We Were Here (23 page)

Me and Rondell hadn’t talked since leaving Malibu, and we still didn’t. He opened up his bag and pulled some donuts and the leftover cans of beer and we ate and drank in silence, stretching out our tired legs. I wrote in my journal for a while, pretending last night and this morning were just scenes in a book, not real life, not what was actually happening to me, and then I put it away.

We watched the dark ocean like it was TV.

After a while I caught sight of this lonely little fishing boat way out there and tried to decide who could be on it. Maybe some old dude fishing late night with no family. A grizzled beard and yellow rain boots as he pulled up a net full of tuna or salmon or whatever. Or a group of science people doing research about plankton or the chemicals found in floating seaweed, all these waterproof monitors beeping and flashing next to ’em on deck. Or what if it was a couple kids lost at sea. What if they snuck on the boat when it was tied to a dock somewhere and ducked into the cabin to rifle through drawers looking for money or valuables they could sell. And while they were down there the rope came loose and they
drifted out to sea and got stranded with no oars. At first they probably yelled and yelled and got all pissed at each other and maybe even fought a little. But when nobody heard ’em they just went quiet and sat with their backs against the cabin, rocking back and forth, confused as hell. Now they’re just floating around out there, lost at sea, stranded. Eating scraps of food and drinking warm beer and not talking. Thinking their own thoughts about what next and how to keep alive, imagining the first thing they’d do if they could wake up and shit was just magically back to normal.

I glanced at Rondell, and he was staring out there too. I looked on the ocean again. Even though I’d never been on a damn boat in my entire life. Still, man. I knew exactly how those two lost-at-sea kids felt.

I stood up and looked inside the lifeguard tower, Rondell watching me. The plastic windows were all scratched up, and it was dark, but I could still sort of see what was inside. A tiny white card table and two broken fold-up chairs. A book turned upside down. Somebody’s flip-flop. An open magazine.

I slid back down the wall and reached into Rondell’s bag for
The Catcher in the Rye
. Started reading under the dull light. But I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept wandering. I had to read the same paragraph over and over, like six times. And I
still
didn’t get what it said. I couldn’t stop thinking about what was gonna happen to us. And Mong. And the kids on that boat.

Rondell pulled out his Bible and opened it up. Moved it under the dim light next to my book.

I looked at him.

He looked at me back.

Then we both turned to our books—this time
neither one of us
understanding a word we were reading.

July 25

When I woke up I had to look around a while before I remembered where we were. And what had happened. I fingered Mong’s tooth around my neck, and somehow I knew I wouldn’t go south today.

Now that it was light I saw we were back in Venice Beach again. Only this time we were at that part where all the freaks hang out, the strip or whatever. We stretched our stiff arms and legs and pissed in the sand and ate the few scraps of food we had left, and then we wandered up to the boardwalk to check it all. We sat there watching as more and more people showed up and old men opened their stands and set out the products and price tags. There were some people with crazy hair and weirdo outfits, like you’d expect—my favorite was this dreadlock guy Rollerblading and playing electric guitar—but mostly it was a lot of fat tourist families with bad sunburns and cameras strapped around their necks.

We walked over to watch the dudes playing ball on that famous beach court, right there between the walkway and the sand. The guys were big and cut up, but they weren’t really that good, which surprised me. All they did was argue and talk a bunch of head at each other and strut around the court like they were acting in a movie. I thought about telling Rondell he should go out there and bust their asses, but I didn’t really wanna talk to him yet, so I kept quiet. I knew if I said anything he’d bring up Mong and what happened, and I didn’t feel like having some big talk about it.

When we got bored of watching fake-ass hoop games we walked over to Muscle Beach and watched these big ’roidheads growling and throwing around weights for everyone to see. There were even a few chicks in there getting their lift on.
I watched this one burly blond woman doing curls and I felt like I was about to throw up.

