Summary: Naomi and Mateo try to fit in with their classmates, and make some compromises along the way. Neither is particularly successful. Content warnings for bullying, peer pressure, and discussion of Shuriki-era propaganda.
"Hey, you're friends with Mateo, right?"
Afternoon plans swept from Naomi's mind at the interruption, and she paused in packing up to see Beatríz looming over her desk, arms crossed and scowling.
"What?" Naomi asked.
Beatríz huffed and rolled her eyes. "You know, Mateo? The weird guy? Spends recreo alone? Sleeps in class all the time?" She looked back down at Naomi, an eyebrow arched. "Talks pretty much only to you? Any of this sound familiar?"
Naomi frowned. "I know who Mateo is."
It had been weeks since their mishap with the olaball, and she and Mateo hadn't gotten past the point of small talk since then. Not for lack of trying—she'd ask about his weekend only to be met with quiet dismissal, as if he hadn't done anything at all, and whenever she tried to ask about his books, the one thing she knew for a fact he liked, he'd dodge the question entirely. It was like he didn't have any hobbies. His own approach to starting conversations, then, seemed to be hovering around the edges of other people's, waiting for an opportunity to jump in that never came. He'd been doing that more often lately, apparently having taken Naomi's 'standoffish' remark to heart, but without knowing how to bridge that gap, he came across more as a nuisance than a participant.
She could see how he'd gotten his reputation. It wasn't that she disliked him, but 'friend' was a bit of a stretch.
"Why does it matter?" she asked.
Grimacing, Beatríz toyed with the end of one of her twin braids where it draped over her shoulder. "I got stuck with him as my lab partner for the chemistry unit and I was hoping you'd have some advice on how to, I dunno," she paused and wrinkled her nose even further, "deal with him."
A tired sigh leaked out of Naomi's nose. She'd wanted to go home, not play diplomat between her classmates. Her stomach growled impatiently to remind her that she'd forgotten a snack during that day's recreo, and even after several months, Avaloran lunchtime still felt awfully late. Most of her other classmates were already out the door, chatting amongst themselves, and Naomi cast them a longing glance, already thinking about her dad's chowder.
"What, is this a Norberg thing or something?" Beatríz suddenly asked.
Naomi blinked. "A Norberg thing?"
"Taking forever to answer a simple question."
She may as well have slapped her. Naomi's cheeks burned, a dozen defensive retorts leaping to the front of her mind. The image of her dad's exhausted expression immediately chased them away—don't make a scene with the locals, Naomi; you can't keep getting into arguments, Naomi—and she swallowed the most acidic of her responses, sitting back and crossing her arms. She still ended up sounding stubbornly sarcastic when she asked, "What exactly is it you want me to answer?"
"He's not exactly a great conversationalist. How exactly am I supposed to even talk to him?"
Naomi smirked. "Well, usually you open your mouth and then you make sound come out…"
Scowling, Beatríz flicked the braid back behind her. Before she could retort, though, a muffled snicker sounded from behind Naomi, and Beatríz turned her glare on the offending noise. "Don't you know that it's rude to listen in?"
"You're talking about me," the eavesdropper replied, and that was when Naomi finally turned around, meeting Mateo's eyes across the desks between them. He waggled his eyebrows like they were sharing an inside joke, and she snapped her head forward again, face flushing with embarrassment. It felt wrong to be gossiping about him, but though it pained her to admit, it felt equally wrong to let him think they were friends.
It wasn't that she disliked him, really. But everyone else in class seemed to be on the same page: Mateo was weird. Being his friend might well mean she would never be anyone else's.
Beatríz gestured toward him with an incredulous shrug, as if to say 'see what I mean?'
"You could've said he was right there," Naomi muttered.
"Oh, I guess I didn't notice him."
"Okay, look," Naomi said, lowering her voice so Mateo wouldn't overhear, "the chemistry unit is only six weeks. Trust me, that goes by in a blink."
"Oh, come on," Beatríz whined, either not catching or not caring about Naomi's intent for discretion. "You have so much more experience with this than me! You have to have met all kinds of weirdos on your travels, right? I bet you're great at handling them! How do you usually do it?"
Naomi's hunger was rapidly turning to nausea, a red flag flapping insistently in the back of her mind. It was technically a compliment, but didn't feel like one. She'd met a lot of people that had struck her as unusual at first, sure, but it was almost always a product of cultural misunderstanding or basic ignorance. It was never a matter of 'handling' anyone. She felt compelled to correct Beatríz, to defend her foreign acquaintances on principle, but her classmate had clasped her hands in front of her and was staring Naomi down with a pleading expression, her eyes big and sad. Nerves crawling, Naomi beat back the alarm, smothering it under a layer of deliberate trust.
Beatríz was worried, that was all, and if Naomi didn't want to alienate her, then maybe she just needed to be a bit placating for now. Fit in. Don't make a scene. She could do that.
"Just… be nice? He's pretty quiet and doesn't like to talk about himself, so as long as you don't, I dunno, yell at him or throw something at him or something like that, he shouldn't do anything too out there. And if he does get too weird…" she shrugged, "like I said, you're only gonna have to put up with him for a month and a half."
