What If It's Us
Page 38

“If I go to the past, can I change things?”
“Sure.”
Part of me wishes Hudson and I never dated. We were better friends than boyfriends. The good times were good, but I don’t think it was worth losing a friend over. “I would go back to the past, like a couple years ago, with the winning lottery numbers for my mom. Change the game up for us.”
“You’re nobler than I am.”
“What would you do?”
“I’m Team Future.”
“Because of school?”
“Other reasons too,” Arthur says. He squeezes my hand. “Probably better I go to the future. If I go anywhere near the past, I’m just going to write Hamilton before Lin-Manuel Miranda can.”
“You would dick him over?”
“Fine. Cowrite with him.”
I spot a churros food truck parked by the Best Buy and across the street from the park. “Have you ever had a churro before?”
“Not sure I know what that is.”
“It’s just fried dough. I like them best with cinnamon, but sugar is cool too. Come on, my treat.”
We rush to the cart. The guy asks me what we would like in Spanish and I answer in English. One cinnamon, one sugar, one chocolate, one raspberry. We go to the park to eat the churros so we don’t get powder and crumbs all over the books at the Strand.
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Not really. I picked up some stuff from just listening to my parents speak to my aunts and uncles, but I understand more than I can speak.” Fourth-Grade Ben got really tired of not knowing what the other Puerto Rican kids were saying about him behind his back. I take a bite out of the cinnamon churro, which has that freshly baked warmness to it. “Which one you trying first?”
Arthur grabs the chocolate churro. “This is crack,” he says, taking another bite. “Where have these been? Is this a New York thing?”
“I don’t think so? Some Mexican restaurants might have them as dessert.”
“I’m a cookie guy, but I can be converted to a churro guy.” He takes another bite. “I feel like a whole new world has opened up to me. Between you being so white and not speaking Spanish I keep forgetting you’re even Puerto Rican. Your last name always reminds me though.”
I freeze with the churro between my teeth. Arthur continues chomping away at his chocolate churro, completely unaware that he’s just nudged me really hard in one of my sore spots. It’s 2018. How are people—even good people—still saying shit like this? I mean, I’m an idiot too—I learned that with Kent at the Yale meetup. I swallow what I can and drop the rest of the churro in the cardboard tray.
It’s really not my job to train people on catching themselves.
It’s really not my job to reprogram people so they not only don’t say something stupid, but that they don’t think it.
But I want Arthur to be better. To be worthy and see that I’m worthy.
I look around at all the other people around us, couples or family or friends or strangers, and I wonder how many of their days are going south because of nonsense coming out of someone’s mouth. I stare at the ground because I can’t look Arthur in the eyes right now.
“I used to wish my last name was Allen,” I say. “Alejo was too hard for people, and teachers would never mispronounce Allen. My second-grade teacher kept calling me ‘Uh-ledge-oh’ until my mother shut it down.” I can’t explain, but without even looking at Arthur, I feel this thickness around us like he’s realized what he said. “Not looking the part of Puerto Rican messed me up. I know I get some privilege points from looking white, but Puerto Ricans don’t come in one shade.”
“I’m sorry—”
“And not every Puerto Rican is going to run down the block for churros or speak Spanish. I know you didn’t mean anything bad, but I like you and I want to trust you like me too for being me. And that you’ll get to know me and not just think you know me because of society’s stupidity.”
Arthur scoots closer to me and rests his head on my shoulder. “If I could time travel, I’d rewind five minutes and not be so stupid. I know that’s an empty gesture because this is a make-believe scenario, but I really would. I would even give up the opportunity to cowrite Hamilton with Lin-Manuel, which, let’s face it, I have no place being anywhere near that anyway. But I really don’t like hurting you or making you feel bad, and I know I’ve done that a few times now.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. It’s really not. I’m really sorry, Ben.”
“I know you didn’t mean any harm. I just want to put it out there. I love being Puerto Rican and I want to feel as Puerto Rican around you as I do at home because that’s who I am.”
“So I’m not getting the boot?”
“Nope. I take your time-travel answer to heart. Sucks that you won’t get to hang with Lin-Manuel though. Guess you’ll have to settle for another Puerto Rican.”
“Good. I still have a lot to learn about you anyway.”
“And you probably know everything there is to know about Lin-Manuel already, right?”
“I know nothing of Pulitzer Prize–winning Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was born on January sixteenth and attended Wesleyan and named his son after the crab in Little Mermaid.”
“I’m walking away from you.” I take the basket of churros. “And you’ve lost your churro privileges.”
Arthur gathers up his shopping bag from the Strand, where he bought magnets, postcards, and a Strand shirt, and now we’re riding the train uptown to his place on the Upper West Side. I know the neighborhood well. I used to go up there all the time with Hudson because of the skating rink, and yeah, he had a thing for the Hudson River too. Acted like it was named for him. Arthur wants to share his view of the Hudson River and just sit there with me, and I’m not bringing up the times I sat there with Hudson because what am I going to do, not go anywhere I’ve been with Hudson? Not happening.
Besides, our options are kind of limited. I can’t bring him home without feeling too exposed—and it may be too soon to meet the parents. I wouldn’t mind, but I can’t force it the way I tried with meeting Hudson’s mom. That was a fail on my part.
Arthur and I are tired now though. I’m probably better off just going home and sleeping, but I don’t want to leave him. By the time I wake up, I would only be able to text or call or FaceTime him and I’ll miss hanging out in real life.
“Too bad we can’t charge ourselves like phones,” I say.
“We can. It’s called sleep,” Arthur says. “It’s just that phones don’t take eight hours to charge.”
“I like sleep. A lot. Summer school is costing me enough sleep, and now you? Betrayal.”
The train is going local since it’s Saturday, which means we might be sitting tight for thirty minutes. Maybe forty or fifty minutes if someone has pissed off the MTA gods.
“I’m going to power nap,” I say.
“Can I join you?”
I wrap my arm around him and he comes closer to me. The car isn’t packed and I’m able to spread my legs a bit to get more comfortable. “I can’t sleep without sound. Mind if I put one earbud in?”
“What do you listen to?”