Wanted

by Heidi Ayarbe

  He hands me a paper with his picks—a four-game parlay, all-or-nothing bet on Wild Card Weekend—money-lining each game. So rookie.

  I shake my head. “Listen. Back in middle school, I did the parlay-card thing. This, though, is just green. Nobody money-lines four different games.”

  “I make the bet, you place the bet. Like I really need advice from a chick about how to bet.”

  “Gambling 101, Nim. This is pretty basic stuff.” And annoying. “You can’t cover the losses anymore. You’re already several hundred plus in the hole. You lose, I lose, which shouldn’t be the case—as you stated, you make the bet, I place it. But here’s the thing. You can’t cover it, and I want my money back.”

  I take the normal vig with all my clients, but Nimrod is the pain in the ass who bets too much. His losses never used to affect my take, but lately, I don’t even get the juice and have gotten into a bad habit of fronting him cash I know he’s not good for. No odds in my favor there.

  I straighten my back, moving in close, trying not to gag on the musty smell of his cologne. My throat burns like I’m drinking tree bark and moss. “I won’t front you the cash for this bet.”

  “It’s my cash, my bet. I’m good for it.” Nim pushes past me. I lose my balance and stumble backward, falling from halfway up the bleachers to the ground. My diaphragm spasms. I gasp for air.

  Nimrod stands over me, framed by the heatless sun, making him look like some kind of Greek god—his perfectly waved hair on fire. He spits; thick phlegm splatters on the grass next to me and spatters into my ear.

  He pulls the truck title out of his wallet and drops it next to me. “Place the fucking bet. Tonight,” he says, then turns on his heel and leaves, Medusa trailing behind him. I try not to panic because it’s been approximately forty seconds since oxygen has reached my brain. And you can’t bookie when you’re brain dead.

  I close my eyes, willing my body to start respiratory function. Sometimes I wonder if I’m like the tree falling in the forest.

  If nobody sees Michal, will she exist?

  “Hey. You okay?” I open my eyes. The kind-of-new guy at school, one of those instantly popular fit-ins, stands over me in all my humiliated glory. I’m still trying to catch my breath when he reaches his hand down to help me sit up. “You okay?” he repeats. He pulls his baseball cap off and pulls me into a sitting position, squatting down beside me, placing his hand on my back, dusty blond hair flopping into his eyes.

  I’m caught between not breathing because, physiologically, it’s impossible at this moment and not breathing because the hand resting on my back makes me feel like I did when I licked a wall socket on a dare when I was little. He squints, trying to block the sun from his eyes. “Should I call someone? Are you, like, choking on something? Can you breathe?”

  I manage to nod.

  “Which one? Choking or breathing?”

  I hold up two fingers.

  He hands me a bandana to wipe my face. “You okay?”

  My diaphragm decides to cooperate and contract to let air in. I gasp for breath and rest my head between my knees, tucking Nimrod’s truck title in my pocket, hoping I haven’t turned that awful purple-red color. “I’m okay. Just clumsy.”

  Javier comes over and crouches next to the new guy.

  I’m feeling incredibly exposed. Hard not to do, considering they found me sprawled on my back on the third-base line. I undoubtedly have a grass stain on my head from sliding off the bench after I lost all respiratory function. So my existence takes place in two spheres: bookmaking and humiliation.

  “Josh,” the first guy says, shaking my hand, smiling wide, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth, perfect for first-date lettuce disasters. “I’m new here. You might’ve seen me around. Specifically in your Creative Writing and Government classes.”

  Yeah. I’ve seen him. Who hasn’t? “Yeah. I’ve seen you around.”

  “Hey, Mike, whatcha doing sprawled on the third-base line?” Javier says, taking my other hand in his. Together he and Josh pull me to my feet.

  I brush wet grass and dirt off my jeans.

  Javier’s a cool guy. He’s placed a couple of bets. The only time he ever won, he invited me out to Dairy Queen to celebrate, as if I were personally responsible for the Giants beating the Mariners.

  I sigh, running fingers through my hair and pulling it back into a ponytail.