There was a split second before Beatríz responded where she looked annoyed, half rolling her eyes, but then her mouth stretched into a wide and toothy smile as she leaned in to squeeze Naomi's arm. "Thanks so much for the advice, Naomi. You're the best," she said, and she'd flounced out of the room before Naomi could place why it made her so uncomfortable.
The harsh scrape of chair legs against the floor rang out behind her, and Naomi turned her head just in time to see Mateo stalking past. He swung his backpack up to his shoulder as he passed her desk, roughly clipping her arm with it as he did. "See you," he said, his voice as stiff as his gait, and he left the room with his head bowed and face taut.
So he'd overheard after all, but at least now he knew where they stood. That was a good thing. And if Naomi's stomach felt like she'd swallowed a rock, well, that was just the hunger.
"Hey, hey, Naomi!"
Dante had an arm around her the second she set foot outside for recreo a week later, and he swiftly ushered her to the rest of their group, positioning her so she was eye level with José's nose.
"In your professional opinion, would you say José's new mustache looks more like a dead caterpillar or a mold growth?"
José wrinkled his nose, the scruffy tufts of hair beneath it shifting with the motion. "I think it makes me look distinguished."
Beatríz scoffed from the courtyard wall, where she was re-braiding her hair. "It makes you look like my Tío Arturo after a bad breakup."
The guys both laughed, clearly in on whatever the 'Beatríz's tío' situation was, and not wanting to feel left out, Naomi forced a chuckle.
"I vote caterpillar?" she tried, and Dante crowed, slapping her back.
"I told you! Cut in half! Like the head's on one end and the butt's on the other."
"It'll look better when it grows in more," José protested, retrieving an apple from his bag. "We'll see who's laughing when I've got a full mustache to twirl and you're the one sporting face mold."
"Just shave it, man. It'll grow better in a year."
"So, your Tío Arturo," Naomi tried, turning to Beatríz as the guys continued to bicker, "what's up with him?"
"Oh, it's a whole thing," she replied, tossing her finished braid over her shoulder and reaching for the wrapped torta she'd set on the wall beside her. "There was this barrel of juice and a runaway mule… it's a long story."
Dante settled in against the wall, finally retrieving his own snack and waving it around as he talked. "See, her tío was trying to woo the daughter of the owner of the brewery down the street from the Emporium, and—"
"You wouldn't get it," José cut in. "It's a 'you had to be there' situation. You remembered something to eat today, right?"
Naomi almost recoiled from the bluntness, her intrigue flattened under his words, but recovered fast, lifting her bag. "Yeah, I've got a sandwich in here." She glanced at Dante, who simply shrugged.
"Eh, I tried," he said, his mouth full. "Speaking of wooing, d'you guys think Celia would wanna go hiking with me next weekend?"
The topic now thoroughly changed, the conversation moved on with no signs that anyone was going to finish filling Naomi in. Settling in to eat, she chewed her sandwich absently as she tried to keep up with the subject. It ricocheted between other in-jokes and family drama that had little to no context, and offered her little opportunity to contribute. That was fine—it gave her time to appreciate her food.
It was when she was polishing off the last of her snack that the topic finally swung back around to something familiar.
"So Bea, how's working with El Silencioso going?" Dante asked, a mischievous grin on his face. "Has he shown you where he's hiding the bodies, yet?"
"Mm! About that!" She hastily swallowed the last bite of her sandwich. "I've been wanting to talk about him. So it turns out that Mateo is actually, like," her face twisted in confusion, "really smart? He's got like half the periodic table memorized, and he knows all sorts of weird stuff about which elements explode randomly. Or explode in water? I dunno, I wasn't really listening."
"No kidding?" José remarked around a mouthful of bread, having swiped one of Dante's conchas.
"Yeah! And I thought he was just being annoying when he got all particular about how we measured the ingredients—reagents? Whatever—during the lab, but apparently that's actually super important for the experiment working."
Dante blinked, staring at the bread in his hand. "Oh. I guess that's why my lab turned out so weird. I thought it'd be like cooking or something, where if you add too many onions, then you just have more onions."
"The last time you tried to make beef empanadas, they were almost entirely onion," José said. "I like onion, and even I thought those were monstrosities."
"Also, also!" Beatríz cut in, yanking the attention back to her, "Apparently he just kinda… knows Maruvian? Like, the whole language."
Naomi perked up, finally finding a foothold. "That's the language of the kingdom that was here before Avalor, right?"
"Yeah, and it's a dead language," José said. "The Maruvians are gone. It's the kind of thing only professors or archeologists know."
Their classroom history books had a lot to say about the Maruvians, and none of it was flattering. They were a society of wizards, the books said, and that was what wiped them out—swallowed by their own hubris in thinking they could wield such a corruptive power as magic. It was why Queen Shuriki had outlawed the practice when she took the throne—to spare Avalor the same fate. And since Maruvian wizards used drums to cast their spells, music became the natural next ban. And then since dancing and festivals were avenues for music, it was only good and necessary to ban them as well, as a preventative measure.
Of course, Queen Shuriki still had to bear the burden of carrying the power of magic herself, the histories said. Someone had to protect Avalor from dark forces. Someone had to keep that old, dark magic from making a resurgence, lest the country fall to ruin.
