by Jack Lopez
Alex flicked Jamie again.
What enraged me was to see Jamie flinch before he was even hit. I pushed Alex hard on his shoulder.
He came forward, trying to flick my head, but I just kicked him in the stomach, the way I’d seen these Thai kickboxers do on television. Nestor, my father, would sometimes watch sports on TV before he went to work and I’d watch with him. The kickboxers just wailed on each other using their hands, feet, knees, and elbows even. I noticed when they came forward they led with a kick, a lifting of the knee and snap of the foot. That was what I did to Alex. And it caught him right in the belly.
Right when Mrs. Brown showed up.
Jamie was as surprised as I was that Alex was suddenly crying. I was sent to the principal’s office, where my only regret was that I cried too when she told me how much trouble I was in.
Now, I almost felt like crying. Rather than help Jamie moments ago, I had just stood by. Amber was the one who had intervened, not I.
After some time she said, “That’s why he wasn’t at school.” She stared at the waves and her voice sounded scratchy.
Jamie had told me he didn’t feel well, was why he missed school on Friday. “What?”
“F wouldn’t let him out of the house until he mowed the lawn. He wouldn’t do it Friday and he wouldn’t do it yesterday. He just sat in his room. Until this morning.”
We had talked on the phone and he’d said he didn’t feel like doing anything. But the hurricane swell got him off his ass. And it wasn’t even here yet. I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing.
Some of our friends came in from the water, though most of them hadn’t seen anything. Greg Scott had but he was too polite to mention it. I could tell by the way he looked at Amber that he knew. In fact, everyone knew that F was an asshole and yelled at Jamie sometimes. Nobody talked about it, it was just growing-up shit. F was a cheap jerk. Jamie was big now. Some shit would go down, no doubt about it.
While picking up my board I told Amber we should go. She got her board, stuffed her towel into her backpack, and, in a slight daze, followed me, Greg Scott walking with us. When we got up to the highway, there was no car. F must have taken it.
“Now what?” Amber said. Her long brown hair was coming out of its tight braid. Her face looked more linear than it really was, making her look older, tired.
“You can leave your boards at my house,” Greg Scott said. He was such a pal, unlike Mr. Has-It-All Greg J.
And we did, which was nothing new. I carried my board under my right arm, and Jamie’s under my left arm. An hour ago we had two cars. Now we had no car and four boards to carry. Greg Scott’s father saw us approaching and came out and took Jamie’s board from me, helping us to place them all in the garage.
“Where’s Jamie?” Mr. Scott said.
“He had to get home suddenly,” Greg Scott said. He looked at his father. His father asked no more questions.
I didn’t feel like carrying my pack all the way back home, so I left it with the boards. Amber left her wetsuit and stuff too.
Greg Scott walked with us back to the street. His father resumed the weeding he was doing. “Take it easy,” Greg Scott said.
“Yeah,” I said. Then Amber and I began the long walk back toward our houses.
CHAPTER 3
Behind The Strand, the name of the beach houses just north of Playa Chica, were large tract homes where Jamie lived. His father, Mr. Watkins, had been a really nice guy, coming to our ball games when we were young, putting a basketball backboard in their driveway and shooting hoops with us far into those summer nights that seemed to go on forever when I used to spend the night at Jamie’s. His house was bike-riding distance from mine, and he and I spent all our free time together.
For a time I think I secretly wanted to be a Watkins, to be their second son, to have those soft searing blue eyes that Jamie and Amber had, to have the sandy blond hair, to be in a two-child family, to acquire the ease with which they all seemed to do everything. Jamie’s father was a professional, an up-and-coming architect, someone who was in the paper sometimes for awards and things. Mrs. Watkins was athletic and perky (my mother’s term — I think she was jealous), and stayed home.
My parents were the same age as Jamie’s, but they were not Claire and Eddie. My father was a printer, my mother a secretary, and sometimes they fought over not having enough money. There were four kids in my family and money was tight. Our land was worth a lot, though, and that was something.