  “Binder placing a bet?” Javier points to Nim’s looming frame in the distance. He and Medusa are working it in some spontaneous feel-up moment—probably the only time they’ll get until after school. “He do this to you?”

  Josh points to where Nimrod was standing. “That guy pushed you down? And spit on you? What the . . . ? That’s just wrong.” The small scar across Josh’s left eyebrow practically glows white in his red-flushed face.

  “Save your indignation for when you lose. You here for Sanctuary?”

  Javier turns back to me. “Yeah. Josh wanted in on something.”

  “You’re late.”

  “We mixed up meeting places. My bad.” Javier scuffs his shoe across the grass. “Listen. I’ll let you two figure it out. I’ve got to finish some calc before Mrs. Hensler gives me infinite detention.”

  I laugh.

  We watch Javier head toward school. “Wild Card Weekend. I’m not really into new clients,” I say. “I’m not interested in consoling beginners—or losers.”

  “Not a beginner.” Josh flashes a smile. “I don’t lose.”

  “Cocky. So how much are you throwing away?”

  “You’ll take my bet.”

  “I don’t have all morning.” I shrug, waiting for the typical I want to put twenty dollars on the Raiders winning. After which I’ll have to explain the Raiders aren’t even playing.

  “First scoring play. San Diego Chargers.”

  I push my bangs out of my eyes and nod. “Nice.”

  He hands me a hundred dollars. “Want in on it? You can match my bet and we’ll make loads more.” He’s smiling, a half-moon toothy smile that makes him look utterly dorky or adorable.

  “I don’t gamble. I just make my money off of those who do.”

  “It’s a good high,” he says.

  I shrug. “So is having a nice bank account.” Which I would, if it weren’t for the fact I have a few credit cards I need to pay off. I look down at my Old Gringos. Maybe three hundred was going overboard. But they’re pretty sweet.

  “You like the sidelines, huh? Don’t play the game.”

  “Watching you guys suffer is entertaining enough.” I don’t know if this is a challenge, an observation, or him just being a total pendejo.

  “Suffer with me.”

  “Are you for real?” I head to the building, Josh matching my stride. “What is that? Suffer with me? I mean, hello. Did you get that from some soap?”

  Josh bursts out laughing. “Yeah. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “Trying?”

  “Anyway, we can watch the game together this weekend. At Bully’s.”

  I shake my head. “Nah. I’m good.”

  “Wish me luck, then.”

  “It’s bad luck for a bookie to wish somebody good luck.”

  We walk into the building, a wave of heat with the familiar sweat socks/school caf burritos smell blasting us.

  “See you soon,” Josh says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Like in ten minutes in Creative Writing.” I watch him walk down the hall, talking to practically everybody he walks by. He turns around and sees me watching him—too late for me to turn away. He nods and shouts, “Play the game.”

  It bothers me that he already knows about my sideline life.

  Chapter 2

  Doping: High School Sports and That Chick Who Smells Like Testosterone in Geometry Class

  Valuing Diversity? Yeah. Right. Our Fragmented Student Body

  I TUCK PB & J UNDER MY ARM.

  It looks like Seth and his underground paper are back in business. Seth walks by and n
ods, shoving PB & J into everyone’s hands, slipping it in lockers. He’s probably already papered everybody’s cars in the parking lot. I hope it doesn’t snow.

  PB & J had to go way underground for a couple of months because around November, Seth wrote an “unconfirmed” article about an unidentified fungus in the locker room. The Health Department made the school rid the locker rooms of fungi that may or may not have been there.

  It cost the district about five grand.

  Kids call Seth “WikiLeaks.”

  I weave my way through various crowds of students. The theater group is doing a scene from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the courtyard in the alleyway that links the two buildings of classes. From an architectural point of view, the place looks more like an oval-shaped, two-story mall than a high school. They’re trying to promote their spring production, as if high school alone weren’t dramatic enough.

  I inhale. I smell like Clearasil. Maybe I should invest in a good perfume. It’s hardly likely Josh, or any other guy for that matter, will find Clearasil sexually stimulating.

  Josh: not even the same league. Good six-word memoir.