If Naomi was being honest, a lot of that sounded like bunk.
She'd lived in plenty of other countries where magic was a normal part of everyday life. People would hire a wizard to help them with even mundane tasks like repairs or pest control, and they never seemed more ignoble for it. Mages were an ordinary part of the royal court, and wanting to be a wizard was an ordinary aspiration. And banning music and dancing was just absurd, even taking the magical kind into account. There were entire academies across the sea in Enchancia dedicated specifically to teaching magical music, and they'd been around for ages without a magical apocalypse.
(She'd asked about them, actually, and Sra. Díaz had shaken her head and said, "Well, it's only a matter of time, then." She'd felt Mateo's eyes on her during the entire next recreo. Which, yeah, that was a little unsettling.)
It all just seemed at odds with itself. Nothing she knew of magic pointed at it being civilization-destroying, but she also didn't know enough about the Maruvians to challenge the idea that maybe their magic was. It was fascinating, the dichotomy between the irreverent, hedonistic villains the textbooks painted them as, performing sacrifices in their temples and laying curses for sport, and the mundanity and practicality of magic as she knew of it. She could better understand Mateo's interest in mythology after a few weeks of these lessons; she wanted to start picking apart the history of it all herself.
José turned to Beatríz. "So where'd he even learn it?"
"I bet it'd be helpful for the final essay for the Maru unit," Dante added.
Beatríz nodded excitedly. "That's exactly how I found out! I was working on the report for last lab with him after school yesterday and I mentioned that I hadn't finished the history essay yet, and all of a sudden he starts going on and on about how badly translated all the sources the school gave us are, what, like he'd seen the originals or something, and just—" Huffing, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ugh, I could barely get him to shut back up."
The idea of a chatty Mateo was somehow more unbelievable to Naomi than him being a linguistics whiz. Sure, he knew weird stuff; that made sense. He might as well know Maruvian. But she felt like she'd been lobbing him the softest olaballs of conversation topics since they'd met, and he'd inevitably missed every one.
"Oh, hang on," Beatríz said, and then suddenly sat up straight, waving an arm wildly. "Mateo! Over here!"
Naomi craned her neck, leaning around Dante to see that sure enough, Mateo was crossing the courtyard back toward the building. He'd frozen mid-stride, staring wide-eyed over at Beatríz, and after glancing around as if to make sure no other Mateos had burst into existence nearby, he raised a hand to point at himself.
"Yeah, you!" Beatríz confirmed. "Get over here!"
José stiffened, arching an eyebrow. "Uh, Bea? What're you doing?"
"Trust me," she whispered, and as Mateo arrived at the edges of the group, she turned a coy smile on him, fiddling with the end of her braid with one hand. "I was just telling these guys about how great a help you were last night."
"Oh! Um…" He'd pulled his shoulders in and was clutching at his backpack straps like they were his only tether to his surroundings. Glancing between the four of them, his face wandered through a mix of confusion and suspicion as he took in their expressions: Beatríz, still smiling innocently and at direct odds with José, who was regarding Mateo with his own wary look of judgment; Dante, something amused stretching across his face as the scene unfolded; and Naomi, trying very hard to keep her face as neutral as possible. Whatever he found, or didn't find, was enough for him to loosen his posture incrementally.
"Thanks?" he finally said. "Or, I mean, you're welcome! It's no problem. It was—you know, it was a school assignment, so—"
"You should sit down!" Beatríz said, cutting him off. "Naomi, make some room."
Naomi jolted, shooting her a startled look.
"Go on," Beatríz huffed, waving her fingers like she was shooing her.
A complaint lodged in Naomi's throat like a stuck piece of food, but she scooted closer to José anyway. Don't make a scene. Mateo sat down cross-legged in the gap with a nervous smile, setting his backpack beside him. Beatríz leaned toward him, her chin cupped daintily in one hand.
"So Mateo, how'd you get so super-smart anyway?" she asked. "Is it all that stuff you're always reading?"
He ducked his head, flattered, and made a soft sound of protest. "Well, I don't know about that…"
"What are you always reading, anyway?" Dante asked, and before Mateo could stop him, he'd flipped Mateo's backpack open and tugged out one of his notebooks, cracking it open haphazardly.
Dread sliced across Mateo's face. "Please give that back!"
He grabbed for it, but Dante leaned out of his reach, paging through it. "What's all these squiggles? Hey, Bea, check this out."
"Don't! They're just—they're just drawings, they're nothing important."
"If they're nothing special, then why do you want it back so badly?" José asked as Mateo swiped at Dante's hands again.
"Don't make such a big deal out of it," Beatríz said. "We just wanna see."
If Naomi was being honest, she was curious, too. She craned her neck as Beatríz and Dante flipped through the book, catching glimpses of rows of sketched symbols lining the pages. They looked intricate, though she couldn't make out the details from the angle and distance, and Mateo's body was blocking her before she could determine any kind of pattern.
He wrested the book from Dante's grip. "It's private," he said, clutching it against his chest.
Dante threw his hands up. "Alright, alright. Jeez, man, we were just messing around."
"They weren't very interesting anyway," Beatríz added. She tucked a loose hair behind her ear and gave him a smile stretched in false reassurance. "Don't worry—we won't take it anymore."
