Accidental Love by Gary Soto Read Free Book Online Page B

stared at him until he looked over her shoulder and sneered at Rene, who was standing up. "I'm going to have to smack that swanson again," he said.
    Marisa bristled. "So it was you who hurt Rene?"
    Roberto gave a ratlike smile. "Ah, I was just playing with him."
    "You mean like this?" Marisa hauled off a punch to his shaved temple and a second punch that brought a flow of blood from his mouth. Even though he was an eleventh grader, Roberto wasn't that big—a little taller than she—and she had arm wrestled him before and knew what he could do.
    "I don't want to hurt you!" He backed up, holding his lip. "You're a girl."
    Some girls, wet from being sprayed with the hose by boys, pulled Marisa away.
    "I had to do it because he didn't want to tutor me no more."
    "You're hella freaky! So what!"
    He backpedaled when Marisa, like a bull, started toward him. He shoved her with a straight arm and struck her in the face with the heel of his palm.
    "You ain't gonna hurt me!" she bellowed. But she sensed by the taste of blood that he had cut her lip.
    More girls pulled Marisa away, a loop of blood flying from her face. She stood breathing hard and hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline. By then Rene was at her side, pulling on her arm and begging, "Come on—let's go." To Roberto he yelled, "You better not hit her again."
    They left the high school car wash, walking up the street, both feeling their injuries.
    "He's the swanson, not you," Marisa growled. "My ex-school's stupid. You should have seen the principal's car—nasty!"
    "Violence doesn't get you anywhere," Rene commented.
    Marisa mumbled for him to be quiet.
    "If he touches you like that again, I'm going to hit him back," Rene blubbered.
    "You just said you're against violence."
    "That's because I usually get beat up. But I don't care anymore."
    Marisa hooked her arm in his. "We're messed up. Your nose is all red."
    They continued down the street, kicking through the fall leaves. Rene stopped and patted the bar of his bicycle. "Get on."
    Marisa hopped onto the bar and Rene straddled the bike, gripping the handlebars tightly. He kicked off, straining as he tried to pick up speed. He was pedaling for his girl, and Marisa was touched by his courage. With the two of them, the bicycle could crash to the asphalt street and rough them up even more. Could they stand two embarrassments in a span of ten minutes?

Chapter 7
    Marisa fabricated a story of how she had hit her face on the shower nozzle—her uncle Pedro, a small man no taller than a boy, had done the remodeling on the bathroom several years before and assumed everyone was his height. The nozzle was positioned low.
    Marisa vowed to stop fighting. She would stand by her nerdy boyfriend and learn to play chess, Rene's favorite pastime. She would come clean about her new life and learn chess in the presence of her mother and father. Rene, only slightly scared of meeting her parents, biked over on Sunday afternoon with the chessboard and pieces rattling in his backpack.
    Marisa's mother had been ready to go shopping
when she opened the door to a young man who, she would later tell Marisa, resembled a clean-cut, young religious type going door-to-door handing out pamphlets.
    "Mrs. Rodriguez, I'm Rene Torres, a classmate of Marisa's." He extended a hand and asked permission to leave his bike on the porch.
    "Of course," she remarked without looking at the bike leaning on the rail. She let Rene pass, holding the door open for him. "Who is this skinny boy?" her face was asking. Marisa's father muted the television just as the Raiders, down three points, were attempting a forty-eight-yard field goal. He stood up to shake hands with Rene.
    "Don't let us disturb you, sir," Rene said. "We're going to play chess."
    Her father and mother gawked. Was this boy here to court their daughter? Why did the boy have a red nose? Did it have anything to do with their daughter's cut lip?
    "Mom!" Marisa called, embarrassed by her mother's jaw