Whistleblower ✓

06 | guac is extra

You could smell Pepito's from a full block away.

This was both a blessing and a curse.

It was absolute torture to stand in the McDonald's parking lot while Hanna sprinted inside to use their restroom. Andre and I sat on a strip of grass underneath a stop sign and talked about what we were going to order. All the while, we could smell it—the slow-roasting meat, the fresh-chopped tomatoes and cilantro, the warm homemade corn tortillas.

"Alright, I'm done," Hanna announced when she returned.

We were up before she'd even finished speaking.

Pepito's was, in essence, a food truck without wheels.

The stand was compact and a bit dingy, with faux-adobe walls and a red terra-cotta tiled roof that held a large marquee letters spelling out P-E-P-I-T-O-S. Some of the letters flickered. On the adobe wall over the order window, painted in loopy red script, were some of their primary menu options—burritos, tacos, enchiladas—and off to the side, between the stand and a small parking lot, were a few metal tables and benches where drunk students were stuffing their faces.

Pedro was at the grill, Joaquin was handling condiments, and Oscar was manning the register. He grinned under his wiry mustache when Andre and I stepped up to the counter to order.

"Back already, eh?" he asked.

"Por supuesto," I said, beaming.

Andre and I had accidentally become regulars during sophomore year. The guys had taken to calling him Tigre, because of the stripes buzzed into his hair and his voracious appetite.

"The regular?" Oscar prompted.

"Y una quesadilla para mi amiga," I said.

Everyone is always a bit alarmed the first time they hear me speak Spanish.

This is partly to do with my name, and partly to do with my dad being Irish. There are still traces of my mom in me—the thick, caramel brown hair and olive skin that tans after fifteen seconds in the sun—but most people just assume I'm just a slightly darker version of the white my dad is.

My Spanish is also not good Spanish.

What I speak is not the pretty, flowing language that my mom's family members speak.

My dad did his best to learn Spanish after my mom died, so I'd have someone to speak it with, and took me to Mexico to visit her family every couple of years, when our budget allowed for it. Still, I didn't get all that much practice. Which is why I loved Pepito's for more than just the quality tacos.

Oscar punched a couple buttons on the register.

"One large quesadilla, three carne asada tacos," he read off, "y para el Tigre, un super burrito de pollo con todo."

Andre slapped his debit card onto the counter.

"I got this one," he told me. "You paid last time."

Hanna and I found an empty table. The metal benches were cool beneath my bare thighs, and the breeze that carried down Cerezo Street was a welcome relief from the warm night air. Andre followed us over when he was finished paying and slapped a receipt on the table, informing us we were order 86.

Then the three of us sat and waited.

We talked about nothing, and everything.

Andre was frustrated because he'd been doing really well in practice—he'd worked out all summer to try to put on some more weight—but Coach Vaughn didn't seem to notice. Kyle Fogarty, the first string tight end, was a senior. He'd probably start every game, leaving Andre to warm the bench.