We Were Here (2 page)

Principal Cody stared at one of the pages for a minute, then he looked up and said: “I was actually thinking about getting my wife the DVD as a gift. It’s our twenty-eighth anniversary in, let’s see”—he used his fingers to count—“thirteen days.”

Diego nodded, so I nodded too.

“Congratulations, sir,” Diego said. And then after a short pause he said: “Anyway, sir, Mrs. Nichols told me I needed to get someone to rehearse with since tryouts are comin’ up soon. So I got my brother here, right, Miguel?”

I nodded.

Principal Cody handed the playbook back to Diego and smiled at me. He said: “Well, I wish you kids all the best.” He checked his watch, then turned back to Diego and clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s hurry on to class now, gentlemen. You’re already ten minutes late. You can get back to the Jets and the Sharks at break, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Diego said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Diego packed his playbook in his backpack and we both smiled and nodded and then walked past the cafeteria toward the classroom buildings. Diego looked back after we rounded the corner, and when he saw we were out of Principal Cody’s line of vision he whacked me on the back of my head one last
time. But we were both sort of laughing when he did it. We weren’t serious anymore.

“Who’s the Jets and the Sharks?” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told me, pulling a pack of gum from his jeans pocket.

“You aren’t really trying out for that play, are you?” I said.

“Wha’chu think, Guelly?” Diego said, chewing his gum and wadding up his wrapper. He flipped me a piece too.

I caught it, unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth.

“I ain’t even read that shit, boy,” Diego said, and then he slipped right into his classroom without saying bye. Like he always did.

I walked down a few more buildings cracking up about my bro, until I got to my own classroom. I peeked around the door, and when I saw my teacher writing out an equation on the chalkboard, I ducked in without her seeing me and grabbed a desk in the last row.

Later that night I snuck the playbook out of Diego’s bag and read the whole thing to see who the Jets and Sharks were. And what the character Action was like. When I was finished I couldn’t believe what a perfect lie Diego came up with. Right there on the spot too.

But that’s just an example of my bro. I swear to God, man, he thinks up lies faster than anybody you could ever meet. Trust me.

June 3

Yo, this group home’s full of punks and posers and loudmouths and skeleton-ass baseheads. Nothing but ugly, stupid-looking gangster-wannabes. I guarantee there’s not a person
in the place who could spell his own damn name without a cheat sheet. And you should peep the weak-ass decorations they got in this place. Corny paintings and posters on every wall: a sailboat leaving some fake island, two polar bears fondling on each other in the snow, a giant rainbow waterfall coming off a cliff in Hawaii or some shit. There’s this big blown-up photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., on a stage pointing out at a crowd of black people back in the day and a bunch of goofy inspirational sayings like: “Life is 5% what happens to you and 95% how you deal with it.”

Yo, deal with
this
, I said in my head, and when I saw nobody was watching I spit a fat loogie on the cheap plastic frame.

On every single door there’s a typed-up sheet of rules so nobody forgets they’re in a group home, forgets their ass is locked up, put away, bad kids. On the dry-erase board in the kitchen there’s a list of all the chores we gotta do every day—“Miguel” written in over the name that’s been crossed out, “Marquee.”

I guess it’s only the damn names that change.

A Serious Question for Whatever Counselor’s Reading This:

Yo, you really think a punk-ass place like this could make a kid
better?
How’s that make any sense, man?

Lemme ask you something: If you send a normal kid to a group home with a bunch of dummies for nine months what’s more likely to happen? The normal kid ignores all the shady shit around him and gets his life straight, or he just turns into a damn dummy his own self?

For real, think about it.

June 3—more

This ancient-looking black dude named Lester drove me here in a house minivan. Didn’t stop yapping the whole time either. He told me how they got seven houses total and each one has six residents and a minivan. The residents are all between fourteen and eighteen years old and are placed here to “rehabilitate.” I damn near pissed myself when he said that word, by the way, ’cause he could hardly pronounce it. He’s like Jamaican or whatever, so it came out sounding like “rehubby-litate.”

“Something the matter?” he said, turning to look at me.

I just shook my head at him, though, and kept laughing. And after a while he went on.

He told me about the history of the place, how it was founded and who by and what for and a bunch of other random stuff too, but after a while, man, I just tuned his Jamaican ass out. Instead I counted how many cars passed us on the freeway, thinking back on how me and Diego used to flip people off from the back of our old man’s truck when we passed ’em. How we’d make bets about which people would flip us back. You’d be surprised how many people just take shit like that, by the way. Or act like they don’t see you. For real, most people ain’t got no kinda balls, man. It’s sad.

When we got to the place, Lester handed my file and my bag of group-home clothes to the counselor, this surfer-looking white guy named Jaden.

Jaden:

Blond floppy hair, blue eyes and perfect white teeth when he smiled at me. He looked pretty damn out of place, considering all the black and Mexican ex-Juvi kids he was supposed to be watching. He and Lester talked in the office for a sec with
the door closed and then Lester came back out, told me good luck, waved to the rest of the residents sitting around the couch watching TV and took off out the front door.

Jaden came up to me and patted me on the back. “What’s up, bro? Welcome to the Lighthouse. Ha ha! That’s what everybody calls it, bro. Because all the other houses on this street are old and brown and gray and ours is bright yellow like a lighthouse. Ha ha! Anyway, bro, you wanna meet the guys now or in the morning?”

I didn’t say anything back.

He peeked in at the rest of the residents, then turned back to me: “Tell you what, let’s do it tomorrow. We’ll start fresh and all that good stuff. Ha ha!”

He waved for me to follow him into one of the three rooms, where he set down my stuff. “Go ’head and use that dresser, bro,” he said, pointing to the one closest to the window. “And this is your bed right here with the light blue blanket. You’re rooming with Jackson. He’s from Oakland. Little bit of a drug habit that keeps setting him back, but we really like the guy overall.”

