The Thing You're Good At

by Lesley Choyce

  I left the library feeling pretty hopeless. Lotz and his stupid word. Stupid laws that didn’t allow people to live where they wanted to live. There should be a law, I kept thinking, some law that says if you only have two real friends in the world, no one should be allowed to take one of them away.

  The next day I sat with Maria at the back of Mr. Lotz’s class. I didn’t want to tell her about what I’d read in the library or say anything about her leaving in case she started crying. Instead, I wrote her a note saying I would always, always be her friend. I passed it to her just before the bell rang. She read it and smiled.

  As soon as class started, Lotz of Stories started talking to us like he was bursting. Like he’d had one too many Red Bulls. He got going about Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. And most of it went right over our heads. But the guy had so much enthusiasm. I think we all sat there a little stunned, even Leo and Toe. Lotz didn’t run out of steam until the bell rang again and kids started to pour out of his classroom. I heard Leo say on the way out, close enough to Lotz that he would hear, “Man, I’m glad that’s over. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack or something.”

  I was one of the last to leave, and Lotz tugged my sleeve and pulled me back.

  “So did you look it up?”

  I didn’t want to tell him I thought it was a crock of shit, so I said no.

  Lotz looked disappointed. “Okay, but carry it with you, okay? You never know what could happen.”

  I said okay, even though I had thrown the sticky note into the trash at the library. I started to walk away, but he tugged at my sleeve again. That kind of seemed weird for a teacher to do. If he’d done that to Leo, I knew Leo would have punched him right in the face.

  “Here’s the thing,” Mr. Lotz said. “I’m new at this school, and I know I don’t know much about your life or the lives of your classmates.”

  I wanted to say, That’s right. You don’t know a damn thing about us, and all your fancy ideas are wasted on us. But I didn’t.

  Lotz continued. “See, I have this theory. I think anyone, anyone, can be a success if they can find one solid thing they are good at. They just need to find that one thing and make it work for them. That’s what you need to do, Jake. Find that thing and make it work for you.”

  His words, like those words on the computer screen in the library, were just that—words. Ideas. Nothing to do with real life.

  “Why not give it a try, Jake? Figure out what it is you’re good at,” Mr. Lotz said with a big smile, “and really work at it.”

  I had to say something, I guessed. But this shiny guy, this long-winded, overly educated teacher, was living in some imaginary world that had nothing to do with me. So I told him the truth.

  “Yeah, the only problem is, Mr. Lotz, I’m not good at nothing.”

  He looked puzzled at first, deflated. But then he put his smile back on.

  “Anything,” he said. “You’re supposed to say, ‘I’m not good at anything.’” And then Mr. Lotz looked me straight in the eye and said, “Just think about it, Jake. Think about what I said.”

  Chapter Eight

  I felt bad that I had given Lotz a hard time. He seemed to have taken a real interest in me, which was both good and bad. I preferred to go unnoticed. But his words stayed with me. Not good at nothing. Not good at anything. What was the difference? I tried to think about people I knew. What were they good at, and how did they use it?

  My dad was good at complaining. And that hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

  My brother Cole was good at getting into trouble. And that got him in jail.

  My brother Luke was good at keeping to himself. And I didn’t see that doing him much good.

  My mother had been good at running away from our sorry life. Maybe that did work for her.

  Leo and Toe were good at giving people a hard time. That didn’t sound like much of a career either, but they were always pretty proud of themselves.

  And Maria? Even though I’d known her for years, she was still a bit of a mystery. I didn’t know what she was good at. She never liked to talk much about herself.

  Maybe Oscar was a better example. He was good at putting a positive spin on anything and making the best of what he had. But he was still homeless and living on the street. Although sometimes he stayed at the men’s shelter downtown.

  And me? I really didn’t know what I was good at. Nobody had ever said to me, Jakey, you’re really good at… whatever.

  Maria was waiting for me outside the school when classes ended. She looked so sad. I kept thinking about what she had told me and wondered if she would really have to move away.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey, Jake. How was your day?”

  “Like all the rest,” I answered, but then I thought about what Oscar had said about each day being an adventure or something. So I told her about my chat with Mr. Lotz after history class.

  “Why do you think he said that to you and not the whole class?” she asked as we walked down the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think I know what you’re good at,” she said with a hint of a smile.

  “What?”

  “You’re good at...” She paused and looked up at the sky. “You’re good at helping people.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Who have I ever really helped?”

  “Me, for one. You’re always there for me when I’m feeling down.”

  “That’s not a skill.”

  “Well, I think it is. And there’s Oscar. You like helping him out, right? And Luke. You’re always looking out for Luke.”

  “That’s nothing. He’s my brother.”

  “But I’ve watched you, Jake. You do things for people sometimes, and you don’t expect anything in return. Not a lot of people are like that. Most people I know only do something good for a person if they expect to be paid for it or get something for themselves. But not you. So there. You’re good at something.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true. But thanks for saying it. You make me sound like a saint. Believe me, I’m no saint.”

  “I should call you Saint Jake.”

  “Saint Loser is more like it.”

