* * *
The high school is dark at what I guess is two or three in the morning. The football lights are off, and all the entrances are fenced shut. In the middle of the night, the buildings look like a bunch of brick squares, like the school is just one long fortress. The crickets are loud and constant all around me, but I’ve gotten so used to the sound I only hear it every once in awhile now when I’m not thinking about anything. All of a sudden I believe my mom: we’re staying.
Headlights beam down the street from behind me, and I can tell that a car is turning off the highway. I cut across the street, where there’s nothing but desert and a big ditch – everyone here calls ditches “washes,” I don’t know why – that runs to the next block. I jump into the soft sand at the bottom and lie down, hoping that the car will pass and I can go home. But then I hear a car door open and close, and a bright white circle begins to shake on the ground in front of me. A woman’s voice tells me to stand up and put my hands in the air. Dirt tastes like metal in my mouth as I push myself up from the ground. The light makes me turn my face away as I climb up the steep hill.
“Why were you hiding from me?” she asks. It’s a cop, and she’s pretty. Her hair is tied into the tightest ponytail I’ve ever seen, and her shoulders are pulled back as if they were attached to ropes, but she’s got long eyelashes and small hands and fingers. She’s either really mad or trying to make herself look that way.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“What are you doing out here this late?”
“My friends were going to a party. I didn’t want to go, so I’m walking home.”
She turns the flashlight off. “We have a curfew in this town, you know.”
“I just moved here.”
“Well, you’re getting off on the wrong foot with this nonsense. You don’t run from the police, no matter where you live. You got that?”
I say I do. She pulls out a big pad with carbon copy sheets, and I remember again that I’m in trouble.
“It’s stupid,” she continues. “It makes us run. And it just pisses us off all the way around, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m sorry.” And I really am. I’m not a bad kid. Anywhere else, nothing like this would’ve ever happened to me. I never had to make friends with a guy like Beady before because it didn’t matter if I had friends or not. I was always just waiting to leave town again, to see the next place.
“Why don’t you tell me your name and your address.”
“My name is Eduardo Raymond Montez,” I say, feeling my voice crack. I realize I don’t have my address memorized yet. I don’t have anything else to say, but she waits like I’m supposed to keep going. “I live around the corner. The street’s got an Indian name I can’t remember because all the streets have Indian names. It’s Cherokee or Pueblo something. I didn’t want to move here—I had to. It’s hot all the time and there’s nothing to do, but this is it. We’re staying.”
I wipe my cheeks and feel really stupid, because I’m crying and because she’s so pretty. She frowns at me. Not like she feels sorry for me, but like she just doesn’t understand. “My name's Eduardo Raymond Montez,” I say again. “That’s it. That’s all I know.”
The lady cop’s eyebrows push together on her forehead. She hasn’t written anything down yet. She just keeps looking at me. The pen is still in her hand, but she’s biting her bottom lip and doesn’t look mad at all anymore.
# # #
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Author's Bio
Richard A. Sanchez's work has appeared in Tin House, Storychord, and The Pacific Review. He is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at University of California, Riverside, and he currently works as an English and creative writing instructor.
He lives with his wife and three daughters in California, where he is working on a collection of stories and a novel.
Find Richard at:
richardasanchez.com
Where We Are: A Short Story Page 3