The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky: Chapters 6–10

I want to see her as she was when I was small, her skin not blanched from illness and moonlight but ruddy from the sun, which she could never get enough of whenever she ventured barefoot onto the patio to water her potted plants or read student essays in her favorite deck chair.

I take a small bite, push my roiling heartburn down, chew, swallow.

Evelyn wanted my culture to be an integral part of our home, and food was the most practical route in for a gringa and a kid regularly called a gringo by dick-for-brains jerks who can’t feel big unless they’re putting down kids like me, kids who can’t speak Spanish fluently, kids with Anglo blood, kids without family south of the border, kids who look like them but somehow aren’t like them.

The lighthearted banter of the happy father and son sitting a few feet away barely registers.

Just an upstanding kid who thinks better of gorging himself on sugary snacks, that’s me.

I don’t want to sound overconfident in the benevolence of fate or anything, but I kind of think the universe owes me this win since it’s my birthday.

Evelyn’s favorite way to deal with my impending adulthood is to embarrass me, her lamentations rarely ending until my hair has been mussed or my forehead has been kissed.

I miss the view and the flowers blooming—especially the bright orange ones that grow on the portico; don’t know what they’re called, but they’re pretty dope.

I shake off my disorientation, which still comes every time I visit, and force a smile.

If you’re going to be a professional storyteller, Brett, you’ve got to conduct your research.

We finally checked the Phoneline Trail off our hiking list—so maybe I should be riding high—but I couldn’t help but want to throw myself down a cliff as I watched Reed’s entire demeanor change around Thandie.

Out of nowhere, the dork who meticulously dusts his vintage WWE action figures and regularly watches tutorials to make his house cuter in Animal Crossing morphed into the meathead jock, hanging on Thandie’s every word, placing his fingertips on the small of her back at every bend as if at any moment she might forget how to walk and tumble down the trail.

Something tells me he’s already forgotten the entire exchange—it was a joke, a farce.

Whatever animosity I was carrying has vanished.

It’s not like I fare any better around them.