  Maria gave me a soft punch on the shoulder. Right then I noticed a pickup truck coming up alongside us. The brakes squealed as the truck came to a stop. I could hear a loud, nasty rap song playing inside. Maria looked a little scared as the driver rolled down the window.

  “Jakey,” the driver said. It was Dalton, one of Cole’s friends from back before he got sent off to prison. Dalton had been looking for trouble as much as Cole was, and I usually hadn’t wanted to know what the two of them had done together. But Dalton had always been okay to me.

  “Hey, Dalton,” I said. “Where’d you get the truck?”

  “I stole it, little man,” he said, turning down his car stereo.

  “Lookin’ to join Cole?” I asked.

  Dalton just laughed. He turned off the engine and leaned out the window. “I’m just messin’ with you, Jake. I don’t do any of that shit anymore. I bought this here truck, fair and square. Four months with the paving company. Worst four months of my life. But it got me this. You guys want a ride?”

  I looked at Maria, who still seemed a little scared, but I told her it would be okay. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been in a ride other than a bus. “Sure,” I said. I knew I could trust Dalton. “A ride would be great.”

  I walked Maria around to the passenger’s side, and we got in. The inside was a bit smelly. Old cigarette smoke and a guy who hadn’t had a bath in a while. But it was warm, and Dalton seemed really happy to have some company.

  “You guys hungry?” he asked.

  I’d shared my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich at lunch with Maria. I was hungry most days, and I knew Maria was hungrier than me. “I don’t have any money,” I said.

  “It’s on me,” Dalton said. “I still got some of that paving money left. My treat.”


  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I still feel bad about Cole, I guess. It easily could have been me. How’s he doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. We don’t really hear from him much.” I didn’t give Dalton the truth. That I was still angry at Cole and refused to talk to him on the phone or visit him.

  “Your brother getting busted was an eye-opener for me,” Dalton said. “Like a big slap of icy cold water in the face. I decided to cut myself free from all the bad stuff I could. It wasn’t easy, man. Took me a while to figure out what to do. I worked some easy-ass jobs but didn’t make much dough. Then I got on the paving crew. But just long enough to buy this. Now I’m using it to do odd jobs, haul stuff for people.”

  “How’s it working out?”

  “Well, not that good so far. I don’t know how to get the word out. And everyone I know is too poor to want to pay me to haul anything. But I’ll get there.”

  We pull up in front of McDonald’s. “Mickey D’s,” Dalton said. “Hope you guys ain’t vegetarians.”

  Chapter Nine

  Dalton had dropped out of high school a couple of years back. I just got tired of showing up every morning, is the way he explained it at the time. This didn’t really make sense to me at the time, because he didn’t really have anything else to do that I could see. As a lot of other kids like him did, he’d just hang out on the street until he found a way to get into trouble or until trouble found him.

  Cole had actually stayed in school. In fact, he’d kept giving me lectures about sticking with school and graduating. He’d even helped me with my math homework. I’d always thought of him as smarter than me. But then, robbing a store isn’t most people’s idea of smart.

  The hamburger Dalton bought for me tasted good, even though I knew it wasn’t exactly healthy. But then, when you don’t have much money and eat the same thing all the time, even a Big Mac tastes good. I watched Maria eat hers very slowly as Dalton rambled on.

  “That truck out there is the thing that’s gonna save my sorry ass,” he said. “Sure, it needs some work. But now when things at home get a little too heavy, I can just grab my keys and go sleep in my truck.”

  Dalton’s father was a mean drunk. When my father drank, he sometimes got mad, and if I was the only one around he sometimes said mean things to me, raising his voice until he was screaming. But then he would stop, and usually he’d tell me he was sorry. Dalton’s father wasn’t like that. Once he got drinking, it got ugly. And he liked to hit. Hard. So I could see why Dalton was happy about the idea of sleeping in his truck.

  When Dalton finished eating, he tapped his fingers on the table. “Gotta go,” he said, even though I doubted he had anywhere to go to. “You guys want me to take you home?”

  I looked at Maria. I could tell she liked being here. And besides, we weren’t far from home.

  “No thanks, Dalton,” I said. “Hey, man, thanks for this. Nobody’s been this nice to me for a long while.”

  “No problem, little brother. Just trying to spread the wealth.”

  After Dalton left, Maria and I just sat there in McDonald’s, saying nothing and watching people coming in and going out. Families. Real families. Mothers with little kids. Fathers with sons. “It’s just like you see on TV,” I said to Maria finally. But then I remembered Maria didn’t have a TV.

  “I bet they have problems too,” Maria said. “We all have problems.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably.” But there wasn’t much probably about it. Sure, they had problems, but not quite like mine. And not quite like Maria’s.

  I guess I had a hangdog look on my face, because she suddenly got a little devilish smile on hers, picked up a French fry and flipped it at me, hitting me in the nose.

  “Hey!” I said, totally shocked by this totally un-Maria-like move.

  “Hey,” she repeated, stifling a laugh. “Can’t we forget about our problems just for once?”

  I nodded, smiled and flipped a fry back at her.