"Oh. Um," Mateo squirmed, his agitation deflating into confusion. "Thank you?" Settling back into his spot, he put his notebook away and tugged his entire backpack into his lap, clinging to it protectively.
"Hey, Beatríz says you know Maruvian," José cut in, changing the subject. "Is that true?"
Beatríz's smile grew broader. "Ooh, yeah! You should say something in Maruvian!"
Mateo faltered. "Uh, like what?"
Her teeth gleamed. "Whatever you want!"
There was a long pause as Mateo rubbed his chin, his lips pursed in thought. "Well, there's a lot that I could say…"
"Just pick something!" José groaned, and Mateo flinched, his shoulders jumping.
"Right! Sorry! Um, how about…" Straightening up, he cleared his throat. "Ninoyolnonotza, campa nicuiz yectli auiacaxochitl…"
Naomi listened as he went on, stunned. His voice formed the syllables with practiced ease. He didn't just know Maruvian; he was good at it, or at the very least confident enough to fool her. The lack of his usual anxious stammering told her he was reciting something he'd read, not just coming up with something on the spot, but he still sounded like he knew what he was doing.
"Cool," she breathed.
"Wow," Beatríz said, strained, "that sure is a lot you're saying."
Mateo paused. "Is that a bad thing?"
"No," she said, drawing the word out, "but I was expecting maybe a sentence or two, not the whole dictionary."
"That wasn't the dictionary," Mateo said, annoyed. "It was the first part of—um." Just like that, his attitude evaporated, and he clamped his mouth shut with a nervous squeak. "Never mind. It doesn't matter, right?"
And just like that, Naomi's impression of him rebounded right back to 'weird.' Yet another thing he wouldn't talk about. She didn't know why she expected anything different.
Dante rolled his eyes, something roguish creeping onto his face. "Hey, my bisabuelo knows Maruvian, too."
Mateo whipped his head around. "Wait, really?"
"Sure!" He snickered, unsubtle, like he was setting up for a joke, and as Naomi glanced around, she could see José and Beatríz hiding amused smiles behind their hands. "Listen to what he taught me," Dante went on, and with a deep breath, he rattled off a string of words. It sounded like Maruvian at first, all hard c's and t's like Mateo's recitation, but the way the excitement dropped off Mateo's face as he spoke was a pretty clear tip that something wasn't right.
"Um. None of that is Maruvian," Mateo said. "That was just nonsense."
Dante gasped. "What, are you saying my bisabuelo lied to me?"
Panic flashed across Mateo's face at the accusation. "No, of course not! I just think that maybe there was a mix-up?"
"What kind of mix-up? You think I'm misremembering?" He leaned in, his grin looking more like he was just baring his teeth. "That's exactly what my bisabuelo told me. It's Maruvian, honest!"
"It's not, though!"
"Maybe it's just a dialect you don't know."
"I—well—" Mateo looked around at the others, fidgeting with his backpack straps. There was sweat sliding across his temple as he took in Beatríz and José's giggling, and he sank in on himself in defeat. "Maybe I could talk to your bisabuelo sometime about it."
That was the point where José finally gave up, letting out a groan of a laugh. "Mateo, Dante doesn't have any bisabuelos. That's the joke. He makes up family members to be good at random things so that he can make himself sound more impressive than he is. Everyone knows that."
"Hey, low blow," Dante remarked, though he didn't sound particularly hurt.
"I didn't know that," Naomi muttered. Just the previous week, Dante had told her his bisabuelo was an expert in cartography, and now she felt like a sucker for believing him. "You guys could've said something when he pulled that with me earlier."
"It's a rite of passage," José said, "and you're new. You at least have an excuse for not knowing."
Ashamed, Mateo curled tighter around his backpack, staring at the ground.
Beatríz examined Mateo's pout as the group returned to conversation, keeping sharp-eyed watch even as she struck up talk with José about an upcoming test. After a minute or two, a flash of inspiration crossed her face, and she suddenly made a show of digging through her backpack, looking for something. "Ugh, I can't find my notebook. I must have left it in the classroom."
"Do you need it right now?" José asked.
"Um, yes? Obviously. Ugh, am I gonna have to go back in for it? Recreo is almost over!"
"I could go look for it, if you wanted?"
All heads swiveled toward Mateo. He'd been silent ever since Dante's prank, and he recoiled at the sudden attention, but composed himself as best he could to reaffirm it. "I don't mind, really."
Pressing a hand to her heart, Beatríz simpered. "You'd do that? That's so sweet."
Naomi's snack soured in her stomach at her tone. Something felt off about it, and far too familiar for comfort.
If Mateo had picked up on it as well, he didn't show it, instead trying to bite back a delighted smile at the praise. "Sure! It's no problem!" He scrambled to his feet. "I'll be right back!"
Beatríz fawned again. "Thanks so much, Mateo! You're the best!"
Beaming, he took off toward the building.
José watched him go, disbelieving. "There's no way. There's now way that just happened." He turned to Dante, whose own incredulous expression was shifting into a broad grin.
Beatríz spread her arms, palms up, as a smirk spread across her face. "And that's how it's done," she said. "I figured that one out last night when he basically volunteered to finish the lab report by himself. Turns out, all you have to do is be a little nice to him and he does whatever you want. It's just like you said, Naomi!"
