The Prince of los Cocuyos by Richard Blanco

Author:Richard Blanco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, CACO AND my primas were already gone. Hurt, I realized they must have snuck out of the room early while I was still asleep. I hurried down to the pool and spotted my primas on lounge chairs, their long, svelte bodies smeared with a thick coating of sunscreen. I dragged a chair beside them as if nothing had happened. “Oh, hello,” Carla said kindly, lifting her sunglasses to look at me. “Hey, cuz,” Denise said, acknowledging me with a smile. They were friendly again, but not Caco—of course not. “Nice shorts. You belong at the kiddy pool,” he wise-mouthed, and then turned his face away. “Dig it! Put that up!” Denise said, and turned up the volume on the boom box. She and Carla began singing along to “Disco Inferno,” their eyes closed to the sun, tapping their painted fingernails on the aluminum armrests and wiggling their bodies to the music. Even Caco joined in, flapping his hairy toes to the beat.

“This song is outrageous,” I offered, trying to ease my way back into their favor. “Oh shut up, blubbo,” Caco said. “You don’t even know who sings this.” My primas giggled. I had to save face. “Yes I do, butt-brains. It’s The Trammps—and it’s from Saturday Night Fever—I saw the movie too! What do you know anyways? You can’t even dance!” It was true. Caco was a terrible dancer. He knew it, I knew it, and he knew that I knew it from the nights I spent dancing with him after he practically begged me to help him practice his disco steps. For days afterward, I’d have to wear Band-Aids on my mutilated toes. But I didn’t mind. For an hour, sometimes more, we were not bratty brothers—we were tribesmen dancing barefoot in our Fruit of the Loom boxers, entranced by the percussion beating through our bodies. Though sometimes we’d dress up for the part in silky shirts and polyester slacks. Regardless, as soon as he’d lift the needle off the LP, the threats would follow: “I’ll kill you if you tell anyone, I swear. I’ll tell Abuela about you dressing up like a girl in your sheets.”

“You really don’t know how to dance?” my primas asked Caco, giggling even louder. “He’s a total nerd,” I answered for my brother, who was unable to come back at me with anything more than “Shut up, or else.” “Or else what, John Duh-volta?” I said, tripping my primas into a full-blown cackle, holding their tummies. In a flash he scooped me out of my chair—my feet wiggling as he carried me to the pool and flung me into the deep end. I could sense my primas laughing even as I swam underwater to the other side of the pool.

When I came up for air, I saw them tugging at Caco’s arms, teasing him out of his chair to dance with them. I sat on the pool ledge alone with my best poor-me face, hoping

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