Wanted (6 page)

Nimrod’s face is smooshed against the passenger door of his truck. Medusa and the others wear shocked, just-been-Tasered expressions on their faces. I’d like to see
that
in the yearbook.

“So what does a bookie do after exacting revenge on a client?”

I look at the time and shrug my backpack over my shoulder. “Go home.”

“You want to do something later?”

“No thanks.”

“How about this? When you
do
want to do something, call me.” He clasps his hands behind his head and stretches out his legs.

I watch his expression, waiting for the change—the slight nuance that reveals the truth behind the words. The mockery. His eyes are hidden under the brim of his baseball hat, though, so I can’t read his expression.

“Thanks for the company,” I say.

Josh tips his hat. “Thanks for the show. See you tomorrow, Michal Garcia.”

I pause. Nobody calls me Michal. It sounds nice:
Mee-kal
. He even pronounces it right. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t Mike. Michal. It makes me feel different, like I matter.

Stupid. It’s just a name.

Josh holds his pinky and forefinger to his ear and mouth. “Call me, Michal.”

Michal.

On the sidelines. Sure. Doormat. No
.

Chapter 7

Sanctuary Wednesday 7am courtyard
.

THERE’S A BIGGER CROWD

for divisional playoffs. I look at the faces and inhale, breathing in the scent of anticipation. Three guys are huddled around a paper. I glare at them. They should be paying attention. It’s my show now.

“Sorry, Mike,” Javier mutters and hands me Seth’s
PB & J
—his one-page headlines edition. Seth hands them out between big issues to drum up interest and cash for printing the paper. Javier points to the third headline down. I skim down the first two about gang violence and a food drive, my eyes focusing on the one Javier pointed out.

Bringing Down Goliath: No Stones. Just Parking Tickets

I clear my throat and say, “So?”

“Nothing.” Javier smirks. “Just thought you might have the inside scoop to
that
story.” The group laughs.

“You guys here to bet or chitchat?”

They settle down. I can feel the heat creep up my cheeks and try to keep my cool.
This is my show
. I scan their faces. Ready to win. Most will lose.

Josh isn’t here. Such a tool, feeding my story to Seth. No wonder he wanted to hang out with me after school.

We open
The Gambler
. Nobody has to sit on lookout because the courtyard is teeming with teachers. I sometimes wonder if they think I’m selling Do-Si-Dos or something. Whatever.

I read from the book, picking a passage to mirror Seth’s headlines.

Is it not a beautiful spectacle—the spectacle of a century or two of inherited labour, patience, intellect, rectitude, character, perseverance, and calculation, with a stork sitting on the roof above it all? What is more; they think there can never be anything better than this; wherefore, from their point of view they begin to judge the rest of the world, and to censure all who are at fault—that is to say, who are not exactly like themselves.

Most of them look up at me, brows furrowed, confused.
They’re hopeless
. They don’t move, though, and wait expectantly for me to say more. It’s fun to be in the place everybody wants to be. I’m still buzzing from Monday’s vengeance, and reading about it makes it all the more real. I can hear Leonard’s nasal voice in my head, though:
Take the bets. Get a good spread. Come out ahead.
Basic bookie law.

It’s kind of the point of it all.

No wonder everybody’s been talking about Nim’s truck being impounded. Everybody knows it was me. Message sent. Meaning received. But there’s a fine line between glory and stupidity. I need this job. I need the cash. I need to keep my clients in line. I
didn’t
need some stupid headline to advertise it. I’m all about invisibility. How can I expect some trust-fund pretty boy to get that? What a tool.

I close the book and give them my daily special. “Between the Chargers and Falcons I’m offering a no-juice line. One-time deal—almost unheard of in playoffs. Any takers?”

Silence.

“Do you guys even know what that means?”

Javier speaks up. “Not really.”

I sigh. “Never mind. Who’s betting what?”

The guys place their bets. They like when we meet in the courtyard. It makes it more dangerous—alive. There’s a rush when we pass money under the noses of the esteemed faculty—some of whom place bets with me, too. Well, just Mr. Myers, the Driver’s Ed teacher.

Nim shows up with all the other bettors. “You have something of mine,” he says when the crowd clears.

“You have something of mine.”

