by Heidi Ayarbe
Irony is lost on the masses.
But something’s different. Kids aren’t just talking about the trip. They’re talking about Babylonia. Babylonia is in every breath taken, every word spoken.
Babylonia is everywhere.
I open my locker, bracing myself for the avalanche of books. Sitting on top of a semi-organized pile is a little box. I open it and find a braided leather bracelet with a silver dice charm dangling from it.
“Do you like it?” Josh is leaning against the locker next to mine. “I couldn’t find anything else really bookie-ish.”
I nod. “Thank you.” I can’t find any other words in my brain, then blurt out, “How’d you get into my locker?”
Josh smiles his crinkly-eyed, half-moon smile. He leans in, clasping the bracelet onto my wrist. “You’re not the only one with tricks up your sleeve.” His lips brush against my ear, and I’m afraid my entire body will go into some kind of nuclear reactor shutdown, like my face will glow red and my head will start spinning. He stands up. “Sorry I didn’t call yesterday. Things were . . .”
“It’s okay,” I say, fighting to keep my composure. I lower my voice. “Mr. Mendez told me Mrs. Mendez will be working in Carson?”
He nods.
“Did you say—”
He shakes his head. “Dad’s got a real skewed sense of morality, so I think bringing up the fact he illegally employs the mother of a gangster wouldn’t be beneficial to anybody.”
I nod. “So why the change?”
“The change of venue? I just asked him to. Since I never ask him for anything, I guess he decided that he could comply with my wishes.” Josh shrugs. “We don’t talk much. He’s more of a memo leaver than a dad. Every morning I wake up to a nice sticky note of instructions.” Josh pauses. “I can’t remember not waking up to that. Weird, huh. He even sticky-notes my birthday.”
“Thanks,” I say. “For asking for that.”
He skims through the paper while we walk to class. “Who’s Bronek?”
“I think that’s the point.”
“Seth’s good,” Josh says. “Really good.”
I can’t help but wonder what Moch would write. Like maybe Seth could bring him on as a columnist—“La Cordillera Beat: News from the Front Line.”
We pause at Mrs. B’s door. I see Josh inhale, holding his breath while he peeks around the corner, then rushes to his chair as silently as possible. I follow. Moch is at his desk, head lying in his arms, sunglasses on, hood up, sleeping.
Exhale.
Trinity walks in with her entourage, huffing like a fairy-tale bad guy. She’s wearing tired chic today—her hair swept up in a loose pony, matchy-matchy purple Adidas sweats and old-school Converse. She sits down, crossing her arms in front of her, ready for war.
Inhale.
Mrs. B comes in and slams her books on the desk. Moch jerks awake. “Good morning, class,” she says. “Who’s ready to share?” she asks.
The class, as usual, slips into the silence of dread.
Mrs. B claps loud—unnaturally loud for such small hands. “Wake up, kids! It’s Monday. It’s your time. Who’s up?” I wonder what Mrs. B sees from her side of the class—a group of misfits she’s trying to guide through the joys of literature; lost causes; America’s future. Who knows? She smiles. “Miss Ross, I do look forward to hearing what you have to share.” Mrs. B’s eyes narrow just a touch.
Trinity’s jaw tightens. “I have a memoir.”
Mrs. B smiles. “Please. We’d love to hear it.”
“Six words,” someone says.
The class giggles.
“Let’s have Mike keep track of my words. You know all about counting, don’t you?” Trinity flicks her tongue. If she’s trying to pull off femme fatale, it’s working. Every guy in the room is awake—incredibly awake.
“Better than Caleb, anyway,” I say. Her boyfriend lost seventy bucks this weekend. If Trinity blew Sanctuary, Caleb and his friends would probably burn her at a stake à la Salem witch trials. Caleb’s never missed Sanctuary. Ever.
“Miss Ross, we’re waiting.” Mrs. B doesn’t know what’s going on, but we’re smart enough not to continue before she catches on.
Trinity smiles, and I’d swear I just saw some kind of light glimmer off her teeth.
