We Were Here (9 page)

I pulled my hood off when I caught my breath and Rondell did the same, but Mong kept his up. And he couldn’t seem to catch his breath at first, or stop coughing.

“You all right?” Rondell asked him after a minute or so.

Mong looked up at us and smiled.
“Of course
I’m all right,” he said. “I’m free.”

When he finally got his breath he reviewed what was supposed to happen next again—though by this time I pretty much had it memorized. He’d gone over it with us every single lunch for the past five days, outside on the far cinder block. How his cousin would show up in her red Acura and drive us all the way down to the Mexican border. How some guy he knew from Juvi would pick us up from there and take us to this resort near Rosarito. How we could get work there right away, on the local fishing boats, live for mad cheap and meet all kinds of tourist girls from everywhere in the world.

While he was talking I thought in my head how weird it was that some Chinese kid knew ten times more about Mexico than I did. And I was supposedly
from
there. Or at least my family. That shit didn’t seem right to me.

“Soon,” Mong told Rondell, “you guys will be living brand-new lives on the most perfect beach in all of Mexico.”

“And you too,” Rondell said.

Mong spit in the bushes and turned his eyes on
me
this time. Only me. “Yeah,” he said, that crazy smile he gets slowly coming over his face. “And me too.”

July 16/July 17

We’ve been waiting for Mong’s late-ass cousin all the way into the next day. Like three punk little kids waiting on Santa Claus with a plateful of cookies. Our backs up against the dirty-ass trash Dumpster, butt cheeks falling asleep, hardly talking ’cause we hardly even know each other. I keep looking at Mong, wondering if he even
has
a cousin. Or if he just made the whole thing up to get us to go on the run with him so he can stab me in the back when I’m sleeping.

After the first hour I got so pissed off just sitting here I said: “Yo, Mong!”

He didn’t even look at me, though. Just kept staring straight in front of him and said: “She’s coming.”

Then the next couple hours I got mad paranoid. Like the first time Diego smoked me out at the levee. I swore every set of car tires I heard on the street was the cops scouring the neighborhood looking for us. I even held out my hands at one point and couldn’t believe how much they were shaking. Like I was some kind of tweaker coming down from a three-day run.

After that I got pissed off again and spent my time brain-storming what I would do if ol’ girl
never
showed. Like maybe I could hitch a ride down to Mexico on my own. Or up to Canada. Or across to Stockton, where I could live on the levee and Diego could visit me every day and bring me scraps of food. I even thought maybe I could sneak back into the
Lighthouse and pretend like I was there the whole time, they just didn’t see me.

“Mong, man,” I said as soon as the morning started chasing off night and the sky changed to lighter.

“Don’t worry” was all he said back, though. And still he didn’t look at me. Just reached up to touch his brown tooth necklace.

Rondell, on the other hand … Man, that dude hasn’t gone through
none
of these emotional ups and downs during our wait. Wanna know why? ’cause about twenty minutes after we got here, homey passed his ass out cold, head hanging all forward, mouth open. One thing I’ve learned about Rondell is he can catch Z’s pretty much anywhere, anytime. In any position. Maybe the bigger a kid you are, the more you gotta close up shop.

And Mong just keeps peeking his shaved head around the Dumpster every ten minutes or so, to make sure we don’t miss his cousin’s car. All night he’s been doing that shit, but still there’s no sign of this supposed cousin.

At this point, man, I’m so pissed and confused I’m not even pissed and confused anymore. I’m just sitting here writing every little thing down in my journal, like the judge said for me to do. Though I doubt me writing about busting out from a group home is what his old ass had in mind.

July 17—more

Hours and hours went by and there was still no sign of Mong’s cousin. And when it got to be past ten, and all the stores started opening and the parking lot started filling up
with cars, Mong finally went off to find a pay phone. I wasn’t even pissed or paranoid anymore, I was just mad loopy from having stayed up a whole night leaning against a trash bin thinking about what was gonna happen next.

Soon as Mong left I reached into Rondell’s bag for my new book,
Of Mice and Men
, thinking maybe I could try reading a little. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

The only problem was Rondell woke up while my hand was still deep in his bag. We stared at each other for a few seconds and I laughed and said: “Well, look at this, Rondell. Somebody just got caught with their damn hand in the cookie jar.”

