The moment is gone.
I stand there in the empty hall, playing the scene over in my mind.
And I realize that Go To and I … we’re on the same team.
REALITY SUCKS
LUIS AND I GET TO WORK AFTER SCHOOL. We improve stuff where we need to—usually just making it sound smoother or less wordy, more bouncy.
We start reading some changes and there’s a knock at the door. Luis goes to answer it.
This big cholo dude blasts into the room, freakin’ agitated. He’s my grandpa’s height, like six two, and buff with this gnarly, black gothic-lettered tattoo that creeps up his neck out from under his white T-shirt.
“Wussup, cuz?”
“Not much, Frankie.” Luis is real serious with him.
The guy bounces around the apartment, bug-eyed, looking for something. He opens up cupboards and drawers and messes up the place.
“Flaco here?”
“No, I don’t know where he is.”
The dude is breathing hard. He’s got this sick vein pulsing red just below his eye. “Where’s he at? It’s real important.”
“I dunno. You want his number?”
“I GOT his number, dumbass!”
Spit sprays when he talks. His chest heaves up and down with each angry breath. He opens a drawer and slams it closed with a BANG!
“He don’t answer his fucking phone and I need to talk to him yesterday!” Frankie throws a book across the room. It knocks a painting off the wall.
“All right. I’ll tell him when I see him, but I don’t see him much anymore, Frankie.”
“That’s right; you don’t see nobody much anymore. What’s up with that?”
Frankie doesn’t wait for an answer. He spots me and points a fat, trembling finger my way. “This your new buddy? You guys playing with your Pokémon cards?” He spots the typed pages. “What the hell is this?” His face is a huge, crazy smile with popping wide eyes.
He jumps at me.
I know I’m gonna die.
But Frankie doesn’t kill me. He just snatches the poem from my hands and starts reading it out loud—mocking it—bouncing around the apartment again, spewing lines and howling. He drops onto his belly and pounds the floor with his fists and feet, laughing so hard he’s got tears in his eyes.
“That’s great, fellas,” he says in his corniest voice. “Thanks for the entertainment.”
Then he cuts the laughter and springs to his feet.
He hikes right up to Luis, chest to chest. He stares Luis directly in the eye. Luis holds his ground and looks Frankie in the eye right back.
“We all been wondering where you been,” Frankie says.
All I can think about is Carlos and how he said people were gonna be coming after Luis. He said I should warn him.
“Now I know where you been. You been here writing poetry with your girlfriend. You planting daisies, too? Learning to sew? You hemming this dude’s skirts? What the hell, Luis?”
Frankie bumps Luis with his chest. Luis bumps right back. “We need to know if you’re with us, Callado. ’Cuz if you ain’t with us, you’re against.”
“That’s enough, Frankie. I get it. I’ll let my brother know you stopped by.”
Frankie explodes. “I’m talkin’ about YOU now, pendejo! I’m pissed off at your brother but at least I know he’s a part of the family. Don’t forget who took care of you back then, Luis, who looked after you. We don’t forget shit! So I gotta know—you with us? Or you against?”
Luis doesn’t back away. He stares laser beams of anger up at him, looking like he’s ready to throw down. All I can hear is breathing, then Frankie slams Luis in the chest, “Let’s go!” Luis falls back on his ass. “Get up, pussy!”
Luis bounces up and charges Frankie, shouting, “I’m with you!” as he rams Frankie in the chest, knocking him backward onto the floor. “I’M WITH YOU, CABRÓN!”
I’ve never heard Luis even talk loud. Now he’s yelling, barking at Frankie at the top of his lungs.
Standing over him.
Looking down on him.
Face red. Neck veins pulsing, his scar on fire.
Fists balled. Looking like he’s about to kill Frankie.
Shouting him down. Saying all kinds of stuff about how bad he is, how tough he is. How he could kill Frankie right now and how he should.
I’m frozen. I can’t move an inch, but there’s an earthquake going on inside my stomach. What the hell is Luis gonna do?
He finally stops shouting. Everything’s quiet.
Everything but the sound of breathing.
Frankie forces out a chuckle. “That’s better,” he says from the ground. “I was thinking you went soft on us, Callado.” He reaches out a hand. Luis grabs ahold and pulls Frankie onto his feet. “You’re getting strong, guëy.” Frankie says it like he’s proud of him. He hands the poem back to Luis.
Luis starts folding it.
But Frankie says, “Nah, nah. No you don’t.”
“What?”
“You gotta rip that shit up.”
Luis freezes. “Come on, man.”
“You choose, hermano.” Luis just stands there holding the poem, looking as scary as Frankie. “You choose,” Frankie repeats.
Don’t do it, Luis.
DO NOT DO IT!
Luis slowly rips the poem. Shreds of paper drift to the floor.
“That’s right,” Frankie says.
Luis looks him in the eye the whole time, showing Frankie that, yeah, he’s with him. And he’s made his choice.
“That’s more like it, hermano. Tell your brother I stopped by. We’ll see you at Cristián’s place next week?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All right then.” Frankie flings the door open and struts into the darkness.
Luis doesn’t move.
