We Were Here (27 page)

I punched his big ass in the arm and then walked away, telling him over my shoulder: “Good luck, big Rondo. Don’t get nobody pregnant.”

“Good luck, Mexico,” he called after me. “I’m gonna miss you!”

I didn’t even turn around once as I walked away. I learned the best system for saying bye to people is to just keep walking and not think about it that much. You can’t stress about every single person you say bye to, right? That’d be like half your life spent worrying about people you’re no longer gonna see.

Nah, man, you gotta look forwards, not backwards.

Rondell would figure his shit out over there. Or he wouldn’t. Same as me. But there was no use stressing about it. I couldn’t sit there and wonder if he’d be okay on his own or not, if people might take advantage of him. It’s not like I could do anything when we were in two different countries.

That’s just how life is, man.

I walked back to the main road and headed north this time, back into San Ysidro. Into America. I didn’t even know where I was going yet or how I was gonna get there or how I could make back all the $750 to send to the Lighthouse. If you think about it, I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’ anymore. All I knew is I had to stay in America until I got my shit straight.

About a mile down the busy road I cut into a minimall and hit the first pay phone I found, this one right at the edge of the huge parking lot. I set down my bag on the thin bed of grass and tossed some change in the coin thing and dialed my moms.

It rang five times and then the answering machine picked up. I wasn’t surprised she still had the same message as when I called from the Lighthouse. Diego’s voice saying: “Peoples,
we’re not home right now. Leave a message at the …” My moms laughing in the background and then the beep sounding. I remember ’cause I was sitting right next to him when he said it. I remember looking over at Moms, watching her crack up a little.

That’s something you should know about Diego, by the way. He can pretty much make Moms laugh any time, any place. No matter what mood she’s in.

I hung up.

I sat down and looked at the parking lot for a while. Watched some people pulling in and others pulling out. I tried hard to think what I should do next, but I honestly had no idea. My mind was completely blank. I looked up at the clouds and tried to make out shapes. For a sec I thought I saw Diego’s face laughing at me, but when I looked closer I knew I was full of shit. There wasn’t no face there. More like a big-ass white bowling ball, one with the finger holes and everything.

I pulled out this journal and read through a bunch of my entries. It was crazy to look back over my last couple months. So much shit had happened. It almost seemed like I had to be making half the shit up, or at least exaggerating. But I wasn’t, man. Every single thing in here is completely true.

I still had a bunch of pages left, too, and I wondered if by the time I ran out of pages I’d be done with my story. And how would it end? It’s weird when you’re writing a book about your own life and you got no clue what’s gonna happen next or if it’ll even be good or bad.

One thing I can say for sure, though, I was happy as hell my journal didn’t have a bunch of that emotional crap most people’s journals have. I know that’s probably what the judge wanted me to put or whatever, but I like it so much better that I just tell what happens. It seems like more of a real book that way. Like the ones you see in bookstores or school libraries.

I stood and picked up the phone again, dialed the number on the leather petty-cash envelope.

Jaden answered right off and said hello.

“It’s me again,” I said.

“Miguel, bro. Great to hear from you, man. I was actually just thinking about you.”

I rolled my eyes, thought:
Right, money
. “I’m payin’ the petty cash back. It might take me a while to raise it up, but I’ll mail it soon as I do.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Bro, I think that’s solid. It makes me really happy to hear that.”

“I should just send it to the address on the envelope thing? That’s the right one?”

“Read it to me.”

I read it to him.

“That’s it, bro. That’s where I am right this second, in my office. The guys are just cleaning up after breakfast. We had frozen waffles. You remember our frozen-waffle mornings?”

I switched the phone from one ear to the other.

“You liked the blueberry ones, right, bro? Kind of burned on the sides. See, Miguel, I was paying attention.”

“Yeah, they’re all right.”

For some reason just thinking about the Lighthouse made butterflies go into my stomach.

“Anyway,” Jaden said. “I’m watching the guys right now and thinking how much this place has changed. We got three new residents. Nice kids. One of them is an amazing dancer, bro. Last night we put on some hip-hop and cleared the living room floor and all the guys broke it down. It was unreal. They took turns in the middle and even made a couple routines. By the end, though, we were all watching Miya. He can
do things you’ve never even seen before. Like he’s double-jointed in every part of his body.”

“Yeah?” I said, trying to think why he’d be telling me all this.

“It was good for the guys, bro.”

As he kept talking I looked over my shoulder to watch this young mom wheel a cart from the grocery store to her car singing to her kid: “Old MacDonald had a farm / EE-I-EE-I-O / And on that farm he had a cow …” I watched her pop the trunk and start loading in the plastic bags. Her little kid stood up in the cart, clapping.

“… and we got a new batch of books, too,” Jaden was saying. “I ordered them myself with you in mind. Never know when you’re gonna get a resident who reads, right? It’s hella rare, bro. But you proved to me it can happen.”

I remembered going up to the Lighthouse bookshelf, feeling all the spines and then picking the one I wanted to take in my room. I said: “I’m almost finished with
The Catcher in the Rye.”

“Miguel, my man, that’s in my all-time top five. Holden’s a trip, right? He says some pretty funny stuff about the people in his life. Ha ha! But at the same time, he’s really just a vulnerable, lost kid.”

I switched the phone again. “I liked
Of Mice and Men
better. And
The Color Purple
. Mostly
The Color Purple.”

“Yeah, those books are great too. But you gotta understand, Miguel.
Catcher
was way ahead of its time. Nobody’d ever written a character like Holden. He was a true original.”

“No, I like it a lot,” I said, reaching into my bag and pulling my copy out. “I’m just sayin’.”

