross the border to where my mother was waiting for us.
I don't remember much of the crossing itself, only that I was gripped by fear during that exodus. What if we get caught? I kept thinking. The one clear memory I have is that of sitting in the backseat of the car after crossing, my mother sleeping besides me with my brother in her arms, and watching the sun rise over the horizon. I remember the brightness of it, the great rolling clouds and the shock of seeing the sky. Back in Mexico the pollution was so dense the sky looked grey, yet as I stared out the window I had nearly wept. Blue. The sky was so blue, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And so it was that even now, though people believe me to love only the colors black and red because of my attire, one of the things that will always make me smile is the color blue.
Let me now skip to the beginning of middle school, since my elementary years were nothing but a pile of embarrassing blunders as I tried to learn English and adapt to the American lifestyle and culture. By this time I had made a decent amount of friends and was able to speak English with a fair amount of fluency. My mother and I had joined a wonderful church and were attending frequently, as it was a sort of place of refuge for her, and for me as well. I usually joined her in the main service, but by 6th grade she insisted that I join the other girls in the children's service. "You're going there", she had told me sternly.
I remember the feeling of dread as I walked into that little room, and saw all the other middle school girls sitting around a table. I must have done something that triggered my coping mechanism because I don't remember much of that first meeting. Yet by the second one, I was comfortable enough with the girls to make conversation with them, and had even become a tentative friend with a sweet, frizzy-haired, lanky girl named Katya. She was very kind, if a little eccentric, but as she was still in elementary she could not join me with the older girls. I felt a stab of anxiety at this, since she was the only one that I really knew among the others, and I found her presence comforting.
It was a Sunday morning when it was time for me to go to the meeting . I woke up late, grabbing a pair of jeans and pulling a t-shirt on. I yanked my hairbrush through my hair, jumping when my mother shouted my name, saying it was time to leave. The drive to church took some ten minutes, and I sat in the car fidgeting with my hands. As we went into the building, my palms started to sweat. I had no idea what to expect, but I was getting more nervous by the second. I stepped into the room, a cozy, bright-lit place with a large wooden oval table occupying the majority of it. Most of the girls had already taken their seats, chattering pleasantly with one another. I took my seat at the far south end of the table and looked around me. I already knew most of the girls, so there seemed to be no reason to worry about introducing myself to someone.
Then, as my eyes skimmed over the crowd, I stopped and did a double take at the small Asian girl at the other end of the table. She wasn't here last time, I thought.
She sat there, eyes fixed on a phone on her lap instead of making conversation with the others around her. Her fingers typed away at an alarming speed over the screen, and she smiled occasionally at it, unfazed at the world around her. It was obvious that she was a little alienated from the group, the odd one out. She did not seem to care, though, instead busying herself with other small matters.
With curiosity I began to look her over.
She was wearing a band tee and a loose, dark hoodie, black skinny jeans and a pair of scuffed sneakers on her feet. She wore several bracelets on her wrists, a myriad of colors and band logos against her caramel colored skin. Her thick black hair was cut short, and swept to the side, inky fringe falling over her eyes. Then suddenly she looked up, locking gazes with me. Her dark eyes twinkled with curiosity.
Our teacher called for us to quiet down, and I saw the girl put her phone away. The girls were instructed to say their names out loud to ensure I remembered all of them. I turned slightly to match faces to names as they were spoken to me.
"I'm Sara".
"I'm Winona".
"I'm Katherine".
"I'm Mary".
Then it was her turn.
"I'm K", she said to me with a shy smile and a wave.
There was little other I remember from that meeting, as it unfolded in the usual routine. We read, shared what we enjoyed, and we were dismissed. The girls went out of the room in a great rush and I realized K had been one of the first to step out. I tried to walk out faster, hoping to catch up with her. I wanted to talk to her, introduce myself, and maybe make a friend out of a fellow outsider. But by the time I managed to push past the others, she was gone.
"Hey, N!" I heard Katya call out as she came out of her own meeting.
"You looking for someone?" She asked me.
I stared at the door, caught up in my thoughts until Katya poked me in the ribs.
I jumped in shock, "No one", I said, "No one".
•••••••••••
It wasn't till next Sunday that I saw her again. Saturday night was when the teens of our church met with each other, but when I got there she simply wasn't there.
I opened the door, expecting not to see her there since she hadn't shown up the night before. Yet there she was sitting in the same spot as before, phone in hand, typing away. She was wearing a hoodie again, the same colorful wristbands on her hands. And as soon as I walked in through the door, she looked up and smiled at me.
I took my seat on the opposite end of the table, the other girls greeting me immediately, asking me how my week was, if I was ok, and a torrent of other questions. I answered as politely as I could, considering I hadn't really slept well the night before. The last thing I needed was to come off as rude. I looked to the other end of the table, and saw that K had turned her attention back to her phone. She looked like one of those kids that probably couldn't live without the thing.
"Alright, girls, let's start the reading".
She scrambled to put her phone in her pocket.
We took turns reading the message, going counterclockwise around the table, reading about 3 sentences each. For the most part, I really tried to pay attention, my eyes following the words on the page. There is one thing to know about me, though, and that is that I daydream easily. So when it was my turn to read out loud, I had no idea where were on the page.
Scrambling to find my place, I asked the other girl beside me to repeat the last sentence she had read. Looking to the other end of the table, I locked eyes with K. Then, with mock annoyance, she half shouted, "Read!", a playful twinkle in her eye.
"Make me", I bit back at her.
"You wanna go?"
"Fight me".
