Darnell: True, he was being jerky… but you still shouldn’t have gotten physical

  Me: I said I know.

  The hammering inside my head feels like it’s getting worse.

  TTYL, I type.

  After letting Peppy back in, I head upstairs. Even though I’m home alone, I tiptoe down the hallway to Cesar’s open door.

  On one wall of his room, the shelves are lined with sports trophies: little polished gold-plated figures kicking soccer balls, shooting basketballs, or swinging baseball bats. Another wall is plastered with plaques and awards. Alongside them, a campaign poster reads, Who’s the leader of the pack? Who will keep our school on track? Cesar for President!

  On his desk is a framed photo of him and Victoria at her parents’ barbecue last summer. Next to it is a picture of Cesar and me when we were little, taken at the Ol’ West photo kiosk beside the Alamo. We got our picture taken wearing cowboy hats, holsters, and boots. A big sheriff’s star shines on Cesar’s leather vest. A smaller deputy’s badge glimmers on mine. He points his six-shooter at the camera while I gaze at him, admiring him like I always have.

  Across the room, his bed is neatly made. I kick off my sneakers and climb on top. The pillows smell like Cesar—a mix of musky cologne, soapy shampoo, and a licorice scent I now know comes from his skin-whitening cream.

  Lying back, I think about how he and I used to goof off for hours in this room. We would fall asleep watching TV and wake up with our arms and legs so tangled up it was hard to tell whose were whose. I remember the time he asked me to help him secretly build a little opera stage scene out of toothpicks, glue, and cardboard for Dad’s birthday. It took a week, and Dad loved it.

  What happened to that Cesar—the brother he used to be?

  As I lie there thinking, a blanket of weariness spreads over me. My head is still throbbing. My body aches. My eyelids hang heavy. The day’s events are catching up with me. And before I know it, I sink into a doze.

  The next thing I know, Cesar is shaking my shoulder. “Hey, why are you on my bed?”

  I blink my eyelids open. Peppy is standing on the mattress, tail wagging, tags jingling. He rolls over, offering Cesar his tummy.

  “Sorry,” I say, sitting up.

  Cesar stares closely at my face. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I got into a fight with Chang.”

  Cesar yanks his backpack off. “Yeah? What about?”

  I might as well get it over with. “Um… it sort of came out at lunch that Dad is trans. But everybody promised not to tell.”

  Cesar flings his backpack down. “‘It sort of came out’? How? Chang blabbed, didn’t he? I knew he would.”

  I take a breath. “No. It was me.”

  Cesar’s face twists, his eyes bulge. He looks like he’s about to morph into the Hulk. All he needs is green makeup. “Why would you tell people?”

  “Because I was lying by not saying anything. I needed to let Zoey know about Norma.”

  “Stop calling Dad that!” Cesar shouts. “He’s not a woman. He’s a freak and a liar.” Before I can duck, he smacks my shoulder.

  I pretend it doesn’t hurt, but it makes me mad. “No, you’re the liar. At least she had the guts to stop lying. Not like you, trying to make your skin white.”

  Cesar’s eyes pop wide again. “Keep out of my stuff.” He raises his fist again, but I grab ahold of his forearm.

  Cesar tries to shake me off. “Let go!” He frees his arm and raises his fist again.

  “No!” Leaping to my feet, I fling my arms around him. My heart is racing. My mind is racing. Every cell in my body is racing. “I’m not your punching bag.”

  As Cesar struggles to pull away, Peppy whimpers for us to stop fighting. My heel accidentally tramples his paw, and he yelps. I lose my balance, tipping over, still holding Cesar. Together we topple to the carpet.

  Cesar scrambles on top of me, but I shimmy out from under him. He grabs ahold of me, and we wrestle like when we were little. This time I refuse to let him pin me.

  We grapple across the room, grunting and groaning. One moment he’s on top of me. The next minute, I wrench out from under him. Then his head bangs against the steel bench press—bam!

  I let go of him. “Are you hurt?”

  Cesar sits up, rubbing the back of his head. When he looks at his fingertips, they’re wet with blood.