A wet wind blows into the apartment. He watches the tiny shreds of our poem fly all over the room. He closes the door. The wind stops. Luis watches the papers float back down to earth. He closes his eyes tight. Rubs his head, acting like it’s aching again.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
Okay?
Luis grabs a broom. I watch him slowly sweep the floor. He dumps our work in the trash and walks into his room.
I wait for him to come out.
He doesn’t.
“Bye, Luis.”
I wait for a response.
Something.
Anything.
Nothing.
He doesn’t show his face. He doesn’t say a word.
He’s made his choice.
AWAY
I WALKED THIS NEIGHBORHOOD—FROM LUIS’S APARTMENT all the way to my house—the last few nights, and all I thought about was how good this made me feel. How cool Luis was. How he was the opposite of what people at school thought. How Carlos clearly had no idea what he was talking about.
Well, tonight Luis proved Carlos right.
Tonight Luis is exactly the person everyone thinks he is.
And tonight this place is scary as hell. Headlights glaring in my face. The shriek of screeching tires. Voices in the dark. Each sound is a threat that Frankie or some crazy gangster is gonna jump out and kill me.
I walk faster for a few steps, then break into a full run. I do all I can to get farther from Luis, farther from the stupid fucking poem, farther from trying, farther from caring. Because when you try and when you care … that’s when you get your ass kicked.
I imagine a big scar on my neck getting bigger and bigger. I run faster, all the way across Pac Highway and down the hill to my world.
To safety.
I burst into the house breathing hard.
“Samuel?”
I ignore Ginny.
“GOOD-BYE, SAM!”
I try to ignore Gilbert.
I slam my bedroom door. Bury myself in the covers.
I don’t even look at the boom box. There’s no escaping the truth tonight.
Of all the millions of people in the world who could possibly be my friend, that thug was the best I could do.
It was never gonna work.
I knew that.
I saw the bloody train wreck coming from a mile away.
And I hopped on for the ride.
Who does that?
Lonely fucking losers. That’s who.
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
AFTER A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, I WALK INTO MR. OLSEN’S SCIENCE LAB.
Luis is nowhere.
It’s a relief. I don’t wanna see him again.
I put on my lab goggles and yawn a huge one. I figure it’ll be okay to close my eyes for a second.
One thousand and one.
I open my eyes.
I can’t fall asleep in class.
But one more long, slow blink won’t hurt anybody.
One thousand and …
The bell rings. My eyelids spring open. My cheek rests in a puddle of spit on my desk. I wipe my face and look around. I can’t see because everything is a greasy blur. A brown blob flies at my face. I realize it’s a hand. But I’m still half asleep and don’t know what’s going on. So I slap the hand away.
“Your goggles, dude.”
It’s Luis. He takes my safety goggles off and the blur goes away.
“You sleep-slobber like a hound dog, Sam.”
I wipe my mouth with my shirtsleeve as Luis helps me up and hands me a stack of papers. “Here.”
What the hell?
No freakin’ way.
He retyped the whole damn poem.
Twice this time.
One copy for him. One for me.
It must have taken him half the night to remember it all—to get it right—and poke every letter into that typewriter.
Last night it was gone … gone with the freakin’ wind.
This whole thing was over.
And now Luis is here. And the poem is back from the dead.
I don’t know what to do.
He looks at me, then looks down at the ground like he’s waiting for me to respond.
Then he says, “Sorry about last night. It won’t happen again.”
BACK ON THE HORSE
IT’S TUESDAY. Only three days to go.
I’m shaking as we take off for Luis’s apartment after school.
Who’s to say something like last night won’t happen again?
We’re at the intersection at 220th and Pac Highway, waiting for the light to change. Luis has his hands in his pockets. He’s staring at his shoes. “My brother talked to Frankie. He told him to never show his face at the apartment, or he’d…”
Or he’d what? Stab him? Shoot him? What the hell? It doesn’t make me feel any safer. It just makes it clear how messed up in that world Luis is.
“Frankie promised he wouldn’t come around anymore.”
I shouldn’t be doing this.
I shouldn’t be going anywhere near Luis’s place.
I know that.
But what I tell him is, “Sounds good.”
ROLLIN’
WE CRACK OPEN A COUPLE ROOT BREWS AND GET DOWN TO BUSINESS.
I take my spot a few feet from the wall. Luis stands by me. But before he counts us off, he points a finger at me and makes circles.
“We’re barrel rollin’ this baby. Three hundred sixty degrees, Sam.”
It’s so stupid it’s great.
“Do it with me,” he says. “Let’s Tex it up!”
I make the circle with him and from that point on, we look at each other and do the three-sixty sign before every run-through.
We practice hard. We nail the transitions, the tempo, the unison starts and stops until it feels like we’re so good we can’t get any better.
Until we know we’re ready.
I get my stuff packed as Luis puts the pages of the poem in our folder.
“Hey, Sam,” he says, without lifting his eyes from the pages.
“Yeah?”
“Next time someone busts into my house and comes after me, you wanna grab a frying pan or something? I mean, serious.… You gotta have a homie’s back, homie.”
He looks up and starts laughing.
I start laughing too. “All right, homie.”