  Eventually we got up and dumped our trays, and I walked her home. She asked me not to come in this time. On the way to my place I realized I had a bad feeling in my gut. I thought about Dalton, trying to figure out how to make a life for himself with that old truck. I thought about my own father, sticking with the crappy Fish Shack job he hated just to keep himself and his sons from ending up on the street.

  And I thought about Maria and her parents. They weren’t hurting a damn soul. Why should they be persecuted like this?

  And then I thought about what Mr. Lotz had said to me. What was I good at?

  The answer still seemed to be nothing. Maria was wrong. I couldn’t do anything to help anybody around here. Not even myself.

  Chapter Ten

  I went back to the library because I couldn’t think of any other place to go. I sat down and read some newspapers and then went on the library computer again to find out more about what was going on with this deportation of illegal immigrants. I guess this had already been going on in many parts of the country, but, like Maria said, now the authorities were cracking down on people right here in the city, right here in my neighborhood.

  I thought it was downright cruel. I mean, when you think about people just disappearing, you think about zombies coming and stealing them or criminals kidnapping them or something like that. You don’t think about cops or government agents just going into people’s homes and taking them away, never to be seen again.

  The more I read, the more it seemed that Maria’s family had just been lucky so far. But luck always runs out.

  I made a point of hanging out with Maria whenever I could. More than ever, I felt like it was my job to protect her, even though I wasn’t sure who exactly I was protecting her from. Could some government guy just show up and grab her? That sounded too crazy. This wasn’t like Nazi Germany or anything. I also asked Luke to keep a watch out for her, although I didn’t say why.

  “Yeah,” said Luke. “I’ll make sure nobody messes with her.”

  And I knew Luke would do just that.

  When a week went by and nothing happened, I started to believe that Maria and her parents were going to be okay. Maybe they were just being paranoid.

  A second week went by and nothing bad happened. I kept checking the news at the library in school when I could. It seemed like the crackdown on illegals might have slowed. Or maybe it was just old news.

  Dalton saw the two of us walking home again one day and stopped to give us a ride. He had a truckload of junk in the back. “I’m hauling it to the dump,” he said, proud as could be. “My uncle asked me to clean out his basement. If I can get more jobs like this, I’ll be all set.”

  I couldn’t see how owning an old beat-up truck could make a guy so happy, but it seemed to have changed Dalton, who had always seemed to me like a ship without a rudder.

  It was like he was reading my mind, because the next thing he said was, “This ain’t just no ordinary truck, ya know. This is a Ford F-150.”

  Maria and I both nodded like we were impressed.

  On Friday I saw a black government car parked in front of the school. At least, I thought it was a government car. It looked like something you’d see in one of those spy movies. It got me worried, but nothing came of it. Maybe it was just a black car and that was all.

  The next Wednesday, I asked Maria if she wanted to come help me do my rounds with Oscar. It was a fairly sunny day, and I thought it might help keep her mind off her worries.

  We scouted cans and bottles and stuffed them into an old backpack I’d found.

  “Things just keep getting better and better,” Oscar said when I carried my first load back to him. I told him I thought there were some good finds a few blocks over, past Duskie.

  We walked Oscar and his cart over there, and he found a whole case of empty wine bottles sitting at the curb. He inspected them one by one as he put them in his cart. “Australia, Italy, France, New Zealand,” he said. “This is just like tra
veling around the world. I sure am glad you two bought me the ticket and are here to enjoy the trip.”

  Maria looked at me and just smiled. Today was a good day.

  Chapter Eleven

  And then it happened.

  Monday rolled around, and Maria wasn’t in school. I kept hoping she’d show up late, but she didn’t. The usual kids were entering Mr. Lotz’s class for third period, but she wasn’t one of them. I stopped at Lotz’s desk and just stood there for a minute, still hoping she’d arrive.

  “What’s up, Jake?” he asked.

  “I’m worried about Maria.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Oh. Well, is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t think so. But I want to go look for her. Can I skip class?”

  He looked at me, and I could see the concern in his eyes. “Of course. Do what you have to do.”

  And I left.

  I ran as long as I could toward her apartment building, but my lungs gave out on me after a few blocks. I was still winded when I got there and struggled a bit walking up the three flights of stairs.

  The door was unlocked. I called out a hello as I walked in. But no one was there. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nothing looked much different about the place. Some dirty dishes in the sink, some papers on the table, but somehow it had the feel of a place that had been abandoned in a hurry.

  That sick feeling didn’t go away. I felt a kind of panic set in. Like my brain was freezing up. She’s gone now, and there is nothing you can do about it, I told myself. You should have taken better care of her.

  I sat down on a folding metal chair at the kitchen table. Then there was another voice. I swear it was Maria’s. Don’t give up on me, Jake. Don’t give up. But the voice was just in my head.

  I could feel my heart beating faster. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the panic. I couldn’t believe she had moved away without telling me, without even saying goodbye. I guess I thought she’d always be there for me—someone I could be around without feeling like she wanted something from me, someone I could talk to, even though we didn’t do much talking. And now this.