He hands me the cash and I count it. “It’s all there,” he says.

“That it is.”

“So?” he says. Nim snatches for the paper I hold in my hand. His knuckles are bruised and chafed.

I pull the paper away, staring at his hands. “What happened to your hand? Those bruises look pretty fresh.”

“Garbage Disposal,” he mutters.

Garbage Disposal. Everybody knows about them. But Nim? Nim’s part of some who-knows-what-supremacist group?
Nim?
I look around for Moch but don’t see him. It’s not uncommon, since he skips every other day of school anyway. But last time Garbage Disposal hit the streets, Pacho ended up with a broken jaw and Moch had two broken ribs.

Garbage Disposal and la Cordillera are things people talk about—things that I don’t want to believe are real beyond some lame dress code. All talk. No action. But lately, there’s too much action. I hate to think of Moch as a gangbanger. I hate that Garbage Disposal is real—with guys from my class in it. “Garbage Disposal? Are you serious?”

“Listen, you want to hang out with Cheech and Chong, that’s your deal. At the end of the day, we’re just doing the good
citizens
of Carson City a favor. Look around you.” Nim motions to the kids walking up and down the courtyard. “They’re like fucking cockroaches.”

“
They
?”

“Let me correct that.
You
,” Nim says.

When Nim needs me, I’m white. When he wants to demean me, I’m Mexican. And it’s always like that—I’m not enough of one or the other. I wonder what happened to the melting-pot theory of America.

“You people take our jobs.” He tugs on my shirt. “My money is earned.”

Earned? A set allowance from his parents is
earned
? I stare at Nim and try to imagine Garbage Disposal—a group of guys who get spray-on tans, don’t have accents, and eat beige food have decided how America should look and sound and taste.

“Why do you hate so much?” I ask Nim.

“None of your business.” He shoves his bruised right hand in his pocket, gripping the title with his left, raking it from my hand, giving me one awful paper cut. Nim whispers, his voice an angry growl. “If you ever mess with me again, you’re dead.”

“Likewise,” I say.

He doesn’t hear the last thing I say because I’m barely speaking above a whisper, sucking on the thin line of blood across the palm my hand. The buzz of Monday and taking bets is gone, leaving me with an empty, sick feeling in my stomach.

The bell has rung. Students pass and swirl around me, making me feel like I’m the center of a whirlpool—that abyss of nothingness. Ten minutes ago I was on some kind of vengeance high. Now all I want to do is swim my way out and make sure Moch hasn’t been left for dead somewhere.

There are two places where time is eternal—heaven, from what I’ve read, and Carson High School, from what I’ve experienced. Ninety-minute blocks are spent in a twisted time warp, and no matter how much I look at the clocks, the hands don’t advance. I feign concentration, only thinking about getting to Mocho’s house. He wanted to talk. He asked me over the other day. I didn’t figure it was anything, and now I don’t even know if he’s alive.
Garbage Disposal.

After school I run to the parking lot so I won’t get caught up in the lineup on the way out.

“Michal!” Josh
Tool
Ellison catches up to me just as I get to my car. I’ve managed to avoid him all day. “Can we talk?” he asks.

I shove one of Seth’s preview papers at him. “I think you’ve talked enough.” I should’ve known he’d be like the rest of them. I wriggle my key in the door. Figures right now would be the time it decides to get stuck.
C’mon, Little Car.

Josh watches as I struggle. “Can I—”

I hold up my hand. The Buick makes it virtually impossible to have a dramatic exit. Locking this car, in fact, is probably a monumental waste of time. It’s not exactly robber bait. The lock finally budges and I pull up on the metallic handle with all my strength. The heavy door swings open, and I throw myself in front of the steering wheel.

Josh stands between the door and me. “I’m sorry. Really,” he says.

I shrug. “Whatever.”

“Please, just give me another shot. Let me make it up to you somehow.”

I stare at the line of cars streaming out of the parking lot; I’ve missed the window of time to get out of here before everybody else does. “I’ve gotta go,” I say, closing the door. I look at Josh in my rearview mirror and can’t help but think he really is sorry.