"I'll fight you, bro".
"All right, settle down, you two", our teacher said, the other girls looking a little shocked at our little outburst. Two of them, Winona and Katherine, stood up quickly; ready to stop us if a fight broke out. But as we glared at each other from across the table, we began smiling, then snickering, and finally started to shake with laughter.
"We're just joking", K told them through her laughter. We looked at each other again, trying to keep a straight face, and failing miserably.
••••••••••••••
"Let's take this outside".
"Fight me, K".
"You wanna go, girl?"
I can't remember exactly what happened after the meeting. Somehow we had ended up here, up in each other's faces, mock fighting. Meanwhile, my mother and the other sisters stood in the background, expecting a fistfight in the middle of the church lobby.
••••••••••••
There is little I remember from those first few weeks. The church meetings blended into one another, blurry images of people, hymns and friendliness. But K remained bright, an image of focus in a background of swirling colors. We became good friends in no time.
I remember those were happy times. We had barely moved in with my new stepfather, a short, stout, but seemingly decent enough man. I was nearing the end of 6th grade, my older brother was in his last couple of years of high school, and my younger brother was getting used to the concept of school as he entered it. We lived in the suburbs of a small city in Texas, a sprawling land of parks, malls, and small, colorful houses. K lived on the west side of town, in the more wealthy area, but we were able to convince her mother to drive her over to visit every now and then.
I went to school with my cousin, Itzel, who looked so much like me that people often mistook us for sisters. The difference in our personalities was what broke that assumption quickly though. She was the social butterfly, popular, pretty, and everything that I wanted to be. The boys at the school flocked around her, flighty thing that she was. I, on the other hand, was small, shy, and slightly antisocial. And while she seemed to change boyfriends every other week, I had never even held hands with a boy.
Our mothers would often look at us and say, "Black and White", shaking their heads, "Night and Day".
It was sometime during the end of my second semester of 7th grade that things began to change. Even now, I still don't like looking back on that year, a time full of confusion, pain, and the beginning of a broken home. But let me tell you what happened, as difficult as it may be. Let me take you back to 7th grade.
Chapter One
Dylan. That was his name. Now, after all this time, I learned to be mature about what happened, but please remember I was a middle school girl back then. Life was nothing but drama for a girl who just started puberty. And then he came in. I thought he was perfect, or at least that's what my cousin kept telling me.
Itzel kept telling me I should get a boyfriend, saying that it was the perfect thing for me to do. Everyone was getting into a relationship, anyway. Dylan was a friend of hers, and I shared theatre class with him. He was mid-height, a little burly, and sported that emo haircut that girls went crazy for back in 2007. "He's perfect for you", Itzel had told me with a grin. I believed her, of course.
She played cupid, and I started dating him about a week later. I was on cloud nine, and everything seemed so perfect. He was funny, popular, we shared the same interests. Within that first week he developed the habit of walking me to each of my classes, always giving me a small kiss before I walked into the classroom. He could only walk me halfway home though, as my mother was extremely conservative and would most likely had murdered me if she ever saw him. So he'd pull me into the bushes and kiss me before saying goodbye.
Saturday night came along, and I decided to tell K.
I entered the church lobby, almost running to where K was seated on a couch. She looked up from her phone, and noticing my expression, she put it away.
"What's up with you today?" she told me.
I took a deep breath and said, "I met someone and…"
"Aaannnddd?' her eyes narrowed and she suddenly smiled. Oh, no. I knew that look, that was not a good look. K wasn't exactly the prime model of good behavior in our congregation, and it showed when she got The Look. I suppressed a whimper, and suddenly telling her did not seem like such a good idea. It wasn't like she was a bad person or anything, but I was fairly sure she could kill me with the amount of teasing she was about to unleash on me. That combined with the fact that some of her vocabulary could make a nun faint.
"Come on, N, spill it", she whispered as she scooted closer.
" ...and we're dating".
She froze. I stopped breathing. Even now I can recall the mischievous expression, the wheels turning in her head. In what seemed like slow motion, she tackled me, and we both went sprawling on the couch. I tried to sit back up, ignoring the looks from people walking by. Looking to the left, I saw Katya stop and stare with shock. I waved her off, saying we were fine. She nodded warily and kept walking. I sighed and tried to push K's dead weight from me.
Managing to shove her off, I finally noticed that she was trembling. Fear took over, and I shook her shoulders.
"What's wrong?!"
She looked up and I nearly smacked her when I saw that she was laughing.
"What's his name?" she managed to wheeze through her giggling.
"Dylan".
The Look went over her face again and I froze. This was not good, not good at all, and I was going to regret every single moment. She sat up straight and I braced myself.
With a deep breath she began, "N and Dylan sitting in a tree…"
I smacked her.
She started to cackle and I was beginning to wonder if too much embarrassment could kill someone.
K sat up, clutching her middle, and wiped a small tear from her face. She held out her hand and yanked me up with her.
"I'm just playing with you", she giggled, "This is great, you really need a guy".
I rubbed my eyes and sighed in relief. She approved, that's what mattered.
"But I'd like to meet him, if possible".
"Sure, when?" I asked.
"I'm pretty busy this week, but I'll let you know when I'm free. If you're gonna start dating, then I need to know if he's good enough for you. Now, c'mon, the meeting's gonna start", she told me.
I grabbed her hand and together we walked to the meeting room. K took her hand back and instead threw her arm around my shoulder and pulled me in. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, "k..i..s..s..i..n..g".
I pushed her and she tumbled away laughing.