I finished explaining the plan to my brother, detailing all the specifics of my mental blueprints—how we would avoid the creaky floorboards, get the car keys—but he wasn’t getting it. I peered into his dark-brown eyes, and he stared back at me blankly. I snapped my fingers in front of his face and said, “¿Entiendes?” Domingo shook his head no; his twelve-year-old brain could not make sense of why I wanted to sneak out of the house to visit a girl in the middle of the night.
“But ¿porqué?” he asked.
“Because I want to,” I said.
“Why can’t you go alone?”
That was a valid question, but I was fifteen and didn’t have time for reasoning. I had this stupid notion that if we got caught together, the blame would be split in half, or at the very least, the punishment wouldn’t be as severe. Maybe we could even just say that we were driving around when there were fewer cars on the road, practicing for my driver’s permit. “Because, man — look, you coming, or you gonna be a little puta?”
“Don’t say that word,” Domingo said. “Mom says if you say malas palabras you go to hell.”
“That word is in the Bible,” I said.
“Then why is it bad?”
“It’s not. Mom just — ugh. Man, are you coming with me or what?”
I could see Domingo trying to make his decision, so I tried to nudge him in the right direction a little by telling him that it would be his fault if I went and got into a car wreck because I didn’t have a co-pilot helping me keep a look out. I told him that God wouldn’t be happy with him for abandoning his brother in his time of need. The message was especially effective sitting in his room with a picture of Christ on the Cross hanging on the wall right behind me. I could have said it in anywhere in the house, really. We had at least one rosary, eight candles, and two Bibles in each room in case the sudden need for prayer struck and there was no time to make it to the living room area. We didn’t have first aid kits or a fire extinguisher, but by God if there was ever an emergency that required prayer, we were ready.
“I guess,” Domingo said, after looking over at the picture of Jesus at the last supper on his nightstand.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “I even made a mixtape for us to listen to in the car on the way,” I said.
“Does this mean you’ll stop calling me Judas?”
“I’ll think about it.”
◆
Isabella and I had been planning this late-night visit for almost a month, so we’d managed to iron out most of the details. We figured there would be more cops and party-goers later in the week and into the weekend, leading us to decide on a Monday. But the hardest part wasn’t going to be the drive, it was going to be getting the car to start without waking my parents. That was the other reason for enlisting Domingo—getting him to help me push the car far enough down the street for me to start the engine undetected.
The night it was all set to go down, I lay in bed shaking with excitement, checking the alarm clock next to my bed every two minutes. Finally, at 11:27, when I was sure my parents were asleep, I slid out of bed and made my way to Domingo’s room.
I whisper-yelled his name from the door, but there wasn’t a reply, just some light snoring. I made my way to his bed with nothing but a single ray of light coming in through the blinds from the streetlight outside to guide me. “Domingo?” I called out, taking small steps, scared to step on something, not familiar with the layout of his room in the dark. I reached his bed and shook him awake. “I told you to stay awake,” I said, when he opened his eyes.
“You said go to sleep.”
“I said pretend to go to sleep.”
Domingo rubbed his eyes and asked, “What time is it?”
“Time to go.”
◆
I started the engine at the end of the street and handed the directions I had folded in my pajama pants to my brother. He unfolded them and told me to get to the highway.
“North or south?”
“It doesn’t say,” he said. “Oh, wait. There’s an ‘S’ next to the number.”
I’d never been to Isabella’s house before. We’d met at church, and that’s where most of our interactions took place. She and her family were new to the congregation, but I definitely noticed her on the first day. They had sat in a pew near the back, and did so continuously, whereas my family had a standing appointment with the front row every Sunday morning, meaning there was never any chance of us running into each other.
Then, one Sunday after church, after my parents had finished bathing in holy water, we walked outside and found Isabella’s dad looking into the hood of his car in the parking lot. He said the battery was dead, and my dad offered to give them a jump. While they plugged red to red and black to black, I decided to make my way towards Isabella, who had wandered onto the church playground.
