I go sit on my bed and cry and hold Hops the Kangaroo tight.
22:31
The phone rings and jolts me out of my tears. I scramble as fast as I can to my mom’s room to pick up the phone. Her eyes blink open.
I hear Wolf’s voice. “First, don’t say anything to alert your mom that there’s a problem. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say casually.
My mom is looking at me with half-open eyes. I turn away so that she can’t see my own red and swollen eyes.
“It’s Wolf,” I tell her. “It’s fine.”
It’s not fine and I’m mad at her, but I don’t want her to get up.
“Meet me in the trench at twenty-three thirty,” Wolf says. “Bring any provisions available. Also, grab as many Ziplocs as you can.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I say, trying to sound like he’s not being a big weirdo. I don’t know why he has to have a plan for everything instead of just telling me what’s going on.
We hang up and I tell my mom that Wolf wanted to let me know he was okay.
23:04
There is finally silence in the house. I creep around in my socks and find my way by the lavender light in the hallway that helps the plants grow. I open the cupboard beneath the sink and grab the whole box of plastic Ziploc bags. My mom’s going to kill me for this. She hates when we waste them, but I don’t care what she says anymore.
Very slowly, I crack open the fridge door. Wolf’s in luck. There’s a big hunk of turkey pastrami for sandwiches. I slip it into my duffel bag and grab a half-full container of margarine. I crack open the freezer door and pull out a bag with five and a half frozen bagels. This should do it. Even if Wolf’s pulling an all-night plan, he can’t eat this much. I fill my canteen with water and throw it in the bag, too.
I exit through the back door because it’s quieter. I toss my stuff into the trench, and then lower myself down beside it. I look up at the sky and wait. The city lights blur all but a couple of stars. Even if it is muddy in the trench, it still feels better down here in the dirt. I’m glad I’m out of the house and away from my mom. Maybe this is how my dad feels. Why did she have to be so mean to him?
23:47
Ugh. Wolf’s late. I’m going to kill him. He’s my best friend, but I’m going to kill him. When is he going to get here—
I hear the mourning dove call and Wolf jumps down into the trench. He’s wearing his full fatigues and cap. He’s got a duffel bag over his shoulder that looks too heavy for him to carry. A drip of sweat trickles down his face.
“It’s too hot for all those clothes,” I complain, tired and frustrated.
He ignores me. “Sergeant Salazar?”
“Yes, Captain McCann,” I say, yawning.
“I will be departing at zero zero fifteen hours,” he states, and turns away from me.
I jump up. “Departing where?”
“Across Los Angeles and out to the ocean,” Wolf says, his voice emotionless. “Look.” He pulls out a flashlight and a map and traces the wash south with his finger, through Pico Rivera, Downey, Lakewood, Long Beach.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“It’s time for me to go,” he explains.
“The cops tried to get you?!” I gasp. “Why didn’t you call? I would’ve come to help.”
“No, they haven’t come yet,” he admits, as he starts zipping and unzipping pockets on his jacket and pants and stuffing supplies from the trench into them.
“Then there’s no reason to go anywhere,” I argue.
“There’s something else,” he whispers, and looks at me.
I’m scared. “What is it?”
He gulps. “My dad and his girlfriend are getting married.”
“So?!” I exclaim.
“So, they’re happy together. But I’m not. I’m not part of it.” He lifts his cap and wipes his eyes. “I don’t want to be part of it, and I cause a lot of trouble, so it’s better if I leave.”
“It’s not better, Wolf.” I’m getting mad.
I flip on my flashlight and catch sight of a tear coming out of his eye. He pushes the flashlight down fast. “I’m not crying,” he says.
“I know,” I say, because that’s what he wants me to say. I try to reason with him. “You can’t carry this stuff all the way to the ocean.”
“I’ve already planned this out. I’m going to rig my duffel bag to the old fence—to my raft—and pull it down the middle of the wash,” Wolf explains.
“The sheriffs are always circling the city, Wolf. They’d like nothing better than to catch you and drive over to your home and make a whole big deal out of it. And then your dad would threaten to take your army uniform away again, or worse.” I say, desperate. “And it would be a big mess, okay? A big mess!”
“No, they won’t,” he answers angrily. “They won’t catch me. They won’t find me in the wash. By morning, I’ll be halfway to the Pacific.”
Wolf can’t go like this. He can’t leave and never come back. He can’t do that. He’ll get hurt out there where nobody knows him.
“Why do you want to go to the ocean anyway?” The longer I keep him talking, the longer he is with me and not gone.
Wolf wipes his tears away and takes a quick breath. “Whenever my mom got too upset, she would pack a picnic and drive me and my dad to the ocean with her,” he explains. “That’s where you go when you’re too upset.”
I’m picking at the mud on the side of the trench wall. I rub my hands in it. I try to think of the words that will keep my friend from leaving.
“Wolf, you can’t find your mom at the ocean,” I tell him. “She wouldn’t want you to be there all by yourself.” I smell the mud on my fingers and look up at the dark sky. “Besides, we could get our parents to drive us there on a Saturday.”