Naomi swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. "Okay, that wasn't exactly what I meant."
She just shrugged. "Well, whatever works." Her eyebrows shot up in surprise as she saw something in her bag, and she pulled out her notebook, exactly where she'd been looking for it.
"Whoops," she said. "I guess he probably won't find it, then. Oh, well. It's the thought that counts."
Weeks turned into a month, and Beatríz kept her claws sunken deep into Mateo the entire time. It started small, with the lab reports he was supposed to be doing anyway and tiny favors that would make anyone look selfish to turn down. Could she borrow a pencil (and then never return it)? Could he drop off her assignment on the teacher's desk when he brought his own up? Nothing outlandish.
And then it was asking for so much help on assignments that he was all but doing them for her and running errands that put him well out of his way. Could he get her something from the bakery? Could he help sweep up her dad's store after school? And through it all, she heaped on praise and adoration, waxing lyrical about how smart and helpful he was. Mateo leapt at each scrap of attention like a starving man, and even if he noticed that she undercut every compliment with cruelty, the backhanded remarks and invasions of his privacy weren't enough to scare him away.
And through it all, Naomi said nothing.
It wasn't that she was getting any enjoyment out of watching her friends use him. Her stomach churned each time one of them twisted his words around so much that he ended up apologizing for jokes made at his expense. It was just that every time they made a remark that even she didn't get, it stripped back a layer of the false confidence she'd painted over her own ignorance. She was hardly a paragon of social grace, even next to Mateo's impossible awkwardness, and her lack of familiarity with the local culture just made it worse.
Watching Mateo flounder was a joke she knew she could be in on, for once. So even though her neck prickled and her chest hurt, when her friends laughed, she laughed with them.
It was when it escalated to even José and Dante exploiting his help that Naomi finally found the stomach to confront them.
"Don't you think it's kinda mean?" she asked José over a roll one recreo. Mateo was hovering by Beatríz as she spoke to a group of other girls from the class. She patted his arm as she said something, and even from a distance, Naomi could make out the discomfort on his face as the girls all tittered in response.
"What's mean about it? If you ask me, we're doing him a favor."
Her brow wrinkled. "By mocking him behind his back all the time?"
José shook his head, waving the question off like an annoying bug. "That stuff's not the point. He's got friends now, thanks to us. And friends help each other out, right?"
"Yeah, sure." Naomi ripped off another piece of bread. "The helping is real mutual."
The look he gave her was almost pitying, and when he spoke, it was with the cadence of someone talking to a young child. "Look, you're still new here. There's a lot of things that you just don't understand. Like the tilde thing."
Her ears burned and a spike of humiliation crawled up her spine at the memory. How was she supposed to know what the tilde over an 'N' meant? Let alone how it was pronounced? All it had taken was her reading 'año' as 'ano' one time to turn her into a punchline, where Beatríz kept insisting that Naomi should use the latter as Dante almost collapsed in laughter. José had finally rolled his eyes and chastised not them, but Naomi, as if it should've been obvious from the start how wildly inappropriate she sounded.
Thankfully, he didn't dwell on the reminder, instead gesturing across the courtyard, where Dante had approached the group of girls and tossed an arm across Mateo's shoulders. Mateo had gone rigid, leaning his head away, but he didn't pull away entirely, instead plastering on a smile and bearing with it.
"Mateo is… kind of a mess," José went on, "and he's been that way as long as Bea and I have known him. Trust me. This is the best thing to have happened to him all year. He does us a few favors, and he gets to hang around. It's not a big deal."
Face still far too warm, Naomi watched the group at the other end of the pavement. Mateo hadn't relaxed, but he'd adjusted, enduring Dante's manhandling with far less unease, and one of his laughs at whatever Beatríz was saying almost looked genuine.
"Okay," she finally said. "If you say so." And the knot in her stomach pulled ever tighter.
Naomi joined her friends in their usual recreo spot on a warm Friday morning, settling down and letting her brain catch up with the ongoing conversation.
"Maybe Celia just doesn't like birds," José was saying. He patted Dante's arm and then flicked a crumb off his own, returning to his snack.
"She has birds," he replied, sounding miserable. "Her family has chickens. She's named them all."
"Maybe Celia just doesn't like you," Beatríz offered with a shrug.
Naomi leaned toward Mateo, who was watching with rapt attention. "What did I miss?"
"Bird date went badly," he whispered back.
"It wasn't a bird date," Dante insisted, "it was a 'walk to a peaceful jungle clearing' date. That happened to have birds in it." He tipped his head back, sending a pleading look to the sky. "I just don't know what I did wrong!"
"Well, better luck next time," Naomi said.
Beside her, Mateo snickered. "Or, I guess that would be better luck nest time?"
And oh, that was bad. Naomi pulled a face and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked immensely pleased with himself, eagerly watching the others for their reactions.
But their reactions never came. Beatríz's face pinched briefly and José rolled his eyes, but the conversation continued as if Mateo hadn't said anything.
"Try the beach or something next time," José said. "Way fewer birds there."
Beatríz shook her head. "Again, I'm not sure the birds were the issue."
Mateo's smile faltered. "Nest time?" he tried again.
