WHEN I WAS SEVEN OR EIGHT YEARS OLD, I thought being American meant reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. But that feeling of being a total American was short-lived, and it was a shattered dream I dared not confess to Abuelita.

Because later, in high school, that dream was redefined, still feeling no less American but now with a hyphen attached: Mexican-American. The hyphen alone made liberty and justice for all a conditional element going forward that my family would learn the hard way.

I'd thought about those past dreams since last night and the conditions that came with being a hyphenated citizen. My father spent time cutting coupons at the dining table. The air conditioning was broken, so a heavy warmth lingered in the air. Having stripped off all my excess clothing, I sat barefoot in front of a tiny oscillating fan, turning toward the faintest breeze whenever it caught my skin.

The summer sun hadn't yet risen above the houses, but the weather forecasts this morning promised a scorcher—one for the record books. Abuelita placed another stack of breakfast tamales on the table, stuffed with various fillings and wrapped in a corn masa dough.

"Abuelita, I'm too full." I gave her pleading doe eyes. I still had greedy eyes, but my stomach was not a democracy, and her breakfast tamales sat like lead in my belly.

"The boy is not hungry," Dad spoke up and then turned to me. "We need to talk."

Something about his tone suggested the appearance of a smile, but I didn't catch one. He refused to take his eyes off the coupon he was cutting.

"Como estás, Alex?" he asked. His eyes flicked up to me just once.

"Estoy bien." I shrugged, because I was okay, but his face said that I hadn't fully grasped what he was asking.

"You came home late last night. Derek saw you talking with Tate Parker." He left his sentence open-ended while I filled in the mental blanks. "Have you been friends for a long time? I haven't seen you talk at school."

"No. We're not friends." And this wasn't a lie.

There were days when my dad's job didn't feel like a weight on my shoulders. During long summers, like the one we were heading into now, away from school, it became easier to forget that my dad was employed at the same high school I was enrolled in. But every time I saw my father pick up those scissors, just like a mop at school, it felt like a slap in the face, a reminder of how far we'd fallen.

"Does it matter who I am friends with if you did nothing wrong? What happened to you was an injustice."

Dad would never discuss it, but he was fired from Parker Realtors for pot-smoking on his lunch break and sued for causing the company reputational damage. A client found him cleaning a mass of joint butts behind the dumpster.

He won't say he did it or that he didn't. He doesn't say much other than, 'No es nada de lo que estar orgulloso"—It's nothing to be proud of—then the conversation was over.

"A friendship with a boy who has Dean Parker for a father will serve none of us well. No wonder Tate fights in the streets. Do you want to be caught up in that? Move on. You can't fight every injustice. Sometimes, you shouldn't try because the bigger picture is more important, and I chose to let this go."

My earliest memory was breaking a jug of water perched on top of the refrigerator—a superstition Abuelita took seriously because water wards off evil—and she'd cried for five straight days. I couldn't count the number of times I'd been yelled at for passing the salt or scratching an itchy palm, but her beliefs steered our daily lives.

On day six, my father had whispered something in her ear, and suddenly, Lita was back shuffling across the kitchen in her worn slippers; no longer wary spirits would cause her mischief. It took several more years for me to figure out he had told her an appeasing white lie. I knew this because whenever he spared the truth since he had a tell, his eyes pinched together a fraction when he spoke—like the lie had to be squeezed out of him in order to pass his lips.

He was giving that tell right now.

My father wanted to fight. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why he then wouldn't. Maybe, it didn't matter whether people were innocent; public opinion or the gossip wheel would always wonder about him.

"What were the stipulations of your settlement with Dean Parker?"

He paused, letting his eyes now fully rest on mine. The answer was there before he'd even verbalized it. "I'm not allowed to discuss it. You know this. Why do you persistently ask? You are too much drama. You drop nothing."

Abuelita grinned. "No sé de dónde lo saca ese niño, Rafael. Like father, like son." Her hearty frame shook with humor at her own joke.

It was hard to be genuinely bilingual because we constantly toggled between two worlds and two languages, so the result at home was always a mesh of both.

I smiled. "Abuelita, let me finish." I turned back to my father. "Not even with me?"

"Especially not with you, Alex."

A hot flash of hurt burned my cheeks, but he didn't catch it because he never looked back up. Maybe it was for the best, but deep inside, I couldn't let this go. Maybe Tate knew that too. One year into the role of a high school janitor, he had met the minimum qualifications of being physically able-bodied and able to communicate orally. But he had so much more potential than that.

"I know you didn't do anything wrong. But you don't fight it?"

He was careful with his scissors as he ran a line down the blackened newspaper. Psoriasis marred his fingers, caused by a reaction to the disinfectant used in the bathroom stalls. Three snips later, he stacked the coupon onto a growing pile beside his coffee. It was one guilty pleasure he'd allow himself.

A sip of Merlot or chilled beer had never wet his lips, which is why the implication he was caught doing drugs on the job was incomprehensible to me. He couldn't discuss it. He was right—one hundred percent. But his protests meant nothing because it meant everything to me.

Dad cast a weary sigh. "There's nothing to be said that I can say to fight it. We need to be twice as careful as everyone else, Alex. "

Abuelita suppressed a sigh of her own with her back to us at the sink. "Maybe, Alex is right, Rafael." She wiped her brow with the side of a wet hand. "You have always been a good man, an honorable man. And I know you want to protect your family. But sometimes, we must fight for what is right, even when it seems impossible."

As she spoke, my father's shoulders tensed, and I had the feeling that whatever he was refusing to let out might stoke the fire that was already lit and burning inside.

"Rafael?" She turned to look between us, and I was sure she could feel the tension radiating from my father's back and confirmed as much with a sullen frown before returning to the dishes.

He removed his glasses, running a hand over his eyes before putting them back on. The map of lines across his face spoke of worries past. Battered by life, raising a family, or a disregard for sun cream, I couldn't imagine who he had been in youth.

"Let sleeping dogs lie—both of you. It helps no one to revisit a past you cannot change. We move on and move forward because it's all we can do. A fight like this can consume you if you let it. There comes a time when we must accept our circumstances, and do the best we can with what we have. Find a new friend, Alex."

Dean Parker shattered my father's reputation and then had the nerve to sue him for reputational damage. Maybe that's why he'd bowed out of the fight—he thought it would never make a difference.

Except—maybe it could. Tate Parker said as much. While I maintained my stance there would be no reconciliation between our fathers, Tate's had the power to force change. My father clipped another coupon; this time for ten cents off laundry detergent. Ten cents. It might not be the wisest move I would ever make, but if Tate was right, maybe there was a chance to change the future for all of us.

Abuelita kissed my temple, her plump fingers squeezing my shoulder before she left the room, as she did each day at a predictable time, seeking the comfort of her warm bed and radio. Two minutes later, Mexican rancheras softly echoed around our empty house.

"Papá?" I reached forward and paused his hand.

But he didn't answer; his attention had left the room along with my grandmother.

I'd fight for him instead. That would involve going to one person I was forbidden from seeing. He and I lived six blocks apart, but that might as well have been the opposite side of the world right now. An idea formed in my head. Flock was neutral. Flock would give me Tate's number.

Tate Parker...

What came next was involuntary, and I tried to reign in my grin, but it had already broken. For a moment, I felt incredible guilt about conjuring a smile like that.

"What are you thinking of now?" he asked, his lips tipped up into a quizzical grin.

People say honesty is the best policy, but in this case, I don't think it is.