I take a deep breath. “Actually,” I say, “I think the closest you can ever be to your mom is right here inside our trench, inside the dirt,” I swallow. “I mean, it’s where we come from. And it’s where we go after we die.”
“I’m not dead, Alex.” Wolf’s voice grows cold. “I just need a different place to live.”
“I didn’t mean that. Ugh.” I get so frustrated. Wolf makes his plans and doesn’t listen. I throw a rock up and out of the trench.
Wolf stands up and brushes the dirt from his pants. “Sergeant Salazar, I have to head out now.”
I won’t take this as an answer. I try again with my words. “The dirt makes all the plants grow. The dirt is where we’ve been safe all summer. The dirt is where everyone leaves us alone. We can stay here together, Wolf. The dirt is ours.”
And even though these are the best words I’ve ever come up with, Wolf is still climbing up the ladder.
“Wait!” I shout. “Then I’m coming with you.”
chapter 15
SET SAIL
Tuesday morning. 00:07.
“You can’t come with me,” Wolf argues. “What about your mom?”
“My mom betrayed me,” I say.
His eyes get big. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“I found out where the deed came from.” I fill Wolf in on how my mom tried to deny that it was my dad’s phone number. Then stopped me from calling him. Then told me he didn’t want to see us. Then how Johnny knew the deed was my dad’s, how my dad wanted to give us Aztlán, but it wasn’t actually real, and then my mom got mad at him for losing our money, and then she threw him out.
“Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s awful.”
“Take me with you as far as Downey. Then I’ll climb out and find my dad, and you can go on your way.” I hold my hand out to him. “Agreed?”
He thinks about it for a moment, and then reaches out to shake my hand. “Agreed, Sergeant Salazar. Do you need to get anything from the house?”
“Nope.” I’ve been carrying the little paper with my dad’s information on it in my pocket ever since the day in the kitchen with my mom. That’s all I n
eed. “Let’s go.”
We hoist Wolf’s stuff over the chain-link fence and let it drop down into the wash. The raft is the hardest part, so we lift it together, balance it on top of the fence, and wait for Wolf to scramble over and grab it again on the other side. Once we have all the stuff down inside the wash, Wolf begins to secure the supplies to the raft with ropes and bungee cords.
He takes the Ziploc bags I gave him and puts inside a photo of his mom and dad, his wallet, his school ID card, and his camera. He double-bags them to keep them from getting wet or messed up.
He ties one of the ropes from the raft around his waist and throws me the other. I secure it around me, and we give the raft a push into the little algae stream. It begins to move slowly with the current, and we walk ahead of it, on either side of the water, pulling it along.
Wolf looks over at me and smiles. “I’m glad you’re coming with me.”
Tuesday morning. 01:07.
“One beat that’s a short low tone, then a long one that goes up and down, and then another couple low tones. Like this.” Wolf whistles.
He is teaching me how to make a mourning dove call. It sounds really cool and loud down in the wash in the middle of the night. We whistle it together, but mine sounds fake. I think my mouth’s not big enough for all the notes.
When there’s a rock in the wash, each of us gives it a good hard kick, and then we watch it skip and dance thirty feet ahead of us, bouncing off the concrete walls. A couple of times we’ve even managed to make a rock hop the stream to the other side, so we can pass it back and forth between us.
We come upon a tree branch with a big clump attached to it.
I turn away, because what if it’s a dead rat or something?
“Hold up,” Wolf says, and reaches down for the clump. It turns out to be a handful of algae.
“Ewww, gross. It’s all slimy.”
Wolf smiles up at me, his hands full of green gunk.
“I’m not touching you ever again.” I back up.
He laughs and hurtles it at the wall. It splats a bunch of mud and falls down.
“Yessss!” he cries.
I look at the muddy wall and think of the notebook he threw—splat—at the principal’s face during the assembly in March. Nobody yelled, nobody cheered, nobody made a sound, besides the principal’s loud, “Owwww! Crap!” Which was kind of like swearing, but none of the kids gave him a hard time on account of the blood that started pouring out of his nose. The principal had been in charge of a room of two hundred kids, and then a second later, he was bent over, dripping bright red blood.
The gym teacher jumped up and yanked Wolf out of the auditorium. That prank got him kicked out of school for, like, the hundredth time, but they called the police for this one, and they didn’t let him come back to finish the year. That’s why Wolf spends his days at the library.
“Hey, Wolf,” I ask. “Why did you throw the notebook at the principal anyway?”
“You heard him,” he says. “He accused me of talking in the back.”
“Yeah, I know, but he always goes around the room, asking kids to be quiet.”
“But I wasn’t talking,” Wolf says defensively.
“I mean,” I look at Wolf and say tentatively, “you were actually talking. I was sitting right next to you.”
“Okay, yeah, but a lot of kids were talking, and I wasn’t talking any louder than them.”
“Well, that’s true,” I concede.
“He yelled out, ‘Wolf, keep quiet!’ in front of all those kids,” he says. “And I could hear them start laughing.” He kicks at another rock, which smacks against the wall and rolls back over into the stream.
