Carlo opens a gallon of milk. Though he has a cup he could readily use right there, he decides to drink from the carton.
There’s a sign in front of the sink that reads:
WASH WHAT YOU USE
He’s still in his boxers, and it’s clear he just woke up.
Then, coming back to his room, his little sister hugs him.
“Hola Carlo! Buenos días.”
“Buenos dias, Claudia.”
Carlo pats her back.
Then, he goes to his room, lays back down on the bed, takes out his PSP, and starts playing some racing game.
“Carlo.” His mother, Paula, opens the door.
He puts down his PSP behind his back rapidly, “sí mama.”
“Carlo, ya sabes que tienes que hacer tus chores antes de que te pones hacer esas webadas.”
They exchange a glare.
“Get up, the grass needs to be cut,” she said, leaving the room with the lights on, as she would always do whenever she wanted Carlo to wake up.
You see, Carlo just got on summer break.
Except, it’s after he had graduated high school and he still didn’t know what college he wanted to attend. Or if he wants to attend college at all.
He got up, got dressed, went outside to mow the lawn, and while he was doing it, his best friend Patrick came up on his bike.
“Hey Carlo, do you want to ride bikes after you’re done?”
He looked at the time on his phone and realized it was already past noon.
“Yeah, why not? I’ll be finished in around 25 minutes.”
“Sure thing.”
Carlo finishes cutting the grass, leaving some clippings out, pushes the mower into the garage, and goes straight to his bike.
Riding off, Paula watches him from the window, shaking her head.
Carlo and Patrick are biking along on the road, side by side, chitchatting.
They get to this area which they like going to, especially Patrick, to see what he could find.
The scrapyard. Like a junkyard with metallic scraps.
Patrick gets off his bike, leaning it to the fence, and starts looking around.
“Why are we here?” Carlo asked.
“You never know what you can find.”
Carlo gets off his bike, leans it against the fence, then starts looking for what he can find.
Amidst all of rust and busted appliances, he finds a shiny BMX frame, polished stainless steel.
Other scraps bury it as well.
He moves other things off of the frame only to find a wheel buried behind it.
Like the wheel off of a conveyor.
He looks at it, turns it, and visualizes what machinery could’ve gone around it.
Just then, in his imagination, he sees a large machine from an assembly line built around the wheel. But a gruff voice interrupted the thought.
“Hey, who said you could come in here?!” Some worker with an orange yells from a distance.
“We better get going!” Patrick takes something with him. It’s a rear bike rack for cars.
Carlo drops the pulley/flywheel-like thing and goes off toward his bike.
They ride off from the direction that they came.
“Ok, so, what do you wanna do now?” Patrick asked.
“I’m getting kind of hungry, so I better get home. My mom cooks dinner around this time.”
“Can I come?”
Everyone’s at the dinner from Carlo’s family.
His dad’s sitting at the head, Patrick’s on the other end, eating away Paula’s made-from-scratch Mexican food.
Carlo’s next to his mom, and Lilly is on the other side.
“So, Patrick, what are you planning to do when you finish college?”
“I’m going to the army, just like my pops. I’m going to be an aviation fighter, eventually. But first a soldier!”
“Wow, that’s awesome, and what makes you want to do that?” George Sr. asked.
“It’s just that if anyone’s going to die for this country, it’s gonna be me. I don’t see why anyone else should if I don’t.”
“That’s beautiful Patrick,” Paula said.
“Yeah, Carlo doesn’t really know what he wants to be doing yet, but when he does, oh boy, I’ll bet he’ll be great at it,” Carlo Sr. said.
Carlo went from putting his head down, in anger and in shame, to looking up at his dad. He couldn’t hold back from smiling.
He felt good knowing that someone else believed in him.
So they kept talking as the forces of alignment started to work for Carlo.
At the same time, up in the sky. Far above this earth, as if past outer space itself, there sat God, on his throne, and Christ before him with an angel.
“What are we to do for him, our beloved vessel, Mr. Carlo Rios?”
“He’s an inventor. He just doesn’t know it yet. Are we to bring him on a journey to get him to understand what he’s to do in these last days on earth?”
“I’ve decided. Let’s take him on an adventure. One so wild, one so crazy, that he’ll know the true meaning of life and what it’s worth. Then he’ll go out. And make something out of his life.”
“To the glory,” Jesus said.
Carlo had a dream that night that would forever change his life.
As he’s falling asleep, he resolves that he’ll have to take a year off, because he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, and going forward, he figured, to try and get a degree would simply be a waste of time if he didn’t know what he wanted to do.
What if he picked the wrong thing?
Then again, what if he picked the right thing?
No, he thought, I would not even know how to start picking the right career, the right degree, even the right classes. College is going to be just like high school.
He resolved that college wasn’t going to be for him. Not at that moment, at least.
It was too soon.
He needed more time to explore, to learn new things, to work, so that when and if he did go to college, it would be for a good reason. Not just because others had said to do so.
He fell into a deep sleep. And before he even knew about it, was in a world of his own.
MARK SOTOMAYOR 