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Zane Obispo
1
It all started when Mom screamed.
I thought she’d seen a scorpion, but when I got to the kitchen, she was waving a letter over her head and dancing in circles barefoot. After a year of being homeschooled, I was going to get to go to school again. Did you catch that word? Get. As in, someone was allowing me to learn. Stupid! Who put adults in charge, anyway? But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to go to some stuffy private school called Holy Ghost where nuns gave me the evil eye. And I for sure didn’t want the Holy Ghost “shuttle” to come all the way out to no-man’s-land to pick me up. Mine was the last stop, and that meant the van would probably be full when it arrived. And full meant at least a dozen eyes staring at me.
I smiled at Mom, because she looked happy. She took care of sick people in their homes all day, and she also let her brother, Hondo, live with us. He spent most of his time watching wrestling matches on TV and eating bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, so she didn’t wear smiles too often.
“But…” I didn’t know where to start. “You said I could be homeschooled.”
“For a year,” she said, still beaming. “That was the agreement. Remember? A single year.”
Pretty sure that wasn’t the agreement, but once something was in Mom’s head, it was superglued there. Arguing was useless. Plus, I wanted her to be happy. Really, really happy. So I nodded hard and fast, because the harder I nodded, the more excited I’d look. I even threw in another smile.
“When?” It was September, and that meant I’d already missed a month of classes.
“You start tomorrow.”
Crap!
“How about I start in January?” Yeah, you could say I was super optimistic.
Mom shook her head. “This is an incredible opportunity, Zane.”
“Doesn’t private school cost a lot?”
“They gave you
a scholarship. Look!” She flashed the letter as proof.
Oh.
Mom folded the letter neatly. “You’ve been on the waiting list since…”
She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t need to. Since referred to the day this jerk —a jerk whose face was seared into my brain—had mopped the floor with me at my old school, and I’d sworn never to set foot in any “place of learning” again.
“What about Ms. Cab?” I asked. “She needs my help. How am I going to pay for Rosie’s food if I don’t work?”
My neighbor, Ms. Cab (her real last name is Caballero, but I couldn’t pronounce it as a little kid and the nickname stuck), was blind and needed an assistant to help her do stuff around the house. Also, she worked as a phone psychic, and I answered the calls before she came on the line. It made her seem more legit. She paid me pretty good, enough to feed my dog, Rosie. Rosie was a boxmatian (half-boxer, half-dalmatian) and ate like an elephant.
“You can work in the afternoons.” Mom took my hand in hers.
I hated when she did that during our arguments.
“Zane, honey, please. Things will be mejor this time. You’re thirteen now. You need friends. You can’t live out here alone with these…”
Out here was a narrow, dusty road in the New Mexico desert. Other than my two neighbors, there were tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes, coyotes, roadrunners, a dried-up riverbed, and even a dead volcano. But more on that later. Most people are surprised when they find out New Mexico has so many volcanoes. (Of course, mine was no ordinary act of nature, right, gods?)
“With these what?” I asked, even though I knew what she was thinking: misfits.
So what that Ms. Cab was a little different? And who cared that my other neighbor, Mr. Ortiz, grew weird varieties of chile peppers in his greenhouse? Didn’t mean they were misfits.
“I’m just saying that you need to be with kids your age.”
“But I don’t like kids my age,” I told her. “And I learn more without teachers.”
She couldn’t argue with that. I’d taught myself all sorts of things, like the generals of the Civil War, the number of blood vessels in the human body, and the names of stars and planets. That was the best thing about not going to school: I was the boss.