Jaden said some more about the book, and I stared at the cover thinking how far away I was from my life back at the
Lighthouse. And even farther away from my life in Stockton. From my moms and Diego and our apartment and the levee. I shook my head thinking where I was now. On a pay phone in San Diego with some surfer group-home counselor telling me about his favorite books and how his parents once invited this old English teacher to dinner who had supposedly met the guy who wrote
Of Mice and Men
.

“Bro, listen,” he said after a short pause. “From now on I want you to call here collect. You know how to make a collect call, right? You just dial—”

“I know how,” I said.

“Good. From now on, bro. I love hearing from you. I mean it.”

“Does Lester know I call?”

“He does. I’m not gonna pull any punches with you, Miguel. I told him first thing. He’s confused, just like I am. We think we’ve created a pretty chilled-out environment where guys can get better and move on with their lives. So it was a surprise—”

“Did he call my mom?”

“He did, yeah. She’s worried. I called her too. Right after you last called. I told her you were okay and that you were a good kid. We had a nice long talk, bro—”

“Anyways,” I said, interrupting him. I didn’t want to hear anything else about my moms for some reason. Just in case it was bad. “I’m paying the money back,” I said. “That’s all I called for. I just don’t know how long it’ll take.”

As I was hanging up the phone I heard him saying something about me coming back and how he and Lester would work things out with the judge, but I didn’t really hear the details.

I knew I should start walking again. Go find a train or bus station and buy a ticket somewhere. Or I should at least figure
out some sort of plan—even if it was just for the rest of today. But I didn’t do
anything
, man. I just sat my ass down on the little strip of grass, next to my bag, and watched that young mother finally pull her car out of her parking space. Watched her loop around to the exit and cautiously merge back into traffic. Then she was gone.

And there was this one memory that kept coming into my head. I don’t even know why. It was the time when me and Diego and my moms all went to some ice cream place about two months after we found out my pop wasn’t coming home from the war.

Moms, who’d been so depressed she barely got out of bed, came marching into me and Diego’s room and said: “You guys be ready in ten minutes, okay?”

“Why?” Diego said.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” I said.

“I’m taking you guys out for ice cream sundaes.”

Diego looked at her like she was crazy. “Ice cream, Ma? I don’t know if you checked a calendar lately, but it’s the damn middle of winter.”

Moms put her hands on her hips and said: “And your point is?”

“It’s rainin’ outside, Ma.”

“That’s what umbrellas are for,” she said. “Now come on, I feel like a chocolate sundae.”

I automatically started pulling my umbrella from under the bed, but when I looked up and saw Diego watching me I paused.

Moms turned to me and said: “See, Miguel agrees with his mom. A sundae sounds good, doesn’t it?”

I looked back at her and said: “I guess so.”

Diego shook his head. “Come on, Ma. You know Guelly’s gonna just go along with any single thing you say.”

“That’s ’cause he likes being around his mom,” she said.

Diego held his hands out, said: “And I don’t?”

“Hurry up and get ready, then. We’re going out for sundaes together.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Diego said, a smile slowly coming over his face. He pulled his umbrella from under the bed too. “You know I’m just bustin’ your balls anyways, Ma.”

We all piled in the car and went to Baskin-Robbins and ordered huge ice cream sundaes and sat together in a booth way in the back. And after Moms had a couple bites she flicked a spoonful of ice cream onto Diego’s black sweatshirt. Diego looked down at the ice cream, and then looked up at Moms with this shocked-ass look on his face. I remember I couldn’t believe she did that. I maybe even thought she was going crazy.

“What?” she said, shrugging and going back to her sundae.

“You just flicked ice cream on me,” Diego said.

Moms acted all confused, though, said: “I most certainly did not, Diego. You ever think maybe it was your little brother over there?”

Diego looked at me, and I shook my head. Then he scooped up some ice cream and flicked it on my mom’s jacket.

She casually picked up a couple napkins, wiped the ice cream off and told Diego: “That was extremely rude, honey. Flicking ice cream on your own mom. What kind of son would do such a thing?”

Diego was about to say something back, but right then Moms scooped up some chocolate sauce in her right hand and wiped it all over Diego’s face. Then she pulled out a long chunk of banana from her sundae and threw it in my lap.

Before you knew it we were all three of us flinging ice
cream and bananas and chocolate sauce all over each other and laughing our asses off.

The manager stormed over to us and told us to leave immediately. Moms picked up her spoon and flicked ice cream right onto his damn cheek and forehead. Me and Diego laughed so hard we could barely breathe. The manager guy wiped off his face with a rag and got this crazy look on his face. He spun his head to the girl working the register, shouted: “Jenny! Call the goddamn cops! Hurry up! I want these people arrested!”

But me and Moms and Diego were already racing out of the store together, laughing and telling each other to hurry and get in the car. We cracked up the whole way home, sticky-ass melted ice cream all over our clothes and faces and hands. And then, as we pulled into our apartment complex parking lot, Mom’s laughing died out and she got this different look on her face as she stared straight ahead. And then she started sobbing. She gripped the wheel and cried harder than anybody I’d ever seen before.

Me and Diego put a hand each on her shoulders and told her, “It’s okay, Ma. It’s okay. Don’t cry, Ma. It’s okay.” But secretly I think we both knew it was a good thing. It was the first time she’d cried since the army guy came to our house that day and said our pop was involved in a freak training accident and wasn’t able to make it through.

I was laying in the grass by the pay phone picturing all of us in the ice cream place, the look on the manager’s face, us coming home in the car, when I heard this deep voice behind me saying: “It’s the cops. We arrestin’ all guys named Mexico.”