“Where are you going?” Domingo asked, following me.
“Over there.”
“Can I come?”
“No,” I said, and pushed him on the shoulder. He looked like he was about to protest, so I held up my fist. He sighed and walked back to the car. I made my way to Isabella, who was sitting on the swing in her light-blue sundress, black shoes dangling over the pebbles while her legs swung idly. “¿Qué tal?” I asked.
She smiled assuredly and gave me a one-word answer: “Nada.”
“I’ve seen you around,” I said. She didn’t reply. “You never close your eyes during prayer.”
“Why were you looking?”
“I like to watch for sinners,” I said.
“‘Remove the log from your eye before pointing out the speck in your brother’s’,” she said.
I stood there silently without a comeback.
“Are you gonna ask me out or what?” she asked.
We spent the next few months making out and feeling each other up every chance we got. Once a week wasn’t enough for me, so I convinced my parents that I wanted to go to church for Wednesday services, too. They more than happily obliged, thinking I was trying to become a better Catholic. What it really meant was that Isabella and I got the chance to meet in bathroom stalls, empty rooms, and the confession booth to explore each other’s bodies over and under clothes twice a week instead of once.
◆
“What was the name of the street, again?”
“Vermont Avenue,” Domingo said.
“Mierda.” We were lost. I had printed the directions from Google Maps and paper doesn’t have re-routing capability. Worst of all, if worse did come to worst, there was no way we could call our parents even if we wanted to, since neither of us had cellphones. “Give me that,” I said, snatching the paper out of my brother’s hand. “That says ‘Belmont,’ ¡pendejo!”
“That’s what I said.”
“Hijo de puta. I think we already passed Belmont.” We were so far out of the city at that point, the headlights on the car doubled as street lamps because there weren’t any. There was nothing but trees, farms, and livestock, with the occasional street sign. Isabella told me her parents owned a little farm out in the country, and I had started to wonder if there would be a sign or just a cardboard box with the street name written on it and an arrow pointing down a dirt road.
I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, the headlights hitting nothing but chicken coops, and started heading back the way we came. The whole time, the condoms I took with me were burning holes in my pockets. As opposed to her old-school Catholic parents, Isabella was all about pregnancy prevention, but I wasn’t one for reading instructions, so figuring out how to get one on was an ordeal that took me a week to figure out. My first mistake was trying to put them on in the shower. Then I unrolled one and tried to put it on afterwards. By the time I had gotten it right, I’d used up all but two of the eight I’d managed to steal from a box at Walmart.
“There it is!” Domingo shouted, pointing at a street sign up ahead. I slowed down, but passed it, unable to see where the driveway started. I pulled another u-ey and eased back to where the street sign was, looking down the dirt road, uncertain, until I saw her dads’ pickup truck parked in the gravel driveway about 30 yards away. Isabella told me to park down the street on the side of the road, so that if one of her parents got up, they wouldn’t see my car.
I steered toward her house, using their driveway to turn the car around, then drove almost a quarter mile down the road just to be safe. When I parked, the only sounds came from the crunch of fallen tree branches beneath the Civic’s tires and the rabbit-like beating of my heart. I was nervous. Nervous about getting caught by her parents, my parents, the cops, but mostly I was nervous about losing my virginity. Isabella had told me not to worry about it, that we would figure it out together, but no fifteen-year-old boy listens to that. I’d gone straight to the computer to watch some porn videos to learn a few moves, but all the buffering that had to happen with the dial-up internet we had at our house made it impossible, especially with the computer set up in the living room. Ctrl+alt+delete could only do so much.
“I’ll be back,” I said, grabbing the flashlight Isabella had told me to bring, knowing how dark it could get out there.
“How long?”
“No sé, mano.”
“Can you at least leave the car on so I don’t get cold?”
“We’ll run out of gas. There’s a blanket in the backseat.”
“Okay. Try to hurry up.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking the mixtape I’d made for Isabella out of the tape deck.
