by Fred Aceves
The stiches got removed and left no mark, so I’m ready to forget the whole thing.
Amy, Zach, and I decide to study at his old house, where he’s moved back since his mom died.
When I ran into him in the halls a week after the baseball game, her death was written all over his face.
His grandma’s living here too, playing parent, right now trying to calm down his crying sister who just bumped her head against something.
It’s shiny floors everywhere except the carpeted bedrooms and office. Through the glass door of the living room I see an inflatable duck floating in the swimming pool. Zach tells us his dad had the pool put in before moving to Massachusetts to live with his girlfriend.
In the hallway are photos of Zach, his sister, and his mom—a lady with bright eyes and almost yellow hair.
I’m trying to act like this ain’t the most impressive house ever. Amy touches the coffee-colored couch so I do too. It’s soft and fat like a teddy bear, and the smaller couch and armchair match perfectly with it.
There are two dining rooms, the smaller one inside the kitchen.
Amy catches me smiling. “Fancy place, huh?”
“Yeah.” And I smile bigger, knowing that me and her got this in common: our fascination with this kind of life. Zach opens a cupboard. “Want some snacks?”
Bags, boxes, and cans fill four shelves.
I say “pretzels” at the same moment Amy says “chips.” I’m about to be the gentleman and go with Amy’s choice, but Zach grabs both.
He leads us to where we’ll study, his white and brown wingtip shoes clicking on the floor. After studying on my own these last weeks, I’m curious about how group studying works.
We load the big dining room table with two sets of textbooks, notebooks, and plenty to write with.
We practice for the chemistry test. I need to ace that thing, and nobody’s tests are harder than Mrs. Kavli’s. Even Obie struggles in that class. Obie who’s his old self again. Obie who’s gonna be a physicist.
Zach is quizzing us. Amy’s quicker most of the time, and gets more right. We giving Jeopardy! answers. What is cadmium? What are molecules? What’s something I can’t fucking remember?
Mrs. Kavli don’t believe in multiple choice. You gotta come up with the answer on your own. If you get it wrong, it’s negative points. Even worse, we gotta fill out the periodic table, know all 118 chemical elements and their abbreviations. How am I gonna pull that off?
I’ll keep studying. That’s how.
I need to remember that every minute of studying will take me a step further away from Maesta.
After we done with chemistry I say, “I ain’t never had the test anxiety that Breckner talked about, but I see it happening next week.”
“You’ll be ready,” Amy says.
I ain’t so sure. Shoulda been learning this stuff all semester, picking it up bit by bit. Now I’m supposed to cram it all in my head and it ain’t fitting.
We start studying history. We get so into the Bill of Rights that I don’t even notice the weak light until Zach’s grandma comes by to switch on the chandelier. She invites me and Amy to stay for supper. I know from movies that supper is dinner, so I’m all over that.
She insists we call our parents to ask for permission. I make out like I got credit on my phone and fake a quick conversation.
“Hi, Mom . . . I’m fine, thanks, and you? . . . Can I have dinner at Zach’s? . . . Yeah, his grandma’s really nice . . . Okay, thanks . . . I love you too.”
I pocket my cell. “My mom says it’s okay.”
On the table, Zach’s grandma lays out a brick of meat loaf. Then she sets down a shiny white bowl of mashed potatoes, gravy in a tiny pitcher, and another bowl of steamed vegetables—carrots, green broccoli, and white broccoli. After I show that plate who’s boss, finishing before anybody else, she offers me more. It’s good, especially the mashed potatoes that got lots of butter and pepper.
She knows everything about Future Success and school finishing soon. While she talks, she spoon-slaps more mashed potatoes onto my plate. I guess they ain’t gotta save none for tomorrow.
Between forkfuls of meat loaf and potato (I’m mixing them), I tell her about Future Success, my low grades, and how I’m trying to get them up. I answer her questions, sometimes with just a nod or a head shake.
