Silent (2 page)

Her favorite telenovela was on, so I smartly waited till the commercial before interrupting again. “Mamá, do you think I could get some new shoes?”

She frowned. “I just bought you shoes the other day.”

I rolled my eyes and worked on keeping my cool. The other day, the other year…who was counting?

“Please, Mami. The teachers at school are starting to notice.”

“I don’t have no money right now.”

“You could ask Hector—”

“Hector’s not gonna buy you nothing.” She cut me off. “He’s pissed at you.”

I blinked, striving for the face of innocence. “Why, Mami?”

“You think I don’t know?” She snorted. “I’m not stupid, Alex.”

Damn.

“Besides,” she continued, sighing, “you know he don’t like that I can’t give him a son, and you remind him of that.”

I used to feel a twinge of guilt every time my mother brought up how having me caused that infection…until the day Mimi told me that was the best thing that could have happened to her. Having a kid with Hector would only have made a bad situation worse.

I wiggled a little closer, lacing my fingers with hers. “You don’t have to say the money is for me.”

She batted me away. “Ay, go get a job like other kids your age. You should already be in high school last year, you know. High school kids work.”

“What job?” I asked, throwing up my arms in frustration. “What kind of job you want me to do while I’m going to school?”

The telenovela was back on, taking my mother’s focus. “I don’t know. Pick up cans with the immigrant children.”

I resisted the urge to call my mother a bitch, even in my thoughts. She was more out-of-it than she was outright mean.

But I did need those shoes.

I left her and headed down the hallway, taking full advantage of her distraction. She didn’t notice me slipping into her room—or
his
room, as he constantly reminded me.

I slid the dresser drawer open as quietly as I could. The last time I’d jacked some weed from this spot, I thought I’d left enough in the bag to keep him from noticing. But he had noticed, obviously, and there was none in there anymore. Time to check the other hiding places.

I rummaged through the remaining drawers, the closet, and underneath the mattress before I finally found some in the hollowed out bedpost. I took a decent handful, even though I knew I’d probably be in for an ass-kicking later. With any luck, I’d have new shoes to make the running away that much faster.

~*~

I exchanged the torn sneakers for my flip-flops and wandered over to the squat black and white buildings of the projects. We’d lived there once—just me, my sister, and my mom. Yeah, the places were crappy and some of the residents sketchy at best, but it wasn’t like living a few streets away in an old crumbling house was all that much better. Besides, Hector’s name was on the lease for the house, and that alone made it suck in my eyes.

Our old neighbor, Andre, was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his place, smoking and drinking a beer, as usual.

“Hey,” I said as I approached. “What up, man?”

“Hey, Al. Whatcha up to today?”

After a quick glance around, I pulled the plastic baggy halfway out of my pocket. “You need?”

Andre grimaced and wiped his forehead with his arm before taking a long drag of his cigarette. “Nah, chico. Not today.”

“What?” I blurted out. “But I only gave you a dime sack last time…you must be out by now. C’mon, Andre.”

Damn, could I sound more desperate?

“Listen, listen.” He put up his hands. “Don’t flip, man, but I found me another supplier.”

My left eye began twitching. Andre was one of the few people I knew well enough to feel comfortable dealing to. Without him, my moneymaking days were close to over.

“Someone else? Who?”

He looked away. “Franky.”

Franky? That fucking gangbanger was moving in on my tiny turf?

“Franky? Jesus Christ, why?” I pressed, trying and probably failing to keep from sounding like a whining child. “Don’t I always give you the good stuff…the best price?”

“You do, you do, little man…but it’s about supply. Franky works for the big dogs—they always got stuff. You a kid stealing weed off your old man.”

“Hector is not my old man!” My hands curled into fists. If Andre hadn’t been twice my size, I probably would’ve taken a swing at him.

“Easy.” He stood and pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket to offer me one. I took it because I couldn’t really think of anything else to do, and I obviously needed to calm down.