Yo, man, I gotta say something for the record. I’m not really feeling no buff chicks. Imagine you were making out with some Muscle Beach girl and you felt her big-ass biceps and triceps rubbing all against you. Or she went to hold your hand and her shit was all callused from gripping so many damn barbells. Or even worse, if she went to hold something
else!
Nah, man. I’d probably feel like I was with a damn dude.

It goes the other way too. I don’t get a
girl
going for no muscle-head guy either. To me the shit just doesn’t look natural.

When we left there we ate a couple dogs each on a bench in the middle of the boardwalk, checking out all the weirdos walking past and the tourists pointing at ’em behind their backs. Then we went down on the sand to watch the beach again.

Out on the water now there were all these white dudes sitting on their boards waiting for waves. A couple even had floppy blond hair like you see in magazine ads about surf clothes or flip-flops. It made me think about my moms, man. How fifty percent of me was the exact same as these guys. I bet if I’d have had a white pop instead of a Mexican one I’d be sitting out there too. On my board, fingers dangling in the water, watching for when another good wave might come. I’m not even playing, if we’d have had a white old man me and Diego’s lives would be totally different from how they are now. I probably wouldn’t even be here, on the run from a group home, trying to get to Mexico.

Or not trying, I should say. At least not today. ’cause just like I had a feeling about earlier, me and Rondell hadn’t moved south not one damn foot the entire day. I don’t even know why.

I glanced at Rondell and his eyes were closed again, head all leaning back against the wall. I cracked up picturing his big ass trying to sit on a surfboard. Dude would probably sink right to the bottom. Crush a little innocent shrimp that was walking by.

Whenever a wave would finally come all the surfers would drop to their stomachs and start paddling like crazy trying to get in the best spot to catch it. But only one guy would ride it in. The second he popped up on his feet, the rest of them would pull back and start looking for the next one. It seemed like there was some kind of rule about that.

This was the first time I’d really watched people surf. I mean, everybody knows what it is, and sometimes it shows on TV for a quick sec, but it’s a totally different thing when you sit there and pay attention. I couldn’t believe how many tricks they could do on a wave. Like going up and down it and spraying water and squatting to let it cover them for a few seconds and then popping out again and standing back up. It was amazing, actually, almost like they were doing some kind of dance on water. And anytime one of them came back in to shore they’d shake their hair out, wrap their leash around their board and walk past us with these big-ass smiles on their faces, like they’d just had the damn time of their lives.

It almost made me wanna try it someday. Was there such thing as a Mexican surfer? Not on this beach, I know, but on other ones? Like what about in Mexico? There had to be Mexican surfers in that resort part Mong told us about. I decided maybe that’s what I’d do when me and Rondell finally got down there. Become a surfer. Rondell could go get himself a fishing pole and sit out there all day in a boat trying to hook himself a trout. But not me, man. Stockton was the only placed I fished at. Diego was the only dude I shared bait with.

Nah, I was going down there to find me a surfboard and learn how to ride some damn waves.

A few hours later I woke up in the same spot and looked all around. Our bags still under our feet. Rondell still asleep with his mouth hanging open, a nasty string of drool going from his bottom lip to his sweatshirt. The sun was falling into the ocean and the sky was warming up for the colors. All these people with bongos were gathering in the sand straight down the way from us, and this beat started growing, making this hypnotic rhythm. It was the craziest shit I’d ever woken up to.

It wasn’t just young hippie kids like you might think either—though there were a lot of those kinds of people too. It was also normal adults in regular clothes. Ones who looked like they just got off work at a bank or some business. And teenage kids. And blacks and Mexicans and Asians. Even a few old people that could only walk stooped over like turtles. They were hitting bongos too. As the sky went into a perfect sunset over the ocean, more and more people started joining in. There must’ve been over a hundred.

Me and Rondell walked down there with our bags and sat right near the middle so we could totally feel the beat. We both moved our heads with the rhythm and I shut off my brain. After a while this lesbian hippie chick tapped me on the shoulder and held out a little kid drum. “Here, play this,” she said with a big smile. She had short spiky hair and a tattoo of the moon on the side of her neck.