Luis walks me to Pac Highway. We see Bob’s 99 Cent Burgers down the road and make a pact to celebrate with an all-we-can-eat burgerfest after we kick butt at the slam. We shake on it and I make my way across Pac Highway’s four lanes.
I get to the far side and something tells me to look back. I turn around.
Luis is still there.
He’s jumping up and down making the circle with his arm extended. He’s laughing and shouting like a nut case. I can’t hear him over all the traffic, but I know what he’s saying.
I make the circle and shout back at him.
“Three hundred and sixty degrees, baby! Three hundred and sixty degrees!”
ANOTHER SHOE DROPS
THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
I’m in US history waiting for class to start. I’m smiling like an idiot, thinking about how great the slam’s gonna be. How Luis and I are gonna blow everyone away. How all morning he’s been making the circle in class every time I look at him. He’s been pumping himself up. Pumping me up.
Ms. Nguyen walks to the front of class and Luis still isn’t in his seat. The bell rings. She gives us our assignment, and kids get to work.
I hear a psssst behind me and this asshole, Cooper, whispers, “You hear what happened to your buddy?”
I shrug.
“He’s with the rest of them cholos. Fight off campus at lunch. Across the street. Blacks versus Mexicans. Cops broke it up. They all got suspended for a week.” Cooper laughs. Mrs. Nguyen shushes him.
I feel like I’m gonna throw up.
We have this simmering Black versus Latino thing at Puget. It’s stupid to call it that. It’s only a couple kids on each side. They fight over territory—the bathrooms. They fight over who disrespected whom, and someone looked at my girlfriend, and crap like that. It’s stupid.
I guess the whole thing finally boiled over.
I don’t know if Cooper is full of shit. I don’t know if Luis is involved, and I don’t know if he’ll be suspended, but, come on. Gangster kids are always talking about “having each other’s back.”
He isn’t in either of our afternoon classes.
It’s pretty obvious Luis was at the fight … with his real homies.
He made his choice.
If he isn’t there tomorrow for the slam, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.
WANNA KNOW
WALKING DOWN THE HILL toward my grandparents’ place. All I can think about is, I wanna know for sure. I wanna know if he was in the fight and if he’s suspended.
I wanna know if this whole thing is over.
I press the menu button on my phone and go to my contacts list. There’s only one: Luis Cárdenas.
I snap the phone shut and shove it back in my pocket.
If there’s something up with Luis, he’ll call me. This slam is too big of a deal to him. If there’s something going on—if he can’t make it—he’ll call.
Fuck it.
I pull the phone back out.
Ring. Ring. Ring and ring.
Hey, Luis here. Can’t pick up. Leave a message.
“It’s Sam. Just wondering what’s up. We’re practicing tonight, right? We should hook up one last time just to make sure we got this thing. Call me.”
I hang up and walk.
And wait.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
FRIDAY MORNING.
Puget High School.
Five minutes before the bell.
No Luis.
He never called me back. I haven’t seen him since Wednesday morning, before the fight. He’s clearly suspended.
I had held out hope that somehow he’d show.
You’d think I would have learned by now.
I’ve got years of practice with this hoping thing.
What I’ve learned is people are either there for you or they’re not there for you.
And no bunch of hoping is gonna change that.
So here I am.
Alone with a choice to make. Should I go to Cassidy’s and watch the other kids do their thing and sit there pissed off at myself—and at Luis?
Or should I get lost?
The bell rings.
I take off running.
I’m out the front door, and think I’m in the clear. Then Carter sticks his head out the office window.
“Hey, where are you going, Sam? There’s a special delivery for you in the office. Come pick it up and head to class.”
I trudge back inside the building and into the office. Carter hands me a CD and a note. The note reads
Hey, Sam,
Sorry I can’t be there. I hope you can forgive me. I can’t really explain what’s going on, but I’ll tell you all about it soon. I know you’re not going to want to do this thing by yourself, but I think you should. Do it for me. Do it for yourself. We worked too hard on this. I recorded my part on CD, so I’ll be there with you. Just press play and do your thing, man! You’re going to be great!
Your brother in slam,
Luis
Why doesn’t he come out and say he’s suspended?
As mad as I am, there’s something about the note that makes it okay.
So before I know it, I’m walking to Cassidy’s, CD in hand, running the lines of the poem in my head.
I pull the door open. It’s dark in there.
Cassidy has replaced the fluorescent lights with candles. There’s a spotlight outlining a stage. A music stand is set up for people to put their poems on. There’s cookies and juice. There’s coffee! It doesn’t look anything like our class.
Cassidy strides my way with a huge smile on her face. “Sam, my man. I’m looking forward to hearing what you got.”
It’s wishful thinking on her part. She has no idea about the poem.
But she says it like she knows.
“Grab a cup o’ joe. Sit back and enjoy. Hey, where’s your partner in crime?”
“I dunno.”
Cassidy hollers, “All right, gang!” She lays out the ground rules. “Listen respectfully. Fill out a reflection for each poem—respectfully. Stand up tall and speak into the mic like you deserve your classmates’ adoration. And you’ll get it. I promise you.”
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