“Tell you what I’m gonna do,” Andre said. He lit up my cigarette and waited till I’d drawn in a few times before throwing an arm over my shoulder. “I’ll buy it off you today, ’cause I can see you really need it…but I can’t keep it up. You gettin' too old to freelance…don’t you wanna get jumped in? You’d make real money then.”

I twisted away. “Nah, man. I’m cool. Lemme just sell this and go—I gotta go buy me some shoes.”

Andre shrugged, pulling out a wad of cash from his pocket. “Suit yourself. But you’re probably gonna have to make a decision about where your loyalties lie pretty damn soon. You ain’t no baby no more. You sell to the wrong person…you could get yourself in real trouble, man.”

We finished our transaction and said our goodbyes—possibly for the last time. There was no way I was joining a gang in these parts—and not for the reasons everyone thought. I wasn’t too good for it, and I wasn’t chicken…but I also wasn’t stupid.

A gang in the ghetto wasn’t no place for someone like me.

~*~

That night I shoved my new shoes into the bottom of my backpack before climbing into bed. I lay awake for about thirty minutes, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the homework I hadn’t done. Eventually I crawled out from the blankets and grabbed my shoes again, so I could pull them into the bed with me. They were shiny and white, and in the light of the street lamps streaming through my window they nearly glowed.

Mimi told me it was dumb to always buy white shoes, but she just didn’t understand. Yeah, they got dirty faster, but there were those few glorious days where they were the brightest things I owned, and everybody who looked at me would know I’d just bought something new. You couldn’t really get that effect with the more practical black shoes.

It was stupid, but I kept the sneakers next to me in the bed. I wrapped my arms around them like they were some kind of teddy bear, stroking the material between my thumb and forefinger until I fell asleep.

~*~

I awoke to a hand pressed over my mouth.

“Don’t make a sound,
pendejo
.”

Hector’s speech was slurred, but he had a firm grip on my face, causing my lips to press painfully into my teeth.

In his other hand, he held my shoes.

“This what you buy after you steal from me, you little shit? This fucking shit?”

I tried to speak, but Hector tightened his hand, digging a nail into my cheek.

“You too fucking pussy to be a real man, so you think you can just take what you want, eh? Well you’re wrong, little
maricón
. You never gonna take from me again.”

He grabbed his lighter out of his pocket, releasing my mouth to do so.

“No, Hector, please!” Tears sprung to my eyes, not from the pain so much as the humiliation. It’d been stupid to think I could get away with taking so much from him…but I had
needed
those shoes!

And now they were about to go up in flames.

He lit the canvas and tossed them in my trash bin, where the crumpled wads of paper soon caught fire.

I knew it was a lost cause, but I jumped up from my bed anyway. “Hector, no!”

His hand flew across my mouth and I dropped to the floor, stunned, my lower lip stinging.

“Please,” I begged. “I need them for school.”

The tears escaping now, I crawled over to the trashcan as if there was something I could do to stop my shoes from becoming a pile of ashes.

“Cry all you want, pussy. Your mama’s good and drunk and fucked to sleep.”

A flame shot up over the rim of the can, licking at my face, and the heat ignited my fury. I charged to my feet and tried to ram Hector’s body with everything I had in my five-foot-eight frame.

But through the anger and the tears, I wasn’t thinking properly, and I just ended up in his grasp again. Except this time, he locked onto my wrist and flicked on his lighter, holding my arm against the flame.

I screamed and tried to pull away but he had me pinned, and it wasn’t until spots of pain blocked my vision that he let me go.

I crumpled to the dirty hardwood, too exhausted to cry any more.

“Don’t you forget,” Hector said, and walked out.

Chapter 2: Up to No Good

I lay in a heap for a while, watching the fire. The flames danced with such energy, in complete control of their small world. I felt a bit like a fire sometimes…storming through life like I had shit all figured, when really any asshole could come along and put me out.

I managed to gather myself off the floor, ignoring the pain long enough to grab an old towel and smother the fire to death. When the room was dark again, I waited for my eyesight to adjust before examining my injury. The skin of my wrist was red and raw, and it was blistering slightly.

Staggering footsteps led me to the kitchen, where I took a bag of French fries out of the freezer. I held my breath, counted to five, and gingerly placed it on my arm.