I figured he’d have a little something to say about me stashing all the books I’d swiped from the Lighthouse in
his
bag. But he didn’t. The thought probably never even crossed his mind. All he did was reach in right after me and pull out
his
book, the Bible, and open it up so he could pretend like he was reading just the same as me.

What Happens When You Get So Damn Bored You Can’t Even Think Straight:

I swear to God I tried to concentrate on what was happening with the characters I was reading about, but after a while I couldn’t help myself. I was so tired and confused about what was gonna happen next I just wanted something to happen now. So I turned to Rondell and said: “Yo, how’s that work-in’ out for you, homey?”

“What?” he said, looking up at me.

“Staring at a bunch of words when you ain’t got no clue what they say?”

Rondell closed his Bible up slowly, keeping a finger on the page he was at. “Wha’chu tryin’ to say, Mexico?”

“Nothin’, man,” I said. “You just always got that damn Bible open, and I know you can’t read for shit.”

Rondell looked at me confused as hell for like ten seconds.

Then his face went serious and he lunged for me, grabbed my neck in his huge right paw and squeezed. “Who says I couldn’t read!” he yelled.

I tried to answer but I couldn’t breathe, much less make a sound. I clamped onto his thick black arm and tried to push it away but I couldn’t budge him.

“I could too read!” he shouted.

I squirmed and kicked and tried to bite, but I couldn’t get loose. All the blood rushed to my face, my eyes damn near bugging out of my head. “Okay,” I mouthed without sound, scared he might take shit too far and choke me to death. “Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.”

He let go of my neck, but continued staring at me with this intense look.

I gasped for breath and reached up to feel my numb neck, the thick dents his fingers left in the skin. “Goddamn, Rondell!” I shouted, punching him in the arm as hard as I could. “You almost choked my ass to death!”

“You was tellin’ lies, Mexico,” he said, hardly registering the punch.

I stretched my neck and opened and closed my jaw. “Jesus, man!” I didn’t know he’d get
that
stressed about me saying he couldn’t read. It wasn’t like I was telling dude the end of some movie he didn’t watch yet. He knew he couldn’t read.

He kept on staring at me.

I put my eyes on the asphalt under my feet and took a couple deep breaths to pull myself together. There was an ant trying to carry off some kind of crumb that was three times as big as his dumb ass. He kept dropping it, picking it up and
moving it a few inches, then dropping it again. I shook my head and looked back at Rondell. “Look, man,” I said, trying to calm the guy down, “I didn’t mean you couldn’t
read
read. I was just sayin’ the Bible’s hard to interpret. People study that shit their whole lives and still don’t get what it says.”

“’cause I could read,” he said, opening his Bible back up. “You shouldn’t tell rumors about people when they can read, Mexico. That’s how people get a beat-down.”

“You just heard me wrong, Rondell. I didn’t say—”

“See that sign over there?” he said, pointing to the lit-up store sign a few yards to our right. “I could read them words just fine, Mexico. It says, ‘The’ and ‘Gap.’”

I nodded my head and said, “All right, Rondell. You can read, then. That settles it.” I picked up my book again, hoping we were done, but we weren’t.

He stared at the side of my face for a while and then said: “I could read them two words like it wasn’t nothin’, Mexico. ‘The Gap.’ You shouldn’t tell rumors about people that ain’t true.”

“All right,” I said. “Jesus Christ, you can read, okay?”

“The Gap,” he said again, under his breath.

I looked up at the sign again, and then at Rondell. “Got it,” I said.

The sign actually said “Old Navy,” but I didn’t feel like getting into it with the dude anymore. He was too frickin’ strong and high-strung to argue with about something that didn’t even matter. What the hell did I care if he was a damn illiterate or not? I was just trying to have a conversation.

I stared at my book for a minute or so, making like I was already back into the story, but when I looked up Rondell was still mad-dogging me. Over his shoulder, I could see Mong making his way back.
“Finally,”
I said. “Yo, here comes Mong, Rondell. I sure hope he tracked down his damn cousin, don’t you?”