  I move toward him. “Let me see.”

  “Get out of here!” The anger returns to his eyes like two big brown fists.

  “Sorry,” I say, scooting back with Peppy.

  “And stay out!” Cesar shouts. “You’re not my brother anymore.”

  I get to my feet. “Oh, so now you’re cutting me out too? Pretty soon you won’t have anybody left except yourself… whoever that is.”

  Cesar takes that in for a moment before yelling, “Go! Get out!”

  “Let’s go,” I tell Peppy.

  We’re halfway down the hall when Cesar’s door slams. When I get to my room, I slam my door just as loudly.

  Chapter 34

  I talked to Cesar, I text Norma from my bed.

  And…? she answers. How did it go?

  I debate for a moment how to respond. Well… we got into a fight. He banged his head on the bench press… He’s bleeding a little

  I’m on my way, Norma says.

  I toss my phone down on the bed. At least they’re finally going to talk. I just hope they don’t get physical.

  “He’s in his room,” I tell Norma when she arrives—in a housedress—and heads upstairs with Peppy trailing behind.

  “Cesar?” Norma knocks on his door. “Jorge says your head’s bleeding.”

  “I’m fine!” shouts Cesar. “Go away!”

  Norma ignores him. “I’m coming in.”

  “Get out!” Cesar is standing at his mirror, trying to examine his scalp.

  “Let me see,” Norma says, plowing toward him.

  “Leave me alone!” Cesar’s eyes burst wide. I realize this is his first time seeing Dad as Norma. He scrambles away from her, climbs onto the bed, and reverses toward the headboard, pressing back almost hard enough to smash through the wall. “Get away from me.”

  “Cesar, let me look,” she says, bearing down on him.

  “Get your hands off!”

  Cesar tries to pull away, but Norma towers over him, shoving his hands aside. “Stop that, mijo.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not your son.”

  “No? Whose son are you? The pizza delivery guy’s?” She grabs Cesar’s head between her big fists. “Now, hold still.”

  Cesar flinches. “Stop it.”

  “Oh, come on—you’re worse than Peppy when he’s hurt.” She gently separates Cesar’s hair between her manicured fingers and examines the wound. “Jorge, go into Mom’s bathroom, second drawer on the left. Bring the antibiotic ointment.”

  I dash down the hall to Mom’s bathroom. When I come back, Norma is standing with her hands on her hips, lecturing: “We’re still a family. Nothing will ever change that.”

  Cesar sits covering his ears. “I’m not listening.”

  I hand Norma the ointment. She squeezes a dab onto her fingers and leans over Cesar. He tries to push her away.

  “I can do it,” he tells her. “Just back off, okay?”

  “No, not okay. I tried backing off the past three months—it hasn’t worked. We need to talk this through.” While she rubs ointment into his scalp, Cesar crosses his arms.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Well, we’re going to.” Norma plunks down onto the mattress. “I get that you feel hurt, betrayed, angry. I know all about anger. I’ve been as mad as you—so angry it was destroying me. I know what you’re feeling. And I’m very, very sorry.”

  Cesar brings his knees up to his chest and circles his arms around them. “Saying you’re sorry doesn’t change anything.”

  “Maybe not. But I hope it helps you get ahold of your anger and see my point of view. I didn’t do this to hurt you, or Jorge, or Mom. I did it because I had to.”

  “Why couldn’t you have waited?” Cesar demands.

  “Tell him about the shaving accident,” I say, hoping that might help my brother understand.

  “What about it?” Cesar asks.

  Norma lets out a sigh. “It wasn’t an accident.” She pushes up her blouse sleeve. “It was a cry for help. I… I tried to hurt myself. It was a gesture—only a gesture.”

  Cesar stares at the zigzag scar, and for a moment, his face loses some of its anger. Then it goes tight again. “So you were going to ditch us? You’re just lie after lie.”

  Norma tugs her sleeve back down. “Yes, I lied—past tense. Now I’ve stopped lying. I faced who I am. And you can too. Come on, mijo, you’re a better person than this.”