◆
Once I made it to her house, I snuck to the back window, where Isabella told me her bedroom was. She said she’d leave the curtains open so I could look in to make sure it was the right one, but when I got there, I didn’t have to look, because Isabella’s face was pressed against the window waiting for me. She smiled when she saw me heading towards her, so I started doing tumbles and coming up with my hands in the shape of a gun while humming the James Bond theme song to make her laugh. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands, then put her index finger up to her lips, motioning for me to be quiet.
At her window, Isabella pantomimed for me to push it up. Until then, things seemed to be going exactly as planned. Then the window stuck. I pulled up as hard as I could, and when the window finally gave, it let out a banshee mating call I was sure could be heard for miles. We both froze, straining to listen for any sounds of movement coming from her parent’s bedroom. When we figured it was safe, I kept pulling up on the window, but that howl came from the edges of her window again.
“Should we get some butter or something?” I asked.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and tiptoed out of her room. I stood outside looking around, hoping there weren’t bears or tigers. I was raised in the city, so I had no idea what kind of wild beasts lived in the country. Mosquitoes bit at my arms and ankles, the crickets seemed to grow louder making sounds of disapproval, and moths flew into the zapper they had set up on the back porch. When Isabella came back, she was holding a can of WD-40. She sprayed the sides of the windows and then told me to close the window so she could spray that part, too. I did and then we slid the window up and down, slowly raising it higher with each push and pull until it was wide enough for me to slide through.
The window sill was near my stomach, so I had to lift myself up to slide in. I managed to get half of my body in smoothly, my hands on the floor inside her room, before then the rest of me just fell in, scraping my shins along the brick of her house as I did. I landed on a pile of her clothes with blood oozing down my legs. Instead of helping me up, Isabella jumped on top of me. “Hola, Tomás,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
She kissed me, and we started undressing, shaking—at least I was—more from nerves than the night breeze coming through the window. “The bed,” Isabella said, getting under the covers. “Take off your socks,” she instructed. I did, then lied next to her, my hand making its way up her thigh. “Did you bring a condom?” she asked. I instinctively reached for my pockets, then remembered I’d taken off my pants. I got out of bed and felt around her bedroom floor in search of them.
I located the condom in my jeans, next to the cassette tape, opened it with my teeth, the lube coating my taste buds, then slid it on while Isabella watched with curiosity. I got on top of her, but Isabella stopped me. “Fingers first,” she said. I nodded and slid my hand down her body. After a minute, Isabella’s hand, which had been on my wrist guiding me, made its way to the back of my neck. “Okay,” she said.
I grabbed myself and eased into her, stopping every time she let out the slightest sound, asking, “Is that okay?” She’d nod, never opening her eyes, but seeming to get more comfortable with each second; and after a few seconds, it was over anyway. I felt embarrassed at how fast it all happened, but Isabella kept her eyes closed, not seeming to mind. I lied back down next to her and grabbed her hand, brought the back of it to my mouth and gave it a kiss. That’s when I noticed the red under my fingernails.
I let go of her hand and inspected mine more closely, wondering if I’d cut it on my way through the window. I didn’t see any open wounds, but remembered the blood on my shins. I lifted the covers to look, and saw a dark spot near Isabella’s thighs. “I think you’re bleeding,” I said. Isabella’s eyes snapped open. She jumped out of bed and pulled the covers off. We both looked at the wet spot in the center of the bed, then streaks of blood from my shins, making it look like a jellyfish.
“Shit,” Isabella said. “I didn’t think that would actually happen.” She opened her closet door.
“What are you doing?” I asked, getting out of bed.
“I’m going to get some peroxide before it stains,” she said, sliding on a robe. She opened the door slowly and quietly, then slipped out. I did nothing but look at the bed until Isabella came back with two wash rags, handing one to me, saying, “You do the ones you made.” I bent over her fitted sheet and started scrubbing, wondering if I’d ruined our first time, or if we were being punished. I tried not to believe in God, but standing naked in Isabella’s room, watching her shoulders tense and release as she tried to get out the stains, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that God was making both of us bleed for our sins.