He looks away from me so I can’t see his face. “I was so sick of hearing kids laugh at me. I was so sick of going to school and pretending like everything was normal and my mom wasn’t dead.” Wolf pauses. “And I didn’t want to keep quiet anymore.”
I feel so bad for him. I want to go to him and pat his back or something. I start crossing the little algae stream, but when the rope from the raft tugs at me, I slip and fall.
“Oh, yuck!” I shout.
I’m lying flat on my stomach in the slime with water streaming through my pants and shirt. I roll over, sit up, and look at my drenched body.
Wolf starts giggling. “I’m never gonna touch you again.”
I’m fully grossed out, but his giggling starts up my giggling. He unloops the rope from his belt and does his Dodgers slide into the stream next to me, splashing any part of me that wasn’t already wet.
“Argh!” I yell, turning my head away from the spray.
He jumps on me and we start wrestling, rolling on the concrete together. He pins me down, and then I push with all my strength and knock him off me.
I lie on top of him. “I’m stronger than you, Wolf.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says. “But only if you keep your training up.” He nudges me, and I move off him.
We sit in the water together, looking at each other and laughing. My body is finally cooling down in the early-morning desert air.
“You could’ve just told me you wanted to stop for a swim,” Wolf jokes.
“Shut up.”
“You should’ve seen yourself. Full-fledged belly flop.” He giggles some more.
I laugh with him for a bit. Then I look down and see my left nipple poking up a little and my right nipple puffing way out under my wet shirt.
“Oh no!” I exclaim, and cover my chest quickly with my arms.
Wolf pulls back, startled. “What’s wrong?”
My face goes red. “Nothing.”
“No, something’s wrong,” he says.
“It’s embarrassing,” I answer.
“More embarrassing than your belly flop?” he asks incredulously.
“Yeah,” I answer with certainty.
“Wow,” he says. “Tell me anyway.”
“No way.”
“Look, you should tell me,” he insists.
“Why?”
“Let’s see,” he says, holding up his fingers to count. “Number one, I’m your best friend. Number two, I just told you why I threw the book at the principal. Number three, it’s dark, and it’s easier to tell things in the dark.”
“Okay,” I say. “But don’t laugh.”
“Not a chance.”
I lower my arms and look down at my swollen chest.
“What?”
“Look at them,” I say.
“Look at what?”
“Oh, come on, can’t you see how big my chest has gotten?”
“Oh, huh. I hadn’t noticed,” he says, staring more closely at me. “I can see that one.” He points at the right nipple.
“Jeez, don’t point.”
“Oh, sorry,” he says, lowering his finger. “Hey, how come one’s bigger than the other?”
“I don’t know!”
“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” he says. “I was just curious.”
“I know. It’s okay,” I say. “I wish I knew more about what’s happening to me.”
“Well, it’s probably fine,” he says. “They probably just grow when they’re ready. I was reading about orangutan development during lactation and they say that—”
“I’m not an orangutan, Wolf.”
“Yeah, I know, but they’re primates like us, and there might be some facts that are helpful.” He stops talking when he sees I have my hands over my face.
“Wolf, I don’t know what I am. If I’m a girl or a boy? If I’ll be a woman or, or, a man or what!”
“So?”
“Well, these are coming.” I point to my chest. “And then I won’t be able to hide them, and I’ll have to be a woman.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” he says. “We’re animals. Some animals are boys or girls and some aren’t. And some change. It’s not such a big deal. Like seahorses, when they want to have babies—”
“Wolf, it might not be a big deal to animals, but it’s a
big deal to people.”
“Oh, yeah, you could be right.” He nods.
“What am I going to do?” I ask.
“Hmm, I’m not very good with people, so I don’t know what to say about them.” He pauses to consider the situation. “But I don’t think a chest growing big automatically makes you a woman. It must be up to you. If you decide to be a guy, then your chest, whatever it looks like, will be a guy’s chest because it’s yours. And if you decide to be a woman, well, then logically, it’s the opposite.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he says. “Scientifically, it would be impossible for someone outside of your body to know what your body feels like inside. You’re the only one that would have access to that data. I could find a library in Long Beach and try to get some more material on it, though.”
“Oh yeah? I’d really like that,” I say, standing up and brushing bits of leaves and dirt off my pants.
He stands up beside me and walks over to grab his rope. He ties it around himself and we continue on our trek.
Tuesday morning. 04:36.
My legs are dying when Wolf suddenly stops and studies the bridge above us. “This is it.” Wolf points. “Florence Avenue.”
“We made it?”
“Yep. You climb up this ladder,” he says as he studies the map, “then head east on Florence, south on Paramount, east again on Third, and then south on Myrtle. It’s really only a mile or two more.”
“So I’m going left and then right? And then left and right again?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hmm.”
“Shoot, I’d give you my map, but I kind of need it.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find it.” I lower my head. “Wolf, you’re my best friend. You better be careful. And you better write to me so that I know where you live and that you’re okay.”
“I’ll send you a postcard as soon as I make it to the beach,” he promises.
The Street Belongs to Us Page 10