Her interested in me has me all interested in her, wanting to ask questions too. But now Amy’s telling her about some science experiment in her class with a solar hot dog cooker.
Do Zach got anyone besides his grandma? Nearby, I mean. I wonder if having just one person’s enough. I turn to who could be my one person.
Amy puts a big piece of broccoli in her mouth and chews. Even with her cheeks puffed up she’s beautiful.
25
HOME AIN’T a horrible place no more. The dinner drill was always me taking a plate of food to my room or, before Brian, to the living room. Now I can go to the kitchen when I want, fry an egg to go with the rice and beans, and when I need a break from homework I can watch TV on the armchair or laid up on the couch.
After that first day eating at the table, me and my mom have dinner together in front of the TV. She takes her time with every small forkful. Swallows. Takes a drink of her cranberry and vodka, then forks another bit of rice into her mouth.
I remind myself not to scare her away with too much talking. When her fork scrapes the plate, I got a few minutes left before she goes into her bedroom to watch TV by herself. I try to appreciate the hush between us.
A social worker named Erica came by one evening. My mom was expecting her, answered the door wearing slacks, a nice blouse, and a smile, the friendliest hostess you ever saw. She had Erica sit in the comfy armchair and offered to make coffee.
“You seem like a very nice family,” Erica said right away, and explained that she just needed to verify that our house was a safe environment. “I’ll have to ask you a few questions.”
She asked more than a few. With my mom in her bedroom, Erica asked all the cop questions from the hospital and then some. I musta given her the right answers ’cause Erica never came back.
With the last day of school two weeks away, I’m studying harder than ever and feel a yawn coming when I hear a tap on the window.
“Marcos.”
It’s Obie. I fling the curtain open and there he is, some light from the parking lot touching him. He’s on the narrow strip of dead grass, shouldering his backpack.
“Hold up,” I tell him.
It’s almost midnight and, after hours of cranberry and vodka, my mom’s passed out, but just in case I talk and move quietly.
I’m wiggling the screen. Pushing up top and on the sides. I grip the plastic tab at the bottom and pull. Nothing’s working. If some zombie apocalypse was going down out there, the slow-moving dead woulda been on Obie by now.
Obie’s shirtless, rocking old Spider-Man pajama pants and Nikes. I finally get the window open, then close and lock it behind him. He drops his backpack on the bed and keeps moving around my small bedroom, sorta pacing between my closet and dresser.
I know what this is about. He’s been lying to me this whole time.
In a low whisper he says, “The cops are on me.”
I toss my bedsheet over the lampshade to dim the room. It makes the light kinda blue, like we underwater.
I hear a car’s engine rumbling. In the crazy maze of Maesta, you never sure where the shouts and sirens come from. During the day, the little noises out there eat each other up, but at night the sounds carry. For sure the rumbling’s getting louder. Obie takes a step toward the lamp.
Before he switches it off I whisper, “That’ll catch attention.”
The engine cuts off. A door opens, then slams shut. A man’s singing “Tears of a Clown.”
Now there’s some sad things known to man,
But ain’t too much sadder than . . .
Just Desiree’s uncle coming back from a bar.
I ste
er Obie to the bed and make him sit. Though it don’t calm him, it’s probably better for him than the pacing. It’s definitely better for me.
“I never really stopped delivering,” he tells me.
“No shit.” Now’s not the time to make him feel bad or stupid so I don’t say nothing else.
“I kept telling myself to stop, just one more week, but it’s hard to turn down money.”
“So did you deliver to a cop?”
“No.” As he tells me what’s going on, I jump in only to remind him to whisper.
He re-upped this afternoon. Then, after bedtime, not sleepy and a little bored, he sparked some weed up. He was careful to wait until his mom went to bed, careful to blow the smoke out the window, but she musta gotten up to use the bathroom or something. During a second hit the door opened and his mom’s jaw dropped. Then the door closed.
“I thought she was too pissed to talk, you know?”