"Bea, If she didn't like me at all, then why would she even agree to go on the date in the first place?" Dante asked, raising an eyebrow in challenge. "Also," he turned to José, incredulous, "I'm pretty sure there are more birds on the beach."
"Because—because birds make nests…?"
José sighed, pinching his nose. "Yeah, we heard you the first time, Mateo. It just wasn't very funny."
He drew a sharp breath. "Oh," his voice wavered, "okay."
"You don't need to get that upset about it," Beatríz said. "You're awfully touchy about one dumb joke."
The accusation immediately put him on the defensive. "I'm not upset about it, Bea, I'm just—"
"Beatríz."
Mateo jumped at the sharpness of her tone. "W-what?"
"It's Beatríz." She heaved out a weary, exaggerated sigh. "Come on, Mateo, you always get so upset whenever someone else gets your name wrong. Can't you at least do this right?"
He sputtered, eyes flickering across her face before jumping between the others and back. "But I—but you—but before, you said—" He gave his head a tiny shake, like he could jostle coherent words into place, and finally seemed to find an argument that stuck. "Dante and the others call you that!"
Beatríz slouched, her annoyed expression morphing into false pity. "And do you just do everything that everyone else does? I thought you were smarter than that."
Wincing, he pulled his limbs in, staring down at where his hands lay in his lap.
"Aww, Mateo," Beatríz started. She peeked over at Dante, who spurred her on with a stifled laugh and a thumbs-up. "It's okay. I'm not mad at you. Everyone messes up sometimes!"
Furrowing his brow, he took a shuddering breath and lifted his head, looking her in the eye for the first time all day.
"Do you think I'm stupid?"
Beatríz blinked, taken aback. "What?"
"Do you really think I can't tell when I'm being made fun of? I've been putting up with it because I thought, well, all of you make fun of each other sometimes, and I thought maybe that meant this was normal, and it would stop hurting after long enough." He swallowed, gripping the straps of his backpack. "But it's not normal. The way you guys talk to me is different from how you talk to each other."
"How are we making fun of you?" Beatríz asked, recovering fast. "I said I thought you were smart!"
"No you didn't! Well," he closed his eyes, gave his head another tiny shake, "yes, you did, but you didn't mean it like—that wasn't how you—" A frustrated sound escaped his throat. "You're doing it right now! You're taking everything I say and making it mean something else!"
A wheeze of laughter rushed out of Dante's mouth, and he quickly went to cover it, watching the scene with his eyes crinkled from mirth.
"Are you—" Mateo's face scrunched up further. "Are you seriously laughing at me?"
Dante snorted again, a strangled sound that had him hunching over to muffle it, his shoulders starting to shake. Beside him, José pressed his fist to his mouth and covered a laugh with a fake cough. His ragged mustache twitched over his lip as he tried not to smile.
Mateo's grip tightened on his bag. "It's not funny!"
"Of course not," Beatríz said, her voice laden with the sickly sweet kindness that she'd been faking for weeks. Across the circle, her foot bumped against Naomi's, and she met her eyes with a split-second wink. "There's absolutely nothing funny about you."
José was by Naomi's ear, humor in his tone as he whispered, "Especially not his jokes."
Naomi felt sick.
"Oh, don't try to start that again!" Mateo snapped. His voice was climbing in pitch and worse, in volume, drawing the attention of other students scattered around the courtyard.
"Start what?" Beatríz asked, the picture of innocence.
"The—the same thing! You're just insulting me and pretending it's a compliment!"
"Hey, she's just trying to be nice," José said. "Don't yell at her for no reason."
Dante could no longer hide his laughter. His whole body trembled, and he had to flick a tear away as he gasped for air.
"It's not nice! She's being awful!" Mateo jabbed a finger at José. "You're being awful!"
"You just don't know how to take a joke," he replied, swatting his hand away.
Beatríz scoffed. "We're just having some fun, right, Naomi?"
No. No, no, no, she'd been trying to stay out of it, but suddenly, all eyes were on her. Beatríz, José, and Dante weren't even bothering to hide their grins.
"I, uh," her own uncomfortable laugh slipped out, and she chanced looking at Mateo's face. He looked stricken, his eyes wide and desperate like he was pleading with her. Like he needed her.
Naomi turned away.
"It was just a joke, Mateo. It's not that big a deal."
From the corner of her eye, she saw Mateo's body tense so tightly he shook, but he took a ragged breath and stood, clumsily pulling his legs back under himself. "Fine," he spat, his voice breaking. "That's fine. If you guys don't want me here, then—then I'll just go." He swung his backpack onto his shoulder and had stomped just a few feet away before he suddenly wheeled back, pointing at them all again. "And—and you all should be ashamed of yourselves!" And with that, he marched away, not toward the school, but away from it, disappearing onto the streets of the city.
The moment he was around the corner, the others burst into raucous laughter.
"Oh, my God?" Beatríz said. "What even was that? Is he just—he literally just left!"
"He sounded like my mother!" José cackled, before putting on a falsetto and wagging a finger at his friends. "You should be ashamed of yourselves! Seriously, what is his problem?"
Dante wiped his eyes, finally managing to breathlessly speak again. "Oh, man, did you see the look on his face?"