Bling!
She says, “Free breakfast, free health. Culture of handouts.”
“Seven words,” I say under my breath.
Moch stands up. “Can’t accept handouts with clenched fists.”
Trinity fires back, “Drug dealers. Pimps. Tattooed lawn maintenance.”
“Buyers. Hypocrites. Trust fund pampered elitists.” Moch mutters, “Yeah. Like I’d really want to go on your ski trip. I can use your ten-dollar words, too, you prissy—”
Catalina Sandoval raises her hand. If anybody goes by unnoticed more than me, it’s her. She doesn’t belong to la Cordillera or any clubs. She just studies. All the time. Every lunchtime she goes to the library. Every afternoon she stays in Mrs. Hensler’s class to get help with calculus. “My family—” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “We don’t have papers. I used to bring home food on the weekends from Brain Food.”
I blush. Everybody knows Brain Food is a program for low-income families. They give kids enough calories for the weekend. I used to take it home, too. Why am I ashamed?
Catalina’s cheeks get redder as she talks. “My parents work hard. They can’t afford doctors or new clothes or anything. I am grateful for free lunches, free health, Trinity. Last week my pa got hurt at work—a nail went all the way through his thumb. His boss sent him home, only paid him half day. We went to Clinica Olé. They took care of him. Gave him a tetanus shot, stitched his thumb up. For free.
“He went back to work the next day. He gets less money because he’s less productive. So you say he got this medicine for free. It wasn’t free, because my pa has built many of your homes here. Nothing’s free. He’d already done his time. And there are lots of places that have made sure that people get that.” She turns to Trinity. “I’m not a border bunny, spic, beaner, drywaller. I’m a four-oh student who is determined to get my papers, get legal, and prove you all wrong about who I am. I am Mexican American. I just don’t have a little piece of paper to prove it. But it’s who I am.”
We wait for Mrs. B to say something—to bring this back to Creative Writing or memoirs or something. But all she does is sit on her desk, her red nails drumming on the desk, one leg wrapped around the other, her spastic beelike energy drained.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” Trinity says, staring at Moch.
“Yes you were,” Catalina says.
Mrs. B’s finger lands on my name. “Mike? We haven’t heard from you in a while.” Mrs. B is on a Creative Writing–teacher high. It’s like six-word-memoir anger management in here.
I flip open my notebook and read. “Half Mexican. Half American. Not anyone.”
The class is quiet.
“It’s dumb,” I say. “I don’t know why I wrote that.” I bury my face in my notebook, trying to hide from Moch and everyone else.
“Your grandmother is a great lady, Mike. She’s someone to look up to,” Catalina says in a hushed voice. But one everyone listens to. I’m ashamed I never think of my grandma as someone exceptional.
“And you, Mr. Ellison? What do you have to say?”
We turn around to see his hand dangling in the air, half committed. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes, a flush of color to his cheeks.
Josh clears his throat. “Reconciling parents’ sins. Retracing. Backtracking. Sorry.”
Chapter 20
Rocky-Style Conference Championships This Weekend: Why We SHOULD Bet on Cardinals, Our Modern-Day David
Kudos to Cultural-Minded Prom Committee: Bronek Picks Theme Song: “Hříšná těla, křídla motýlí” by Some Czech Chick We’ve Never Heard Of
Sanctuary goal post 3:00 Thursday
“GOOD AFTERNOON.
Conference cham
pionships are going to be big this weekend. Especially after last weekend’s upset between the Cardinals and the Rams.”
A few groan.
“I know,” I say. “Tough break.”
“Seventy bucks tough,” says Caleb.
“Seventy? I lost fifty plus getting jacked off for the ski trip. Sixty bucks to stare at a stupid banner and get some lame-ass school Commandments. Shit. My entire paycheck. I’ve been bumming rides for the past week. I don’t have cash for gas.” Tim, body-shop guru and resident car mechanic extraordinaire grumbles.
