I wanted a chance at being fifteen and “normal.” I wanted to make like nothing was wrong.
“Ready?” my dad asked. He untied his apron and threw it down on the counter. I listened for my mom’s footsteps on the stairway.
“Yeah.” I shoved the rest of the treat into my mouth. Something had to happen.
Chapter 2
A family of sparrows scattered into the valley of buildings that loomed large and empty all around Pig Park. I broke away from my parents and walked toward my friend Josefina.
“Hey,” I said.
“Good morning, Masi,” Josefina said. She undraped the length of her limbs from the bloated slats of the lone park bench that stood among the weeds. I zigzagged through the hodge-podge of folding chairs and plopped down beside her.
There were twenty-five of us: Josefina’s family, the families from restaurant row—which was what we called all the surviving eateries on the north side of the park—the Sanchez sisters and their mom, Colonel Franco and Jorge Peregrino. Every girl, boy and grown-up left in our neighborhood sat in a circle. Peregrino made his way toward the center of the group.
I watched with eyes wide open and listened to the only person in Pig Park still making money. “As you all know, Pig Park has reached out for help and for answers. What is it that draws us to a thing? Most often it’s recognition, our senses open up and something in the back of our mind clicks,” Peregrino said. He stroked the thick gold chain that hung around the outside of his turtleneck. He pulled out a large piece of paper from his briefcase and waved his hand in front of it like a model on one of those TV game shows. “Behold the solution to Pig Park’s problems.”
Marcos, Josefina’s brother, angled his head. Shiny shoulder length hair swept away from his face and revealed a square jaw line and high cheek bones. He snickered.
Peregrino’s visual aid was a map of Pig Park—the actual park our neighborhood was named after—with an oversized cutout of a pyramid from a schoolbook or a magazine taped to it.
Josefina looked at Marcos with thick brown eyebrows in a scrunch. I looked at my dad. My dad looked at my mom. My mom crossed her arms over her chest, shook her head from side to side and sighed.
I squinted at the picture just to make sure. “He wants us to fix Pig Park by putting up a giant pyramid right smack in the middle of everything?” I asked.
“How is this going to help?” my dad asked. He leaned forward on the lopsided legs of his chair, facing Peregrino. My mom reached out and grabbed my dad’s chair to keep him from spilling onto the grass.
“You have to think of it like the Picassos downtown. Except no one this side of North America has a pyramid. Building a Gran Pirámide right here is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Peregrino said.
“What are you talking about?” Mr. Nowak, Josefina’s dad, interrupted. Mrs. Nowak squeezed his large white hand with her small brown one.
Peregrino didn’t miss a beat. “Pyramids are among the most recognizable symbols in the history of mankind, from Egypt to MesoAmerica. Think of the Aztecs, the Mayans and the Incas. People will see it and come. First out of curiosity, then more. There will be so many people, you won’t know what hit you. They will be good people too, the kind who care about history and culture.”
“That’s your thinking? We’re going to keep from becoming a ghost town neighborhood or a massive parking lot by putting up a pyramid for people to gawk at?” Mr. Nowak didn’t miss a beat either. “THAT’S going to help my grocery store?”
Josefina turned to me in that way she always had since kindergarten and whispered. “That’s crazy.”
“Seriously. We’re not Aztecs,” I said.
“How much is it going to cost?” My mom stood and bellowed over us. It was typical for her to ask about money. The stress of tracking the bakery’s accounts was turning her hair to ash and stamping crow’s feet into the corners of her eyes.
“You decide how to build it and how much to spend. I didn’t come up with this idea on my own. The man who came up with it, Dr. Humberto Vidales Casal, is a world-renowned scholar and community development expert who cures neighborhoods. He knows his stuff. There is a small fee for his guidance. However, when we are finished, La Gran Pirámide will more than pay for itself,” Peregrino said.
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” my dad said. He rose to stand beside my mom. “It’s an investment.” Some of the grown-ups from restaurant row, like Mr. Fernandez and Mrs. Sustaita, nodded. Mr. Nowak clicked his tongue. A few of the others grumbled.
Colonel Franco cleared his throat. “It’s better than doing nothing. We don’t even need that much money. We have other resources.” Despite the Pancho Villa mustache, Colonel Franco wasn’t some long lost revolutionary hero. He was a retired Army man and president of the Pig Park Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t own a business, but thirty-plus years of bravery, leadership and service to the U.S. of A meant something. He had built bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior officer. “A pyramid is little more than simple geometry. Two triangles here, two triangles there. I can lead the construction project,” he said and waved his hand.
The grown-ups huddled together. Colonel Franco had hit on it with fewer words: a crazy plan had to be better than no plan at all. After a long while, even Mr. Nowak was drawing short breaths around the thing. They were desperate enough that they decided every neighborhood girl and boy would report to the park to help Colonel Franco with the construction. They said it as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, as if we knew how to do that sort of thing. They less enthusiastically agreed to scrape together what little money we had for Dr. Vidales Casal’s fee and wire it to him by the end of the week.
Applause came in small bursts like the kernels in a microwaveable popcorn bag.
Peregrino folded the drawing and stuffed it back into his briefcase.
What else was there to say? I waved goodbye to Josefina and followed my parents home. I took one tiny step after another. My parents shrunk further and further away. I walked as slow as my body would go.
I thought hard about the morning’s events. It’d all happened so fast like cars on the expressway, shooting by so quick you wouldn’t want to get caught in the way of one. I didn’t know exactly what to make of it.
Then something clicked.
My right leg tap-danced with no direction from me. My cheeks pushed up against my ears.
I would get to spend the summer outside with my friends.
Chapter 3
The small hand on the clock hovered over the six. I pulled the bakery’s blinds and locked the door. I walked upstairs and down the hall.
“We can’t do this. We won’t even cover our costs this year. We don’t have money for that man’s fee,” my mom said to my dad.
So much for trying to find the positive in this.
My