I was thinking all this shit as I tried to get comfortable on the shower floor, where I always fell asleep. I don’t know why, but I liked to nap with the water cascading over me. I liked the tingling feeling the jets of spray made as they hit my head; I liked the warm, safe feeling I had inside the shower, locked inside the bathroom. None of my family could disturb me here. While leaning my legs up against the opposite tile wall I couldn’t help thinking about this morning at the beach.
“Hurry up, I need to pee!” my little sister shouted from the other side of the door.
“Go away!”
“I’m telling, you’re not supposed to stay in the shower so long,” Patti whined.
“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute,” I lied. I listened to see if she was actually going to tell, which she rarely did. She could use the other bathroom, dammit! In time, I forgot about her threat, the warm water making me drowsy.
Jamie and I had met in kindergarten. One day Mrs. Watkins approached my mother, asking if it was okay for me to come and play at their house. Of course it was, but, still, my mother had to go over and check things out just for form’s sake. From that time on we had a regular play day — Tuesday — which lasted through elementary school.
After Mr. Watkins died, Tuesdays turned into every day, because I would walk home with Jamie and hang with him. Mr. Watkins died in a freeway auto accident. He was driving early in the morning on his way to a shopping-center site that his firm was going to design. A big rig crashed over the center divider and hit Mr. Watkins’s car head on. He died on impact, the Highway Patrol told Mrs. Watkins. He hadn’t suffered, they said. And his car had hit others, three more people dying in the fiery crash. The Highway Patrol said the stuff about dying instantly because there was a horrific fire, and not much was left of some of the accident victims. It was all right there on the freeway, and on television and in the newspapers, really sucking in its gory details.
Jamie was in the fifth grade, Amber in seventh. People from all over the area attended the funeral, and so did I and my parents. Even my older brother went because he knew the family, and my father said he should pay his respects.
At that time it was no longer fun to go over to Jamie’s, but I still did. He started coming over to my house more often, and I knew it was hard for him to see my father, but that was what he wanted, to hang around somebody else’s father, I guessed.
My legs were above my head, my back flat on the floor, which stopped the drain, I noticed, as water was almost overflowing the shower pan, so I switched positions, leaning against the wall and pulling up my knees into my chest so the water hit my neck and back as I stretched my upper body forward. I settled in, thinking how hard it had been for Jamie to lose his father, to lose all his money, to have F live in his house.
Sick shit, I figured, because of a damn big rig.
I must have finally conked out, thinking those thoughts, letting the hot water soak me, when my father, Nestor Barrela, banged on the bathroom door. My older brother Raul, when he first began to talk, had called him Nestor Barrela, and it had sort of stuck as a family joke, though I just called him by his first name. “You’re using all the hot water!” Nestor shouted. When he wasn’t home I wouldn’t wake up until the cold water hit me.
After drying off, I lay on my bed in my room. My brother’s bed was still against the other wall, and I could almost imagine him lying there in his boxers, talking on his cell, his lean and strong body gangly-like even though he wasn’t that tall, his brown hair still me
ssed up from showering, his long eyelashes looking wet though they weren’t. I’d shared a room with him my entire life, and now he was married and going to be a father. It was weird not having his clothes in the closet, not having stuff I could borrow if I needed it. Or not talking with him when he came home from his job at the pharmacy, where he had worked the counter and made deliveries.
I must have dozed off again, for the next thing I knew my mother said, “Come on, sleepy head.” She was in my room.
“I’ll be right there.”
It was weird with only five of us at the table, my older brother’s seat empty next to me. Across from me sat my little sister and brother. Patti was eleven, Paul seven, still getting his “big” teeth. My older brother was nineteen (soon to be twenty), four and a half years older than me.
“How was surfing?” Nestor said. Even though my mother wasn’t yet seated, he’d already begun eating.