  Cesar smirks. “You’re telling me about being a better person?”

  “Yes,” Norma says. “One thing I’ve learned through this is it doesn’t matter if you wear pants or a skirt. What matters is in here.” She pats her heart. “And in here.” She taps her head. “What matters is that you take responsibility and face who you are. For you, that means accepting you have a trans dad—whether you want to or not.”

  Cesar keeps his knees tucked up, looking wounded.

  “I know I hurt you,” Norma says. “And I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  Peppy’s ears prick like he’s waiting. So am I.

  Outside, a car door slams in the driveway. Mom’s home. Peppy tears out to the hall, tags tinkling. The rest of us exchange glances.

  “Hello?” Mom calls from downstairs.

  “We’re in Cesar’s room!” Norma yells back.

  A moment later, Mom appears in the doorway. “Nice to see the three of you in the same room.”

  Actually, it’s the first time since Dad left that we’re all in the same room.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The boys had a fight,” Norma explains, “and Cesar cut his head.”

  Mom strides straight over to him, flashing me an angry look. “Jorge, what’s gotten into you today?”

  “He started it. I’m sick of him punching me.”

  “I punched you ’cause you blabbed to your friends at school,” Cesar says. “Now everybody’s going to find out about…” He points his chin at Norma.

  Mom bends over Cesar and inspects where the ointment plasters down his hair. “Honey, you know the news about your dad is going to get out whether you want it to or not.”

  “You could’ve at least waited till after the election,” Cesar mutters at me.

  “I tried. I didn’t want to tell people. But Chang and Darnell already knew—and they haven’t ditched me. Why can’t you tell your friends?”

  “That’s Cesar’s decision,” Mom says. “He’s got a right to decide when he wants to tell his friends.”

  I think about Chang badgering me, and I know Mom is right. But what about my right to tell my friends if I want to?

  “So I have to wait for Cesar before I can tell anybody? That’s not fair. I’m sick of all these secrets. Now Dad says you knew about the whole woman thing before you got married.”

  “What?” Cesar cuts in, turning to Mom. “You knew?”

  Mom sinks into the desk chair, looking annoyed at Norma.

  “We need to clear this up,” Norma says firmly. “Once and for all.”

  “All right,” Mom says, but she doesn’t sound all right—she sounds anxious. “When your dad and I were dating, we shared a lot with each other about ourselves. That’s what dating means: getting to know the other person.”

  Cesar looks like he’s about to explode—again. “He told you he was trans?”

  “Well, not in those exact words. He said that inside he always felt more like a woman than a man.” Mom glances at Norma with a mix of sadness and longing. “Am I remembering right?”

  Norma nods silently.

  Cesar’s anger melts into confusion. “So then why… why’d you marry him?”

  “Because I loved that tender side of him… and I admired his honesty. I know that sounds strange now, but it’s true. And I thought, I can deal with this. We can make it work. And we did.” She exhales a breath out the side of her mouth. “Until he couldn’t keep the woman inside any longer.”

  “You know how hard I tried,” Norma whispers softly to her.

  “I know,” Mom says.

  “If you knew about him the whole time,” Cesar asks, the anger returning to his voice, “why didn’t you tell us? You lied as much as he did.”

  Mom glowers at him. “I did not lie.”

  “You lied by keeping it a secret,” Cesar insists. “You acted like he was the bad guy.”

  Mom’s face turns pink, like she’s embarrassed. “Cesar, I never made your dad the bad guy.”

  “Yeah, you did. You never told us you knew about him before. What were we supposed to think except that he lied to you?”

  Suddenly a new puzzle piece of Cesar’s anger at Dad clicks into place—he’s been feeling hurt for Mom.

  Mom folds her arms like we’re ganging up on her. “Fine, maybe I should’ve handled this differently. Maybe Dad and I should’ve told you the whole truth. We did the best we could. This hasn’t been easy.”

  “You think it’s been easy for me?” Cesar says.