I sat on my new bed and stared at the scuffed-up headboard. There were like twenty different sets of initials carved into the wood. This how many other people slept in this bed? I thought. And what was I supposed to do, carve in my initials too? Another set of stupid-ass letters on a stupid headboard in a stupid group home surrounded by stupid people?

Really? That’s what’s up?

And right then something clicked in my head. I realized how alone I was. Just another random kid in their system. A half-Mexican ghost from Stockton who messed up his family. I’d spend this year with a bunch of other ghosts from other nowhere places until they said I could leave, and then
I’d have to go haunt some other spot. And I was trying to think if I could ever go back home. Maybe when my moms dropped me off she was dropping my ass off for good. My whole family would probably turn their backs on me. And I’d have to roll solo like this forever.

Anyways, staring at all those initials, the shit hit me hard. I didn’t have nobody that cared about me anymore.

Not even my own self.

And right then I had to put my hands on my middle. And lean over. I didn’t know what was going on, but I had mad cramps in my stomach. And my head was spinning. Jaden stopped talking for a sec, asked me if I was okay, but I just sat there. I tried to be as still as possible so I wouldn’t be sick or nothin’. And eventually he started talking again.

He moved toward the door, peeked outside and then leaned against the doorframe. “Les tells me you’re cool beans, bro. That’s sweet. We need some chill factor in this place. Sometimes the guys get a little—You know, they get worked up about stuff. But it’s not a bad house overall. We’re like any other group home: we got some positive energy flow and we got some static. While I’m here during the day, before the night watch comes in, it’s my job to build on the positive flow and limit the static. You see what I’m saying, bro? It’s Miguel, right?”

I didn’t say anything back.

He opened my file, then closed it and said: “Listen, let’s go sit in my office for a sec.”

I cringed when I stood up because my stomach was killing me and I didn’t know why. Probably the rubbery-ass micro-waved cheeseburger they gave me earlier in the day, my last meal at Juvi. I thought about ducking into the bathroom real quick, but I didn’t. I followed Jaden into his office.

He sat down at his desk, leaned back in his chair and pointed for me to sit on an empty stool. “Les also tells me you’re from Stockton.” He sat up straight. “Bro, that’s where I went to college. Small world, right? Elements of energy flowing together into one body of water. Six degrees of separation. Hey, what’s up with that little Italian spot, Guido’s?”

I didn’t say anything back.

“That was my hang, bro. Ha ha! Me and my boys used to go there on Sundays to watch football and eat calzones and drink pitchers of cheap beer. Talk to honeys. Those were some of the best days of my life, Miguel.”

He looked down at my folder, said: “Hey, you ever think about going to college, bro? It’s pretty awesome. And I see you got really good grades. Three point four, bro. That’s amazing, actually. I think that’s the highest GPA I’ve ever seen in a resident file.”

I didn’t say anything back.

I watched Jaden flip through the next few pages of my file, nodding his head. “Anyway, Stockton,” he said, smiling. “I got memories for days.”

I figured his eyes would get all big when he got to the part about what I did, but they didn’t. He just nodded some more and then closed up the file and put it in a drawer with the others, next to a shiny lockbox—the kind people use to store money.

“Bro, I’ve been at the Lighthouse for going on four months,” he said, turning back to me. “I try to run it on the chill side, you know? That’s my motto. You guys handle your biz, do your chores, stay out of trouble, et cetera, everything’s cool. But check it out, bro. It’s a serious adjustment, living with five other guys. Dealing with the social pressures of a group-home environment. Don’t be afraid to lean on me at
first. I was a psych major, bro. I got a handle on this kind of thing. You feel me?”

“I gotta pee,” I said, pushing off the stool.

Jaden smiled and stood up. “Out this door, hang a right, third door on your left.”

I turned to leave.

“Door doesn’t lock,” Jaden called after me as I hurried my ass down the hall. “Just so you know. None of the doors here lock, bro. Except the office—”

I shut the bathroom door behind me and rushed the toilet, wrapped my arms around the cold porcelain and heaved. But nothing came out. All the blood in my body went to my head, the back of my eyes, and I dry-heaved again. My face was burning. I heaved again and again, but nothing came up. I didn’t know what the hell was happening to me. Or if I was sick or what. I spit in the toilet and stood up, looked at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and I couldn’t believe it. There were tears running down my stupid-ass face, man. I was crying like a bitch.

I pictured Diego behind me pointing and laughing. Telling me I was mad soft.

I slapped myself in the face so I’d stop. Slapped myself a second time, harder. “Look at your bitch ass,” I said to my reflection. “Punk bitch.” I punched my stomach for cramping up on me like that. Elbowed myself in the ribs. The tears weren’t coming out anymore, but I slapped my face again anyway. I wasn’t gonna let myself turn into no punk. Punched my right temple and grabbed my hair and pulled as hard as I could. Then I spit in the toilet again and sat on the edge of the tub, rocking back and forth. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. And I didn’t know where to go or what to think.

There was a knock on the door, and I turned around and shouted, “Yo, somebody’s in here!”

Then I stared at the floor where the tile was all cracked and worn out and listened for the sound of somebody’s shoes walking away.

June 4

Took me less than one day to get in a damn fight.

Right before breakfast, Jaden brought me into the TV room and introduced me to all the posers sitting around on the couches watching a rap video. Three black kids, Jackson, Reggie and Demarcus; a shaved-head Chinese kid with these nasty-looking scars on his cheeks, Mong; another Mexican kid, Rene; and a fat white boy named Tommy. Only Tommy looked up when Jaden told ’em: “I’d like you guys to say what’s up to our new resident, Miguel.”