It was burned into Naomi's mind, the way his face had crumbled when she looked away, devastated, like she'd screamed at him instead. Like she'd kicked him. She may as well have.
"Yeah," she said quietly. "I did."
Mateo didn't return to class after his outburst. Sra. Díaz tutted at his empty chair and scribbled something onto the attendance record, and class went on, the whispers about his absence and the scene he'd made fluttering around the room. A few of Naomi's classmates tried to grab her for comment when the school day ended, but she shrugged them off, feigning ignorance, and went home for the weekend with that wretched sense of shame still slithering through her insides.
When she got to class on Monday, Mateo was already at his desk in the back of the room, trying to finish an incomplete assignment. His eyes flicked up briefly as she pulled her chair out, and darted away just as fast, his jaw tightening. Naomi tried not to feel too hurt. Deciding it was for the best that she let him be, she pulled out her notes from the previous week and began to review them, thankful Mateo sat behind her and she didn't have to see the object of her discomfort while she worked.
The tenuous peace wasn't meant to last, though. Beatríz sauntered into the room with José and Dante on her heels, all chatting loudly amongst themselves, and her face brightened as her gaze fell on Naomi. She waved cheerily as the guys took their seats, and then noticed Mateo further back, and her expression snapped to something malicious. The look passed as quickly as it appeared, rearranged back into sweet and innocent, and Naomi watched as she breezed past her desk and hopped up onto Mateo's, jostling the surface beneath her. Mateo yanked himself back from it like the shaking table had burned him, and barely had time to muster an affronted glare before Beatríz spoke.
"Mateo, hi! Did you have a good weekend?"
He leaned even further back, like she was contaminating the space around him. "Beatríz. Go away."
She scoffed. "Rude. I'm trying to be nice." She had a hand on the desk—Mateo was staring at her nails instead of anywhere near her face. "What happened last week? You left so suddenly. You know we were all just having a little fun."
"I wasn't having fun," he shot back, and his jaw clenched further as he realized he'd been goaded into talking to her. "Leave me alone."
It wasn't Naomi's business. She could just go on with her review and have plausible deniability when it inevitably went south again. But something nagged her into staring anyway, leaving her peering over her shoulder and far from inconspicuous.
"Anyway, you way overreacted," Beatríz continued. She lifted her hand to examine her nails, delicately running her thumb under the tips. "It wasn't our fault—you're just too sensitive." Suddenly jabbing a finger at him, she added, "And if you get mad at me for saying that, you're just proving my point."
Mateo had opened his mouth to retort, finally glaring up at her face, but snapped it shut with a forceful click at her accusation, grinding his teeth. His whole body had tightened; his shoulders were up by his ears and his hands gripped the edges of his desk so hard it looked painful. One leg bounced under the desk fast enough to wobble the surface—his abandoned pencil shuddered back and forth in time.
Naomi peeled her eyes away from the scene to check what the others were doing. José watched from the corner of his eye, his chin propped on his fist and a slight smile curving his lips. Quiet, discreet—he had his textbook open in front of him as an out if he got accused of listening in. Dante was being much less subtle but no more helpful, twisted in his seat and watching Mateo with the hungry stare of someone looking for drama. They all wanted him to blow up again, set like a ticking time bomb, and at the rate Beatríz was going, they were going to succeed.
Naomi swallowed, and her blood pounded in her ears.
Beatríz flashed another winning smile. "So anyway, it would be super sweet of you if you could help me sweep up again after school today."
Mateo glowered at her again. "I'm—I'm not going to do anything else for you. Leave. Me. Alone."
"Oh, don't give me that look." Beatríz crossed her arms. "You're acting like I made you do anything for me. You're the one that always volunteered."
He'd freed a hand from his desk to press his knuckles hard against his mouth, like he was about to bite his hand, or about to be sick, and his breathing had gone uneven, like he needed to cry, or scream, or both. "Please, stop," he begged, his eyes squeezed shut, his bouncing leg even more frenetic, but Beatríz still wasn't letting up, instead leaning closer, letting a braid dangle between them.
"Mateo, this is just what friends do."
"Hey!"
Beatríz whipped her head around, confused and annoyed, and Naomi felt her cheeks burn under the sudden scrutiny. She hadn't meant to be so loud. Her blood roared, now, drowning out everything but the frantic thrumming of her heart—don't make a scene, don't make a scene, don't make a scene—and it felt like the whole room had to be staring by now—
She swallowed, her tongue heavy. "He said to buzz off."
Beatríz said nothing at first. She tilted her head, looking at Naomi with a bored expression that seemed to drill into her skull, like she was daring her to back down. With a deep breath, Naomi set her jaw and held the stare.
After an agonizingly long moment, Beatríz huffed, rolling her eyes. "Well, whatever." She slid off Mateo's desk and finally made her way to her own, but not without leaving him a venomous parting shot. "Have fun by yourself, weirdo."
Her pulse slowly returning to normal, Naomi chanced a look around the room to see who had been watching. It was scant few, thankfully—though a handful of students had turned their heads, the ordeal hadn't been the commotion she'd imagined it. But Mateo definitely was staring at her, his hazel eyes blown wide and full of hope, and somehow, that made her feel worse than anything else.