I took the drum, and me and Rondell started hitting each side of it with the rhythm. It was actually one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me. We hit that little drum for so long my fingers started losing feeling. They went numb. But I didn’t even care. The beat we were all making together was so sick. Not like a rap song but something else. A chant
or something bigger. Hundreds of drums getting smacked at the same time. Nobody talking. The ocean right next to us and the sky all orange and pink and purple. And you could feel how happy everybody around you was.

At one point I closed my eyes so I could
just feel
everything. The beat and the crowd and the sand. I pretended like it was a ceremony about Mong. Or my pop. Or something with Diego. It didn’t even feel like I was in the real world, man. But somewhere else. An alternate reality where people talked in drumbeats and always made time to look at the ocean—and I mean
really
look at it too, the way Mong did. I can’t even explain how it felt like with all those drums. If somebody would’ve tapped me on the shoulder right then, told me this was God, I’d have signed up for damn church, man. Committed for every single week and even brought a donation.

I wished it could’ve kept going and going, but after the sun went all the way down, and the colors disappeared, the drumming died out little by little and people started getting up with their bongos. They shook hands with everybody around them and had little smiling conversations as they made their way back toward the road and the so-called real world.

I gave the kid drum back to the hippie lesbian and told her thanks.

“You guys ever drummed in the circle before?” she said.

“Nah,” I told her.

“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

Me and Rondell nodded.

“You should come back tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll even bring your drum with me.”

I looked at Rondell and then back at her. “Yeah, man. We could do that. For sure.”

Rondell looked at me, and I wondered if he was smart enough to know if I was lying or not.

“Great,” the girl said, holding up her drum.

“Cool, man.”

“I’ll find you guys, okay?”

“We’ll be here,” I said.

We all smiled and nodded and then her and this other hippie chick walked off together holding hands, like they were girlfriend-girlfriend.

Everybody else was leaving too, but me and Rondell didn’t go anywhere. We sat right back down in the sand and watched the last few people gather up their stuff and go home. Watched them walk away together, talking and laughing and rubbing each other’s shoulders. And soon it was just us two left. Me and Rondell. It was dark, too. But the summer air was still warm. I breathed it in deep and tried to think who came up with the idea that everybody should come to the beach and bang drums while the sun went down. It had to be one person who started everything, right? How long ago was that? Maybe if I ever made it back to Stockton me and Diego could try and start it going at the levee. I pictured everybody showing up at our favorite spot. All of us banging drums or buckets or whatever we could find and then shaking hands and smiling and talking. Me and Diego telling new people they should come back and join us the next day.

Then I felt guilty for being happy. I knew the shit wasn’t right ’cause of what happened with Mong. So I stopped.

I looked at the fingers I was using to smack that little kid drum. I was kind of bummed the feeling in them was now coming back. I wished they could stay numb like that for the rest of the week. Then I could remember how it felt.

Rondell tapped me on the shoulder.

“What’s up?” I said.

He shrugged, told me: “We really comin’ back here tomorrow?”

I shook my head. “Can’t.”

He nodded and set his head down on his bag.

It was our first words to each other in over a day.

I set my head down too. And when I closed my eyes I was happy ’cause I could still feel the hypnotic vibrations going through my body.

July 26

Took most of today to make it to Long Beach. When we were too tired to walk anymore we got slices of pizza and Cokes at a shack near the strip and sat on benches watching everybody walking around, doing their thing.

Rondell asked me was our plan still to go to Mexico, but I just stared back at him without answering. Something bad was happening in my head, man. I couldn’t barely even stand Rondell all of a sudden. I couldn’t stand me, either. Us two meaningless kids with some meaningless plan, and how if you got right down to it absolutely nothing we did or planned to do even mattered. Nothing I said or did or even thought. It was worse than a cliché. It was nothing. And if it was nothing then why shouldn’t I just go swimming too, like Mong?