When I drive up to his house, Mocho is sitting out front on an old lawn chair, its plastic weave frayed at the ends. Mocho’s cousins run around the yard, playing whack-me-with-an-aluminum-tube game. I feel a surge of relief and wave like a maniac through the window. There’s a three-legged table propped up against the side of the trailer house, and two recliners without their backs. The brown tufts of grass are barely visible underneath patches of dirty snow, old tires, and what looks like an impromptu car-part garage sale. I don’t know what Moch wants with all that junk.

Before I have a chance to get to him, Mrs. Mendez is waving me into the old trailer house. I see Mocho say something to her, and she swats him with a dish towel.

Mrs. Mendez gives me a warm hug when I walk up the crooked aluminum steps. “Where you been, Michal? You never come by no more. How’s Liliana?” She’s wearing a maid’s uniform—some retro-aproned gray dress, like she’s just stepped out of a TV sitcom.

Mocho walks in behind us. I flinch at his swollen face—bluish-black cheeks and split lip, a bruise shaped like a class ring on his jaw.

“Are you—”

“Fine,” Moch interrupts.

I follow his eyes, scanning the kitchen: peeling wallpaper; a cardboard box covering a broken window; linoleum, worn and yellowed with time, bubbling in one spot so everybody stumbles on the same bump in the floor except his mom, who sweeps around the crammed kitchen gracefully.

It bothers me he pays more attention to some peeling wallpaper than the smells coming from bubbling pots, the kids running around the neighborhood, the laughter coming from a back room. The place is alive with its broken window and peeling paint. I sit next to Moch on the couch and watch the soccer match between Barça and Celtic.

“¡A comer!”
Mrs. Mendez hollers, and the kitchen fills with bodies of all ages. Chairs, stools, and wooden crates covered with towels are shoved next to two card tables. I’m placed at the head of the table, squished between two kids who I understand to be Mocho’s niece and nephew—both recently arrived from Mexico. They giggle every time I try to say something in Spanish.

“You never learned your Spanish.” Mrs. Mendez
tsks.

I’m a little embarrassed. Lillian left Mexico behind and never spoke Spanish at home because she did all she could do to put a sea between us—first Mom, then me—and Guadalajara. It’s weird not to have roots in a place that’s full of what I could be. Lillian washed the Mexican away.

The only thing that lingers in our home is a candle she lights to the Virgin of Guadalupe some days. It’s the barometer to her stress, and when it hits the fan, the candle comes out on the kitchen counter with a small statuette. “Old habits,” she says.

Mr. Mendez smiles when he sees me, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s been a long time. How is Lillian?”

“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”

Mr. Mendez wears a tired smile and kisses Mrs. Mendez on the forehead, washing his callused hands in the sink before sitting down. He smells like car grease and petroleum jelly.

“Dad’s got a new job,” Moch says. “It’s kicking his ass. They’ve got him hauling heavy machinery—stuff he shouldn’t be doing at his age.
Salud
to Ellison the Great.”

I wince and feel embarrassed and defensive at the same time. Josh isn’t all that bad.

Mr. Mendez shoots Mocho a look, narrowing his eyes just a bit, then cracks a smile—two missing teeth on the left side of his jaw, making him look almost cartoonish. “My job puts this food on the table and in those pots. Be grateful.”

Moch turns away, his anger clouding his six-word memoirs, covering the aromas of chocolate and chilies, grilled meat and plantain. The cousins start to giggle, and the tension dissipates.

I’m passed steaming plates of shredded meat, spicy green salsa, and thin homemade tortillas heated on the stove. They warn me away from a plate of hot chilies and all laugh when my eyes tear just by smelling them. Even Mocho.

Everybody talks over everybody, and I catch some words in English, none in Spanish, and the rest of the time feel like even though I’m not understanding ninety percent of things, I’m part of it—part of this table.

Mrs. Mendez stands to sweep the dishes off the table, pauses, and sits.

“You okay?” Moch looks over his glass of water, his forehead a washboard of worry.

“
Borracha
,” she says, “but without the tequila. Better get a pregnancy test,” she says, and laughs.

“Ma!” Moch says.

Mr. Mendez looks pale, like he needs to sit down, too. Except he’s already sitting.

She looks at us, her mouth a straight line, smooth chestnut face glistening with sweat.