My mother had made meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. But my parents put salsa on their meatloaf, something none of my friends’ parents did. And my father would sometimes wrap the meat in a tortilla, making a small burrito. Another thing my friends didn’t do. Ever. But they tasted good that way and I did the same as my father.
“How was it?” my father asked again.
I thought of Jamie. “It was fun for a while,” I said.
“You sure were tired,” my mother said, placing the gravy bowl on the table and sitting down. “It’s not like you to sleep all afternoon. Are you feeling well?” She placed her hand on my forehead.
I recoiled from her touch. I didn’t tell them about walking home, about F and Jamie on the beach.
“He’s fine, just lazy.” Nestor was half finished with his food before we’d even served ourselves.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
Nestor bared his teeth at me, his teasing smile.
“Leave him alone,” my mother said. As she chewed she always ground her teeth, something that made me squirm, sort of like when you hear chalk screech over the blackboard.
My sister wolfed down her food, following my father’s lead, laughing from time to time. She was starting to develop already, and she was going to be real pretty, like my mother. My mother was short with a “full figure” and a bright smile and she colored her hair a reddish shade. My sister had brown hair and green eyes and the fair skin of our mother.
My father, finished with his food, pushed his plate forward, stood up, and said, “I’m going to read.” That meant he was going to take a nap before going to work. He was a printer, a foreman, and he worked the graveyard shift, eleven at night until seven in the morning, but he had a far drive to get to work, and he always went in early on Sunday night, the first work night of the week for workers of the graveyard shift.
As we finished our dinner, my mother said to me, “Are you okay? You’re awfully quiet.”
“Mom, can I get a subscription to CosmoGirl?” Patti said.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I want my own computer,” Paul said.
“You’re too young,” I said.
“Nobody’s getting anything,” my mother said.
“I’m gonna go shoot baskets,” I said. My mother gave me the stare. “May I please be excused?”
It was around sunset when I climbed on top of the block wall that surrounds our backyard and looked out to sea. From a standing position on the wall, I could see the surfline at Playa Chica. The waves did seem to be building — there was a solid line of white-water crashing on shore. Cool. Tomorrow would be good. But tomorrow was a school day. Monday. Maybe I could fake being sick.
I sat on the wall, watching the colors of the sky as they transitioned from day to night, from bright and textured to dark and flat. When it was almost dark, I went inside the house.
A theme song for some bogus reality show was going when I thought I heard something outside. My mother was asleep. Because she worked in the morning, she’d go to bed early. Nestor had already left for work, taking his old Toyota pickup. My younger brother and sister were asleep, since they went to bed at 9:00. Probably the wind. It had been really blowing when I came in at sunset.
I sort of had the house to myself and was enjoying it. I had some homework to do, had to study for a test, print out an assignment for English, nothing to get excited over. I liked to stay up late and do my schoolwork when the house was quiet. The problem was that I aced everything without trying; I just wasn’t challenged, as Mr. Vance, my homeroom teacher said. I was considering skipping eleventh grade next year and going right to twelfth, if this year stayed so boring. The problem was that Jamie wasn’t in the H classes — the honors classes — and I’d be a grade ahead of him, and I’d graduate a year before him. I resisted last year when my counselor, Mrs. Perez, had approached my parents. I’ll give this to Nestor and my mother, they don’t force things on me that I don’t want. As the theme song continued playing I went into the kitchen to get a bowl of ice cream. I thought I heard a tap at the front door, but ignored it because nobody would come over on Sunday night. I plopped back down on the sofa, spooning ice cream down my gullet, with all the big, comfortable pillows propping me up. There it was again. Tap, tap, very lightly. And again.
What the? I thought on my way to the door and opened it.
“Juan,” Amber hissed. She wore a T-shirt and her frayed cutoff Levi’s and her hair was all messed up and she was way out of breath and it looked as if she’d been crying. She held her hands together, wringing them, a gesture I’d never seen her do, making her backpack fall off her shoulder.