  When I open my locker, an avalanche of books falls on top of me. I pull out my wrinkled Government report and try to iron it on my thigh. The bell rings. The hallways begin to clear out. Mocho heads toward me, disbanding from the sea of blue and khaki, looking almost normal alone, instead of like a cliché—the way he looks when he’s with the pack.

  We practically grew up together, living in the same trailer park. Pre-Cordillera, Moch wanted to be a pro baseball player or be like Sy Hersh—some Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. We had an aluminum can–collecting business. Moch bought a mini tape recorder with his earnings to conduct lengthy interviews with the people from the neighborhood. I usually just bought candy. I wonder if he still has those tapes.

  Funny that Moch and I both went illicit.

  Mocho helps pick up the pile of papers, books, and magazines. I blush when he flips through my dog-eared copy of Cosmo that was inconspicuously tucked into my Government book. He hands me the magazines. I shove them into my locker, pile the books, and keep them balanced until I can slam the door shut without all of them falling out again. “Thanks for helping me out.” The books thud against the locker door. “I could’ve been buried alive.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says. He looks away, absently picking a Yoda sticker off some kid’s locker.

  My back and ribs hurt from falling off the bleachers this morning. I pull out my Creative Writing folder and write my two memoirs along with one about a sideline life. Falling off the bleachers and oxygen deprivation have made me downright prolific. Just call me Proust. I kind of laugh to myself.

  Mrs. Brooks is on a memoir kick. Every day we’re supposed to write six words that sum up a feeling, a moment—anything that tells her what our day has been like. Every day I scramble to write six words that will get me a passing grade. Today I’m compelled to write:

  Oops. Got off at wrong life.

  But I don’t think that’d get me a passing grade and would probably get me a trip to see Mrs. Valencia, the feel-good counselor who has made everybody read The Secret. “Attitude, attitude, attitude, sweetheart. What you seek is right before your eyes.”

  It feels like every time I look for something, it’s back at what could’ve been if Mom were around.

  I write: Wanted: Happiness. Lost in Great Basin.

  Moch is picking the sticker out from under his nail.

  “Were you out there this morning?” I couldn’t see across the field without my glasses, so the entire group looked like a smear of blue and tan—smudged chalk.

  “Yeah.”

  “So when somebody pushes me off the bleachers, you just sit tight. Is that what happened when Pacho got his jaw broken by Garbage Disposal? You just sat tight?” I say. “Thanks a lot, Moch.”

  He cocks his head to the side, thick eyebrows drawn together in a deep scowl. “I never leave a hermano.”

  I know what he’s saying is true because last week, after Pacho was beaten badly, Moch came to school with bandaged hands. But it bothers me that I don’t count. Pacho does.

  Mocho glares at me with glassy eyes. I shift my weight from foot to foot. Silence falls over us, like we’re in a bubble.

  It’s been a funky morning. I feel a lump in my throat.

  Moch bites down on his lower lip and grunts.

  I swallow back the ache. “Moch,” I say, looking around the hallway, “you know it’s totally okay to string words together in a coherent sentence. It doesn’t make you less scary.”

  He glares for just a second, then cracks a smile. His teeth have more gold than the Vatican, but he still looks ten years younger than he probably wishes he does. “Don’t say that kind of shit, Michal. You could get real messed over for that.” His scowl is gone and he looks worried. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” I can feel Nimrod’s thick fingers on my shoulder.

  “Walk to class together?” Moch asks.

  I nod. Moch, though he tries to hide it, is one of the best in Creative Writing. He writes six-word memoirs about everything you wouldn’t expect. He writes about papaya sunsets and shaved coconut snow, childhood mud pies like bubbling pots of mole—a spicy chocolate life.

  Then one day he wrote about the way blood congeals on the floor. Mrs. Brooks hasn’t called on him to share since.

  Plus he’s gone a lot lately. A lot. I refrain from reading the obituaries most days because I’m afraid before long he’ll be there and his poetry will be gone, too. Most of us could write his memoir: Bang! Wasted life. Anger turned cliché.

  “What are you doing hanging with Ellison?” Moch asks, interrupting my thoughts, doing his limp-walk, swagger thing.