But Rondell wasn’t having it. He stayed staring at me and held up his Bible, said: “Besides, Mexico, when it comes to the Bible you don’t gotta read it like no regular book. You just open up the cover and
it
reads
you
. And you just know what you gotta do.”

I closed my book and tossed it back in Rondell’s bag. “Look, Rondell,” I said. “I’m sorry about what I said, okay? I really am. But will you please just shut the fuck up already? You’re driving me crazy.”

Rondell gave me a blank look for a couple seconds, and then he said: “Wha’chu tryin’ to say, Mexico?”

All I could do was cover my face with both hands and take a long deep breath. And when I looked up again, Mong was standing in front of us, nodding.

“She’s coming,” he said.

July 17—more

About four hours later, a red Acura pulled into the mall parking lot, and this hipster-looking Asian girl stepped out and shielded her eyes against the sun as she looked around.

“There she is,” Mong said, and we threw our bags over our shoulders and ducked out from behind the Dumpster.

At the car, Mong’s cousin held up her hand for us to stop and said: “All right, nobody gets in without telling me their full name, first and last.”

“Miguel Castañeda,” I said, saluting her.

“Rondell Law,” Rondell said, saluting her the same as I just did. “Gots two
L
s at the end of the ‘Rondell’ part, ma’am.” He turned and looked at me all proud, like he was some sort of damn spelling-bee champ.

“Okay, two things,” she said, pulling off her sunglasses.
“First, nobody I’m driving calls me ma’am. It makes me feel like an old lady. I’m just plain Mei-li. Mei-li Chen.” She spelled her first name out for us, dash and everything, then she turned to Mong and said: “Second. Cousin, look, I’m sorry I’m late. But I had to really think about this, ’cause I’m not so sure it’s on the up-and-up.”

“I told you—”

Mei-li put her hand up to cut Mong off. “But I think I figured out a compromise. You’re just gonna have to trust me, okay?”

Mong gave her back a blank stare.

“Mong,” she said, all long and drawn-out, tilting her head to the side. She reached out and touched his brown tooth necklace. “You still have it.”

They looked at each other for a sec, and then Mong looked away.

“Mong,” she said, “are you gonna trust me?”

He shrugged.

“Okay. Good.” She looked at me and Rondell and smiled perfect white teeth.

Mei-li:

I watched the girl put her sunglasses back on and fumble with her car keys. Watched her push a few strands of hair out of her face with the back of her hand. And, man, I gotta state it for the record: Mei-li was probably the hottest hipster Asian chick you could ever meet. She was around nineteen or twenty with short choppy green and black hair and big round eyes. She had a silver eyebrow ring and wore a skull-and-bones necklace, a white wife-beater and black Dickies with a chain going from her wallet to her belt. There were two Chinese characters tattooed on the inside of her left wrist and one on her shoulder.

With most girls who dressed like that I just figured they were witches who might cast a mad medieval spell on your ass, but with Mei-li it was different. I bet you could shave ol’ girl’s head completely bald and dress her ass in garbage bags and she’d still be fine as hell.

She slipped into the driver’s seat, pulled closed her door. As Rondell climbed into the backseat I turned to Mong, who’d been watching me stare down his cousin the whole time. “What?” I said.

He didn’t say anything back, though. Just looked at me for a couple more seconds like his old psycho self and then ducked into the other front seat.

I waved dude off and looked around the parking lot, at all the people going in and out of cars and stores and walking with shopping bags full of brand-new stuff. I saw this group of kids around our age carrying skateboards. They were laughing and pointing at one kid sipping on a big McDonald’s Coke. You’d probably think it made me feel bad about myself. Because they weren’t running from the cops. They were just out in the open, laughing, having a good time. And maybe it
did
make me feel a little bad. But mostly I just felt excited. Like me, Mong and Rondell were getting away with some bank robbery or something. And nobody knew. Like we were outlaws from back in the Wild West days. Riding out of town on horses, toward Mexico, with all the money.

It’s how we were different from other people.

Original.

I slid into the seat behind Mong’s cousin and closed the door. Mei-li turned the key in the ignition and some punk music started blaring out of the speakers, but she only lowered the volume a little as she put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space.