I hated to admit it, but after dinner I had forgotten about the shit this morning. Overcoming my surprise, I said, “Come in.” I could count on the fingers of my right hand the times Amber had been over, and I couldn’t ever remember when she was here on her own.
“No,” she said. She was breathing hard, as if she’d been running, but she was trying to mask it so she’d be quiet.
I’d always had a crush on Amber. And now here she was at my door, her chest heaving up and down and her powerful and perpetually tanned legs twitching into a pigeon-toed stance. Her individual features were angular, sharp, and she shouldn’t be good-looking, but she was. She was beautiful, in my opinion. It wasn’t that Amber was so stunningly good-looking or an outrageous babe or anything. But once you saw her you wouldn’t forget; her beauty was not ordinary.
After she caught her breath she said, “Jamie’s on the beach. He beat the shit out of F.”
“Come in.”
“I’m taking him money. He got some stuff together and left. He asked me to get you.”
“Where’s F now?”
“I’m not sure. My mother called the paramedics. I think the cops’ll come too.”
“Crap. Get in.” I leaned forward and grabbed her arm, pulling her into the entry hall. I turned off the porch light. “Let me get a sweatshirt.”
Jamie was in trouble. My best friend in big trouble, the sinking feeling right in my gut told me.
Moments later we ran across the field over the hollows, underground trenches for storing World War II munitions. Sometimes kids would hang out at the hollows when they were avoiding their parents.
A slight overcast blew in off the ocean, obscuring the half moon that washed the land in an eerie light. The smell of saltwater permeated the air, and Amber and I were huffing and puffing, but still, we ran toward the sea. It was just beyond the marsh, beyond the four-lane highway that skirted the beach and went all the way to the pier, all the way to Mexico.
“Wait,” Amber said. She leaned over, panting.
“You okay?” I said.
Her braid fell over her head, almost hitting the ground. She stood upright, gave me a sad smile, and pushed me. “Yeah. F was drunk, Juan. Drunk! And yelling at all of us. Jamie stood up to him and kicked his ass. He hurt him. F’s hurt, I mean really hurt.”
“Let’s go!” We took off again.
After we’d made it through the strawberry field and t
hrough the cornfield we slowed to climb down the small sandstone cliff that would put us on the marsh. The cornstalks rustled in the night breeze, and it was as if you could hear the tidal movement through the marsh — the tide would recede for another hour. There was nothing to do but wade through the muck, which sucked at our feet as we trudged on. Soon the water was up to our knees, then our waists, and at this point you could really feel the tidal current wanting to take you out to sea.
“He’s got a gun at the house. He said he’d kill Jamie.” Amber huffed long, deep breaths as we stopped again.
My family was probably the only one in the nation not to have an arsenal of firepower at our disposal in our house. In fact, my family was totally old school. I couldn’t have piercings, tattoos, iced hair, cell, and my brother married his girlfriend just because she was pregnant. My father told my brother that he was doing the right thing. I thought he was a chump, even though I liked Bonnie.
“If F was drinking, maybe he’ll cool down,” I said after thinking about it.
“F’s messed up. He was, like, convulsing on the floor.”
Soon we slogged through the shallow marshy part in front of the Coast Highway, and stopped before crossing. This was potentially dangerous because if cops were looking for Jamie and saw us crossing, then they could get to him.
“I don’t know if we should both go at once or separately,” I said to Amber.
She knew what I referred to because she said with no hesitation, “At the same time. Otherwise there’d be two chances to see us.”
She was right, of course, and I wondered why I wasn’t thinking so clearly. Fact of the matter was, I was scared. At first I thought I was only scared for Jamie. Then I knew my fear was for Amber as well. Now, this minute, as I prepared to cross the Coast Highway, I knew that I was also scared for myself. What if F had his gun and was coming for Jamie? I didn’t want to die by gunshot, I wanted to drown in huge waves. Waves that were totally out of control. Fucking chaos!