“Shhh.”
“Sorry. And I was worried about what would happen tomorrow.”
His mom didn’t go back to bed. She made a call. Minutes later Obie heard the doorbell, then a man say, “Officer Lymon, sheriff’s department.”
Obie locked his bedroom door, stuffed his feet in the Nikes, grabbed the evidence, and went through the bedroom window.
“I ran like hell.”
“So ya got the goods?”
He unzips the backpack and holds it upside down. A few weed baggies slip out and tumble on the bed, plus about ten baggies of meth.
“And the joint?”
“Tossed it on my way here.”
“Then they can’t bust ya. They probably figure you had only that joint you was smoking.”
Which chills him out some.
I gather them up. “Ya woulda been fucked. Five fat bags of weed, plus meth.”
“Five?” Like it’s the first time he’s heard that number.
I drop them on the bed.
“It was six!” Obie looks them over. His eyes are on me, on the floor, on the bed again. He checks the backpack, the windowsill, his pockets. “I’m missing my personal stash!”
I wedge the baggies between my winter jacket and a hoodie on the top shelf of my closet.
“Six bags, Marcos. Not five. Six.”
“You sure?”
After a moment it comes to him and his eyes close from the brain pain of the memory. His stash has enough weed for four or five joints, and it’s in his sock and underwear drawer.
He’s pacing faster than before. I gotta be extra calm for both of us. I sit on the bed all chill but I know we both thinking the same thing—juvie.
“My mom’s a . . . I don’t know.”
I got a list of words. Too bad you can only trash someone’s mom playing around. Though she used to deal, she likes to pretend she bought that house with her Denny’s wages.
Over and over in a whisper Obie says, “I’m fucked,” and I tell him, “You’ll be okay,” feeling like the biggest liar ever.
He ain’t buying it. Even if his arms wasn’t all trembly you can read the fear on his face. I felt it before he came through the window and now it’s getting worse.
I keep saying, “You’ll be okay,” but he’s someplace way far, where them words can’t reach.
He starts talking juvie, and for how long. If he can take the final-year exams there, and what if he goes in for a crazy long time? Can he do the rest of high school too?
That’s so Obie, tripping about school even at a time like this.
I don’t know what to do except keep saying, “You’ll be okay.”
Again I force him to sit on the bed. Then I sit next to him, my best friend.
He speaks in the softest whisper now, with his last bit of energy. “I’m fucked.”
My brain switches to plan mode. I’ll help Obie. I’ll hide him. Could that work? Brian used to barge in here but my mom ain’t never come into my room that I can remember.
Nah, me and Obie gotta run away up north. We gotta get outta Tampa, then outta the state. Wherever Obie decides, I’m with it, no questions asked. He just needs to chill and say the word.
He keeps muttering about no school and no girls. The more he mutters the more I wanna yank him out from where he is. I stop saying, “You’ll be okay.”
I put my arm around him. Grip his shoulder that’s as knobby as mine. He lets me. I’m hugging him sideways, holding on good, like I want him to listen closely. Like he might run away without me if I let go.
I tell him, “We’ll be okay.”
The muttering stops. He lets out a deep breath. For a while we sit in this way, until he moves his hands to his face.
“So . . . ,” I say, letting go. “You want something to eat or drink?”
He shakes his head. I get up anyway to go to the kitchen. He might get thirsty later. I take my time, drop a couple ice cubes before filling the glass and come back. He’s lying on the bed, brown eyes shining.
I wonder if that was his first time crying since he was a kid. Me, I’ve cried right here a few times, and not just when I was little.
I leave the water on the windowsill for him and switch off the light. He scoots to one side to make room so I stretch out next to him. Though neither of us can move a centimeter, our skinny bodies fit perfectly on my small bed.
I figure I should lighten us both up. “Ya know, this is kinda dope if you think about it. But ya gotta think about it in a different way.”
After a few beats he giggles. “That I’m an outlaw?”