  I wink at him. “Do you have some kind of hip dysplasia or something?”

  “Michal, c’mon.” He stands a little taller, though. His eyes are smiling. It’s nice to see he’s still Moch somewhere under there.

  I liked him a lot better when we collected aluminum cans but don’t think this is the right moment to take a walk down memory lane. I’ve already pushed my luck to the limits this morning.

  “Josh Ellison? He’s a client. He’s in our Creative Writing class. Nice.”

  “Rich,” Mocho says.

  “He drives a Prius, yeah. Probably not destitute.” And just placed a hundred-dollar bet.

  “He could buy Nevada and sell it tomorrow. His dad’s the one who brought in Ellison Industries,” Moch says.

  “That Ellison? Save-Nevada-from-bankruptcy Ellison? Job-creator, tax-paying model-citizen, next-governor Ellison?”

  “He’s just a trust-fund tool, probably getting an airplane for his eighteenth birthday.”

  “So what?” I say. I don’t imagine Josh and his family have ties to the Carson City gang scene. And Josh doesn’t look like a meth head.

  Before the bell rings, he says, “Ma asks about you. Come by the house for dinner this week.” There’s something behind the invitation, something he’s not telling me.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  Moch shrugs. “Come by. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We walk into the classroom. Josh is sitting where he’s sat ever since he came—three chairs from the back in the third row.

  Yeah. I’ve noticed.

  He smiles when I pass him. I nod in his direction.

  Moch glares at Josh, then me, returning to his monosyllabic gang persona.

  Mrs. Brooks asks who wants to share a memoir, her hand hovering over the seating chart to pick at random. I look around the class, a little desperate for somebody to volunteer. Mrs. B’s bony finger circles the paper, then descends like a vulture. The entire class is waiting in dread anticipation. There’s no telling who’ll be crucified. “Seth Collins,” she says. “Six words. Go.”

  Seth exhales. He’s a light bettor, mostly to get the scoop on sports for PB & J and Carson High Tribune—the “legit” paper he edits. I’m
a little surprised he didn’t go this morning. He clears his throat and says, “‘Sanctuary. Pleasure. Pain. Cash up front.’”

  Mrs. B taps her chin. “Cash up front?” she echoes. “What a rich phrase—so open to interpretation.”

  The class is laughing, heads buried in their notebooks.

  I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks and slump in my chair. A few others volunteer, satiating Mrs. B’s need to tap into the affective domain before plunging into an activity on meaningful thesis statements.

  I close my notebook, hiding my memoirs—glad Mrs. B doesn’t ask me to read out loud because I don’t want Josh or Moch or anybody else to know I don’t have poetry.

  Others’ bets. Others’ lives. Silent observer.

  Chapter 3

  JANUARY 11 IS ALWAYS A

  sucky day. It doesn’t make sense to celebrate somebody’s birthday when they’re already dead. But I’d rather remember my mom alive than dead. Kind of silly missing someone after all these years. I hardly knew her anyway.

  I brush the thought away. It’s probably a mix between Josh and Moch and Nim. The tingle of the morning bets and almost getting caught by Randolph was long gone by the time I had to turn in my Creative Writing memoirs.

  I stand in the middle of the hall, holding my books, and watch as everybody streams around me, undisturbed, like I’m a giant stone in the middle of a river. The river changes course.

  I stay the same.

  The halls clear out and I’m still standing there—untouched. Invisible.

  I watch the parking lot clear out. I sit at the tables in front of the media center to finish all my homework so that I can take care of business at home—have the weekend free.

  For what?

  I should feel alive with a backpack full of bets and Wild Card Weekend coming up, four games and a list of hopes—yards run, yards thrown, sacks, winners, losers, you name it. But I don’t.

  I don’t care who wins or loses—ever. It’s Deism. I set the bets in motion and sit back to watch how things turn out. It’s like having control because it doesn’t matter how the game ends—I’ve already stacked the bets the way I need them to make the money I need to make. So I watch my clients—how they suffer, cry, feel like they’re invincible because of one day of good luck.