Bet what you can lose. But I don’t tell them that. They already know. They’re here for the rush. I flip through the pages of The Gambler, thankful for the gambling-addict wisdom of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
“Open your books, please.” I read:
Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one’s head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to look upon the said thought or conception as something fated, inevitable, and foreordained—something bound to happen.
The mood has changed. Conception, reality, fate, inevitability—ideas they needed to hear. That’s probably what Moch should hear, though I don’t really know how I’d pull off pep talks with gang members.
I let the words sink in, feel how everybody’s waiting, calculating, ready to pay for a rush.
“Here are the weekend specials. I’ve got some exotics on the table. Bet on the first team to score, how they score, and if you lose the overall bet, you don’t pay the juice.”
The guys are quiet.
“It means it’s a free bet, guys. I don’t get anything. You win, great. You lose, you don’t pay me my vig.”
Some grumble.
“Never mind.” It’s hard to go beyond basic betting with this group.
Nim’s hanging out in the background. He still owes me the three fifty he bet on the Broncos. He’s a locust. A rash.
I rub my fingers and thumb together and glare at him. He holds his hands out, open palmed.
He’s a gnat.
Dean Randolph comes by and tsks. He stops. “Any of you have anything to do with that Babylonia crap?”
Sure, Dean Randolph. Josh Ellison and I broke into Mrs. Martinez’s office, stole the tickets, and distributed them. That, totally unnoticed by staff and administration, sabotaged the Pearly Gates Heavenly Ski Trip.
“Geez, Randolph,” Tim says.
“Mister,” Randolph growls.
“Mr. Randolph, a bunch of us here paid sixty bucks to go skiing. That money’s gone. I’d like to kick Babylonia’s . . . you know what.” Last weekend put Caleb back a good hundred and thirty dollars in just ski passes and bets alone.
Randolph leaves, the bets are placed, and I head to the parking lot, wondering when the gray-slush days of winter will be gone. “You gonna place a bet?” Josh asks.
I shake my head. “I’m satisfied with being a one-hit wonder.” I’m itching for the trip, the surge of adrenaline in my body. Just watching the game knowing that everything’s on the line makes it different. Alive.
“It’s worth it.”
“Nah. I like a sure thing. No bet or plan is foolproof, right?” Why am I lying?
“Except for abs-tee-nance.”
I laugh. He mimics our health teacher, Ms. Overland’s, southern drawl, pinching her lips together in that prissy-virginal-nobody-touches-my-boobies kind of way.
“Want to go to the movies tonight? Javier and some others are going.”
I automatically crawl back into that tiny safe place where I’m welcome. “That’s okay. I don’t want to be a tagalong.”
“Why would you assume that?”
I pause. “I don’t know.”
“You said you’d go to the movies with me. Remember?”
With him, not half the student body. “Sure.” After almost getting killed while hot tubbing. I don’t think I should be held responsible for anything I said that night.
“C’mon. Movies. Pizza.”
“That’s pretty normal. I haven’t ever really done normal. Where’s the danger in it?”
“We could duck into a second film—do a double feature.”
“Now you’re talking. I was afraid we’d become TV teens there for a second.”
“So, we’re on? What time can I pick you up? Six o’clock?”
“Six is good.”
“Six it is.” He walks to his car in a lanky swagger that just makes me want to . . . I mentally splash water on my face. I’ve finally made an awesome friend who’s not a gangster and I don’t think I should blow it harboring lascivious thoughts about him.
On the way home, I swing by Moch’s house. I knock several times. Nobody answers. I work my way around the house, hoping I can peek in, just to see if everything’s okay, when I hear shouting.
Behind Moch’s trailer park is a huge field we call no-man’s-land. It’s where all baseball games have been played since we lived here. It’s the place where we used to build forts and play tag, hide-and-seek . . . whatever. And now that we’re older, it’s the place where kids go to party, drink, probably get stoned. I don’t think they’re doing poetry readings out there.
I follow the voices.