“Like the Barefoot Bandit. Except you ain’t barefoot. You got dope Nikes. Plus ya got me. Ya ain’t alone.”
I tell him he’s smarter than that runaway kid, and that with my help there ain’t no stopping us.
“We’ll sell the weed and meth,” I say. “Buy two Greyhound tickets with the cash and still have a bunch left over.”
The thought of traveling the country, hopping from city to city, gets me so amped I’m bursting with plans, listing the small jobs we can do—washing dishes, painting houses, doing yard work. A new city every month, money in our pockets every day.
“Shhh, Marcos.”
Right. All my shushing and now watch me be the one to wake up my mom passed out on the other side of that wall.
“Thanks,” Obie says, “but you already hooked me up. Figuring the rest out is on me.”
He might be right. Anyway, the way he says it, with that tough-teacher voice, means his mind’s made up. Then I remember Amy and school and know he’s right. I gotta stick around.
When he goes quiet it means his brain’s on juvie and what goes down in there. I know ’cause that’s all I can think of. Prison bars. Group showers. Him catching beatdowns.
Now what? I figure we need some good memories right about now. I remind him of the time we batted rotten oranges in the empty lot by the hardware store, took turns pitching in a raincoat while the other swung the metal bat, the flimsy skins exploding juice everywhere.
I mention the first time we got drunk sharing a can of Coors Light, how he thought he felt the effect after a minute but the wooziness came during SNL, a growl in our stomachs that had us rushing outside to hurl in the bushes.
I tell him our best Halloween story, that year we and our boys all dressed in cheap costumes, us five riding out to Evanwood to go trick-or-treating. How we scored great candy—gum lollipops and mini chocolate bars—and pedaled home grinning, heavy bags swinging from the bike handlebars.
That’s when we hear a knock at the front door.
My body jumps more than Obie’s.
“Just chill,” I whisper, but he’s up, opening the curtain a bit, either to escape the back way or just have a look.
“Don’t fuckin’ move,” a cop says, right outside the window.
26
A WEEK later everybody still wants to hear the details, ’cause it makes no sense for Obie, who’s never in trouble, never even messes with the teachers, to get hauled away by cops. At school, people come by like we
got something that belongs to them, pressing around to ask the same question—“What happened?”
Someone in Maesta spread the word about Obie’s arrest. I told my boys what Obie was into and we keeping the reason secret. We playing dumb. Don’t know a single thing, we tell everybody, are as surprised as you. But they ain’t buying it. Obie’s life is an action movie on a big screen. They walked into the middle of it and wanna catch up on the backstory.
The morning after Obie’s arrest I biked to his aunt’s place before school with the backpack full of drugs. I went up to the second floor of the apartments and knocked. Eventually the blinds came up, bounced once before settling above her head. Through the streaky window I saw a shiny pink fabric wrapped around her hair. You’d think with all that drug hustling and staying at home she could afford glass cleaner and have time to use it.
The door opened as much as the chain allowed, her eye appearing in that inch of space. “Obie with you?”
When I opened the backpack for her to see, she unlatched the chain, her body filling the doorway. She grabbed the baggies with both hands and dropped them on the floor. She wouldn’t tell me nothing about what they might do to Obie, just said, “Don’t worry about Obie. You just forget it. You don’t know nothing, okay?”
When I asked about him again she said, “If cops visit me, Cory’s gonna visit you.”
“Who’s Cory?” I asked.
“Ya don’t wanna know who Cory is.”
So I had to ask Obie’s mom. When I knocked on the door, I didn’t expect the usual smile and friendliness but I didn’t expect what happened either. Even before the door opened all the way she said, “Get off my porch before I call the cops.”
I understood right away. To her, I’m the bad one. That’s how the minds of moms work. Get into trouble and they blame the kids you roll with. Friends are bad influences, the thinking goes. Never mind that Obie’s mom used to deal. Never mind that Obie got into this through his own aunt.