She returned to her lesson review and tried very hard to pretend he wasn't there.
One thing Naomi had learned pretty fast after her first few moves was that the only reliable way to become part of a friend group was to already be a part of the friend group. When Naomi went to sit with Beatríz and the others during that day's recreo, Beatríz had simply flicked her braid aside and looked Naomi up and down, like an appraisal.
"Wow, Naomi, I would've never expected you to be so bold," she'd said. The guys had snickered and snorted.
Naomi had taken the hint.
So she sat alone on the opposite end of the courtyard, her back to the wall, eating a sandwich that tasted like ash. Watching the other students milling about and having fun felt like salt in the wound. Maybe she could find her way with another group of friends, but she'd always felt like an intruder in the past when she'd tried to insert herself somewhere she wasn't welcome. Like an outsider. She tore off another piece of the sandwich, chewing mechanically. Nothing she wasn't used to. It didn't even matter. Her family would probably be moving soon, anyway.
The scuffing of a shoe on stone pulled her attention away from her self-pity, and she raised her head enough to see a pair of thin legs shuffling against the pavement.
"Um…" Mateo started. He sounded anxious, and had to take a breath to steady himself before saying anything more substantial. "About earlier, in the classroom. I really—that meant a lot. Thank you."
"Sure. No problem." As if her conscience would've allowed anything else. She took another bite. "D'you actually need something?"
Another shaky breath. "Well, I was just hoping—or, thinking—I was wondering if—" He cut off with a frustrated sound, and finally blurted, "Can I sit with you?"
There it was. Naomi's stomach sank. After everything that had happened, it would feel weird to extend an invitation, like they were actually close in any way. It wasn't that she disliked him. It really wasn't.
But…
She looked him in the eye. "Pity's not a good enough reason to be someone's friend, Mateo."
He shook his head so hard it sent his curls flopping around his eyes. "I don't pity you!"
Naomi took a measured breath. "That's not what I meant."
It took a beat for it to click, and Mateo shrank back like he was wounded, his face flushing deeply enough to be obvious even against his brown skin. "Oh," he said, his voice small. "You meant—okay."
"Sorry," Naomi said, not quite sure if it was for the remark or a more general expression of sympathy.
Still embarrassed, Mateo's posture hunched inward, but he didn't leave. "So… I guess you just want to sit by yourself, then?"
Naomi flinched. He didn't need to call attention to it, unless passive aggression was his goal. Worst of all was that whether he meant it as a dig or not, he had a point—she wasn't in much better social straits than him at the moment. The two of them made a pretty pathetic pair.
"Just do whatever you want," she finally said, pointedly turning back to her food. Her appetite had evaporated, though, and she picked listlessly at the sandwich fillings.
Beside her, Mateo shifted his feet again, and then walked a few yards along the wall before sitting down. He set his backpack next to him and retrieved a book, and without another word to her, began to read.
Naomi stayed right where she was. This was fine.
Yeah, so, I feel like there's a reason these two don't talk much about their time in school together. Things will get better for them soon, I promise.
On a lighter note, happy anniversary! Today marks 2 years since I posted chapter one, so, y'know, I figured it was high time to post another. Contrary to how it may have seemed, this fic is not abandoned, but we'll get back to that in a second.
First, language stuff. The title is an attempt at a play on words, combining "pobre/pobrecito" (poor little thing, an expression of empathy/pity) and "recreo" (recess/break). I was kinda going for similar vibes as the phrase "pity party" in English. Naomi's mistake with the tilde is one I see people make more in writing than in speaking, but I imagine if she'd never seen one before its pronunciation could be a point of confusion. For the unfamiliar: "Año" (pronounced "ahnyo") means year. "Ano" (pronounced "ahnno") means anus. So, you know. A bit of a difference there. Now consider that in Spanish, you ask someone's age by asking "how many years do you have?"
Lastly, Nahuatl, the language used as the basis for Maruvian both here and in the show, is not actually a dead language irl: some 1-2 million people speak it, and it's the second most common spoken language in Mexico. That said, Avalor is not Mexico and the EverRealm's history does not directly mirror our own - the Maruvians disappeared overnight in canon, and the only characters we meet that speak it are wizards and archaeologists (including Naomi, eventually) - so I think it's fair to assume that knowledge of it is far more obscure in-universe. The bit that Mateo recites is from the first song from "Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs," which contains a transcription of 91 Aztec songs in Nahuatl, each accompanied by approximate English translations and analysis. The first song is synopsized as "The singer returns from a song trip with flowers for his comrades, only to find them miserably subjugated and unable to join him in music making; death alone can bring release", which felt thematically appropriate given the story's current point in the EoA timeline.
So, the fic status. It's. Um. It's actually done. Like entirely written. All 25 chapters. The reason this update took 2 years is because I spent that time working on *literally every chapter except for this one*, which I finally finished last Sunday. I still have editing and cleanup to do and whatnot, but that takes much less of my time and energy than writing does, which means for the first time in ever, I am actually going to have a posting schedule.
So here it is: From now until this fic is done, assuming no major Life Events happen, I will be posting weekly on Wednesday nights.
So, uh, yeah. See you in a week! Name's the same on tumblr if you wanna chat with me there in the interim!