◆
After we had finished doing the best we could with her sheets, Isabella stripped them off her bed, saying that if her parents noticed, she would tell them her period started and she’d forgotten to put in a tampon before bed. I told her it was a good idea, handed her the mixed tape I’d made her, and snuck back out of her window, one leg at a time, making sure not to scrape my calves. Isabella handed me the flashlight I’d left in her pile of clothes, then kissed me through the window, telling me to be careful walking back.
When I first got to the street, I had to stop to think about which way to turn, not remembering where I’d parked the car. After deciding on a direction, all I could think about was how I was going to tell my friends that I’d lost my virginity over the summer. It felt good not being the only one in my clique who hadn’t done it or lied about having done it before. I remember my friend George telling me he’d felt like electricity was running through him after his first time, how he’d had to smoke a cigarette right after; but I didn’t feel like it was coursing through me, I felt like it—like I was electricity. And even if they didn’t believe me, because Isabella went to a different school, I would still have the feeling of my heart beating like thunder.
When I finally got to the car, I told myself I would play it cool—tell Domingo we’d been playing Donkey Kong on her PlayStation, but when I looked through the driver side window, I didn’t see him. I opened the door, then the back door to see if he’d decided to take a nap in the backseat, but he wasn’t there. I looked at my surroundings, pointing the flashlight down the street in both directions, straight ahead into the ditch next to the car, at all the trees that lined both sides of the road.
I was panicking. He didn’t have a flashlight, he left the blanket in the car, and he had no idea where he was. I started running back to Isabella’s house to get her help, but stopped myself, thinking it would be worse if I got her involved. Plus, I would have seen him if he’d gone that direction. He must have started walking back towards town.
I got in the car and started driving with the windows down, eyes as wide as an owls. The miles kept ticking by on the speedometer, and after three miles, I decided there was no way he could have gone that far, but I kept driving all the way to the first street lamp 12 miles from Isabella’s house. I turned around and headed back, high beams on, doing 10mph, whisper-shouting his name the way I had in his room, wanting him and no one else to hear me.
I made it all the way back to Isabella’s house without seeing him. What if he had walked in this direction and passed her house before I left? Maybe that’s why I didn’t see him on the way to the car. I kept driving, stopping every time something moved in the bushes or trees, but finding it was nothing but rabbits, deer, possums that had crossed the road.
I finally decided that I couldn’t do it on my own and that Isabella knew the lay of the land better than I did, so I drove back again, parked at the end of her driveway, and snuck back up to her window. I found her sitting in bed in her robe, legs spread wide, back to the window, a mirror in her right hand. I tapped on the glass, and she turned around, her face changing from fear to shock to embarrassment. She set the hand-mirror on the bed and opened the window that now opened more smoothly than the earlier.
“What are you doing back here?” she asked, breaking eye contact.
“I can’t find Domingo,” I said.
“You brought him with you?” she asked, poking her head out the window, looking for him.
I didn’t want to admit to her that I had been scared of getting caught and decided to bring him with me. The plan had been for me to push the car to the end of the street, to not tell anyone else what we were doing.
Embarrassed, I tried to keep the subject on Domingo. “I need your help.”
“Okay,” she said, “let me put on some jeans. Don’t look.”
“Just hurry up,” I said, and turned my back to the window, but when I heard the robe slide from her arms, I turned my head to look out of the corner of my eye, quickly looking away when she turned to face me.
“Help me get out,” she said, sticking one leg out the window. I offered her my arm and shoulder so she could steady herself. “My dad has a heavy-duty flashlight in the shed,” she said once she was standing next to me, tossing my little flashlight through the window, where it landed next to the hand-held mirror. She walked to the back of the house, got a key from under a cinderblock by the door, then got two flashlights—the kind with a built-in handle that took six D batteries each. We checked that they worked and made our way to the main road.
“Should we split up?” I asked.
“And how are we supposed to contact each other if we find him?” she asked.
We started walking in the direction of town. “I’ve already looked here.”