A second later, I dropped the bag on the floor, intense pain rocketing through me and making me hiss out several half-formed curses. I shoved my good arm in my mouth to muffle the rest of what I wanted to scream. The last thing I needed was another confrontation with Hector.

Leaving the damn fries lying on the ground, I rifled through a kitchen drawer to find some aspirin. Then I dragged out a bottle of tequila and used it to knock back four pills, hoping the shot would make me woozy enough to fall asleep despite the pain.

I took the bottle back to bed with me, just in case I needed a little more help.

~*~

“Alejandro!”

My mother stood at my bedroom door in her glittery pink tank top and jean mini-skirt, a hand on her narrow hip. “What are you doing? Get your ass up and go to school!”

I tried to move and flinched when my arm touched the blanket. “Mami, I don’t feel so good. Can’t you call and say I’m sick?”

“You better get your ass up and go. Hector and I are going out of town for a few days. I don’t have time to deal with you.”

She stepped away then, leaving me to my pounding headache and fucked-up wrist.

When she and Hector had driven off, I got up and carefully dressed. My wrist had patchy, peeling red spots of skin from the burns, and I knew I’d have to cover it up before I left the house.

Feet shoved in flip-flops, I dug through the bathroom and the hallway closet in search of gauze. I didn’t really think we’d have any, unless Mimi had bought it for some reason. My first instinct was right, however. We were not a first-aid-prepared household.

In the end, I grabbed some toilet paper and wrapped it loosely around my wrist. I taped it down and decided it looked close enough to a bandage. As close as I could get, anyhow.

José was waiting for me a block away from the school.

“Flip-flops?” He pointed a stubby finger at my feet, taunting me with his laughter. “Ooh, you gonna get in trouble.”

“Fuck off,” I grumbled. Obviously, I was in no mood for his stupidity.

He stopped. He could hear the tone in my voice, and he knew I’d back it up with a fist if I had to.

“What’s the matter? Hector beating up on you again? Your lip looks a little fat. And what the fuck is that on your arm?”

I shot out the tip of my tongue, passing it over my lip and feeling the small cut there. “He’s being a fucking asshole, but thank God he and my mom left town today. Probably going to Vegas or something.”

“You have the house to yourself?” José’s eyes lit up. “Fuck yeah, man! Let’s have a party!”

I still had a headache, and the idea of loud noise and drunken partygoers making a mess of Hector’s place didn’t sound all that tempting.

“I dunno, man. I’m not sure when they gonna be back.”

“We have to, Alex! I have some beer…you can take some of Hector’s weed…”

My wrist throbbed.

“Nah, man. I can’t do that no more.”

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Then we get someone else to bring some. We can do it tonight…they ain’t gonna be back in one day.”

“But I can’t cut class. The PSA counselor said she’s gonna turn my mom in to the DA if I keep cutting. She’ll kill me.”

“Okay, so we end it early and go to school the next day. It’ll be Friday—we can make it through one Friday with a little hangover, can’t we?”

José blinked at me hopefully, his smile pushing out those round cheeks of his. As annoying as he was sometimes, it was hard not to like him…the way you liked an ugly stray dog that came around begging for scraps.

“Fine. But you better stay and help me clean up so I don’t catch shit.”

If he had been a dog, he’d have been wagging his tail and jumping up and down with excitement when I finally gave in.

~*~

Blanca draped herself on me, purring into my ear. “You sexy, Alex, you know that?”

“Mhm,” I replied absentmindedly. I’d been told I was fairly good-looking by several girls, so I had no reason to doubt her.

Music blared and smoke filled the house. With the lights dimmed and all the smiling people moving about, it almost didn’t look like the shithole it was. Of course, the main reason it was such a shithole was because of Hector’s parties—some asshole or another was always getting a little too high and breaking a chunk of wall or a piece of furniture.

Someone on my left passed me a blunt, and I took it gratefully.

“What’s on your arm?” Blanca’s tiny fingers danced along my chest, making their way toward the bandage. “You been wearing that all day.”