  “No, I don’t. I know it’s been hard for all of us. And I’m sorry. What more do you want me to say? That we shouldn’t have gotten married? That it was a mistake? Let me point out something to both of you: If your dad and I hadn’t gotten married, neither of you would be here right now.” Mom clenches her jaw like she’s trying to stop from crying, and Cesar backs down a little, leaning back on the headboard.

  Norma gazes between Cesar and me. “Anything else you boys want to ask?”

  Cesar shakes his head no. So do I.

  “No more fistfights,” Norma says, rising to her feet. “Agreed?”

  Cesar and I both nod.

  “Good.” Mom stands. “You staying for dinner?” she asks Norma.

  Cesar quickly speaks up. “I’m not hungry.”

  I guess everything we’ve talked about hasn’t changed Cesar’s mind about Dad.

  Norma sighs. “Maybe next time. Let’s let things cool off.” As she passes Cesar’s dresser, she stops. “By the way,” she tells him, “you should stop wasting your money on whitening cream. It doesn’t work—I tried it too.”

  Cesar’s face flames. He glares at me, and I hightail it out of the room.

  Chapter 35

  “Get up, Jorge!” Mom wakes me the next morning. “Even though you’re staying home, you still have schoolwork to do.” She yanks open the blinds to let in the glaring sunlight. “I’ll call you later to check on you. Come on now, get moving.”

  After breakfast, I dutifully complete my classwork assignments online. Both Mom and Dad call to check in on me. Since yesterday, I’ve also gotten a load of messages from friends who heard about the fight, asking how I’m doing—even a text from Emily. But no word from the person I most hoped to hear from.

  When it’s time for school to let out, Darnell texts: I’m coming over with Chang, k?

  Part of me is still angry at him, but I don’t want to stop being friends. Our friendship means too much to me.

  K, I answer Darnell. C u soon.

  When I answer the doorbell, Peppy springs up and down, wagging his tail. And when I see who else came with Darnell and Chang, my heart leaps, just as happy.

  “Ouch,” Zoey says, cringing at my black eye. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not anymore.” Not since she appeared. “I’m okay now.”

  “Fight each other you must never do again,” Darnell proclaims to Chang and me.

  Chang’s lip is less swollen but crusted with a little red scab. “I’m sorry about your eye,” he tells me.

  “My fault,” I say. “I’m sorry about your lip.”

  Zoey’s gaze moves between him and me. I wonder how much she suspects about the cause of our fight—her.

  “Do you all want to come inside?” I ask.

  “Sure,” Darnell and Chang say.

  I look at Zoey, feeling hopeful. “Thanks, but I need to take Peppy to rehearse,” she says.

  Although I’m thrilled she still wants to do the skit with him, as she walks down the street with Peppy and Cesar’s skateboard, a jumble of feelings ping-pong inside me: disappointment. Frustration. Sadness.

  “I wish that was me with her.”

  “Give up hope, you must not,” Darnell says. “As soon as she heard about your fight, she texted me, asking if you were okay.”

  “Really?” I ask. “She didn’t text me.”

  “Have you texted her?” Chang asks.

  “No. What would I say? I already told her that I’m sorry.”

  “That’s a good start,” Darnell says. “But you’ve got to show her that you mean it. Back it up with actions.”

  “Like what?”

  Darnell clasps his fleshy hands on Chang’s and my shoulders. “Men, this will require top-level strategizing… and food.”

  I lead them to the kitchen, bring out the chips, salsa, and sodas, and we take our places around the table.

  “Come close…” Darnell says in a low voice. “The purpose of this summit is to form a plan for Jedi Jorge to win back Princess Zoey. To start, what are some things she likes?”

  “Cookies,” I say.

  Chang crunches a chip. “Tortilla chips.”

  “Nay, gentlemen,” says Darnell. “This mission demands something greater. Something colossal. Stupendous. Something to prove—beyond a shadow of a doubt—Jorge’s determination to win her back. What does she like more than anything in the world?”

  “Animals,” I say. “But she’s already got a dog. And fish. And parakeets.”