“Have you walked through the brush?” she asked, signaling to what might as well have been the jungle to me.
“He wouldn’t have gone through there.”
“We have to look. Come on,” she said, heading into the ditch that separated us from what looked to me to be that scene in Snow White where she runs through the woods and sees nothing but monsters that turn out to be woodland creatures, except I was sure whatever was out there could hurt us.
I followed Isabella, branches scratching my arms and legs, stabbing my face. Every step sounded as though it would echo for miles, and every rustling of leaves that wasn’t made by us sent lighting through my body. After we were through the initial concentration of bushes, thistles, and thorns, the forest opened up a bit, with trees spaced out a few feet from each other.
“This is what Lewis and Clark must have felt like,” I said, trying to break the tension and convince myself and Isabella that I wasn’t scared.
“Domingo,” Isabella said, calling out his name, cupping one hand around her mouth.
“What if someone hears you?” I asked.
“We want him to hear us,” she said.
“I meant what if your parents do.”
Isabella turned to look at me, pointed the flashlight at my chest and said, “You’re the one who brought him. Now we have to find him before they wake up, or it doesn’t matter if they hear me.”
She was right. If we didn’t find Domingo before sunlight, cars would start driving by and see what would look like an abandoned car, or my parents would notice us gone, but maybe we could still play that off, saying we went to get breakfast, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, and even if it did, that all depended on finding Domingo alive and well.
An hour went by, and no sign of him. I could tell Isabella was angry with me for having put her in this situation, tonight not going anything like we’d talked about or expected.
“I’m sorry about your sheets,” I said, as we came to an opening with a wooden fence a few yards in front of us that extended further than my flashlight would allow me to see.
“It’s fine. I should have prepared,” she said, stepping between the two poles that ran horizontally. I followed her lead, took a few steps, then my foot sank into something squishy. I shone my flashlight on it, to find my new Puma’s submerged in mud. I lifted my foot and shook it a little, trying to get some of it off.
“When you came back,” Isabella said, “I was checking to see if it looked different.” She stopped walking but didn’t turn to look at me.
I took a few steps towards her, dragging my right foot behind me in the grass, trying to get some of the mud off.
“If what looked different?” I asked, having only half-understood what she was talking about, too focused on my shoe.
“You know,” she said, waving her hand in front of her pants.
I felt my face turn hot.
“Did it?” I asked.
“No,” she said, turning to face me, her flashlight at her side shining forward. “Do you think this is happening because of what we did?”
I didn’t know what to say, but before I’d gotten the chance to even try to come up with an answer, we heard something. We shone our flashlights towards it, strained our eyes trying to see what it was. It sounded like someone shivering. Was it Domingo? I took a few cautionary steps forward, my flashlight beam landing on what looked like a heap of clothes like the one in Isabella’s room. After a few more steps, I could see him, my brother, in the middle of the field on his hands and knees, praying.
“Domingo?” I called out, running the last few yards to him. He stood up with tears in his eyes, and wrapped his arms around me.
“I got lost,” he said, wiping his nose on the front of my shirt.
“Why did you leave the car?” I asked.
“Are you okay?” Isabella asked, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“I heard this sound,” Domingo said, “and I didn’t know what it was, but I thought it would eat you, so I got out and tried to tell you, but I couldn’t find the house, then I found the barn with all the cows, but I couldn’t find the road—”
“It’s okay,” Isabella said. “You’re fine. I know the way back.”
We started the walk back to the car, and the whole time, all I could think about was that parable, where the shepherd leaves the rest of his flock because one sheep strays. I think it’s meant to be about God going after one of his believers who’s lost their faith, but the only shepherd I saw was my brother. No flock, no robe, just a kid in some basketball shorts who left the house in the middle of the night, and tried using his shepherd’s crook to keep me safe. Maybe God isn’t the shepherd, but the shepherd crook—useless on its own—but in the hands of the shepherd, it saves sheep from falling off cliffs, then leaves the shepherd to carry it and the sheep on his shoulders.