A crowd has already gathered. Kids are shouting. Caleb Masterson holds up a bat and lowers it, cracking down, making a sound like somebody walking on glass. Nim’s there. Laughing. Kicking at the kid who’s curled as tight as a snail shell in the center of the group, a sickening sound coming from his throat, like he’s gurgling his tongue.
I see the flash of metal before I see Comba. Caleb falls to the ground. His varsity jacket turns black by his stomach, his hands a cartoonish red color.
Then everything goes in slow motion. Comba takes the knife, wiping the crimson blood from the blade on a patch of filthy snow. He scans the crowd that’s now gone silent, his eyes lifeless—like two black marbles.
No soul.
A soft moan comes from the kid they were beating up.
The jocks grab Caleb and pick him up in their arms, dragging him through the field. I don’t even realize I’ve dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one. What is the exact location of your emergency?”
“The field.”
“What field, ma’am?”
“Um . . . It’s the one behind Pine Cone Trailer Park.”
“What is your emergency?”
“I think . . .” I shudder and try to keep my voice as even as possible. “I think somebody might be dead.”
Just as I say it, I feel someone’s hand on my phone, pulling it from me, hanging it up. It’s Moch. A bunch of his friends rush to the guy on the ground. He’s unconscious. Comba’s there. I do everything to not look at him.
“Is the clinic open today?” Moch asks.
“Clinic?”
“Look at me, Mike. Is la Clinica Olé open?”
I nod.
Moch squeezes my arm. “Get out of here. Now.” They pile the groaning kid into a car and drive away, leaving me alone in the field, staring at a puddle of blood. I pick up the bat, staring at red-black spatters on it. A field mouse darts in and out of dried tufts of long grass. A screen door bangs in the wind. Sirens wail in the distance, getting closer.
I watch as the half-frozen earth soaks up the blood; then I turn and throw up.
Gangs: tattoos, knives, lettermen jackets, bats.
Chapter 21
THE BAT’S IN THE BACK OF
my closet. I don’t know why I picked it up, why I took it. I tell Josh about the fight. Not the bat. “Did they see you?” he whispers. The movie previews are almost over.
“Not Nim and those guys. Just Moch.”
“Lucky.”
“Yeah. Never really thought about it. Comba scares me. Really scares me. But now, so do they. It’s like they’re all the same. So much hate.”
&nbs
p; “So what are you going to do?”
I shrug. “Nothing. I don’t know.”
Josh grabs my hand, lacing his fingers in mine. “Is this okay?”
I nod. “Yes.”
He turns to watch the movie. I try to focus on the screen but only see the repeat of this afternoon. What should I do?
Seth calls me on Saturday, asking if I have a scoop. That guy knows everything that’s going on. “No comment,” I say.
By the time Monday comes, the fight in the field is legendary, with Caleb Masterson facing the evil gang bangers. Nobody mentions a bat, a kid being dropped off at the ER, or the fact that Caleb’s injury was really superficial. Lots of blood for something so inconsequential. It sounds like I’ve had hangnails worse than that.
From the looks of PB & J, Seth didn’t get the info he needed.
Babylonia Needed for Fabric Distribution: Cheerleaders Are Cold
Are YOU a Gang Member? Checklist
According to Seth’s checklist, every person in Carson High is part of a gang, the most ubiquitous presence being that of band members. I’m kind of happy to be reading about the dangers of woodwind instruments and pleated belts, Seth’s term for cheerleaders’ skirts, as opposed to the real world, anyway.
It’s like I’m always caught in the gray area between right and wrong.
Moch isn’t at school. Classes are eternal. I can’t even get into the heated debate in Government about the death of the American dream. When the final bell rings, I rush to my car. I just want to check in on Moch and Mrs. Mendez.
Josh texts me: My place? Homework.
I reply: OK. 4:00.
Mr. Mendez is pacing back and forth in the house when I arrive. Mrs. Mendez is lying on the couch.
“Are you still sick?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m fine. Finefinefinefine. Just tired. That all.”
“A flu. The doctor says it’s a flu. But I don’t think so.” Mr. Mendez runs his fingers through thinning gray hair.